{"id":64,"date":"2007-12-20T00:43:10","date_gmt":"2007-12-20T00:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/?p=64"},"modified":"2017-02-20T22:05:27","modified_gmt":"2017-02-20T22:05:27","slug":"this-always-worked-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/20\/this-always-worked-before\/","title":{"rendered":"This Always Worked Before…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is Wednesday — well, it was until twenty minutes ago, anyway — and Wednesday is new comic book day, so I drove over to the mall and made my weekly stop at Beyond Comics<\/a>, where I picked up half a dozen titles.<\/p>\n

And while I was doing that, I came to a dismaying realization that I mentioned to the shop manager, who agreed: There are writers working in comics today who used to be on my must-buy list, but who now are getting me to drop<\/em> titles I used to buy.<\/p>\n

Exiles<\/strong>, for example — I started buying it with #10, and never missed an issue until Chris Claremont took over writing it. Three issues later I’d dropped it, and now it’s cancelled. Once upon a time I really liked<\/em> Claremont’s writing.<\/p>\n

Or there’s Peter David on She-Hulk<\/strong>. To be fair, David said<\/em> he was going to revamp the book because he just didn’t know how to continue it the way Dan Slott did it, and I respect that — but I don’t enjoy what he did with it at all, and dropped it after two issues.<\/p>\n

And Paul Dini — I used to love pretty much everything Paul Dini wrote, but I find his run on Detective Comics<\/strong> tedious. I mean, this ought to be an amazing match-up, Dini and Detective<\/strong>, but it just doesn’t work for me.<\/p>\n

Not that Grant Morrison on Batman<\/strong> is any better — I mean, Damian was a really bad<\/em> idea. But then, I’d already been disillusioned with Morrison when he was writing the X-Men — he started well there, but lost me after maybe eight or ten issues.<\/p>\n

I could go on to name other examples, but I think the point is made — these are all writers I thought were great fun when I first encountered them, but who are now writing stuff I really don’t want to read. It’s not just mediocre — if I’m reading a title I can put up with a lot of mediocre before I quit — but so unlike what had gone before, and unlike it in a bad way, that I actively avoid it. Claremont killed everything I liked about Exiles<\/strong>; David systematically removed everything I liked about She-Hulk<\/strong>. I’d stuck with Exiles<\/strong> through a lot of writers, ranging from frankly bad to really good, but Claremont chased me away in short order.<\/p>\n

And then there are one-time favorites I’ve been actively avoiding for awhile now — Dave Sim, Warren Ellis, Frank Miller, Steve Gerber…<\/p>\n

So why is this? I mean, there are lots of writers I still like just fine, but there are also all these writers I can’t stand anymore. And I can’t think of a single long-time comics writer who I think is getting better<\/em>, which is kind of depressing.<\/p>\n

I don’t have any brilliant insights here; I just wanted to rant a bit. I would love to see an old favorite get even better; instead I’m seeing lots of them go bad. I am not happy about that. The universe is being mean to me.<\/p>\n

Make it stop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is Wednesday — well, it was until twenty minutes ago, anyway — and Wednesday is new comic book day, so I drove over to the mall and made my weekly stop at Beyond Comics, where I picked up half a dozen titles. And while I was doing that, I came to a dismaying realization… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-generalities-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":756,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions\/756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}