0:00 Intro 0:55 1. Terrible Creative (credited by blackcat7k) 4:59 2. Too Many Character Variants (credited by stonetic2515) 7:27 3. Variant/Bait-and-Switch Covers (credited by piratecapn1066) 10:36 4. Everything is Gay (credited by waynetech10) 14:17 5. No Stakes Comics (credited by vernonhampton5863) 17:16 Outro
My five things. 1. I detest that they are unable to acknowledge and publicize their worst mistakes. They are unable to accept the fact that Suicide Squad failed after the first film.Damian has been a failure from the start, and it is evident that most Batman fans despise him. Tom Taylor's Nightwing sold more copies than the current Batman & Robin run, and his Robin series was cancelled because of poor sales. We don't like him, because he is just a bad fanfiction concept. 2. Unskilled authors for example, Ram V has no concept what the start, the middle, and the climax of a story are. These problems plagued his Detective Comics and other runs. It is not appropriate for someone who lacks writing fundamentals to be employed at DC. 3. Events. There wasn't any good events since Rebirth. 4. Assassinations of characters For instance, Morrison wrote everyone in his Batman run out of character (especially Talia), Tom King wrote Walley West out of character and Geoff Johns wrote Aquaman out of character. 5. Their fake diversity. They don't care about minorities or something. Only about genders and the characters sexaully. Also, they mocked Batman since Morrison's run that he got assaulted by Talia.
I liked Damian in supersons and in Tomasi's run of Batman and Robin. But he's literally just in the way. Tim is the best Robin hands down. Jason and Cass (especially Cass) should be the ones to get stories focusing on childhood trauma, parental issues and the struggles of being raised as an assassin and then thrown into the real world where your skills don't lie and trying to adjust to it. Without Jon to soften him Damian just kinda sucks. He's like Jason- trapped in the one storyline they know works with him. Every damian story is just 'my dad doesn't understand me'/'I'll fight my way into better family standing! Le gasp, why isn't it working!?' He worked for a second when Dick was Batman. But now that Bruce is back Tim is his other half. Damian is only a hindrance
I totally agree with all the reasons you said. Another thing I hate nowadays is how a lot of the big main male heroes are portrayed. They come across like goofy sitcom Dads or as ineffectual and unsure of themselves. Also a lot of them will have to share the book with a female character (the last few years of Daredevil and a lot of the new Darth Vader series are perfect examples of it) that will upstage him in his own friggin’ book! It gets so bad sometimes that he will seem like a guest star in it. There are plenty of female characters that I like but I’d rather they just get stories of their own and not be used to hijack big name male characters titles.
5 things I hate 1. Decompressed story arcs one after the other 2. Endless crossovers/events interrupting runs I’m reading 3. Speculators and publishers still thinking they matter 4. Writers who disregard established characterization on long running characters 5. Inconsistent art between cover and interior
The cover thing, that's been true for comics for ages. DC was infamous for it, they'd have a solid artist do the cover and some hack do the interior art.
Anything related to comic grading / speculation / resale value is so laughable to me at this point. Like I care about a 9.8 signed copy of anything that has been released in the last 5 to 10 years.
@@ComicBookMuscle when I was young the idea of paying a lot of money for an older golden age or silver age comic seemed kind of interesting and added a certain mystique like "oooooh it would be cool to be able to own Spider-man #1 etc" kind of thing but as I've gotten older the whole thing seems dumb especially for newer books. I was in my 20s during the 90s so the whole speculator thing just ruined comics for me - seeing the mindset of collectors who dont even read the books. I have one of these people in my family and he spends all his money on slabs and then cant pay his bills so he can hang them like trophies on his walls. Its so dumb. And he doesnt even read comics. I contantly tell him "dude its just ink on paper from a printing press its not like a page of the original inked art." To each their own I guess.
5 things that I personally hate about comics today : The destruction and character assassination of iconic characters Replacing iconic characters with gender swapped / race swapped/ sexuality swapped versions All the reboots & retcons & multiverses Events that are more uneventful than a wrestling PPV Comics are woke propaganda rather than telling good & memorable stories
I added my feelings about Variant Covers in the other thread. Didn't we go through some kind of implosion due to this back in the 90's? To another point, if you say "That's really gay," about a comic it's actually not a slur or insult, it's an objective fact.
Gail Simone's career took off because she created the Women in Refrigerators website. No Stakes Comics make for 'great' TV scripts, that's why they do it, because of the Greg Berlanti style of 'Feelings in Hallways' storytelling.
I already complained about it but I'll be more precise here. The things I dislike most about modern comics; 1. The poor writing quality/fundamental misunderstanding of the character they're writing. 2. The lack of heroic morals. Self explanatory, the writers are more concerned with sounding moral by their own subjective ideals instead of showing characters actually sacrifing things to their duty, or using univerisal morals. (Also batman turning into an abusive father, Dick's issues with him used to be standard growing pains. His relationship with Jason showed that he wasnt actually some overbearing tyrant. Now its been flanderized and people took Dick's youthful rebellion/reasonable devastation at losing a little brother at face value so Bruce is just bullying his kids, never apologising or hes depicted as a despicable little sociobat who the writer forces to grovel) 3. Out of touch editorial directives. Peter can't marry Mary, Bruce can't marry Selina, Alfred has to die, [insert character here] can't grow because then people will need to think up new ideas for them. Wolverine can't cut off limbs or smoke cigars, DC characters can't be shown shooting someone (bye bye Red Hood, Grifter, Vigilante, Bloodsport, Deadshot etc). 4. The lack of continuity/respect. This includes gender, race and personality swaps. If they don't care to keep it consistent they why should I? Again, Tim Drake had such an interesting arc laid out for him. Turning from the prefect robin into a morally grey pragmatist as Red Robin/evil batman. They could have expanded on that. Might have even offered a way to get Jason back into the batfamily in a more natural way as they both could grow closer. Maybe even go on a downward spiral. Or maybe Tim would recognise this dark turn as something irredeemable and try to avoid it. But no. Now he's either just there in the background. Or hes toted out for pride variant covers. 5. Horrible art. If I can draw better than a big 2 artists then they need better artists. ASAP. 6. Vapid prattling on and mistaking snark for humour. As well as slice of life stories that do and say nothing. This isnt manga where you can get away with a filler chapter because the books are so large/it comes out in a magazine with multiple other snippets of other series. 7. The fact none of this hack writers have been fired. The fact Sina Grace, Mako Tomaki, Tini Howard, Gail Simone and their ilk write an identitcal story/character dialogue no matter who they're writing shows that they don't have the talent necessary to write those characters. They're never in character, because they lack the empathy to write how these characters in this world would act and feeling. As a final point, I'm not against the concept of a reboot. In fact I think the big two might need a massive hard reboot. But only after clearing house to get every slacktivist "writer" out and bringing in talented writers who were fans of these characters when they were good in. Anything short of that probably won't do anything. Although wow is this is amazing, DC has interupted their event with ANOTHER EVENT! I don't think that's ever happened before. Truly a watershed moment
real talent doesn't want to work for the Big 2 also Bruce and Selina don't really work they have the same thing he has with Talia animal attraction and that's it not a basis for a life long partnership
that's probably true. I liked Talia and Bruce more (before Morrison absolutely destroyed her) but even then I never really thought they'd work because love isn't enough when you've got principles so wildly different. I think Sliver St Cloud is probably the only one who Bruce would have had a chance with as a proper marriage candidate. But she couldn't get past Batman. Another one was Jason and Artemis of Bana-Mighdall. They were a cute couple. But instead we get him forced with Ravager (where either one or both needs to be out of character for it to even work) or some literally who's. I don't blame them. I wouldn't want to work for those out of touch slave driving editors either.
I just read a book about Marvel's history... one big difference in the 60s 70s and 80s was that if your book didn't sell well, you were reassigned or fired. Writers and artists were motivated to create books that people wanted to buy and read... TBO, I don't know who they're making these new books for... so many beautiful covers with bad art and even worse stories inside.
When I read Marvel comics catalogue, I only find names like Jason Lanzig, Stephanie Phillips, Steve Orlando, Jason Aaron, Collin Kelly and bunch of other 'untalented' writers. Where those great, edgy comics writer of old, gone? Names like Ed Brubaker, Morisson, Jeph Loeb, Warren Ellis, or Alan Moore, were no longer available in comics.
Hello, thank you for the video. It was very nice. I have a good idea for a video that you can do in the future. Take a poll to ask people who do not read comics or have never tried them, what are the reasons for not trying to read comics or not wanting to try them? This is another idea. Take a poll to ask manga readers why they prefer manga compared to comics?
Things I hate. 1- ruining Peter Parker and Mary Jane and their history all bc Joe Quesada couldn’t process his own divorce. 2- retconning characters established history of all sorts but especially their sexual history. 3- removing American way from Superman along with aging John Kent and all things done to Superman under Bendis. 4- making the x men seem more like bad guys and just annoying and terrible people. 5- ruining Nick Fury and removing all cigars. 6- comics have always had politics yes but it was well written and usually brought discussion but was secondary to good writing and good stories and now it’s all about the writers entering themselves into the story and their own politics at the expense of good story and writing and respect for character history. And yeah I wanna add the one you said about variants it’s just a dilution of the characters we loved and just more use of writers politics trying to enter the conversation but using established characters names.
End of the day, a comic book that just tells a straight forward story, with a defined villain and threat, that's in continuity, doesn't break down the hero and doesn't lead into a big event, would be a breath of fresh air.
A big one for me that falls under the character assassination umbrella is not understanding who the character or characters are. I don't understand how an editor can't be up to date on what the characters voice should be and tell the writers, no, you can't do that, this girl is this way, or this guy is this. It boggles my mind
Things i hate. 1: All the different versions of the same characters. We don't need 50 Spider-men and women in the same universe. 2: The Race and gender swapping. Its stupid, offensive, and hypocritical. 3: The fake out deaths or bringing a character back to life, it could work but only if it's written very well and if it makes sense. 4: All the inconsistency in power. I'm sick of Bat-God easily beating super powered beings who should easily be able to kill him without any real effort. 5: All the retcons and reboots. It makes anything that happens in the story meaningless because you know they will just reboot the universe in a few months or years, so why even bother getting invested at all. 6: Making every character suddenly gay.
The shipping that makes no sense is the Betsy/Rachel relationship. Psyloke loses Angel and all of a sudden, she's "Is you! It's always been you!" with Rachel!?
Really? OMG, that's just so dumb. Why can't they just create new characters who are lgbt and make them more believable... this whole thing with every character being pansexual all of a sudden is so stupid and annoying.... and I'm gay! I want representation... but not at the cost of good characterization and good story.
@@mathewsydney8929 Because new characters usually don't take off, so they make changes to characters with an established fanbase. It "starts a conversation."
I'm gay and I hate what is being done in the name of the gay community. It's embarrassing and leads to really terrible writing and destroying characters by having them suddenly announce that they're gay out of nowhere.
Same... we want representation but this is not the 'representation' we asked for... it's more like shoehorning political soundbytes where they don't belong and ticking boxes with underdeveloped characters that are more stereotype than substance... I'm so pissed off at the way they turned X-Men into a fanatical and bloodthirsty ethnostate that I'm just writing my own X-Men fanfic for myself... "inclusion" doesn't help us when it's performative and promotes dumb stereotypes.
Great video, Wes! One of your best to date. The respondents were spot on. All the reasons listed were why I no longer read Marvel comics. They have destroyed Spier-Man. He is new-age loser who will probably wind up sleeping in the park in the near future. Knockoffs, multiverses, no stakes, one note characters, stories that never end, and stupid Kum Ba Ya moments have destroyed much of this storytelling medium. God, will someone at the big two pick up the phone and give Jim Shooter a call!
regarding variant covers, I'm old so I the miss the days from the 80s and 70s (and 90s?) when covers gave you a key moment from the story in an epic fashion that made you want to know what that image means as far as the story goes and made you want to read the story - like books from the Claremont/Byrne Uncanny X-Men run as an example.
There’s a reason why alphabet people have been excluded historically. When they are included, they transform whatever IP or institution or company into a reflection of their own narcissistic personalities. And it destroys whatever has been infiltrated. Every “gay friendly” church and synagogue is dying. Dr. Who (which somehow became the gayest show on TV overnight) is finished as a franchise. And comic characters like Tim Drake and Alan Scott and John Kent are irreparably damaged.
What? Even in a hypothetical golden age of comic book quality, I can't see anyone asking for "Black Panther vs Predator". I'm down for superhero "families" in theory, but only ACTUAL families. Not these diversity cosplayers. That House of El idea had potential and I've neverminded Batman and his four sons (before they were ruined and turned gay or cat-lady thirst traps).
You do realise that old comics we're made with newspaper. The only difference between then and now is that the old comics were pocket change compared to new comics.
I would say that the most appropriate number for a family is 5 members to 10, this defining that everyone will be different if everyone has the same power like the supernan family, decrease this number to 3. We don't need more than 3 supermen, more than that is ridiculous just like we don't need more than 3 flashes. The more people have the same power as the hero, the less special the hero seems and I hate that no one has the right to be special anymore in the world of superheroes.
Yeah, I might as well as add this one. Anything related to comic grading, slabbed, signed, special limited cover of a book that came out in the last 5 years is just laughable to me. None of this stuff has the value that speculators, flippers, retailers think it is. I know they have to make money, but it’s crazy to think you can throw an extra 15 dollars mark up on a book released the same day because it’s a rare variant for some “completionist”. This takes all the fun out of actually READING comics.
The world is large, larger than most people can grok, so the potential need for super heroics can be large as well. Unfortunately, when the majority of all your heroes only hang out in one city, it cuts your efficacy significantly. Are there enough threats in a world to keep a small group of similarly powered super people busy? It can if you have good writers, but that means they're gonna have to be in different, dare I say diverse, locations and interacting with people globally. No more date nights, just monsoons in India and cyclones in Australia, out of control trains in Siberia and mudslides in Chile. More intergalactic threats could be fun but that should be able to be handled by the fifteen earth-based GL's. The Flash family could easily take care of every terrestrial mishap because they move in Attoseconds (An attosecond is to a second, as a second is to approximately 31.69 billion years) apparently. What's an Elongated Man to do compared to a Bat Family Army? See, that's the real pisser about the entire glut of variants to a character, either you stuff so much filler to pad your books, or the earth is a besieged hell-scape of never-ending calamities to keep so many people busy. Guess what's easier to write and draw? Two torsos in blankets texting each other as a Superhero comic is an insult to the legacy of the great creators who made these funny books so darn compelling. Where's the life or death? Where's the odds to overcome, where's the god forsaken action in ACTION Comics?!
Wes, where's the part where there's 19 pages of shitty art, 2 pages of marvel-related stuff & the rest is advertising. At least idw put their ads all in one at the back of the comic. Marvel & DC should take note.
11:31 Preach brother preach there are so many X men characters getting there past histories and sexually changed to fit the LGBTQ agenda. Colossas , Ice man, Kitty Pryde,Wolverine and Cyclops. Colossas had a relationship with both Kitty Pryde and Psylocke and they erased that and made him gay. Wolverine and Cyclops the most iconic rivals in comic history were in a thruple with Jean Grey. Kitty Pryde is now bisexual along with Tim Drake despite both being straight.
#2 is easy to solve: stop the entire line, put out 3 books a week for 12 weeks telling three angles one story; that story is either of a superhero serial killer that systematically eliminates all of the families, or a Hickman’s Avengers-esque story of the main continuity finding multiverses that have no hero’s, and need a couple to protect them from some multiversal villain- so we split the families up to protect those other multiverses, then never speak of them again. Or maybe multiversal COVID- and the main co-morbidity is being a ‘legacy’/variant character.
My list is simple basically dc won’t deage Jonathan Samuel Kent superboy back to normal and marvel won’t allow Peter Parker and Mary Jane to get married and they have their daughter mayday Parker spider girl alive and kicking in the mainstream marvel universe but that’s just my opinion
@@Lauren007E which drives me crazy because you have a emergency reset button right there to deage Jonathan Samuel Kent superboy or say this Jon Kent we have is a fake and the real Jonathan Samuel Kent superboy can be rescued and have him back to his little 10 year old self Jonathan Samuel Kent superboy right there.
that's my cope lol, this Jon is actually Ultramans son who jumped universes to be free of his horrible parents. If you want you can even have a whole "Wow I've learned so much about family, friendship and loving someone more than yourself that I can't actually live with myself for taking this away from that kid... let's go save him!" Then you can have your cake and eat it too. Young Jon is brought back, probably a bit jaded and scared. Maybe a little wrathful that his friends (especially Damian and Kathy) just accepted that he would cut all contact with them without even trying to stay in contact and they didn't care to investigate or notice that was out of character. Maybe even mad at his parents and Nightwing since they just accepted this faker without question while he was left being tormented. They should have noticed that he was different. Heck you might even get more interesting older Jon stories as he can go back to his universe to unseat his parents and become a benevolent dictator and try to make the antimatter universe a better place.
@@Lauren007E actually that’s not a bad idea and honestly that kind of like my idea with my boy Jonathan Samuel Kent superboy as his little 10 being rescued by Superman clark Kent and Lois lane and they kick this imposter ass and save their son, but your idea with older Jon being the son of ultraman and going home to lock his fathers ass and saves real Jonathan Samuel Kent superboy as his little 10 year old-self being saved is pure genius and amazing in my opinion.
I think the worst things they've done at least recently were the changes to Alan Scott (fuck Tim Sheridan to the moon), Tim Drake ( fucknwhoever did that shit) and eeeeeevery single page of Jason Aaron's run on Punisher. That man should be exiled from entertainment for all eternity. Tom King, Tom Taylor and Grant Morrison can suck it too.
1) Lack of action 2) Characters that are not in character 3) Identity Politics 4) Race/Gender Swap 5) Writing that is at the level of an elementary school student
You mean Modern comics like Geiger, junkyard Joe, Redcoat, Rook:Exodus, Sacrificers, Conan, GI Joe, Transformers, Beneath The Trees, Nemesis, Magic Order, Stray Dogs, Feral, Phantom Road, Prodigy…. I could go on and on. You are right, modern comics completely suck. The ones I posted above suck harder than all the rest. Absolutely terrible comics.
5:14 I couldn't agree more there are too many variannt characters in the same universe. We have 2 Spidermen, 2 Thors, two ghost riders, 3 Flashes, 2 Wolverines and 7 human green lanterns. JESUS THAT'S A LOT OF VARIANTS. We need to thin the herd, I'm not saying kill all of them only a few to keep the number of characters to a minimum and keep them in their own universe. Kill off some of the human green lanterns like Simon Baz and the black chick. Kyle Rayners Green Lantern Can be an else world's story. Miles morales Can in SHOULD be Spiderman in his own universe because he doesn't work with Peter around. Having Peter still be alive and still be Spiderman puts miles further in Peter's shadow.
One percent of the population and you want to make ninety percent of all the characters gay, it’s like okay have a few gay characters but not 9 out of 10.
Wes, it was so awesome that you choose my comment to use to speak about the variant cover bullshit, it really made my day to see you directly quoted me in one of your videos, thank you for that, it really did make my day today
I'm so tired of female writers that do nothing but self insert. There are some great female writers that don't, but it seems a lot of the newer ones can't help themselves, it's so obnoxious, especially when the self inserts or character retcons based on their head canon fetishes become the main focus. The other thing I hate is the laziness in gender, race, or orientation swapping to get accolades. Create new characters and invest the time into them instead of changing preexisting ones. The X-Men line has seen a dozen new characters, almost all of which have been diverse and that's awesome... except they don't push them, because that takes effort.
Regarding X-Men, they are creating new characters and are not utilizing most of the characters they already have. The writers are lazy. We don't need or want new characters that are bland and will end up under used.
The era for profitability of the 5 or more comic creator team is coming to a close, artists need to write and writers need to draw, colorists need to letter and letterers need to color for example, and everyone needs to self-edit. May the best representative of mankind win.
It used to be that you hired creators and if they did well and sold well then you would put them into one shots then mini series then ongoings and then if they could keep up multiple books but now it's reverse lmao.
I've never understood why sexuality mattered in comicbooks. I'm tired of the laziness. There's minimal action and fantasy in it anymore. I read comics to escape reality, not to see the real world depicted in pages.
Cost is a pretty big issue. Comics was always a hobby where, with $5-6, you could try out a few titles. Then, when something hooked you, you could start dropping more money. But today's books cost $5-6, which makes that scenario toast. FYI: Our books are $2.99.
@@HereComesCALICO agreed! This seems like a self perpetuating problem. Comics need to be printed on cheaper paper again and distributed on newstands, grocery stores, convenience stores etc to reach a wider audience and more kids to grow readership. The more people reading the more they can reduce costs I would think. I dont buy new comics anymore due to the price, instead I buy the occasional trade.
Check out the letters page in Conan 15, that hit the stands way back in February of 1972. A fan asked marvel to try to keep the cost of the books from rising, because he liked to get an extra copy or two as investments. They apologized for the price increase, citing that inflation was stronger then conan.20 cents would be a real bargain for a comic today.
@@jmen4ever257 I have tons of old Marvels at that 35 cent price point. Even when I was buying new comics in junior high school I think they were 75 cents and that seems like an amazing bargain today!
I want to see Iceman realize he’s been mentally manipulated into changing his sexuality, and go full battle to the death against Phoenix because of it. That’s the kind of violation that’s unforgivable. Unfortunately, we’ll get the heat death of the universe before we get that story.
Bro same... I'm gay and this shit is more effective than conversion therapy. Never wanted to be straight more than I do now. It's mortifying seeing this being what everyone thinks of when they hear gay now. Can we just be normal ffs
@@thatcomicdad1687 I'm not into comics like I was when I was younger so I've never read a Miles Morales comic but when he was first was announced as Spider-man I thought it was a joke. That is not and never will be Spider-man. I later read somewhere that the Steve Ditko estate was suing Marvel over the rights to Spider-man and that Miles Morales was created in case Marvel lost. The plan was to establish the character as "Miles Morales: Spider-man" and then if they lost Marvel would drop the Spider-man part from the title so the character would now just be called "Miles Morales". Not sure if there's truth to that however. And Spider-Gwen - never read a book with this character but it sounds dumb like something written for little girls.
Great video!! I'm an indie creator with 3 different titles and a former lead designer of McFarlane Toys, it's refreshing to see people calling out the nonsense in modern story telling within those companies!
I continue to read a lot of classic runs from Marvel and DC, and I have to say That I feel like Great comic runs went out wih the 20th century. In my Opinion, Marvel's Peak was the JIm Shooter Era, and while they did great for a while after he was ousted, they was definitely a dip in consistant quality (not a big one, but it's noticable IMO), Focusing more on the speculative Market was crippling shot to the industry that is still slowly killing it. DC I feel held out longer and to me only stareted to really dip after Zero Hour (maybe during?), Both held on to the Turn of the century and then I feel a lot of Long Term Bad Choices were made and when we really start to see things get iffy. Yeah, I know a lot of people like a lot of what was being produce in the 2000s, but we have to face it that a lot of decisions made back then have led us to where we are now. The Current crop are a result of the Over correction of things that happened previously. Where as before there was the chaos of blowing everything up and offing characters for shock value, now there are no stakes and everything is nice and neat and everyone sits around drinking coffee and eating donuts while looking at their phones. The Current Crop obviously Hate What comics were, but I feel like the previous Generation did as well. Both are guilty of forcing what they want regardless of what it means for the characters and their legacies.
i dont understand how they can just kill an entire medium, the best medium of storytelling and just act like things are fine. Marvel and DC have driven away their core audience and for what?? i just dont get the thought process here. You get a decent book every now and then but majority is just a shit show and its heartbreaking to see the downfall of comics. We as fans can only take so much before we reach a breaking point and i think i speak for us all when i say that im so tired. being a comic reader is so tiring and frustrating. change HAS to happen or the medium has NO future at all :(
Marvin Miller: Gee, Wendy. I absolutely hate the lack of public service announcements. Wendy Harris: Comics today are ALL PSA. Marvin Miller: Too bad children can't read them anymore. Today's comic PSA's are NSFW.
6:25 You ever see the Red Letter Media episode about Terminator Dark Fate where Mr. Plinket spends like 2 minutes going "but that's the same guy" to Mike explaining all the variations of John Connor that exist now? Yeah, that's how most of these families feel. 1 or 2 versions beyond the main that seem worth keeping, and then like a dozen more interchangeable idiots nobody cares about. I'm pretty sure they repeated that joke with Batman at some point, too, to be more comic relevant. My brain just goes to robits first, sorry.
Constant reboots. Ignoring past continuity just becasue they can't think of a way to work with it. Not only bringing back the multiverse and then beating it over and over and using it to just trot out endless versions of the same characters every color of the rainbow just to please everyone.
The creative teams on Daredevil, Batman and Detective have finally gotten me to stop collecting those titles after 20+yrs. DD the writing is going nowhere and the art is mostly subpar w/oKuder, Batman the story has sucked but Jimenez’s art kept me on board, and Detective had some good art but I’m not sure what even happened the story dragged on so long. Thankfully there’s plenty of quality Indies to check out, and the back issue bins.
@@lobaoguara2332 Literally anything? Any other polygon? It doesn't have to be hexagons every single time. There is no law that says shields have to be represented by hexagons, but they constantly are. It's lame and uncreative.
You have a point, though the hexagon is the strongest shape for structural stability, it's everywhere in Comics and Sci-fi. It's in the fabrics, it's in the architecture, the tech and the magic. Oldheads understand the possible nod to tabletops and early turn based video games, but Master Chief spent an entire game on a ring violently thrust through with hexagons. It had nothing to do with anything and it was honestly just lazy terrain filler. Maybe it's all just the simulation trying to tip it's hand, "Look guys! It's all polygons! Do you get it yet?!"
I haven't read current comics in a long time but I noticed something funny about diversity characters in superhero TV shows, mostly the Arrowverse. Follow me on this: "Arrow" introduces Mister Terrific and makes him gay. What do they do? Instead of having been a cool, badass, he is a nerdy motormouth whose tech constantly breaks down and when it does he gets his butt kicked and has to be saved. That doesn't seem like a very positive representation to me. They also did Wild Dog and made him Hispanic. What did they do there? They gave him anger issues to the point where he lost his daughter because he he beat up some random guy or something. Hot Latin temper. Really? I suspect that is very common with these types of characters and it amuses me.
sadly i think that the well of imagination of the writers is starting to dry imagine people who are getting paid to actually be little boys /girls and play with ''their toys '' and take us with them in their magical journeys are now people just existing
The variant coves hurt local shops, especially when they're based on the copies ordered. Retailers aren't going to buy 25 copies they can't move , which in turn causes consumers that would normally shop locally to go online to one of the big shops where they can get Amy variant they want , causing local shops to lose business they would have otherwise had.
Wes - I wish you separated the time bars on the separate issues you touched on in this video and other videos you do. I was thinking about this last night and I was thinking the Bat Ffamily should have different members present in one universe and not present in others. As far as slice of life - they should have slice of life lines that are not in the superhero books but have the supporting characters from them...
Hey Wes, this is slightly off topic but it's still actually connected to comic books. Did you see the recent news article that showed that DC and Marvel have both lost their shared trademark of the word superhero? Now that term is back in public domain again. You should make a new video about this and talk about it on the next episode of Comics Aficionados so that people can actually know what that means and how it changes the game for independent comic book creators.
Every character gay and the sitting around talking and eating. It feels like every comic is this now. I gave from the ashes a try, but it feels like nothing is even happening. I want action, stakes, climactic battles, heroes with the odds against them! Not eating and talking and being cute and endless validating.
The multiple versions of a hero thing drives me nuts. No matter how many good things I hear about Spider verse I just cant be bothered and then all the multiverse shit since then all it does is water down the characters. I remember when Invincible season 2 started before I read the books a multiverse/alternate dimensions was brought into it and I was a bit worried after the marvel shit but they did it much better in Invincible and I actually love how all his alternate versions were evil. The Invincible war in season 3 is going to be fucking amazing.
I’m just tired of it all. I’m tired of every single writer for Marvel, DC, and pretty much every other publisher having the exact same beliefs. They are one giant Hivemind and there are no unique voices in comics. There are just different degrees of talents. They inject the character they’re writing with their ideologies. They use self-insert characters. They bend and have broken many characters to fit what they want them to be. Not who they are, just who they think they should be. Because of this, they don’t know how to tell fun stories anymore. This weeks issue of Batman was a disgrace. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but Zdarsky has turned Bruce into a bleeding heart liberal socialist and preemptively wrote the readers as the bad guys “protesting” in the book calling Bruce a communist because he knew he would be criticized for it. The new villain being draped in something similar to the flag using guns…I can already see where it’s going. It’s just sad that these publishers don’t have the balls to hire some actual unique writers. I’ve been reading and collecting comics for over 30 years and I’m close to my breaking point.
The fact that you brought up She Hulk made me so happy because I finished that whole series and it was HORRIBLE. It went nowhere, no stakes. Literally like a year of my life gone to that bs story. That's why it got canceled
ya, Ram V sucks. I remember when he was on Carnage/Venom. His stories just went no where. That's also why I am a bit excited for Batman Dark Patterns. Yes, it is another Batman book, but it is stripped down, just Batman. no Bat family! :)
On having too many Character Variants. You guys are reading it all wrong. The current iteration of the DC Universe is literally just a present day Kingdom Come / Jupiter Legacy. The titles you are reading are just the propaganda stories published for mass consumption permitted by your superhero overlords.
I prefer less "galaxy wide" threat stories. The amount of times the galaxy/universe has been put in "danger" only to have a group of people from one silly planet "fix" the problem is eye-rollingly ridiculous. I like stories that have the characters being human at times. One of the reasons I enjoy She-Hulk when she was kicked from the Avengers, her life stopped being centered around fighting. But there was still conflict.
I hate what Marvel did to the Punisher.
Seconded.
50th anniversary and not only was there nothing, he was dead at the time.
I am the same age as the Punisher and this p*sses me off
He was better in Punisher Max. They had amazing art covers and stories.
“Everything is fake and gay!” has become my motto in all things pop culture in the last ten years.
0:00 Intro
0:55 1. Terrible Creative (credited by blackcat7k)
4:59 2. Too Many Character Variants (credited by stonetic2515)
7:27 3. Variant/Bait-and-Switch Covers (credited by piratecapn1066)
10:36 4. Everything is Gay (credited by waynetech10)
14:17 5. No Stakes Comics (credited by vernonhampton5863)
17:16 Outro
Haha He used another one of my comments. Honored.
@@joshuaingobo1559 you do outstanding work.
My five things.
1. I detest that they are unable to acknowledge and publicize their worst mistakes. They are unable to accept the fact that Suicide Squad failed after the first film.Damian has been a failure from the start, and it is evident that most Batman fans despise him. Tom Taylor's Nightwing sold more copies than the current Batman & Robin run, and his Robin series was cancelled because of poor sales. We don't like him, because he is just a bad fanfiction concept.
2. Unskilled authors for example, Ram V has no concept what the start, the middle, and the climax of a story are. These problems plagued his Detective Comics and other runs. It is not appropriate for someone who lacks writing fundamentals to be employed at DC.
3. Events. There wasn't any good events since Rebirth.
4. Assassinations of characters
For instance, Morrison wrote
everyone in his Batman run out of character (especially Talia), Tom King wrote Walley West out of character and Geoff Johns wrote Aquaman out of character.
5. Their fake diversity.
They don't care about minorities or something. Only about genders and the characters sexaully. Also, they mocked Batman since Morrison's run that he got assaulted by Talia.
He turned Talia into some ranting Bond villain. It was heartbreaking.
Have to agree with you on the events thing there.
The point 5. They don't see black ppl, women, Asians, LGBT, etc as ppl, but as tools 2 be used like shields or propaganda mouthpieces.
I liked Damian in supersons and in Tomasi's run of Batman and Robin. But he's literally just in the way. Tim is the best Robin hands down. Jason and Cass (especially Cass) should be the ones to get stories focusing on childhood trauma, parental issues and the struggles of being raised as an assassin and then thrown into the real world where your skills don't lie and trying to adjust to it.
Without Jon to soften him Damian just kinda sucks. He's like Jason- trapped in the one storyline they know works with him.
Every damian story is just 'my dad doesn't understand me'/'I'll fight my way into better family standing! Le gasp, why isn't it working!?'
He worked for a second when Dick was Batman. But now that Bruce is back Tim is his other half. Damian is only a hindrance
I totally agree with all the reasons you said. Another thing I hate nowadays is how a lot of the big main male heroes are portrayed. They come across like goofy sitcom Dads or as ineffectual and unsure of themselves. Also a lot of them will have to share the book with a female character (the last few years of Daredevil and a lot of the new Darth Vader series are perfect examples of it) that will upstage him in his own friggin’ book! It gets so bad sometimes that he will seem like a guest star in it. There are plenty of female characters that I like but I’d rather they just get stories of their own and not be used to hijack big name male characters titles.
5 things I hate
1. Decompressed story arcs one after the other
2. Endless crossovers/events interrupting runs I’m reading
3. Speculators and publishers still thinking they matter
4. Writers who disregard established characterization on long running characters
5. Inconsistent art between cover and interior
This is a great list!
The cover thing, that's been true for comics for ages. DC was infamous for it, they'd have a solid artist do the cover and some hack do the interior art.
You read my mind.
Which is is more people that read Marvel Pride special
Anything related to comic grading / speculation / resale value is so laughable to me at this point.
Like I care about a 9.8 signed copy of anything that has been released in the last 5 to 10 years.
@@ComicBookMuscle when I was young the idea of paying a lot of money for an older golden age or silver age comic seemed kind of interesting and added a certain mystique like "oooooh it would be cool to be able to own Spider-man #1 etc" kind of thing but as I've gotten older the whole thing seems dumb especially for newer books. I was in my 20s during the 90s so the whole speculator thing just ruined comics for me - seeing the mindset of collectors who dont even read the books. I have one of these people in my family and he spends all his money on slabs and then cant pay his bills so he can hang them like trophies on his walls. Its so dumb. And he doesnt even read comics. I contantly tell him "dude its just ink on paper from a printing press its not like a page of the original inked art." To each their own I guess.
5 things that I personally hate about comics today :
The destruction and character assassination of iconic characters
Replacing iconic characters with gender swapped / race swapped/ sexuality swapped versions
All the reboots & retcons & multiverses
Events that are more uneventful than a wrestling PPV
Comics are woke propaganda rather than telling good & memorable stories
Point 1 and 5 hit home.
I added my feelings about Variant Covers in the other thread. Didn't we go through some kind of implosion due to this back in the 90's?
To another point, if you say "That's really gay," about a comic it's actually not a slur or insult, it's an objective fact.
The state of comics at Marvel and DC is so bad, I've seen artists switch over to doing comic strips.
Gail Simone's career took off because she created the Women in Refrigerators website. No Stakes Comics make for 'great' TV scripts, that's why they do it, because of the Greg Berlanti style of 'Feelings in Hallways' storytelling.
I already complained about it but I'll be more precise here. The things I dislike most about modern comics;
1. The poor writing quality/fundamental misunderstanding of the character they're writing.
2. The lack of heroic morals. Self explanatory, the writers are more concerned with sounding moral by their own subjective ideals instead of showing characters actually sacrifing things to their duty, or using univerisal morals. (Also batman turning into an abusive father, Dick's issues with him used to be standard growing pains. His relationship with Jason showed that he wasnt actually some overbearing tyrant. Now its been flanderized and people took Dick's youthful rebellion/reasonable devastation at losing a little brother at face value so Bruce is just bullying his kids, never apologising or hes depicted as a despicable little sociobat who the writer forces to grovel)
3. Out of touch editorial directives. Peter can't marry Mary, Bruce can't marry Selina, Alfred has to die, [insert character here] can't grow because then people will need to think up new ideas for them. Wolverine can't cut off limbs or smoke cigars, DC characters can't be shown shooting someone (bye bye Red Hood, Grifter, Vigilante, Bloodsport, Deadshot etc).
4. The lack of continuity/respect. This includes gender, race and personality swaps. If they don't care to keep it consistent they why should I?
Again, Tim Drake had such an interesting arc laid out for him. Turning from the prefect robin into a morally grey pragmatist as Red Robin/evil batman. They could have expanded on that. Might have even offered a way to get Jason back into the batfamily in a more natural way as they both could grow closer. Maybe even go on a downward spiral. Or maybe Tim would recognise this dark turn as something irredeemable and try to avoid it. But no. Now he's either just there in the background. Or hes toted out for pride variant covers.
5. Horrible art. If I can draw better than a big 2 artists then they need better artists. ASAP.
6. Vapid prattling on and mistaking snark for humour. As well as slice of life stories that do and say nothing. This isnt manga where you can get away with a filler chapter because the books are so large/it comes out in a magazine with multiple other snippets of other series.
7. The fact none of this hack writers have been fired. The fact Sina Grace, Mako Tomaki, Tini Howard, Gail Simone and their ilk write an identitcal story/character dialogue no matter who they're writing shows that they don't have the talent necessary to write those characters. They're never in character, because they lack the empathy to write how these characters in this world would act and feeling.
As a final point, I'm not against the concept of a reboot. In fact I think the big two might need a massive hard reboot. But only after clearing house to get every slacktivist "writer" out and bringing in talented writers who were fans of these characters when they were good in.
Anything short of that probably won't do anything.
Although wow is this is amazing, DC has interupted their event with ANOTHER EVENT! I don't think that's ever happened before. Truly a watershed moment
real talent doesn't want to work for the Big 2
also Bruce and Selina don't really work
they have the same thing he has with Talia animal attraction
and that's it
not a basis for a life long partnership
that's probably true. I liked Talia and Bruce more (before Morrison absolutely destroyed her) but even then I never really thought they'd work because love isn't enough when you've got principles so wildly different. I think Sliver St Cloud is probably the only one who Bruce would have had a chance with as a proper marriage candidate. But she couldn't get past Batman.
Another one was Jason and Artemis of Bana-Mighdall. They were a cute couple. But instead we get him forced with Ravager (where either one or both needs to be out of character for it to even work) or some literally who's.
I don't blame them. I wouldn't want to work for those out of touch slave driving editors either.
I just read a book about Marvel's history... one big difference in the 60s 70s and 80s was that if your book didn't sell well, you were reassigned or fired. Writers and artists were motivated to create books that people wanted to buy and read... TBO, I don't know who they're making these new books for... so many beautiful covers with bad art and even worse stories inside.
When I read Marvel comics catalogue, I only find names like Jason Lanzig, Stephanie Phillips, Steve Orlando, Jason Aaron, Collin Kelly and bunch of other 'untalented' writers.
Where those great, edgy comics writer of old, gone?
Names like Ed Brubaker, Morisson, Jeph Loeb, Warren Ellis, or Alan Moore, were no longer available in comics.
Mister Wes, you missed that part where they made the Predator a half-assed Wolverine!
You what’s funny Wes?
I went to Terrific Con in August and the most popular creators were the old school ones.
Hello, thank you for the video. It was very nice. I have a good idea for a video that you can do in the future. Take a poll to ask people who do not read comics or have never tried them, what are the reasons for not trying to read comics or not wanting to try them?
This is another idea. Take a poll to ask manga readers why they prefer manga compared to comics?
Things I hate.
1- ruining Peter Parker and Mary Jane and their history all bc Joe Quesada couldn’t process his own divorce.
2- retconning characters established history of all sorts but especially their sexual history.
3- removing American way from Superman along with aging John Kent and all things done to Superman under Bendis.
4- making the x men seem more like bad guys and just annoying and terrible people.
5- ruining Nick Fury and removing all cigars.
6- comics have always had politics yes but it was well written and usually brought discussion but was secondary to good writing and good stories and now it’s all about the writers entering themselves into the story and their own politics at the expense of good story and writing and respect for character history.
And yeah I wanna add the one you said about variants it’s just a dilution of the characters we loved and just more use of writers politics trying to enter the conversation but using established characters names.
End of the day, a comic book that just tells a straight forward story, with a defined villain and threat, that's in continuity, doesn't break down the hero and doesn't lead into a big event, would be a breath of fresh air.
A big one for me that falls under the character assassination umbrella is not understanding who the character or characters are. I don't understand how an editor can't be up to date on what the characters voice should be and tell the writers, no, you can't do that, this girl is this way, or this guy is this. It boggles my mind
They need to bring in character bibles. Using the proper charactization from the 80s/90s and 00s
they don't want to they consider them problematic
they actually think they are saving the world from the injustices
of the past
Things i hate.
1: All the different versions of the same characters. We don't need 50 Spider-men and women in the same universe.
2: The Race and gender swapping. Its stupid, offensive, and hypocritical.
3: The fake out deaths or bringing a character back to life, it could work but only if it's written very well and if it makes sense.
4: All the inconsistency in power. I'm sick of Bat-God easily beating super powered beings who should easily be able to kill him without any real effort.
5: All the retcons and reboots. It makes anything that happens in the story meaningless because you know they will just reboot the universe in a few months or years, so why even bother getting invested at all.
6: Making every character suddenly gay.
@@lightingdragon4143 excellent points!
The shipping that makes no sense is the Betsy/Rachel relationship. Psyloke loses Angel and all of a sudden, she's "Is you! It's always been you!" with Rachel!?
Really? OMG, that's just so dumb. Why can't they just create new characters who are lgbt and make them more believable... this whole thing with every character being pansexual all of a sudden is so stupid and annoying.... and I'm gay! I want representation... but not at the cost of good characterization and good story.
@@mathewsydney8929 Because new characters usually don't take off, so they make changes to characters with an established fanbase. It "starts a conversation."
I'm gay and I hate what is being done in the name of the gay community. It's embarrassing and leads to really terrible writing and destroying characters by having them suddenly announce that they're gay out of nowhere.
Same... we want representation but this is not the 'representation' we asked for... it's more like shoehorning political soundbytes where they don't belong and ticking boxes with underdeveloped characters that are more stereotype than substance... I'm so pissed off at the way they turned X-Men into a fanatical and bloodthirsty ethnostate that I'm just writing my own X-Men fanfic for myself... "inclusion" doesn't help us when it's performative and promotes dumb stereotypes.
@@mathewsydney8929 it's not even quality representation. We don't get to be heroic or bad ass we just get to be b itchy queens. Horrible stereotyping.
Great video, Wes! One of your best to date. The respondents were spot on. All the reasons listed were why I no longer read Marvel comics. They have destroyed Spier-Man. He is new-age loser who will probably wind up sleeping in the park in the near future.
Knockoffs, multiverses, no stakes, one note characters, stories that never end, and stupid Kum Ba Ya moments have destroyed much of this storytelling medium.
God, will someone at the big two pick up the phone and give Jim Shooter a call!
regarding variant covers, I'm old so I the miss the days from the 80s and 70s (and 90s?) when covers gave you a key moment from the story in an epic fashion that made you want to know what that image means as far as the story goes and made you want to read the story - like books from the Claremont/Byrne Uncanny X-Men run as an example.
Minding my business listening to Wes as im driving down the road. Fraud alert siren goes off and thought I was about to die for a second 😂.
There’s a reason why alphabet people have been excluded historically. When they are included, they transform whatever IP or institution or company into a reflection of their own narcissistic personalities. And it destroys whatever has been infiltrated. Every “gay friendly” church and synagogue is dying. Dr. Who (which somehow became the gayest show on TV overnight) is finished as a franchise. And comic characters like Tim Drake and Alan Scott and John Kent are irreparably damaged.
What? Even in a hypothetical golden age of comic book quality, I can't see anyone asking for "Black Panther vs Predator".
I'm down for superhero "families" in theory, but only ACTUAL families. Not these diversity cosplayers. That House of El idea had potential and I've neverminded Batman and his four sons (before they were ruined and turned gay or cat-lady thirst traps).
Comics are way too expensive and many will literally fall apart they are made so poorly with tissue paper.
You do realise that old comics we're made with newspaper. The only difference between then and now is that the old comics were pocket change compared to new comics.
@@mikem3543 Well I have, it falls right off the staples
@@Froban They never fell off staples brand new
"AcKtUaLLy"
I would say that the most appropriate number for a family is 5 members to 10, this defining that everyone will be different if everyone has the same power like the supernan family, decrease this number to 3. We don't need more than 3 supermen, more than that is ridiculous just like we don't need more than 3 flashes. The more people have the same power as the hero, the less special the hero seems and I hate that no one has the right to be special anymore in the world of superheroes.
I was at a convention recently and heard Dan Slott saying the Bat Family was too big
Yeah, I might as well as add this one. Anything related to comic grading, slabbed, signed, special limited cover of a book that came out in the last 5 years is just laughable to me.
None of this stuff has the value that speculators, flippers, retailers think it is. I know they have to make money, but it’s crazy to think you can throw an extra 15 dollars mark up on a book released the same day because it’s a rare variant for some “completionist”.
This takes all the fun out of actually READING comics.
@@ComicBookMuscle I completely agree with this!
The world is large, larger than most people can grok, so the potential need for super heroics can be large as well. Unfortunately, when the majority of all your heroes only hang out in one city, it cuts your efficacy significantly. Are there enough threats in a world to keep a small group of similarly powered super people busy? It can if you have good writers, but that means they're gonna have to be in different, dare I say diverse, locations and interacting with people globally. No more date nights, just monsoons in India and cyclones in Australia, out of control trains in Siberia and mudslides in Chile. More intergalactic threats could be fun but that should be able to be handled by the fifteen earth-based GL's. The Flash family could easily take care of every terrestrial mishap because they move in Attoseconds (An attosecond is to a second, as a second is to approximately 31.69 billion years) apparently. What's an Elongated Man to do compared to a Bat Family Army?
See, that's the real pisser about the entire glut of variants to a character, either you stuff so much filler to pad your books, or the earth is a besieged hell-scape of never-ending calamities to keep so many people busy. Guess what's easier to write and draw?
Two torsos in blankets texting each other as a Superhero comic is an insult to the legacy of the great creators who made these funny books so darn compelling. Where's the life or death? Where's the odds to overcome, where's the god forsaken action in ACTION Comics?!
I didn’t know I could have picked 5 things I hated.
Also this came out before Breevort said this, but I hate that Peter and MJ will never get married.
Wes, where's the part where there's 19 pages of shitty art, 2 pages of marvel-related stuff & the rest is advertising. At least idw put their ads all in one at the back of the comic. Marvel & DC should take note.
Well said!!! Yes, these are the things that essentially ruined comics and will continue to do so until comics is DEAD
11:31 Preach brother preach there are so many X men characters getting there past histories and sexually changed to fit the LGBTQ agenda. Colossas , Ice man, Kitty Pryde,Wolverine and Cyclops. Colossas had a relationship with both Kitty Pryde and Psylocke and they erased that and made him gay. Wolverine and Cyclops the most iconic rivals in comic history were in a thruple with Jean Grey. Kitty Pryde is now bisexual along with Tim Drake despite both being straight.
#2 is easy to solve: stop the entire line, put out 3 books a week for 12 weeks telling three angles one story; that story is either of a superhero serial killer that systematically eliminates all of the families, or a Hickman’s Avengers-esque story of the main continuity finding multiverses that have no hero’s, and need a couple to protect them from some multiversal villain- so we split the families up to protect those other multiverses, then never speak of them again. Or maybe multiversal COVID- and the main co-morbidity is being a ‘legacy’/variant character.
My list is simple basically dc won’t deage Jonathan Samuel Kent superboy back to normal and marvel won’t allow Peter Parker and Mary Jane to get married and they have their daughter mayday Parker spider girl alive and kicking in the mainstream marvel universe but that’s just my opinion
what you expect company run by dickheads whos head only think money and use agenda for their selfish
Its so clear that they just wanted Conner but he was dead, now that hes back they really dont know what to do with two teenage superboys
@@Lauren007E which drives me crazy because you have a emergency reset button right there to deage Jonathan Samuel Kent superboy or say this Jon Kent we have is a fake and the real Jonathan Samuel Kent superboy can be rescued and have him back to his little 10 year old self Jonathan Samuel Kent superboy right there.
that's my cope lol, this Jon is actually Ultramans son who jumped universes to be free of his horrible parents. If you want you can even have a whole "Wow I've learned so much about family, friendship and loving someone more than yourself that I can't actually live with myself for taking this away from that kid... let's go save him!" Then you can have your cake and eat it too. Young Jon is brought back, probably a bit jaded and scared. Maybe a little wrathful that his friends (especially Damian and Kathy) just accepted that he would cut all contact with them without even trying to stay in contact and they didn't care to investigate or notice that was out of character.
Maybe even mad at his parents and Nightwing since they just accepted this faker without question while he was left being tormented. They should have noticed that he was different.
Heck you might even get more interesting older Jon stories as he can go back to his universe to unseat his parents and become a benevolent dictator and try to make the antimatter universe a better place.
@@Lauren007E actually that’s not a bad idea and honestly that kind of like my idea with my boy Jonathan Samuel Kent superboy as his little 10 being rescued by Superman clark Kent and Lois lane and they kick this imposter ass and save their son, but your idea with older Jon being the son of ultraman and going home to lock his fathers ass and saves real Jonathan Samuel Kent superboy as his little 10 year old-self being saved is pure genius and amazing in my opinion.
I think the worst things they've done at least recently were the changes to Alan Scott (fuck Tim Sheridan to the moon), Tim Drake ( fucknwhoever did that shit) and eeeeeevery single page of Jason Aaron's run on Punisher. That man should be exiled from entertainment for all eternity. Tom King, Tom Taylor and Grant Morrison can suck it too.
1) Lack of action 2) Characters that are not in character 3) Identity Politics 4) Race/Gender Swap 5) Writing that is at the level of an elementary school student
1-5: modern comics
You mean Modern comics like Geiger, junkyard Joe, Redcoat, Rook:Exodus, Sacrificers, Conan, GI Joe, Transformers, Beneath The Trees, Nemesis, Magic Order, Stray Dogs, Feral, Phantom Road, Prodigy…. I could go on and on. You are right, modern comics completely suck. The ones I posted above suck harder than all the rest. Absolutely terrible comics.
@@mikem3543 modern Harley comics specifically.
How have i not heard about "Fraud Watch" till now???
I'm so far removed I believe the last American comic I bought that was recent was the batman/Joker by silvestri
I hate what dc did to Jon and Christopher Kent.
Same here I am still pissed off about that as well
What did they do to Christopher Kent ? I thought he was forgotten about after the new 52oom
@@mohammadbashammakh from what i remember apparently people are pissed off about him now being a villain now loyal to his father general zod.
@@TevyaSmolka nah Zod kicked him out. They tried to do a supersons thing with him and some kid pretending to be Sinestos kid
@@mohammadbashammakh I wish they forgot him
5:14 I couldn't agree more there are too many variannt characters in the same universe. We have 2 Spidermen, 2 Thors, two ghost riders, 3 Flashes, 2 Wolverines and 7 human green lanterns. JESUS THAT'S A LOT OF VARIANTS. We need to thin the herd, I'm not saying kill all of them only a few to keep the number of characters to a minimum and keep them in their own universe. Kill off some of the human green lanterns like Simon Baz and the black chick. Kyle Rayners Green Lantern Can be an else world's story. Miles morales Can in SHOULD be Spiderman in his own universe because he doesn't work with Peter around. Having Peter still be alive and still be Spiderman puts miles further in Peter's shadow.
One percent of the population and you want to make ninety percent of all the characters gay, it’s like okay have a few gay characters but not 9 out of 10.
Wes, it was so awesome that you choose my comment to use to speak about the variant cover bullshit, it really made my day to see you directly quoted me in one of your videos, thank you for that, it really did make my day today
And yes I changed my name a little because the 1066 was added randomly when I created my account lol
I'm so tired of female writers that do nothing but self insert. There are some great female writers that don't, but it seems a lot of the newer ones can't help themselves, it's so obnoxious, especially when the self inserts or character retcons based on their head canon fetishes become the main focus.
The other thing I hate is the laziness in gender, race, or orientation swapping to get accolades. Create new characters and invest the time into them instead of changing preexisting ones. The X-Men line has seen a dozen new characters, almost all of which have been diverse and that's awesome... except they don't push them, because that takes effort.
Regarding X-Men, they are creating new characters and are not utilizing most of the characters they already have. The writers are lazy. We don't need or want new characters that are bland and will end up under used.
The era for profitability of the 5 or more comic creator team is coming to a close, artists need to write and writers need to draw, colorists need to letter and letterers need to color for example, and everyone needs to self-edit. May the best representative of mankind win.
they don't exist anymore
the well of imagination has run dry
It used to be that you hired creators and if they did well and sold well then you would put them into one shots then mini series then ongoings and then if they could keep up multiple books but now it's reverse lmao.
I've never understood why sexuality mattered in comicbooks. I'm tired of the laziness. There's minimal action and fantasy in it anymore. I read comics to escape reality, not to see the real world depicted in pages.
Cost is a pretty big issue. Comics was always a hobby where, with $5-6, you could try out a few titles. Then, when something hooked you, you could start dropping more money. But today's books cost $5-6, which makes that scenario toast. FYI: Our books are $2.99.
@@HereComesCALICO agreed! This seems like a self perpetuating problem. Comics need to be printed on cheaper paper again and distributed on newstands, grocery stores, convenience stores etc to reach a wider audience and more kids to grow readership. The more people reading the more they can reduce costs I would think. I dont buy new comics anymore due to the price, instead I buy the occasional trade.
@@toad1971 Precisely. Our comics are only $2.99 and we print on newsprint. We sell a ton, on the regular.
Check out the letters page in Conan 15, that hit the stands way back in February of 1972. A fan asked marvel to try to keep the cost of the books from rising, because he liked to get an extra copy or two as investments. They apologized for the price increase, citing that inflation was stronger then conan.20 cents would be a real bargain for a comic today.
@@jmen4ever257 I have tons of old Marvels at that 35 cent price point. Even when I was buying new comics in junior high school I think they were 75 cents and that seems like an amazing bargain today!
I want to see Iceman realize he’s been mentally manipulated into changing his sexuality, and go full battle to the death against Phoenix because of it. That’s the kind of violation that’s unforgivable.
Unfortunately, we’ll get the heat death of the universe before we get that story.
That would be a great run, and epic fights. End with Iceman dead, because they've made him a joke.
Bro same... I'm gay and this shit is more effective than conversion therapy. Never wanted to be straight more than I do now.
It's mortifying seeing this being what everyone thinks of when they hear gay now. Can we just be normal ffs
Zenescope is also awful for variants, they only seem to exist to sell $100 nude covers
If we are going to get rid of variants and clones, can we start with miles morales and spider gwen?
@@thatcomicdad1687 I'm not into comics like I was when I was younger so I've never read a Miles Morales comic but when he was first was announced as Spider-man I thought it was a joke. That is not and never will be Spider-man. I later read somewhere that the Steve Ditko estate was suing Marvel over the rights to Spider-man and that Miles Morales was created in case Marvel lost. The plan was to establish the character as "Miles Morales: Spider-man" and then if they lost Marvel would drop the Spider-man part from the title so the character would now just be called "Miles Morales". Not sure if there's truth to that however. And Spider-Gwen - never read a book with this character but it sounds dumb like something written for little girls.
Thank you for using my comment. It may be small, to some, but I'm glad to hear it shouted out.
I also hate most of the things on this list, especially the boring as hell talking heads mundane slice of life stories and scenes in superhero comics.
Comics used to be The Battle of New York. Now they’re Shawarma.
Great video!! I'm an indie creator with 3 different titles and a former lead designer of McFarlane Toys, it's refreshing to see people calling out the nonsense in modern story telling within those companies!
Pages hidden by QR codes got added to my list recently.
We need a lot more than just 5 things, we could make a 5 hour video with all the issues comics has.
Exactly.
I continue to read a lot of classic runs from Marvel and DC, and I have to say That I feel like Great comic runs went out wih the 20th century. In my Opinion, Marvel's Peak was the JIm Shooter Era, and while they did great for a while after he was ousted, they was definitely a dip in consistant quality (not a big one, but it's noticable IMO), Focusing more on the speculative Market was crippling shot to the industry that is still slowly killing it. DC I feel held out longer and to me only stareted to really dip after Zero Hour (maybe during?), Both held on to the Turn of the century and then I feel a lot of Long Term Bad Choices were made and when we really start to see things get iffy. Yeah, I know a lot of people like a lot of what was being produce in the 2000s, but we have to face it that a lot of decisions made back then have led us to where we are now. The Current crop are a result of the Over correction of things that happened previously. Where as before there was the chaos of blowing everything up and offing characters for shock value, now there are no stakes and everything is nice and neat and everyone sits around drinking coffee and eating donuts while looking at their phones.
The Current Crop obviously Hate What comics were, but I feel like the previous Generation did as well. Both are guilty of forcing what they want regardless of what it means for the characters and their legacies.
i dont understand how they can just kill an entire medium, the best medium of storytelling and just act like things are fine. Marvel and DC have driven away their core audience and for what?? i just dont get the thought process here. You get a decent book every now and then but majority is just a shit show and its heartbreaking to see the downfall of comics. We as fans can only take so much before we reach a breaking point and i think i speak for us all when i say that im so tired. being a comic reader is so tiring and frustrating. change HAS to happen or the medium has NO future at all :(
@@smoothlettuce940 just walk away or read indy books that deliver quality - the big 2 will never change if people don't stop buying.
Marvin Miller: Gee, Wendy. I absolutely hate the lack of public service announcements.
Wendy Harris: Comics today are ALL PSA.
Marvin Miller: Too bad children can't read them anymore. Today's comic PSA's are NSFW.
6:25 You ever see the Red Letter Media episode about Terminator Dark Fate where Mr. Plinket spends like 2 minutes going "but that's the same guy" to Mike explaining all the variations of John Connor that exist now? Yeah, that's how most of these families feel. 1 or 2 versions beyond the main that seem worth keeping, and then like a dozen more interchangeable idiots nobody cares about. I'm pretty sure they repeated that joke with Batman at some point, too, to be more comic relevant. My brain just goes to robits first, sorry.
Constant reboots. Ignoring past continuity just becasue they can't think of a way to work with it. Not only bringing back the multiverse and then beating it over and over and using it to just trot out endless versions of the same characters every color of the rainbow just to please everyone.
The creative teams on Daredevil, Batman and Detective have finally gotten me to stop collecting those titles after 20+yrs. DD the writing is going nowhere and the art is mostly subpar w/oKuder, Batman the story has sucked but Jimenez’s art kept me on board, and Detective had some good art but I’m not sure what even happened the story dragged on so long.
Thankfully there’s plenty of quality Indies to check out, and the back issue bins.
0:55 I have an irrational hate of hexagons. But that's not just a comic problem. That's an all of sci-fi and even some fantasy problem.
What, would you prefer it to be like?
@@lobaoguara2332 Literally anything? Any other polygon? It doesn't have to be hexagons every single time. There is no law that says shields have to be represented by hexagons, but they constantly are. It's lame and uncreative.
Bro Team, Star Trek game: "SHIELDS MADE OF HEXAGONS AGAIN!! RRRAAAARRR!!"
You have a point, though the hexagon is the strongest shape for structural stability, it's everywhere in Comics and Sci-fi. It's in the fabrics, it's in the architecture, the tech and the magic. Oldheads understand the possible nod to tabletops and early turn based video games, but Master Chief spent an entire game on a ring violently thrust through with hexagons. It had nothing to do with anything and it was honestly just lazy terrain filler.
Maybe it's all just the simulation trying to tip it's hand, "Look guys! It's all polygons! Do you get it yet?!"
how does a story with the xenomorphs in fail how
Great video. I spit out my drink when the “fraud alert” popped up. Funny stuff!
I haven't read current comics in a long time but I noticed something funny about diversity characters in superhero TV shows, mostly the Arrowverse.
Follow me on this:
"Arrow" introduces Mister Terrific and makes him gay. What do they do? Instead of having been a cool, badass, he is a nerdy motormouth whose tech constantly breaks down and when it does he gets his butt kicked and has to be saved. That doesn't seem like a very positive representation to me.
They also did Wild Dog and made him Hispanic. What did they do there? They gave him anger issues to the point where he lost his daughter because he he beat up some random guy or something. Hot Latin temper. Really?
I suspect that is very common with these types of characters and it amuses me.
sadly i think that the well of imagination of the writers
is starting to dry
imagine people who are getting paid to actually be little boys /girls and play with ''their toys ''
and take us with them in their magical journeys
are now people just existing
Senpei has recognized m😢
I hate when IDW made Jennika into the new Nightwatcher instead of Raphael. 😡
Pretty much that. I don't know else can be said about the state of comics right now.
Great video, Wes!
I read Ram V's Aquaman 'Andromeda' Black Label book, and that was enough for me.
I dont understand the complaints on variant covers. If you don't like the variant, just buy cover a. Simple
The variant coves hurt local shops, especially when they're based on the copies ordered. Retailers aren't going to buy 25 copies they can't move , which in turn causes consumers that would normally shop locally to go online to one of the big shops where they can get Amy variant they want , causing local shops to lose business they would have otherwise had.
@@Carrion_Comics well explained
Wes - I wish you separated the time bars on the separate issues you touched on in this video and other videos you do.
I was thinking about this last night and I was thinking the Bat Ffamily should have different members present in one universe and not present in others.
As far as slice of life - they should have slice of life lines that are not in the superhero books but have the supporting characters from them...
Hey Wes, this is slightly off topic but it's still actually connected to comic books. Did you see the recent news article that showed that DC and Marvel have both lost their shared trademark of the word superhero? Now that term is back in public domain again.
You should make a new video about this and talk about it on the next episode of Comics Aficionados so that people can actually know what that means and how it changes the game for independent comic book creators.
We need more Bad Boy Wes 🤣
I hate what Jason Arron did to She Hulk.
To me, this has been the worst run in Detective Comics in the almost forty years that I have been reading it.
Every character gay and the sitting around talking and eating. It feels like every comic is this now. I gave from the ashes a try, but it feels like nothing is even happening.
I want action, stakes, climactic battles, heroes with the odds against them!
Not eating and talking and being cute and endless validating.
Editorial change is a must, especially at Marvel
Awesome work guys
I do feel bad for x-men fans. I mean, I guess I shouldn’t judge without reading an issue, but it looks really bad.
The multiple versions of a hero thing drives me nuts. No matter how many good things I hear about Spider verse I just cant be bothered and then all the multiverse shit since then all it does is water down the characters. I remember when Invincible season 2 started before I read the books a multiverse/alternate dimensions was brought into it and I was a bit worried after the marvel shit but they did it much better in Invincible and I actually love how all his alternate versions were evil. The Invincible war in season 3 is going to be fucking amazing.
all of the stuff you mentioned and small case lettering.
I’m just tired of it all. I’m tired of every single writer for Marvel, DC, and pretty much every other publisher having the exact same beliefs. They are one giant Hivemind and there are no unique voices in comics. There are just different degrees of talents. They inject the character they’re writing with their ideologies. They use self-insert characters. They bend and have broken many characters to fit what they want them to be. Not who they are, just who they think they should be. Because of this, they don’t know how to tell fun stories anymore.
This weeks issue of Batman was a disgrace. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but Zdarsky has turned Bruce into a bleeding heart liberal socialist and preemptively wrote the readers as the bad guys “protesting” in the book calling Bruce a communist because he knew he would be criticized for it. The new villain being draped in something similar to the flag using guns…I can already see where it’s going. It’s just sad that these publishers don’t have the balls to hire some actual unique writers. I’ve been reading and collecting comics for over 30 years and I’m close to my breaking point.
The fact that you brought up She Hulk made me so happy because I finished that whole series and it was HORRIBLE. It went nowhere, no stakes. Literally like a year of my life gone to that bs story. That's why it got canceled
ya, Ram V sucks. I remember when he was on Carnage/Venom. His stories just went no where.
That's also why I am a bit excited for Batman Dark Patterns. Yes, it is another Batman book, but it is stripped down, just Batman. no Bat family! :)
Be a fan of Image comics. You'll learn REAL quick to not give a shit about variant covers anymore.
Here thing when working with a minority like a gay character u need to treat them like salt. Add a little for seasoning don't make it the main course
On having too many Character Variants. You guys are reading it all wrong. The current iteration of the DC Universe is literally just a present day Kingdom Come / Jupiter Legacy. The titles you are reading are just the propaganda stories published for mass consumption permitted by your superhero overlords.
why would someone pay for fanfiction
when they can read it for free
fanfiction sites exist
I’m done with most all marvel books
1) Marvel
2) DC
3) Disney
4) Warner Bros
5) Shills for any of the above.
Bad Boy Wes activated!
John Romita Jr’s artwork.
Wes dynamite seems to have a lot of kick starter campaigns for their books.
I prefer less "galaxy wide" threat stories. The amount of times the galaxy/universe has been put in "danger" only to have a group of people from one silly planet "fix" the problem is eye-rollingly ridiculous. I like stories that have the characters being human at times. One of the reasons I enjoy She-Hulk when she was kicked from the Avengers, her life stopped being centered around fighting. But there was still conflict.