there’s a period in recent Marvel history that i know little to nothing about, but i often hear it referred to… i think it was during the height (or if you will, the depths) of the Jemas era, but some of it might have been before: i’m talking of the period when through a bizarre set of editorial edicts, major changes were made throughout the way the Marvel Universe was presented. for instance:

- simplified continuity: writers were prohibited from making explicit reference to any plot elements older than a year or two, and flashbacks as a storytelling element were banned altogether

- no crossovers: not only was the practice of crossing storylines across various titles eliminated, but each individual character existed in his own continuity that was unrelated to the continuity of other characters

- no secret identities: i don’t know if this was actually an mass editorial directive, but wasn’t there a period when it seemed most characters were having their secret identities revealed? Daredevil, obviously, but also Captain America, the X-men, Iron Man and others, right?

i’m particularly interested in the whole thing with each character being in their own continuity… was this something that just happened like “let’s chill out on the whole crossover thing” or was it explicitly stated like “Spider-Man is the ONLY superhero in **his** New York City, while the Fantastic Four are in **their** New York”? how did that start? and better yet, how did it end?

He felt it would scare off new readers and always made a point to insult any continuity-obsessed fans out there in cyberspace.

>- simplified continuity: writers were prohibited from making
>explicit reference to any plot elements older than a year or
>two, and flashbacks as a storytelling element were banned
>altogether

It seemed like they were trying to be more sophisticated and were almost ashamed of being a publisher of beat-em-up funnybooks. Anything they referenced was the "classic" stuff: Stan Lee Spidey, Miller Daredevil, etc. In some interviews, they would even talk about a more sophisticated "Marvel Knights reader." What the hell is a Marvel Knights reader? It's the same person reading all their other shit!

>- no crossovers: not only was the practice of crossing
>storylines across various titles eliminated, but each
>individual character existed in his own continuity that was
>unrelated to the continuity of other characters

Maybe this was a reaction to how convoluted things were in the '90s. Reading one book and have it to be continued in another. They also wanted to keep things nice & clean for the trades in the bookstore market.

>- no secret identities: i don’t know if this was actually an
>mass editorial directive, but wasn’t there a period when it
>seemed most characters were having their secret identities
>revealed? Daredevil, obviously, but also Captain America, the
>X-men, Iron Man and others, right?

This was basically a reaction to 9/11: the real heroes are the police & firemen who risk their lives. Which is a bullshit concept, because firemen don't have to worry about Batroc ze Leaper banging on thier doors.

>i’m particularly interested in the whole thing with each
>character being in their own continuity… was this something
>that just happened like “let’s chill out on the whole
>crossover thing” or was it explicitly stated like “Spider-Man
>is the ONLY superhero in **his** New York City, while the
>Fantastic Four are in **their** New York”? how did that start?
>and better yet, how did it end?
>

I don't think this was ever really an official concept, but more of something speculated by fans.

>He felt it would scare off new readers and always made a
>point to insult any continuity-obsessed fans out there in
>cyberspace.

yeah, i know that Jemas was anti-continuity, and for a while there i almost agreed with him (as far as the whole "accessibility" issue was concerned, anyway)

>It seemed like they were trying to be more sophisticated and
>were almost ashamed of being a publisher of beat-em-up
>funnybooks. Anything they referenced was the "classic" stuff:
>Stan Lee Spidey, Miller Daredevil, etc. In some interviews,
>they would even talk about a more sophisticated "Marvel
>Knights reader." What the hell is a Marvel Knights reader?
>It's the same person reading all their other shit!

LOL

i never understood the big distinction between Marvel Knights and regular 616 stuff myself

>Maybe this was a reaction to how convoluted things were in the
>'90s. Reading one book and have it to be continued in another.
>They also wanted to keep things nice & clean for the trades in
>the bookstore market.

yep... i understand (and appreciate) that one. the whole thing about each character being in his own continuity is what fascinates me. the only Marvel comic i read during that era was Daredevil, and he had Luke Cage, Black Widow and even Spider-Man in there all the time

>This was basically a reaction to 9/11: the real heroes are the
>police & firemen who risk their lives. Which is a bullshit
>concept, because firemen don't have to worry about Batroc ze
>Leaper banging on thier doors.

ah-HAA!!! that explains it!

yeah, i know that Marvel took a lot of pride in their "proactive" response to 9/11 with that "Call of Duty" book and their whole thing of making 9/11 a major element of their universe. i appreciated the sentiment, but it never really worked for me, storywise.

like the first 9/11 special they did where all the characters in the Marvel Universe are helping out at Ground Zero and Dr. Doom is crying? it made no sense... why is Doom so touched by this particular tragedy when he himself has attempted to create MUCH worse devastation in the past?

It happened. There's nothing they can have the characters do about it because they want their universe to reflect our real life one. But how many times have they destroyed the Statue of Liberty only to have the JLA or X-Men or whoever put it back together nice & neat as if nothing happened? In a way, it's almost insulting & undermining to real life tragedies.

I've always dug that about Marvel, but at times it pays to have a few Gothams and Metropolis's, ya know?

We're still feeling the impact 9/11 to this day, but how long did the ripple effect last in the MU? A month or two? Then it was back to business as usual?

Mind you I'm not really criticizing them here. It was just a sticky situation. They couldn't not talk about it, yet there was no way to really address it within that superhero context and really do it right without completely restructuring everything. It was kind of a no-win situation. I give them props for trying though.

gone back to the imaginary cities thing, where in the late 80s and early 90s they had a lot of characters based in Seattle, Chicago, etc.

i dunno how i feel about that... i used to like the balance between cities like Keystone and Coast and then you had the Titans in New York and Wonder Woman in Boston. but there are way too many problems inherent in setting comic stories in "real" cities

what i always liked with DC, though, was the way they distributed their characters across the country. with Marvel characters being all based in New York, i used to wonder

a) why when Mr. Hyde is on a rampage through New York, it's always Daredevil - not the FF or Spider-Man who emerges to fight him?

b) after years of getting their asses handed to them by New York's superhero community, why didn't the villains wise up and try Philadelphia, Detroit, Texas, Los Angeles (well, there was the West Coast Avengers), Florida, etc.?

is dealt with in Brian K Vaughn's Runaways. He said he specifically chose to set the story in L.A. so as not to become involved in the adventures and lives of the other Marvel heroes.

Of course, I think they just headed to NYC in the last issue...

But it's not like Marvel isn't aware of this issue, they just choose to treat it as more of a little in-joke, rather than work towards changing it. At this point, it really doesn't bother me though. Sure, it doesn't hold up to much logic when you really stop and think about it, but that pretty much holds true for the entire genre.

Runaways was especially poignant because the series' fist incarnation started around the same time theat Grant Morrison had Magneto basically blow Manhattan up and (some) people were asking... "Uhh where's the avengers? Where's the FF?"

But you're right, it's not that serious, and it's good that they treat it as such.

but it crossed my mind a few times, especially in cases like the aforementioned destruction of Manhattan

Dr. Strange or some mystical character gave an "everything happens for a reason" explaination about certain heroes & villains attracting each other by design.

>a) why when Mr. Hyde is on a rampage through New York, it's
>always Daredevil - not the FF or Spider-Man who emerges to
>fight him?

yeah, that's kinda lame.

"a) why when Mr. Hyde is on a rampage through New York, it's always Daredevil - not the FF or Spider-Man who emerges to fight him?

This used to bug me as a kid. I brought this up one time to some friends (we were 11 or 12) and they just looked at me like "WTF you talking about. Electro fights Spiderman because he's his enemy"

I used to be a big fan of Marvel because it was set in "the real world". But I've since changed this line of thinking afetr seeing a lot of the problems that come with it. Nothing wrong with using real cities but it needs to be in a sort of "what if" type world.

by making it more explicit that different heroes have their own territories: Daredevil's in Hell's Kitchen, Spider-Man's in Queens, the FF in Manhattan, Dr. Strange in the Village, Luke Cage in Harlem, etc.

>by making it more explicit that different heroes have their
>own territories: Daredevil's in Hell's Kitchen, Spider-Man's
>in Queens, the FF in Manhattan, Dr. Strange in the Village,
>Luke Cage in Harlem, etc.

That's pretty weak if you ask me

LOL

can travel to the farthest reaches of our galaxy... explore worlds unknown... even traverse parallel dimensions, full of peril untold...

But he won't set foot in Harlem?

>can travel to the farthest reaches of our galaxy... explore
>worlds unknown... even traverse parallel dimensions, full of
>peril untold...
>
>But he won't set foot in Harlem?

Now that might be realistic lol

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>a) why when Mr. Hyde is on a rampage through New York, it's
>always Daredevil - not the FF or Spider-Man who emerges to
>fight him?
>
That's always been odd, but maybe he's just rampaging through Hell's Kitchen or something. OR maybe when Magneto tries to destroy Manhattan, the Fantastic Four or the Avengers don't show 'cause they're saving the planet from Dr. Doom or off in outer-space fighting Skrulls or something.

>b) after years of getting their asses handed to them by New
>York's superhero community, why didn't the villains wise up
>and try Philadelphia, Detroit, Texas, Los Angeles (well, there
>was the West Coast Avengers), Florida, etc.?

The actually came up for an explanation of why there are in mid-west heroes in an issue of "Quasar" of all places. If I'm remebering this right, there were two cosmic entities living in Minnesota or something: one was responsible for creating all the superheroes and villains on Earth, and other that could erase them from existence. Since he lived in the midwest, the nullifier guy would wipe out the existence of any mid-west super-heroes and villains soon after they were created. I guess his power had distance-restrictions or something, since it didn't stretch to the costs. I always found that explanation kind of lame, but Marvel did write it in the early '90s, so there ya go.

>The actually came up for an explanation of why there are in
>mid-west heroes in an issue of "Quasar" of all places. If I'm
>remebering this right, there were two cosmic entities living
>in Minnesota or something: one was responsible for creating
>all the superheroes and villains on Earth, and other that
>could erase them from existence. Since he lived in the
>midwest, the nullifier guy would wipe out the existence of any
>mid-west super-heroes and villains soon after they were
>created. I guess his power had distance-restrictions or
>something, since it didn't stretch to the costs. I always
>found that explanation kind of lame, but Marvel did write it
>in the early '90s, so there ya go.

not that i actually LIKE that explanation, but it's still interesting...

i'm particularly intrigued by the idea that all super powers in the universe come from some central source (kinda like what Bendis did in Powers)

Which shows what most of the other Marvel writers/editors thought of the idea.

But Quasar was big into tackling cosmic concepts and whatnot. That, and the characters the Marvel Universe completely forgot. Thunderbolts took over this role later in the 1990s.

that was the team that replaced the Avengers during "Heroes Reborn," huh?

i heard that was pretty good

Great premise which I won't spoil if you haven't read it. (Don't check the Wikipedia page if you want to keep it a secret).

Really fun book, with a really good usage of Matvel heroes and villains.

The other team to "appear" while the Avengers were gone was the short-lived "Heroes For Hire," notable if for nothing else than bringing Luke Cage back into the fold and eventually into Bendis' heart.

i doubt that knowing the premise will completely ruin it for me, though... sounds like a fun book

so this Heroes for Hire... it was Luke and Iron Fist and who else?

I loved the premise of the Masters of Evil masquerading as superheroes. Hell, I ever liked some of those characters when they villains. It was a pretty damn interesting book for a while. I fell off collecting it years ago though.

The Heroes for Hire line-up was a bunch of leftover characters who didn't "die" in the Onslaught : Ant-Man (scott Lang), the original Human Torch, Black Knight, Hercules, and She-Hulk; White Tiger was the only new character. I heard Bendis killed her off later. In fact, if I didn't know better, I would have thought Bendis wrote it.

White Tiger DID get killed during Bendis's Daredevil run, but that White Tiger was a dude.

his successor is a woman, though

and then there's the OTHER White Tiger who was in The Crew...

i doubt that knowing the premise will completely ruin it for me, though... sounds like a fun book

so this Heroes for Hire... it was Luke and Iron Fist and who else?

But I agree with Afkap, the idea that ALL superpowers come from one streamlines source is a pretty cool approach. Kinda like what JMS is doing with Supreme Power.

It's in one of the issues, I swear. Right before the five issue arc whete Quasar fought the first major universal threat he was "destined" to face.

I don't know who jumped off the Marvel idea, but I remember hearing about a DC crossover about "the source" that dealt with something similar. I think Byrne was handling that one.

In that infamous early X-Force/Spider-Man crossover. If I recall, he rammed one tower into the other, to knock them both down.

And anyway, WTF would Doom cry about 9/11 for? Hasn't he at least blown-up the Baxter building? Threatened to blow up Manhattan? The country? The planet? The universe? But 9/11 makes him squirt a few? I doubt it.

and the WTC was one of the most beautiful designs he had ever seen.

You know, castles and whatnot.

so i doubt he'd shed a tear.

Musta been a leaky Doombot or something. Yeah, that's what happened.

....didn't you see this?

http://img487.imageshack.us/img487/2485/mm13a3jj.jpg <-(read 1st)
http://img487.imageshack.us/img487/4847/mm13b7eg.jpg <-(read 2nd)

A year later and he's still there...

-- Nate

and they didnt burn the original script and story board?????

his name is doctor doom for a reason.

I can't answer your question as I haven't really followed comics in some time.

But damn, virtually everything you mentioned seems like a TERRIBLE idea. Those were all things I absolutely loved about Marvel:

- long histories, back stories, continuities

- crossovers between comics and characters (though I admit it was irritating when a 10-part story took place in 10 different titles)

- secret IDs and the pressure of maintaining them usually made for good plot elements


The lack of crossovers and each hero existing in his own New York seems like the worst idea of the bunch by far.

Wow. That definitely doesn't sound like the Marvel I always loved.

>- simplified continuity: writers were prohibited from making
>explicit reference to any plot elements older than a year or
>two, and flashbacks as a storytelling element were banned
>altogether>

This was pretty widespread. I never liked the idea of shucking continuity like that. If referencing old stories was an issue with comic readers, then the Silver Age would have been the downfall of the industry.
The way I've always seen it, you can mention (off the top of my head) The Korvac Saga, but if the writer doesn't give you the necessary info needed for the reference, then that's bad continuity.


>- no crossovers: not only was the practice of crossing
>storylines across various titles eliminated, but each
>individual character existed in his own continuity that was
>unrelated to the continuity of other characters
>>>>>>>

This was a big thing for awhile. As mentioned above it was especially bad since damn near all Marvel characters lived in NY. You had Thor move Asgard directly above NYC, Magneto blowing up Manhattan something fierce, etc. All at the same time, but never getting mentioned anywhere else.

because i just started checking out Jurgens’ run where Asgard was over Manhattan and the Church of Thor became a widespread phenomenon… i was wondering whether that was referenced at all in other books.

i guess not!

I miss those little editor boxes saying "Amazing Spider-Man #299 Ed. Axel."

DC doesn't bother doing it either.
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EDIT: probably decompressed storytelling and "writing for the trade" too

It was in Marvel Team-Up, referencing the recent Captain America disassembled story which was written by the same writer, so I guess that makes it more of a writer's note.

even ones like "Last issue"

i thought they were great and made u buy more comics but since they made the summary page before almost every comic it made them obsolete. but they dont give issue numbers in the sumamry page which is kind of stupid.

>- simplified continuity: writers were prohibited from making
>explicit reference to any plot elements older than a year or
>two, and flashbacks as a storytelling element were banned
>altogether

Is this the reason why they always restarted a comic with #1 every so often?? This is one of the things that has turned me off to Marvel. Like how many times was Captain America been restarted?

the lesson learned from Spider-Man #1 and X-Men #1 in the early 90s was the number one issues mean increased sales from readers who feel they're hopping on at the beginning, as well as from speculators who hope the first issues becomes a collector's item