To DC Comics fans, Flashpoint is an infamous story. It heralded the New 52, which saw characters like Wally West...

>To DC Comics fans, Flashpoint is an infamous story. It heralded the New 52, which saw characters like Wally West, Cassandra Cain, and Stephanie Brown disappear. It massively reshaped the DCU into something incredibly bleak and base in an attempt to do something more “youthful and edgy.”

>When Doctor Doom obtained the powers of the Beyonder at the end of Secret Wars II, it caused Reed Richards, Franklin Richards, and Molecule Man to remake the Marvel-616 universe. And look at the events that have taken place since: Iron Man is in a coma, Captain America is a Nazi, and there were truly terrible sequels to Civil War and The Clone Saga. There’s non-stop political soapboxing, the X-Men are an afterthought, and the Fantastic Four disappeared. All the good guys are bad guys, all the bad guys are good guys. Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. Yeah, thanks, Doc. You really made things better.

screenrant.com/doctor-doom-movie-worst-things-evil-acts/

Was just reading this article and found this tidbit. What do you think, is he right?

To point the issues solely at Secret Wars II is a bit disingenuous. The cracks had begun to show for a fairly long time even before it happened: Avengers vs. X-Men was a fucking tire fire, and really marked the point where Marvel really started trying to marginalize the X-Men. Carol became Captain Marvel in 2012, and writers have struggled to figure out what to do with her since.

The New 52 was organized at essentially the last minute (Geoff Johns has openly admitted that the decision was made partway through the writing of Flashpoint, and all writers at DC were given 6 months notice to wrap everything they had up), and its real biggest weakness was a lack of unified creative vision. Batman Inc. and Green Lantern continued as if nothing happened, 'Tec was pretty much the same save a few character revisions, while books like Teen Titans, Superman, and Wonder Woman had radical shake-ups that basically completely changed the character and the tone of their books, for better or worse.

>Batman Inc. and Green Lantern continued as if nothing happened,
It was literally a decision that the two best selling books got to retain their lore even if the circumstances now no longer made sense timewise.

I'd argue that the last good event Marvel had was Siege -- It topped off Dark Reign, which was at the very least interesting, seeing Osborn go from a B-List villain to an A-Lister and what would happen if someone like that managed to take control of the world.

Everything after that was handled badly, or at best was just boring.

And the end result was that we had a reboot where the two best-selling books completely ignored the continuity reset and were utterly hostile for people wanting to jump on.

As I said; indicative of how half-baked the entire thing was and how lacking it was in a unified creative vision.

If you really want to make the argument, you can say the earliest indications of Marvel's current issues (obsession with infighting, lack of regard to continuity, overly morose and depressing storytelling) started with Avengers Disassembled way back in 2004.

Oh indeed -- Then it wasn't exactly new to have heroes fight, it's been a staple of comics since forever, but that was when it became more about psychological and emotional issues than just "Who the fuck are you? WE MUST FIGHT!" like it had been in the past. Because of that, we got a lot of strange character changes for the sake of drama, disregarding continuity and turning these heroes, the beacons of hope and justice, into human people, for better or worse.

Green Lantern has more or less always told the idea of continuity to go fuck itself though. When Crisis happened it was a new earth with new stories, except for Hal and the GL corps who kept poking the fourth wall and calling attention to retcons and confirming they still had all their BS silver age power level shit. Hal got a new origin story in Emerald Dawn that was then promptly ignored in 90% of issues so that by the 90's he'd literally been a superhero since the late 50's and was old enough to have half his hair gone gray and that became his origin story, and what was when he didn't have entirely new orgin stories or elements thrown into random issues. But then they had to justify introducing Kyle so he became Parallax and more or less reset shit. Only Hal was the one doing the retconning and he got other powers after so it was a big clusterfuck.

Ollie of course told Hal that all this retcon bullshit was fucking retarded and bringing people back like that was cheap. So of course the moment Johns began his run everything was retconned in that exact way and basically destroyed whatever development Hal got, without ever retconning anything he did.

For those of you following along this means that Hal Jordan is currently a man in his 80's with the body of a man in his 30's that never actually lost his memories despite going through seven reboots and essentially watching every person he's ever known die, be reborn, and die again countless times. Except since this isn't an actual official stance so much as literal decades of sloppy editing regarding a B tier hero and generations of fans retconning shit to their liking, so Hal just kind of conveniently forgets stories that would still clearly have needed to happen because the people who were also in it DID get rebooted and Johns either forgot who's alive or dead and just never cared when he was writing beyond "throw as many named characters on the screen as possible for a cool splash page".

I kinda agree.
I really, REALLY enjoyed Hickman's Infinity/Beyonder Saga.

It was dark, it was the culmination of a LOT of storytelling that started since Civil War. Tony's and Steve's flawed ideals crystalized into a war that neither could win, so they became dark shadows of themselves. Tony became a weapons maker again and made weapons of annihilation ; meanwhile Captain America did not yield his ideals, even if meant that everyone must die and suffer for them, uncompromising, not even to save lives; and petty enough to go kill Tony when the world was ending.

I was hoping a reboot would begin a new beginning, and a fresh , new approach that would give us a new era of bold ideas and new hopes.

Now, all I have is SJW Marvel, Tony in a coma, Captain Nazi, no FF, no Xmen, dead Wolverine replaced by older non Wolverine/Wolverine, and Spiderman 's life is so fucked up it's unrecognizeable.

I dont know what to think.

>"Those SHIELD agents in the Savage Land during New Avengers 1st arc will be important later" -Bendis
They were skrulls the whole time!!!

Flashpoint was bad
Rebirth was/is good
Secret War the event was good
The post-Secret War status quo from Marvel is bad and continues to be bad

But that has more to do with the creators who stayed behind than it does with any changes to the status quo of continuity. The only guys I like that are still at Marvel ad Duggan and Ewing. And Hastings... kind of.

I think Marvel just needs a major roster shakeup. Guys like Brevoort, Bendis, Slott, Alonso are growing mold at this point. The stinky kind. Out with the old, in with the new.

>its real biggest weakness was a lack of unified creative vision

reboots are always a bad idea

gtfo with that "it would have been better if..." crap

some ideas are just bad ideas

I agree with both.
The New 52 was an attempt to make DC more palatable for Warner suits. You had some good stories, but it's undeniable that Johns wanted Origin to be the JL movie
Marvel's been a dumpster fire since nu Secret Wars.

>and there were truly terrible sequels to Civil War and The Clone Saga.


Harsh, but true.

Dead no More was fucking good.

>It massively reshaped the DCU into something incredibly bleak
Absolutely fucking absurd exaggeration.
I can't even think of any opening new 52 arcs that would be considered "dark" toned much less bleak except Court of Owls.

Flashpoint was garbage though

>is he right?
Not really no.
>Yeah, thanks, Doc. You really made things better.
Things were varied and brimming with potential in the patchwork of Doomworld, things became troubling after that.

I think you're the first person I've seen around here who enjoyed it. The only good things to come out of it were Kaine's return and Ben's resurrection, and the latter only became good once PAD started cleaning up Slott's mess.

>and there were truly terrible sequels to Civil War and The Clone Saga
He says that as if the originals were in any way good.

DC is the father and mother of capes. When they fail with something, it means any other cape will fail even harder at it.

It's because Hickman and Remender left

>end of Secret Wars II
Doesn't he mean Secret Wars III?

That's not how Secret Wars II ended. Secret Wars II ended decades before Civil War happened and years before the restarted the Clone Saga.

Cap wasn't a Nazi, I think he may have even been The Captain at that point.
And fuck, Rhodey was Iron Man for the first Secret Wars

>some ideas are just bad ideas
t. a bad writer

1- He didn't actually say that, just that sequels were much, much worse. Which they were.
2- The Clone Saga was long enough and varied enough in quality that there were definitely some highs in there until the whole thing ran too long and became a mess.

Secret Wars - a good enough event made to shill a toyline
Secret Wars II - the second most obnoxious mistake Jim Shooter made, and the first time a crossover event actually bogged down ongoings with bad tie-in issues for a fanfic level editorial OC to show off his infinite powerlevel.
Secret Wars III - Steve Englehart's take on the Beyonder/Doom stuff during his FF run in the late '80s.
Secret Wars 2015 would be Secret Wars IV, if Bendis' "Secret War" storyline doesn't take that unofficial title by Marvel reckoning.

they blame doom. when it was reed, franklin and molecule man that fucked up in remaking 616?
reed fucks up and doom gets the blame, every fucking time

>When Doctor Doom obtained the powers of the Beyonder at the end of Secret Wars II
What? That didn't happen in Secret Wars II. In fact, wasn't Secret Wars II the ONLY Secret Wars that didn't actually include Doom? It happened at the end of Secret Wars I. It also happened at the beginning of Secret Wars IV and he attempted but failed to do it in Secret Wars III.

No, he means Secret Wars IV, and even then, "Doom obtained the powers of the Beyonder at the end" is from Secret Wars I 30 years earlier, not II, III or IV.

It's pretty clear that whoever wrote this doesn't actually read comics and is just making this article based on here-say he heard from third party sources.

>When Doctor Doom obtained the powers of the Beyonder at the end of Secret Wars II, it caused Reed Richards, Franklin Richards, and Molecule Man to remake the Marvel-616 universe
Almost everything about this line is wrong.

>Doom obtained the power of the BEYONDERS not the BEYONDER
>this happened at the beginning, not the end
>it was Secret Wars IV, not Secret Wars II
>they remade the ENTIRE MULTIVERSE not just 616
>Reed, Franklin and Molecule Man having to remake the multiverse is because it was destroyed by the incursions and Doom's Molecule Man Bomb, which happened before Doom got the Beyonders' powers, ergo him getting those powers doesn't actually have much of anything to do with why they had to remake the multiverse

Aspects of what he said is true. Writers now at Marvel are at odds with each other, and putting out utter rubbish as a result. Nothing will change likely because people keep buying, the car is running but no one is in the driver's seat.

America is corrupt politically, SJW mentality is in comics but it's needed in real life but all they can do is step on the soapbox because that's all they can do.

Marvel refuses to give X-Men any spotlight out of anger with Fox over move rights and will destroy the Uncanny universe anyway they can.

Civil War was done for the movie, and the concept was horrible to begin with. Clone Saga was done so Millennials who might not have read or even was alive when the original CS came out to maybe see what it was like and it was bad.

Captain America was a Hydra agent? What? That completely doesn't make sence, it's throwing out decades of stories and will no doubt be reconned at some point.

>I was hoping a reboot would begin a new beginning, and a fresh , new approach
there was not reboot, no new beginnings and no new approaches

>Marvel refuses to give X-Men any spotlight
Like half of their books are X-books or feature mutants according to the most recent solicits thread.

Just look at Marvel now: Iron Man is an alcoholic, Captain America has been replaced by an alt-righter, there's Secret Wars II and Avengers #200. There's non-stop political soapboxing, the X-Men are flooding the shelves, and Dazzler has a solo.

>talks about Secret Wars II
>has a picture of Secret Wars III

No it wasn't.

How the fuck did you even read it like that? The snark there was to imply "You know how bad Civil War and the Clone Saga were? Those sequels were worse".

I agree, Hickman's Run was a great way to end the Marvel Universe. Marvel dropped the ball, after he left.

>>has a picture of Secret Wars III
What? That's not a picture of Secret Wars III. Pic related is a picture from Secret Wars III.

but he is right you pleb

Dead no more was as stale as the original clone saga

>Dead no more was as stale as the original clone saga

No it wasn't, it was even more stale than the original clone saga.

Yeah, you would think that, you bad writer.