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Edge & Christian posted:The solution to this in modern stories is just ensure whatever scheme Riddler or Ivy has hatched involves body counts in the 4-6 figures, so you can agree with the message but not the "murder and skin a prime number of corporate lawyers and use them to build a murder maze" or whatever. For me, it was "Hush." And I liked him a lot in that, reinvented as a pricey private detective consultant for police departments faced with unsolvable cases. Big Bad Voodoo Lou fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Jun 16, 2020 |
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Jun 16, 2020 00:11
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I think the Riddler would work with kind of a Situationist/Guy Debord angle where it's less about specific goofy wordplay riddles and more about treating Gotham City or the world as a labyrinth or a conundrum to be untangled in kind of a "psychogeography of crime" way. I think he should be broadly understandable and sometimes even sympathetic as someone who's essentially an aesthete who wants to turn the world around in his hands to appreciate it better, but villainous because he doesn't care if people get hurt-- someone who's less about proving his superiority by posing riddles (because then you run up against the problem that most Batman writers are not capable, it seems, of writing very difficult or interesting riddles) and more about solving riddles, in ways that necessitate Batman coming in and stopping him. This would tie back into his detective days, which I liked a lot, but bring him also to that level of mixed grandiosity and ludicrous scale that defines the best Batman bad-guys-- he wants to solve the strange case of the world, but in a completely amoral and detached way, which would set him up as a nice counterpoint to both Batman (the more compassionate "detective") and I guess the Joker (who wants to obfuscate or distort things instead of bringing that violently into clarity).
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Jun 16, 2020 00:24
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How Wonderful! posted:I think the Riddler would work with kind of a Situationist/Guy Debord angle where it's less about specific goofy wordplay riddles and more about treating Gotham City or the world as a labyrinth or a conundrum to be untangled in kind of a "psychogeography of crime" way.
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Jun 16, 2020 00:35
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How Wonderful! posted:I think the Riddler would work with kind of a Situationist/Guy Debord angle where it's less about specific goofy wordplay riddles and more about treating Gotham City or the world as a labyrinth or a conundrum to be untangled in kind of a "psychogeography of crime" way. I always love your takes on things, and that is one of my favorites. I'd totally buy that Riddler comic, because it makes him a somewhat sympathetic and fascinating antihero. But it would take a really smart person to write it in a worthy manner, ideally someone from outside of comics. Like maybe YOU? It reminds me a bit of Rick Veitch and Tommy Lee Edwards' excellent and nearly-forgotten Question miniseries from the mid-2000s, that reinvented him as an "urban shaman" who could sense mysteries and secrets in cities, sort of like Jack Hawksmoor from The Authority, but as a weird detective with a creepy crush on Lois Lane. On that note, aside from that one Denny O'Neil issue, it's amazing the Question and the Riddler haven't been made official arches, like Batman and the Joker, or Superman and Lex.
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Jun 16, 2020 00:38
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Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:It reminds me a bit of Rick Veitch and Tommy Lee Edwards' excellent and nearly-forgotten Question miniseries from the mid-2000s, that reinvented him as an "urban shaman" who could sense mysteries and secrets in cities, sort of like Jack Hawksmoor from The Authority, but as a weird detective with a creepy crush on Lois Lane. This book was so excellent. The fact that the Metropolis drug dealers are doing their business in bathrooms because they assume Superman won't look in there is brilliant.
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Jun 16, 2020 01:34
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Lord_Hambrose posted:This book was so excellent. The fact that the Metropolis drug dealers are doing their business in bathrooms because they assume Superman won't look in there is brilliant. I don't think it has ever been collected in a TPB, which is a drat shame. I love all the different versions of the Question, and somehow I love that they all fit him so well: Ditko's Objectivist vigilante/muckraking journalist, O'Neil's soul-searching Zen master, the JLU cartoon's creepy conspiracy theorist, and Veitch's urban shaman. When I read that the New 52 reinvented the Question yet again as some embodiment of evil alongside the Phantom Stranger and
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Jun 16, 2020 04:46
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Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:I don't think it has ever been collected in a TPB, which is a drat shame. I love all the different versions of the Question, and somehow I love that they all fit him so well: Ditko's Objectivist vigilante/muckraking journalist, O'Neil's soul-searching Zen master, the JLU cartoon's creepy conspiracy theorist, and Veitch's urban shaman. When I read that the New 52 reinvented the Question yet again as some embodiment of evil alongside the Phantom Stranger and It was definitely unfortunate, though at least Rebirth undid that and now there's two Questions running around, I believe
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Jun 16, 2020 04:58
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Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:It reminds me a bit of Rick Veitch and Tommy Lee Edwards' excellent and nearly-forgotten Question miniseries from the mid-2000s, that reinvented him as an "urban shaman" who could sense mysteries and secrets in cities, sort of like Jack Hawksmoor from The Authority, but as a weird detective with a creepy crush on Lois Lane. I really liked that Question series, and I remember thinking it worked as a commentary or follow-up to the more famous O'Neil run, and the more I think about it the more I think my Riddler pitch is just working backwards from the Question, which honestly is probably not the worst way to approach the guy-- a kind of "Ditko hero as villain" inversion that I think feels timely. The iconic Riddler designs always do look eerily Ditko-esque-- even Frank Gorshin looks like he should have been a Ditko pick in that recent twitter thread about actors who look like they were drawn by different artists.
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Jun 16, 2020 05:06
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Montoya Question needs to get more love. The way she grew into the character in 52 was one of the best story arcs in there, and Rucka did some good not great minis afterwards with her.
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Jun 16, 2020 05:46
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Madkal posted:Montoya Question needs to get more love. The way she grew into the character in 52 was one of the best story arcs in there, and Rucka did some good not great minis afterwards with her. She's in the Lois Lane series playing second fiddle to the title character.
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Jun 16, 2020 05:51
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Madkal posted:Montoya Question needs to get more love. The way she grew into the character in 52 was one of the best story arcs in there, and Rucka did some good not great minis afterwards with her. She's one of the best legacy characters of all time and everything involving her and Vic in 52 is absolutely stellar. Recasting Vic as a government agent and sidelining Montoya in the New 52 and Rebirth stuff was completely inept. Like, everything from the moment Montoya first puts on the mask to her shining the bat-signal into Kate's apartment is probably one of the best comic runs of the last twenty years and DC did nothing of importance with it. Shirkelton fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Jun 16, 2020 |
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Jun 16, 2020 06:18
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I need to read The Question, especially the O'Neil run, but I could never find the first trade. My limited experience is Renee Montoya's very brief appearance in Final Crisis, Pax Americana, and JLU. But it also seems like a concept you could do a lot with. I personally had an idea for a miniseries (admittedly with a heavy Hotline Miami inspiration) where The Question is tearing through the mob, exposing corruption, and slowly unravelling a conspiracy, but we're seeing it from the perspective of a detective trying to figure out who the Hell this guy is. I'm still annoyed DC only did one Azrael release, at some point he had a crossover with The Question. poo poo, thinking about Renee Montoya, I need to read more Batwoman. That's not the fault of not being able to find it, I just keep putting it off for other books.
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Jun 16, 2020 06:49
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Has the Riddler designed an escape room yet?
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Jun 16, 2020 13:45
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Nessus posted:Moving the topic in here from Funny Panels, the idea of the Riddler going after people who don't deserve their money makes sense, although you do get a question of "where does Batman get involved, except as a gimlet-eyed agent of the status quo?" I think this vibe would work best for Riddler (and keep him more villain than anti-hero) if he wasn't targeting people who had achieved greatness in an immoral fashion, but rather people who'd achieved success without "deserving" it by his elitist personal metric. So like, tech CEO who made their bones by stealing patents from better inventors? Yeah, sure, this Riddler would go after that person. But also like "sports manager who pulls down a million dollars a year, but constantly misuses words in interviews and boasts about not reading books" would infuriate Riddler, because he's that sort of dweeb. The guy who hated George W. Bush not because of his policy decisions, but because he mispronounces nuclear in press junkets. Android Blues fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Jun 16, 2020 |
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Jun 16, 2020 16:19
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I also agree with How Wonderful! that the Riddler shouldn't be murderous, so much as just indifferent to incidental harm caused by his schemes. He cares about forms, ideas, and intellectual diversions more than people, and that's really harmful, but he's never been interesting as a vicious murderer.
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Jun 16, 2020 16:21
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(Part of why I hated The War of Jokes and Riddles - there are almost no jokes and almost no riddles, just two gang lords who occasionally make a coy reference to their respective gimmicks while engaging in acts of gratuitous violence.)
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Jun 16, 2020 16:23
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Riddler is antifa
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Jun 16, 2020 16:28
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Before Dark Knight Rises came out and there was a rumor that that the Riddler would be the villain I thought it would be cool if the character was brought in by the police as an expert who could try figure out who Batman is and create elaborate traps to catch the Batman. With each failed trap he gets more and more risky and dangerous with his traps. Unfortunately Warner Bros never hacked my dreams and stole my idea. edit: also about 99% of Batman's villains don't work as mass murdering psychopaths but here we are. I call this the Joker Escalation Symptom, where the villain can no longer be some jerk with a theme and a desire to commit a crime according to that theme (usually involving jewelry theft) but now they need at least one mass murder to show how evil they really are. Madkal fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Jun 16, 2020 |
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Jun 16, 2020 16:43
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I can't help but feel that Wonder Woman: Dead Earth #3 is way more death metal than the titular event. Wondy using a lightsaber chainsaw pfff. How about a whip made out of her lasso and Supermans spine+skull.
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Jun 16, 2020 17:19
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I just want more Swole Riddler from the Harley Quinn cartoon
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Jun 16, 2020 17:27
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It's weird that I hated Marvel Zombies but really like DCeased. The current Hope at World's End is okay, but the original and Unkillables are really good.
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Jun 16, 2020 17:28
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Dawgstar posted:It's weird that I hated Marvel Zombies but really like DCeased. The current Hope at World's End is okay, but the original and Unkillables are really good. its because Tom Taylor is a good writer
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Jun 16, 2020 17:39
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I take back what I said about Taylor. World's End #3 was the first good Flash family content I've gotten since I was in high school. Legitimately a bit emotional from my nostalgia in reading it. All hail Tom Taylor, I guess.
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Jun 17, 2020 00:27
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Two Tone Shoes posted:I take back what I said about Taylor. World's End #3 was the first good Flash family content I've gotten since I was in high school. Legitimately a bit emotional from my nostalgia in reading it. All hail Tom Taylor, I guess. It was. I miss this Flash so much. loving barry allen.
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Jun 17, 2020 02:29
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Mr Hootington posted:It was. I miss this Flash so much. loving barry allen. I blame Johns who's a huge stan for the character and wrote flashpoint.
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Jun 17, 2020 03:18
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doomrider7 posted:I blame Johns who's a huge stan for the character and wrote flashpoint. It was nice to see a couple of others from the Flash family. Taylor said somewhere Wally is his favorite Flash as well, but he actually writes Wally like he's his favorite.
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Jun 17, 2020 03:26
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Laughing Zealot posted:I can't help but feel that Wonder Woman: Dead Earth #3 is way more death metal than the titular event. Snyder's Metal is like stadium type metal. Dead Earth is underground guerrilla concert metal. Mind, Wonder Woman stepping up to literally fight God is just another level of one-upsmanship
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Jun 17, 2020 03:42
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Yeah Diana's having a pretty trippy week. Death Metal is just crazy and fun enough that I'm looking forward to more (like what else am I gonna look forward to right now anyway?  ), but I liked the original Metal event anyway. And speaking of Wally, who knew that the whole Rebirth Manhattan flashboot whatever shenanigans would get wrapped up in here, of all places?WW Dead Earth is just gut punch after gut punch (heh) but the execution is just so good. Grisly, obviously. But good. The titular WW series is...there. I like so much of what's in here, but the actual plot -- if you can call it that? -- is the hottest of messes. Surprise Phantom Stranger out of nowhere! Sir, this is a good pagan establishment, we don't need more theological complications up in here thanks.
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Jun 17, 2020 04:08
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Is there any sort of order or anything to all the Dark Multiverse Whatever stuff because at this point I'm totally lost.
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Jun 17, 2020 04:13
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ImpAtom posted:Is there any sort of order or anything to all the Dark Multiverse Whatever stuff because at this point I'm totally lost. if you want the full story, you're gonna have to start at Capullo and Snyder's Batman run, because some of the early threads leading to the first Metal event are in there if you want the essentials, it's basically the two preludes to Metal (The Forge and The Casting), Metal itself, plus Batman: Lost, which goes after Metal #3, and Dark Knights Rising: The Wild Hunt, which goes after Metal #5; then you follow Snyder on Justice League: No Justice, going into Justice League proper, with the rest of the picture in the first arc of the current Batman/Superman series.
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Jun 17, 2020 05:53
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So no big deal, really  In seriousness, I wouldn't bother with too many tie-ins unless you're making an active project of reading through the entire storyline, because it's really not necessary. I never read any of Snyder's Batman or the Batman/Superman stuff with the dumb oh-look evil heroes again 'cuz of the dumb Batman/Joker character who Snyder finally seems to realize no one likes storyline and I still enjoyed Metal. Also, reading the entirety of Scott Snyder's Justice League just for the "Look, the Monitor and Anti-Monitor are brothers who had an evil mother named Perpetua who was locked behind the Source Wall but now is free and took over everything" infodump is way too excessive. The thing about Snyder's events is that they tend to start off in media res, so completely disoriented at first is pretty normal.
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Jun 17, 2020 06:32
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ElNarez posted:if you want the full story, you're gonna have to start at Capullo and Snyder's Batman run, because some of the early threads leading to the first Metal event are in there Don't forget the Hell Arisen that pretty much leads straight into the event if I'm not mistaken.
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Jun 17, 2020 12:32
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doomrider7 posted:I blame Johns who's a huge stan for the character and wrote flashpoint. Johns had a lot of big plans. He and Didio thought bringing back Barry would be as popular as bringing back Hal and that they'd get to do a bunch of spinoff books for everyone. Turns out no one gave a poo poo about Barry at first so Didio's bright idea was to excise everything but Barry for 15 years until the only Flash readers around have only known Barry. Which worked I guess, though I mostly blame the TV show.
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Jun 17, 2020 13:19
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BrianWilly posted:The titular WW series is...there. I like so much of what's in here, but the actual plot -- if you can call it that? -- is the hottest of messes. Surprise Phantom Stranger out of nowhere! Sir, this is a good pagan establishment, we don't need more theological complications up in here thanks. The fact that one of the founding members of the Justice League was a direct servant of God for a couple years really sets the bar there. I am always disappointed that Azzarello's take on Wonder Woman and definitely the Greek gods isn't the default. Being heavy on the mythology stuff is always something that I want in my Wonder Woman stories. Being back Ferdinand, frankly.
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Jun 17, 2020 13:20
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Two Tone Shoes posted:Turns out no one gave a poo poo about Barry at first so Didio's bright idea was to excise everything but Barry for 15 years until the only Flash readers around have only known Barry. Which worked I guess, though I mostly blame the TV show. This was my problem with that era of Flash. I was a huge Flash fan as a kid, but post Flashpoint the only Flashes I had any connections to were all taken away and replaced with bland Barry Allen. Hell, I cared more about Jay Garrick because I read JSA. The main problem is of course that I was in my early 30s at the time. So bringing back the Flash from before I knew how to read really didn't entice me to want more. Just too young to care about Barry Allen and too old to care about Barry Allen. Lets be honest, Barry Allen is just Batman without being scary. He has a lot more trouble carrying a story on his own than Batman, but has a great selection of interesting villains to patch any holes.
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Jun 17, 2020 13:28
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Lord_Hambrose posted:This was my problem with that era of Flash. I was a huge Flash fan as a kid, but post Flashpoint the only Flashes I had any connections to were all taken away and replaced with bland Barry Allen. Hell, I cared more about Jay Garrick because I read JSA. I think it says a lot about a character that you have to massively retcon and upend everything about him, his motives, and what kind of hero he is to bring him back so that no one finds him boring. The DEAD MOM thing was obvious Batman parallelism and was just the most hamfisted and transparent way to try to make him more interesting. People like superheroes with dead parents, just look at Batman!
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Jun 17, 2020 13:29
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Darn it, I missed Jesse Quick.
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Jun 17, 2020 13:43
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Two Tone Shoes posted:Johns had a lot of big plans. He and Didio thought bringing back Barry would be as popular as bringing back Hal and that they'd get to do a bunch of spinoff books for everyone. i'm sorry i seem to be misreading this post because i swear to god its saying that bringing back Hal Jordan was popular
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Jun 17, 2020 18:06
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Two Tone Shoes posted:Johns had a lot of big plans. He and Didio thought bringing back Barry would be as popular as bringing back Hal and that they'd get to do a bunch of spinoff books for everyone. That was such a terrible idea and blatantly destined to fail since people liked Hal and took issue with how he died so bringing him back to fix all that clusterfuck was welcome. People liked Barry and very much were cool with how he died since he went out in a cosmic blaze of glory saving the multiverse. There was no real reason to bring him back other than character stanning.
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Jun 17, 2020 19:37
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Alaois posted:i'm sorry i seem to be misreading this post because i swear to god its saying that bringing back Hal Jordan was popular It was a very mixed bag. People initially hated Kyle Rayner because he was nothing like Hal Jordan, then time happened and people grew to like him. Hal came back and people were pissed that he started taking attention from the other GL's, time happened again and people liked him. It helps that the other GL's didn't get written out and still got stories and that they fixed the Parrallax debacle.
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Jun 17, 2020 19:41
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