Secret Wars Too #1 - "Sraw Terces" & "Last Days of D-Man"

[superboyprime]

"As for reviews and such. I used to look at that stuff, but when you start working on bigger books at the big two, you can't really keep doing that. It gets too negative. There are just too many readers/fans/reviewers that are more invested in the characters than you as a creator. Which is fine for the fan, but bad for the artist. It's one of the reasons that some many of us love doing creator-owned. It's not just that the market has changed and we're making more money on those books, it's that the fan is there for the creators not the franchise. It's just a healthier experience." - Jonathan Hickman

Comments

[beyondthefringe]

When D-Man showed up in the new Captain America, I was like "Isn't that guy dead?" and then this story is all "Eh, magic. A crappy wizard did it."

And I'm okay with that because comics.

Now if only they'd stop jobbing out the Serpent Society... who, amusingly enough, seem set to appear in Captain America with a new business angle.

What? I dig a snake-themed supervillain group that offers health benefits!

[icon_uk]

The Serpent Society are indeed awesome! A professional association of supervillains who actually (mostly) get along rather well.

[lonewolf23k]

They're making a comeback in the new Captain America book, and it looks like they've gone back to being "Serious Professionals" Supervillains.

Although they've also relabeled themselves "Serpent Solutions".

[astrakhan42]

The story about Hickman not being able to write the ending of Secret Wars wouldn't have worked had anyone but Hickman himself wrote it. Otherwise it would've seemed way too mean-spirited.

Also, it's a shame that the greatest page in comic book history had to be cut for length. "Finally, this luchador mask makes sense!

[viridian5]

There are just too many readers/fans/reviewers that are more invested in the characters than you as a creator. Which is fine for the fan, but bad for the artist.

That might explain a lot about the way he writes, where a lot of the characters are OOC in the service of his plots.

[baihu]

He's not the only one guilty of this, and I can't blame a writer having to try to work with characters they probably don't have a history with and not really being able to do them justice. At some point, you just have to accept they 'tried', at least hopefully.

I mean, you can see the results of a single-writer/creator work with like Kurt Busiek's Astro City, it's just refreshing to see everyone consistently in character with proper continuity, simply because it's just him handling everything and he knows everything and everyone in his stories.

[viridian5]

The thing is, that this is his job that he gets paid money for and I have to avoid books featuring characters I'd otherwise enjoy reading about because he's writing them OOC or jobbing them for the sake of his self-created characters for long periods of time and his plotting has become the spine of a huge Marvel event.

Astro City is an ideal of a self-created series/world, while I find most of the characters I've seen that Hickman created less than charismatic.

[chalicother]

See that's what I agree with, if you can't write a character or don't understand, then don't use them. Honestly , I respect Grant Morrison for saying he couldn't write Wonder Woman, and avoided writing her. I wish more writers would do the same, instead of having bad writing affect character so badly, that it becomes their main characterization.

[palgrave_goldenrod]

Is it necessarily that simple, though? Particularly when it comes to the Big Two? The shared universe, continuity and editorial fiat being what it is, you might be stuck with having to write characters you don't want to use or aren't interested in just because that's the way the overall set-up is playing out. I mean, with creator-owned stuff you get to play with whatever you want because you're in charge, but I'm guessing that there's only a handful of creators working for the Big Two who have sufficient clout to be able to set their own terms for what they do or don't want to do like Grant Morrison would be (and even he couldn't entirely avoid writing Wonder Woman, as all the fuss about how he wrote her in "Final Crisis" demonstrates).

Plus, not including a character might just annoy people who are fans of that character, which means you can't win for coming or going. It's not quite the same thing, granted, but look at all the fuss because Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown aren't/weren't being used at DC.

And, of course, there's the simple fact that creators might not so much "not understand" a character as much as they might simply have a different understanding of a character or a fresh interpretation that they want to try which contrasts with a reader's preferred interpretation. Particularly with superhero comics, where characters have sometimes been reinterpreted multiple times over decades, a lot of the time "you can't write this character" is simply code for "I don't like the way you're writing this character". It might be a perfectly valid interpretation of the character, it's just not one that matches the one in the reader's head.

I'm not exactly disagreeing with you; ideally writers would only ever write characters they wanted to use, were familiar with and understood. But it's not necessarily that simple.

[matrix_dragon]

I love that scene with Jarvis. Reminds me of when he and D-man were talking at the start of Busieks Avengers run, when they get bags of groceries to help out homeless kids. "Heroism comes in such varied forms, it seems... but it always shines through."

[icon_uk]

So the Hickman story is basically a variation of the "I can't think of what to put in my comic strip, so I will write a story about not being able to think of what to put into my comic strip"?

I think you're allowed ONE of those in your creative career, so fair enough. Still not interested by it though.

[wizardru]

He and Grant Morrison and JMS and whoever else probably have a secret panel at Comicon about it.

And yes, I agree. I don't know much about D-Man, other than it sounds like he's been done dirt for years and I think it's great that he's back. Bendis having him have a psychotic break was a thing, sure. Bendis having him be a needy joke was just mean. Brubaker killing him seemed...off.

It's like they were trying to make a lighthearted slightly silly character into either a major joke or load him with gravitas that he just wasn't designed to support. Of course, Bendis didn't really get Squirrel Girl, either.

[starwolf_oakley]

Sometimes the mistreatment of D-Man seems like a middle finger to Mark Gruenwald. Not as bad as the many middle fingers to Jim Shooter, of course. I just wonder "Sheesh, why does everyone like doing dirt on D-Man?"

Thinking it is a dis on Gruenwald might be a stretch.

[thezmage]

I really hated this issue. There were, like, four funny panels in the whole comic, and they all features Uncle Ben

[remial]

Doctor Doom has good advice. "Suck it up, go tell your bosses, People's jobs are riding on you."

Doctor Doom really would be a great ruler if Reed Richards would just leave him alone.

[silverhammerman]

No, Doctor Doom would be a great leader if Doctor Doom could leave Reed Richards alone.

[deh_tommy]

He left Reed alone in Secret Wars 2015 (at least, for the eight years the lifeboats didn't appear).

[philippos42]

He took a job writing Avengers and then complains that people are fans of the Avengers and not of him? Did it ever occur to him, or to anyone at Marvel for the two years he was writing two Avengers books, that he was a bad fit for the Avengers?

Also: Hickman set this whole crossover up and he didn't have an ending? Is this for real?

Lunatics. Lunatics running the asylum? No, lunatics running whatever--the company, in this case.

[laughing_tree]

He took a job writing Avengers and then complains that people are fans of the Avengers and not of him?

Acknowledgment is not complaint.

Also: Hickman set this whole crossover up and he didn't have an ending? Is this for real?

Absolutely. And he also spitballed the issue with Doctor Doom at a hot dog stand. Come on.

But more seriously, Mark Waid, Larry Hama, and even Alan Moore have talked in the past about how they'll start stories without actually having an ending in mind, trusting their own skills enough to come up with one by the time it's necessary. It's not nearly as disastrous an approach as one might think.

[philippos42]

Did he have an ending before Marvel decided his concept would hijack the entire line for several months

[lbd_nytetrayn]

I liked the Dr. Doom and D-Man bits here.