Poll of the Day > PotdMon: Nerd/Geek

(+) Yeah! (+)

I hoping for good things from volume 2 of "Tower of God". The timeskip should be interesting.

I'm sad "Marry Grave" ended.
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The Wave Master posted...

Neon Genesis Evangelion drops on Netflix Jume 21, the last day of spring.

Time to listen to a whole new generation of viewers go "WTF?!"

Still one of my favorite anime (... minus the new movies).
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Debating whether to do more of the regain Link's memories sidequests or go directly into beating Ganon. I know the memories sidequests unlocks some gear and, of course, there are a lot of other significant sidequests as well.

WhiskeyDisk posted...

I'm about a third of the way into Odd Thomas, and I can't stress enough how much Koontz's writing style irritates the hell out of me. I've committed to the series and all, but JFC I don't need to know what every person in a hundred yard radius is wearing and what they smelled like. I don't need a breakdown of every plant and insect in the environment.

Always an issue I've had with a lot of genre fiction.
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I_Abibde posted...

The Wave Master posted...

Neon Genesis Evangelion drops on Netflix Jume 21, the last day of spring.

Time to listen to a whole new generation of viewers go "WTF?!"

Still one of my favorite anime (... minus the new movies).

I much preferred the anime that ripped off Evangelion and did so much of the plot several times better. On the other hand, it's been ages since I last watched RahXephon.
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So I've been working on a story that I'm writing, and I decided to finally try the approach of stand-ins for character names so I can just write when I have a flow going, and then go back to apply names when I have something more concrete to work with.

Doing it this way for the past eleven or twelve days, I am now done with chapter 9 with the exception of naming [CmndSuave]. So the difference is so-so, I guess. The speed is roughly the same, but there's better flow as I work, as well as possibly better flow IN my work during a first draft. That last note might be hard to tell, though, as my ability to tell ad create stories has reached a level of decency that I wish I had ten or twenty years ago.
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Entity13 posted...

I much preferred the anime that ripped off Evangelion and did so much of the plot several times better. On the other hand, it's been ages since I last watched RahXephon.

Another one of my favorites. Studio Bones has never been able to top itself since RX, if you ask me. ... But I feel that anime has never gotten a fair shake because it gets dismissed as a rip-off of EVA.
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I_Abibde posted...

Entity13 posted...

I much preferred the anime that ripped off Evangelion and did so much of the plot several times better. On the other hand, it's been ages since I last watched RahXephon.

Another one of my favorites. Studio Bones has never been able to top itself since RX, if you ask me. ... But I feel that anime has never gotten a fair shake because it gets dismissed as a rip-off of EVA.

Yeah, this is a shame since those points are an ironic improvement. Think what would have happened if Twilight Princess legit did its OoT elements better than OoT. RahXephon did some of its own thing too, even, and the moment that cinched it for me was a tragic scene that was a rather literal gut punch. Evangelion didn't really have impact for me at any point until the only character I (barely) cared for died in an epic battle.
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Entity, just don't turn into one of those authors that has a penchant for naming characters unpronounceable things like Q'zrthkl'x because I rename characters like that "Bob" or "Jim" or "Susan" in my head so that dialog doesn't become a series of speed bumps.
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WhiskeyDisk posted...

Entity, just don't turn into one of those authors that has a penchant for naming characters unpronounceable things like Q'zrthkl'x because I rename characters like that "Bob" or "Jim" or "Susan" in my head so that dialog doesn't become a series of speed bumps.

Yeah, I try to avoid that. When I use non-English names I at least try to use existing languages (or existing names from various regions and eras) so that they work as names.

For instance I have a character named Keft'aerak (Aerak for short), which means "hot breeze." It's pronounceable, and is derived from another language.
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WhiskeyDisk posted...

Entity, just don't turn into one of those authors that has a penchant for naming characters unpronounceable things like Q'zrthkl'x because I rename characters like that "Bob" or "Jim" or "Susan" in my head so that dialog doesn't become a series of speed bumps.

I usually just cut out the middleman and refuse to read books like that at all.

It sort of goes hand in hand with what I tend to think of as the Blurb Test - when I read the back cover blurb of a book and they've thrown a half-dozen Proper Nouns at you before they even tell you the name of the main character, I put that book right back on the shelf and never look at it again. They're both generally good indicators that what you're looking at is hack genre trash written by an author who is just trying to mimic the style of other writers, and doesn't really have an interesting story of their own to tell.

Brandon Sanderson is particularly bad for that in my opinion. I actually liked his work finishing off the Wheel of Time books, so I thought I'd give him a chance to see what his own stuff was like, but every book just has so much jargon in the blurbs that my eyes just glaze over and my brain shuts off before I can even finish. In his case, at least, I think it's because he seems super-anal about coming up with the mechanical systems for magic in a setting and obsessing over the details before worrying about the actual story, and his pride in his work means he sort of wants to try and show it off as much as he can. But it makes the conceptualization way too dense for my taste.

The worst part is, books with way more complex metaphysics or mechanics or elaborate setting details have successfully managed to get by with far simpler blurbs. Roger Zelazny and Stephen Donaldson have written some of the more complex fantasy novels I've ever read in terms of narrative and setting detail, yet they almost always had cover blurbs that were incredibly inviting to casual readers and which made you want to read without drowning you in unnecessary surface details.


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

WhiskeyDisk posted...

Entity, just don't turn into one of those authors that has a penchant for naming characters unpronounceable things like Q'zrthkl'x because I rename characters like that "Bob" or "Jim" or "Susan" in my head so that dialog doesn't become a series of speed bumps.

I usually just cut out the middleman and refuse to read books like that at all.

It sort of goes hand in hand with what I tend to think of as the Blurb Test - when I read the back cover blurb of a book and they've thrown a half-dozen Proper Nouns at you before they even tell you the name of the main character, I put that book right back on the shelf and never look at it again. They're both generally good indicators that what you're looking at is hack genre trash written by an author who is just trying to mimic the style of other writers, and doesn't really have an interesting story of their own to tell.

Brandon Sanderson is particularly bad for that in my opinion. I actually liked his work finishing off the Wheel of Time books, so I thought I'd give him a chance to see what his own stuff was like, but every book just has so much jargon in the blurbs that my eyes just glaze over and my brain shuts off before I can even finish. In his case, at least, I think it's because he seems super-anal about coming up with the mechanical systems for magic in a setting and obsessing over the details before worrying about the actual story, and his pride in his work means he sort of wants to try and show it off as much as he can. But it makes the conceptualization way too dense for my taste.

The worst part is, books with way more complex metaphysics or mechanics or elaborate setting details have successfully managed to get by with far simpler blurbs. Roger Zelazny and Stephen Donaldson have written some of the more complex fantasy novels I've ever read in terms of narrative and setting detail, yet they almost always had cover blurbs that were incredibly inviting to casual readers and which made you want to read without drowning you in unnecessary surface details.

On the other hand I'd say that the blurbs are the fault of someone else working for the publisher. The author has only so much say in what goes into a book before the sales team tries to, you know, sell it with the cover. I like to think that better blurb writers for sales teams were easier to find in the 80s or 90s, whereas what we see now is a trend too many of them follow because they think it works.
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Well I just finished Odd Thomas.

Fuck you Dean Koontz. Fuck you.

I haven't been sucker punched this hard by a twist ending in a very, very long time.

Otherwise, despite my as mentioned earlier aggravation with his narrative style, he writes really smart, crisp dialog. So I guess I will soldier on with the series. He can't hurt me like this again.
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Would you say it was worth it? Online reviews say it wasn't that good.
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I can't speak for the movie, or Koontz's other works, but Koontz is starting to grow on me despite my initial annoyance with his...quirks as a writer. I can only grade him against this one book rather than grading the book against his other books. Perhaps jumping from David Wong's writing style to his was more jarring than I would have otherwise found it had I come in from a biography or other sort of work.

Then again, I loved the Dresden Files novels too and I can't imagine the critics having been kind to them either.
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WhiskeyDisk posted...

Well I just finished Odd Thomas.

Fuck you Dean Koontz. Fuck you.

I haven't been sucker punched this hard by a twist ending in a very, very long time.

Otherwise, despite my as mentioned earlier aggravation with his narrative style, he writes really smart, crisp dialog. So I guess I will soldier on with the series. He can't hurt me like this again.

The twists were no less annoying/stupid in the movie.
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Never enough Zelaznys or Donaldsons in the world of fantasy literature. Then again, I can remember back when Donaldson was a controversial writer. ... These days, I doubt he'd make anybody bat an eyelash because people only seem to care about naughty bits in visual media and young adult 'literature'.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It sort of goes hand in hand with what I tend to think of as the Blurb Test - when I read the back cover blurb of a book and they've thrown a half-dozen Proper Nouns at you before they even tell you the name of the main character, I put that book right back on the shelf and never look at it again. They're both generally good indicators that what you're looking at is hack genre trash written by an author who is just trying to mimic the style of other writers, and doesn't really have an interesting story of their own to tell.

This sounds like the reasoning I used to ditch Final Fantasy XIII. Take a drink every time a character says "L'Cie" or "Fal'Cie" in the opening act of the game.
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I_Abibde posted...

Never enough Zelaznys or Donaldsons in the world of fantasy literature. Then again, I can remember back when Donaldson was a controversial writer. ... These days, I doubt he'd make anybody bat an eyelash because people only seem to care about naughty bits in visual media and young adult 'literature'.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It sort of goes hand in hand with what I tend to think of as the Blurb Test - when I read the back cover blurb of a book and they've thrown a half-dozen Proper Nouns at you before they even tell you the name of the main character, I put that book right back on the shelf and never look at it again. They're both generally good indicators that what you're looking at is hack genre trash written by an author who is just trying to mimic the style of other writers, and doesn't really have an interesting story of their own to tell.

This sounds like the reasoning I used to ditch Final Fantasy XIII. Take a drink every time a character says "L'Cie" or "Fal'Cie" in the opening act of the game.

As much as I actually liked XIII, I like my liver far more, thank you.

Also I will admit to that flaw in the game, easily, as well as many works of fiction. When I write something I at least have the sense to try to ease my audience into new words or concepts, and even then try not to have so many that it's a burden by the time the meat of the story has picked up. XIII went overboard. Many of Sanderson's books did not if you bother reading them instead of the blurb, but the blurbs definitely did go ham on that.
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On the subject of 'postrophe names, I thought of this when I posted earlier, but didn't have time to look for the link until now:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PunctuationShaker

Also, I tend to blame Anne McCaffrey for those sorts of names, just like I blame Tolkien for random "foreign" words inserted into otherwise normal English, as methods hack writers tend to use to make their fantasy seem deeper because they sort better, more popular writers do it once, so they copy it without understand why it works for those writers, or how it fits in their specific setting for reasons which don't necessarily apply universally.



Entity13 posted...

On the other hand I'd say that the blurbs are the fault of someone else working for the publisher. The author has only so much say in what goes into a book before the sales team tries to, you know, sell it with the cover.

Oh no, that's 100% the case. Cover blurbs are like film trailers, in that they're almost never created by the person who created the actual work in question, and the auteur often hates them for being inaccurate or downright deceptive. And that's been the case longer than any of us here have been alive.

But my perception is more along the lines of, if your story focuses on those details excessively, it makes it harder for the blurb writer to summarize in any useful way, which is why they tend to default to overuse of setting details. When you're two paragraphs in and the blurb-writer is talking about how a thousand years ago the empire of Proper Noun fought a war with the kingdom of Proper Noun, and the Knights of Proper Noun discovered the Proper Noun, and used it to end the war and usher in the era of Proper Noun, and now Main Character is growing up in Proper Noun and he has to find the Proper Noun to Proper Noun Proper Noun, it tends to imply there isn't a lot of worthwhile story in there to sum up in any other way.

Whereas telling me that Main Character finds a magic ring that turns out to be evil and he has to travel across the land with his friends and chuck it in a volcano, it feels like there's more meat to that story even as simplified as it is.

It also helps if you work your way up to the Proper Nouns - if your blurb tells me that the main character grows up on a farm and his parents are murdered by evil soldiers before you start dropping in the setting-specific stuff, you've got a better chance of being worthwhile than if you feel the need to drop a dozen setting references before you mention a single character name.


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I_Abibde posted...

Then again, I can remember back when Donaldson was a controversial writer.

Having your main character rape a 12-year old girl in one of the earlier chapters definitely makes for a hard sell for a lot of people.

That was one of the awkward sticking points when trying to sell that series to people who'd never read it (and where I think a lot of people just stopped reading it and wrote him off as a writer). Though when the entire series as a whole is taken into account, I think it's one of the emotional fantasy stories I've ever read. And while Covenant himself isn't always likeable, some of the supporting characters wind up being the most lovable I've ever seen in fiction *cough*Foamfollower*cough*.

It's a deeply cynical fantasy that actually winds up being strangely idealistic in a lot of ways.


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Entity13 posted...

On the other hand I'd say that the blurbs are the fault of someone else working for the publisher. The author has only so much say in what goes into a book before the sales team tries to, you know, sell it with the cover.

Oh no, that's 100% the case. Cover blurbs are like film trailers, in that they're almost never created by the person who created the actual work in question, and the auteur often hates them for being inaccurate or downright deceptive. And that's been the case longer than any of us here have been alive.

But my perception is more along the lines of, if your story focuses on those details excessively, it makes it harder for the blurb writer to summarize in any useful way, which is why they tend to default to overuse of setting details. When you're two paragraphs in and the blurb-writer is talking about how a thousand years ago the empire of Proper Noun fought a war with the kingdom of Proper Noun, and the Knights of Proper Noun discovered the Proper Noun, and used it to end the war and usher in the era of Proper Noun, and now Main Character is growing up in Proper Noun and he has to find the Proper Noun to Proper Noun Proper Noun, it tends to imply there isn't a lot of worthwhile story in there to sum up in any other way.

Whereas telling me that Main Character finds a magic ring that turns out to be evil and he has to travel across the land with his friends and chuck it in a volcano, it feels like there's more meat to that story even as simplified as it is.

It also helps if you work your way up to the Proper Nouns - if your blurb tells me that the main character grows up on a farm and his parents are murdered by evil soldiers before you start dropping in the setting-specific stuff, you've got a better chance of being worthwhile than if you feel the need to drop a dozen setting references before you mention a single character name.

And this is why I look at the first chapter or two of my story and ask myself what's necessary, and what can be told without losing my audience to unfamiliar words. I want to at least cut down the odds of a bad blurb, and also increase my odds of readers coming along who read any part of the intro first. The middle or ending might not work as well, since names and terms are in effect.

At the same time, though, I do try to limit how much of those things appear in ANY paragraph, and how many paragraphs per page. As much as I liked LotR, that was one gripe I had about it where so many lore building paragraphs existed, and so many such words existed in and out of the lore building. I thought many of Sanderson's books to be better about that, but caught in its own traps (such as the blurbs).

With apostrophe names I at least have an in-world reason for it as it has to do with combining noun and adjective, as is the cultural norm for the obligatory space elves I made (so obligatory that the main character, who is from Earth, references Vulcans to everyone's confusion). The other races that appear don't have this as their norm, but may have other cultural quirks that don't require punctuation like that.
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About those apostrophe names: What that brought to my mind was 'Zakath from the David Eddings books (Belgariad, Malloreon, etc.). He lampshaded that by having the characters talk about it in one of the later books ("What does that apostrophe stand for, anyway?").

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It's a deeply cynical fantasy that actually winds up being strangely idealistic in a lot of ways.

A good summation. One would think that would make it a perfect series for our times, but ... try getting people to read anything from the '70s and '80s, these days.
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Just saw the trailer for Batman vs TMNT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgsliR2t7XI" data-time="

I never knew that I even wanted this to be a thing until I saw it. Also wtf is up with Scarecrow's costume? They gave him an oversized mascot mask.
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Was listening to random music on YouTube when this came up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qitn6FRc0oc" data-time="

I've heard it before (of course), but this time, while listening to it, the thought popped into my head "You know, this sounds like one of the most 80s songs I can think of." Like, it's a song that is a pure distillation of everything the decade represented in terms of music, and feels like something that couldn't have come from any other time period. Aliens could find this song a thousand years from now in the ruins of human civilization, and accurately recreate the 80s from it.

Which led me to wonder, ARE there any other songs that are more quintessentially 80s? If so, what are they?

(The only thing coming to mind is literally everything Stan Bush wrote for the Transformers movie (and honestly that entire soundtrack in general), but I'm curious what other people might throw out there. Even people who may never have experienced the glory that was the Greatest of All Decades.


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I would say Guns n Roses' Appetite for Destruction is about as 80s as an album gets.
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99 Luftballoons
Eye of the Tiger
Danger Zone
Safety Dance
Wake Me Up
Never Gonna Give You Up

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Which led me to wonder, ARE there any other songs that are more quintessentially 80s? If so, what are they?

'80s kid here. Difficult question to answer, but one song definitely catches it all for me:

Beat It by Michael Jackson.
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Just checking in fellow Geeks.

With my brother dying, the funeral, and all the other stuff associated with his death, I have been busy with real world problems, and have not been here.

Chris' death has taken a toll on me to the point where I'm sure I'm depressed. I want to finish Spider-man, but I just don't have the strength to do it right now.

On top of that my wife and I had to put down one of our cats. She was 17 years old, and wasn't eating or walking any longer. It was just time. With the cat being 17 it means my wife was with her longer tha. she was with me, and she has bee. taking it hard too. Death on top of death lately, and I'm not sure if my mom is going to last much longer either.

Either wayn we go forward, and if I'm not around in the next few weeks just keep posting. I'm always around.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Which led me to wonder, ARE there any other songs that are more quintessentially 80s? If so, what are they?

Obviously Survivor's Eye of the Tiger, which is the first Rocky song I think of.

And, of course, there's "Danger Zone" >_>
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The name is okay.

See ya next topic!
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I'm currently eating fried chicken at 6am.

I can't decide if this means something has gone terribly wrong with my life, or terribly right.


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'm currently eating fried chicken at 6am.

I can't decide if this means something has gone terribly wrong with my life, or terribly right.

Sounds much more tasty than the usual oatmeal and fruit, flaxseed, chia seeds, and kale smoothie I have each morning.

Also cross-posting this here since Im excited for this now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t433PEQGErc" data-time="

Looks like a really good Joker origin story. Maybe not 100% tied in to the DC cinematic universe but still immensely enjoyable.

WastelandCowboy posted...

Sounds much more tasty than the usual oatmeal and fruit, flaxseed, chia seeds, and kale smoothie I have each morning.

See, that sounds tastier to me than fried chicken does. I like fried chicken, but it's too much of the same flavor, it's very strong, but not varied. That smoothie sounds way more complex and delicious.
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GanglyKhan posted...

WastelandCowboy posted...

Sounds much more tasty than the usual oatmeal and fruit, flaxseed, chia seeds, and kale smoothie I have each morning.

See, that sounds tastier to me than fried chicken does. I like fried chicken, but it's too much of the same flavor, it's very strong, but not varied. That smoothie sounds way more complex and delicious.

Its delicious, but just always pretty much the same. My digestive system is temperamental in the sense that if I eat anything out of the ordinary, itll let me know its not happy the day after. At least with this, everything is habitual.

Keep forgetting to post about BOTW. "Beat" the game a few nights ago and was pretty underwhelmed by the final Calamity Ganon fight, although his final forms are really neat-looking. When he first appears in each form, he appears absurdly daunting but they *really* under-utilized him. Especially because his last form doesn't mean really move much other than to turn around

Oh, and in geekier news, Hasbro finally has a full figure roster for a Marvel Legends wave I actually want (well, except maybe bondage Wolverine)... but it's with a BAF I don't give a shit about.
https://www.bigbadtoystore.com/Product/VariationDetails/87830

Before that, the closest they came was with the Juggernaut wave (where I stupidly held off buying the Wolverine so my Juggernaut is incomplete). At any rate, it's really annoying because I *thought* that those figures were going to have Wendigo as the BAF, which would have been a pure win.

WastelandCowboy posted...

Also cross-posting this here since Im excited for this now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t433PEQGErc" data-time="

Looks like a really good Joker origin story. Maybe not 100% tied in to the DC cinematic universe but still immensely enjoyable.

I was excited by the previous trailer, but now I have mixed feelings, especially given how much they show the Joker just get shat upon. At any rate, the Joker is one of those few characters where you can really play around with his origin story because he's been written as an unreliable narrator.
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Fun fact: I actually appear in the film Odd Thomas as a background actor. You basically need to pause some scenes, and I'd never point out which one was me, but yeah.

Also, I was actually hurt by Anton Yelchin's whacko death, because I met him on that and Fright Night.
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I actually jumped over to Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself as a bit of a pallette cleanser. I'm about 2/3 of the way through but it's been a busy week. I've got Forever Odd on the Kindle too, but TBI has been sitting on my device unread for well over a year. The audiobook is godawful, I just can't stand the narrator and it turned me off to what is shaping up to be an interesting book.

I'm not really sold on the whole audiobook thing. At least if I fall asleep reading, my Kindle goes to sleep shortly after I do. If I fall asleep listening to an audiobook, whisper synch makes a mess of where I left off. Plus it's readily apparent that the reader can make or break a perfectly cromulent book.

As a rule with my limited foray into audiobooks it seems any book that isn't actually narrated by the author is terrible. Niel Gaiman's take on Norse Mythology, great. The Blade Itself read by...I can't remember...terrible.
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Still hanging in there. Been watching a lot of Mortal Kombat 11. It's a very pretty game, but it feels to NRS (Netherrealm Studios) for me to wnkpy on a playable level. I think the middle and end games are going to be hard to master, and not really fin to play.

On a fun but sad note I got all of my brother's clothes when he passed away. My wife and I have been sorting through the clothes, and we stumbled across a John Cena shirt from like 11 years ago. It was the shirt my brother let me wear when I went to Atlanta for my first Wrestlemania. It's a good memory, and one I will always cherish.
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I woke up this morning, got myself a gun, decided I was the chosen on, and I finished Spider-man on the ps4. I guess I just hot tired of feeling sorry for myself, and decided to keep moving forward in life. People die every day, and it stinks, but I know that when I die I want people to keep living, I want people to keep being happy and experience new things.

Therefore, I finished Spider-man.
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WhiskeyDisk posted...

I actually jumped over to Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself as a bit of a pallette cleanser. I'm about 2/3 of the way through but it's been a busy week.

I read that. But I sort of lump that in with A Crown for Cold Silver as books that feel like they tried to emulate the dark fantasy flavor of George RR Martin and kind of missed what made it work, and instead went all-in on the cynicism and doing terrible things to the characters. It's very much "look how dark and edgy we are!"

I of all people love some dark tragic cynicism, but you have to earn your tragedy. It feels like too many of the imitators kind of skip right over that directly to murdering and torturing characters because that's what Martin did and people seemed to like that.


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Back on GameFaqs after nearly 3 months.

Anything exciting happen?
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

WhiskeyDisk posted...

I actually jumped over to Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself as a bit of a pallette cleanser. I'm about 2/3 of the way through but it's been a busy week.

I read that. But I sort of lump that in with A Crown for Cold Silver as books that feel like they tried to emulate the dark fantasy flavor of George RR Martin and kind of missed what made it work, and instead went all-in on the cynicism and doing terrible things to the characters. It's very much "look how dark and edgy we are!"

I of all people love some dark tragic cynicism, but you have to earn your tragedy. It feels like too many of the imitators kind of skip right over that directly to murdering and torturing characters because that's what Martin did and people seemed to like that.

I'm giving Abercrombie a pass since he's keeping his number of POV's and the scope of his world manageable. I get the comparison to GRRM, but Abercrombie writes like a man that knows we all have things to do and places to be. I don't feel like I'm going to have to start taking notes just to keep up.
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Of the original Avengers from the comics, who was your favorite? Iron Man? Thor? Hulk? Ant-Man? The Wasp?

WastelandCowboy posted...

Of the original Avengers from the comics, who was your favorite? Iron Man? Thor? Hulk? Ant-Man? The Wasp?

Meaning first lineup? idk, probably Iron Man. Used to definitely be Iron Man, but... kinda cooled down on that sometime after the movies. Then again, I kinda like the Wasp from a lot of the supporting material.
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WastelandCowboy posted...

Of the original Avengers from the comics, who was your favorite? Iron Man? Thor? Hulk? Ant-Man? The Wasp?

At the time or overall?

Probably Iron Man either way, honestly. Wasp was a non-character for most of her existence, Ant-Man has a ton of issues, Hulk was out almost immediately and never all that overly interesting to me except for a really short period in the 80s, and Thor was mostly bleh for me except when Simonson was writing the character in the 80s. Though the quintessential Avenger has always been Cap, up to most people effectively retconning him into counting as a "founding" Avenger even though he didn't join the team until issue 4.

Though I was always more of an X-Men kid.


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WastelandCowboy posted...

Of the original Avengers from the comics, who was your favorite? Iron Man? Thor? Hulk? Ant-Man? The Wasp?

I've never actually read any of those. I typically read DC. Which series would be a good start for getting into some older Marvel stuff?
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GanglyKhan posted...

Which series would be a good start for getting into some older Marvel stuff?

Not necessarily a series, but some of the best storylines to come out of Marvel were from the late 70s/early-to-mid 80s. A lot of which has been repackaged into trade paperbacks, so they're relatively easy to find if you looking for physical copies.


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Out of the actual original Avengers, Thor is probably my favorite. I prefer Cap though, even though he wasn't a founding member.
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Hulk was my favorite original Avenger. Although, he was kicked out of the group a million times, or he either quit in rage. However, I just liked the rage aspect because I have fits of rage, more as a kid, and much less now, wisdom and a good woman have mellowed me out a lot.
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I was late to the Avengers party, but my favorite of the original four is Iron Man ... despite his character flaws (or because of them).

I was another X-Men kid. Seriously, pretty much the entire Claremont run was solid gold, IMO, and that's a rare achievement in a medium that is renowned for inconsistent writing.
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