InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "here, have a chocolate biscuit"

neuhallidae (neuhallidae) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-08-09 15:52:00

Entry tags:

char: ant-man/wasp/hank pym, char: captain america/steve rogers, char: captain marvel/genis-vell, char: hawkeye/ronin/clint barton, char: immortus/kang the conqueror, char: iron man/tony stark, char: songbird/melissa gold, char: wasp/janet van dyne, creator: kurt busiek, creator: matt fraction

Nobody does retcons like Immortus does retcons!
Matt Fraction on Invincible Iron Man's next story arc after "World's Most Wanted" concludes in October.

Pepper, Maria, and Rhodey are Tony Stark's three closest friends, but he used to be a lot more connected with the other superheroes of the Marvel Universe. At the end of “Secret Invasion,” many of Earth’s champions considered Stark **persona non grata** as a consequence of the controversial moves he made during that storyline and others like “Civil War.” That posture may change, though, by the time “Stark Disassembled” begins. “Tony's taking utmost responsibility for the choices he made and Osborn has stolen everything he's ever had. I think once people see the way Tony is going to bat for them, that he's manning up, making right, and ready to pay the ultimate price for the choices he made that's going to remind people that he's not a villain,” Fraction stated. “And there's a spectacularly public finale to 'World's Most Wanted.' 'Stark Disassembled' is intimate and private in the way that wakes and vigils often are but 'World's Most Wanted' ends as the whole world watches.”

More Here

I'm kind of...eh. On one hand part of me wants to be interested, but the rest has been less than impressed with Fraction's handling of the series so far.

Also, Tony's last major retcon, as told by one of Immortus' Space Phantoms through four and 3/4 pages of Avengers Forever #8.

(Post a new comment)

	(Anonymous) 2009-08-09 09:12 pm UTC (link)
	"No more. Please. No more." My reaction exactly, Cap. (Reply to this)

	hybrid2 2009-08-09 09:29 pm UTC (link)
	"he's manning up, making right, and ready to pay the ultimate price for the choices he made" so he'll tell everyone how he paid Titanium Man to attack DC? and mest up with osborns nanite to start a war with Atlantis? (Reply to this)

	volksjager 2009-08-09 10:16 pm UTC (link)
	errrr, then of course they couldn't end without totally fucking up the whole Human torch/Vision connection. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	xdoop 2009-08-09 10:23 pm UTC (link)
	No, that was Byrne. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	neuhallidae 2009-08-09 10:23 pm UTC (link)
	IIRC, that had already been massively fucked up by prior retcons in Avengers and West Coast Avengers. All they did here was blame it all on Immortus' interference with the timeline, since he'd already been responsible for Vision's dismantling in "Vision Quest" anyway. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	cmdr_zoom 2009-08-09 10:56 pm UTC (link)
	Every once in a while, Tony goes so far with the Irondickery they have to explain why it really wasn't like that. (Reply to this)

	box_in_the_box 2009-08-09 11:49 pm UTC (link)
	As much as Kurt Busiek goes out of his way to be charitable to his fellow creators, I loved the implicit metafictional commentary in Avengers Forever, since it basically involved past eras of Avengers looking at their future writing and saying WHAT IS THIS BULLSHIT??? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	lawrence_live 2009-08-10 09:35 am UTC (link)
	A stroke of genius from Busiek :) (Reply to this) (Parent)

colonel_green
2009-08-10 12:06 am UTC (link)

I have a love/hate relationship Busiek's Avengers stuff. Obviously, something had to be done to iron out all the confusing stuff surrounding Iron Man after "The Crossing". But in other cases you get stories dedicated to resolving continuity errors from the 1960s that only he knows or cares about. The overall impression his Avengers run left with me was its incredible preoccupation with past continuity.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

neuhallidae
2009-08-10 12:13 am UTC (link)

Busiek's referred to as a continuity porn writer with good reason. While there were a lot of things I didn't like about his run, his handling of things like that godawful Crossing storyline were homers. I tend to prefer his handle on characterization as well (most of the time, anyway, his way of reviving the Vision/Wanda/Wonder Man triangle that should have been left alone made me grouchy), especially in works like this where different timelines are chucked together and he gets to play with it a bit (Present!Hank and Present!Jan's "Oh, crap" reaction to Yellowjacket was priceless).

(Reply to this) (Parent)

arbre_rieur
2009-08-10 01:32 am UTC (link)

What makes Busiek's continuity-wrangling work and someone like Roy Thomas's (bad day Thomas, not good day) not is that it's always done in the course of an actual story. Back around the time his run began, a bunch of Avengers fans gathered a list of continuity knots and dangling subplots that the series had accumulated and sent it to him. He responded by saying that, if he found a way to address any of them in the course of a story he was already going to tell, he would, but he wasn't going to go out of his way to do so.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	pensive1 2009-08-10 01:12 am UTC (link)
	Dear lord make it stop. By that I mean make Fraction stop writing the book. PLEASE (Reply to this) (Thread)

	*offers a cuppa to pensive1* jazzypom 2009-08-10 08:02 am UTC (link)
	There, there, we'll get through it. There's always other Tony's and Stark verses. Thank GOD, or else I'd have to shank somebody. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: offers a cuppa to pensive1 pensive1 2009-08-10 04:25 pm UTC (link)
	So help me, I don't want to speak too soon, but I am so glad we still have the Ultimates and Marvel Adventures. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Marvel Adventures is cancelled jazzypom 2009-08-10 04:36 pm UTC (link)
	They are having Marvel superheroes, and Millar is back on the Ultimates so we will see. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: Marvel Adventures is cancelled neuhallidae 2009-08-10 04:47 pm UTC (link)
	He's still in MA:A, which is ongoing. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	Re: Marvel Adventures is cancelled pensive1 2009-08-10 04:54 pm UTC (link)
	What I meant is Tony still appears in the MA titles that are sticking around, like Superheroes. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Yeah, this. jazzypom 2009-08-10 04:58 pm UTC (link)
	And we have good Tony art. Somewhere. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: Yeah, this. pensive1 2009-08-10 05:03 pm UTC (link)
	And even if I have to wait until 2010, Adi Granov is still drawing a absolutely bangable Tony. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	jarodrussell 2009-08-10 03:42 am UTC (link)
	Who's Iron Man? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	scottyquick 2009-08-10 05:29 pm UTC (link)
	You should really make multiple icons with that quote, one for Tony, one for Peter, etc etc. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	ashtoreth 2009-08-10 05:55 am UTC (link)
	Says right there! Being connected to a machine made it easier to get inside Tony's head! Extremis! Why do they got to be complicated? (Reply to this)

	I don't care anymore jazzypom 2009-08-10 08:01 am UTC (link)
	Call me when the book gets a new (good) writer and a new (good) artist. For a top tier book in marvel, stuff is pretty rancid right now. (Reply to this)

statham1986
2009-08-10 09:12 am UTC (link)

I actually like the idea that they're going to change the trade dress for the book, but that's the only thing I like. Fraction's current stories seemingly have him paying lip service to the fans who wanted to see Tony suffer from making dubious decisions, when I think the majority actually saw him as trying to do the right thing at a difficult time (Millar and JMS writing Tony as an asshole didn't help, but I still didn't see Tony actively breaking the law in the face of a law that hadn't even passed yet). Maria Hill being mind-raped and Tony forcefully losing his company, reputation, and now his mind aren't necessary to break these characters down - They're forced penance to show that Fraction listens to his readers, when in fact, I found Hill more interesting as the assholish but occasionally sympathetic SHIELD agent, and Tony was infinitely more interesting when the Knaufs (sp?) were writing him.

Fraction and company have stripped away the best element that was moving Tony forward - Extremis, too. The 'test-pilot of the future' line, that was already there, and it seems to me that Fraction deliberately had Tony broken down again so it could look like he's done some grandstanding work in building him up to something awesome again.

But on the subject of the trade dress, I really, really like that idea. I don't want to see every comic looking like some fashion or movie rag you can pick up in any newsagents, but at the same time, I've loved ideas like the trade dress the Intimates used. That was fantastic. It's just a shame that Marvel doesn't seem able to stay the course with these things - Millar's FF run tried something new, and that's being stripped away as soon as he leaves...

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	skalja 2009-08-10 03:58 pm UTC (link)
	Honest question: what did you find new about Millar's FF run? Because I tried reading an arc or two and both the characterizations and the plots seemed really, really dull. (I did like Susan starting her own superteam, though I didn't get that far into that plotline.) I'm interested in hearing alternate viewpoints! (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	statham1986 2009-08-10 06:25 pm UTC (link)
	In terms of what I found new about Millar's FF run, I actually found the writing and the art very, very bland. I was referring to the trade dress, which was redone to look more like a modern glossy magazine - And is promptly being stripped away as soon as Millar and Hitch are done. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

skalja
2009-08-10 07:44 pm UTC (link)

Oh! Right, yes, I loved the new FF trade dress.

I also liked the Civil War trade dress, honestly, even though it was a tad "OMG DRAMA DRAMA TRAJAN FONT." I did not like how difficult they made it to figure out where the Civil War trades fit into trades of ongoing series, numbering wise.

Man, we should have a "trade dresses you think are awesome" thread on ns_d.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	statham1986 2009-08-10 09:00 pm UTC (link)
	The Civil War dress annoyed me because it was so weirdly plain, I thought it was difficult to actually identify books in the event because they all looked the same! But as for favourite trade dress/design, The Intimates, Wildcats 3.0, and Sandman Mystery Theatre, for me. (Reply to this) (Parent)