What are your thoughts on the current direction of Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios?

Please note that discussion in this thread may include spoilers for films/TV series or the comics themselves so while you can discuss passed events openingly any future events and spoilers from recent comics/films should be kept hidden.

So, I'm rather indifferent to Marvel at the moment, I love Marvel Comics, especially the X-men yet I am only buying 3 monthly books, one of which I'm thinking of dropping. There are many reasons for the lack of interest and it all pretty much occured around the start of Schism (X-men) event. To list a few issues I have:

- The All New X-men book is not good, not for the writing but the 'idea' behind it. It's easily the worst story idea I've ever read in Marvel. I like time travel but this is stupid. Especially as the rules of Marvel's time travel have been ignored for it.

- Hickman's Avengers is just bad, no better than bad fan-fiction. "We need to get bigger." was mentioned like 15 times an issue for the first 10 issues, it's like an 8 yr old wrote it.

- Characterisation of Cyclops and Murderine.

- Too many books, characters are spread thin and customer's wallet too.

There are many other problems with the comics department, yet the Studios is doing very well. The films in a new and well connected universe, slightly different to what we know in 616 or Ultimate. Thor 2 wasn't as good as the first and SHIELD has been entertaining, just unsure how/when they are going to introduce mutants into the 'Avengers' film world. X-men films might have it covered by they've got an issue when they try and introduce Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver.

Anyway, your thoughts?

I love that their bringing seperate Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, and Iron Fist miniseries to Netflix which will lead to The Defenders. But at the same time I wish Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D was better and I'm already read for Phase 2 to be over with so we can get to the Ant-Man movie and supposed Dr. Strange film.

They will be good, I'm sure, with the correct writers/directors. If they do Jessica Jones in a more Alias style then it could be brilliant. I'm also interested in how they will change Iron Fists origin.

Funny i found Thor 2 way better then the first anyways only watched they're movies and cartoons/animes and never read their comics.

I liked Iron Man, Spiderman 1&2, The Amazing Spiderman, X Men First Class, Blade 1&2, Thor 2 and the Avengers.

I thought were meh Spiderman 3, Iron Man 2&3, Thor, The Wolverine and X Men The Last Stand.

I thought sucked: Captain America, All Ghost Rider Movies, All Ghost Rider Movies, All The Hulk Movies, All Fantastic Four Movies Daredevil and Wolverine Origins.

Not a good ratio really -_-

Marvel is a convoluted mass of bastardizations twisted into other bastardizations. A mess of a corporation trying whatever they can to get a few more sales, and they have absolutely no interest in writing a good story. They don't care about what will keep their corporation alive in 20 years, they only really care about rehashes and gnawing that last scrap of meat off of spiderman and all the other characters bones.

on the positive side Stan Lee and various other great writers have come out with dozens of great ideas. Spiderman's underlying plot is so perfect that no matter how many times they rehash it into a movie, it will still kick ass.

I have skimmed through many of the earlier spidermans and read all of the new ones. Sufficed to say that whoever is writing the storyline right now is a business man and not a writer of any level of skill. Spiderman himself in one of the issues said that he was at one point in like 5-10 different comic series simultaneously because everything sells better with spiderman in it.... He's in something like 2 avengers teams, and he replaced johnny blaze in the fantastic four or whatever the f*** they are calling it now.

In short, marvel can burn for all I care. They have absolutely no interest in putting original stories out there and the stories they do put out there get jumbled into the marvel universe and combined and then spiderman joins the team for whatever reason... If you want anything decent from a comic book these days you need to look to japan or korea.

Thor 2 had a worse director, never going to be good it's was alright just not as enjoyable as the first (lacked Balder and Enchantress) however, The Last Stand you liked?

Okay, so my fanboy nature of X-men took over a little on that film but to me it was essentially like someone holding me down and giving me a good kicking. It was an insult to not only the rich history of the X-men but to the characters. The only redeeming feature of the entire film was the Xavier/Jean scene, would have been more epic if we could see the physic battle they were having).

Thor was just a plain movie with terrible romance and story by the Shakespeare dirctor who doesn't know how to shoot action scenes. Thor 2 is not great but at least i had fun watching it and Loki was just great. 

The Last Stand was a terribley bad good movie since they just destroy every single character they can it was something just watching it. XD

My mate absolutely despises how mainstream friendly they are now.

In short, I think it sucks. I haven't bought comics (and I grew up a "Marvel Guy") since at least 2005. And it was painful hanging on that long, because their shit, especially my beloved X-Men, went sharply downhill as soon as they let Grant Morrison take the helm. But it was declining even in 1999 or so before that. Since I quit buying, I keep up in a peripheral way, just to keep tabs on what new stupid thing they're doing in their storylines....and it never fails to disappoint/anger me. I'm glad I stopped.

And for that matter, DC has gone down the shitter in recent years too. Which is really too bad, because both companies have SUCH great histories and rosters of great characters, but they just both.............suck now.

The only partial saving grace, I suppose, is SOME of the Marvel movies. I enjoyed Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy. I liked the Ang Lee Hulk even though everyone seems to think the craptacular Ed Norton one was "better". The first Ghost Rider was decent. Captain America and the Avengers movies surprised me, and Thor was okay even though I thought the whole "let's make it seem like they're just aliens from another dimension instead of gods living in a magical land" thing was stupid. I'm hoping the second movie fixes that element. But Marvel also let them totally shit all over my fav. two Marvel Comics, X-Men and Fantastic Four, which they are continuing with the progressively more and more awful "First Class" movies.

So I dunno. In general, I guess you label me a bitter fan, who absolutely LOVES classic Marvel and DC stuff, but hates their modern shit because they just don't even seem to try anymore.

There seems to be more bitter fans than usual at the moment. The catering for the new fans from the films and their dollars means the Marvel Universe and it's stability has taken a hit for the last few years. 

These new fans in terms of X-men want only 1 thing, Murderine/Stabberine/Wolverine. This baffles me that writers in their right minds would want him on their team. His history is confusing, his character is messed up and his powers inconsistant depending on the writer. For some reason in many books he is in, he's the morally sound one, then go goes and kills 3 more random guards. 

It also used to be that Marvel was able to entice great writers to their side, that seems not the case anymore. Avengers, one of their biggest books, is writen by Hickman who's most notible work is... oh, Fantastic Four. There lies the issue, many of Marvel's recent great writers made their names on other things, Brian K Vaughan, Ed Brubaker, Mark Millar, Mike Carey and yes Grant Morrison. Sadly in my view they are left with 2 good writers, Bendis and Brian Wood. Bendis just can't write X-men, he should have stuck to more of noir style books. He's also taken Cyclops in the worst direction they could have. The reason X-men is ruined is because they are continueing on this idea that Cyclops thinks he's right when he would have realised long ago that he isn't. 

...

Nearly went off on one there. X-men = poor. Although try picking up the first trade of Brian Wood's X-men, I enjoyed it.