About Comics

I've been reading a lot of comic books lately. I started a few months ago; my plan was that I'd be ready for Comic Con because I'd know what was going on. This plan turned out to be pointless, because the comics-related content was surprisingly marginalized. I still bought a couple comics, just to establish where I was. But the upshot is that here I am, trying to make some sort of sense out of the latest offerings from DC and Marvel.

And other companies, of course. Dark Horse has a Serenity comic (you know, "Serenity" as in "Firefly") that seems pretty good. I don't know where Dorothy of Oz is going, but I like it so far. And when the Buckaroo Banzai comic comes out, I will be first in line. But right now, I want to talk about the big two.

I used to be a big Marvel reader. I not only read X-Men, I read some X-Factor, a bit of New Mutants, and even the first few Excalibur. Yes, those are all mutant titles, but to be fair, at the time, mutants were pretty much all there were. When I was much younger, I read a little Flash over on the DC side. But then, I also read Richie Rich at the time.

These days, the only Marvel title I read is Avengers. Although I guess that's called "The New Avengers" these days. See, what they did earlier this year was kill off a few characters (at least one of which is already alive again) and "shake things up" so now the team includes Spider-Man and Wolverine alongside Luke Cage (he's a black guy who punches things very hard), Spider-Woman (no relation to Spider-Man), Captain America, and Iron Man. I think that's all of them. Some people are all up in arms because the team changed around so much, but I kind of like it. For one thing, the power level feels about right: none of these guys is a lot more powerful than the others; it always seemed like Thor threw off the curve, you know? When you have a Thunder God on the team, do you really need a guy with explosive arrows?

Another thing people find lame is that Wolverine and Spider-Man have been crudely inserted into the team to gain readership. And I can see their point: those are the two most popular characters, and they're featured in four or five titles already. Each. I'm kind of enjoying the banter that Spider-Man brings to the book, since he's clearly nervous and feels out of his league. But it's still kind of mercenary.

The thing I do find odd, and have always had trouble with, is that characters in a team book like The Avengers can have their own title (like Amazing Spider-Man) at the same time. I mean, it's all supposedly in the same universe, right? It's all in one continuity? So how can Spider-Man be hanging out with a bunch of Avengers in the jungle while at the same time doing whatever he does in his own book? I have the same problem in DC, where I'm reading JLA along with Flash, Green Lantern, and a couple others I can't remember right now. It's kind of jarring to read Flash in his own book moaning about how he's wanted for murder or something and having to run around keeping tabs on the four million villains attached to him, and then the next book I read has him lounging around in the Justice League Watchtower like he has nothing better to do.

Tomorrow: Great Big Continuity-Busting Events and Why I'm Already Tired of Them