Which is actually a little more accurate to local politics; the candidates are all so busy keeping their own campaign going they don't devote much headspace to the other guy. In fact, a surprising amount of opponents end up friends behind the scenes.

Well, men's style has been static a lot longer than that. A white dress shirt and blue blazer aren't going to raise an eyebrow at any point from 1920 on.

Sure, Bendis is always going to get special dispensation. But he's also one of their 5 most prominent writers, driving one of their 2 most important franchises…if this doesn't apply to him, it's not very far reaching, I don't think.

Sure. But I guess for me, to the extent that this edict is malleable, it doesn't really matter. If Bendis and Hickman still get to tell whatever story they want to tell, I'm fine. I didn't want to buy any new FF toys anyway.

It just seems far more likely to me that this is a cancellation ahead of a "UNIVERSE-SHATTERING!" event that has already given the FF a central role, and that they'll be happy with a new #1 issue as soon as Secret Wars is over.

That might be true, but I guess that's kinda my point- if it's an edict that Bendis and Hickman are allowed to break, and that's not being so tightly enforced on the X-Men line as a whole, it's not really much of an edict.

Not sure what you mean. Bendis is specifically creating new X-Men, and while the FF are appearing heavily in Avengers books, I dunno, it still seems like that'd be getting around the "don't use the FF" edict.

I guess that's possible, but if "Go out with a bang" were the motivation, then you'd think it'd be in their home title (or that said home title wouldn't get it's own "out with a bang" arc).

Does Claremont know what he's talking about, though? I mean, Bendis has created a handful of new characters in the last 2 or 3 years. So when did this edict come down? What about the fact that Reed, Sue, Valeria, and Doctor Doom are pretty central to Hickman's Avengers/New Avengers/Secret War/Battleworld mega-arc?

Well, the real issue here is whether or not the tone serves the story/characters. For Marvel, damn near its entire roster can be fun and zippy (modern Cap kinda can't, but Winter Soldier was notably darker anyway). But DC's entire roster *can't* really be dark and brooding. Batman can. God, Batman damn well BETTER be.…

That reminds me of Peter David's comments on the script for Spider-Man 2- it was essentially the same thing as Spidey 1 and it was all going to hang on the villain. Fortunately, Molina really pulled it off.

But "Sam Jackson" is a bit like "Cary Grant"- it's the same character every time, but the character is fun enough.

Wait, so if Marvel wanted to make a great movie, they'd make sure it was nothing like a great movie?

Joker and Loki aren't really supposed to be similar; Joker is an insane quasi-force of nature out to prove that everyone is as broken and violent as he is. Loki is a manipulative god with daddy-issues who wants to rule a world or two.

It's a plot beat used in dozens of movies that was different in both tone and function in Avengers than in TDK. In Avengers, all the character were aware that Loki was playing them and the purpose of the scene was to set up the intra-Avengers brawl on the Helicarrier. In TDK, Joker's duplicity was a surprise and the…

So, by that logic, are Charles Foster Kane or Vito Corleone "cooler" than Batman?

"It's so bad now that Marvel issued an edict to its comic writers not to create any new characters for the X-Men comics just out of spite."

Present-day Marvel and DC creatives have been involved in the movies/TV shows though; Bendis, Loeb, Johns, probably some more that I don't know.

Yes, but sometimes you can't eat an entire pizza.

Yeah, this- and it ended up impacting all the people who *didn't* want to be exposed to smoke, 'cause they had no choice.