Avengers Chronology Conundrum

In Avengers 19 (2010) a drawing shows a photo of the Avengers with Wasp, Goliath (Pym), Vision, Black Panther, Hawkeye, Thor, Cap, Iron Man and Scarlet Witch.
The lineup is from Avengers 58-59 except for Scarlet Witch, who was away with Toad and Quicksilver between #53 and #75. So is this a mistake or is there a way to make sense of this picture?

This is a period in Avengers history when Black Widow was around in a stressed relationship with Hawkeye. She was not an official member of the Avengers.

The photo must have been planned to commemorate the Vision’s induction (in #58). Maybe Black Widow couldn’t pose for the photo because she wasn’t a member so she used her espionage skills to dress as Scarlet Witch, a former member. This could have been her idea or someone else’s so that she could appear alongside them. Apart from the Wasp which is already there, the Scarlet Witch was the only past female member Natasha could impersonate. An intriguing proposition but are there clues that this interpretation is correct?

On the photo « Scarlet Witch » looks very stern and crosses her arms, keeping her distance from Hawkeye. His body language is less clear. In some way he turns his back to her, in another he turns his head toward her either to make eye contact or as a sad witness of her displeasure.

Further decoding the body language, we can see that Iron Man must have been the sticker for the rules who initially objected to have Natasha pose with them. Not only does he have his back to her at an angle as if to bodily obstruct the line of the camera but he clenches his fists and his head is turned away from his comrades in disagreement with his fellow Avengers who are looking at the camera.

La BD avant Töpffer

BD avant Töpffer

La mort de Peter Parker

Il y a un mois on apprenait que la série Amazing Spider-Man allait s’arrêter au numéro 700 pour être remplacée par Superior Spider-Man. Marvel avait déjà joué ce tour en 1996 lorsque ASM avait été remplacé par Scarlet Spider pour marquer le fait que Ben Reilly, le clone de Peter Parker, reprenait le flambeau. Les spéculations allaient bon train pour savoir qui était la nouvelle personne sous le masque. Le scénariste actuel avait même lancé une fausse piste
selon laquelle c’était le Spider-Man de l’an 2099.

Dans le numéro 698 on apprenait à la fin que le Docteur Octopus avait échangé son esprit avec celui de Parker et  qu’il habitait le corps de celui-ci en ayant accès à tous les souvenirs de son ennemi tandis que Parker était lui dans le corps mourant de son vieil adversaire. L’épisode s’arrêtait sur l’arrêt cardiaque du mourant.

J’avais alors écrit:
« Il me semble évident que Parker va revenir au numéro 700 et perdre. »

Et on m’a répondu :
« Cela n’a rien d’évident. Il arrachera une forme de victoire, très probablement à un coût personnel très élévé. »

C’est la marque de l’ingéniosité de Dan Slott qu’il arrive à concilier ces deux idées apparemment antithétiques (opposées).

L’épisode illustre en effet la notion de victoire à la Pyrrhus. C’est une des marques de la série que Spider-Man remporte ses victoires au prix cher. Cet aspect du personnage est souvent contesté du côté américain qui, vivant dans le culte de la réussite, trouve anormal que le personnage continue d’être un loser après des années. Ainsi on voit des demandes pour que Parker se marie, ait des enfants et que sa tante meurt, autrement dit pour clore le chapitre du drame familial qui est à l’origine du personnage. Une telle évolution a pour désavantage de changer le personnage et de lui reconstituer une famille, ce qui explique sans doute la raison pour laquelle Marvel est toujours revenu sur de telles évolutions.

La nature d’un héros est triompher en dépit des obstacles. Spider-man dispose d’une force surhumaine mais ses meilleurs combats ne sont pas ceux qu’il remporte par la force. Les fans saluent d’ordinaire son intelligence et dans ce numéro 700 Octopus et Parker rivalisent d’intelligence comme Holmes et Moriarty mais ce n’est ni à son intelligence ni à sa ténacité que Parker arrache une sorte de victoire, c’est grâce à la totalité de son vécu qu’il fait revivre à son ennemi. La vie de Parker n’est plus alors une simple banque mémorielle dans laquelle Octopus va puiser des informations mais une suite de souffrances qui lui instillent de façon indélébile le respect de la vie humaine.

Le choix d’Octopus comme successeur
Thématiquement, les adversaires de Spider-Man étaient des versions plus âgés de lui-même, des scientifiques victimes d’expérience scientifique. La similarité des origines entre Spider-Man et le docteur Octopus était telle que John Byrne décida de combiner les deux événements en un seul en 1999 dans Chapter One, sa reprise des origines du personnage. Le docteur avait la distinction d’être le premier super-vilain à vaincre Spider-Man et à le démasquer. Il était aussi proche de sa tante et causa indirectement la mort du capitaine Stacy.

What happened to make Marvel great in the 60s?

What happened?
It’s a matter of phasing in and out of the superhero genre.
We know that Stan was reluctant to do superheroes. He had tried to revive them in 1953 and that had failed.
So his early superhero stories were the usual fantasy monster plots. He created the fallible superhero and emphasized that concept with mental or physical handicaps.
Bear in mind that the early Thor series (in Thor Masterworks Vol 1) has stories by Bernstein and Lieber.
That was the first phase.

The second phase is Lee seeing that his fallible hero approach is succesful and dismissing the fantasy monster plots, establishing the common Marvel universe. This includes guest appearances (see FF from #24 to Annual #3)

The third phase is to remove the Marvel universe and superhero elements and intensify the series’ specific elements.

For both series, it means dropping the guest appearances and creating new characters. This is the Kirby influence.
For Thor, it means focusing on the fantasy elements, creating its own Asgardian chracters and mythology, introducing the Olympians.
For FF, it means introducing more of the FF specific elements: more science-fiction, aliens, genetics, hidden races, hidden civilizations.

Brian Michael Bendis

Recently Bendis reintroduced 70s character Killraven in the Avengers.

I’m glad that the great 70s characters get brought back and used. Bendis brought back Cage, Spider-Woman, Ms Marvel (and some others I’m not thinking about) to the forefront.

In a way, Bendis keeps stretching his writing muscles. He first wrote crime and spy stories. Then Powers is a crime series in a world inhabited by superheroes. He started Daredevil by focusing on the criminal Silke and the FBI agents. He created a detective character for Alias and confronted her with the more fantastic elements of the Marvel Universe (basically a similar concept to Firearm from the Ultraverse). The Pulse was still a crime book but with journalists.

His first foray in straight superheroics was New Avengers and he used the street characters (Cage and others), as well as the human Stark (notice he killed the inhuman Vision straight away).
Then he created the outlaw Avengers.
His try at straight superheroics with Mighty Avengers showed he wasn’t at ease with it yet.
Dark Avengers was better as it was criminals pretending to be big time superheroes. Finally Bendis thought he was ready for another shot at straight superheroics with Avengers (2010). But this time travel story where he focused on the confusing aspects and paradoxes of time travel lacked… in clarity!
By introducing Killraven, he takes another street character (former gladiator) and is trying to play the culture shock for blood. Maybe this is a step to master sword and sorcery next?

The odd thing is that this is taking him so long. He started including superheroes in his stories 10 years ago. Many writers produced great comics in different genres in just a few years. Why is it taking so long for Bendis to master different genres?

Maybe some will say that my description of a continually learning Bendis can’t be right bacause, look! he’s the architect of the MU, their bestselling writer!

I’ll answer that this succes is largely based on two outside factors.
1. The popularity of Wolverine and Spider-Man. They’re in his two teams.
2. The Marvel Universe is itself a continuing and evolving feature, actually the most popular feature, more popular than any individual character. The Marvel Universe was first developed in FF, that’s where time travel, future history, alternate universe, subterranea, Atlantis, aliens races were introduced. From FF #25 on, all the MU characters guest-starred in the series one after the other. FF was the central title. Spider-Man became popular and he had a second series (Marvel Team-Up) where all other Marvel characters could guest-star. Spider-Man was by then the central character of the MU so by following his adventures in this title you could stay acquainted with the developments of the MU. Then this central position was held by X-Men where all the big crossovers started. (And it’s no coincidence that MTU was cancelled during the height of X-Men popularity). And from the X-Men the Marvel Universe axis shifted to Avengers with House of M.
If you removed Wolverine, Spider-Man and the « center of the Marvel Universe » aspect from Avengers, how would it fare? Well, Bendis couldn’t make Spider-Woman succeed with his writing talent alone.

Transfert sur WordPress

Mon ancien blog a été transféré sur WordPress. Peut-être l’occasion d’y revenir.

Marvel 8

la victoire de la France contre la Nouvelle-Zélande

J’ai passé la matinée à lire les commentaires sur la victoire des Bleus contre les All-Blacks. Il est facile de blâmer l’en-avant qui a mené à l’essai. Cela n’aurait jamais été un problème si la NZ avait dominé comme lors des matches de démonstration en novembre dernier. Le moment clé a eu lieu avant le coup de sifflet qui a lancé le match, quand les Français sont venus défier les Blacks dans les yeux pendant le Haka.

Le haka est une arme psychologique qui terrifie les adversaires et dont la place sur un terrain de sport est discutable. Mais cette arme psychologique est une "tradition". Les Italiens s’y sont fait prendre (they got "psyched out") mais les Français n’ont pas hésité à se mettre juste deriière la ligne blanche puis à la franchir pour aller défier les Blacks dans les yeux. L’avantage psychologique que procure le haka s’est retourné contre les Blacks et ce sont eux qui ont subi l’effet de la réaction des adversaires.

De plus les Bleus avaient été humiliés par leur défaite contre l’Argentine. Ils n’étaient pas question pour eux de décevoir une autre fois. Les All Blacks avaient brillé et se préparaient à le refaire et c’est là l’erreur. Ils ont oublié le sens du haka, se préparer à un combat où l’on peut mourir. Les Français étaient eux prêts à mourir et à se battre comme de vrais guerriers. On en voit certain bouger les lèvres pendant le haka et j’ai eu l’impression qu’ils se le récitaient pour eux-mêmes. La mystique du haka a été brisée et les adversaires se le sont appropriés.

Cela ne s’est pas fait tout de suite: la défense franaise apparait souvent hésitante pour aller au contact des avants adverses pendant la première mi-temps. Peur de rater le plaquage? Quoi qu’il en soit, on ne voit plus cette hésitation dans la seconde mi-temps. Je ne sais pas ce qui s’est passé pendant cette mi-temps mais Bernars laporte a dû avoir les mots justes.

Sans nul doute les Anglais auront à coeur de répéter leur exploit et de nous faire ce que nous venons de faire aux Néo-Zélandais. Le coeur et la détermination seront la clé.

Harvey Pekar The Quitter

While Pekar’s American Splendor made the comics Journal list on 100 best English-language comics of the twentieth century, it took a film to make him famous outside the comics community.  His vision of the potential of comics,  his conviction that the life of ordinary people is as interesting as the life of extraordinary ones (whether real or fictional) give him his stature. His self-description as a loser, a quitter in this autobiographical work on his youth marks him at the opposite end of the spectrum of traditional American values, which in turn must have played a big part of the success of his film in Cannes.
The description of his youth in Cleveland brings to mind another growing-up-in-Cleveland tale, the tale of Rocky Balboa. Since American Splendor came out one year after Rocky, I wonder how much the depiction of Cleveland life inspired Pekar to relate his story.
Rocky was another quitter. Of course Pekar is an intellectual. With his photographic memory, it’s easy for him to acquire facts on Jazz, comics and other subjects. This ease also means that he doesn’t like to fight. Now he does fight physically with others but mainly because that is easy for him. He is surprised to win. In this story we get to see both his qualities (intellectual and physical) that give him great potential and his defaults that make him waste this potential.
Of course, he doesn’t look so ordinary in the end. He had more jobs and experiences by the age of twenty than most people in their life.
His success as an authorial voice sets him apart but he is there to remind us that we are just people.

Army@love

Rick Veitch is one of those unsung geniuses of comics. His Swamp Thing was as good as Moore’s previous issues. His Greyshirt was a tour de force. Ever since The One he’s been noticed and lauded by the best, including his frequent collaborator, Alan Moore.

His latest Vertigo series is the best satire since Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg with which it shares many common traits. It happens in the near future, and sex is an integral part of the satire. The abiliy of Veitch to make fun of this grave subject demonstrates his mastery of the form. The mix of Corporate America values with the life of an occupation army has relevance with the post 9/11 world as well as Vietnam or World War Two. It comments on America’s influence in a way that transcends bipartisan politics, which is the power of satire. The publishers are to be commended for daring a satire on the Afghanisatn/Iraq occupations. (Of course the occupied country is a fictional Middle East country, but this is a normal feature of satire. The humor can be all the more biting and one escapes accusations of bias)

Vertigo was losing steam a couple of years ago. It had its huge successes, like Fables and Y the Last Man, and little else. With Army@Love, American Virgin, and Crossing Mignight the line has been reinvigorated. While these titles are not necessarily best-seller they break new ground.