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guardianofscrewingup:

hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger:

The Moonlighting example is asinine because the show’s failure had little to do with ‘giving the fans what they wanted’.

Spider-Man WAS happy in the JMS run. ASM #500 literally had him say that. So did ASM #200. But he was happy IN SPITE of his problems. And I don’t think the book’s critical reviews or sales suffered during either runs. Compare and contrast to Post-One More Day Spider-Man where critical reviews slumped egregiously and sales were boosted only after you made the main character NOT Peter Parker

The whole ‘give the fans what they want’ thing is foolish because it negates the fact that different fans have different wants and at the same time it presumes what they want is wrong. When Stan Lee gave the fans what they wanted in graduating Peter Parker or marrying Reed or Sue that wasn’t ‘wrong’

And they’re called truisms for a reason. They’re not actually true.

Or, that’s readers saying okay cool I will read that

With pleasing fans, the kicker is you can’t please all of them at once. That doesn’t mean doing things that alienate massive chunks of your readerbase. Or ignoring common sense story choices that suit the characters, that would likely be popular with much of the readerbase. 

As an example, the Annihilation event in Marvel was something that had a bit of spectacle and made sweeping changes to Marvel Cosmic, but it was also a well-planned event. It had a solid story, some satisfying shifts in direction for a few characters like Starlord and Nova, and ultimately culminated in the creation of the Guardians of the Galaxy (which made some sweet bank for Marvel in 2014.) 

But most of the story choices there made sense. They had a reason for happening the way they did. They took characters that’d been unused and underutilized in recent years – or unused in years and years and YEARS like Starlord – fleshed them out, added some depth, and had them join together heroically in a common cause, which is something comic readers generally love seeing. The story served the characters and while the characters changed to meet the challenges they were facing, who they were at the core didn’t change. Nova was still just a guy from Long Island and even after leveling up and having a lot of responsibility thrust on his shoulders…he was still just a guy from Long Island. He grew as a hero and a person, but the plot served the character, the character didn’t change his core essence to suit the story. Instead, he adapted, he grew. Starlord was STILL an arrogant cock but he tried to redeem himself and now distrusted his own judgment so much that he let someone else be in charge and advised them. 

I think what’s debatable in all this with most of the recent major story arcs Marvel has run is the “meaningful” part of “meaningful changes.” The characters always seem to change in their very nature to be whatever the plots need them to be rather than the plots serving the characters. The stories themselves aren’t any better for their size or how grand-sweeping they are – they’re just disruptive. People watch and wait hoping for them to be over as soon as possible and many read just to see if characters they like are going to change or die or get screwed by the changes. 

And that’s because the writers and editors at Marvel right now are deluded enough to think these stories are good enough to warrant these huge interruptions to the universe – and therein lay the problem. They’re not. They’re just crappy, boring stories. The crises in them arise in typically stupid ways with characters sometimes acting out of character and they usually resolve unsatisfyingly with characters still out of character. 

As an example: Avengers Arena back in 2012 was terrible. It actually could’ve potentially not been terrible if the characters hadn’t spent the entire story mostly being used as angst cannon fodder, at the whims of a bunch of pointless new characters Hopeless drummed up, and if they’d maybe had a teeny bit of agency. Even if it was rough going getting there, I’d have much preferred to see the teens really come together and turn the tables on Arcade – surprising him by getting over their collective teen drama and actually showing themselves for the potential heroes of the future they are. 

But no, we spent eighteen issues on a Hunger Games ripoff where the characters barely get any time actually being superheroic and it ends with the writer’s new character killing the writer’s new character so that we get the super satisfying ending of a little girl with her hello kitty shirt soaked in blood. 

Almost cut myself reading that one. But edginess = good storytelling, right??? 

Wrong. The reason the hunger games is successful is not because it’s edgy and dark, it’s because there’s a (relatively) satisfying story of characters growing and changing as they fight against a great evil. Now, admittedly, it’s not the best story ever told but it’s still leagues better on making the darkness in them actually mean something. 

For AA, there was a story in there that could’ve been told. A good one. With better dialogue. With the kids realizing they’re not helpless if they work together. With them having even more baggage to work through to be heroes because they’re young and troubled, and, to their credit, doing it anyway. Taking control, finding their own inner power, being superheroes. 

But let’s get real here, the story was never about them. It was about the spectacle itself. And catering to that, to the people that would like the spectacle if it was genuinely about superheroes superheroing, wow good golly, you can’t expect Marvel to please everyone, right?? 

In short, there’s a difference between making Peter Parker unhappy because it leads to interesting stories you can tell and telling those interesting stories, and tossing him into a random string of unhappy events (and calling them “plots”) because you think Peter Parker’s natural state should be unhappiness. And many of Marvel’s current writers don’t have the chops to differentiate. 

There’s also a difference between running big events that bring sweeping changes because you genuinely have some rousing adventure story to tell and running big events just to run them and then ignoring when the fans tell you they kinda blow. I mean, the difference is when you go back and read the Dark Phoenix saga, it’s also just actually good. People can swallow sweeping change if the story is decent. The reason a lot of these recent events are getting so much pushback is not just that they’re being done but because they could still be done better. 

And a lot of the readership is hatereading or reading just to know what’s going on. And Marvel can’t tell the difference anymore, I guess. 

They need some new blood. To think they used to be the “House of Ideas.” When some of their ideas are “let’s rip off the hunger games” or “let’s do TWO civil wars because…because something something people like watching heroes fight each other right?” (When we kinda don’t). The plot so troubled we saw it doubled. 

Goddamn.