mexicans aren't the only latinos...

Marvel just has a bunch of dumb ass writers who have strayed from making comics about superheroes battling villians and have gone into real world political storylines because they can't just write a 2 or 3 issue arc of the Masters of evil ripping off a bank to finance a new weapon that Baron Zemo wants to make to cause a massive earthquake in NYC & the Avengers have to stop them. No, it has to be about political issues. I got into comics as a kid in the late 70s due to the fact that they took me away from the real world problems & issues for 22 pages of great art & battles between make believe characters. Now these writers have to make yr long story arcs that cross over into multiple titles and involve politics, race issues & other real life stuff that I really don't care to read about in a "comic book about make believe superbeings.

The color, nor gender , nor race had to be changed on any character to make me read a comic books as a kid, a young adult or middle aged man. If the art was great and the storyline was action packed with heroes/villians pummeling each other, I was hooked. That's why I loved Marvel teamup featuring Spidey and a different superhero every other issue or 2. We got great art and stories that only took 1-2, maybe 3 issues to tell! When Claremont & Byrne were on MTU were the greatest in the title's history. Then they went on to write the great but short lived 15 issue Ironfist run before they made history on X-men.

I'll take Perez/Byrne/Kirby/Buscema/Heck/Golden/Romita/Lim/Lee/Gibbons/Layton/Bolland/Dillon/ just to name a few over the vast majority of today's "artists" Just about anything those guys drew, I bought! The story could be great, but if the second I open the 1st page, that art looks like an 8yr old drew it, I put it write back down. The art is what always drew me to comics 1st, story 2nd. Perez & Byrne were then & now my all time 2 favorite artists and they always drew their characters in their correct and listed hgts! No giant 8-9 ft Hulks or 7ft Thors. At one point in the 70s/80s, those 2 were drawing everything in both comic companies. That's how dam n good and in demand they both were. They both created some of the most well known characters in both Marvel & DC as well. George Perez created the White Tiger, Deathstoke the Terminator & Taskmaster as well as helped co-create the Teen Titans. Byrne created Alpha Flight. Now, thanks to the MCU, today's Marvel writers and artist just base their stories and art on what the movies are doing. Knowing what has been done to a lot of my favorite marvel characters these past few yrs all in the name of PC, makes me so glad I quit collecting comics right after the Planet Hulk/WW Hulk arc. That's why I really hope the ML Vintage line succeeds, so I can get a chance to buy classic versions of the "comic book" characters I grew up reading as a kid & not figures of actors.

exactly!....tell that to marvel & DC. Miles is black Puerto rican to be accurate.

4Reelz...it ain't complicated. Miles rocks...

I did not know that. I have never read anything from Miles' run. I thought he was 100% black.

BTW, I'm originally from NY, so I know Mexicans aren't the only hispanics as I grew up with Puerto Ricans. However, like I said, I have never touched anything of his run.

I haven't read anything either, and frankly don't want to. Can't stand characters who assume somebody else's mantle unless they've been established and earned it like Dick Grayson. Miles Morales is literally just some other kid who is Spiderman, purely for the kick of a different race.

It's more complicated than that. Miles comes from a reality where at the time Spider-Man was believed dead, he succeeded the mantle because New York otherwise did not have such a hero especially after Ultimatum wiped most of them out. Now that he's been incorporated into the main reality it seems odd that he should be forced to pick a new superhero name since all he's ever been is Spider-Man, although I guess Marvel could have come up with some external name in the same way that we call the character Spider-Gwen even though in-universe that would be a terrible super name.

I always assumed Miles was Dominican, tbh.

in comics, it seems like none of them are Mexicans. lol

Not to derail the conversation, but I've gotta be honest, I don't either, or at least new ones.

Marvel Comics hasn't gotten a dime from me since Thor became unworthy. DC was sometime before Superdoomsday and Gordon Robocop Batman. I was picking up IDW Transformers, but I also do buy TF's and when I kept getting "double" issues by getting the issues with the figures after buying the original sale comic, I moved over to just downloading them since I didn't know which ones I would get later with a figure and which ones I wouldn't.

TBH, I don't know how anyone reads comics anymore. Between the price and that they can't seem to tell a story anymore. It's all crossovers or "big" events that require 30 titles to understand, or it's by writers who don't seem to understand the characters they're writing or shoehorning some other character in them, and it doesn't matter because they'll be writing someone else in a few months anyway due to the next shakeup.

Yes, there's hyperbole there, but the point still stands.

Of everything Marvel, with some slight irony, the comics are the weakest part IMHO.

"Nothing wrong" you say? Have you read the latest statistics that have been printed on the reading levels of kids in America today? Most teens are reading at a 3rd-4th grade reading level. Kids today prefer to spend their time playing Xbox/PlayStation, texting, hanging out rather than order an online subscription of Marvel comics & spend their valuable time "reading".

If all those options are available and "cheaper" options than traditional comic shops, then how are comic stores still even able to stay in business? Because of people like me that grew up as kids reading Marvel/DC/Image/DH/Indies and still continue to do so as adults because they have the disposable income to splurge on $4-$5 comics that today's teens don't have. I go to my local CBS to check out figures and I watch & observe who is around the comic book racks & guess what? It isn't a ton of teens, it's mostly adult men & a few adult females that are still buying & collecting comics, not teens! So even though those other venues are available to them, that doesn't mean they care to take advantage of that & read actual comic books, they just prefer to go to the movies and see them on the big screen.

Another thing, unless the marvel female character is on the movie screen, these kids ain't buying the female comic based figures either. I just hit TRU/Target & Walmart today & the pegs are saturated with tons of White Tigers, Misty Knights, Hellcats, Angelas & I'm even starting to see a bunch of Phoenix figs on the pegs. Why is that, cuz these kids don't read the comics so have no idea who they are. It also doesn't help that those stores don't put these figures on clearance & still have them up for $14.99-$19.99. Otherwise, maybe customizers would buy em up. That A-force boxset? Had they released that as singles, I'd say that half would be collecting dust on the pegs. She-Hulk, Sif and possibly Photon or whatever she's known as nowadays, would sell. What kid knows who's Elsa Bloodstone? That sparkly female, Singularity? Even I don't know who she is due to the fact that I stopped collecting after WW Hulk. But even if I knew who she was , I still wouldn't buy her due to the fact that how exactly would you display her power as a figure? It's like Photon, she can turn into different spectrums of energy/light, unless Hasbro made some clear "energy" looking variant of her, she is pretty much useless as an "action" figure.

That's why I hate that Cyclops doesn't come with an "optic" blast accessory! That's his sole mutant power, but yet, TB & now Hasbro still can't make that simple but very vital "optic" blast effect for Cyke, But they could make 3 heads for Jean?

Well, my LCS didn't. It closed down 2 years ago or so. The only place I go to anymore that has comics is a board game store and even they have a very small amount of space for comics. I know of other comic stores and the game store that I used to go to had a far larger selection, but that's neither here nor there.

If Marvel wasn't owned by Disney, I do wonder if they'd still print comics. So many of their titles can't even sell 20K anymore. As I said before, it has to be far and away the least profitable part of the Marvel IP.

You'd be surprised at some of the names kid fans know, as games like Marvel Future Fight has a crap ton of characters and lots of obscure characters, like Elsa Bloodstone in it. Other characters, such as Sif have both their movie and their comic costumes.

Not sure why you turned a conversation about kids not reading comics to the education system but that's your loss. Low reading levels are not the result of video games and smart phones. The teens reading at 3rd and 4th grade reading levels come from homes with low income, meaning their parents never had enough money to buy them books and rarely read to them when they were toddlers. Because of this, these kids enter school with a limited vocabulary and are academically behind the students who grew up in families that could provide them with these resources. This problem compounds over the years, putting them further and further behind other students. This is why programs like Head Start are so important because they work to close that ability gap before students enter school. Also, a comic book isn't going to increase a kid's reading level. Comics are 22 pages and are written so that they can be enjoyed by a broad spectrum of people at different reading levels. If you want to increase reading ability, then students need to read books at higher difficultly levels. And how do I know this? I know it because I'm in a Master's program studying Elementary Education and have had several discussions with professors about children's literacy and early childhood development and education over the past year and a half.

Your comic shop has stayed in business because the owner knows what everyone is purchasing and isn't ordering extras of books. The owner of the comic shop I used to go to once told me that he basically knew what books people would be interested in and would only order just enough to meet demand because he was loosing money on back issues. If you want to splurge, go ahead. It's your money.

So the kids who aren't buying comics are buying the male comic figures but leaving the female comic figures? More like they just didn't want those figures.

Sorry to say, but it doesn't matter, because you're still buying a figure based on a character with an actors likeness either way you spin it. I need to do some digging, but you do know why there are more movie figures made today than 57 years ago? Comic book movies are at an all time high (The Golden Age). Of course you're going to see these figures made, we're talking about a 16 movie franchise in which 4 have made over a billion dollars. I'm sure if things were this popular back in the day you would have seen more movie figures, that's just common sense. Also, Captain America is a fictional character that has been drawn by different artist for decades. It's complete asinine to disregard actors playing fictional characters from a comic book. If you were to get upset about Bobby Brown, Jackie Chan, or Taylor Swift playing Frank Sinatra in his bio picture, I'd be right there with you, but with all due respect it doesn't make sense.

I was going to say something about not piling-on Parademon1 and remark that Ark’ers may be confusing his passionate stances for pugnacity and acrimony, but he seems pretty content to take on the entire thread…..soooo, I won’t be doing that.

I add the following, not to lend support, but to clear up a couple of things about what Parademon1 said that do (in fact) ring somewhat true regarding a wide spectrum of cognitive development vectors, youth-education, and current peer reviewed research. Now, I left a career in education long ago and no longer enjoy Lexisnexis-access to professional journals, but there is a swiftly growing mountain of research and complimentary reportage regarding the detrimental affect smart-devices can have on learning and cognition within children:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...s-and-toddlers

Language Delay: Kids Who Use Smartphones Start Talking Later | Time.com

https://www.theatlantic.com/educatio...ssroom/480231/

Kids And Screen Time: What Does The Research Say? : NPR Ed : NPR

That’s just five minutes of searching and skim-reading articles on the web – not a scholarly investigation of peer-reviewed studies, so take it however you want. That said, I do have an interest in these sorts of things and I’ve digested (both academically and professionally) numerous elements of the process of education. Kudos to jwyss234 for highlighting the importance of Head Start, you couldn’t be more right about its function to decrease the vocabulary gap between economically challenged communities and more affluent ones. The reduction of funding for these services, first at the hands of Obama and Boehner via the ‘Grand Bargain’ (not so ‘grand’ at all), coupled with this current administration’s attacks (not to mention the travesty that is one Betsy De Voss as the current Secretary of Education) on the program, serve only to imperil the future of our children and our nation by extension.

Anyways, back to toys…
@Dark
I didn’t mean to imply that I thought the phenomenon was ‘new;’ eBay sellers have been doing this from the start. What is interesting to me is that *Dorkside* (thanks Kirathis) and other online retailers of Hasbro products have legitimated what I consider a ‘hustle.’ I’m pretty surprised that Hasbro doesn’t seem to care. However, I guess they’d have no beef if the online retailer 'buys’ the product and then resells something that is now (technically) their property. I’d like to know a bit more about how that process works…

He's not entirely wrong as a lot of kids I teach would rather play on their iPads or playing video games than do anything else, however, there are many that read comics. More often than not it is manga though. Although, I will occassionally have a kid ask if they could read one of whatever comics I brought in with me.

As for who is at fault, everyone. The educational system is all based on test scores. Half of a teacher's pay these days is determined by the scores each student received in the classroom. There are times when a passing score is actually higher than the actual score possible on the test. Also, the funding a school receives is also based on the test scores. If the school has low scores (which is often the case for schools in poor neighborhoods) they receive less funding than a school that has high scores.

The parents are at fault because many of them feel their child is entitled to good grades because they are their child. One of the teachers I know had a woman start banging on his classroom window until he let her in and then demanded that her daughter's grade on a test be moved from a B+ to an A or she was going to sue the school district. The principal told him to change her grade because it wasn't worth the hassle.

Yeah manga's been popular with kids and teens for a while. It helps that it's cheaper and easier to get into as well (since you don't have 60 years of history and retcons).

As for the education issue, I'm sure there'd be less animosity in this thread if literally the same poster didn't constantly spout off the same (largely unprovoked) rants about the youth of this country not being as good as they used to be ect., which usually come out of nowhere and just kind of sound like this after a while:

http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...44/247/297.png

How toy discussions keep turning into generational sociology debates is quite confusing to me. But I digress.

True. My other suggestion is that we get the chair as a "Build-a-Vehicle" like they did with Vulture's wing suit.

If we're being honest, neither do I. I stopped buying and reading comics about two years ago when the only store I would call my LCS closed up, and even then I wasn't really going there every week anymore.

Going cold turkey was a great decision, I'd much rather put that money towards action figures and pay for movie tickets and a Netflix account.


Yeah, well those figures were all we had. And back then it felt like the actors were walking off screen and onto our shelves. Sure they're underwhelming now but I imagine in about twenty years I'm going to look back on these current Marvel Legends MCU figures and wonder what I ever saw in them, too.

I know a lot of this will likely get scrubbed by a mod, but I want to add in my two cents as to why the sociological side comes out so readily:

There's going to be discussion about the characters attached to the figures being released, that much is unavoidable. Part of the problem, though, is that rather than saying that one doesn't like X character (which is totally valid, because who the hell is gonna like every character that comes down the pike?), some people will use it as a platform. It becomes less "I don't like this character" and more "this character is a waste of plastic/writing" and "this character only exists to pander to X" or "this character is emblematic of the ruination of comics/toys because of X connection to Y movement/political stance/culture/gender/etc".

Which, really, is getting really into hot-button territory. Honestly, that bull doesn't matter. If you don't like the character/figure, don't buy the character/figure, but don't take a piss on the people that enjoy that character/figure. Unless it's connected to a larger problematic situation (IE Secret Empire), nothing about the character/figure is going to be impacting your life in any significant way just by virtue of existing.

The same goes for this whole discussion about MCU figures - if you don't like them, you don't like them, and that's totally cool. That doesn't mean you have to make page-scrolling posts about why your opinion is the right one and needs to be shouted from the rooftops.

In the words of Bill and Ted, just
http://i.imgur.com/T8I86.gif

Dude, yes. While Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is just a comedy on the surface, it has a lot of undertones to it that I love. "Be excellent to each other" is a notion that I've always tried to live my life towards. It's a simplistic ideal, yet so integral to the human race as a whole.

Ok, sorry for getting philosophical. lol Just wanted to say that I love Bill and Ted beyond just the humor.

I beg to differ on John Jr being better than Layton. I mean if you're talking bout early John Jr I might agree. But for some reason he changed his art style later In his career & I didn't like it at all. His early work on IM was awesome: especially his work on "Demon in the bottle" story arc. I consider his version of ironman back then the iconic look for the classic yellow/red armor. A figure based on that armor is long overdue.

WWHHOOORRRAAAYYYYYY! Bendis is gone from marvel....though its a sad day for dc comics readers as dc had just comitted bendiscide.
Link to the announcement. https://www.polygon.com/platform/amp...comics?ref=yfp
I gotta go drink a beer in celebration. :D

1--OMG.
2--OMG??
1--Bendis is gone!
2--Gone?
1--Yes, gone.
2--Bendis is?
1--Yes.
2--Wow!
1--I know!
2--He's gone!
1--I know!
2--That's...
1--Yes.
2--....
1--Some is attacking out of character. And paying absolutely not one whit about continuity! Let's go!

Valid example of why I think that Bendis is a hack writer. This is a day for celebration.

Bendis was one of the major reasons I dropped Marvel back when he wrecked the Avengers to fill the roster with Spidey, Wolvy, Doc Strange, IF, DD, Cage, Sentry & a few more characters that were laughable to call "Earth's mightiest" So now Wolvy was an Avenger & X-men & be featured in 6-7 different titles every month? WTF! Sorry, The vast majority of characters that Bendis made into Avengers were not team players or in the case of Wolvy, were already on a team. IF & PM function way better as HFH, not as part of a team. Spiderman to me, has always been a solo hero who occasionally teams up with other heroes hence the great classic MTU series, DD is also another solo hero who works best on his own.

Agree, I felt like Bendis would take 1-2 charcters in a team book, concentrate on them, and the rest of the characters would be out of character, replaceable with anyone else, because they had an empty voice. He was great as a solo writer, beyond the total dismissal of continuity. Team books were not his forte. And neither were events, except for House Of M, which I thought was awesome even with the damage it did to Scarlet Witch's character. I don't know how he got that one so right yet every other event I read by him was trash.