Would Don Baylor Buy New Avengers?
Apparently the latest issue of New Avengers sucks. I also have it on good authority that the sun will rise tomorrow over the eastern horizon and that water is wet. Not surprisingly, the bloggosphere has taken to bitching and moaning. Why, just look below this very post:
"When will the public stop putting their noses (sic) up BMB's arse and figure out that this is just not a good book[?]"
I haven't heard anyone say this is a good book since the second issue. Not one single person. More on this in a moment.
Further down, Chris can't even work up the enthusiasm to complain. He just asks:
"Are we done yet?"
The better question might be when will people stop buying this book and complaining about how bad it is? Unless Brian Michael Bendis has your daughter tied up in a warehouse somewhere and has vowed to start cutting off fingers and mailing them to you every month you don't buy New Avengers, you are "the public" that is "putting [its nose] up BMB's arse" by spending $3 for a literary kick in the balls on a monthly basis.
I once asked my father, "Why did Don Baylor get hit by so many pitches?" I thought maybe he could impart some observatory wisdom about the slugger's stance that led him to become baseball's modern leader in getting hit by pitches (he's since been surpassed by Craig Biggio).
"Because he liked it," came my father's deadpan reply.
"What?" I gasped. "You think he liked it? How could anyone like getting hit by pitches?"
"If you do anything that many times," he nodded, "you must like it."
On that note, I say anyone who insists on calling New Avengers "Not Avengers," complains about the book every month on his blog, and points an accusing finger at "the public" for the horrible quality of the comic, yet has bought nineteen issues of the garbage in question must be reading crap because he likes crap and has no one to complain to but himself.
If you went to a restaurant for lunch and found a dead roach in the spot where your hamburger was supposed to be, complained, and were told "No, that is the burger!", would you go back the next day?
Maybe you want to give the restaurant the benfit of the doubt because you've had good food there in the past or because you've enjoyed eating other locations of the same franchise. But what if the next day you had the same situation occur? After a week, say they replaced the roachburger's bun with a pile of dog crap. How long would you keep going? Somehow, I doubt after nineteen visits you would still be eating there.
Randy, Chris, bloggers everywhere, either accept that you love being shit on every month or stop paying for it to happen, but shut up about it either way.
Edited to add: I posted this over at Ye Olde Comick Booke Blogge too (because I am lazy). If you want to see the comments readers are making there, clickity click click.
17 Comments:
As I commented in the past, I will actually stop buying this once Civil War ends. I think ish 25. That's when "Ronin" gets to play again, and that's when I called the end. Too much damn Civil War crap in New Avengers for me I think. (I'll try one, if usesless, I can stop before Ish 25.)
And lose the pleasures that come with righteous bitching? I think not, sir! You must be new to the internets and comic fandom. Grousing is the cornerstone of both. Comic fans find grumping more satisfying than enjoyment, consarn it!
On a serious note, would Don Baylor buy New Avengers? No, because Baylor liked only one comic: The Human Target.
(rim shot) Thank you! Thank you! I'll be here all week! Don't forget to tip your server!
I buy New Avengers because it's got Iron Man. He's a hook character for me.
Also, I've still got 2 more issues on my pull list already ordered, so it's looking like #22 is the cutoff for me.
As far as I know, "The Collective" ends next month. I said this would be the arc that determines it. Bendis has had some moments. Certainly the threat is Avengers-esque in its power, he actually used the Sentry, and he was smart enough to use Warbird. Still, I'm not hopeful for the conclusion.
But we'll see.
Right... right... this reminds me of that alcoholism play we had to go watch in 7th grade.
"I can stop before Ish 25."="I can quit any time I want!"
"I buy New Avengers because it's got Iron Man. He's a hook character for me."="I drink because I like it. It relaxes me."
Harvey, my friend brought up your point (or a facsimile thereof) on the phone about an hour ago.
I obviously know the joys of complaining about something bad as evidenced by... well, everything I write at Ye Olde. I buy quarter comics and mock them for the fun of it. In fact, you were the one who brought up the concept of Scheissenbedaurn over there, which--for those who didn't read it--is when you expect something to suck, but it's not quite bad enough to be entertaining for its awfulness.
However, when I buy those, I know they are garbage and I expect it and oftentimes enjoy it. If the New Avengers readers would do the same, I wouldn't mind at all. It's the fact that people complain as if they expected any given issue to be good and were let down.
It comes off the same way as when people with lung cancer try to sue tobacco companies. Consider my post like a Surgeon General's warning. Warning: This issue of New Avengers is going to suck. Buying and reading this comic will fill you with frustration and regret. It'll be ignored, but I hope it takes the wind out of some whiners' sails.
Hear hear.
You don't know him like I do! Back in the good times, BMB made me feel special! He... he's just trying so hard, why can't you leave him alone?
No, that's not a bruise, I just fell.
And for the record, Bendis *knows* he can't write a team book, and this is his attempt *to learn*.
The thing is, I really want this book to be good. I really do. Back in the day, The Avengers were one of those books that I just had to have, up there with Moon Knight and, well, pretty much anything with Elektra. (Except that Ultimate Elektra. Blah!) I loved me some Avengers stomping on da bad guys. Of course, that may just have been Thor's bravado and trashtalk too.
A couple of issues ago, I thought he had turned the corner. He had done a fairly close "old school" look and feel Avengers. Someone had even written that the Annual was an old school Avengers ish, though I am still not buying the Annual.
Its just not a great team. Rumour mill is that there will be changes to the team coming, most likely Civil War time. I can suffer through some suckiness for a few issues. Heck, I went and bought back issues of Firestorm and Catwoman when they were really, really bad. Guess I like continuity and back story.
So I will continue to buy New Avengers for a few more and hope my favorite past team works itself out, so I can continue to buy it.
Until then, please feel free to skip the reviews of the New, or Not, Avengers.
And Carla, can't he go learn on Fantastic Four? That's a team book that REALLY needs some help right about now. (Sorry JMS)
"The thing is, I really want this book to be good. I really do."
I've no doubt that you want it to be good - if you didn't care, you wouldn't write about it. But you have to know by now that Brian Bendis just isn't capable of writing a good Avengers book. His idea of the Avengers involves lots of characters standing around conference tables whining to each other in weirdly stilted dialogue for twelve pages an issue. It's not the lineup that makes this comic suck; adding Thor or Ares or whoever won't save it. It's Bendis himself that's the problem. He can't write action stories, and if the Avengers aren't about action, then what the hell are they?
Now, I don't really mind the fact that you're reading and reviewing a book that you hate. What I object to is the fact that you're paying for it, and in doing so sending Marvel the economic signal that you approve of Bendis (and thus want more of him on Avengers). If you must read a Bendis book, at least have the simple decency to download it off the internet.
Randy, it is? =) I know you want the book to be good. Hell, I love the Avengers! We all know the way things used to be. We know how good it was and can be again. But we can't let Bendis punch us in the mouth and say he loves anymore.
And, the FF was just fine when Waid had it. The JMS had to roll around in a perfectly good story like a pig in slop getting the rest of us dirty in the process. There's a book I left because it was better for the both of us. Let the healing process begin.
As Mama Bull used t' say:
"If you go to the restaurant and order a big plate of garbage and eat it on Monday, and go to the restaurant and order a big plate of garbage and eat it on Tuesday, and go to the restaurant and order a big plate of garbage and eat it on Wednesday, and go to the restaurant and order a big plate of garbage and eat it on Thursday...why are you so surprised and angry when you go to the restaurant on Friday and you get served a big plate of garbage?"
Newsflash: reading, blogging and bitching about a comic and BUYING that comic are two very different things. This is the internet age; paying for these rags is for all practical purposes purely optional. Hell, in most legislations, downloading comics over the net doesn't even count as piracy, and even if it does, it doesn't exactly stop anybody.
Hi, my name is Jon and I'm an Avenger's Fan (kind of, well in theory at least). I never really collected the Avengers before but I always liked them showing up in stuff I bought and I used to read them at my cousin's house when I'd visit. Then I quit cold turkey for like 12 years. All comics. But I should have known you never really quit. I loved the idea of how they started. I was like an all-star book. I was fine with it. Then I noticed they weren't going after the criminals who broke out of the prison which was the whole reason I bought the book to begin with so I dropped it. I'm out. I like a straight forward story. I like simplicity and streamlined stuff. This had all the markings of a slipstreamed story. It turned out it wasn't a stripped down story. I'm glad I went through this before. I could recognize the symptoms and stop myself from wasting my hard earned money again. I don't want to hurt the people I love (well, me and my sense of story and enjoyment). So I dropped it. I feel sorry for all of you here. I am willing to help you in any way I can. Right now all I can say is I don't read the Avengers and my life is good. I have happiness. I have removed some stress and frustration.
Thank you.
carla writes: "And for the record, Bendis *knows* he can't write a team book, and this is his attempt *to learn*."
Bendis has learned many things in his life without charging people $75 to watch.
This should be one of them.
Marvel should have the stones to reject his scripts until he comes up with one that works. Learning works better if failure doesn't come with a check that's the same size as when you succeed.
jake writes: "However, when I buy those, I know they are garbage and I expect it and oftentimes enjoy it. If the New Avengers readers would do the same, I wouldn't mind at all. It's the fact that people complain as if they expected any given issue to be good and were let down."
Well, you know, I'm sure all those quarter-box issues had readers at one time who were having the same thoughts as the dissatisfied New Avengers readers.
"Man, that issue of US 1 really sucked. I'm going to stick with it for another 5 issues or so, but if it doesn't get better, I'm done."
I am, apparently, that rarity among Modern Age comics readers -- someone who not only loathes BMB on NEW AVENGERS, but who has always loathed BMB, and everything he has ever written.
Unlike the BMB zombies your post refers to, however, I have never BOUGHT anything by BMB. What I have read of his toxic trash has come from fellow comics fans, high as a kite on Bendis-balls, who have shoved various Bendis comics and TPB collections into my hands, hopping up and down like some little kid who has to go to the bathroom, or some heroin addict in the third day of withdrawal, screeching at me in reedy, cracked voices "This... this is it... we've finally found him... it's... it's... THE NEXT ALAN MOORE".
And I'd give them that look... you know, the one that says "You told me the same fucking thing about goddam Grant Morrison and goddam Garth Ennis and goddam Mark Millar and goddam every other cocksucker with a British accent and a typewriter who has written for Marvel or DC in the last twenty years"... and they would hop even faster and spittle would start to fly like phosgene gas and they'd get all shrill -- "He IS he IS he IS heizzheizzheizzheeeeeeizzzzzzzz..."
And to forestall them dying right there at my feet (which would mean I'd have to tote their corpuses out back to the dumpster, which would be a lot of work) I'd take the stupid comic or TPB and I'd read it and it would suck primordially in the most appalling and horrendous fashion imaginable.
Which isn't to say I don't hate NEW AVENGERS more than I hate everything else BMB has shat upon, because I do. Oh I do I do I do I DO. Prior to DISASSEMBLED, BMB's raving, drooling incompetence and his urge to show his ass (with a little twist of brown stained toilet paper dangling down between his flabby cheeks) to the entire comics buying world had been confined to the Ultimates Universe (where bad writers should be forcibly sequestered by actual law) and to godawful cheap knock offs of godawful obscure wretched better off dead superhero characters like Jessica Jones and Spider-Woman, respectively.
This was okay with me. However, I've been a raving AVENGERS fan since very very early in the Silver Age, so when Bendis was turned loose on that title/concept and proceeded to splatter his creative incompetence all over it, mangling it beyond all recognition and jamming Wolverine... WOLVERINE, for the love of sweet baby jesus... up the team's assembled ass... well... I... I...
Honestly, it's just too much. I've lived too long. Or Brian Michael Bendis has, anyway.
This whole thing with people buying the title over and over just to complain about it blows me away. For those who buy it over and over just to complain need to do one of two things. You know what one is. The other is to send me your $3.00 each month instead and I can give you a rundown on what has happened each month, like it or not.
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