| |
|
Well, I appreciate you giving it a go, Matt; it's certainly encouraged me to go back and read the whole run thus far, if only to check that I do still find the book engaging, dramatic and able to wring more than a modicum's pathos out of a man dressed as a flag. I'm quite looking forward to it, really.
I certainly can't make you enjoy the nigh-on three years of comics you've already read, though, and wouldn't care to try. The last two aren't especially Shakespearean, either, by the way, but I wholly doubt you'd really thought otherwise. I could conjecture that your apparent emotional disconnect to this run (as compared with other cited examples like Sleeper and Criminal; tried Catwoman? That's some sad-ass shit, too, esp. the Javier Pulido arc, 'No Easy Way Down'. Man. Wrenching.) is based on prior association with the title character as a young'in; "you can never go home again", they say, and many comics readers - if the incessant machine of minor complaint, the cult properties internet, is anything to go by - seem to find this out to their cost every Wednesday wrt their cherished icons. Unless, like, Peter David writes them. I can empathise somewhat, do find reading X-Men occasionally quite trying because of this, particularly Brubaker's own well-intended Cockrum tribute although I'm of the - maybe mistaken - belief he is sincerely pitching this toward a quite possibly fictional younger audience, and haven't really bothered overmuch with Spider-Man for about 15 years.
I don't think that it's been the plot-points, per se, that have had Barbelith or whomever flipping out either - after all, 'Onslaught' and 'Heroes Reborn' respectively killed and resurrected about every non spider and mutant related Marvel character, and no-one seems particularly to plotz, at least not in the good way, at these. Things like death and resurrection certainly are grist to the cycling millwheel of corporate superheroics, and items that generally do seem to generate greater or smaller flurries of interest but are not, to my knowledge, generally heralded by accolades and coronets, right? (Again, to the extent that there is any useful yardstick or independent press in the paddling pool.) So I'd think it's in the execution. Which has been, to my and other 'boosters' minds, fairly emotionally gripping high drama (happy characters - realist or otherwise - are not perhaps so much constituents of this, I think, and developing such a complete throughline as has been with would be rather hard - again, imo) where you've seen it as "dreary" or "emo" and, [+] plotwise fairly unpredictable, though always subtly adumbrated and well foreshadowed in retrospect [-] whereas someone who'd read Captain America before, or numerous superhero comics, even 'The Death of Superman' (because, God knows, those analogies haven't yet gotten old,) could counter that the things are, prima facie, pretty similar and, thereby, also predictable. I am surprised, somewhat, that you've been able to match Bru'n'Gru quite so extensively because, among other things, I'd considered the former to be an artist's guy - cf: Cockrum trib, indie credentials, his tcj interview - and I'm sure I'd read him prior to the release of #1 claiming not to have at that time read much of the latter's work - but then, reading the Miller Daredevil recently, I was surprised at just how close EB's cast and beats hewed to Mad Frankie's. I guess writing these things, given how hard it is to exact any lasting change can seem a bit like playing a fugue, seeing what minor tonal variations you can play. I'm an optimist, clearly, because I hope Scott and Emma stay together forevs and also able, childlike, to suspend my disbelief enough to go along with Steve Rogers being dead, dead, dead which is kind of a fundamental disagreement with your take - reading his monthly 'Cap still dead' Newsarama interviews, Ed has maintained what seemed to me a fairly convincing pretence that this will remain the case albeit coloured with the realism that almost certainly someone, possibly Alex Ross, will bring the character back again.
There's a lot of baseless speculation about writer's, editor's (because, hey, who knows?), someone's motivations and (occasionally future) actions in doing this or that - primarily killing Cap, but also being grim - that I can't really deal with in any useful way, there too. I think you may have gotten a bit carried away at that point - I'm certainly previewing a lot here now having the benefit/advantage of a late evening to waste - and really perhaps the neologism 'kewl' should have been left to embody an acceptable shorthand for the majority of the objections found here; it distinguishes perfectly a refined-slash-jaded outlook from foolhardy, blind exuberance, after all. |
|
|
