boyajian@akov68.DEC (JERRY BOYAJIAN) (12/12/85)
> From: k.cs.cmu.edu!tim (Tim Maroney) > Why is everyone so down on X-Factor???? Well, I expressed my reasons for not liking the comic in my review of the first issue, but I wish to address a couple of points you bring up. > I've been trying to figure out the negative reactions, and I've come up with > two main ideas. First, people feel that anything would have to be Swamp > Thing's quality or better to make up for the idiotic stories where Jean Grey > returned. Since I avoided those stories, I don't have any such perception > of karma, and I can appreciate X-Factor for what it is. If I felt that a comic had to be up to SWAMP THING's quality to be worth reading, then the only comics I'd be reading would be SWAMP THING, MIRACLEMAN, and anything else that Alan Moore put his word processor to. As I said before in my reviews of the X-Factor preludes, I don't like the idea of Jean Grey being brought back from the "dead", but I was perfectly willing to put those feelings aside in my assessment of X-FACTOR. I wanted to hate X-FACTOR because of those feelings, but I couldn't because it wasn't *that* bad. But I still found it terribly wanting. If nothing else about it is bad, the basic premise is utterly stupid. Consider what Don Thompson said about it in CBG. Substitute some equivalent terms and see how much sense it makes --- would you think it was reasonable if the comic was about a group of blacks who worked for racial equality by taking money to capture other blacks and hauling them away so that the white people could rest more easily, then training those blacks to live like whites? > Second, people are > only familiar with the Claremont X-Men and expected something similar. > Wake up, guys; THESE are the X-Men, the Stan Lee characters, not those > johnny-come-lately jerks that Claremont jacks off to pictures of. They are > infinitely better than that Len Wein-created cast of losers and stereotypes. > ... They have > real, complex relationships in the classic Stan Lee style, not the > cut-and-dried, melodramatic ones which Claremont has created. I'll bet you > don't like Marvel Tales either... Then explain away *my* feelings about the comic. I have been a fan of the X-Men since issue #1. I am as familiar with the "old" X-Men as I am with the "new". I won't say that Claremont is the greatest thing since frozen squash, and he's certainly gone downhill over the years, but I seriously don't think he is any worse than the Lee or Thomas. The old issues were great *for their time*, but in my humble opinion, they don't hold up to being re-read today (in the last 10 years, I've read through the entire run of X-MEN at least twice, so I'm not just hypothesizing). Lee had a great feel for general characterizations and for plots, but his scripting left soemthing to be desired. And I have to agree with what some of the others have already said in response to your article --- that going back to the characterization of 20 years ago is *re*gressive, not *pro*gressive. There is no reason to expect that the X-Men should be the same people today as they were 20 years ago. I liked the original X-Men, and I care about them as characters, which is why I, too, will continue to buy and read X-FACTOR, but I still don't think a whole hell of a lot of it. > PS. My love Pam, who's about to begin her Ph.D. in Writing, agrees with me > concerning the relative quality of this book and Claremont's drivel. Is it > possible a classics scholar knows some things you don't? Nah, you read > comics and science fiction, not those outdated old farts like Dickens and > Shakespeare and James, so you must have highly discerning standards of plot > and characterization.... And what do you have to say about those of us who read Dickens and Shakespeare and James (and just for the hell of it, I'll toss in some of my other favor- ites like Borges, Calvino, Kafka, Hesse, Marquez, Shaw, and Ibsen, among others) *and* comics and science fiction? I used to share a household with a woman (not a lover), also coinci- dentally named Pam, who had a Masters Degree in English Literature, her thesis having been on Shakespeare. She never read comics, but one of her opinions was that nothing of worth has been written in the 20th Century outside of science fiction, mysteries, and children's novels. What are we to make of that? Appeal to authority never makes for a reasonable argument. --- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, Acton-Nagog, MA) UUCP: {decvax|ihnp4|allegra|ucbvax|...} !decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-akov68!boyajian ARPA: boyajian%akov68.DEC@DECWRL.DEC.COM
cdrigney@uokvax.UUCP (12/25/85)
/* Written 6:31 pm Dec 16, 1985 by ma3752af@unmc.UUCP in uokvax.UUCP:net.comics */ >> this book only in terms of their expectations. Which is, simply put, a >> tight competitor with BATO for the best team book on the market. > > BATO is not the best team book - The New Teen Titans is! As for > > V.J. Murphy The New Teen Titans is not the best team book - The Watchmen is! ... as soon as it reaches the stands. :-) --Carl Rigney USENET: {ihnp4,allegra!cbosgd}!okstate!uokvax!cdrigney "So, who is this Alan Moore person, anyway?"