The fans at Millarworld revisit their embarrassing youths:
Anyone else out there really embarrassed that you loved something as a kid, but now realize it was crap? Or maybe you hated something that you now realize was great? I, for one, absolutely adored Secret Wars. It was what got me into comics in the first place (specifically, it was the panel in #7 where Wolverine cuts the Absorbing Man’s arm off). I tried to read it recently and found it painfully, unspeakably awful. It hurt me. On the other hand, I loathed Jack Kirby’s art down to the darkest depths of my being and now I love it. Also, I was a complete Marvel zombie and refused to entertain the possibility, however remote, that DC or any other publisher was capable of putting out anything worth reading. I thought my friends were a bunch of pathetic losers when they tried (in vain) to get me to read stuff like Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, Arkham Asylum, and Sandman. I’ve read them all in the last few years, and I want to punch muself in the face for being such a jackass.
I have to admit that I, too, had that “But… I remember Secret Wars being much better than this!” moment a couple of years ago. It’s a common thing for an entire generation, I suspect. As are some of the following:
“I own virtually every Cloak and Dagger solo comic up through the end of their early-90s series. Aside from some great art at times, those are some of the worst comics Marvel ever published, with writing that managed to confusing, moronic, and preachy all at the same time. I also collected the Lobdell / Nicieza X-Men comics avidly (it was the 90s), which in hindsight are a bunch of jumbled crossovers that make about as much sense as a PCP hallucination, with various and sundry ’sitting around at the Mansion not doing much’ issues to kill time between.”
“Gen 13… the early stuff… yeah… and I had Roxy Freefall hairdo too… *sigh* I was young and stupid…”
“I rmember being a kid and buying plenty of episodes of mid-nineties Spider-Man. You know the ones. Scarlet Spider-featuring, Tom Defalco-written crapfests. And I even kinda enjoyed them. And let’s not forget Spawn. I thought that was the sh*t when I was 12.”
“One word: Ultraverse.”
March 23rd, 2007 at 10:30 am
So one has to wonder if they’ll have the same realization about Civil War #7 one day…
March 23rd, 2007 at 11:09 am
Yes, yes, but what about Millar vs. Graeme?
March 23rd, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Oh whatever. Millar just doesn’t realize it’s all a joke, which he’s the butt of. Notice how Mark never mentions Bendis or Byrne in his little rant? That’s because he doesn’t realize he’s not the center of the universe.
March 23rd, 2007 at 1:32 pm
Hey! The Ultraverse was cool!
Up until Marvel bought Malibu, and turned it into spare parts, anyway.
Actually, I had a similar, but arguably mirror-universe, reaction when I recently flipped through a few of the early ’90s DC Vertigo comics I thought were so awesome, when I was in college, and while a lot of them still hold up (most anything with Neil Gaiman’s name attached, with certain exceptions), it’s amazing how many of them seem not only insufferably pretentious, but also yawn-inducingly pedestrian, a dozen or so years later.
As an example, looking back on it, Peter Milligan’s Shade, the Changing Man had brilliant art by Chris Bachalo (back when Bachalo was capable of brilliant art), but the writing suffered from all the same Milligan tendencies that ultimately sabotaged his run on X-Statix (most notably, killing off vastly more compelling characters to focus exclusively on an increasingly, incurably uninteresting lead).
Then again, some of DC Vertigo’s output from back then seemed like completely worthless crap to me, even at the time (Grant Morrison’s Kill Your Boyfriend, I’m referring to you here).
March 23rd, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Man, that guy reminiscing about Secret Wars#7 could have been me; that was the only issue of the series that I bought brand-new, and I too was stunned by Wolverine cutting off the Absorbing Man’s hand (not that I knew who either character was at the time). When I finally read the rest of the series a decade later, I couldn’t believe it had made such an impression on me.
March 26th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
I remember when I was a kid and Fantastic Four #222 (where Franklin is possessed by Nicholas Scratch) scared the living crap out of me…I had nightmares for weeks. I found it on Ebay last week, got it today and….man, I was scared of this?? I opened the book with a little fear, remembering how I felt when I was in Grade 1….the impressions of youth, hey?