Quote from: gleichman;247569They lost me a decade sooner, back in 79 I think it was.

I didn't even start reading comics until the summer of 1984, but I had a good friend who had a Marvel collection that stretched back to the  mid-'70s.  All of our friends would joke about how I'd borrow five or six years of a single title at a time and head for the beach.  Believe me, reading a comic in one sitting like that gives you a very abrupt feel for how the changes in the creative team can shake up a title.

Quote...for the most part we're were interested in doing favorite Marvel Characters 'right'. So the re-boot re-imagining works wonders.

I was always pretty permissive in letting players come up with characters like that, though my game world was one of my own device (though strongly influenced by Marvel).  I recall one player telling me that his character was "Daredevil.  Not the Daredevil, but a Daredevil."  I thought his rationale was pretty cool, so I was totally okay with it.  In retrospect, perhaps I should have encouraged it more, but most of the other players were pretty hot to play the characters they'd always wanted to write into the books they were reading (and Rastaman, the Lion of Judah, was just too precious to turn down).

!i!

Quote from: Ian Absentia;247680Believe me, reading a comic in one sitting like that gives you a very abrupt feel for how the changes in the creative team can shake up a title.

I certainly believe you on that. It's almost impossible to overstate.

The other thing that reviewing back issues like that does is show how uneven even a single creative team can be. Really good stories are far and few between.

I think we see some of the same effect in the Movies.

Quote from: Ian Absentia;247680In retrospect, perhaps I should have encouraged it more, but most of the other players were pretty hot to play the characters they'd always wanted to write into the books they were reading (and Rastaman, the Lion of Judah, was just too precious to turn down).

Both can be a lot of fun, although coming up with a character concept (or even a name) that doesn't exist in the comics is often difficult- which is why we typically go with the originals.

But we get on the 'completely new' track now and then too, using our "x-babies" campaign for that sweet tooth.

Quote from: TonyLB;247510I'm having trouble keeping up with new comics, simply because of the DVD-Rom collections of old comics that hit the market a bit ago.

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Where can i get such marvellous things?

I don't care if it's DC or Marvel as long as I like it. And I don't like superheroes with exceptions of Batman and Lobo, so it's obvliosly DC (alltrought I have to admit I hadto google who produce them)

Quote from: One Horse Town;247719Where can i get such marvellous things?

Never mind. Too expensive.

Edit: Hmm, in the UK £75, from the US £25 + unknown shipping. Might be worth getting 2. Spidey & X-men, i reckon.

Quote from: One Horse TownNever mind. Too expensive.

You can allways go pirate!

Quote from: Fritzs;247730You can allways go pirate!

Not me. I'm wierd like that.

Quote from: One Horse Town;247724Never mind. Too expensive.

Good lord.  I hadn't seen what had happened to the Used prices since the disks stopped being produced.  Yikes.

Okay, this makes the whole thing double stupid:  This was a good way of getting people interested in Marvel comics, without any great down side (yes, I'm not buying new comics, but I wasn't buying new comics before either ... and my son is certainly a comics afficianado because of his exposure to the FF).  I don't know what kind of stupid legal or business wrangling trashed this good idea, but I officially don't like it.

I've been taking a look at Marvel's on-site digital comics offerings, but haven't made up my mind about the whole subscription thing.  Anyone doing it want to tell me how it's working out for you?

Quote from: Silverlion;247397I used to be  a Marvel fan, love its characters, but the changes Marvel has had in the last few years have driven me away.

Me, too.  They drove me away once in 1995 with that Onslaught / Heroes Reborn crap because I always thought the continuity / history was a big selling point.

When they came to their senses and tried to have continuity again, I came back.  

Until they shit on me again by getting rid of thought balloons, continuity, back issue references, etc - everything I liked that gave a sense of history to the comics (I know they want to attract newer, younger readers but isn't that what the Ultimates line was for).  

And they also moved to that shitty "decompressed storytelling" crap where people like Bendis take a lame single issue story and spread it out over six issues as a movie-like "arc" (because they decided they'd rather sell graphic novels to big box stores than comic issues to comic book shops).  

Oh, and for some reason it started taking two to three months per issue to come out (it took like a year and a half to get Warren Ellis' 6-issue Iron Man arc done).

But the Civil War arc was the final nail in the coffin for me.  I should have gotten out sooner, but I kept buying out of habit.  By the time CW ended, I realized Marvel didn't want to write good comics anymore, didn't want comic fans anymore, and pretty much hated its own fan base and was trying desperately to grab the younger, cooler demographic (much like D&D 4 is trying to do now).

So, now I don't read anything.  I rarely care for "serious" or "indie" comics, and the DC universe does nothing for me.  Instead, I now just buy up old back issues of Marvels from the late 70s to early 90s (my personal favorite era).  I'm currently finishing up getting all the Thors I need.

Quote from: jgants;247803So, now I don't read anything.  I rarely care for "serious" or "indie" comics, and the DC universe does nothing for me.  Instead, I now just buy up old back issues of Marvels from the late 70s to early 90s (my personal favorite era).  I'm currently finishing up getting all the Thors I need.

I'm not normally a DC fan--I mean I loved JLA (Justice League Animated..) but since ever since I could read comics: Marvel spoke more to me, with heroes that seemed more real in their concerns (Spiderman, X-men.) Oh I followed a few DC Heroes (Flash, occasional arcs of Batman, like Sword of Azrael), but it wasn't my focus.

Now days it seems like a lot of DC, is telling stories the way MARVEL used too. Blue Beetle, Jamie Reyes, seems to be their "Spiderman", and he runs differently with whole other problems but really, I might suggest you goto a store and skim a trade of his stories. ) The first one was the hardest to get into but I liked it enough to keep following it.