Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Comic Books >

Marvel's MAX line?

09:40 / 07.02.02

Are any of the comics in this line any good, or are they just an excuse to have marvel characters cuss, beat things bloody, and get naked? Since Marvel's trying to do something new and change its image, why doesn't it put out a real mature book. You know, one that doesn't depend on overly-muscled super-men and women with breasts bigger than their head.

09:57 / 07.02.02

The thing to remember is that Marvel Max isn't a mature line, its a comedy line with lots of unsubtle jokes that fanboys pick up on..

if marvel actually DID a mature line... mmmmmm now there is a thought

Professor Silly

09:57 / 07.02.02

I was really enthusiastic about a mature line of Marvel comics.

Overall, I'm disappointed in the results.

I bought the first six issues of Alias, and ignoring the anal sex thing for a moment I'd have to say that it was okay at best. Typical Bendis dialogue, and some suspense wrapped around a (slightly) more realistic look at the life of an ex-superhero lady. I won't buy issue 7.

The Fury mini-series was okay...if you're into Ennis you might like it.

I personally thought the US War Machine mini-series was terrible (both the writing and the art)...

I won't be buying anything else from this line...just not up to par with NEW X MEN, Amazing Spider-Man, etc. Seems like comics made for the sake of shock value rather than good writing...IMHO.

09:57 / 07.02.02

Well I guess its a good thing I didn't buy any of the books. I should have realized Marvel couldn't do a real mature line when I saw some preview pages of Nick Fury. Now I haven't read many of the old Nick Fury books, but they seemed to work quite well without having bodies with big gaping bullet holes in them.
"Look at us, Marvel at our maturity, we can show boobies, and say bad words, and pour buckets of blood on our pages".

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:57 / 07.02.02

I'm enjoying Fury (which isn't a mini-series as far as I know). Normally Ennis annoys me a little, but for some reason the mix of political cynicism (there's some great criticism of American foreign policy and the role of the UN in there) with typical gung-ho macho bullshit works. The last issue was particularly good, I think, in that it does make Fury pay for indulging his 'old friend' Rudy and letting him walk away in issue one...

S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S

... I really wasn't expecting *all* of Fury's team to be killed in that issue. Certainly not in such a perfunctory way (poor Janeane Garofalo...). I think it's a much better auto-critique of the typical Ennis hero than he's managed elsewhete - basically it's Fury's fault that his 'children' are slaughtered, with the prospect of more deaths on his conscience when the US start dropping bombs. Which brings me to the point that it's a genuine cliffhanger - I have no idea how he's getting out of that, which isn't something you can say often in comics.

And of course Darrick Robertson's art helps. Much less flashy than on Transmet, but this brings out his real talent, which is facial expressions. I particularly like Rudy's smugness and fake innocence...

(Note: I knew little or nothing about Nick Fury prior to this comic. I think it works best this way. Maybe there are ageing fanboys getting off on it, or fans of the old stuff objecting, but who gives a fuck.)

But more generally, I agree that the MAX line hasn't really offered what it could have, and is just yet more navel-gazing insular famboy wank. The couple of issues of Alias I picked up were Bendis at his most irritating ("Bendis?" "Bendis." "The guy who-?" "Yeah, the guy who does -" "The dialogue like this?", etc), with awful art, War Machine (I mean, come on, War Machine) couldn't even inspire me to have a proper flick through in the shop. Sort it out, Joey Q...

[ 07-02-2002: Message edited by: Flyboy ]

14:38 / 07.02.02

Fury is fun.

Alias is interesting but its a full on copy of Powers, only with Marvel Heroes, a chick instead of a guy and really bad art and colors.

The Knowledge +1

14:44 / 07.02.02

Well I heard alias is a rehash of the plans Bendis had for Sam and Twitch till he was thrown off.

I like the line a lot. It's fun.

Murray Hamhandler

16:20 / 07.02.02

The only one I've read is the first issue of Howard The Duck, which I'm surprised that I haven't seen discussed hardly at all (if at all) on the board. It's really pretty good, I think. I'll wait to read the whole mini before passing judgement, though. I'd recommend it pretty highly.
Arthur Sudnam

18:38 / 07.02.02

That duck from that strange movie has a comic? What kind of comic is it? I don't see many situations that you can put an alien antromorphic duck in that won't end up humorous.

21:24 / 07.02.02

Is this new Howard or reprints of the old stuff?

Regrettable Juvenilia

21:34 / 07.02.02

New Howard, but written by Steve Gerber, who did the old stuff. Haven't picked it up yet but plan to...

The Natural Way

21:35 / 07.02.02

The old stuff was hardly "MAX", Sax.

tarax, hax is bck.

15:29 / 08.02.02

Originally posted by Trijhaos:

quote:That duck from that strange movie has a comic

Therein lies the problem. Not picking on you though. HTD was a comic from the mid to late seventies that was absolutely fucking brilliant. Political commentary, social commentary. Howard runs for President, lives in sin with his "girlfriend" Beverly. Issue #16, the album issue, so far ahead of it's time as a pseudo-metafiction, that it's unreal. Supposedly Marvel was going to reprint Gerbers original run (#1 - 27, some early apps.) in an Essential b/w trade, but seems to have shelved those plans. I was sooooo excited to see a new series with the "Duck" (you'll get that if you've read it). Ignore the movie. Pales compared to the original series in so many ways. The most obvious being that the original series was good.
Track it down. Read it. #'s 12 and 13 are hard to get 'cause they're the first app. of KISS in a comic book. The rest should be quite inexpensive.

Murray Hamhandler

17:22 / 08.02.02

quote:
Supposedly Marvel was going to reprint Gerbers original run (#1 - 27, some early apps.) in an Essential b/w trade, but seems to have shelved those plans.

????? Where did you hear this? I have the trade on order at my shop. It's supposed to be in sometime this month. At least I thought it was. I think getting that old stuff reprinted was actually one of the stipulations that Gerber set down for if he were to come back and write Howard again. If Marvel fucks up (like they're prone to do), they may just lose another writer for good.
Arthur Sudnam

18:15 / 08.02.02

I had it on order but it appears to have been pushed back at my comic store. Sorry, I made it seem like I'd definitely heard it was cancelled, that was wrong. But I haven't seen it appear anywhere either. Hopefully it's just late.

05:33 / 09.02.02

what would people like to see in the max line? what would you try to put out through it if you were quesada? vertigo-esque trippy reinventions like swamp thing and animal man? A fantastic four version of Kramer vs Kramer? the Kierkegardd Lantern Corps? or Behind the Green Door starring She-Hulk?

07:42 / 09.02.02

quote:Originally posted by pretty hate machine:
Supposedly Marvel was going to reprint Gerbers original run (#1 - 27, some early apps.) in an Essential b/w trade, but seems to have shelved those plans.

It got knocked back a little, but is supposed to be appearing at the same time as the Ant-Man and Dr. Strange Essential volumes, sometime in the very near future.

15:57 / 09.02.02

I definitely think this line needs to be like early Vertigo. Which, I suppose, is what it's turning out to be. It provides the kind of voyeuristic, looking at super-heroes in their underwear fascination that Vertigo no longer does. Though I think the only real difference between this line and Marvel Knights is the fact that they can swear in these books. MAX maybe does need to embrace a more hallucinatory style of story-telling to really set itself apart. That's why I'm kind of stoked about the Howard The Duck book. Even back in the 70's that one was campletely fucked. Strange things happened for absolutely no reason. I want more of that.

Regrettable Juvenilia

18:18 / 09.02.02

Two things:

1. Bought first issue of Howard The Duck today. Distinctly unimpressed. "Boy bands are all manufactured cynically, and appeal to middle-aged gay men!" - this is what passes for cutting edge satire in the world of comics. I bet the Warren Ellis Forum fucking love it.

2. Also bought Fury 6 - wow. So we don't get a last-minute save, we get a scorched earth ending... With the Americans carpet bombing the island, and Nick Fury facing up to some rather nasty home truths. Reminded me of nothing so much as the end of 'Iron Man 2020: Man of The Year', for those who remember that. I'll be very interested to see where this goes from here...

Regrettable Juvenilia

21:06 / 09.02.02

Y'know, I swear I read a solicitation for a later issue than #6 somewhere, but people keep telling me I'm wrong (and not just you, sweet Knodge), and that did seem like a big 'The End' at the end...

In which case, it's even more laudably bleak. As summarised somewhere else:

quote:Okay, the badguy dies and Fury survives, but this is a story about a hero failing utterly. He lost his team; he set up the people he was trying to protect for a class 1 fucking-over; his bureaucrat arch-nemesis got the better of him; he's about to get saddled with his dipshit nephew; and he realises that everything the villain said about his own motives is true. And there's nothing he can do about it beyond a couple of gestures of impotent rage.

I didn't think Ennis had it in him.

[ 10-02-2002: Message edited by: Flyboy ]