Thread 149930467

I've heard this described as the worst thing Marvel ever created. Is that hyperbolic?

>>149930467 (OP)
>Is that hyperbolic?
Absolutely. It's not even the worst thing Marvel created that year, anon. It's not even bad.

Most of the sequels, spin-offs and knockoffs were pretty bad, but the original event was one of the most popular and well-regarded X-Men stories of the 90s.

>>149930467 (OP)
It's OK the best part are the redesigns many of them iconic. Dark beast and nate grey were fun additions to the main universe after it was over.

>>149930467 (OP)
What about Trouble?

>>149930467 (OP)
One More Day was worse

>>149930467 (OP)
That's not OMD or Trouble

>>149930467 (OP)
>OMD
>Trouble
>Marville
>Secret Wars II
>Avengers Disassembled
>House of M
>Decimation
>Civil War
>AvX
>IvX
>All-New All-Different
>Age of Ultron
>Civil War II
There's a big list of shit that's worse than AoA

>>149931100
To say nothing of Age of Revelation, which a shiittier ripoff of AoA

>>149930467 (OP)
Krakoa era

>>149930467 (OP)
This isn't even on the top 40

>>149930896
>>149931100
>trouble
Whats that story about?

>>149931835
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p33xZ0obsAc

>>149931835
Despite what people say it's a boilerplate teen soap opera comic that only has notoriety because at one point in development the idea of it being canon to be the background of Ultimate May, Ben, Mary, and Richard Parker was tossed around which in turn has morphed into "Trouble was actually 616 canon until fan backlash made them change it" because comic fans will believe pretty much anything as long as they can be upset about it.

>>149931835
What if Ultimate Peter Parker's family was orgy having whores and he was May's son with Richard and Ben was sterile? Except at the time it wasn't presented as a what if, that was the cope out after it got universally panned.

Above you can read a Marvel's employee perspective on why they're saints.

>>149931667
anon it's not even started yet

>>149930467 (OP)
Look, man, I started reading Marvel from 2012 to 2020, recently picked it up again, and let me tell you something… 90% of the events made in the 2010s and 2020s FUCKING SUCK and are worse than Age of Apocalypse.
Age of Ultron sucked.
Original Sin sucked.
Avengers vs. X-Men sucked.
Infinity was good.
AXIS was entertaining.
Secret Wars was great.
Civil War II was awful.
Inhumans vs. X-Men was bad.
Secret Empire was terrible too (the Ultron part almost saved it, but it was too brief).
Infinity Wars was interesting but bad overall and very forgettable—who the hell even remembers that Gamora went evil and fused everyone's soul? Almost nobody.
War of the Realms, the first good event since Secret Wars, took 5 damn years to get a proper main event, can you believe it?
Empyre—fucking horrible, not interesting, boring, and almost as forgettable as Infinity Wars. The only interesting part is the art where some women were drawn pretty sexy, that’s it.

And well… here I am, time to read King in Black now. Hope it’s good.

>>149931916
>Infinity was good
>Secret Wars was great
Hackman fuck off

>>149931916
>And well… here I am, time to read King in Black now. Hope it’s good.
If you're 12 and barely literate you're in for a treat.

>>149931934
>everything by Hackman has to be bad reeeeeee

>>149932256
not everything he writes is bad (he's definitely wildly overrated but that's another conversation) but those two are definitely bad

>>149930467 (OP)
is the other way around is the last good thing ever, that Marvel Comics did.

>>149931916
>Infinity was good.
Is pure shit with descompressive storytelling
we have thanos' son called THANE at home, also inhumans outside FF are shit
>AXIS was entertaining.
Is OK at his best.
>Secret Wars was great.
IS LITERALLY THE REASON WHY MARVEL IS SHIT FROM 2015 UNTIL TODAY, MARVEL DIED that day
>Civil War II was awful.
Is pure shit

>>149930467 (OP)
It's not even the worst X-Men thing Marvel ever published. That said, I can understand that making every non-mutant hero and villain job off-screen to Jobpocalypse could upset people.

>>149930467 (OP)
Age of Apocalypse has plenty of good stuff in it

>>149932256
Any event comic written by Hickman is bad

>>149933451
Who gives a shit, it’s an X-men comic. Apocalypse awakens decade earlier than he was meant to and wrecks everyone because it happens so early that superheroes aren’t a thing really

>>149930467 (OP)
X-Men in general is bad.

>>149930467 (OP)
>I've heard this described as the worst thing Marvel ever created. Is that hyperbolic?

Anyone saying that's the worst thing Marvel ever created is some literal Boomer whose mindset is stuck in the 90s, who's still complaining about 90s comics and either didn't read anything that came after the 90s, or in denial that post-90s comics can be worse.

>>149935042
Wasn't AoA very highly regarded in the 90s?

>>149936172
It was popular, but there were likely some Boomers complaining

>>149933411
>also inhumans outside FF are shit
Completely wrong. When they are in a F4 comic they have no agency as they need their help with whatever nonsense, it can never be the other way round as it wouldn't make a good F4 comic if its all Inhuman focused. Its like Thor being an Avenger, he just sucks because otherwise the story doesn't work.

>>149933514
Yeah, that other anon is voicing a common complaint about the story by people who haven't actually even read it, and have some misconception that Apocalypse soloed the FF, Avengers, and all the other non-mutant heroes, when the reality is that he got awakened a decade or two before most of those characters had their origins, gathered an army of mutants, and his forced launched a full scale invasion of New York, where most of the people who would've become superheroes got killed instead.

There was a side mini revealing what happened to some of the characters who got out of the US, or who just weren't in New York when things went down. Don Blake lived, but never learned he was Thor. The Hulk existed, but he wasn't a good guy. Gwen Stacy survived, because of course Marvel editorial had her survive.

>>149938532
Yeah like at least this put the effort into trying to make it plausible even if there were possible mistakes that seeped through

>because of course Marvel editorial had her survive.

Less to do with that and more to do with doing a shock alteration. Like, "holy shit in this timeline Peter Parker is dead but Gwen Stacy is alive!" If it was done nowadays people would just think it was Marvel editorial having a fixation on Gwen.

>>149930467 (OP)
what retard thinks age of apocalypse is bad, let alone the worst thing ever. let me guess, some pronoun using tranny.

>>149939025
I too hate pronouns! And adjectives!

>>149938981
>Yeah like at least this put the effort into trying to make it plausible even if there were possible mistakes that seeped through
I think they covered their bases pretty well with explaining what happened to most of the characters who would've been around in early Silver Age Marvel, IIRC Hank Pym and Wasp were the only ones we didn't get answers for, and both presumably just died in the initial invasion before they got their powers.

The only glaring mistake I can remember was one of the later AoA prequel stories featuring Absorbing Man, a character who shouldn't have powers in a timeline with no Thor.

>Like, "holy shit in this timeline Peter Parker is dead but Gwen Stacy is alive!" If it was done nowadays people would just think it was Marvel editorial having a fixation on Gwen.
Yeah, fair point, it just ended up looking worse in retrospect when it became obvious editorial and writers do have a fixation on her.

>>149933451
>That said, I can understand that making every non-mutant hero and villain job off-screen to Jobpocalypse could upset people.

Did you even read it?

Matt Murdock was a kid when Apocalypse invaded and years later got blinded a different way. The Fantastic Four never got their powers and Reed and Johnny were killed during one of Apocalypse's attacks. Don Blake never remembered that he was Thor. It's unknown if Peter became Spider-Man because for some reason Magento and Rogue's kid has a Spider-Man mask at one point. Apocalypse invaded before Banner became the Hulk, so Banner became something like the Hulk a different way years later.

>>149939084
I also don't think they ever found Captain America yet, did they?

>>149931915
I can just tell.

>>149939116
>It's unknown if Peter became Spider-Man because for some reason Magento and Rogue's kid has a Spider-Man mask at one point.
That's from the awful sequel mini written ten years later, by Marvel's current EIC, who clearly didn't know Peter was meant to have died before he ever got his powers.

>Apocalypse invaded before Banner became the Hulk, so Banner became something like the Hulk a different way years later.
IIRC Banner still had the same origin, he just wasn't anywhere near New York when Apocalypse started attacking, and fled the country. This Hulk never evolved past his initial grey form, and just got more and more amoral.

>>149939130
True, Namor died in the invasion, still an amnesiac vagrant, so he never lived to free Captain America from the ice. I think a text feature in the back of one of the comics did address this.

>>149930467 (OP)
Was Age of Apocalypse better or worse than the 80s X-Men events (Mutant Massacre, Fall of the Mutants, Inferno)?

>>149939231
probably one of the best 90s events out of marvel and it was self contained once upon a time

>>149939317
I asked if people thought it was better than 80s X-Men events?

Who would win, mankind's evolutionary superiors or gun?

>>149940668
Most X-Men are weak to guns, of those that aren't most of them are weak to guns in certain circumstances. The X-Men are buoyed by a handful are really powerful members while the lot of them are glass cannons.

>>149940958
I'm pretty sure I remember Gambit deflecting bullets with his staff or with pure speed, yet he died by a bullet in the head shot by a random goon. Aside from Wolverine, most would die by the same. If I break in the school and shoot Cyclops while he's sleeping, he's not coming back from that.

>>149939212
>That's from the awful sequel mini written ten years later, by Marvel's current EIC, who clearly didn't know Peter was meant to have died before he ever got his powers.

I can't 100% blame this on ol Yoshida on account the editor should've also been on top of this. But then again this was also the 00s where they didn't care much about details

>>149930467 (OP)
wrong

>>149930467 (OP)
It's honestly just... there. Completely inoffensive.
I didn't love it, but didn't hate it either.

>>149933411
Marvel was shit since about Disassembled.
I could go further and say that a lot of the bad aspects of modern Marvel started in Alias but that upsets people enough to call me a "schizo" and a "troll" for some reason.

Crazy that we've got a Marvel's worst thread with nary a mention of the clone saga or heroes reborn.

>>149931915
Do you seriously trust current Marvel editorial?

>>149945407
I'd rather read Heroes Reborn AND the Clone Saga over nearly everything >>149931916 mentioned

>>149931903
Sounds like Marvel shill gaslighting

One World Under Doom

>>149945407
Despite its reputation the Clone Saga doesn't come close to being as bad as 90% of the other events in this thread

>>149930467 (OP)
Where did you hear that? I've never seen anyone say that. It's just mediocre and unnecessary.

>>149945407
Clone Saga complaints are a secondary thing, it was such a nothing event.

>>149931100
I don't think Secret Wars II deserves to be on this list with the rest of this shit... Beyonder turning into a black guy to hang out in the hood was fun.

>>149945407
Clone Saga wasn't that bad. It was just long.

>>149945745
Heroes Reborn was essentially a proto-version of Ultimate. Even though it was technically the 'real, original' versions of the characters, it was also an AU that had no real impact on them. As much as critics and a lot of the existing fans of those characters hated it, putting some of the biggest star artists in the industry to work on those characters really brought in a lot of new readers, and showed Marvel could make the FF and Avengers characters popular and successful if they just made the effort to try, and it led to the subsequent Heroes Return relaunches being back to basics stories within the main continuity.

There's really no reason to be salty about Heroes Reborn unless you were really invested in some of the pre-HR runs that got completely derailed by it, or the very mention of Jim Lee or Rob Liefeld provokes you into a deranged spergout.

>>149946285
this is objectively wrong

>>149946696
Not that anon, but the truth about the Clone Saga is that it has good parts and bad parts, it has new characters people liked, and it has parts that were spectacularly bad ideas.

The "Peter is the clone, Ben is the original" retcon actually got reversed within just over a year, which makes it less of an open wound than most of the later bad Spider-Man stories, and the absolute state of Spidey comics from OMD onwards gives a lot of people some perspective. The late 90s Byrne/Mackie era was worse than the Clone Saga, and even a lot of that doesn't seem quite so bad in hindsight now you know how bad things have gotten since then.

>>149946696
I would sooner reread the entire Clone Saga than anything that has come out in the past 15 years, let me tell you.
That being said, Clone Saga was a clear step down from the Michelinie/DeMatteis era, which was peak Spidey as far as I'm concerned.

>>149945206
I agree with you from 2004 to 2011, marvel stuff still is readable (disassembled to thanos imperative) but from 2012 to 2015 is like saying goodbye to a dead body.

>>149946655
Peter David Hulk fan here, Heroes Reborn fucked my shit up

>>149946655
Not that anon but, personally I disliked how after HR the FF's secondary cast was erased for a long time. Doom jr disappeared as Reed's father and half sister. Johnny' s skrull wife as well.

>>149930467 (OP)
It's probably the only good X-Men comic.

>>149945745
>>149945980
>>149946148
>>149946285
Holy fuckin' shit, recency bias is a real thing.

>>149950931
I was around to read Heroes Reborn and the Clone Saga and dislike much of them. Now I'd rather read those over Civil War II, AvX, Age of Ultron, Original Sin, and most of that other crap that one anon listed.

>>149930467 (OP)
No, it is one of the best events.

>>149931916
>Infinity was good.

no it wasn't

>>149945407
Heroes Reborn looks awful and has trite and childish dialogue but actually isn't bad at the conceptual level. This came at a time when nobody was buying Avengers comic books at all. There wasn't even one Avengers title in the top 300 floppies of 1994 or 1995 (1996 we don't even have figures for because Diamond/Heroes World fuckery). Something had to be done and a flat reboot - given nobody who read Marvel Comics at the time was really reading Avengers - wasn't the worst idea.

Giving it to Liefeld? Terrible idea. Outsourcing to Liefeld's company, which turned out to just be Liefeld in two trenchcoats misunderstanding how disguises work? Absolutely terrible idea. But the actual concepts, up to about the midway point where Marvel finally twigged that they'd made a mistake giving it to Liefeld, the top selling comic books guy of the era? Not bad. It's like a proto-Ultimate with less incest and cannibalism.

>>149950931
Develop an opinion of your own instead of going off from elderly collectors having a fit about a halfhearted arc where only there or four creatives total put any effort into - and they weren't even around for most of it - while everyone else dragged their feet and outright ignored the fake premise.

>>149946655
>There's really no reason to be salty about Heroes Reborn unless you were really invested in some of the pre-HR runs that got completely derailed by it, or the very mention of Jim Lee or Rob Liefeld provokes you into a deranged spergout.

The thing is, people forget there was only one title that people were legit upset about losing--the Waid/Garney Captain America, which was getting positive buzz at the time. Hulk by PAD still continued but it was obvious it got derailed by having Banner sent off to the Heroes Reborn Universe. Maybe arguably people might've been upset about losing Fantastic Four but people had been criticizing DeFalco's F4 for a while. But even back then I don't really get the outrage over Avengers and Iron Man because at that time they just got through The Crossing and Iron Man was a teenager. If you think Heroes Reborn Iron Man and Heroes Reborn Avengers look like shit comics, it's one thing, but claiming they're worse than what immediately came before? Hell no.

Now people disliking that the characters were taken outside of 616 and into the Heroes Reborn universe, I could see. Remember, there was no knowing at the time it started how long Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld were going to be on there. Like a month before Liefeld was off his books, he had already mentioned what he had planned for upcoming stories (bringing in the Invaders, Squadron Supreme, a Platt-drawn story involving aliens that eventually got its pages repurposed into Fighting American). Hell a while back in the podcast he revealed that had Heroes Reborn gone on for a second year he was going to bring in the Heroes Reborn universe's Daredevil and Kingpin. But if you didn't like Jim Lee or Rob Liefeld at the time I could see why you wouldn't like this arrangement.

>>149951747
liefeld fucking sucks, but for some reason people buy his trash to this day. he moved books regardless of how bad it looked at the time.

>>149946734
Yeah, if you read the Clone Saga as it was being released, there was no way of knowing when it was gonna end. It was running through what, four Spider-Man books a month? The "Peter is the Clone/Ben is the original" idea basically told the readers they followed a clone for the last 20 years. If they had not done that, or resolved that part of the plot point sooner (like within the next month or two) more people would've been okay with Peter and MJ leaving and Ben taking over as Spider-Man for a little while.

Marvel forgets that with bad ideas they need to immediately fix them and not sit around on them otherwise things go bad to the point where not even that one fix fully works.

>>149930822
>>149930888
>>149930896
Spider-Man fans really do whine the loudest.
Ultimatum is unequivocally the worst comic Marvel has ever published.

>>149950931
I've read the Clone Saga three times now and I enjoy it. It has plenty of good stories, which is more than can be said about most of the things in this thread

>>149948349
>Peter David Hulk fan here, Heroes Reborn fucked my shit up
You still had a Hulk book which was still written by Peter David thoughever. You just got a more amoral Hulk for a year while he and Banner were separated. Of the six books affected by HR, Hulk fans had the least to complain about.

>>149949168
That's a valid complaint, and most of those characters haven't been treated well on the rare occasions we've seen them since.

>>149951747
Anon, it sounds like your Liefeld derangement syndrome has you somehow thinking Rob's Extreme Studios was just him and nobobody else, and you're buying into the official Marvel line that they took Avengers and Captain America away from Extreme because the books were "so bad", as if Marvel Comics suddenly cared about the quality of their books and those titles were so egregiously worse than some of the other things they've published. Liefeld's version of events sounds more plausible, that a bankrupt Marvel tried to forcibly renegotiate the contracts for a lot less money, he pulled out, but Jim Lee went for it, angling to leverage the success of Heroes Reborn into a top-level position at Marvel.

And Avengers was a book that was neglected by Marvel for years, but I'm not sure it was selling as badly as you think it was. Comichron.com's records before the Heroes World era show sales through Diamond in the first half of 1995 for Avengers were all within their top 100 books, usually in the 60s or 70s, and outselling characters like Ghost Rider and Punisher who 90s guys always insist were more popular.

>>149954271
>Liefeld's version of events sounds more plausible, that a bankrupt Marvel tried to forcibly renegotiate the contracts for a lot less money,

if the books were selling that wouldn't be necessary or wise

sounds like you've got Liefeld's cock in your ass syndrome

>>149930467 (OP)
It required you to read every fucking book to get the full story back when Marvel raised the prices of the Xbooks by 25% because they could get away with it, PLUS the fact that it pretty much irreversibly derailed the X-Men spin offs, with Gen X being knifed in the womb four issues in while Xfactor and X force NEVER fucking recovered when they came back from hiatus

>>149952439
The Waif Cap erun actually was astroturfed as being popular. It didn't boost sales and fans HATED it and yet, Waid had Wizard sucking his dick and hating Heroes Reborn purely because they wanted their buddy restored to the book, while also shitting all over Gruenwald's Cap run even though Mark only just died because Waid HATED Gruenwald.

When he came back, Waid continued to suck and sales were down.

>>149941752
not that many marvel heroes are actually bullet-proof especially compared to DC where Superman/Wonder Woman and their related supporting cast and villains mean any villain who deals with the Justice League has to be way stronger than say the Avengers.

Even Spider-Man isn't actually bullet-proof, he's way stronger than he is durable. There's a shit-ton of DC heroes who can survive a direct hit from an ICBM and only a handful of marvel ones who can, and besides Hulk most of the marvel ones are healing the damage rather than shrugging it off

>>149952439
It's important to remember that a lot of the things going on in these books in the year before Heroes Reborn were deliberate attempts by Marvel editorial to keep their jobs, and the jobs of their freelancers, by trying to get attention on their books and spike sales any way they could, to try and convince Marvel's execs to call off negotiations with Lee and Liefeld and not outsource those books. Bringing in Waid and Ellis to write Captain America and Thor was basically the equivalent of a sports team hiring ringers, but they didn't spike sales enough for the execs, who had hopes of Heroes Reborn producing million-selling books, and didn't understand how delusional this was, as the industry was in a very different state by the mid 90s. When HR was announced, Wizard magazine spearheaded a fan campaign to keep Waid and Garney on Cap's book instead of giving it to Liefeld (which in turn probably was a key moment in a lot of comics fandom turning against Liefeld), but they couldn't do anything, the contracts were already signed.

Teen Iron Man was obviously a failed experiment that didn't help sales, and HR just forced a faster end to it, but it's understandable that anyone reading FF or Avengers at the time might be upset by pre-HR plots being derailed and characters dropped from the books afterwards, and mistreated by later runs.

The initial HR contracts were for a year, with the possibility to extend for longer if both parties wanted to, that's why there were ideas for a second year.

>>149954357
>if the books were selling that wouldn't be necessary or wise
The books WERE selling, and selling better than they had been selling in many years. And if the people running Marvel only made decisions that were necessary and wise they wouldn't have been bankrupted in the first place, plus the whole thing having created a lot of bad blood internally, with editorial seething about the execs outsourcing four books to people a lot of them considered "traitors" for having left to form Image.

>sounds like you've got Liefeld's cock in your ass syndrome
Grow up, you pathetic dick.

>>149954427
>It required you to read every fucking book to get the full story
You could just read the bookending oneshots and the two main X-Men books and understand the main story. Reading all the other books gave you the full details of all the various side-quests, and the stories of Nate Grey, or Cyclops and Havok, but you got enough details from the bookends to follow what was going on.

>back when Marvel raised the prices of the Xbooks by 25% because they could get away with it,
Didn't they start out with the more expensive "deluxe paper" editions being released a few weeks before the regular editions, then phased out the regular editions later in the year? That was pretty bad of them.

>PLUS the fact that it pretty much irreversibly derailed the X-Men spin offs, with Gen X being knifed in the womb four issues in while Xfactor and X force NEVER fucking recovered when they came back from hiatus
Generation X didn't really seem to suffer in terms of sales or fanbase from AoA, despite the complaints. It's the later creative team changes that killed that book's popularity, while X-Factor and X-Force's popularity declined due to changing writers after AoA, in X-Factor's case, several months after AoA. The entrenched fandom meant it took some time for the books sucking to really affect sales at all, and even then they were still doing respectable numbers.

If you think about it Nate Grey is the Miles Morales of the 90s

>>149955272
He's a younger, more powerful AU version of a popular character, but Nate Grey wasn't set up as Cable's successor, nor did any of his stories ever involve Cable dying and Nate replacing him, nor an AU version of one of Cable's love interests being set up as Nate's girlfriend. Nate boned Cable's mom instead. The closest viable equivalent would be if Miles hooked up with Aunt May.