scans_daily

In the last two days, interviews and solicits came out for Arena and managed to calm me in only that it confirmed that it would be bad.

The first lettered pages were released, and Dennis Hopeless managed to lose all credibility within the space of a single panel. There's more loss of credibility as the preview goes on (and, like All New X-Men, it too comes from the end of the book--A Writing 101 level mistake in my opinion), but all it took was one Panel.

Looks like a flash forward or they are counting down. Either way, the "Day 29" marker raises far more problems than anything else in this scenario.

And then there's Hazmat's narration. Basically ret-conning her back-story in that she's always been a bitter/caustic person. It goes on, is all depressing and flowery and dull. The real kicker is the phrasing. So far, I've only seen one person agree with that phrasing.

But keep in mind that Hazmat was an honor's student too, making the wording even worse.

It made me laugh. That one line broke suspension of disbelief so hard that I honestly stopped worrying as much about this. I mean, it gave us this!

Word to your mother. That is whack. Be Cool, Daddy-o. Totally Radical.

And out of character.

Not 4 days later, Hopeless did an interview/liveblog session and did nothing to gain back the reader's trust with wonderful phrases like:

"I was going to use Molly from the Runaways, but decided that having a character that young would be tonally problematic, but turned off the part of my brain that was concerned with the well-being of the characters when it comes to the cast."

And

"None of the people responding to the concept and the marketing have seen the book, so I don't take it personally because they haven't seen it yet."

~~How . . . trollish. Rather than addreess the concerns like an adult, he decided to inflame or ignore them.~~

Edit: Honestly, that to me reads as though he's trolling the readers.

Now we have the solicits up for the next batch. Looks like this thing is double shipping as much as possible.

VENGERS ARENA #4 & 5
DENNIS HOPELESS (W)
Issue 4 - ALESSANDRO VITTI (A)
Issue 5 - KEV WALKER (A)
Issue 4 & 5 Covers by DAVE JOHNSON
Issue 4 Variant Cover by BOBBY RUBIO
Issue 5 Variant Cover by JOE QUINONES
• Issue #4 = The Runaways vs. Avengers Academy!
• Issue #5 = The Braddock Academy vs...themselves?
• Plus: What is up with Chase and Darkhawk?

It's just so . . . bland. What's to say at this point? Other than the lack of a Running Man cover disappoints me. It's just more proposed fights, some off which make no real sense (the Runaways and Academy kids are very close, but given Hazmat's situation, I doubt that will be remembered).

Well, there is one thing that I've wanted to ask a lot of people. I made a micro poll to gage interest vs. knowledge of the characters in it and want to see the results.

I may be a bad-mouther of this, and I just gave a little display on why I think it won't be better than a 2/4 if things keep going (which is about 1 point lower than it needs to be), but I want to get a good sample size for this poll. If you could spread this poll around to try and get a large enough base for this, I'd be very thankful.

So if you have the inclination, do vote.

Edit: I just want to say thank you to everyone who voted. In les than 12 hours, you and other folk all expressed your opinions in this poll and provided a large enough sample size to draw conclusions from! Do feel free to spread the word further to places liek CBR, Newsarama , Comicvine, wherever! But even as it stands now, the data is workable. Thank you, everyone!