Longbox Graveyard #158

I often write that Longbox Graveyard exists in a world where it is always 1978, but regular readers of this blog will know that since October of last year, I’ve been living in the now. Specifically, I’ve been reading and reviewing the sixty-odd titles that made up Marvel Comics’ latest relaunch — the awkwardly-named All-New All-Different Marvel Now!

Given my oft-voice preference for comics of the past, why did I commit to such a sustained sojourn in this current era of high cover prices and convoluted continuity?

Well, I’ll tell you.

It was all about the Treehouse.

My love of comics is bound up in nostalgia and a desire to revisit my lost youth. I expect it is the same for many older fans (and I am on the hard side of fifty). While I genuinely enjoy and appreciate comics from the 1970s, I recognize that many of the reasons I prefer them to more contemporary efforts is rooted in that self-same nostalgia. Certainly, comics today enjoy better printing standards and an overall higher level of artistic execution than the beloved books of my youth … but I still like comics from the 1960s-1980s better than today’s offerings. I always will.

Bronze is Golden

My love of these comics is wrapped up with the life I had in those years — things I’ve touched on over the last five years of this blog, like moving to Hollywood, CA in 1974, and exploring weird old comic shops along the boulevard; meeting Forest J. Ackerman and realizing for the first time that growing old didn’t mean you had to grow up; getting deeply wrapped up with fantasy fiction in general and Conan and John Carter in particular; starting new schools and getting my first girlfriend; moving away from home; starting my own tentative career as a writer and a creator … all those life events are things I associate with comic books, sometimes very specific comic books. When I remember chasing around my backyard in Hollywood, throwing my dad’s sculpting hammer at rocks and trash cans, I also think about Thor and Hercules and Firelord taking on the insane living planet Ego — both those things are equivalently real in my memory, in that long summer of ’74.

Other memories are entirely made up. Like reading comics in a treehouse.

I did have a treehouse at the Hollywood house — more like a tree platform, actually, overlooking a canyon in the Hollywood hills. I used to go up there with my toy Winchester rifle and shoot at imaginary Skrulls, something that once scrambled a police helicopter my way. (This was a high-crime time in Hollywood, and everyone was jumpy, maybe doubly so because that was the summer of the SLA, and the house that the LAPD lit up with 9000 rounds of ammo was only about a dozen miles from my house). I don’t especially remember reading comics in that treehouse, but that doesn’t matter — the idea of comics and childhood and treehouses are all bound up together, and led directly to my dropping several hundred dollars on new Marvel Comics these past few months.

In the middle of 2015 I was in a miserable place. My health wasn’t great, my best friend from my childhood was dying of cancer, and my work was providing little in emotional satisfaction. I still had enthusiasm for comics but my attention was flagging a bit, and I was entertaining the notion of winding down Longbox Graveyard entirely (I mean, I was publishing things like Top 10 Super-Dogs, for crying out loud!). I was so distraught that I decided to medicate myself with whatever felt good, eating everything in site and ballooning up to 250 pounds (don’t panic, I’m back down to 200 now), and also indulging myself in any easy bit of retail therapy that I thought would make me feel better.

fortunately, I am The Blob no longer!

I decided that reading comics in a treehouse would make me feel better. So that’s what I did. Sort of.

Marvel’s All-New All-Different relaunch intrigued me — mostly because I was desperate — and it promised easy fodder for a series of micro-reviews at Longbox Graveyard. So, instead of closing down the blog, I’d force myself to produce daily content through much of the year. With my own original comic — 4 Seconds — coming out (I thought) toward the end of 2015, it also seemed a good idea to familiarize myself with Marvel’s latest output … if I was going to be a comics creator again, then I should know a bit about my field. I resolved to buy all the #1s in the Marvel relaunch.

This was easier said that done.

Marvel solicited the relaunch with a PDF catalogue that laid out the new titles and the new creative teams, but there was no easy way for me to just push a button and get one of everything. I either had to go into a local comics shop and set up a pull list (and I am too lazy for that), or I needed to order them online, but the online options I surveyed didn’t make it easy for me to determine which books were and were not part of the relaunch. After way too much work, I assembled a scratch list of all the books that I thought were part of the relaunch (and this became my review archive, which you can visit here). Armed with this info, I opened an account with Westfield Comics, both because I remembered them from my mail order days in the 1980s, and because they offered a nice deep discount for new customers that took some of the sting out of those Marvel cover prices.

Then I forgot about it. One of the downsides of an outfit like Westfield is you secure those deep discounts by ordering months in advance, which can take some of the heat out of purchases made in the heat of the moment. And the purchase really was made in the heat of the moment, and was more than a little irrational. I’ve made much about getting rid of stuff here at Longbox Graveyard, and now here I was ordering dozens of floppy comics that I would read once and toss (or eBay, I guess). But, darn it, I was in a painful place and I just wanted a box of comics to read in a treehouse with my friends.

So when the box showed up, I rounded up some friends. Billy King, Chris Ulm, and I weren’t friends when we were kids, but it feels like we were. Comics give us a shared memory of youth that was separated by miles and years in actuality. Chris and I have been friends for thirty years, and we have a rich comics history between us, but it has mostly been professional, like when I was writing comics for Chris when he was Editor-In-Chief of Malibu Comics, or when Chris has joined me for podcasts and guest columns at Longbox Graveyard. I haven’t known Billy as long, but we have still been friends for a dozen years, and recently he pitched in with character designs and story architecture for 4 Seconds. The three of us all work together in the mobile games business, and we have lunch hours to kill, so … they were my built-in Treehouse Comics Pals, and the Treehouse itself was a spare conference room at our office, where we’d show up a couple times a week, unpack our lunches, and sort through my big box of new comics.

It was great. The experience, I mean. The comics were OK (and more about them in a moment), but the experience of getting together with my friends, and all of us kind of going back in time to read the same characters we’d loved as kids — that was nice. We’d share the books we thought were good (rarely), or bitch about the things Marvel got wrong (more commonly), or better yet just set aside the darn books and get into geekfights about Marvel’s characters and creators, or maybe we could trigger an Ulm Rant about his Malibu days and the state of the direct market or some unprintable story about the true origins of Image Comics or the Ultraverse. I should have recorded those Treehouse sessions — they would have made a dynamite podcast. But, really, it was the free and easy nature of just showing up and reading comics with friends that made the magic. There were no expectations. And over the period of weeks and months that followed, we read a lot of comics, and I got some of the healing that I needed. Things are better now. I’ve got good and caring friends. They are a blessing.

But how about those comics?

On the most basic level, they did the job. Taken as a whole, the comics of Marvel’s latest relaunch were about what I expected. Maybe a little better than I expected. There weren’t any real lightning bolts in there, but neither were there a lot of outright stinkers. I think I gave about half of the books a “thumb’s up” by saying I’d read a second issue (the only kind of review score I attached to this project). That’s pretty good. The launch was mostly B-level books with a few that might grow into something better, and a couple sad-sack titles that never should have seen the light of day. But every book in the launch had something to offer; I’m glad I read them all, both because of the joy of being in the Treehouse, and because it was educational to take such an in-depth and focused look at the state of Marvel Comics circa 2015-16.

Even after reading all those books, and writing the reviews, and arguing them out in the Treehouse with the guys, there’s still one thing I don’t understand, though.

Just who was the All-New All-Different Marvel Now supposed to reach?

Was it to attract new readers? If so, the initiative failed (and I don’t mean just in terms of sales numbers, which have been pretty soft). No, just looking at this relaunch as a jumping-on point, it earned failing grades. It spun out of a cross-over event (Secret Wars 2) that ran late and wasn’t wrapped up until well after the first wave of relaunch books hit the street, and aside from some of the books referencing some vague cataclysm that came months before, there was no spark or starting gun or anything, really, to mark the start of this new start to the Marvel Universe. Precious few of the books were genuine #1s — in too many cases, readers needed knowledge of prior continuity to make sense of what was happening (and even prior knowledge didn’t always help — I read sixty relaunch titles and never found out what happened to the Fantastic Four, or why Ben Grimm was now part of the Guardians of Galaxy). Looking back over my reviews, you will see where I noted that book after book failed to measure up for new readers. Now, sure, new readers come into ongoing comics series all the time, and figure it out as they go … but Marvel made a point of relaunching everything in their line with new #1s, and I don’t think it is too much to expect that most of these first issues would be actual first issues.

(Except that it was too much to expect).

a comic book Bigfoot, a creature every bit as mythical as a new comics reader

Was this relaunch intended to reactivate Marvel’s existing base? Maybe, but if so … it may have done more harm than good. Save from temporarily goosing the sales of some series, this relaunch doesn’t seem to have fired up the readership in any meaningful way. The relaunch didn’t create a breakout hit, and sales numbers have largely returned to pre-relaunch levels. Renumbering and relaunching is risky, as fans might as easily see it as a jumping-OFF point as a place to jump on. Renumbering ongoing series that were only in their first year (like Squirrel Girl) seemed especially unwise.

guilty as charged

Maybe the relaunch was intended to attract mainstream Marvel movie and TV fans? After all, the Avengers movie franchise is the biggest thing in the world, while the comic is lucky to sell 100K copies — theoretically there are a lot of movie fans out there who might be interested in reading a Marvel comic. But, no … while this comics line had a S.H.I.E.L.D. book that TV fans might recognize, too much was scrambled up and significantly at odds with the movie take on these characters to welcome movie fans as new readers. The All-New All-Different Marvel Now has female Thors and Wolverines; dozens of Spider-Men (and the only one of them that was Peter Parker was nearly unrecognizable as such); an old man wearing Captain America’s costume (and another geezer swinging Wolverine’s claws). There were several Inhumans books, but none for the Fantastic Four. Jessica Jones was on Netflix but nowhere to be found in the relaunch. The Avengers lineups (across all the many Avengers books) didn’t map to the canonical characters so popularly portrayed in the films. Some of these ideas worked fine in the context of comics, but they did nothing to roll out the welcome matt for film fans. Quite the opposite.

my son at the Marvel Movie Marathon several years ago … and he still doesn’t want to read comics!

Was this relaunch intended to bring back lapsed fans? Well, it did get me to buy several boxes of comics, but I was emotionally wounded and kind of in a unique situation. Neither Chris nor Billy, my Treehouse pals, were monthly Marvel readers before this relaunch, and they really haven’t changed their position. Chris may collect a few of these books in trade (something he was doing anyway), and Billy plans to collect a (very) few books up through issue ten or so, but after that, he’s out. For my part, I’m not buying any #2s, though I might catch up with a few of the series as Billy brings them in, or when they spool up on my Marvel Unlimited digital subscription service. But I have zero enthusiasm to keep up with any of these books on a monthly basis.

At best, mixed results in this area.

those kids are out there, someplace, and all grown up, too!

So if this relaunch wasn’t aimed at new readers — or even old readers — and if it didn’t drive movie fans to check out the comics, and if it didn’t drive new readers into comic shops to open up new pull lists, then why blow everything up and relaunch at all? Was it just for the sales bump? If so, it’s kind of like that Daffy Duck trick, where he blows himself up on stage. It wins the contest with Bugs Bunny, but what do you do for an encore?

(A rhetorical question, I know. We can look forward to more events and relaunches and renumbering and etc. and etc. until the business stabilizes or the last fan goes to that big longbox in the sky … but that’s a subject for a different article).

Coming out the other side of the relaunch, I do have a firm idea of what I want from Marvel Comics, though. Not that I expect Marvel to do this, but if I had magic powers, I would want a Marvel where there were fewer books but higher quality; with stories that are complete in one volume; about characters that I recognize that don’t invalidate most of what I remember about them from the Silver and Bronze Ages; with enough continuity that the stories fit together without collapsing under the weight of ridiculous trivia; provided in a format that was easy to buy and collect without making it my part-time job to scour the solicitations and place blind orders months in advance with no clear idea of what was and was not part of the relaunch or event I was trying to follow; and I want the stories to have broad enough appeal that I could share them not just with my Treehouse pals, but also with my wife and my kids and just regular friends who don’t sleep, breathe, and eat comics all the time.

It will never happen.

Except, actually, that it has.

It’s called the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

My sad realization after reading all these Marvel Comics is that the Marvel Comics I most want to read are the Marvel Movies. They hit every criteria I noted above … I get two or three movies a year, maybe a TV series, all of pretty good (sometimes great) quality, and they are major pop culture events that I can share with pretty much everyone in my life. They are the characters I know and love made fresh with contemporary interpretations that keep the best stuff from the past while ignoring the nonsense and serving up familiar surprises about what comes next.

And so for me, the future of Marvel Comics isn’t comics at all! At least, it isn’t contemporary comics … I will still go back to 1978 for a comics fix now and then. But these latest books? Good, but not good enough to change my habits. So it goes.

Ah, but … what about DC Comics, you ask? Aren’t they about to relaunch on their own, with a “Rebirth” event that will make the New 52 old news?

Well, yes they are. And it just so happens that I’ve ordered the first wave of those books, because I want the Treehouse to continue. One way or the other, I’ll be reading thirty-odd DC books this summer, and maybe more if I like what I see in the first wave.

The question for you, dear reader, is should I review DC’s Rebirth the same way I did Marvel’s All-New All-Whatever Blah Blah Blah?

Vote in my poll, below!

Thanks for reading, voting, and (I hope) commenting below. I consider all the many online friends I’ve made through Longbox Graveyard, both here on the blog and through Twitter, to be part of my extended Treehouse family, and nothing would please me more than shooting the breeze while reading a box of comics with all of you. Since I can’t do that, this blog has been the next best thing, and I will keep it going awhile longer whether I review the DC books or not. But please cast a vote, to guide me in what I should do next at Longbox Graveyard … and I will see you in the Treehouse!

NEXT MONTH: #159 Fire And Water: Human Torch vs Sub-Mariner!