LunarKnight

Hey that was crucial to the plot. It was necessary to create a pointless sacrifice scenario that could have easily been averted by NOT putting the minigun on the asteroid rover.

That's pretty much been my #1 thought reading almost every post in this thread.

I really have no problem with bringing back Bucky. It's not like a body was every found or anything. It's like Bart said in the David vs Goliath episode, "surely the blast that failed to kill me, managed to kill the giant". Steve and Bucky simply survived the same death (though Steve has a more plausible reason for it).

Oh it is. No questions there. There's just good retcons and bad rectons. Those that take the entire history of a character into account and piece together a logical fix for another writer's mistakes, and those that just lazily say "a wizard did it" or change things up just to be shocking and sell books. I'm only really bothered by the latter two styles.

Since the Clone debacle was almost entirely a matter of making Peter the real Peter again, one solution was to make it so there was never a clone to begin with. Replace cloning with a time loop where the original Peter is apparently killed, but is actually thrown back in time (probably with amnesia or some other kludge, I forget the details). He then takes the name Ben Riley and sets out to take back the Spiderman mantle from the apparent phony. The idea was to make neither one a clone, but both of them Peter, just as part of a time loop.

It'd be a really cool story if it was intended from the beginning, but they let the Clone Saga run without a solution for so long it was nearly impossible to come up with something that made sense. Too much was written without an intended conclusion. A similar time loop concept is used to great affect recently in **MINOR SPOILERS** BlazBlue for what its worth.

That was the intention from the beginning, but the idea was met with about as much support as New Coke replacing Coke Classic (which was never a marketing trick, fwiw, it was a genuine, giant corporate mistake). That's the whole problem with the Clone Saga. It was Marvel trying to backpedal their replacement when they realized people didn't actually want one.

The Mephisto ending is the best one I've seen. Peter apparently gets incinerated, but is actually unknowingly thrown back in time, making him both Peter and Ben at the same time.

Yup, but that wasn't the case with Cap. Bucky wasn't even supposed to carry the shield for the entire story arc, but proved popular enough to get a little more time. The reveal at the end of Reborn #4 was supposed to happen in #40 as part of the same story in which Steve died (parallel in many ways, to which the Red Skull died in Issue #1). Things changed when the death of Steve proved to be a bigger deal than anyone expected, leading for a desire to make it seem more permanent, mixed with the unexpected popularity of his replacement. Really, the story was written with Steve's death as a beginning to the story, and his return being the end.

I kinda liked the proposed Mephisto ending to the Clone Saga. It was sorta clever all things considering. Really though, the biggest problem with the Clone Saga was that the ending was ever in doubt. A good story works towards its conclusion from the first page. Obviously, a lot of this had to do with Marvel thinking New Coke would actually work this time, but when history repeated itself there they were way too slow in setting a new goal for the writers.

I like the BN tie ins though; they make the event seem more alive when Batman and Superman and everyone are fighting them as well. We just didn't really need the extended go nowhere story dragged out over 3 issues. Even cutting them down to 2 issues a piece would have gotten the point across without deluding it so far. The same was true of most of the Secret Invasion tie ins. Nothing wrong with a thin premise as long as you don't try to stretch it too far.

What's hard to understand about some of the books taking place before and after the event? They haven't been fighting the zombies for 4 months; I believe they're still on the first night. There's no reason an ongoing story has to stop and fight zombies when that evening most likely just took place after the current story arc and before the next. Secret Invasion was particularly guilty of this, outright derailing X-Factor into oblivion and hitting up books for no reason like Guardians of the Galaxy and Nova (though the latter two rolled it in pretty well). I'm personally very glad every DC title right now isn't dropping their story to fight zombies.

Now, its important not to ignore the event entirely or you get a situation like Final Crisis where no one seemed to notice Darkseid leveled civilization and became the supreme lord and master of earth or WWH where the Hulk destroyed all of Manhattan, but no one seemed to notice. The event specific banner titles like BN: Batman or SI: X-Men do a pretty good job of making it feel like the events effect everyone, though they should start doing them as one shots rather than extended stories. I'm totally down for "and then the X-Men killed some Skrulls" but 3 full issues of it, clearly with nothing of real importance just feels unnecessary. Just one issue to play with the concept is all they really need.

I can totally make sense with the concept of Emerald Twilight. I just can't make sense of the story as its printed on the page. Especially the bit when the all powerful Guardians decide the proper response to all this is to simply kill themselves.

You said it yourself. Prophecies are best taken with a grain of salt. Just because it says the spectrums will rise before the black descends doesn't mean the spectrums rising will actually cause the black to descend. Specifically, its Scar's death that seems to give Nekron the chance to act in this world. I really don't think the creation of the lights was the trigger; specifically because Nekron could act before the red light was even harnessed.

And back to the prophecy thing; just because they're meant to shake up the recipient doesn't mean they're simply lies. The prophecies of the Inversions appear to happen, just not in the way you initially assume. I'll be really surprised if in some way, the Guardians don't take Carol away and Hal isn't forced to fight them. It just may be for reasons other than the ones assumed from the way it was presented.

I don't think that's really true. Nekron seemed to get his foot in the door the same way he originally did. In both of his stories, his glimpse into our world appears to be triggered by the death of a Guardian. I really don't think their numbers need to be reduced. They just need to be scattered. They're great fodder villains, and space is an awfully big place for them to hide.

I wonder if Carol will join with Predator and become the last Sapphire (and possible a hero this time around). There's still plenty to see with the Sapphires. I sincerely doubt Johns has forgotten Atrocious's prophecy.

That's because the light is the actual object, the emotion is merely the power source. You can have more power sources than implemented uses after all. Every car needs a source of power to run, but you don't need to build a car for every power source that exists. They also like to explain certain emotions as blends like sadness being a mix of Fear and Love.

I suspect they'll all remain in one form or another. They'll probably scatter to their various sectors rather than bunch up as giant armies, but there's no reason to outright destroy them. The Sinestro Corps continues to exist for just that reason. They stopped being an army and were turned into more of individual criminals (ie GL 2897.2 requesting help apprehending local Sinestro Corps operative). You can play the same game with the Red team and Larfleeze is just a single villain to use as necessary. The new "good" teams are small enough to be a minor factor in the future. The blues can take a pilgrimage to spread hope, but there's not enough to pair 1:1 with the greens anyway. Likewise, the Indigo will go back to wandering. Its not like anyone ran into them before.

The blacks on the other hand will be interesting. Obviously they won't continue to run as they are now, but I'll be curious to see where they end up. I suspect their battery will be destroyed and Nekron packing, but I doubt they'll vanish forever. My guess is that Black Hand, being like Ion, will retain a certain degree of autonomous power and will be able to raise the dead in a limited fashion. You have to shut down Nekron of course, but there's no reason you couldn't keep the Black Lanterns around on a smaller scale.

Matt Fraction's pretty good at this as well. He was writing things in for Iron Man way back when he first started the Order and the "solution" to the death of Tony was written into the very first issues of World's Most Wanted.

Brubaker does something similar, though I get the impression he more plans out story beats in advance, then fills time until he feels the need to reveal them. Reborn could have easily happened a year ago, but the interest in the title was high enough the machine could break and be saved for another day.

Morrison clearly plans things out ahead; they're just insane things that no one can actually follow. He wrote the sequel to Final Crisis two years before the event after all.

Also, Marvel's cosmic team seems to have a handle on long term planning. I don't know how intentional it really was, but the big bad of Realm of the Kings appeared in the very first issue of Guardians of the Galaxy. They're either excellent planners or they do a phenomenal job of winging it naturally.

Peter David used to do a great job of this for X-Factor. He seems to have given up trying as Marvel continually shoved story mandates down his throat, sadly. No sense trying to plan when they won't let you reveal the story naturally anyway (which is really both sad and funny when you consider how obscure the book is).

I forget the telepathy bit. Part of the reason Wanda was able to affect the entire world like that was due to Xavier's "touch every mind on the planet" trick (that's regularly used to create world threatening events come to think of it). The whole thing is still a change to the originally intent of her power. Originally she threw bolts of energy that caused "bad luck" to occur to the affected target. Now it "rewrites history to alter its current state" which is the new "realistic" take on "bad luck". Bendis just took this a step further and made her "target" the entire planet, loosely explained with Xavier being there.

The other bit about it was that she'd lost control of her power. In a sense, it was like Cyclops. She was basically altering history around herself without actively trying to. Its not all that different from the usual story where an energy manipulator loses the ability to direct their blasts, leading to a big city wide explosion or something, except she was randomly firing blasts of causality.

Amazing the difference delivery makes, eh? It also helps that Marvel dealt with the continuity gap immediately with Decimation, making it clear that a whole lot of mutants simply had their powers turned off at the moment in time right before the reality wipe. Having immediate consequences for warping reality eased the blow significantly (like having some guy immune to lava suddenly find himself incinerated). Having characters remember what life was like before the wipe gives some kind of purpose to it, since its an event they actually have to respond to.

One More Day mostly just sucks on hamfisted, not even going to try and make sense of this, screw you, delivery. Things happened, but they didn't happen, but people remember they happened, but don't remember. Worst of all, the story has no consequence. Peter did something big, but since it did/didn't happen in the first place, there's nothing to build off of. A change occurred, but the authors have to write this world in which we're all familiar with things we were never told.

Back to House of M; I think the greater criticism isn't the nature of the delivery, but the general absurdity of the outcome. "No More Mutants, except the cool ones and ones central to the story, they're good still".

So, I referenced this above, but here's what happened.

Someone at Marvel said, "everything's gotta be realistic!" Dragons can't talk, that's silly. They can only communicate through telepathy. That's more realistic.

Eventually this hit Wanda. "Bad luck, how could a power give other people bad luck?" So, someone got stuck trying to come up with a more realistic interpretation of her power. What they decided was that she was actually altering history, unconsciously altering time so that a guy forgot to clean his gun this morning and it jams up or creating an alternate universe where he didn't tie his shoes causing him to trip. Someone took this and ran full on with the alters reality until the interpretation was used to the extreme of Disassembled and House of M.

But, hey? At least its more realistic.

There's a fantastic interview somewhere of where that comes from. The best part of the quote goes something like "things had to be more realistic, so like, dragons had to talk telepathically because that was more realistic somehow".

It sort of makes sense in the context of the decade that created it. Don't forget, this is the same era that brought us Adam-X, the X-treme X-Man who's covered in blades to cut people open and make their blood Xsplode!

On that note, I have to hand it to Marvel. They really know how to take a bad trend and crystallize it in its purest form. This decade they took the trend of emotionally crippled, self loathing superheroes and personified it in Penance; the guy who walks around in a spike filled suit because he needs to cut himself to feel enough emotion to use his powers.

I'd suggest perhaps the two should fight in some kind of soul crushing meta commentary on society, but realistically as soon as Penance cut himself, Adam would make him go boom. Then again, I'm sure someone will do it anyway.

... his city and no one he cared about. Clearly such grief would drive someone to murder everyone they DO care about.

I pick and choose, then selectively remove the bile as necessary. Sometimes its fun to watch something nosedive into an absolute trainwreck, but that doesn't mean I need to display it.