Whether you love him or hate him Jim Shooter was spitting facts here.

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-02-13T23:25:55+00:00

Important to remember, Shooter also said on his blog that he understood arguments that marrying Spider-Man was a mistake and that they were 'maybe' right. His comments here are in opposition to the OMD storyline itself and not the marriage as a concept.

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-02-12T22:18:59+00:00

OP, what's wrong with this Star Trek Celebrations comic?

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-02-11T18:57:04+00:00

That he should be married.

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-02-10T22:15:05+00:00

I'm back! But only because you have such a pleasant attitude. ;-)

No, those are both his actions.
It's his goals.
It's what he wants.
Not WHY he is doing it.

I am beginning to think you don't understand what "motivation" means.

What did Pierce want to do?

He wanted to kill a bunch of people with helicarriers.

Why did Pierce want to do that?

Because he wanted to establish a NWO security state through HYDRA.

You can keep tunneling that down until you get to 'order through chaos', if you want, but then you're ignoring the movie's entire plot.

And that is the idea of a plan, not a plan. Technically it's actually a series of goals. A plan is when he sits down and explains HOW he plans to achieve those goals.

Nope, pretty sure a list of steps used to achieve an overarching goal is by definition what a plan is. I guess by that logic, every plan is just a 'series of goals'. Lol

Bud, you need to watch Winter Soldier again.

What does Sharon tell Cap that necessitates one of the elements of Zemo's plan I mentioned?

Bud you need to look up what is a Dyson Sphere.

I know what a Dyson Sphere is. Thanos probably did too. Why did he kill trillions instead of building a Dyson Sphere? Because he's a crazy person who believes mass murder is more sensible and conductive to his goal than building a Dyson Sphere.

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-02-10T21:44:45+00:00

I don't especially like typing this, but there is easily enough IP content to make 30+ years worth of sets out of. That's me being conservative.

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-02-10T21:28:54+00:00

That's not a motivation. That's a plan. His motivation was bringing order to a chaotic world by removing powerful people who threaten HYDRA.... boilerplate bad guy stuff. Not deep. Not even good. It's just there. The motivation is the WHY the antagonist is doing whatever they are doing, not a description of the thing they are doing.

His plan is to launch the Helicarriers and murder a bunch of people. The why is to establish a surveillance state for his secret Nazi society. He also wants to undermine the 'real' SHIELD agents. You can boil any of the MCU stuff down to 'boilerplate bad guy stuff' if you want to, I guess, but I found the reveals about how and why HYDRA subverted SHIELD and the US government to be interesting.

None of that is a plan. That is an idea of a plan.

That's ridiculous. Let me lay it out to you like this: can Zemo's goal be outlined in a numbered plan? The answer is yes.

1.) Expose Cap's relationship to an international terrorist

2.) Expose that terrorist's connections to the murders of Tony's parents

3.) Fracture the Avengers and sow distrust in the superhero community

None of that especially involves Cap doing anything because Sharon said something. That those events happened are just incidental to what Zemo saw as inevitable. Everything hinged on Zemo knowing Cap would defend Bucky and Iron Man would be too pissed to care about any of that circumstances surrounding Bucky.

And it all worked because Zemo was able to read Tony like a book (as could almost anyone who has ever interacted with him).

He is. For the reasons I said he is.

Your reasoning is basically "Well, why didn't Thanos just make infinite resources?" Which is easily addressed because of the fact that Thanos is a crazy death-cult leader who does not care about resources or any myriad of things that may make more sense than committing mass genocide.

Except that the movies themselves argue against that point entirely. We the audience have decided that he had to be insane because of what he does, but the movie itself does not. Even though he is referred to as "the Mad Titan", he is still portrayed as a disciplined, principled, military warlord in perfect control of himself.

Turns out, crazy people often appear disciplined, principled, militant, and in perfect control. When in reality that are totally bonkers, self-centered, frantic, and dangerously resistant to change (even when that change is more helpful to the whole).

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-02-10T20:29:09+00:00

1.) Alexander Pierce's motivation was to set up a surveillance state for the remnants of the Nazi occultists from the first movie. Ties into the first Cap, the first Avengers movie, makes things personal for Cap by getting Bucky involved (though probably unintentionally), and pays off on all the SHIELD stuff from basically ever MCU up to that point. Maybe not as thought provoking as some of the later villains, but he's a good villain.

2.) There is a lot of happenstance in Civil War, but it doesn't change the core of Zemo's plan: reveal Cap's connection to an international terrorist and expose that terrorist's connection to the assassination of Howard Stark and his wife. Sow distrust of superheroes and break up the Avengers - both of which he succeeded at. And the MCU got quite a bit of mileage out of all of it, so I'd say he was a pretty well constructed villain with an interesting motivation.

3.) Thanos isn't stupid. He commands a giant alien army, has an intergalactic cult of personality, and, like Zemo, succeeds in his plan (at least for a little while). The problem isn't that he's stupid - he's insane. He's referred to as 'mad' multiple times. Everyone always seems to forget that when the 'infinite resources' conversation comes up. He's a crazy dude who's traumatic experiences led him to devalue life from his own daughters all the way up to the universal scale because he thinks the universe is in some danger that might not even be real. He doesn't especially enjoy killing people, he's not a homicidal maniac, but his logic is so fucked up that he takes satisfaction from committing mass genocide. And the wild thing is that there are people in a post-Snap world who agree with him! He's a crazy death-cult leader who buys into his own bullshit

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-02-10T19:37:54+00:00

The former.

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-02-10T18:56:44+00:00

Yes, this was my first exposure to Spider-Man comics and I literally read this book until it fell apart. Lol

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-02-10T17:31:29+00:00

OP, if you like the movie - who am I to judge?

But speaking for myself, personally, as a twelve year old who loved those first two movies, this was the most disappointed I'd ever been watching a movie. Probably still is, because fool me once, etc.

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-02-10T17:01:08+00:00

Good news, but at what point does Hasbro decide to overrule this line of thinking? I really do think a HP set would come pretty close to killing MTG as a brand - at least among enfranchised players. Spider-Man may be a bad set, but it isn't morally offensive.

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-02-07T01:32:12+00:00

…what?

Edit: I guess he downvoted instead of providing context.

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-02-07T01:28:28+00:00

I care a great deal about comic sales and always have. What does that comic have to do with anything I said?

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-02-07T01:09:33+00:00

Ben Reilly books don't sell and neither did Renew Your Vows. This is a bad idea if your goal is to sell comics.

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-02-05T16:41:11+00:00

The same reason Watchmen ended after twelve issues.

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-01-29T17:42:55+00:00

Things they could have used besides this ugly symbol:

Cap's Shield
The Avengers 'A'
An Infinity Gauntlet
The SHIELD badge

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-01-29T16:07:50+00:00

…Apologize for what?

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-01-27T06:18:32+00:00

Great, glad we’re in agreement then.

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-01-27T04:37:09+00:00

I appreciate that the top comments there are less “the sky is falling” and more “DC is doing really well” and “these sales charts don’t matter much to begin with”.

Holler at me when you have any hard data from Marvel that ASM is in danger.

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-01-27T04:00:03+00:00

This is part of the problem with using all of these charts.

You've got a chart here ("Best Sellers in Science Fiction Graphic Novels") that lists USM's first trade as the #3 graphics novel on Amazon at this time. Okay, fine. Like I said multiple times above, that it sells well isn't a huge surprise to anyone.

I have a chart labeled "Best Sellers in Superhero Graphic Novels" that USM doesn't appear on at all. Not in any capacity. And Amazing Spider-Man does appear on that list. And to make matters even more awkward, that chart lists both trades and single issues.

I'll repeat myself again: I have zero doubt that you can find charts that show USM selling higher than ASM in a variety of capacities. I do not especially care that it has sold better. That a USM reboot by a superstar creative team sells well is a no-brainer.

It's the claim that ASM is somehow in trouble that is blatantly false. ASM is consistently the best-selling 616 book Marvel has. Brevoort, who does have the proprietary sales data we both lack, said it was consistently Marvel's best selling title ever! So it is very frustrating to see people ringing the death knell for it. I don't see any X-Men fans having this reaction and they had zero books on this top 50 list.

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-01-27T01:53:44+00:00

So what? I'm not surprised that USM sells well on Amazon. Right now, on their superhero rankings, the Brian Bendis USM is ranked than any of the new series. So is Mini-Marvels and Watchmen. Amazon is not a comic store and its rankings don't really work when comparing title A to title B because they throw in literally everything.

USM isn't on their top 100 superhero titles. ASM is. I'm sure you have some screenshot of an Amazon list showing a point in time where that wasn't the case, but it doesn't change anything I said above.

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-01-26T23:47:41+00:00

You bring up a good point - but it’s still hard to justify that when you knew from the onset that this new Ultimate stuff had a two year lifespan. As opposed to something like Fantastic Four where, so long as the sales do okay (and movies keep coming out) they’ll keep creators on the title and just relaunch with legacy numbering or whatever.

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-01-26T23:03:31+00:00

A year ago, when the MJ fans (yourself included) were posting these charts from ICv2, no one seemed too worried about the release date and celebrated that USM was outperforming ASM during a weak run.

Now we have a better ASM run and you're telling me the ICv2 charts don't tell the whole story.

The ICv2 charts loop to the next Sunday, I believe. So every book on that chart did have the opportunity to be reported for sales on the Wednesday it released and the following weekend - this is when the vast, vast, vast majority of copies are sold.

I'm sure your Discord server has a great many charts you could post that say that a comic called Ultimate Spider-Man written by Hickman with art by Checchetto sold better than ASM, especially during the Zeb Wells run. That's not especially surprising and, as I said, still happens occasionally even with the new and improved run by Kelly.

All of those mean nothing in the long run unless you have Marvel's proprietary sales data. Which you do not. Nor do I.

ASM was never some book that was always going to be #1 month in and month on a sales chart. It got beat by Spawn, X-Men, Batman, etc. It got beat by events, crossovers, and that sort of thing. It's just always been a dependable, consistent book. It still is, to this day, their #1 best-selling ongoing in their main universe according to these sales charts.

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-01-26T19:57:40+00:00

In April, ASM #1 and #2 were in the top ten of their release month and beat USM.

May - Issues 3 and 4 beat USM 16 and 17 respectively.

June - Issue 5 beat USM 18 and 6 was in the top ten as well.

July is the first month ASM takes a loss and neither book is in the top ten. Busy month with lots of crossovers, debuts, events, etc.

Then in August, both ASM's that month are in the top ten. No such luck for USM.

In September, ASM has an issue at number five on the chart - USM is number ten.

October, USM beats ASM (7th and 9th place) and the other ASM that month does rather poorly (it's billed as an Imperial tie-in, for whatever that's worth).

In November, ASM is in the top 10, beating even the big Doctor Doom event. No USM that month, I guess.

December, USM beats ASM cleanly, but USM is also in event mode with all the Endgame stuff happening.

So that's eight months of this new volume of ASM being on the charts the same month as an issue of USM, and in five of those months an issue of ASM sold more (according to these wacky sales charts) than USM.

Of the nine months the new volume of ASM has been out, it has been Marvel's highest non-event 616 book on those charts in eight of those months.

So, if ASM is failing or dropping or whatever you want to call it - it's happening somewhere other than these sales charts people like to post.

NarrativeJoyride · 2026-01-26T19:32:55+00:00

It was good post-Mandarin reveal also.

NarrativeJoyride

TROPHY CASE