The Avengers talk about Steve.

[proteus_lives]

Greetings True Believers!

Here are a few scans from Avengers #16. The Avengers visit the confessional booth to talk about Cap.

They embrace a theory I've held myself for quite awhile.

Enjoy!



Cap is mourning Bucky and the others react to it.





I've long believed that Steve is the Avatar of America. One Out of Many.

Comments

[fifthie]

Nothing says gripping, dynamic writing like putting your characters in a black void in front of an invisible cameraman and have them say your opinions for you.

[proteus_lives]

Just works, doesn't it?

(frozen)

[fifthie]

Trolling grade: C-, needs improvement.

(frozen)

[proteus_lives]

Not trolling, disagreeing. I like this interview pages, have since Bendis and crew started doing them. They work well for team books.

(frozen)

[fifthie]

Not trolling, disagreeing.

B-, a slightly more subtle attempt.

They work well for team books.

If your goal is to reduce everyone on the team to a meaningless cypher, then this certainly works as a way of doing that.

(frozen)

[fifthie]

These pages would actually be slightly better if the utterly irrelevant, randomly arranged drawings of characters' heads were removed and Bendis presented his opinions on Captain America in plain text, since that would at least be honest.

(frozen)

[proteus_lives]

Actually, this line of thinking about Cap seriously pre-dates Bendis.

(frozen)

[fifthie]

Nothing I said indicates anything contradictory to this line of thinking pre-dating Bendis.

But I guess I did also miss an opportunity to note the unoriginality of Bendis's opinions.

(frozen)

[proteus_lives]

I kinda think you're the one trolling, if anyone is doing that at all.

"If your goal is to reduce everyone on the team to a meaningless cypher"

Why do you think it does that?

(frozen)

[fifthie]

I kinda think you're the one trolling

Down to a C- for the tiredest, most obvious of shticks.

Why do you think it does that?

For the reasons indicated in my subsequent post.

(frozen)

[proteus_lives]

I simply disagree. Gives a little more focus to characters that might simply swim in the background like Iron Fist.

Shtick?

Dude, you could at least develop one.

(frozen)

[fifthie]

I'm actually going to backtrack a tiny, tiny amount: The Spider-Man panel contains fully five words which make more sense as an observation from the perspective of the character than they do as straightforward punditry on the part of the author.

Aside from that, you can pretty much swap any of these panels with any of the other ones, or throw in a completely different set of characters, or remove the heads entirely and present this essay in plain text, and no meaningful context is lost.

(frozen) Mod Note

[salinea]

This thread is frozen and is under discussion.

(frozen)

[aaron_bourque]

Guardians of the Galaxy did them right. As debriefings. This is like . . . the confession room, or whatever it's called, in the Big Brother house.

And everyone loves Big Brother!

. . .

(frozen)

[proteus_lives]

At least most of the folks on Airstrip-1.

[jlbarnett]

couldn't even put them in a round table. Or in front of a flashback panel

[fifthie]

What's really striking is how Bendis can't be bothered to make his essay sound like the actual views of any of the actual characters whose mouths his opinions are coming out of.

[fifthie]

Maybe I should start copy-pasting my posts here into word bubbles over Hawkeye's head, I bet that'd give them like, +100 credibilitudes.

[proteus_lives]

It seriously would dude.

[fifthie]

[proteus_lives]

See!

You really put the work in. I'm proud of you.

I'm mildly more interested in what you have to say.

You're still wrong but more interesting.

[valtyr]

Hahaha, A+

I don't dislike the concept of the talking heads, but I do think they need tighter characterisation and better art to pull them off. Especially Clint and Maria seem unlike themselves here.

[mrstatham]

I think Maria's off both visually and in terms of her written personality, here. I think they've cut off what was the most interesting point of her character by having her be actively friendly with the Avengers, now. Here, she's just crawling up Steve's butt with the rest of the team.

I'm not saying I want her back to the Millar characterisation at all, hut since Siege, she's lost a lot of her edge.

[fifthie]

Hahaha, A+

Thanks, I'm pretty amazed how well all that slotted in there.

I don't dislike the concept of the talking heads, but I do think they need tighter characterisation and better art to pull them off.

As someone else said, Guardians of the Galaxy did this pretty well.

Especially Clint and Maria seem unlike themselves here.

I can't get past Tony using crazy as a noun.

Bendises gonna Bendis, I guess.

[icon_uk]

As long as we remain aware that not all Cypher's are meaningless! :)