Last night I watched an interview with Dan Slott (Marvel Writer) that went over his Spider-Man run in depth, which Marvel had him on for about 10 years.
I stopped reading after J. Michael Straczynski departed the book, reading a little here and there just because I couldn’t drop the habit for awhile, but I found it wasn’t for me and quickly ignored what was going on in that realm.
The interview was meant to garner sympathy mostly because of the way the fans reacted to his stories, and this is why I find it interesting and worth discussing today, because it harkens back to everything I say about these companies and why they cannot tell a good story in the modern age.
He stated it was always the intention to bring everything right back to the iconic version before he departed the book.
No matter what the change, no matter how drastic, no matter what the concept, Marvel and DC will ALWAYS DO THIS.
They are IP farms for movies first and foremost and they’re not here to actually develop characters, build a new world, they’re here to push everything right back to the same at the end of the arc.
And that’s why they can do these amateur hour “what if?” stories, where Slott admits that when he sat down he was trying to think of what hadn’t already been done with Spdier-Man and “what if… what if..” which is why his and almost every Marvel book these days reads like something out of those pages and not something that should be done in the main universe.
Because they’ll always bring it right back.
And it incentivizes them to go and do the most absurd gimmicky things possible to get you outraged on the internet to talk about it, because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter, they just need that quick sales nut which will come from the controversy.
It’s dead. There is nothing to these IPs. These characters don’t matter just because they have a brand name you liked when you were a kid.
I gotta keep beating that drum because it hasn’t set in for so many folk yet. But it’s time to move on. There’s no potential for real storytelling here.
And that’s why I started the alternative, and have been busting on Flying Sparks for about a year, with 10 issues under my belt and more on the way. I’m building a real universe with real developments, real change, real story. I hope you’ll break the habit just because something has a brand name by Disney, and join me instead.
Back Flying Sparks today and get real storytelling from a #1 bestselling author.
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