What do you think about this guy's opinion on the "Battke of the Bands" Arc?

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by Leo656

https://y.yarn.co/2357fe72-c25f-40f1...f1b83_text.gif

Crappy gif, best I could find of this clip. Sorry, I know I'm usually better.

And yes, Peter was totally right. That movie seems terrible.

[Leo656]

Sh*t, even I could've just gone on YouTube for the clip if it was THAT important, I just didn't know if it was funny enough to take the extra seventeen seconds out of my morning to bother.

Turns out it was. Ya bastid.

And that entire "movie" was just Bill Pullman's psychotic-break fantasy; he's actually on Death Row for murdering the Jeff Daniels character after he caught him runnin' around makin' pornos.

...I just saw "Lost Highway" last week for the first time ever.

[MikeandRaph87]

It has no place in TMNT. It simply doesn't work for the plot. The solicits and articles on it make it read like a huge ramification and dire future. It could not have been more of a stretch.

[oldmanwinters]

[Sees "Battke of the Bands"'
[Thinks "is that German?"]

[ChosenOne]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I mean, there's a saying that "All Art is Propaganda", in that it invariably reflects the views and beliefs of its creator.

Good art does it with subtlety, though. It doesn't smack the reader/viewer over the head like a nunchuck with the author's views.

Originally Posted by MikeandRaph87

(...) dire future.

Weeell...

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by ChosenOne

Good art does it with subtlety, though. It doesn't smack the reader/viewer over the head like a nunchuk with the author's views.

Strongly agree.

I don't ever think that trying to make a point or send a message or entertain a notion is "offsides", I just think there's a way to do it within a commercial piece of entertainment without bludgeoning people with it.

Like okay, some people may remember this. But once upon a time, Chuck Austen had a terrible, I mean f*cking awful run on Action Comics. Like all writers who handle the character, he wanted to "leave a stamp" on the Superman mythos, and one of the things he always felt like was that "Lois is a bitch, Clark should've ended up with Lana instead." And he wanted to explore that idea.

Problems arose from the very start of this. For one thing, in-story Lana was married with a kid; but Austen wanted her free to openly pitch herself at Clark so she suddenly acts like she doesn't care about her family and only ever got married or had the kid to keep up appearances while secretly pining for Clark the entire time. Further, Lois was very much NOT a bitch or a selfish uncaring wife who neglected Clark's needs or wants, at this point, but that's what Austen wanted her to be for the purpose of his story, so suddenly, she WAS that, out of nowhere. In the concurrent Superman books running at the exact same time, everything about her character and her marriage to Clark was shown to be healthy and stable, the exact opposite of what was going on in Austen's run. So right off, the writer was twisting the characters and the canon to fit the story they wanted to tell, and that's always bad to start with.

So it starts off with Lois being absent for a while while Lana all but throws herself at Clark for several issues, stopping juuuust short of flat-out telling him "She's a bitch, get a divorce so we can f*ck," even flat-out telling Clark that "Lois doesn't love you", which is f*cking absurd and contradicts everything we'd directly seen and read in any Superman books for over ten years. It got baaaaaaaad. So then Lois comes back, and the two of them start getting super-catty with each other, and it's cringe. The whole time, Superman's in recovery from getting his ass kicked by some loser super-villain Austen made up for this story who never mattered again afterwards, so he mostly just sits around moping about all this while his wife and his ex are about to have a catfight at the dinner table in front of Ma and Pa. Everybody f*cking hated it, it was awful.

It got to a point where Ma Kent in-story tells them both to stop being c*nts, tells Lana to stop being a homewrecking bitch and tels Lois she could basically be nicer to Clark (or something), and that's the end of that plotline after what felt like a million issues but was probably only like six or seven (his arc only ran for 11 issues, originally planned for 12 but he got kicked off it at the end). I imagine DC told him to drop it immediately due to the severely negative feedback they were getting, thus the clunk/thud "resolution" out of nowhere and it never coming up again. The rest of the story wasn't much better but people f*cking HATED the Lana/Clark/Lois stuff. And it was like HALF of what the story was about! It's become something of a legendary tale in how NOT to explore an intriguing idea within the confines of the established-fiction of a licensed property.

So we've got ignoring established canon and character behavior to fit your story, rather than writing a story to fit what's been established, and that's not how comics work. We've got a non-ending to a prominent plotline which takes up a lot of real estate but in the end turns out to be F*cking Nothing and a giant waste of time. And we've got characters acting in ways that directly contradict things they did Not Long Ago At All, just because the plot demands it. Sound familiar at all?

And it's not like the basic idea Austen went for in that case wasn't intriguing; it'd been a prominent theme in the past, particularly the Silver Age although it wasn't handled very gracefully there at all and was actually rather awful back then, too. The whole idea of Lana carrying a flame for Clark and there always being a spark of "What If?" between them is part of their entire dynamic. But this sh*t was bananas. In better hands, it COULD have been a real knockout subplot; instead, it ended with one of the characters IN THE STORY saying, "This is stupid. Stop it right now."

There's a Good and Bad way to utilize your soapbox when entrusted with familiar and beloved fictional characters. Every good writer is trying to make a point, but there's a way to do it with grace and a way to just smash it in people's faces. The latter generally doesn't much work because it's so transparent and lazy.

[Bahamut810]

I almost dropped the series because of that. Even if Bebop was a 'quitter'...Checkovs gun. You hyped a battle of the bands...you showed everyone playing their instruments. GIVE US OUR BATTLE OF THE BANDS! That was *no* way to write a story. AT ALL.

[ChosenOne]

Originally Posted by Bahamut810

Checkovs gun.

Guns are bad, m'kay? No one needs a high capacity assault writer.

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by oldmanwinters

[Sees "Battke of the Bands"'
[Thinks "is that German?"]

At a glance, I thought it said "Bukkake of the Bands" and I thought this whole conversation was gonna be a lot different.

[ProphetofGanja]

At this point IDW’s TMNT cast is in danger of Too Many Cooksing itself out of existence

[ryu238]

Originally Posted by hypered1

As I said in my previous comment, it was Bebop and Natsu who decide they wouldn't compete.
The person on reddit was trying to say that it was the crowd and/or the turtles that wouldn't let them play which isn't the case at all. Sally did tell them to leave the club but that was after Rocksteady began threatening to start a fight.

Either the reddit person was incorrectly repeating what they've only heard about the issue or they've actually read it and they're being deliberately disingenuous with the facts to twist them into something sounds far worse than the truth.

Thanks. I knew there was something wrong there.

[ChosenOne]

There's a lot that's wrong, alright.

[ryu238]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Kinda makes me glad nobody reads this book, or the TMNT brand might be an even bigger joke than it already is right now.

The gymnastics performances by this arc's defenders would make a contortionist green with envy. I have a strong feeling that a lot of it comes from just being terrified that there won't be a TMNT book and so they have to justify and defend it because it's better than getting nothing.

I'd disagree, personally. With stuff like this, we don't especially need a TMNT book that badly, I reckon. It's a blind, toothless, two-legged dog with scabies at this point, just waiting to be put out of its misery so the suffering can end.

Also, the original poster missed the chance to copy over perhaps THE single most relevant part of the reddit post they're citing:
"I suspect this is therapeutic for the author, to create a world where everyone agrees with their point of view."

I mean... there it is. That's literally It.

Except what politics were being pushed?

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by ryu238

Except what politics were being pushed?

A point of view isn't necessarily a political one.

[ChosenOne]

Originally Posted by neatoman

A point of view isn't necessarily a political one.

Ever heard the saying about hammers and nails?

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by ChosenOne

Ever heard the saying about hammers and nails?

"Just because all you have is a hammer, that doesn't mean everything is a nail"

Is that the one?

[ChosenOne]

Originally Posted by neatoman

"Just because all you have is a hammer, that doesn't mean everything is a nail"

Is that the one?

Oh, yes, that's the one.