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Forum - View topicNEWS: Marvel, Tsuburaya Productions Partner to Release Ultraman Comics Starting in 2020
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 520 |
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I'm torn about this.
On the one hand: hey! Ultraman is picking up steam in the US! There are decades worth of content that new Ultraman fans can jump into and enjoy that this book could introduce people to! Decades of references in anime will finally make sense to people in the US! And Ultraman is plenty of fun. But... Marvel's doing it. And the Marvel of today isn't the Marvel of the 1980s that made those phenomenal licensed Micronauts or ROM the Space Knight or Transformers comics. The Marvel of today is owned by the visciously-IP-hungry Disney and is run by an editor-in-chief that faked an Asian identity. I want this book to do well because this could finally give Ultraman his big break in the US. But... I don't trust the guys that thought "Secret Empire" was a good idea to write Ultraman. |
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Commander Cluck
 Posts: 123 |
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I don't know why you're blaming Cebulski. He was given the keys to lock up shop for the night after the previous owner set the store on fire and stole all the money from the register. If you want to blame anyone for Marvel's current predicament it'd be the likes of Axel Alonso and Sana Amanat. I don't expect these to do well. Power Rangers only does middling and that has huge 90s nostalgia behind it. They keep trying to make Ultra Man a thing in America, but it never works. |
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4409 Location: New York |
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This is not the same Marvel of ROM, The Transformers and Micronauts. It’s not the same Marvel that gave so many toys epic backstories like GI Joe, or just made hilarious toyline material like Brute Force.
This is the Marvel or Stoppable Wasp, the Unbelievably Hideous Squirrel Girl, and...America Chavez. This is going to be a dumpster fire. |
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TheOtakuX
 Posts: 344 Location: Wooster, Ohio |
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They can still do good things. I've been enjoying the current X-Men, the Gwenpool miniseries, West Coast Avengers, recent-ish Avengers & Venom (I fell behind when War of the Realms interrupted everything). As for 'licensed' material (if you can call it that, now that they're both owned by Disney), modern Star Wars comics are good. |
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HoboSoup
Posts: 361 |
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Hey, hey, Squirrel Girl has been dorky and adorable since she first made her original appearance in 1991. |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 520 |
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A guy who faked an Asian identity being handed the reigns to a Japanese property just feels... really messed-up, is all. That context looms over the whole deal something nasty. As middling as Power Rangers has done, it needs to be given credit: it's endured. Plenty of franchises would give their left lung to do as "middling" as Power Rangers has for the past 25 years. Ultraman could do just as well; the original shows were syndication fodder in the 70s and 80s, and the streams have done well-enough that Mill Creek has seen fit to bring over boxed sets of even the newer shows like Ultraman Orb. Can Marvel make Ultraman a household name? Eh, prolly not--I see IDW as probably handling this better along the lines of what they've done for GI Joe, Transformers and Jem and the Holograms (Marvel's old 80s spirit of awesome licensed comics lives on through IDW). But all it takes is one month of GeekyWeekly making "Just what is all this Ultraman stuff and how can you ship it with Bucky Barnes?" thinkpieces to make a new fan or a thousand. Not every show needs to become a tentpole franchise starring Paul Rudd to be a success, it just has to do well enough to bring people in. And, misgivings aside, Marvel can clear that hurdle. There are goofs over at Marvel who can do right by tokusatsu heroes--Dan Slott is pretty much the reason why Japanese Spider-Man is relevant in the US courtesy of putting him into the Spider-Verse comic, and Jed Mackay did a damn good Japanese Spider-Man one-shot in the Vault of Spiders mini-series. Also, Dustin Weaver has a lot of Toku-influences in his stuff, his Infinity Stone series and his Spider-Verse one-shot give me a lot of hope. Marvel can do this. It's just that Marvel could also miss the point. 
It must've taken you a whole hour to come up with those "sick" burns. Had a hard time making one up for Chavez, did we? |
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Beatdigga
Posts: 4409 Location: New York |
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No, Chavez is pretty much a joke on her own.
But that goes back to my point that the Marvel where unknown to American characters could become massive successes whether connected to the Marvel Universe proper (ROM, Micronauts, Conan the Barbarian, Godzilla who got to fight the Avengers) or off in their own world (Transformers, GI Joe, hell, the 70’s and 80’s Star Wars comics) is gone now. The idea that comic books are going to introduce new people to these characters the way they did for Joe or hell, the Shogun Warriors line (it wasn’t a particularly good comic, but the Fantastic Four got to pilot Combattler V and that was kind of awesome) is not a thing anymore. I mean it’s not like Ultraman is gonna be in the MCU or anything. So that leaves us with the comics they are making, which by and large are awful, preachy pieces of junk they charge $5 for 22-24 pages. |
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Scion Drake
Posts: 942 |
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I swear I’ve seen this rhetoric before. Like on “certain” websites & YouTube channels I avoid like the plague, hmmmmmh.
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Beatdigga
Posts: 4409 Location: New York |
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Well the problem for me is the cost to entertainment ratio. Most of the comics in shops aren’t worth the money for ongoing issues.
Ultraman is gonna get a limited series, it’s not gonna sell well, and I just see Tsuburaya being frustrated with the endeavor. Heck, this isn’t the first time they tried release Ultraman comics in the US. I remember Tiga got one and it didn’t do so hot. |
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Gurren Rodan
 Posts: 263 |
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Well, whatever the results will be, I'm happy right now to see the franchise getting another opportunity to find footing (albeit small) in the States. Here's to hoping we get something good.
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Commander Cluck
Posts: 123 |
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Squirrel Girl in Great Lakes Avengers was great. Her and Speedball were cute together. Not so much the modern junk Marvel tried to push her as.
It's only going to get worse. As sales keep dropping, they'll keep hiking up the cover price to fudge the end of year numbers and say comics are doing just fine. We're already seeing 7.99 comics in comic stores. I would guess in a few years we'll start seeing comics being sold at the same price as manga volumes: 9.99 an issue. Sad how they'd rather do all this than make books people want to read. |
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Errinundra
Moderator
 Posts: 6534 Location: Melbourne, Oz |
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Post deleted. Please stay on topic and avoid political bashing.
And, Commander Cluck, I fixed your quote tags. |
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