"New Avengers" for the current Illuminati story is really perplexing. Marvel spent 8 years building up the "New Avengers" brand as the place for a more ground-level team of heroes (or, to be blunt, the place you go to watch Luke Cage boss around other super heroes). Even in "The Heroic Age", when Adjectiveless…

I personally love Bendis. Yeah, he loses the bead when he moves into the major team franchises (with the exception of the Initiative/Secret Invasion/Dark Reign New Avengers, though I guess a team lead by Luke Cage and Ronin isn't really much of a "franchise" anyway), but when he keeps himself grounded, the stories…

Yeah, and it's not even *that* specific. Like, Spider Island or Edge of Spider Verse could have happened in Metropolis or Central City just as easily as NYC.

I think I mostly enjoyed Slott on ASM, but someone on here last week pointed out: Peter, MJ, Carlie, JJJ, etc. don't really *do* anything in his run, it's just that a bunch of outside shit happens to them. They react in a mostly entertaining way, but the outside shit could happen to anyone. Iron Man could deal with a…

CW itself was abysmal, and I can't fault anyone for Bendis fatigue, but the Initiative/Secret Invasion/Dark Reign/Siege run was actually some special stuff. No single phase of it lasted long enough to wear out its welcome, but they all kept raising the stakes enough that when Cap finally wangs Osborn with the shield,…

Well, I'm not saying it's smart or dumb, I'm just saying it is. Hollywood is risk-averse, especially on movies that they sink a lot of money into.

I mean, it'd be nice, but I don't really expect the big budget action movies to go all that obscure.

This is pretty apt. Honestly, with the exception of Will leaving (an even outside of the producers' control), there's nothing more than window dressing in terms of status quo changes.

That was 30 years ago, though.

"But for some reason, people right now are not willing to allow for the time it would really take for this immersion to set into mediums like comic books or video games or whatever."

It really is about TGW level of legal verisimilitude. Really good at faking it, but every once in a while gets something wrong in a pretty distracting way.

This is veering off topic, but I suspect the real magic of Napster/file sharing was accessibility, not price (well, lack thereof). Once iTunes established itself, I was more than happy to pay its prices to get the song immediately in a sharable (between my devices) format.

Also- and this only matters so much, but it does matter- DeConnick is pretty much Marvel's point-woman on talking about Women In Comics. Taking a title away from her would kneecap that.

I think you're vastly overestimating the long-term plotting that Stan Lee was doing back in those days.

How could Gwen love both? She didn't even know he was Spidey.

I don't think that's really accurate- I THINK Gwen was introduced first, and if not completely, she was certainly fleshed out as a character first (if "Mary Jane" predates her, it's only as this girl Aunt May keeps mentioning).

I've honestly never heard a bad word about it- and hey, he keeps getting work…

How can you be so shocked? It's fine if you don't like, but it's been a widely admired run since its publication. I didn't read it, but I knew people thought it was cool. It basically launched Darwyn Cooke into the mainstream. That people like it cannot be new information to you.

Diane/Alicia comparisons are always pretty interesting. I feel like Diane has set her north star. She knows what she's for and what she's against, and what she'll do to fight for/against either. They're not choices I would make, but I don't recall her ever failing her own standards.

One would also think Peter would have already dealt with most of these issues. Perhaps the stuff relating to Alicia's clients and family is too attenuated (but perhaps not), but Zach would definitely be on Eli's radar already.