Why Star Lord's origin tale is almost as great as Spider-Man's, how it all ties into the upcoming movie, what Iron Man has to do with it and much more...
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I'm glad I don't read a lot of comic boards, otherwise I wouldn't read anything anymore.
I read the GOTG .1 issue last night and it was a really good read. Great art, nice characterizations, didn't feel decompressed, and truth be told, I've been reading Marvel since BEFORE StarLord's origin first appeared, so any artistic license taken in the retelling of the origin didn't bother me .
I think this is going to be a real hot run, and probably the closest a book will be to the movie version.
Bendis is really hit and miss...I think his passion projects (Jinx/Goldfish, Torso, etc.) are really great, and then there are some stuff where he's just phoning it in (a lot of the Marvel stuff). Then there are these blips on the radar like New Avengers #29 (or whatever the Illuminati issue was) where it took two things that shouldn't have worked (A vs X AND an Illuminati story) and turned out this really great, singular character-driven story.
Can't say I hate the guy because he still puts out stuff that is better than a large number of Big Two writers (as a WHOLE...there are few truly exceptional writers from Marvel/DC). This video, however, didn't do a good job of pumping me (and apparently most of TR's commenters) up that much.
I'd correct this, LYT:
Star-Lord /had/ an interesting origin until Bendis went and screwed it up, his endless retconning of Marvel's events resulted in House of M, and neither of the top 2's events have been the same since, especially Marvel, who does 2-3 of these a year, sadly.
Prior to Bendis deciding to make our hero a boring half breed, he was originally born under a unique planetary alignment and his real natural father was paranoid that his wife had boned some random alien. That had lots more potential than giving him a boring lame origin.
Though I will credit Bendis, the first issue (past that weird anachronism with kids in cargo pants in the 80s) was pretty good and nothing like his absolutely terrible Avengers Assemble arc, which pretty much confirmed Stark'd be in the GOTG series and film: Tony proclaims he'll shove things up Thanos' "tooshy". WHAT THE HELL MAN.
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Just a note about time in the Marvel Universe...
"Thirty years ago" in the Marvel Universe doesn't necessarily mean it was the 1980s. Marvel uses a sliding scale, so things that originally happened in the 60s now happened in the 80s, but that will change as time movies forward in the real world. In the 2020s, stuff that originally happened in the 1960s will be moved up to the 1990s.
The only events in Marvel history that remain permanently rooted in their time are those that happened prior to and during World War II.
So when GotG starts out saying "30 years ago", it's not set in stone that 30 years ago in Marvel time was actually the 1980s. It just means "not the present" realistically.
HOWEVER, there were cargo pants in the 1980s. We just wore them a bit tighter, and didn't have them hanging off our asses like kids do today. I'd post a picture but it's too embarrassing. Just believe me: A lot of us new wavers, punks and post-punks loved our cargo pants, especially in black, camo, or tartan/plaid.
@nix.nightbird Technically right now it's the 1980's, and it will be for awhile yet, when the book came out. Now, in ten years when you read it, yeah, it'd be the 1990's. Of course, the issue'll be retconned by then, I'm sure, and hopefully with a more compelling origin for Peter once more. Ugh, the Bendises.
I was just lecturing about Marvel's sliding time, actually. I do not recall the cargos being quite as prominent and McNiven seemed to be using a modern style of dress, and while they are more a punk thing it seemed more like just an artist mistake.
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@Kozmik_Pariah Starlord's origin was retconned into what Bendis showed it as long before he ever got a hold of the character.
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@Kozmik_Pariah to be fair, I was summarizing his opinion. Of the original. Which...you agree with?
@Kozmik_Pariah I have never read Star-Lord's origin, but with your summation, I will have to seek it out.
As far as Bendis' retconning, I am just as frustrated as any reader. How many new ideas has Bendis added over his decade plus tenure at Marvel? I am not calling him out, I am just curious to what he has done that has added to the Marvel Universe tapestry.
The Illuminati is just a retcon vehicle, so Zoom-zoom to that.
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Tons of ideas, his Illuminati series (though the idea wasn't his since it was from Hulk, the retcons were) did nothing but stir up all sorts of dumb ideas. The Illuminati from a rational standpoint in the M.U. shouldn't even exist, taking a look at all the times members of it - especially Dr. Strange's Defenders - have tried to take over the world, and the explanations that were more compelling, like Captain America's arc vs. Nixon, were never tackled.
I think it kinda sucks to be a friend to Bendis too, like when Oeming (his Powers and bff or something) did a mini for Ares and less than a year later Bendis stole Ares to use in his Avengers stuff and utterly retconned it. It's kinda funny that you'd steal your friends' stories and then dump on them like they don't exist. And the Sentry, when he pretty much retold the mini in his New Avengers. Ugh.
I did like GotG, though. Other than the pants (which I'd place on his artist pal) the only thing he did was have Peter (in the 80s) call a kid a "lame ass", which I don't think was in the vernacular back then lol
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Yeah I think I am going to pass on this one. I get that if you have a formula that has got you this far, why change it? But "decompressing" is a real issue when it comes to me and comics, and Bendis has been the poster boy for this staple for about a decade now. Compression isn't a scary thing, it's not that daunting, I see it as more bang for my four bucks.
Just because "Daddy Issues" is a common theme withing Marvel Comics doesn't mean it's a good one. I say be creative, tell a story worth the time and money. Don't slowly poison the reader with boredom. For a story that is seven issues long, but only worthy of two.
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I'd prefer Bendis' decompressing to the horrible compressing done with DC's New 52. Justice League has been a travesty.
@nix.nightbird @earthmanprime I find the vast majority of the New 52 to be a travesty in general. I don't see the compression you are talking about. I have read the first issues of about 20 or so of their comics, but all I found was stories that didn't hook me, and just poorly written for the most part.
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Not being able to view the video at work but based on your comments, are we seeing the first crack in the armour for the Marvel/Disney Juggernaut?
I've never read Guardians of the Galaxy, never appealed to me. I made it about halfway though the video and I had lost all interest in reading anything or watching that movie.
It may be a great title, but they completely lost me there.
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It seems to me that Marvel is basically treating the re-launch of Guardians of the Galaxy as promotional material to advertise the upcoming movie.
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@nix.nightbird Is that drastically different from how most titles are handled when movies come around, though?
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Well, it has its good points and bad points. I'm liking the idea of Stark being a member of the team (which tells me they're going to extend RDJ's contract to appear in the GoTG movies as more than a cameo, most likely), and it's cool that Stark is known as "the Space Knight" to the alien races out there (If only we'd see a genuine Space Knight by the name of ROM...) while he's being accused of killing a god (Phoenix).
On the downside, the changes to the Avengers are kind of irksome. I dislike the move to get Black Nick Fury in 616 (Nick Fury Jr.) and I really don't like that they redesigned Captain America's uniform to look like the one in the movies (complete with the lame helmet).
And there are titles that handle the movies differently. Spider-Man, The X-Men, and the Fantastic Four don't mutate much when the movies come around, simply because Marvel Studios feels no need to create "synergy" between movies produced by another studio (Fox, Sony) and Marvel Comics. They didn't turn the Green Goblin into a power ranger. They didn't make Venom a skinny twerp. They didn't make Sandman Uncle Ben's killer. They didn't make Doctor Doom a wuss. They didn't make Galactus a cloud. They didn't completely fuck up X-Men history.
No, it's just the titles that are coming from Marvel Studios that are being affected. I sincerely hope some of the changes don't stay, while other changes are excellent and I'd love to see them stay.
@nix.nightbird @LYT Captain America's Avengers uniform was the worst thing in the movie. Give me a thousand overly convenient endings but get rid of the stupid spandex - it looks even worst when you see it along side Thor in some pseudo armor.
@nix.nightbird @LYT Though, to be fair, the Galactus cloud thing predated the movie in the Ultimate Universe.
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I love Guardians of the Galaxy. I am sick and tired of Brian Michael Bendis. Watching this video and seeing that he wants to make GotG about daddy issues...ugh.
Then in the creative meeting, talking about how good Peter Quill's origin is and how it takes three pages to tell and that he wants to retell the origin, but "decompress the shit out of it"...double ugh.
That effectively killed any glimmer of anticipation I had about the new comic.
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@skeeter_dan I share your pain. I went from being indifferent to Bendis to refusing to buy anything written by him. I just got tired of book after book where nothing happens, characters sitting around spouting "realistic" dialogue which doesn't further the story in any way but I'm supposed to somehow admire because it's REAL, followed by a page or two of mediocre fighting and a generally unsatisfying conclusion to storylines lasting eight issues which could have easily been told in two. Ugh. Probably the most overrated writer in comics these days, along with Geoff Johns.
@PCabezuelo @skeeter_dan word for word this! Bendis just seems a self congratulating, self back patting ego trip who writes sup par-ominishambles of insipid arcs.
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Bendis is way better than Johns. At least Bendis holds a story together for several issues. Johns jumps all over the place, loses track of what he was talking about, and starts a new subplot without getting back to the story he was telling last month. It's maddening.
I read every issue of the New 52 Justice League, and I STILL don't know what the fuck is going on. He's hopping back and forth months, years, and days, but all at the same time. He has characters talking about stuff that happened "last week" or "last month" but he never shows it! He just refers to it as if it happened last issue and assumes we'll figure out "Oh, he has jumped the story ahead two years."
Johns also HEAVILY relies on stories being told in other books, so if you're only reading one book, you're completely lost for half an issue while he refers to things that happened in another series. That would be like tuning in to watch Breaking Bad and having the characters spend the entire episode talking about stuff that happened to them on Weeds.
I've grown to hate his storytelling, simply because it's a complete LACK of storytelling. Pound for pound, Bendis is the better writer and at least follows sane story progression.
@nix.nightbird Completely agree with you on Johns and yes I prefer Bendis but still have grown to dislike his style. I used Johns as a comparison because I think he's Bendis' counterpart at DC in the sense that they both oversee/write stories that deal with the big characters, especially crossovers, and have been pretty much tagged as the head writers for each company. I don't care about DC but I feel as far as Marvel is concerned there are much better writers than Bendis - like Hickman, Fraction, Waid, Slott, even Remender - who don't get nearly as much attention or credit.
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@PCabezuelo @skeeter_dan The only Bendis thing I can really say I have been a fan of was Moon Knight, which followed your formula to the letter! I was pretty bummed when the whole thing turned out to be an Age of Ultron advert. Sorry Marvel, I won't be reading Age of Ultron, and have already dropped the three Marvel Now titles I had started, one of which was by All New X Men by Bendis.
@Regular_Stormy @skeeter_dan I actually enjoyed Moon Knight for the first few issues but then lost interest as the story lost momentum.
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