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The idea behind this thread is simple: Talk about a character or version of a character that you are a fan of, but other people generally dislike and are hard upon. So yes, explain why you love Darkhawk here or why The Savage Dragon is a misunderstood masterpiece. No judgement here, though thought out counterpoints are fine- the entire point is these are characters you feel aren't liked by most people so saying you don't like them doesn't accomplish anything. I want to start off by talking about the New 52 version of Shazam. Rather specifically, why I like it: simply put, it's character growth, and more specifically, it's about a teenager who's jaded and is in that phase of 'everything is dumb, people suck, why bother being good' and learning to get over himself and be a better person. The fact of the matter, is simple: it's the sort of story I enjoy because the main character is written to have problems, but tries in spite of them to be good. On top of that, understandable problems: he doesn't know where his parents went, but he's been bounced from home to home and he's fifteen and decided he's figured out the world. He even says so at one point: "Yeah, well, I'm only 15 and I already know there's no such thing as a pure-hearted person." The thing is, whether he's right or not isn't exactly the point (The story portrays him as, of course, being right) but rather, the conclusion the wizard takes from it: he's been hung up over looking for someone flawless that he's ignored the idea of finding someone who aspires to be good. And Billy Batson is shown to be believably imperfect- there's the whole bit in the first chapter or two where he's lashing out and everyone hates it. But the point IS that Billy Batson is actively trying to be a little brat. He's that kind of kid, and then, everyone there is supporting him, and despite the fate of the world being thrust onto his shoulders... he manages to get over himself and let someone else in, rather than living his whole life hating everyone. Like, for all the people who lambast it for having Billy be like that, the entire point of it is to do that so Billy Batson can actually have a story where he grows and moves past it, and I enjoy it for that. He starts off entirely focused on the negative, like several other characters. Billy just says "These people aren't my real family, so I don't want them" when the story starts, but by the end of it he's turned around, and he's willing to make them a part of his life instead of pushing them away. The wizard is shown as being someone who just brings good people to his place, uses his magic to see what mistakes and misteps they've made, but when Billy suggests actually looking for the good in a person, he realizes he should have been looking at the good that went with it- and trying to do what he could to stoke that. Black Adam has had his power and has been deciding that the world is bad and needs destroyed, and won't let anyone tell him differently... but Billy changes back into a kid and tells him, essentially, to confront his mistakes and his decisions and see if he can keep telling himself that he's right and what he did was actually good, that these people are actually bad and deserve what he does. And Black Adam changes back, and crumbles to dust. It's got just enough there that I enjoy it for what it is- a goofy Geoff Johns story with a rocky start, and a kid character that comes out of it being written like a kid with power in over his head and learning to deal with his problems, and actually growing up a bit and moving out of the teenage nihilism he exhibits in the process.
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Jan 18, 2016 22:44
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I like Spider-Girl. I daresay she might be one of my favourite heroes. I'll be honest, a lot of it was down to the fact that three digests of Spider-Girl were the first comics I ever owned I was only a kid, this was over a decade ago, and we were in New York for a holiday, and we got to go into Midtown Comics. I'd just watched Spider-Man 2 on the flight across the Atlantic. I actually picked out Spider-Girl because I thought maybe my sister, who's a year older than me, might like it too. She didn't. But I thought it was the best thing ever. Yes, the dialogue was hokey - the teen slang as written by a middle-aged man was a bit off, but I never really got out much so I didn't have much of a frame of reference. It just made sense to my mind that this is where Peter Parker & Mary Jane would wind up (keep in mind, everything I knew about them I knew from the movies - this was just prior to OMD, I think). There was interpersonal drama in the everyday parts that didn't drive me out of my skull from boredom, as opposed to when I was exposed to it by osmosis from Hollyoaks at teatime, and the action was amaing. In one Spider-Girl fought against Spider-Man & the Human Torch (the only one I really liked in the at-the-time dire Fantastic Four movie - oh how naive we were...) when they were teenagers! And in another she went up against Seth, the Serpent god of Death, to by time for all the other superheroes to escape being trapped in Avengers mansion - so while she didn't technically defeat him, she was the one to save the day. Yeah, I'll admit it wasn't exactly the pinnacle of the medium, but dammit, it was my gateway to comics. I mean, I was sad that it wasn't really very popular compared to other stuff, what with repeated rebrandings failing to find traction. But then I figured after finding out what seemed to keep happening to the characters who kept getting published (OMD, for one thing) that it was probably for the best. They wrapped up her story nd I figured that was enough for me. It was a nice self-contained run without dragging in the mire of grimdark that plague mainstream books. Then...Slott happened, and he bscially took that characterand sacrificed her on the altar of Cheap Drama. Still, after DeFalco & Frenz were able to if not undo what Slott did, they were able to reorient that character into the one I recognised, I guess I can live with Spider-Woman as one of the Web Warriors. But she'll always be Spider-Girl to me. 
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Jan 18, 2016 23:26
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This is Conduit. On any self-respecting list of Worst Villains of the 90s, he's right at the top, and he deserves it. He is terrible. First off, his character design is atrocrious. I mean, just look at that poo poo. Good Christ. So, here's his deal: Kenny Braverman was born in Smallville on the day that Kal-El's ship came to Earth. In fact, the ship passed directly over the car the Bravermans were taking to the hospital as it was crashing, so baby Kenny got a high dose of Kryptonian radiation. Kid grows up having health issues from time to time, but nothing major. Kenny's big problem in his childhood is his father, who is every lazily-written alcoholic abusive sports-obsessed dad cliche imaginable. Kenny tries very hard to make his dad happy, but he's always coming in second to Clark Kent, so his dad beats on him for losing. Eventually, Clark starts doing worse and worse in sporting events and eventually drops them altogether, which leaves a clear field for Kenny to start winning, so that's good for him. Kenny also has a crush on Lana Lang, but Kenny is an rear end in a top hat and Lana's not interested, leaving him to fume as Clark Kent once again gets what Kenny wants. Still, once he gets out of high school and away from Clark Kent, things look up for Kenny Braverman! He gets recruited by the CIA! The CIA gets him a special high-tech power suit, awesome, go Kenny. Kenny even starts manifesting superpowers! But they're not very good superpowers. He emits Kryptonite radiation all the time, which he can focus into Kryptonite blasts (the suit helps with this). His powers cause him to fuse with the suit, and the suit becomes alive or something and/or he can control it with his mind? It's not explained because all of Kenny's poo poo is very badly written, but the suit's a part of him now and it can also extrude these thick metal cables of varying length that Kenny can charge with deadly radiation and whip around because shut up we're not ripping off Omega Red just shut up. Anyway, the CIA puts Kenny up to some unscrupulous poo poo which gets thwarted by Clark Kent, Kenny decides he's simply had it with Clark Kent's bullshit and attacks him and Lois, and they get "rescued" by Superman who beats up Kenny and puts him in jail. Kenny gets broken out of jail by this secretive "information broker" guy in a different power suit who calls himself Shadowdragon (I told you this was all 90s and terrible as hell and if you didn't believe me before, I bet you do now). Shadowdragon's like "hey, you've got beef with Superman, right? Here's a data file on him I stole, you can have it" and then he fucks off out of DC continuity forever as far as I know because he's a glorified plot contrivance. Kenny looks at the data, puts it together with his own memories of his childhood, and figures out that Superman is Clark Kent, at which point he absolutely snaps. Calling himself Conduit, Kenny wages war on Clark, attacking his loved ones. Clark decides that the best response here is to just stop being Clark Kent and be Superman all the time even though Kenny's made it very clear he knows Superman is Clark Kent and it's not like he'll stop loving the people Kenny already knows he loves just because he took the glasses off, but Death of Superman sold really well so DC was gonna sell an event called Death of Clark Kent and gently caress you if it doesn't make any sense. Anyway, this doesn't work. Kenny tracks down Superman and beats him so bad he knocks Superman unconcious. When Superman wakes up he's in a full-sized duplicate of Smallville completely populated by perfectly lifelike robots ("city creation" and "building perfect robot duplicates with convincing AI" have suddenly appeared on Conduit's superpowers list, apparently). The robots are programmed to be exactly like they were in Smallville when Clark and Kenny were growing up, except now they love Kenny and hate Clark for being an rear end in a top hat. Kenny and Clark have their final controntation on the 50 yard line of the Smallville High football stadium which has been completely populated with robot duplicates of Kenny's dad in every seat of the stadium, and they agree to fight with no powers, just "Kenny and Clark" and I am not making a word of this up.  Anyway, Kenny breaks his word and starts using his powers (I'm not sure how exactly Clark was supposed to stop being invulnerable or fast anyway, but never mind), but then gets too pissed off, and this somehow causes him to start growing bigger and bigger as he overloads with radiation while his dad taunts him about how he's still not better than Clark (I can't remember if this is a hallucination or one of the robot dads or what). Kenny grows and grows and then hits a power line and that makes him explode. The end. Conduit would never be seen or heard of ever again, barring a one-panel cameo as a corpse in the Watchtower morgue at the start of Blackest Night. So that's the whole story of Conduit. He's horrible on every possible level and has been justly forgotten. And if I was writing Superman, I'd bring him back in a heartbeat, because there is a really, really good character buried under all of that poo poo. First off, I don't think the visual design is unsalvagable. Look at this:  You can almost see it, right? It's still bad, but that picture's drawn well enough that you can see how close it is to being good. Turn the weird shoulderpads into a proper chestpiece, put some cabling on his legs, and bam, good character design. Not great, not gonna set the world on fire or anything, but visually interesting and getting across "Kryptonite assassin with prehensile cables he uses as weapons" quite well. (I don't mind the horrible green. That's the color Kryptonite is, and anyway, Kenny is walking radiation. He ought to be somewhat unpleasant to look at.) But what I really like is the character, and I've got two main reasons for liking him despite all the terrible bullshit and hoping someone will do it properly one day. 1) Kenny is right. So, sports are really important to Kenny when he's growing up, right? We can lose the terrible abusive dad bullshit, Kenny can actually want that for himself. Some people actually just want to win because they're athletic and they like winning, that's a thing that happens. Anyway, dude wants to win at sports, but he never does. He's always in second place. And he always gets beat by the same guy. Clark Kent. No matter what he does, Clark Kent is better than him. Imagine you're that kid. Imagine that you're in high school and you've been losing to this same guy non-stop since like third grade when they started to phase out the participation trophies and declare actual winners. Imagine that it's Sophmore year now and you're at the first track meet of the season and you're resigned to second place because you've got pattern recognition, for gently caress's sake, you know how this is gonna go. You line up for the first race and you're already mentally practicing your good-sport smile and going over all the platitudes about how winning isn't everything and you did your best. And then you win. Imagine how good that would feel. It would be the best day of your young life. You'd cherish the memory forever. You start racking up the wins as Clark begins to fade; by spring break he's lucky to make top ten. Next year his performance is simply dismal and Clark starts dropping out of sports he used to dominate left and right. What a triumph that would be for you! Okay, puberty isn't kind to everyone and that was probably a factor too (Clark's started to wear baggy clothes, like he's putting on weight or something), but still. This is your win. You outlasted the kid who was the best at everything. You worked your rear end off and you never gave up and it took years, years, but you did it. Except, years later, you find out the truth. Clark Kent was Superman the whole time. He was cheating! No wonder you lost loving everything to him, you're a regular person and he's got super-speed and super-strength and couldn't be injured and can fly so no wonder he had such a good vertical leap, and... wait. Remember when you finally won? And it was the best day of your life, the triumph you built everything else on? He let you win. HE LET YOU WIN. What was that, pity? Table scraps from the alien god-king? Apathy after such easy wins had lost all their savor? Was it all mockery? Was he laughing as he watched the mere mortals celebrate their meaningless victories, knowing he could always win the next one, or just kill everyone, wherever his whims took him next? Motherfucker. You're gonna get him for this. You'll dump his broken body at your feet and he'll know that Kenny Braverman was always the better man. So, yeah, back out of Kenny's head now. But he's got a point, doesn't he? Clark had an unfair advantage by being Kryptonian, and intentionally throwing sporting events is an incredibly dick move. Those are true statements. Kenny's justified in his anger. He doesn't know that Clark had no idea he had superpowers when he started playing sports and that, once he realized it, he took the least bad from a suite of exclusively bad options by doing a graceful fade out. (By the way, it should be obvious at this point that I'm 100% Ride Or Die for the Post-Crisis version where Clark's superpowers developed gradually as he aged. I'm ready and willing to go off in a rant about how that's an important facet of the character, but as that rant is not germane to the topic at hand, I'll save it.) From what Kenny knows, from Kenny's perspective, the way Kenny sees the world -- and Kenny is absolutely still a fairly unlikable rear end in a top hat -- he's got a legitimate beef with Clark Kent. Clark wronged him, knowingly or not. So that's the first thing I liked about the character. Kenny's an rear end in a top hat, Kenny's crazy, but Kenny is not wrong. When he shows up, he casts a new light on Clark's childhood (which, no matter where you stand powers-wise, is always Clark at his most ethically iffy). Lex sees the imperious alien degrading humanity by constantly being better than them, but you have the comfort of knowing that Lex is just wrong about that. Kenny shows up and you have to realize that oh yeah, Clark sorta was that, at least from a certain angle and before he got himself completely figured out. He reminds you just how close the world came to disaster just because this unbelievable alien crash-landed here, how if he was even slightly a worse person he'd have conquered the world without even meaning anything but the best. Kenny also has the complaint that Clark's spaceship gave him his superpowers, which turned out to make his life significantly worse, but I think there's a lot less there narratively. It's better off in the background as a reason for Kenny to have kryptonite powers, which are good for him to have to nullify Superman's powers and make it Kenny and Clark fighting, not Conduit and Superman. Which leads to the other reason I like him... 2) Kenny is a Clark Kent villain, not a Superman villain. That's unique. All of Superman's enemies are Superman's enemies. They hate Superman, they want to beat Superman. If they found out that Superman is Clark Kent they'd think, great, I can use this to strike at him when he's not expecting it, or I can blackmail him by threatening to release his secret to the public, or a-ha, that means Superman has loved ones and now I know who they are, I can hurt him by hurting them. Kenny Braverman? Exact opposite. He hates Clark Kent's guts and really doesn't care about Superman. He finds out Superman is Clark Kent, and what's his reaction? "So that's how he always beat me, well now I hate Clark Kent way more than I already did, and also I can make better plans to hurt Clark now that I know he's got superpowers and can plan around them". That's... actually amazing. Nobody else does that. Nobody else would do that. There's a bit in Death of Clark Kent I actually like: Kenny's been sending taunts to Clark about who he's gonna attack next, because he's doing all this to torture Clark and keeping Clark constantly on edge and feeling powerless is a pretty good way of doing that. Anyway, for his next target, he tells Clark, I'm going after the woman you love! And while Clark is hurriedly getting Lois to safety, Kenny... goes straight at Lana Lang. I loved that. He's a Clark Kent villain, and Lois is Superman's love, so she just doesn't register as a target to him in the same way. It doesn't actually make sense -- Kenny didn't go into a coma after high school, he knows goddamn well who Lois is, he's seen her and Clark together, but gently caress it. It's great. (If I was writing it, I would put Kenny into a coma after high school, one caused by his powers activating, to give him more reason to be mad and also explain why he's still so fixated on these high school slights, but oh well.) Being a Clark Kent villain means he's always going to come on the attack in ways that nobody else does. He's not going to rob a bank, or try to destroy Metropolis, or join the Legion of Doom and plot world conquest. That's Superman villain poo poo. He's got no interest in fighting Superman. Kenny wants to fight Clark. Even if he does stuff that another supervillain might do, like attack the Justice League, he's going to come at it from a totally different angle than anyone else. Because it wouldn't be Conduit attacking the Justice League, it would be Kenny attacking Clark's high-and-mighty new friends, the ones who lord it up above everyone else just like Clark lorded it up in high school. With Kenny it's always going to be personal, always something that hurts. And Superman needs that, I think, because wearing the glasses is a selfish act. It's crucial; it keeps him human, it keeps him sane. The Sentry, the Plutonian, all the criticisms and deconstructions, they don't wear the glasses. Superman does. Clark Kent is so, so important. But it's selfish, and I think Superman knows it. Conduit is the personification of that. Superman's always going to have the voice in his head telling him that people are dying while he eats dinner with his family. There will always be that knife, ready for Kenny to show up and twist just a little bit more. Want to make him stop? Want him to go away forever? Stop being Clark Kent. It's honestly that simple. Fly off, go live in the Fortress of Solitude, have allies instead of loved ones. Have a mission instead of a life. Do it. Kenny Braverman will never attack you again. You can use all that free time to help more people. It'd be so easy. Do it. And every time Superman doesn't do that, every time Superman stands and fights, you assert that Clark Kent is important, that he's worth fighting for. That's a good story, one with a deep well of concepts, and nobody's ever tapped it. And they should, because for gently caress's sake, look at how bad the comics have gotten ever since DC forgot that Clark matters just as much as Superman. Anyway, that's an embarassingly long rant on Conduit, one of the absolute worst characters of the 90s. Because a good idea, poorly executed, is still a good idea. CapnAndy fucked around with this message at 05:27 on Jan 19, 2016 |
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Jan 19, 2016 05:20
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CapnAndy posted:Anyway, that's an embarassingly long rant on Conduit, one of the absolute worst characters of the 90s. Because a good idea, poorly executed, is still a good idea. :clap: I'd go so far as to get rid of the costume and codename entirely - if he's fixated on Clark Kent, it makes sense for him to be plain old Kenny Braverman.
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Jan 19, 2016 18:09
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Black Lighter posted::clap: You could do that up until he finds out about Superman, and then the dumb outfit and name even make sense. He's mocking Clark for 'feeding his own ego' by calling himself Superman.
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Jan 19, 2016 19:23
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Black Lighter posted::clap:
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Jan 19, 2016 19:33
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I always thought Conduit was salvageable, too. Just turn the yellow part green, and he's the modern Kryptonite Man (this was before Dr. Abernathy was introduced by Busiek). That was an excellent post. I'd like to do just this for Hank Pym and Cyclops, but I have no confidence in my writing.  Also note Kenny was the kid that attacks Clark in MoS: 
Dario the Wop fucked around with this message at 12:43 on Jan 20, 2016 |
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Jan 20, 2016 12:40
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I've said it before in other threads but I guess now is the perfect time/place to talk about why I love Hank Pym. I can basically sum it up with a sentence from Frank Miller (who's talking about Daredevil but this post isn't about Daredevil, plenty of people like him): "It's a wonder he isn't a villain". Hank Pym is the most shat upon character in Marvel Comics and possibly comics as a whole that I can think of. I mean, he (and Wasp) practically started the loving Avengers instead of letting them all go their separate ways at the end of Avengers #1!  and he beat Loki, which he admits was sheer luck but whatever, a win is a win. So why can't he get any respect? Why am I phrasing this rhetorically I'm on a comic forum not loving Buzzfeed, we all know:  Hank Pym is a wife beater. And that's the end-all be-all of his character. But why? It's been 34 loving years since Avengers #213 came out, if you believe Jim Shooter, the slap was never supposed to happen. You'd think this would fade into obscurity, almost like Avengers 200, as a comic moment that's hosed up and should be forgotten. I mean no writer nowadays seems to remember when Reed Richards hits his wife or children:  (the one with him hitting Franklin is technically a What If so I guess 616 Reed is off the hook for that one) And no Spider-Man writer is ever going to mention the time Peter hit a pregnant Mary Jane:  but Hank Pym doesn't get a pass. Reading other sites, there is kind of a clear reason why, that being that Ant-Man doesn't really have any defining moments like Reed or Spidey. There's no "great" Ant-Man story as opposed to those other guys, but then there can't be a great one, because every writer since '81 seems to want to write a Hank Pym redemption story. Or, to completely rip off a Mightygodking post : quote:Everyone wants to write the redemption arc, but nobody seems to want to write the post-redemption arcs. All right though, I've been posting about how Hank Pym's a fuckup for far too long. But here's why I like him: He never gives up. Going back to that "It's a wonder he isn't a villain" quote, it totally applies to Pym. I mean, to start off with, his first wife died before he even put on a suit.    (Hey, Tales to Astonish #44 came out in 1963. Maria Pym, née Troyava: World's first fridging?) then after he joins the Avengers he starts to feel inadequate compared to his peers. (After all, the other non-slap reason Ant-Man doesn't get respect because he's Ant-Man, and his powers blow if you're uncreative)  then he develops actual schizophrenia and hits Jan and everything goes downhill from there. He develops the world's first AI, which immediately goes rogue and becomes one of the Avengers' greatest foes, and eventually destroys everything until Wolverine comes back in a lovely event and helps Hank kill Ultron. He has writers make him a laughing stock and people in-universe make sure to mention all his mistakes to his loving face all the time,    and you know what he does?    He puts on his doofy costume and gets back to work superhero-ing. And that, to me, is pretty neat. edit: oops I posted the same image twice TwoPair fucked around with this message at 02:12 on Jan 21, 2016 |
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Jan 20, 2016 16:42
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TwoPair posted:and you know what he does? So I did not find it as uplifting as you.
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Jan 20, 2016 18:17
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There's something kind of encouraging about a character whose shtick is "more broken than you'll ever be; has screwed up worse than you ever will. Still one of his world's greatest superheroes".
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Jan 20, 2016 18:37
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Busiek wrote the post redemption stories. His Hank was pretty great and people should use his Hank instead of the one that is just a wife beater/gently caress up.
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Jan 20, 2016 20:20
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Hank as a colossal gently caress up is sort of interesting, generic hero man Hank isn't. The wife beating thing does need to be let go off tho.
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Jan 20, 2016 20:33
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I liked Hank in Avengers Academy. He was fun as superhero Mr Belding.
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Jan 20, 2016 20:35
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I have a weird love of Carnage despite the dire lack(and total absence up till a few years ago) of good stories featuring him. He was totally my favorite villain as a kid, despite not actually reading comics at the time, he was just so cool, and those nostalgic feelings kept with me growing up. That he's also Southern helps a little bit.
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Jan 23, 2016 02:46
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I think we can all be glad that the scientist supreme poo poo was dropped so quickly and thoroughly, though.
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Jan 23, 2016 05:06
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Serious Frolicking posted:I think we can all be glad that the scientist supreme poo poo was dropped so quickly and thoroughly, though. Didn't Loki say he was just loving with him?
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Jan 23, 2016 06:41
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Serious Frolicking posted:I think we can all be glad that the scientist supreme poo poo was dropped so quickly and thoroughly, though. What was so terrible about it? Seeing the concept talked about make me think that at least something was being done with Hank other than the usual. Circutron fucked around with this message at 09:01 on Jan 23, 2016 |
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Jan 23, 2016 08:03
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Those are some well written and argued pieces. I have to say, I kinda like a Hank Pym on the backfoot and unsure of himself. The wife beating thing has always been a little bugbear because it perpetuates the whole "woman in fridges" thing. I am not saying you can't have domestic violence in comics, but I would rather read a more grounded take on it. I kinda can't relate to Reed Richards these days because he has gotten less "absent minded professor" and more "emotionally distant/ bordering on abuse" It's a hard image to shake after a certain point. I do like the idea of a Hank Pym suffering from honest to god depression and emotional problems. Not in the Sentry way of mental health being a ticking time bomb. More in a "his biggest challenge is getting out of bed in the morning" It's a little more subtle and allows for investment. I mean, have him attempt suicide after loving up a rescue. I would root for a guy who can face all that poo poo and come out the other side. I also really liked Hank's character when I was a kid and I read a West Coast Avengers where a guy who had speakers implanted into him (IIRC his name was The Voice) mind controlled the team into hunting down and trying to kill Hank Pym. All he had was a bunch of shrunk gadgets in his pocket to fight them with and it was pretty cool. I remember he broke mockingbird's wrist by shrinking her vambraces, among other cool things I half remember. It has been so long and my google-fu sucks. But that issue was a point for Hank Pym being awesome.
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Jan 23, 2016 16:02
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Lonos Oboe posted:Those are some well written and argued pieces. I have to say, I kinda like a Hank Pym on the backfoot and unsure of himself. The wife beating thing has always been a little bugbear because it perpetuates the whole "woman in fridges" thing. I am not saying you can't have domestic violence in comics, but I would rather read a more grounded take on it. I kinda can't relate to Reed Richards these days because he has gotten less "absent minded professor" and more "emotionally distant/ bordering on abuse" It's a hard image to shake after a certain point. Reading some Kirby/Lee stuff Reed was like that then.
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Jan 23, 2016 18:44
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bobkatt013 posted:Busiek wrote the post redemption stories. His Hank was pretty great and people should use his Hank instead of the one that is just a wife beater/gently caress up. Kurt Busiek is one of the best comic writers ever. Man's got a list of strong character runs as long your arm. There's only one person I'd have trusted to write Ultimate Spider-Man if Bendis could no longer do it, and it's Busiek.
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Jan 23, 2016 20:20
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I have a certain fondness for early Rob Liefeld during his New Mutants era. There's something very 90s about it and despite everything, a point I bring up a few times, an interview I'd read with Rob back when he was first drawing the title had him speaking about some of his influences on character costuming. He was looking at fashion magazines, he was considering superhero costumes with a bit more utility to them. The pouches, the high collars, etc. They're jokes now, but at the time not only did they feel really new and different, but they sort of made sense and they also helped set a change in comic book characters for a while where, for better or worse, other artists tried to emulate the look to various degrees of success or failure. But I also like to imagine the sudden popularity of The Liefeld Era of New Mutants had a huge influence on the fate of the New Mutants and Marvel, too. This is sort of an odd thing for me to mention, but I first want to throw out some a FAN THEORY that is probably untrue but I see as a possibility: Had Rob's popularity on the title not happened, given all the other X-family shake-ups in that era, I highly suspect the team would have ended with #100 and just like Rahne and Rictor ended up with X-Factor, the remaining team would have likely ended up split into the impending X-Men Blue/Gold teams or vanished entirely. Also, with Cable around, would we have even gotten Bishop or would Cable have take that character's arc and been the main X-Family's mysterious gun-toting, militaristic, facially-marked, time-displaced mutant character? (I actually was going to write a lot more about this theory, but I figure it's not a fan theory thread and likely a ton of quotes/evidence would prove me wrong)
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Jan 24, 2016 09:33
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Circutron posted:What was so terrible about it? Seeing the concept talked about make me think that at least something was being done with Hank other than the usual. "Hank Pym, you are the most special and smartest dude in the universe and are officially the best at science." I will admit though, out of all the many, many sentient murder robots people invent in the mu ultron is totally top tier.
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Jan 24, 2016 14:00
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JediTalentAgent posted:(I actually was going to write a lot more about this theory, but I figure it's not a fan theory thread and likely a ton of quotes/evidence would prove me wrong) I'd be interested in hearing more if you feel up to writing it.
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Jan 24, 2016 17:12
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El Gallinero Gros posted:Kurt Busiek is one of the best comic writers ever. Man's got a list of strong character runs as long your arm. There's only one person I'd have trusted to write Ultimate Spider-Man if Bendis could no longer do it, and it's Busiek. Waid is doing pretty good with Miles on ANAD Avengers, and Hickman was pretty good with the small amount he used him in Secret Wars.
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Jan 25, 2016 00:06
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TwoPair posted:And no Spider-Man writer is ever going to mention the time Peter hit a pregnant Mary Jane:
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Jan 25, 2016 01:27
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Upon reflection, I think I actually might have summed up most of it in that post, and it's not much of a theory. This is sort of part of it, though. But just prior to the Liefeld Era, the rest of the X-Books seemed to be building up to a gradual reunion of the teams. However, New Mutants seemed to building up to a gradual dissolution of the team. While New Mutants were absorbing characters from the X-Terminators, we were also seeing the team was gradually losing characters more and more. A big part of this theory of mine is that prior to the arrival of Rob that Marvel was possibly preparing the readers for the comic to end at #100 and the direction of the rest of the X-books was being written at that time with that in mind. At the very start of the Asgard Arc in New Mutants, I think Boom Boom makes a comment on how many people they've lost from the team recently. In the last few years we lost Doug and Illyana through various means. The Asgard Arc would similarly see the departure of Dani from the line-up, having chosen to stay in Asgard* (a story plot point I think was spoiled earlier in a New Mutants Annual published well before the arc was over). Then, with the start of the Liefeld Era, we were seeing Rusty and Skids being written off the team. With the first few months of the Liefeld Era, we proceed to see events laid down that would further decrease the team line-up. The X-Tinction Agenda Event began and the only team to seemingly lose members to it were the New Mutants. Rahne finds herself stuck in Genosha (for a time, at least) and Warlock is killed. Shortly after the end of the arc, Rictor also departed. Sunspot, too, eventually leaves the team during these final issues. Characters that left might not have entirely been Rob/Fab's choice, though. There'd been a long-running background plotpoint of Xavier sort of fearing that Roberto would be corrupted by power and at this time the Upstarts/New Inner Circle plot was beginning to surface, so perhaps his departure was suppposed to play a much larger part in those characters/story than it ended up doing for the larger X-Men universe. Eventually, we'll see a restructuring of X-Factor and the reincorporation/redistribution of the Core X-Men consisting of the original 5 X-Men/All-New-All-Different X-men (sans Nightcrawler) and newcomers like Gambit and Jubilee into two separate Gold/Blue teams. The remaining NM team at this point seems down to Boomer, Cannonball and Cable, had more characters not instantly been added in the last few issues. As it would happen, 1 month after New Mutants #100, there is an X-Factor storyline that starts up featuring Time-travelling, Nathan Summers, Apocalypse... But I don't seem to think Cable was there. However, Cable's status as future Nathan was still maybe not 100% set in stone in that time, so having him there was pointless to the character, BUT that storyline and the impending Muir Island story seems like either one would have been a big jumping off point as a way to sync up remaining active New Mutants characters into the other titles. Could this have been the last leftovers from a plan that Marvel had originally been progressing towards for until Rob and the New Mutants popularity started to rise and they changed plans due to faith to be able to come up with ideas to keep an audience really interested in him? Given Louise Simonson and Claremont wrote much of the X-family of titles up to that time, Simonson was replaced with Liefeld and Niceiza for the final three issues were the major shift in preparing for X-Force #1 takes place. I sort of wonder if Simonson/Claremont had drafted a much different ending to the NM series, which was more or less undone by the creation of X-Force.
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Jan 25, 2016 03:52
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I'm going to go in a weird direction with this and say Ryu from Street Fighter. Yes, I'm talking about a video game character in a thread about comic books. Bear with me on this one. People have always talked about Ryu being this boring shell of a character who only talks about how "the fight is all." The most the games outright did with him was turn him into Luke Skywalker with his own personal Darth Vader and Obi-Wan (with Oro as Yoda if you want to keep it going). But Masahiko Nakahira was able to make Ryu into a genuinely compelling character which is reflected just enough in the games. He decided that Ryu isn't so much the hero of the franchise as he is the engine. Nakahira did a series of manga stories in the 90's about the different Street Fighter games. They went in different directions, but the three involving Ryu (the outlier was a Cammy/Vega story) build on his identity. First there's Street Fighter Alpha, which introduces the very idea of "Evil Ryu" and the entire inner-darkness storyline. Then Sakura Ganbaru, which was about Sakura, his fangirl who trains to follow in his footsteps while searching the world in hopes of getting another round or two against him. Then there's Street Fighter III: Ryu Final. It starts with Ken telling Ryu about how he fought Gill (SF3's final boss) and beat him after pulling a Spider-Man and thinking about his family for inspiration. Since Ryu's such a loner, Ken asks what it is that Ryu values and why he even fights to begin with. What's his role in the world? Ryu figures it's just to be the best. That would be the easy answer. Over the course of the story, he wanders around, meets various characters and gets in sparring matches. Win or lose, everyone seems to appreciate the experience. Ryu comes across Oro, a 100+-year-old man who is likely the greatest fighter in the world, and the two travel together. Oro explains that in the end, Ryu isn't all about becoming the best. He's about making everyone better just through fighting him. At first, Ryu is reluctant to believe it because he really had his heart set on being the best in the world and all that. But even in the other manga stories it's apparent. Birdie, a career criminal, befriends Ryu and tries to take care of him because Ryu was respectful and complimented him after their SF1 fight. Sakura has dedicated her life to being like him. Everyone he comes across in the SF3 book come out more fulfilled, especially Sagat. The climax is about Ryu challenging Akuma. We've been led to believe that this could only end in either Ryu's death or Akuma's death and Ryu's subsequent madness. If Ryu were to win and spare Akuma, Akuma would just come back for him again and again. Before the fight, they share a Killing Joke bit of laughter when Ryu admits that he admires Akuma's stubbornness. Then they have one of the most badass fights I've ever seen in a comic. Ryu wounds Akuma really badly and has the chance to kill him and end it. He refuses, tearfully begging that he doesn't want to end this. He wants to fight Akuma again and again. Akuma seems to understand and they trade final blows. Ryu falls to his knee. Akuma looks over him and instead of going for the kill, he walks away, saying that he one day hopes to be challenged by Ryu's "children." Ryu and Akuma have both accepted what he's all about. The epilogue is a take on Alex (the main hero of SF3)'s ending from SF3: Third Strike, which is the latest canon game in the series, chronologically. Alex has gotten his rear end kicked in a street fight with Ryu and it's lit a spark in him. Now he's realized the same zest for wanderlust fighting and is obsessed with one day getting another crack at Ryu. So yeah, Nakahira made me realize Ryu is pretty awesome.
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Jan 25, 2016 09:04
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JediTalentAgent posted:As it would happen, 1 month after New Mutants #100, there is an X-Factor storyline that starts up featuring Time-travelling, Nathan Summers, Apocalypse... But I don't seem to think Cable was there. However, Cable's status as future Nathan was still maybe not 100% set in stone in that time, so having him there was pointless to the character, BUT that storyline and the impending Muir Island story seems like either one would have been a big jumping off point as a way to sync up remaining active New Mutants characters into the other titles. Indeed, I'm pretty sure Cable appeared in the X-Men '92 cartoon ("The wild man of Borneo ... <shifty eyes> ... See you around.") with a slightly different backstory before anything about his background was revealed in the comics.
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Jan 25, 2016 16:01
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Wheat Loaf posted:Indeed, I'm pretty sure Cable appeared in the X-Men '92 cartoon ("The wild man of Borneo ... <shifty eyes> ... See you around.") with a slightly different backstory before anything about his background was revealed in the comics. I am pretty sure it was not until X-cutioner song that his background was decided. I remember reading that a possible plan was it was Sam.
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Jan 25, 2016 16:13
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Heck, I think Cable took several issues before they even revealed he had a mutant power/what it was/showing it off. He just happened to be a big guy with a robot arm, but there was nothing really about, "My mutant power is ________" maybe made me feel like they didn't quite know what do with him or what he was supposed to be. The first time I think I saw him use TK was maybe not until NM #100 or XF #1 and no one was thinking Scott/Jean's kid. Cable, in retrospect, reminds me of a modern TV series that the writers create a huge mystery character/plotline to only admit during/after production, "We had no idea where we were going with it when we started it."
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Jan 25, 2016 21:19
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Sure, that was the trend in the early 1990s wasn't it? They started with a cool-looking visual or a cool-sounding idea, and worked from there. The most (in)famous example is Onslaught, which originated from Scott Lobdell thinking, "Wouldn't it be pretty cool if someone could punch the Juggernaut halfway across the country?" Cable was originally presented as a villain, too, wasn't he?
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Jan 25, 2016 22:57
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Wheat Loaf posted:Sure, that was the trend in the early 1990s wasn't it? They started with a cool-looking visual or a cool-sounding idea, and worked from there. The most (in)famous example is Onslaught, which originated from Scott Lobdell thinking, "Wouldn't it be pretty cool if someone could punch the Juggernaut halfway across the country?" Nope. In his first storyline it involved MLF and him helping out the New Mutants.
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Jan 26, 2016 00:08
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I'm pretty sure both Liefeld and Simonson have said that Liefeld drew the character and gave no story beats and Simonson just wrote him in.
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Jan 26, 2016 03:40
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An early X-Force issue had him tinkering on his arm with a wrench. It's interesting how much was made up after the fact.
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Jan 26, 2016 19:22
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There's all sorts of things like that. There's a bit in Fatal Attractions where Magneto tears his entire cybernetic side apart and it's just robot underneath.
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Jan 26, 2016 20:06
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JediTalentAgent posted:Could this have been the last leftovers from a plan that Marvel had originally been progressing towards for until Rob and the New Mutants popularity started to rise and they changed plans due to faith to be able to come up with ideas to keep an audience really interested in him? Given Louise Simonson and Claremont wrote much of the X-family of titles up to that time, Simonson was replaced with Liefeld and Niceiza for the final three issues were the major shift in preparing for X-Force #1 takes place. I sort of wonder if Simonson/Claremont had drafted a much different ending to the NM series, which was more or less undone by the creation of X-Force. I don't think there was anything particularly "last minute" about any of it, New Mutants was selling pretty badly but the entrance of Liefeld/Cable took off very fast in terms of sales/fan interest, and probably contributed to Harras's attitude of siding with Liefeld (and Lee and Silvestri and Portacio) over whatever the writers wanted to do. There's a reason those late-period X-Men books veer into doing MAGNETO and APOCALYPSE and EVERYONE'S BACK AS A TEAM, because that is literally what the hot artists wanted to draw, not any of that dumb "depowered uncostumed Wolverine in Madripoor and mutants in Asgard and Archangel dating a lady cop" non-iconic stuff Simonson/Claremont were writing. Rob was less interested in classic characters, as he had a whole raft of his ORIGINAL characters left over from his Teen Titans revival pitch that would end up in New Mutants/X-Force (Cable, Stryfe, Forearm, Feral, etc) and the ones he didn't get to in X-Force would pop up later in Youngblood. By the time New Mutants was six months away from Issue #100 the die was cast for "let Rob do whatever he wants", and X-Force #1 was hyped up in the pages of New Mutants #100 (and in press months earlier hyping up New Mutants #100 itself) and I believe the writing was on the wall for Claremont leaving the X-Books, given that pretty much every issue from January and up have co-writing credits given to Nicieza, Lee, Portacio, and sometimes all three. He stuck around for X-Men #1-3 for the paycheck, and I believe has been really explicit in interviews about how it was basically Jim Lee drawing whatever he thought looked good and Claremont trying to script over it. The Mutant Genesis books (with the possible exception of X-Factor) were pretty much all "Artists Do What They Want, and Someone Comes In To Polish It" which is why John Byrne lasted all of five issues trying to script Uncanny even though he really wanted the job to stick it to Claremont somehow, and why Lobdell (who from all accounts just hung out in the offices looking for work and was very quick to get scripts done, sometimes literally overnight) got so much work in this period. And of course a year after that, all of the artists Harras put his faith in quit to form Image, and things got mixed up yet again.
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Jan 27, 2016 05:39
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Rob having so much sort of free reign is one reason I wonder if that maybe derailed his progress. Looking at his early Hawk and Dove and very early New Mutants work, he seems I think pretty good with just some hiccups. I don't know how much is owed to him or his inkers, though. He was so successful at what he was doing there was no one challenging him to become better than just being bigger? After a while, though, he just sort of got looser and looser with is style and sales just seemed to keep increasing. But even stuff like pin-up and costume design I think was pretty good for the time, until he got into the habit of just making every character put into a Michelin Man-styled suit of cromium armor with a bucket for a head.
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Jan 27, 2016 08:31
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Endless Mike posted:There's all sorts of things like that. There's a bit in Fatal Attractions where Magneto tears his entire cybernetic side apart and it's just robot underneath. I am inside of you Nathan
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Jan 27, 2016 10:23
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Nathan Barely! I love that show.
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Jan 27, 2016 15:59
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 03:24 |
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If that were on Archer you'd be hearing someone in the background going, "Um, Phrasing?" or "Just the Tip."
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Jan 27, 2016 22:57
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