So I'm reading some Heroes Return comic that I got from the library and it's the usual superhero nonsense and I'm good with that. I love seeing beings of unimaginable power smash each other in the fucking face. I get off on it. And Jason Aaron and Ed McGuinness usually produce the kind of pumped-up hyperbole that is all I want in these kinds of comics, so I'm all in, for 200 pages, at least.
And it's all going along nicely when we get to this part during the big fight at the climax, where there is the biggest wind-up for some kind of pay-off, and then....
Nothing. It cuts to another bit of action. You don't see the hit of the hammer, or any of the pain Thor is bringing down, you don't see anything. No pay-off, no climax. The next time you see these characters, they're both roughing it up at about the same rate, and then Thor is smacked down in the name of plot shenanigans and the answer to Thor's mighty question is tossed away.
I was so thrown off by this jarring cut, I had to find another copy of this comic to see if the collected edition had some kind of misprint, but it turned out that's just how it was.
Once on a flight home from foreign lands, the lovely wife was watching that Australia film, starring Huge Jackman and Nikki Kidman, and they cut out the bit where the rugged man and determined woman finally embrace and kiss and it was the biggest tease ever, with no reward. A harmless romance movie became something deeply frustrating.
I felt the same here, and while everything worked out okay for the good guys, (with the usual foreboding notes for the future), it all felt pretty unsatisfying. Jarring, discordant narratives might be an attempt to be big or clever, or things might have just got squeezed out by the endless pontifications, but I don't know how anybody could get off on this kind of thing.
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