Those moments when you realize you've possibly read Marvel comics for too long sneak up on you.

In my mind Marvel's secret sauce was the humanist perspective and the more grounded approach and it feels so weird that's largely gone. Maybe this is a distinct old fogey problem. Marvel's greatest success historically was always with its grounded titles. "Human characters with human problems" with the iconic example being Peter Parker barely having enough power to make ends meet. Even the FF had money problems as well as a plethora of other mundane ones.

I have seen an increasing amount of debate both within fandoms and between fans and creators about the popularity of low-conflict stories about superheroes (what I shall refer to as "cozycore") and I believe a lot of the disagreement comes from misunderstanding.

A short 🧵 Everything in here also applies to other mediums and this is certainly nothing unique to superheroes, but I'm using it as a focus topic because it's obviously something I know well.

I'm going to break my sacred vow and briefly talk about Betsy Braddock for @EmmaTalksComics . In 1976 Marvel wanted a comic produced exclusively for their burgeoning UK market and the creative team was iconic artist Herb Trimpe and some guy named Chris Claremont.

https://twitter.com/EmmaTalksComics/status/1794787892608606560

Starts off in its own mag in the UK, originally in full color and it's very silver age style with your random supervillains, exuberant narration and simple characters. This is far from what Claremont's writing would become.

Alright, I guess I wanna share some stuff with you fine folks. Maybe it's because I'm exhausted or maybe it's lingering depression and anxiety but hey, why not. I started thinking about this earlier...

Spoiler alert, I used to dream about making comics myself. This is probably gonna get maudlin as fuck so you may wanna tune out now.

But yeah, started reading comics real young as you do. I got exposed too what i still consider some excellent comics early like Wolfman/Perez New Teen Titans, Bernie Wrightson Swamp thing, Atari Force...

Alright, I wasn't going to do this but since it's already aggressively invading my timeline and I don't want to feel forced to turn twitter off for three months I feel I may as well.

I'm going to talk a little about Blood Hunt issue 1, and the "Red Band" variants of this issue. Warnings: Below this point I am going to MASSIVELY spoil the story in this comic. I will not post images or scans due to how recent it is, but please turn away if you want to read it for yourself.

Second, these are PURELY subjective views, so please take it as my thoughts only

People love to joke and meme about Claremont's penchants for stories where his female characters get transformed, mentally or physically (often both). "Body and soul" is a long-established Claremont trope. But the context of WHY he does it often goes unmentioned. 1/

https://twitter.com/Icarus7000/status/1784198998472933563

Claremont puts his character through transformative arcs to explore their personalities, expose their raw spots and present them with a scenario where they can be free of whatever troubles them. Become what they want you to be. Conform. Stop struggling. Let go.

One thing I wanted to talk about during my brief spate of X-Men posting was the concept of mutants and evolution as presented in the comics from the 1960's to now, but I quickly realized that to give this a fair overview I would literally have to detail read every X-men comic. Marvel's idea of evolution is fascinating me as a trained biologist because while it's obviously created with grand storytelling and sci-fi/fantasy in mind, sometimes you find yourself looking at concepts which are rooted in Victorian era pseudoscience or worse.

This is the most important issue of an X-Men comic ever.

I am only half joking.

Nope this isn't Krakoaposting, this is another short retrospective. Giant-Size X-Men #1 was thrown into the cold, harsh world of 1975 as a faint hope of revival of a long-fallow property. The X-men, long reduced to cameo appearances and reprints were getting an overhaul for the 1970s. And overhaul that created one of Marvel's biggest properties

Ten-Hut!
I've come to the conclusion that the best thing is to just sit down and tackle the topic right now rather than procrastinate, so this is it. My dear friends, today we will explore...

G.I. JOE - THE MIDDLE YEARS
-A Comrade Bullski Production- I am not 100% prepared but due to having some very busy months I pretty much never will be so please be patient. Now join me, dear reader as we go back in time...

Alright folks, when things get out of hand they just do. I don't have any valid excuse for the time since the last thread other than that life has been very busy for me, and sadly mostly in ways not related to comics in any way.

But let's go again. Let's go back to Hyboria. Don't worry, that G.I. Joe topic is on the way, by the way!

This will not be an extremely lengthy topic but more a discussion on something I have always been very fascinated with, namely world-building in fiction, or "secondary reality".

Welcome once again, o nobles of Hyboria. Tonight I am going to talk briefly about a topic I have touched upon a few times recently, namely the literary development of the character of Conan and the battle of ideas that raged for decades regarding the character and his creator. So join me tonight for the ultimate battle:

CONAN versus CONANTICS!

Now let me tell you of those days of high adventure...

Overall this brief era was filled with wasted potential. There were a lot of fantastic creators involved and yet none of the titles or storylines ever got any traction and it all read as a disjointed mess that was hard to get a firm grip on. And so it was time for another change. After a year-long hiatus Conan returned in an all-new Conan the Barbarian #1 in summer of 1997. And Marvel had now decided to make the barbarian the star of one of the worst ideas of the 1990s - the ongoing miniseries.

With several bigger projects on the back burner the purchases I made the other day ignited my desire to talk to you fine folks about this guy.

So let's talk about Conan the Barbarian and how his decades-long award-winning first tenure at Marvel ended. It gets weird. This will be a slightly improvised thread so please bear with me.

But it's a topic dear to my heart as I grew up reading Conan, both in comics and novel form. You might say I was a fan, though that fandom has been tempered by age.

Right, because of real life commitment and working on another article I still haven't had time to prepare a new topic. And so I will do something I normally don't because I'm honestly itching to talk about SOMETHING with you all.

Let's do a quick "What did I buy?" Yes it's true. I buy things other than comic books. This is the result of a quick spin around the various stores I like downtown.

Some of it is pretty basic like a couple books.

While I was doing my deep dive on Secret Files & Origins the other day I mentioned how charming I find reading handbooks like this and seeing how they encapsulate a specific year or period. So why not look at profiles in these that make you go "Wait, who?" This isn't a "proper" deep dive or analysis, friends. This is just me having some casual fun with some stuff I love. Come on this journey with me and let me know which of these characters YOU were already familiar with!

Alright friends, it's time for another hyper-focused topic on something probably nobody but me cares about.

In my handbook retrospective last year I talked briefly about these but now it's time we travel back to the 90s, back to DC and take a look at... SECRET FILES AND ORIGINS As you probably remember I have had an unhealthy fascination with handbook comics ever since first discovering the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe (Deluxe edition) through our long-departed Swedish editions of Marvel comics. And with good reason.

Gudra the Valkyrie is hardly a household name and I'm sure even many Wonder Woman fans are only barely aware of her as a sometimes villain, sometimes sorta-ally of Diana. But she has one surprising and very key role in the DCU. Or had, anyway. (And if you're wondering why I wrote Gudra when the comic page CLEARLY reads Gundra - that's a whole thing.)

Alright folks it's time for us to take a look at one of the most unlucky teams in superhero comics. Today we go global and explore the hopefully beginnings and tragic end of DC's Global Guardians.

Caution: This thread is gonna get DARK. It is absolutely no secret nor surprise that most superhero comics produced in the USA are extremely US-centric. The degree of this naturally varies and some creators are much better at changing perspectives than others. Still, DC and Marvel especially are very focused on the USA

So fun fact.
One of my recurring efforts as a teen and young adult was trying to hammer out an idea for a uniquely Swedish and Scandinavian superhero universe that would neither be filled with just stereotypes and also not just a parody of American comics.

https://twitter.com/JimZub/status/1500670078387466241

Those two are largely the only modes you ever see of superhero fiction here, or at least that was the case at the time. And it's damn hard because you're constantly faced with a bunch of cultural references that won't make any sense to anyone from outside this area.

Hello everyone.
Join me today as we explore the fate of the original super-team in comics through sorrow and joy, from the war-torn days of World War 2 to the futuristic utopia of the 1980s as we seek an answer to the question...

"Who killed the Justice Society of America"? This thread is a direct response to my full aware self-critique that I talk a lot less about DC than I do other publishers. Which is weird as DC was pretty much the reason I became a life-time comics fan as a young adult. So I hope this will be interesting.

One of the first batch of superhero comics I got my hands on in the original US release (and not a translated Swedish edition) was this series, which is a very strange animal even today, looking back. It is in every regard a direct sequel to the 1991 mini Deadly Foes of Spider-Man which was also written by Danny Fingeroth but had a different art team mostly carried by Al Milgrom. Both series are in essence kind of about the Sinister Syndicate, the sorta-kinda Sinister Six