I got sick and tired of most of the comics I read!   And I canceled ALL my subscriptions.

Why?  You guys have written out most of the answers as you've tackled individual titles.

In addition, I got tired of comic books trying to look like movie storyboards.   One recent issue of Batman had a fight drawn out over several pages without a single word to drive the plot, the characters, the twists and turns.   Most others just gave me big beauty shots of ... well, nothing in particular.   Just ways to fill up space with a half page or more of a superhero standing there,  looking heroic, and saying nothing of import...

Equally bad, some of my "favorite" characters have so many books a month that I can't follow the different plot lines from one book to another.   In the end, I no longer cared about them.   I was simply buying them out of habit.

Of course, I couldn't go cold turkey.  I still read the thumbnail previews to see if anything interests me ... visit my comic book shop every two weeks or once a month, and thumb through the things that did ... and if they don't look more like a filled in coloring book than a plot- or character-driven comic book, I'll still pick them up.

For example, I'm enjoying the New Krypton series across the Superman books.   

I realize that many of you, if not most, are still deeply invested in these characters ... and I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade.   Really, I don't.

But I am wondering if anyone out there is as sick as I am about what the editors and writers of characters (caretakers of them, really) have done with our iconic characters.

Your thoughts?

I've made my views clear enough often enough, so I won't go into the diatribe that constantly wells in me when it comes to comics.  Suffice to say that stories are important to me.  That is why I chose the profession I have, but I feel the same way you do AS.  I have dropped all of my DC books (after they canceled most of the books I was getting), and I no longer read any mainstream (continuity) comics.  I do read a few Marvel Adventures titles, as they aren't choked with 50+ years of bad writing choices and the worst of continuity.  I used to read the JLU title, but that was canceled as well.  Now, I have started really enjoying independent books, reprints, and classic titles.  I'm going to try and get some of the original Aquaman run this Christmas, but other than that, I'm not buying a single DC book...how sad is that?  The guy doing an entire mod devoted to the DC Universe isn't even buying their comics?

I'm not reading many comics at the moment - DC cancelled or is cancelling several that I did read, same at Marvel.  Right now, I think the only comics I'll still be buying come the new year are Fables, Ex Machina, Hellboy, BPRD, and Invincible.  Now I do read a few more than that, mainly mooched off friends who are a little more into comics than myself, but if I couldn't do that, I still wouldn't buy them.

To those who've dropped everything completely I say: try different comics!  There's always something worth reading!

Yeah, I'd second that!  There are tons of great independent books out there.  Read some of them!

I don't really have much of a problem with comics these days, except maybe for the event after event sort of nature they've taken on. I guess I'm probably younger than a lot of the people here, though, and I only started reading comics a few years ago so I don't have the same sort of attachments to characters as some people.
I guess I sort of enjoy how everything gets all mixed up and put through the ringer these days. 

I don't think I've ever dropped reading comics altogether... but I was never a big "monthly" and "on-going" guy either (except when I was a kid and religiously following Larry Hama's GI Joe) so I haven't tired of the medium as much as those who've been reading comics featuring the same characters month in and month out for the same amount of time.

I guess my decision to keep up with comics, albeit irregularly, despite my own misgivings about the way the industry has handled itself of late partly boils down to why I read comics in the first place... I read comics these days primarily because I love the medium of illustrated sequential storytelling (comic books, comic strips, storyboards), and not because I have a particular fondness for certain "iconic" characters. That approach fills me with some optimism.... at any given moment there has to be somebody making comics (or who has already made comics) the way I like them... they may not feature Wolverine or Spider-Man or Archie or whoever, heck, they may not even be written in English, but they're out there, and it's just up to me to find them and support their work.

Quote from: BentonGrey on December 11, 2008, 09:57:09 AM
I've made my views clear enough often enough ... Now, I have started really enjoying independent books, reprints, and classic titles.  I'm going to try and get some of the original Aquaman run this Christmas, but other than that, I'm not buying a single DC book...how sad is that?  The guy doing an entire mod devoted to the DC Universe isn't even buying their comics?

LOL.   I have picked up some of the REALLY OLD Superman Family reprint books, the ones that have about 500 pages for $17 and are all in black and white.  The stories are both atrocious in their simplicity ... yet somehow delightful at the same time.   Maybe you had to be there at the time for them to be nostalgic ... on the other hand, the business can't only be supported by a handful of original comic book nerds like me.   

What made me think of this is that you refer to some of the orginal Aquaman comics for Xmas - and I think a brand new black and white collection just came out.   If so, Merry Xmas in Atlantis!  (At a time when men where men and teens were, well, still wearing short pants! :doh:  )

But able to kick supervillain butt none the less!  Ha, thanks AS, I am going to try and get my hands on the originals, though, as the coloring is just such an essential part of the story to me.

I had to give them up years ago when mortgage, food and bills started sapping the extra income.
I still have a soft spot for all the ones I read when i was younger, but alas financially I have to live vicariously thorough the stuff you guys post now.

I really really want to read new stories about my favorite iconic characters but none of the current takes  interest me. I buy some every once in awhile but usually annoys me more than I enjoy it. Even ones that don't annoy me seem to move so slowly convolutedly etc that I feel didn't get what I paid for.

Then again the animated Timverse is just about the perfect superhero universe to me so I've got high expectations. One the third hand, I still enjoy  rereading classic stories I haven't read in 20 years, I've tried independents but they just don't sustain my interest.

I guess I'll  have to stick to sources for my superhero fixes including my 20 year plus Champions   RPG campaign

I certainly understand what you are saying, Ancient Spirit.  I experienced burn out about 10 years ago.  I was away from comics for so long that so much of it is new again.  Even so, I have just a few titles that I pick up regularly.  Part of which is the sheer expense.  But then again, like others have said, I DO miss the comics of my youth.

I was a collector years ago.  I made mine Marvel.  Couldn't afford a bunch of regular subscriptions, but I picked them up when I could.  I even still have some of my old collection (though I'm contemplating a future sell-off on eBay).

Then the day came when I'd realized that Marvel had 'jumped the shark'.  They were messing with characters I loved in ways that were not true to why I got into comics in the first place.  I was buying comics with storylines that were distasteful or downright offensive out of sheer habit.  A lot of comic books went to the local landfill then.  They weren't fit to keep or pass on and I felt it would be hypocritical to try to sell them.  I stopped my habit and by and large haven't bought comic books since.  Maybe an issue here and there, but not a single one over the last few years.

Oh, I still occasionally pick one up at a bookstore... hopeful that maybe they've started printing comic books I could buy again.  And I've been disappointed every single time.

I am mostly fed up with Marvel, quite frankly. DC is hit or miss, but they really need to quit doing a new "Crisis" every few years and replacing established heroes with younger heroes of a different ethnicity (I want the real Blue Beetle and Firestorm back!) and keep Grant Morrison off mainstream titles.

I grew up a Marvel Zombie, and I've been reading comics since I was 5. (Meaning 1976) I'd read DC Comics, but if I had I only had money for 1 comic and had to choose, I'd grab a Marvel over a DC 95% of the time. However, Marvel has slowly turned into crap over the past decade or so, and the ONLY Marvel title I'm reading is Captain America.....other than Avengers/Invaders, and that's not a regular series. I refuse to touch any book with Spider-Man in it because OMD/BND, the Clone Saga and Sins Past are some of biggest loads of bs in comics history. I have to hold my nose when reading almost anything with Iron Man - who used to be my second favorite Marvel hero (behind Steve Rogers as Cap) - because frankly Tony Stark has been made into either a villain or the biggest idiot on Earth in the Marvel Universe. Civil War was pretty much garbage, and the whole Initiative\Multiple Avengers teams and other crap from it can't end soon enough, as far as I'm concerned.

I can't wait for the day Joe Quesada either resigns or is fired as EiC or steps into the path of an out of control bus.

Right now, my reading list consists of:

Avengers/Invaders
Batman - will probably be dropping, and considering Batman's my favorite DC hero, that says a LOT!
Captain America
Justice Society of America
Wonder Woman (if you're a Gail Simone fan, you should be reading this!!!)

And am waiting on the next FX mini-series from IDW, which unfortunately will not have John Byrne doing the art again, but that's a long way off.

(I'm also reading the American version of Shonen Jump, which I may be dropping, and am waiting on the next FX mini-series from IDW (which is a long way off, and unfortunately will not have John Byrne doing the art again), but those are irrelevant to this discussion, I believe)

I finally gave up buying funny books for a whole different reason... money.

When I stopped buying comics it was a tough decision. Well maybe it wasn't so tough because at the time it came down to having 7 meals a week or 6. When it came to feeding my family the answer was clear.

Back in the day I was a big fan of Marvel. I dabbled in DC (mostly JLA) but Marvel was where I called home. At one point Marvel books seemed to dive in quality and then once Peter David was forced off Incredible Hulk I was done with them. Next up Gran Morrison left JLA. I gave Mark Waid a shot but he dint' float my boat so I dropped my one DC title. Finally, I made my home at Image until finances dictated that I couldn't do it any longer.

To this day the only books that I regret dropping are Savage Dragon and Invincible. :(

-MJB

I think it can't be overstated how much the rising costs of individual comics issues is driving away readers. At the $1 to $2 per issue range, that only means, oh, I don't know, buying the generic cereal instead of Kellogg's or Post-branded breakfast items. $3 or more, and it becomes more of a luxury that becomes expendable in the face of other essential items like toilet paper... then again, if you're unsatisfied with the comic you just bought, it can always pull double-duty (just watch out for the paper cuts!!!).

I first moved to reading TPBs back in the mid-1990s (around 1996 or 1997 or so, I think), when the typical cost of a single Marvel issue hit about US $1.95 and it was becoming a real strain on my modestly-sized budget (it was my freshman year in university, and I was already struggling to make rent & eating instant noodles 7 nights a week). Of course, they didn't do regular TPB collections back then so I ended up reading and buying a lot of non-mainstream stuff that would usually find its way into bargain bins to get my comics fix. In a way, that helped me branch out of superhero comics and gave me a broader appreciation of the medium. I don't think I'm a typical case, though, since I really loves me my comics. Anybody else, I think, would have just dropped their comics-reading habit cold.

Anyway, it got me thinking... if publishers are worried about kids not reading comics these days, maybe they should re-think the current price point and make it more accessible for parents to give comics as disposable "this'll keep the kids quiet during the drive to the supermarket" type deal.   

That's a good point ZD.  I remember that is precisely what comics were when I was a kid.  We'd go to the grocery store, and I'd pick out a book or two, and it was very economical way to placate the antsy kid in the shopping cart!  I wonder what the profit margins on their books are these days?  I don't pay full price for any of my comics, otherwise I couldn't afford them.  My comic store offers an excellent subscription deal that save me 30%.

The price of comics is why I only read a handful of books; back when they were around $2 a pop, I was probably reading about 10 titles at one point.

I've gotten into manga the past couple of years. You can buy a manga book that has anywhere from 180 to over 200 pages - in black and white, but the ads are in the back of the book, not interrupting the story - for about what you'd pay for 3 comics. I'd advise anyone who has quit comics because of the price to go to a bookstore that carries manga titles (I get mine from Waldenbooks; if there's not one near you, try a Borders, as they're part of the same system - I use a Borders Rewards card at Waldenbooks) and take a look. Just keep in mind that the majority of manga is NOT for kids, despite what the art looks like, so if you have any kids and buy manga they can read as well, be careful in what you get. (A good one if you have kids is Yotsuba&!, but its currently on hiatus or something; 5 volumes are out so far and volume 6 was supposed to be out months ago)

On the price point thing, I have no evidence to back this up but, what I've heard is that the rise in paper price is hurting the comic industry, to the extent that even if they switched to a cheaper paper brand it wouldn't make a significant difference in the retail price. But again this is heresy.


Obviously I'm still enjoying comics so I don't really fit in here ;)

I tend to follow characters and Marvel has done a great job at destroying most of my favorites...

The original Alpha Flight = Mostly Dead (including my faves...Puck and Heather)   :(

The original Spider-Woman = Impersonated by the Skrull queen, Veranke for years now(and I was really hoping that Jessica had made a successful comeback, Joining the Avengers, re-establishing her ties to Nick Fury...But instead, Bendis has probably ruined any chance for the character to make any real impact).  I hated Bendis' Spider-Woman: Origin (for turning her interesting and complex origin story into a convoluted mess) and I eventually lost interest in his writing of the character in new Avengers...At this point, I won't read anything he writes...Including Spider-Woman's new series (the premise of which sounds absolutely horrible to me)...   :thumbdown:

Werewolf By Night/Jack Russell...Is in a new series coming out next year, but he's now married and has kids?!  WTF?! 

I've never been a big fan of Captain America, Iron Man or Spider-Man...But I believe Marvel is slowly destroying these characters too (if not actually killing them off, as with poor Cap). 

At DC...I'm really only a fan of the Doom Patrol and DC isn't doing much with them right now.

I'm not buying anything right now, save for the occasional Buffy, Season 8 issues.

Dana

I agree with a lot of stuff that's already been said.

a)Marvel has screwed up their IP so badly over the past several years as to be unrecognizable. OMD/BND made me drop all the Spidey titles, and Civil War/The initiative/Secret Invasion's extreme abuses of continuity have made me drop all the rest of the 616 titles; except for Thor, which has had 1 issue come out in the last, oh, three months, I think.  I bought X-Men Noir, and reccomended it highly, assuming you like the setting

b) I am at the end of my financial rope with the price increases. $2.99 is the absolute maximum I am willing to pay for a regular format book from the big two (other companies get a bit of a break because I don't believe they have as much fat that can be cut).  There's a rumor going around that they are going to up their mainstream titles to $3.99, at which point pretty much all the big two's titles will be dropped, and I'll just be getting indies and continuations of TV shows.

Current pull list (down dramatically from a few years ago; at one point it was 40+ titles a month, now it's less than 20)

DC
____
Batman (will probably drop once Morrison leaves - love his stuff.  I dont think he's writing 'Battle for the Cowl' though, so you  might wanna hang in there GM)
Booster Gold
Brave and the Bold
Hellblazer
JLA
New JLA title starting soon
JSA
Planetary- Yes, technically there is still one issue left to go
Trinity

Marvel
______
Thor
X-Men Noir


Dark Horse
____________
Buffy, Season 8 *

IDW
______
Doctor Who*
Doctor Who - The forgotten*
Angel - After the fall *
The X- files *

Possible (rumored) additions
________________________
Veronica Mars *
Pushing Daisies *


* am willing to pay $3.99 per issues, and probably a little (though not much) higher


Oh, and as for the Doom Patrol - until DC puts Morrisons brillant run on them back into continuity, they are dead to me

I was a big X-Men fan for years too(mostly of the originals and the All New, All Different X-Men characters), but I finally got sick of Claremont.  I tried to pick up the random issue here and there (mostly Carey's run...Which has been pretty good), but I just couldn't get back into them...

Professor Xavier has been turned into a lying, mind-raping, manipulative bastard...Cyclops is following well in his footsteps, Jean has been killed off again and again and again (no writer seems to be able to competently write the nice girl next door), the Beast is a big stupid-looking cat, Angel has become a cyclical, mutating joke, Nightcrawler's origins have been screwed with far too much making him a continuity mess (not mentioning his tiresome, constant flip-flopping on his beliefs and role in life), Storm has been diminished, married off and "segregated" out of the team and shipped off to Africa (my mind boggles at this horror), Polaris has been turned into an unbalanced psycho, Havok has been shipped off into space, Sunfire has been mutilated beyond recognition...And Wolverine is just over-used and over-exposed to a point beyond saturation.

Most of the characters have been removed so far from who and what they are/were that I just don't care anymore.

Dana

Quote from: bredon7777 on December 14, 2008, 06:44:31 AM
Oh, and as for the Doom Patrol - until DC puts Morrisons brillant run on them back into continuity, they are dead to me

B, Morrison's run is in continuity...All versions of the DP have been integrated into the current team (who make very sparse guest-appearances here and there).  The Chief has been resurrected and is still an evil jerk (as Morrison made him, much to my disgust) and he in turn, resurrected Rita Farr/Elasti-Girl.  Larry, Cliff and Mento are also somehow back among the living...But all of those stories Morrison wrote, happened in continuity.

Dana

Quote from: cmdrkoenig67 on December 14, 2008, 08:05:18 AM

Quote from: bredon7777 on December 14, 2008, 06:44:31 AM
Oh, and as for the Doom Patrol - until DC puts Morrisons brillant run on them back into continuity, they are dead to me

B, Morrison's run is in continuity...All versions of the DP have been integrated into the current team (who make very sparse guest-appearances here and there).  The Chief has been resurrected and is still an evil jerk (as Morrison made him, much to my disgust) and he in turn, resurrected Rita Farr/Elasti-Girl.  Larry, Cliff and Mento are also somehow back among the living...But all of those stories Morrison wrote, happened in continuity.

Dana

(Emphasis mine)

That is EXACTLY why I don't like Morrison to work on mainstream books.  As I've said before, we've reached a point in the histories of these characters where the only easy way to make "interesting" stories about them is to twist or torture them until they no longer bear much resemblance to what they were before.

Regarding Morrison, him not writing "Battle For The Cowl" is the main reason I haven't dropped the title yet. Morrison's work on Batman for me has been more miss than hit, the prose issue with CGI wasn't worth the delay (and the Ostrander-Mandrake 3-parter was meh; a villain who looks like Leatherface with a flamethrower with the name of an obscure Marvel character and an origin sort of ripped off from Darkman? Puhlease), and I hope once he's off the book he isn't allowed anywhere near the character outside a team book for a while.

Doom Patrol, I'm not quite sure what's going on. I haven't read it since the series that eventually went Vertigo (dropped it well before that happened, however), with Erik Larsen on the art when I quit reading. But Byrne's reboot, adding new characters, was unnecessary and I'm pretty sure screwed up Changeling's past.

Morrison, in my opinion, has no business working on mainstream titles; DC was nuts letting him do anything outside the Vertigo line and when he was working on X-Men I avoided reading because they double messed it up (Frank Quitely is my least favorite artist next to Liefeld; his work on All-Star Superman looks okay, but his work for Marvel looked atrocious).

Captain America is my favorite Marvel hero, and frankly I'm glad Steve was killed off because I'd hate to see how the current regime would screw the character up, and I know he won't stay dead. I actually like the fact they made Bucky the new Cap and retconned his history a bit (having him be 18 and packing a gun during WW2, instead of an unarmed teenage sidekick); what I don't like is the costume redesign (he looks like Captain Puerto Rico) and the fact he's romantically involved with Black Widow. Bru also brought back the 1950's Cap - another character who died but didn't - which I saw coming a mile away and wish he hadn't done.

I'd like to see something happens that causes the Superhero Registration Act to backfire; some villains get access to it and kill off some people who have registered and their families. During all this, the whole Civil War and Initiative turn out to be part of a bigger plot manipulated by some mastermind who is revealed, the Thunderbolts are disbanded and Norman is tossed into whatever Marvel's current super-prison is, and before its all over some villain tracks down reporter Sally Floyd (I want to slap the sin out of whoever named her, btw) and beats her to death with a laptop linked to the `net and set to MySpace that has NASCAR stickers plastered all over the casing, yelling "THANKS FOR THE ADD!" over and over while beating her with it. But this has to be done with Steve resurrected, because the kicker should be him finding her body and commenting that she wasn't going to get added to his Friends list anyway.

You know, Brubaker's retconning of Bucky's history wasn't actually anything ground breaking.  There was a Cap book that retold his origins sometime in the late 80's or 90's where Bucky packed guns.  He wasn't a sniper, per se, but he was obviously fighting a war.  That being said, I don't necessarily have anything against his book, other than the new Cap's unselfconscious use of guns.  If the series grappled with the morality of that choice, it wouldn't be a problem to me.  Anyway, I have rambled enough here.

Quote from: cmdrkoenig67 on December 14, 2008, 08:05:18 AM

Quote from: bredon7777 on December 14, 2008, 06:44:31 AM
Oh, and as for the Doom Patrol - until DC puts Morrisons brillant run on them back into continuity, they are dead to me

B, Morrison's run is in continuity...All versions of the DP have been integrated into the current team (who make very sparse guest-appearances here and there).  The Chief has been resurrected and is still an evil jerk (as Morrison made him, much to my disgust) and he in turn, resurrected Rita Farr/Elasti-Girl.  Larry, Cliff and Mento are also somehow back among the living...But all of those stories Morrison wrote, happened in continuity.

Dana

Neat! When did that happen?  As far as I knew, Morrisons stuff went out the window when Byrne rebooted the team.

Quote from: GhostMachine on December 14, 2008, 10:14:16 AM

Morrison, in my opinion, has no business working on mainstream titles; DC was nuts letting him do anything outside the Vertigo line and when he was working on X-Men I avoided reading because they double messed it up (Frank Quitely is my least favorite artist next to Liefeld; his work on All-Star Superman looks okay, but his work for Marvel looked atrocious).

Morrison's JLA is classic - no one in the modern age has even come close to writing the JLA that well.


As for Marvel- I want the members of the Illumanti to take off VR helmets, and then have Reed go "And THAT, gentlemen is why the Registration act is such a lousy idea."

Quote from: bredon7777 on December 14, 2008, 11:00:56 AM

Quote from: GhostMachine on December 14, 2008, 10:14:16 AM

Morrison, in my opinion, has no business working on mainstream titles; DC was nuts letting him do anything outside the Vertigo line and when he was working on X-Men I avoided reading because they double messed it up (Frank Quitely is my least favorite artist next to Liefeld; his work on All-Star Superman looks okay, but his work for Marvel looked atrocious).

Morrison's JLA is classic - no one in the modern age has even come close to writing the JLA that well.


As for Marvel- I want the members of the Illumanti to take off VR helmets, and then have Reed go "And THAT, gentlemen is why the Registration act is such a lousy idea."

Well, his JLA run does seem to be the exception to the rule.

Quote from: BentonGrey on December 14, 2008, 10:52:08 AM
You know, Brubaker's retconning of Bucky's history wasn't actually anything ground breaking.  There was a Cap book that retold his origins sometime in the late 80's or 90's where Bucky packed guns.  He wasn't a sniper, per se, but he was obviously fighting a war.  That being said, I don't necessarily have anything against his book, other than the new Cap's unselfconscious use of guns.  If the series grappled with the morality of that choice, it wouldn't be a problem to me.  Anyway, I have rambled enough here.

Actually, it goes even farther back than that; if you've read any of the original stories from the 40's or seen the covers, Bucky packed guns back then occasionally. There are several covers that not only show him carrying a gun, but actually shooting them - however, I'm not sure how often he used them in the actual stories; I've read about 4 or 5 Captain America stories from that era, and Bucky only used a gun in one of them but didn't actually shoot anyone with it. Due to the Comics Code, all that had to be forgotten when Marvel started telling flashback stories. The making him a bit older is the only real retcon....other than him not actually dying, that is, and it makes sense; he was actually a trained marksman assigned to work with Cap and not just some camp mascot who partnered up with Steve because he walked in on Steve while he was changing into costume.

Oh, and he doesn't use the gun (or knife) that often as Captain America. He did shoot up the members of the Serpent Society, but he hadn't trained with the shield enough at that point to rely on using it to take them all out and he clearly wasn't aiming to kill - if he was, they'd all be dead. He did stab Crossbones in the thigh with his knife during a fight, and I actually laughed at that. They've mostly had Sharon Carter using lethal force, not Bucky America, since the Serpent Society thing.

bredon, love the Reed and VR thing. Too bad Marvel wouldn't have the cajones to pull that off, though.

Quote from: GhostMachine on December 14, 2008, 10:14:16 AM
Doom Patrol, I'm not quite sure what's going on. I haven't read it since the series that eventually went Vertigo (dropped it well before that happened, however), with Erik Larsen on the art when I quit reading. But Byrne's reboot, adding new characters, was unnecessary and I'm pretty sure screwed up Changeling's past.

It did, but it's all been fixed now....Byrne's Doom Patrol was explained as a temporal hiccup caused by Superboy Prime.  All Doom Patrols have now been integrated into continuity.

Dana