I mean, Jesus Christ, Rob. Reboot after retool after dramatic change, like you’re trying to stuff the entirety of fifty to seventy years of X-Men/Avengers tales into a 22 page comic. You can’t go three fucking issues without rebooting the fucking team. Your most interesting characters were killed off, or disappeared, or rendered useless. There are so many goddamn loose threads and things and people that show up like we’re supposed to know them and then just vanish.
Add to that the fact that nearly every character you created is a straight rip-off of a Marvel or DC character and well, fuck, man. No wonder people deride your work. MacFarlane and Jim Lee did better art; everyone does better writing. It’s pretty clear that your ego got in the way of your progression; sometimes, success too early kills the instinct for growth.
Evolution is better than talent; a work ethic and a willingness to adapt will always beat natural skill.
I mean, I don’t know Rob. He might be a perfectly nice guy, but goddamn. This universe is a mess, and Brigade and Bloodstrike aren’t any better.
Consistency. Uniquity. Time to learn who people are – these are the ties that bind, the things that draw us to characters, not cheap knockoffs, splashy art and disjointed storytelling that reads like me trying to write my first novel, discarding and changing, abandoning, getting sick of an idea that’s not working and starting over with the same idea, with a twist, but instead of letting it evolve into something consistent for the world to see when it’s ready, you just do it all over and over again. No wonder people can’t seem to stick, and so many of these series or story arcs get rebooted after one to two issues.
You need to go back to basics, ditch the knockoffs and focus on the things that actually worked (which wasn’t much). Of course, yet another reboot is an interest killer, so maybe not. Maybe just put this fucker to bed, and admit, after thirty-plus years?
This shit ain’t gonna work out.
Target: 1400 words
Written: 1413 words, novel: Bad Neighbours
Read: The Never-Ending Present, Michael Barclay
Comics: Youngblood v4 8-9, Brigade v4 1, Bloodstrike 26
Music: With The Beatles, The Beatles