Go, Read: Tegan O’Neil’s Review Of Marvel’s Civil War 2 Comics

Here. It's the top feature in a mini-roundtable of interviews. There are a few brutal sentences in there from Tegan O'Neil, just door-shutting word bombs: "A few strong new concepts are hopelessly adrift in a sea of 55- and 75-year-olds acting out the motions of their attenuated senescence" is one of them.

The reason I'm pulling this out is that the review encapsulates what I feel as an occasional Marvel Comics watcher, that that group of titles is really adrift right now -- in the broad creative sense -- in a way that setes the sales landscape for the near-future. I'm not an expert on these kinds of comics, but the last urgency I detected was reading the Jonathan Hickman-directed cosmic superhero armageddon comics, and even then maybe just the ones that used the end-of-everything as a scary, oncoming train rather than actually showed you the train punching through a series of traffic stops. Bringing the Inhumans to the foreground sounded like a power move, and now it looks like a broad mis-step. Marvel's best comics feel like small-scale rejections of successful formula without any sort of reinvigoration in accompaniment. Their flagship action-adventure titles feel less like an ER or Hill Street Blues or a Law & Order than one of those drama programs with "Chicago" in the title.

I assume the solution is finding that next round of good comics and that bringing talented creators into the fold gets you there. They still seem to be doing that. It just feels pretty disengaged right this moment, and I have to assume that makes a difference on retail culture.
 
posted 3:23 pm PST | Permalink
 

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