It is a commonplace in Marvel comic books, particularly ones of a certain era, to waste several pages of the narrative at the beginning with empty scenes showing the super heroes’ battle abilities and finesse in generic battle scenes. The locus classicus is the Danger Room scene in The X-Men.
The splash page customarily begins with the X-Men seemingly spiritedly fighting one of their most notorious foes. After numerous pages (which we, the comic's humble buyers, have plainly invested and wasted whole cents in) the scene is revealed to be an exercise and an illusion. These were mere phantasms - robotic simulacra created by the Shiiar technology of the Danger Room. Cut to a panel of Kitty Pryde at the Danger Room controls. Eating a slice of pizza, stuck in the mid-Eighties, talking her usual glib “Mary-Sue” patter – beloved of exactly nobody.
This generic scene purportedly establishes the powers and peccadilloes of the characters for new, first-time “casual” readers. A similar scene is the opener of literally millions of comics: Spider-Man webspinning through New York and breezily espying a mugging in a back alley.
Must we be forced to behold this sight once again? Must we live it out anew, night after night? Spider-Man capturing the muggers, grinding them down with vapid one-liners that everybody (everybody) is weary of. He webs them up and further lightly humiliates them, then turns to their victims who recoil from him and call him a “nasty hooligan” or some similar synonym.
Cut to a scene of J. Jonah Jameson droning on about the “web-spinning menace”; or a Daily Bugle front page editorializing against the infamous Spinner of Webs.
Marvel Comics are boring aren’t they!!! I certainly wish they had never invented the Danger Room.
Add Danger Room scenes to my list of boring comics.
Also boring: “Pantheon” storylines that deal with characters from classical mythology.
The splash page customarily begins with the X-Men seemingly spiritedly fighting one of their most notorious foes. After numerous pages (which we, the comic's humble buyers, have plainly invested and wasted whole cents in) the scene is revealed to be an exercise and an illusion. These were mere phantasms - robotic simulacra created by the Shiiar technology of the Danger Room. Cut to a panel of Kitty Pryde at the Danger Room controls. Eating a slice of pizza, stuck in the mid-Eighties, talking her usual glib “Mary-Sue” patter – beloved of exactly nobody.
This generic scene purportedly establishes the powers and peccadilloes of the characters for new, first-time “casual” readers. A similar scene is the opener of literally millions of comics: Spider-Man webspinning through New York and breezily espying a mugging in a back alley.
Must we be forced to behold this sight once again? Must we live it out anew, night after night? Spider-Man capturing the muggers, grinding them down with vapid one-liners that everybody (everybody) is weary of. He webs them up and further lightly humiliates them, then turns to their victims who recoil from him and call him a “nasty hooligan” or some similar synonym.
Cut to a scene of J. Jonah Jameson droning on about the “web-spinning menace”; or a Daily Bugle front page editorializing against the infamous Spinner of Webs.
Marvel Comics are boring aren’t they!!! I certainly wish they had never invented the Danger Room.
Add Danger Room scenes to my list of boring comics.
Also boring: “Pantheon” storylines that deal with characters from classical mythology.
