I could never get into comics because I actually find them near impossible to read. I guess I’m just too used to books. Which is a shame because I wanted to read the full Fruits Basket manga and I tried twice, I just can’t follow it. I am considering trying again for The Sandman ones.
Sure, Zombies and other apocalypse tropes are popular too. And the Superhero movies can be fun as long as you don’t have your brain turned on. I can suspend disbelief to accept a couple of premises that move a SF story along like FTL or transporters. But just accepting that Ironman can hit the ground at hundreds of MPH and not turn into jelly inside his impervious suit is a lot to ask amid many dozens of other physics and logic defying details in an Avengers movie. Maybe I’m just a curmudgeon that way. I remember wondering why Steve Austin’s spine didn’t crumble between his cyborg arm and legs when he lifted a car.
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On the subject of Iron Man, shouldn’t he be Arno Stark soon? (2020?)
Maybe that’ll be the Spider-Man MCU story? (Including Machine Man for @othermichael)
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Yes, you are. (emphasis mine)
If you can suspend disbelief about Thor coming to Earth from Asgard, the silly physical impossibilities shouldn’t really bother you. 
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I don’t see why that’s true. Accepting one given is not the same as suspending all logic and physics. It can be argued that’s the difference between SF and Fantasy. When there’s no consistent constraints, how can there be drama? IMHO Potterland ran off the rails when polyjuice became the go-to solution for all problems. It had very little restraints and tremendous power.
So a big blonde god is cool but Stark having a technological means to not be crushed isn’t? Check!
Some people enjoy things you don’t. It’s a thing that happens. I’m sure you like things I don’t like.
The world continues to turn.
It’s still just handwavium which would otherwise not be relevant to the story. Whether people say the suit has “inertial dampeners” or “faerie dust” is a purely aesthetic distinction, unless they are willing to go into relevant details. I like hard SF, but I still roll my eyes at reviews which insist that explanations using pseudo-scientific terms are somehow more scientific than any other contrived nonsense. Most pop sci-fi really does function more like simple fantasy anyway.
Clarke’s 3rd law. Asgard, at least in the movies, is supposed to be advanced tech not supernatural magic. On the other hand Stark is not supposed to be so advanced he’s transhuman, but his tech is. If he really had “inertial dampeners” or whatever, there’s implications for civilization changing technologies. Goodbye seatbelts and parachutes!! Surely there’s an infinite power source in being able to neutralize mass and inertia. Much great SF is examples of exploring the implications of one new technology. But when you just start piling it on, the world created becomes hard to swallow.
Never mind. Just look at the pretty pictures.
Marilove: you must be fun at parties. Kept civil, conflict is interesting.
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You’re talking about a man who powers a super exoskeleton, including flight and weapons, from a fusion reactor that lives in his chest and you’re quibbling about his inertial dampeners? 
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I read more comics now at anytime in my life. Superheroes have given away to new concepts. I followed Walking Dead from the first issue and I’m now consumed with Saga. DMZ was another favorite. I pass these comics on to my daughter, to friends; neighbors of all ages and most of them fall in love with the idea of single-issue comics. Many of the younger crowd read online while I prefer hard copy. My point is: comics as a visual medium are not dead, far from it. They just need a constant stream of new ideas and invention.
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I agree but…
Comic book movies are geared towards an international audience and the lowest common denominator. It’s almost like lamenting that the rich breeding history of Angus cows isn’t expressed in D-grade McDonald’s burgers.
The hope should be that kids discover comics through the movies, and then are able to experience the deep, mythic history first hand. It’s a bit of a stretch, but it just might work.
Except when it’s the same conflict, over and over and over again. Much like some comics.
Some in this thread need this video:
Now that it’s out of the way, it’s important to point out that it’s not just a matter of patience, when it comes to getting into a story. I came in on Brain Jacques’s Redwall series of books somewhere late in the continuity. But each story was self-contained, and made sense without knowing the mythos. This is also what turns me off a lot of TV series. I couldn’t get into Fringe until it ended up on Netflix, because it’s near impossible to follow without a deeper understanding of the narrative arc. Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, by contrast, had a greater story arc that didn’t require you to understand the deeper narrative. A lot of comics, on the other hand, don’t do quite a good job when it comes to filling in the blanks of the mythos.
I remember picking up a copy of The Spectacular Spider-Man, a spin off of The Amazing Spider-Man series where the main character is Peter Parker’s clone. I couldn’t get into the story of the comic itself, because so much of what had happened before that point was unresolved, and the story of that issue was non-existent. It only interested me because I knew who Peter Parker was. If that was the first ever comic book I picked up, though. I doubt I would have cared about the story, because there kind of was no story without the backstory.
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My mom got me into comics when I was a kid, in order to improve my reading grades. It worked. In eight grade, I tested at grade thirteen for reading. However, I stuck with comics as long as I did out of love for the stories, characters, and the sheer joy of entertainment via imagination they provided. I started with comics like Casper and Richie Rich, progressed through Archie, then DC then Marvel, and ending with the likes of Spawn and W.I.L.D.C.A.T.S. I was forced to surrender to economic reality. I’d started with 12.5-cent comics, and ended with comics topping $3.00. I had to quit cold turkey. After awhile, I even reluctantly sold my collection, as space and money had to take precedence. I feel sorry for today’s children. They have movies, TV and the internet. Yet most of them and their parents can’t afford comics. They will never share my love for these wonderful escapist adventures. It might even prevent them from progressing to non-comic fiction such as the works of Asimov, Heinlein and others. My love of all reading originated with comics. I’ve read some comments saying people have trouble getting into today’s comics because they don’t know the history, or back-stories involved in the previous decades of comic lore. How could they? Even if all the comics are now available digitally, who has thousands of dollars to buy them and catch up? Comics are still beloved by many, but only by those with the deep pockets needed to acquire them. The rest either stick to the movie adaptations, or decry them as a juvenile pastime. Frankly, the only way comics could ever be widely loved is if the rights holders made them available at prices the masses can actually afford. I would catch up and read them again, if I could afford it. I’m sure more modern kids would take interest if it was affordable. However, we live in the age of corporate media greed. It goes far beyond compensating the creative artists. It’s far more about compensating the shareholders. Maybe seeing this future coming is what really made the Vision cry.
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There is something that should probably be called the Howdy Doody Effect. Howdy Doody was a children’s television show from 1947 to 1960. If you ask a baby boomer if he or she watched Howdy Doody, you’ll find a solid divide. The show had a devoted following, but at a certain point newcomers found it too hard to get up to speed on the characters. They missed the inside jokes. They didn’t understand the long standing feuds and stylized interactions. There was other fare available that didn’t leave them mystified. Lots of kids I knew who were maybe a year or two older than I loved the show, but I never met anyone my age or younger who was a fan.
I think comic books had a similar problem. If you started reading them in the 1960s or 1970s, you could catch up on what was going on pretty easily. After a certain point it started getting harder. The older comic books were like the pulps and lacked any real continuity. As the continuity was developed, it got harder for new audiences. It was Howdy Doody Effect at work.
If this wasn’t enough of a problem, Marvel made it worse by taking over its own distribution. This drove other distributors out of business. Then Marvel’s distribution collapsed. This meant no more comic books in supermarkets, gas stations or drugstores. Circulation collapsed and the casual reader market vanished.
Marvel still had a big asset, fifty years of stories. This led to some rather mediocre animated series on television and then to the surprisingly good modern movies. Maybe CGI had to catch up with Jack Kirby and his peers for them to work. At the rate they are cranking out Marvel movies, I’m guessing that young people today are going to get immersed in the continuity and at some point someone will try to get someone younger interested in the wonderful series and fail. Who wants to watch a dozen origin story movies just to understand the 37th in an inscrutable series?
P.S. I’m in an unusual position. My long time partner has read just about every Marvel comic. She had stopped at one point, but when her kid sister, an executive at Marvel died, she started raiding comic book stores, street vendors and, later, eBay, so she could catch up. I never miss an inside reference, but I can see how others might.
DD’s billy club has a spring loaded grapnel on the end. Very useful tool.
True believer here, also winner of the much-coveted Marvel No-Prize a long time ago.
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yes, yes, yes!
