My Marvelous Year

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• Popping in to say I just recently started the My Marvelous Year journey - following along with the podcast. Who knows if I'll ever catch up but I'm up to 1968 and enjoying y'all immensely.

• I have very limited time for pleasure listening, and I rarely listen to comic podcasts regularly since Wait What ended.

  This podcsst is an excellent exception, hosts have great rapport and its made me reviist or read for the first time some marvel classics .

  Will cut and paste to itunes reviews

• Just started at year 1962.....I'll catch-up eventually 😂.

• I have been listening to the my marvelous years pod cast, I started from episode five and WAS ENJOYING IT!
  Till I reached years1985 pt 2
  And I have to say your white guilt and woke takes on everything is a huge turn off.
  To depict all of the riots and protesters destroying businesses, buildings and statues as “ oh look at them poor black people “ is nauseating.
  If you’re full of white guilt then you must have done something to achieve this. I am a 57 year old white man, who has been a comic fan for longer than either of you have been alive. I have see the horror of big city riots and crime. I can tell you first hand that 75 to 80% of crimes are perpetrated by black men. Period. And to almost justify the destruction thst took place and is still taking place is a snowflake move. Sorry you just lost a listener. Have a nice guilty life.

  • That's unfortunate. I just found this pod today and listened to the first couple episodes and was enjoying it immensely. I literally just finished reading Marvel Comics 1 and was about to make my way through some of the golden age comics they discussed before heading to 1962 (I think it was). But if the hosts bring their politics into the pod, I'll just find another before I become too invested. Thanks for the warning.

    Nonetheless, I wish the hosts well. :)

  • There's no place for you here. Bye.

• I just discovered your podcast.
  First off I am enjoying it immensely. I really like how you two deliver the material. I like how clean you make it. A lot of podcasts are littered with profanity, which for me adds nothing to the conversation. I have been a comic book fan since 1973 , and am still one today.
  But I must admit, I do not read anything past 2015. I just do not agree with the way the companies are taking the franchises .
  Keep up the great work on the greatest era of comics ever.
  Oh by the way in your early episodes you keep saying that it was pre comics code. The self governing of comics( comics code) was established in1956 after the seduction of the innocence book came out, which started a trial. Thank you again jim

• Catching up and just listening to Heroes Reborn. Please don't cut out Dave singing. He's so earnest!

  • I'll make sure to include it again if it happens. :)

    • It’s clear that one of the things Dave best understands is the importance of being earnest. Huh?huuuh? Elbow nudge.

• Hey Zack and Dave, I'm loving the podcast so far! I'm up to 1981 and am also friggin loving the ultimate year podcast! I was curious if you guys will ever be doing something like this for DC?

  • "My DC Year" is one of their Patreon goals! And I *think* Zack is already working on a reading list.

    • I am! The rough draft is available in our Slack. :)

• I don’t know where else to put this. This is a very long and ranty comment but I’d like to say upfront that overall I love the website and the podcast and appreciate all the hard work that has gone into both, so please understand that my comments are coming from a place of frustration with something I care about and not from sniping or trying to make a personal attack or simply quibble over a difference of opinion. I just want to mark this moment as I listen to the August 2020 Year 25 1986 Pt. 3 episode to express how much I have loved this podcast, and yet how much I have grown to despise Zack’s contribution to it. I sincerely hope that some critical self-reflection occurred after this episode and the vibe and energy changes subsequently otherwise I may have to abandon my attempt to catch up to you guys. I only started a month or so ago and I’ve made it from 1973 to 1986 and overall really enjoyed the podcast, found the reading list indispensable, and generally enjoyed y’all’s rapport. Even though I almost always strongly disagree with Zack, up to this point it’s mostly been fun to listen to you give each other a hard time over your takes, with Dave typically defending the general consensus view and Zack typically championing strange mediocre things and hating on obvious classics. I also have really appreciated when Zack has brought up ethical and political critiques of these comics and agree that this is an important part of how we read them today, and for the record have no issue with any of y’all’s criticisms of that stuff and would even go further in some cases.

  However, over the course of the episodes the nitpicking and dismissive tone began to annoy me more and more. It seems to reach its absolute apex in this episode. To be clear, I am not upset about Zack having different opinions than my own, it’s the manner in which they are expressed combined with the widespread problems with the substance of his criticisms. In this episode he constantly interrupts Dave, and adopts this sighing whiney tone that is like nails on a chalkboard to me while being extremely dismissive and insensitive about a comic event which is historically important, unprecedented, and emotionally charged for some readers. I get that he felt that it failed on every possible level and was boring and didn’t move him in any way but listening to him talk about this material like that after having just read it was extremely disheartening and makes me question whether I want to keep listening.

  I really wish that Zack could cultivate an attitude of hermeneutic generosity when it comes to the engagement with these comics. I get that for many people who engage with cultural objects for a living or a hobby and need to speak and write about them constantly there is a tendency to frame their own experience via the definition of the critic as one who approaches the material with a fundamentally combative eye, on the look out for flaws, assuming a position of “if this thing is supposed to be good, or even noteworthy, then I challenge it to impress me!” as in the cultural object needs to perform some labor to win you over. But that’s not the only way to approach cultural objects, and I would argue that it’s actually a very immature and unsophisticated one. In contrast with braindead fanboyism, it surely presents itself as the intellectually sophisticated position to define the task of the critic in a combative unsympathetic mode. But in my studies of intellectual history, philosophy, and literature, and in my teaching of those subjects, I’ve found that this approach resembles the meme of the smug guy sitting at the table with the sign that says something something “change my mind”. It puts the burden of interpretation on the text, assuming that it’s the job of the text to work for you while often I would argue that you are the one that needs to work for the text. From my perspective when you have the experience where you think “all these people claim this writer/series/artist/run etc. is great/important/groundbreaking/interesting but I don’t get it” your first thought shouldn’t be “I’m obviously right, my first impression and resulting opinion doesn’t need to be questioned, therefore all of these other people are wrong” but rather, “how could otherwise intelligent people that care about the same things as me have such a different reaction, what am I missing or what contextualization is necessary for me to understand where they are coming from.” This can be purely a thought experiment, the end result doesn’t actually even need to alter your original opinion! Maybe in the end you still don’t care for Claremont or Simonson, but you will seek to understand why other people do and you will be able to discuss the material in a much more interesting way than being snarky and belligerent. You may also discover that much of what you are reacting to is based on your own preconceptions and biases and lack of information where you fill in the missing pieces with the readymade narrative you brought to the reading. This is a classic situation in a classroom setting when a very intelligent and opinionated student hasn’t done their homework. Any good instructor can pick up on it and the best thing to do is to try to anchor the discussion in the text itself. I will acknowledge that in the cases where this happens on the podcast it’s not Zack’s fault, it’s largely due to the reading list and the sheer quantity that y’all were trying to pack in, omissions are necessary. But it’s extremely frustrating when I’ve done all of the reading and then I hear Zack saying a comic made no sense and was full of random references but actually it’s just because y’all skipped the issues where those plot points or characters were introduced. If you want to be a critical warrior and treat every hermeneutic encounter as a battle to the death, you need to come correct. The frequency of basic errors about the content (citing an issue which had a a different artist as proof that Simonson is a bad artist etc.) is remarkable considering the confidence with which your derision is expressed. If you turned in a paper in a college course that was constructed in this way I don’t see how you would pass the course even with an extremely generous instructor. I sincerely hope that there is a shift in the subsequent episodes because if it continues on in this direction I will have to stop listening, which makes me really sad because I’ve gotten so much out of reading along and listening to you guys and was planning on signing up for the Patreon and participating more in the community. But sadly I just hadn’t realized that I was listening to Zack’s villain origin story. I’m kidding… mostly.

  Last point and then rant over. In a Variant Cover episode where you discussed this question of being critical or negative finding fault etc the topic of if there were perfect comics or perfect movies came up and Zack cited “The Matrix” as a perfect movie which has to be the most ridiculous thing he has said up to the point that I have listened. Here’s my Zack style hot take: “The Matrix was a perfect movie for a 13 year old boy in 1999, watching it in 2021 I thought it was pretty awful and gave it 2 1/2 stars. Blade is a way better movie and actually holds up. K owing that Zack thought the Matrix was perfect makes me knock off another two stars bringing it down to 1/2 a star. Blade remains 5 stars.”

  Loved the episode with Frankie and have noticed that you seem to have more guests from this point on and I believe bring in Charlotte as a regular? Perhaps this will help temper some of Zack’s worst inclinations. In any event I apologize if this comes off as pretentious or as pointless complaining but I hope it can be seen as constructive criticism. At the end of the day I just beg you to reject the notion that there are only two ways of approaching this material, as either a shallow fan with nothing but praise or as a smart critic who thinks deeply by complaining and nitpicking. This is a profoundly impoverished understand of the work of interpretation, and it makes for an extremely disappointing and frustrating podcast.

  • Personally, for the record, I feel sort of the reverse of this -- Zack's takes, even if they are sometimes bonkers (disliking Simonson?), are at least clearly unique and show that he is really engaging with the work and forming an opinion. Dave, on the other hand, frequently just voices popular opinion without actually making a case, and simply shuts down conversation because something is considered classic -- disliking it is invalid, because fans decided decades ago that this arc is good and important. I appreciate having both views. One person with absolutely no regard for what's canonically considered good, and one person who frequently adheres blindly to the popular opinion without seeming to form his own.

    In terms of civility, neither of these guys have a lot of tact in a disagreement. We're talking about Zack's stubbornness, but it's not like Dave has ever once in the show been willing to recontextualize a "classic" and look at it in a new way. Dave also very willfully misinterprets Zack's points constantly just to needle him or pick arguments over nothing. I love the show and both hosts, but neither of them approach these things particularly diplomatically.

    Anyway, if anyone is reading this and is at a point in the podcast where they're feeling a little exhausted by the combativeness, just know that the tone fully changes when Charlotte joins up. The conversations become a lot more fun, and when Zack says something off the wall it's more of just a "oh Zack you so crazy" and move on, instead of a "let's talk over each other about this for 20 minutes and not bother listening."

  • I appreciate the effort you put into writing this. You’ve articulated my feelings about the episode perfectly.

  • Agreed with this. I love the podcast but it is exhausting hearing Zack at times. It definitely decreases the enjoyment of podcast.

• I just finished listening to 1986 part 3 and I have to salute Dave for FINALLY standing up to Zack’s crazy “hot takes”. Obviously I don’t need to defend Simonson or Claremont considering they are pretty unanimously considered the most significant and pioneering writers of Thor and X-Men in Marvel history. The part that really stubbed my toes was saying your opinions, which I think you sometimes push as fact, are largely based on not really caring about the lore. MMY is Marvel history and essential story-specific. Lore is literally the point! It’s how we become immersed in this crazy universe! All that being said, I love you both and love the podcast!

• i want to start reading ALL the marvel comics, so is everything you listed on this site have each and every comic? is there a template on reading it in chronological order?

• Hi, I love the show. Before this my only actual "connection" to Marvel, or any superhero-comics, is through movies. So I am wondering if you have any plans for the DC also in the future?

  • They said they would if DC made it easier to do so. Infinite just came out last month so let’s hope they keep improving.

• My family have always been marvel fans, but that was the movies. Now that our kids are teenagers, and I've stumbled onto your wonderful site, we are about to jump in with both feet. We will be reading your reading lists from the beginning. Thanks so much for putting all of this together!

  • Love it! Enjoy the read-along!

• Hi, I just started listening to the podcast as I am a hard core silver age fan. Certainly, I am looking forward to working though the bronze age and into more modern material. One thing I would mention is that on the golden age bonus episode there is a lot of talk about how Timely/Atlas was just a trend chaser. That is true but the caveat to that is that Stan Lee recruited and developed a lot of artists during this time who became stars in the Silver and Bronze Age. People like John Buscema, Steve Ditko, Don Heck and John Romita SR. So there was a lot of trend chasing comics, but the art was often outstanding. As far as the writing side obviously its not like today. If your listeners want to see what top level writing looked like in that era, check out Chester Gould on DIck Tracy. He was doing complex subbplots and story arcs a lot earlier than the rest of the comic strip/comic book industry. Keep up the good work.

• Loving the show here in the UK guys! One request though....can we have some more short burst earnest singing from Dave? It's both in tune and makes me laugh so hard I wet myself. It's a little known fact that all English people do this when laughing.

  • Woohoo! Thanks for the feedback, Paul! I'll see what I can do about tunes in future eps :)

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