What's Going On

I've been a fan of comics as long as I can remember. I've been a fan of Marvel comics in particular since the early 1980s. These days, I just don't care.

Oh, I've waded through more than my fair share of poorly-done comics. I've plodded through bad writing and unintelligible artwork and gimmick covers and inane crossovers and just about everything you could possibly do to a comic to make it less enjoyable. What kept me going, though, was that all of those problems I'd see were decidedly finite. A crossover only lasts so long. A bad writer eventually gets fired. Plus, they tended to only affect a portion of a company's comics. But in mid-2006, Marvel started taking their entire line -- virtually everything they publish -- in a direction that I don't like.

I was okay when they blew up Avengers Mansion and made Scarlet Witch retroactively crazy. I was sorry to see Scott Lang bite it, but I could live with the writing and editorial decisions behind that. The House of M thing seemed a bit overly confused and confusing, but that was pretty self-contained, despite touching on so many different titles. But with Civil War, things took a turn for the worse.

See, the Civil War itself was fine. I don't think it was executed particularly well from a writing perspective, but conceptually, it was okay. But it's bled out to every book in Marvel's line. Not just the war, but the whole notion of being at everybody else's throat. Secret War, Silent War, World War Hulk... It's been a non-stop barrage of hate and distrust throughout the whole Marvel Universe. You know, it was cool that not every hero got along with every other hero; it makes sense that Daredevil and Punisher don't see eye to eye. But who gets along with anybody any more? Heck, half of the teams spinning out of "The Initiative" don't even get along with themselves; they're being forced into service with implanted bio-chips.

It's a company-wide decision Marvel has every right to make. I don't begrudge them that. But at the same time, I don't have to agree with it, and I'm telling them with my wallet. I've dropped every Marvel title except Fantastic Four and I'm only carrying on with that out sentimentality.

"What about the treatment of the FF in other media," you might ask. Well, I don't care for it quite frankly. I don't see the characters I grew to love as a kid in evidence in either the current cartoon or the live-action movies. As far as I'm concerned, they're at best pale imitations catering to the lowest common denominator of the masses. If someone else enjoys them, that's great; I hope it encourages them to pick up an actual comic book. But they're not for me.

Another issue came up in my life recently, too, that's had me seriously distracted from... well... everything else. My wife and I are having some martial difficulties, and that is by far the most important thing I need to focus on right now. Motivation to do anything NOT directly relating to fixing our issues is pretty close to nil.

The upshot is that I've got no incentive to continue working on this site in the foreseeable future. I'll leave it up and running as I think it's certainly a useful resource for research and archival purposes, but I don't know when/if I'll return to updating it. It's been a fun decade and I've learned a lot, but I think I need to move on. Feel free to see what I'm up to by reading my comic blog and/or my "Incidental Iconography" column in The Jack Kirby Collector.