Why did nobody tell me that this existed?

[stubbleupdate]

Now that I'm on holiday, I get a chance to catch up on my reading. One things that I've always wanted to read is Avengers: Disassembled, as House of M and New Avengers mark the beginning of my experience with current Marvel books. I had the outline of the story in my head and knew all of the beats (NOT LIKE THIS!), but I hadn't actually read it for myself.



It's very Bendis-y. And not in the good way. It's very much like he's taken an idea, and it's a good idea. He's taken the idea that the Avengers, one day, have a very bad day. And he's taken this idea, that the Avengers, one day, have a very bad day and he's put it into the mouths of all his characters. This idea, about this very bad day, just comes out in the same way by very different characters.
As bad as some artists are for only having one face that they can draw, Bendis sometimes gets quite bad at only having one voice.
And the story itself feels like Bendis had a bunch of ideas that he wanted to use, but was told that he had to get them all done within the next four issues, so he just smashed everything in together.


However, Disassembled did give us Tony Harris drawing Iron Man, so it's not all bad

Comments

[freezer]

Should I feel bad that I have no idea who this Rumiko is (was)?

Her current whereabouts

[stubbleupdate]

Re: Her current whereabouts

[freezer]

As I suspected.

Re: Her current whereabouts

[lultam]

Relevant username is relevant.

Re: Her current whereabouts

[halloweenjack]

As they say on MetaFilter, "eponysterical."

Re: Her current whereabouts

[rocketlindy]

Is it just me, or is Rumiko a sickly greenish-yellow color sometimes?

Re: Her current whereabouts

[thenicochan]

I won't lie. I LOL'ed.

[lilacsigil]

Man, I really liked Rumiko. She was a great foil to Tony because she could have fun without being out-of-control or mean and hurtful.

[starwolf_oakley]

Wikipedia says she was Tony's main love interest for all of Volume 3. Also:

"Her character was meant to appear in Iron Man 2, but was later scrapped. Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi and Singaporean actress Fann Wong were considered for the role."

[espanolbot]

But her names' Japanese isn't it?

[filthysize]

Nationality isn't that important in casting, as long as you look the part. We've got a Welsh Batman and an Australian Thor, after all. And in the same movie, they had Mickey Rourke as a Russian.

Mod note! A GENERAL NOTE ON THE POTENTIAL OF THIS THREAD

[greenmask]

That's questionable, of course, but let's leave it at this, this time?

OK.

[perletwo]

Why is Tony effin' Stark wearing an effin' cravat? What is he, 90? Is he Douglas Fairbanks Jr.? Vincent Price?

[greenmask]

It goes with his tiny moustache.

[halloweenjack]

IKR? Throw in an FDR-style cigarette holder, why don't they.

[outlawpoet]

Hahaha, so close yet so far. Ray Kurzweil's Age of Intelligent Machines is mostly a history book, reviewing the research history, philosophical underpinnings, and broad technical concepts within AI.

His later book, The Age of Spiritual Machines, is the one that actually makes any projections of the future. Unless Tony Stark is terrified by the technological progress of the 80s computer industry, his comment makes no sense.

Although, it sort of fits, Tony is an extreme control freak, and a bit of a cold-war relic, one can imagine the new internet world of small research firms and exploding tech-only companies would freak out the inheritor of a giant horizontally integrated defense contractor.

[mrph.livejournal.com]

The Marvel Universe versions of these books are going to be a bit different, though, aren't they...?

Ultron deserves at least a couple of chapters. Even if you disregard his offworld activities, iirc he killed an entire country in eastern europe. And then there are the Sentinels - again, even without Genosha, they must qualify for a chapter or three...

(I wonder if Vision, Jocasta and others get interview requests from authors who want to write books on AI...? :)

[outlawpoet]

Hmm. That's an interesting question. Of those, only the Sentinels are really AI. Ultron, Jocasta, Vision, M-11 the Living Robot, Machine Man, and others are really just humans who have been re-embodied, destructively scanned, or emulated.
Figuring out how to accurately emulate people is interesting, but it's really just computational neurology, it doesn't tell you much about how the mind actually works.

Master Mold (the first sentinel super computer), wasn't based on anybody's 'brain-waves' (the usual marvel lingo), so it might count as AI. I'm guessing like how none of our military research made it into our version of the book, US Sentinel stuff is only covered in the broadest terms.

Anyway it's clear that in the Marvel Universe, they don't really have very advanced science in this area, all their terminology is basically psychology, it comes down to 'don't mistreat the computer or it will spontaneously develop complex social emotions about being used'.

The additional problem is that in the Marvel Universe, vitalism is a real thing, living things have real energy that can be detected, and is neccesary, even super-advanced robots like the Technarchy consider it superior to artificial power sources and spend a lot of time being "lifeglow" vampires. Most 'artificial' life forms only come alive via an actual or symbolic sacrifice (like M-11's master destructively 'merging' with his creation). So it's not clear that an entirely artificial intelligence is even possible in their universe.

[mrosa]

Of course people who read books are joyless, humorless nerds who need sex to lighten up.

[mrosa]

The art in the first page is weird. After Rumiko asks Tony what's up with his face, why is there's an exterior shot of a building? Wasn't that already established at the top of the page? How I loathe modern comics art...

[crabby_lioness]

It's very much like he's taken an idea, and it's a good idea. He's taken the idea that the Avengers, one day, have a very bad day.

I very much disagree. Dissed is not just about the Avengers having a bad day. It's about problems they swept under the rug and forgot about returning to bite them in the ass. It's a bad day they entirely deserved and could have easily prevented if they had behaved properly back when Byrne set up the problem. It's a bad day I expected to see back in the early 90s, and in the true fashion of problems delayed and denied, it got bigger and nastier for all the time people ignored it.

[mrosa]

Oh, please, let's stop pretending these characters have lives of their own. Byrne could have solved everything back in his day and Bendis would still have found a way to tear The Avengers apart. Denied problems only come back if the writers want them to come back. The question is, why did Bendis want them to come back?

[greenmask]

You're assuming that Bendis is a writer who doesn't think of the characters as having lives of their own. When I look at the backstories of a lot of characters, I think "in real life, that would make for some major confrontation". If I were a writer, I'd bring that kind of stuff up! Old canon's available to make new canon, why not use it?

[blackruzsa]

I almost thought Tony was his father here... or I dunno, a very badly-aged forty.

[thanekos]

I see Tony has an outfit for in case he's drawn by Chaykin.

And so does Rumiko.