So 2099 started as an a one shot that was going to be called The Marvel World of Tomorrow and was first announced in STAN'S SOAPBOX. It was then made into a line of books. First called Marvel 2093 (cuz it would be 100 years after they were released. Then Marvel 2099. Earth 928 is the designated earth where all of this takes place. I thought that was also the same Earth where Spider-Girl took place but no that was Earth 982. I love Alternative Universes but man it can get pretty wild sometimes. Anyway I picked Ravage 2099 for two reasons I heard it was really really really not good and if you liked it you were a stupid-head. Sometimes I like to stick up for unloved things but sometimes I just don't. The second reason is Stan Lee.
Is it wrong that my anxiety issues are so bad that I'm afraid of waking up one day to like 92230 comments of people screaming at me on this blog. I mean yeah I could just delete them but I just don't want to become the INTERNET'S ANGER SPOT for the day. This is just another reason why the internet sucks with like this many people on it. You say something people didn't like on a forum you'd get like maybe at max 5 people yelling at you. Who were then usually told to shut up. I dunno. I say this because I have mixed feeling on Stan Lee. Yes, I have mixed feelings on a INTERNET LOVED PERSON. You know it's fun to have mixed feelings on a INTERNET LOVED PERSON or THOUGHT or IDEA because then you get both groups of people who seem to roam around the internet these days yelling at you. The left wingers and the right wingers! That's always a great time. I love it.
Stan Lee did not create the Marvel Universe single handedly and people really should know more about Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby and every other artist who worked with him in the 1960s. People shouldn't also give credit to Stan Lee for things that happened after he left Marvel. A lot of people deserve credit for the Marvel Universe and the upkeep of said universe. That is my feelings on that. However and here come the mixed feelings. EVEN IF THE ONLY THING HE DID WAS WRITE DIALOGUE STAN LEE IS STILL VERY IMPORTANT TO THE WHOLE THING. Some people want to say he just edited Jack Kirby's dialogue. No. Sorry, Not a fucking chance. I don't want to disparage Jack Kirby but his dialogue was wild and weird at times. I have come around to enjoying it but I do not think it would have made a lot of people happy in the 1960s. Steve Ditko's dialogue was worse. Jack Kirby's at least had flair to it. Steve Ditko's dialogue is dryer than a British Man's sense of humour. If that's all he did and I believe he did more it would still make it enough for him to be one of the main creators or guys who got it started. This debate and discussion gets people on fucking edge and it's never fun to talk about. It's one of those debates that feel like it could turn into a crazed knife fight at any second but my feeling is Stan Lee is important to Marvel Comics. Just not as important as just about everyone else on the internet would think.
The artist on this comic was Paul Ryan. I don't know how many issues he did but he did these. He was not a fan at first because he had to come up with MANY sketches until his wife was like Why don't you just ASK Stan Lee what he wanted? Paul did that and drew that. Stan was finally happy. Paul drew this issue and I think up to #8 when someone else came in as Writer or Artist. Stan Lee would get an itch to do something with Spider-Man or Silver Surfer or Marvel in general and then get bored and leave again. Or because he had to be on like 5400 talk shows. Paul was born in 1949 and worked on Fantastic Four (my least favorite Fantastic Four issues but they are very well drawn) and the Phantom comic strip after Lee Falk stopped doing it. I like the 1990s Phantom movie. It is wild and ridiculous. Billy Zane is cool.
So I guess it's time to review this comic. Ravage 2099. Let's see if I like it or dislike it. We start with some guy running away from an ECO Patrol. He is just known as a Polluter. He runs into the sewer when the ECO PATROL finally find him and fry his ass. We then see his body being taken away by a cool flying ambulance thing. I really thought I would get to fly a car as an adult but no I would just see my faith in humanity die. I do not love that. I bet it would be cool to be in a flying car though. I still have faith in that. So at ECO CENTRAL some BIG WIG is wondering why the guy was not brought in alive! He is Paul-Phillip and he wants to get rid of the corruption within the ECO PATROLS. He says he will alert Alchemax but his secretary is like NO and then tells him a story of how her father tried to do the same thing but was then taken to HELLROCK to live with MUTROIDS. I hope Mutroids are just Mutants on steroids because that would rule. He tells her to GET STUFFED because HE'S THE HEAD OF ECO HE WON'T GET SENT TO HELLROCK. He then fights a cool 1990S FUTURISTIC GANG. 1990s FUTURISTIC stuff is second coolest only to 1980s futuristic stuff.
One of the FUTURE GANG KIDS was the son of the guy who was killed earlier. He tells them that his father was coming to tell them about CORRUPTION and BAD THINGS and that he had him killed. He denies this and then forces the kid Dack to come to Alchemax with him. Man Paul-Phillip is a goober. They talk to MR HENTON and he's like OH NO ILL FIND OUT WHATS WRONG. and then when he leaves just kills his butler because he feels he heard to much. He then talks to the other ALCHEMAX bosses and oh no they were all in on the corruption!!! THE CORRUPTION LEADS TO THE TOP! They are going to frame him for a crime. I think Paul-Phillip's secretary hears him and wants to help. I don't know why she's at HENTONS place but I guess it could only be here. Paul-Phillip and the kid DACK have a argument and now a MUTROID is after him. They look like a Albino Thing wearing dressed up like a homeless person. He implicates PAUL PHILLIP in a crime. Oh shit he's gonna be sent to HELLROCK. He fights some guys and then jumps out of the WINDOW ON THE TOP LEVEL to try and save him and TIANA the secretary because the MUTROID that was controlled by HENTON was gonna EXPLODE.
HENTON talks about how he's so good and then kills the lady giving him a massage or whatever and then stops watching the video because he can't see through the fire. However Paul-Phillip and his lady are safe. They are holding on to a ledge. They get back into the office and escape without being seen. They somehow find DACK'S house and PAUL-PHILLIP is all like IM NOW RAVAGE AND THEY BETTER WATCH OUT!!!!!!!!!! He goes to a garbage yard to steal stuff for his costume including an old GARBAGE TRUCK made out of STEEL and not PLASTIC and it somehow works after not being used since like 1993 or whenever. He busts out and then we get a final page of a character called DEATHSTRIKE or some 1990s goofiness. wait no he's DETHSTRYKE. Yeah the 1990s were goofy as shit for comic books.
FINAL THOUGHTS: can we say OKAY? OKAY. GOOD can we say GENERIC? GENERIC!! good!! that's what this comic is. It's very been there done that but not with anything that really makes you want to pick up the next issue. The dialogue doesn't even feel Stan Lee-y. I dunno. It's not awful but while I will be reading more Doom 2099 (probably just for my own amusement and not the blog) I do not think I'll read any more of the 31 issues this comic got. I just don't got the time man.
First and foremost, like MY INCREDIBLE BLOG THAT MAKES YOUR BLOG EVEN BETTER, no one will ever read it besides cavern. And this isn't an insult at all because lol even *less* people read my blog posts. But you shouldn't have anxiety about being people's momentary focus.
ReplyDeleteThere's a few reasons. Most people on the Internet don't read anymore. Back when we got on it, it was a wonderful place of TEXT and low quality images. It's funny, I dug out a backup CD (not DVD) of my personal files from 2000. Dodging cringe like a ninja, one take away from it was holy crap, every image was like 320x240. I didn't even bother with copying any images over because it would be kenjeongsquint.gif.
Anyway, that side note aside, when we were young, you could read all day and never run out. Then network speeds increased, data storage increased, resolutions went crazy and video was easily accessible. So now people WATCH and don't READ. And if they do read, it's like every goddamn video where the person is talking but
EVERYTHING
THEY SAY
IS SPELLED OUT
ON THE VIDEO
SO IT DOESN'T EVEN MATTER
IF YOU HEAR THEM
AND THIS IS
ALL THE READING
PEOPLE DO
ANYMORE
They are going to see anything we write and go TL;DR LULZ. On top of that and building on that, you only share your blog posts here and nowhere else. You don't (hopefully anymore) have a twitter account where you link these. If we share your posts, it's inside the same personal circles that are tiny and don't go anywhere. The Google webcrawler is basically dead because of AI. So even if people put in a very specific Google search, you still won't come up. A search for Ravage 2099 may have you on page 70. No one goes past page 2 or even 1.
It's abrasive to say but no one gives a shit. Well, we in cavern do but we are effectively zero so saying no one holds. I would not worry about it at all. Unless of course they release more Epstein files and they reference a serial grapist.
On the topic of Stan Lee, he was more the flagbearer than anything, especially once he stopped writing in the 60s or 70s or whatever. In some ways, he's to Marvel like you are to Cavern. So many of our memes and -isms run through you, that if anyone was the "face" of Cavern, it's you. Did you create and run Cavern all these years? No. But you are vital to it and the company man of the group.
Anyway, I learned enough from the shitty gerbage What If volume 1 that Jack Kirby can draw but he really can't create. The Eternals are hot ass and his writing in What If was mediocre at best. Like you said, more of a team effort and no single person should be the sole credit.
Another aside, they printed What If Volume 2 collections which I was exciting about but they are fucking hardcover (I don't like hardcover reading on the can because the binding aren't flexible enough to rest it over my leg when I'm shaking one out SORRY YOU WANTED A REPLY, YOU GET EVERYTHING THAT COMES WITH IT) and also $60-$100 EACH. Might be a while before they go paperback but man, I am not paying $300 for 4 books.
The whole 2099 thing was kind of good and kind of bad. Like, it was all interesting takes on characters... kind of. I remember Hulk 2099 being basically a completely feral monster (WARNING: my memory may not be accurate) but Punisher was just... Punisher. I was out on Spiderman at that point so I maybe got issue one. I was big into X-Men so X-Men 2099 was a must buy and it was just very ok. I liked that the Professor X 2099 had one hand that destroyed and one that healed and was named like PING PANG XIAN or something. However my problem with that comic is Ron Lim drew it and I'm sorry, nothing against Lim but literally every human he draws looks exactly the same. There's no variety.
Anyway, finally, the actual part of the comment RELATED TO THE COMIC AT HAND and that brings us to Ravage 2099. My memory is a fucking joke now but I vaguely remember my father reading it, I guess as a bonding thing with me? Like he seemed interested in it. Maybe. I'm not really sure. Without getting too personal, I haven't spoken to my father in almost 20 years and the 10 years proceeding it were rocky because of my parents' split. That era of comics was right around when things fell apart. So maybe that was it?
ReplyDeleteSo I was invested in it more than others and unfortunately, it started very thriller (not Michael Jackson Thriller, jerk) and action-y without getting super-y. I think that was Paul Ryan's influence and that was when the comic was the most interesting and if I had to guess, that was the primary focus of Stan Lee at the time.
Then Ryan left and they decided A ROUGH AROUND THE EDGES HERO AIN'T GOOD ENOUGH so they decided to mutate Ravage and turn him basically into a hairy bull man. After that, I very quickly fell off the Ravage wagon and checking in on the shelves over the next few years of this book, it just gets worse and worse. I am shocked it lasted beyond issue 12 tbh.
hearing this makes me kinda want to read more. At least a "we have no idea what the fuck we are doing so we are just throwing it all at the wall" is more interesting than this very generic first issue.
DeleteJack Kirby only wrote like one issue of What If Vol 1 if I recall correctly. It's one I want to like a lot more than I did. I dunno. I should check that issue out again. I do need to review more WHAT IF period.
There's a reason why for the most part whenever they do anything with The ETERNALS it's just those GIANT SPACE ROBOT GODS The Celestials which are clearly the best part of the Eternals!
Yeah it was very much no idea what they were doing. Maybe they saw what Stan Lee spun up and said "fuck that old fart" and intentionally sabotaged it. I dunno.
DeleteThere is too much Jack Kirby stink on What If. I READ THEM ALL BELIEVE ME I KNOW