G
Gordon_Sims
Guest
Doesn’t that describe pretty much the entire comic book industry from 1996 onward?
The last time I read up on it, just the opposite was happening. The big problem is that the stereotypical fans from 10-20 years ago (awkward, socially stunted, sex-obsessed 12-year-old boys) are now the ones creating the comics. As much as you might like Iron Man, Wolverine or whoever on the big screen, when you open the comics and find that the main goal of the books now are to include as many self-aware, faux-cool one-liners as possible, and the portrayal of the female characters is, in general, far more puerile, sexist and misogynistic then they’ve ever been, even if you still buy a book you’re not going to come back for seconds.I agree that comics have lost a bunch of their popularity, but two things come to mind: aren’t the movies driving up interest in the comics? I wouldn’t be surprised if the comics industry has boomed since the movies started coming out.
That is the thing. Anyone else knew from about a year ago that this movie was Rated R. Heck the actor pushed for it to be R. it would have been a huge disservice for it to have been anything other than R. I’m pumped and have heard nothing but great things about it from friends online.I saw the movie (unfortunately) and I have to agree the whole “he knows he’s in a superhero movie” was funny for like the first 10 minutes but then got old for me. Of course, that humor was at least cleverish, unlike the 549 masturbation and penis jokes made throughout the film. (which everyone in my theater always laughed the hardest at. Because hearing a grown man talk about jerking off is hilarious apparently.)
Seriously though, the amount of graphic violence, sex, nudity, and language in this movie was just ridiculous. I can usually push through if it’s got a good enough story, but there was absolutely nothing redeemable in the film. Like…nothing. I should have looked it up before I went. My fault I guess.
Wow, that seems very well-reasoned and comes as a surprise to me.The last time I read up on it, just the opposite was happening. The big problem is that the stereotypical fans from 10-20 years ago (awkward, socially stunted, sex-obsessed 12-year-old boys) are now the ones creating the comics. As much as you might like Iron Man, Wolverine or whoever on the big screen, when you open the comics and find that the main goal of the books now are to include as many self-aware, faux-cool one-liners as possible, and the portrayal of the female characters is, in general, far more puerile, sexist and misogynistic then they’ve ever been, even if you still buy a book you’re not going to come back for seconds.
Oh, I knew it was Rated R going in, but some of my favorite movies are also Rated R, so the rating wasn’t an immediate red flag for me. I was expecting some things, but I wasn’t expecting all of…that. I figured it was just going to be a darker superhero film than they could do with a PG-13 rating.That is the thing. Anyone else knew from about a year agot that this movie was Rated R. Heck the actor pushed for it to be R. it would have been a huge disservice for it to have been anything other than R. I’m pumped and have heard nothing but great things about it from friends online.
Fair enough.Oh, I knew it was Rated R going in, but some of my favorite movies are also Rated R, so the rating wasn’t an immediate red flag for me. I was expecting some things, but I wasn’t expecting all of…that. I figured it was just going to be a darker superhero film than they could do with a PG-13 rating.
I’m not sure how not showing people having kinky sex, fully naked strippers, and dismemberment would have been a disservice to it, but maybe I’m just not familiar enough with the comics. I fully admit I should have done more research before tagging along with the group that invited me though. Would have spared me the pain. Lesson learned I guess.
Have you seen the comics? I have and its why I am not surprised with the movies. Then again that kind of stuff does not bother me much.Based on all the available information and the trailer, this is glorified violence with sex and some nudity and profanity.
Any Catholics reading this: Being an adult does not mean what you were told about right and wrong is gone. Sin is sin. Wrong is wrong. And “not for kids” denies this perverse trash film for what it is.
We are supposed to rejoice in wholesome things.
Ed
It’s the biggest ever opening weekend for 20th Century Fox, for an R-rated film, and for the month of February.It made a lot of money this weekend, so someone must be going to see it.
That’s a real surprise to me. The articles I read dealt with circulation numbers for the big two and made it sound as though they were in terrible shape. Looking at this page, you can get some perspective on where some of the doom and gloom in the articles I read came from. In '96 monthly orders to comic shops was up near 12 million. Now they barely top 6 million. So despite the dollar amounts the actual number of books being sold is 40-45% less than what it was 20 years ago. I’d be curious to see hard numbers from the 80s. I read something, I think by Jim Shooter, which stated that the hottest titles today sell about the same number of copies per month that the bottom-tier Marvel titles sold back in the mid-80s. In other words, Batman and Wolverine are bringing about as many monthly readers as US1 and Crystar: The Crystal Warrior. If accurate, that’s beyond pitiful.Wow, that seems very well-reasoned and comes as a surprise to me.
One possible piece of counter-evidence: at comichron, there are several graphs of estimated comic sales which indicate that comic sales are booming. Here is how one graph shows the data:
2001 - $260-285 million
2002 - $300-330 million
2003 - $350-400 million
2004 - $420-480 million
2005 - $475-550 million
2006 - $575-640 million
2007 - $660-700 million
2008 - $680-710 million
2008 - $680-710 million
2009 - $650-700 million
2010 - $660-690 million
2011 - $690 million
2012 - $735 million
2013 - $780 million
2014 - $835 million
source
To me, this makes it look like the movies have been a big boost since they started coming with ever-increasing frequency after X-Men in 2000, but I’m probably missing something.
I remember that vividly, especially going into stores and seeing the books that were really hot when I was still collecting gathering dust in the dime boxes (for those not in the know, a “dime box” is where comic shops used to put their worst books, the stuff that had no hope of selling at regular price, for 10 cents each, sometimes 12 for a dollar, etc.). It was shocking to watch one of my favorite store’s back issue collection gradually morph into their dime box selection. The biggest casualty at first was Image. Except for some of the earliest issues, especially Spawn, you could find dozens of copies of every single issue. Boatloads of other indy titles followed, then they started dumping all the 90s and 00s Marvels and DCs, especially all those variant covers. They eventually had two rows of tables of nothing but dime boxes, at least a dozen boxes per row, plus just as many stacked two high underneath the tables (I’m guessing 72-110 boxes total). At the peak of the glut, their dime boxes were overflowing with hundreds of great Marvel titles from the 70s. Absolutely nothing was selling! I’d go in and buy entire runs of some of the greatest storylines to ever see print, stuff that would have cost me $5-50 per book ten years early, for less than a dime each (he gave me a discount). In the late 90s/early 00s, we had over a dozen comic shops in a pretty small area. Now I think we have three.Comic strip great, Will Eisner, said he saw comic books almost die out twice before the internet. They were meant to be fun, thrilling, unusual, a trip to another world. And that thrill and wonder is mostly gone. The artistic greats are mostly gone, their work being sold at auction right now.
Marvel Comics went bankrupt (Chapter 11) in 1996. **Yeah, I was there, watching teenagers with stacks of comics standing in line. I mentioned to one that he was quite a collector. He replied, “Oh, I don’t read these. I just buy 'em, bag 'em and six months from now, I’ll get 20 bucks a piece.” **The problem is, a lot of people were doing that, including store owners stashing copies away for the same reason. By the late 90s, thousands of comic book stores closed in the US. The gold foil version, the silver foil version (magnificent print craft by the way) and the color cover version all contained the same comic book. You were enticed to buy the same comic 3 times. For what?
I think part of the problem is that the creators, or at least their egos, became more important than the comics. As soon as fans went from buying “the latest issue of the X-Men” to buying “the latest book by John Byrne,” the seeds of the current creative miasma were sown. The self-importance of a lot of these artists/writers has ruined the actual creativity of the books. Regardless of what someone like Byrne may say, a hastily drawn head on a white background is nowhere near as good or as satisfying as the sort of Kirby-inspired, intricately drawn and inked splash pages that he and Terry Austin used to produce. He hasn’t gotten better; he’s gotten lazy.As time passed, they moved on, but the new breed that came into their own in the 1970s, had different goals, personal goals.
That’s fair. I had absolutely no familiarity with Deadpool going in so I was pretty caught off guard. If I knew that’s what the character was all about I probably would have skipped it. Not my thing.Firstly, I am not going to give the movie a bad review for being a Deadpool movie. Some critics may not like the movie because of its crass humor, gore, and sexual content, but this is what Deadpool is. I’m not going to say it’s a bad movie because it is exactly what a Deadpool movie should be. I don’t say apple trees are bad because they aren’t banana trees.
For this reason, I think the movie is a very good movie, for what it is, which is a Deadpool movie. Similarly, I think a burglar is a good burglar if he leaves no trace of his entry. I may not agree with his actions, but he lives up to the standard of what a burglar should be.