Battlepig

@Phantim555 said:

I completely agree with everything on the books that were good and bad at least out of the books I read anyway lol. However I did like Solstice pre new 52 and I'm not 100% sure I completely understood what you were saying about Static. I agree the book sucked tho so no worries there lol.

Solstice was a nice character... in theory. She was not angst-ridden and not overly dramatic. She was just a lot of fun and all that. But, and here's why she was not going to survive, she made Raven - one of the longest-standing Titans - basically lose her shit every time she was in the same room as her. This would never have stood. The choices they had, had they gone on with the dreadful book that was Teen Titans were a) come up with some random hackneyed excuse as to why the two could suddenly co-exist or b) have one of the two leave. Should b) happen, which was more likely as it would create more superficial drama, it would have to have been (man, I'm outdoing myself with verb-forms tonight) a choice between Raven and Solstice. This would have been an easy choice: You pick Raven to stay on the team, all three fans of Solstice would have been pissed off. You pick Solstice, the horde of sweaty cellardwellers will remind you constantly about the great things that Raven did for the team back in issue #54 back in 1983 because that totally makes keeping Solstice the wrong choice.

The thing about Static, in a tl;dr-version: It was terrible. Static was unrecognizable. He was no longer in Dakota. His costume was new and different. He has new villains nobody cares about and the story is absolutely terrible. The villains are bland, the heroes stupid and incompetent. The supporting cast is absolutely awful and the art is lacklustre at best. Also, I think Felicia D. Henderson is the worst comic writer I've ever come across.

@Adnan said:

Glad to see someone else enjoying Demon Knights as much as I am.

Oh hell yeah!

@CapedCrusaider said:

Can you think of any powers that haven't been thought of yet?? eg ability to double jump any distance indefinitely as well as change direction (Even in the air) lol

That's called "Power of flight" and I have the feeling that that's been done before.

Kind sir, you do realize that if we think of powers that nobody's thought of yet, we do think of them and as such, they don't qualify for your thread anymore. You've successfully created a thread that can have no right answer.

The more characters they have, the bigger the world feels.

That is where I have to disagree. The rest of Tony's article makes sense and is something I agree with. But no, the world does not feel bigger with more characters. At least not in the way Tony is proposing. Because while he would be theoretically right, he's wrong when you look at the reality of comics. It's not that every character has a good number of supporting characters. It's that the hero of book A is supporting character in book B and vice versa. This is an instant character-killer, because who wants to see Batman in thirty books a month? And most of his appearances, he wastes by talking random stuff that might as well have been said by someone else. And when everyone else has to appear in Batman's titles, then where does he talk to his supporting characters? Where's Alfred's wisdom needed when you can have the fourth smartest man in the world? If you want to cram Alfred and the other guy in there, then the story as a whole suffers, because you lack the space to tell a decent story. Another side-effect this has is that characters are only defined by their interaction with other characters who - in turn - are defined by talking to other characters. So it's a never-ending violation of the "Show, don't tell"-rule.

Given all that, I would say that if the DC Universe needs anything it's even less crossovers. Let the characters and their supporting cast grow for a while, then have the rare appearance of another hero. But only if you really can't avoid it or if it's carefully planned.

@Mayo88m: Compared to "Being blown up and all parts are lost in time", I call "running around in present time, abducting people" an improvement. And no matter how you want to twist it, neither Cable nor the Avengers are going anywhere. Which leaves us with one possible outcome. The Avengers will scamper off going "Sorry for the confusion!" and Cable will go "Whoops, my bad" and then Cable suddenly is fixed. Again, it's predictable.

Also, do you see me complaining about House of M or Second Coming? Because quite frankly, those were status-quo-shaking events. X-Sanction is merely something to pass the time gets the label "changes everything forever" slapped onto it. And the only thing they didn't reveal in the beginning were the details. And really, do you want to read a book just to see how something happens and not for what happens? I certainly don't.

@The Impersonator: I think that was a promo for X-Sanction, since it was just "_ _ _ _ _ reborn" at that point.

@JoseDRiveraTCR7: Well, the same thing I expect from basically any other comic. Entertainment, interesting storytelling and so on. And Loeb can be good. His Superman/Batman arc was pretty good, for example.

@ThePRez: No, Ultimate Spidey-Man really isn't that great. While I complain about character development or lack thereof in practically every book I read these days - all in the name of some idiotic status quo that needs to be maintained for some odd reason - Miles-Man has too much too soon. In my review of the second issue, I mention that the story has stopped moving at a crawl's speed, but has come to an absolute stand-still. And in the first issue, there's just too many people to care about. All this has led to one thing. Me not reading Ultimate Spidey-Man anymore.

@chalkshark: Where do you see mindless rage in the Red Lanterns book? In fact, the entire creative team seems to make a big deal of going out of everyone's way to have them not be mindless, raging monsters anymore. Remember that part where Atrocitus just throws his Lanterns into the Ocean of Blood which either destroys them or gives them back their minds, thus removing their mindless rage? The book tries to make rage a selling point, build it all on rage, but it falls flat because it's not doing what's promising. What this book is, is basically a couple people brooding over pointless stuff, then vomiting blood over other characters. There's no actual rage involved. It could be called "Red Lanters that are slightly miffed at one thing or another".

And either they go somewhere with the Earth-plot or they don't. But four issues of this, in three of which the Earthlings were guest-stars at best and everyone knows it's the reasonable, calm brother that gets the Red Ring.

But all in all, the book will stay, even though its premise has been failing since the very first page. This is why editors should not write comics. There's nobody there to stop them if they screw up or have some screwed up book on their hands. Case in point: everything Dan DiDio's ever written.

@Joygirl: She also has an EXTREEEEEME name. And she bleeds. It's her name. Because she bleeds. Her brother, I presume, was named Vomeez.

@BloodTalon: Well, looking at how they apply human morals to everything (see discussion above), the Blue Lanterns book would also be doomed. Every kind of mystery would be solved by being way too obvious, since apparently aliens are just humans with green skin... or something. See, this is something that the much-cursed Red Hood and the Outlaws does right. At least the alien there is alien, apparently can't remember human faces and having sex is something like saying "Hello". Sure, it is different. Sure, our morals contradict that, but hey, she's an alien. She's supposed to be at least somewhat different.

@AtraCruor: In that case, the entire premise of the Red Lantern Corps is flawed (and also isn't, since in the end, the writer's always right). If it's not rage that makes them all angry, then why would the Red Rings - that are seeking out beings with great anger inside them - seek them out? Also, how does that desire for revenge make them good people so that they do the right thing while being angry?

@feargalr: That's just it, they expand characters that are consumed by one emotion by definition. They embody rage. They have nothing else. That's their entire point in Blackest Night and whatever led up to it. So if you let Atrocitus smile or do anything but "Rargh! Angry! Destroy!" the Red Ring should go "Wait, you're not angry anymore. I'll be off then, finding someone more angry than you."

@KingofMadCows: Yes, then there's that. But they're not even doing that right. They're trying to apply some odd form of righteous American Rage to the characters. And it's that seeming righteousness that bothers me. They're angry for good reasons and then act upon that rage to do the right thing... uh, let's just say that it's kind of a daft premise.

@Demonturtle: Well, you do get buttshots of Bleez ("Bleeds", get it? It's a wordplay, because she bleeds.).

This is not the best of idea for a number of things. In fact, all in all, it's a quite terrible idea.

@SpideyIvyDaredevilFan26 said:

Director:

M Night Shyamalan

This man has not made a good movie since the one good movie he made. His name alone would guarantee that there will be people who won't see it solely based on that. It will most likely be a trainwreck too.

So the movie is about a war between demons and werewolves, set in Japan.Both have adopted the fighting styles and weapons of ninjas (Though they use guns as well).

You're immediately trying to do too much. Imagine having to explain how this came about. "For centuries, the demons and werewolves have warred in secret, honing their ninja-skills and their gunplay". I can see that you're thinking in the pictures of exciting action-scenes, quickly cut and basically a lot of eyecandy. But it has to at least somewhat make sense.

After a werewolf massacres several demon assassins, the vampires decide to unleash a secret weapon: A demon/werewolf hybrid, a method they tried years ago in 1891 (Wolfman refference) which almost caused the destruction of the demon, werewolf and human races.

This screams "Underworld". Don't go there. And as for your amazing homage to "The Wolfman", you shouldn't reference things that are in the popular mind as something that failed as a movie, regardless how much of a classic and wonderful story it is.

It manages to attack a law student named Bruce (Elijah Wood). This causes Bruce to become a ferocious and practically unkillable monster, and becomes a danger to his girlfriend Phoebe (Brenda Song).

While Elijah Wood can pull off almost any role, he's not too good as a practically unkillable monster. A) He doesn't look like a monster, he lacks anything sinister or dangerous in his face. B) You do not want to make anything in any movie "practically unkillable" unless you're making a Crank-movie, in which case it's okay.

Helped only by a mysterious vampire slayer (Gary Oldman, who is critical to the plot twist), he must learn to control himself at full moons or become full evil. Meanwhile, Bruce's brother, (Patrick J Adams) is recruited by an incredibly secret group of werewolves dedicated to eradicating the vampires, led by a man simply known as Prometheus (Djimon Hounsou). As "The Chosen One" he is destined to destroy the werewolf/vampire hybrid race, thus killing his own brother.

This is so amazingly lame. You spend a guesstimated half hour on setting up the out-there premise with the out-there characters played by an out-there cast. This takes a lot of effort. A real lot. And it takes time. And that's when you decide to get the plot going, introducing not only even more characters but also a completely different plot. And that plot is so paper-thin that it's very obviously an excuse to show off the amazing gunplay and fight scenes - which, by the way, is something M. Night Shyamalan can't do.

I would recruit the best script writers I know and the movie would be INCREDIBLY bloody while at the same time emotional. Sound good?

Not even the best screenwriter in the universe could fix this movie. Also, you can't do bloody and emotional. How many horror or thrilling action films do you know that make the guys go "Hell yeah!" and the gals go "Awww..."?

In summary: You want to make the ultimate movie, that has everything in it, everyone playing in it and that will please everyone. That won't work. Ever.