I Apparently Really Didn't Like Fear Itself

I don't really feel like picking a topic. I feel like just sort of floating around and writing about whatever.

Last night I read the Fear Itself trade I am not sure why I expected it to be any good because it wasn't. I mean not really. I think I am being spoiled by DC. Having zombies that eat emotions? Yeah that was cool. The Sinestro Corps war? Oh yeah I loved that. I actually really love Flashpoint and the world without hope. I really really really hope they go back and visit it as an elseworld. The idea of batman's father becoming batman and his mother becoming the joker is just to appealing to let go. I loved the Final Crisis and all sorts of other things DC does. Fear Itself is a big bad snake bringing some thor like hammers to earth and having his new avatars spreading fear and whatnot. Whatever. Everyone lost hope except Captain America and Iron Man and human kind pulled together and the good guys won. Yawn. Whatever.

I was disapointed. Marvel events just don't seem to have the same amount of heart as the dc ones do. The characters don't really stop or reflect or even slow down. They slip into emergency mode then they keep going until whatever is going on is over. There isn't any paticular amount of character development but rather character reaffirmation. We know who everyone is and it gets reiterated even to the point where at the end you have Captain America forsaking his SHIELD command and swinging around Thor's hammer on the front lines because that is where he belongs. This event does nothing to shake up the status quo but rather to reaffirm it as something solid. This is who everyone is.

Contrast these events with the Marvel Space books and you'll really start to get a sense of what I mean. Over the course of the Space events the stakes are incredibly high and yet each of the main characters finds time for some real honest to god development through all the action. The people involved in these events were people. We got to know them, and we get to seem them change. In some cases they get redeemed, in others they fall from grace and become cosmic threats in their own right, in still others try their best and fail due to temptation or something else. These are amazing events and something everyone involved should be proud of. They are more than just relentless action scenes with "KEWL" moments. I mean fucking hell the whole Fear Itself story line feels like it was written by hero clix designers who really wanted a new excuse to stat out a new Mjölnir wielding captain america along with an ultra powered Tony Stark.

So whatever. Man I am disapointed in that book. Looking back it has been this way for awhile now. Ever since Avengers Disassembled. But I liked House of M, and I even really liked the Civil War, and I fucking loved the Dark Reign. Everything after that though just feels blah. The Secret Invasion was a massive misstep. See the thing is it could of been good. Very good in fact. The Skrulls became really well developed people in the space books who had needs and culture. Howeverm during the secret invasion they were just reduced to the villians of the week. They had no more motivation than conquest and they went back to being faceless mindless greened skin villians. The same thing happened in this event and in Siege to a lesser extent. Marvel is forgetting that great villians make great heroes. It also takes more than some magic hammers and killing paris to make people into great villians. Hell the hammer wielders didn't even speak english so there was no real way to get to know them. We had a name show up next to the newly empowered person who explained who they now are and then they went on a killing spree. Pure and simple, but not effective. Osbourn is a compelling villain, the Skrulls can be compelling villains, Doom, Magneto, Sin (red skull's daughter), et cetera. There was nothing compelling about the fear monger people except art design.

Whateva. Alright well lunch is over and looks like I found a topic pretty damn quickly.