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Gavok posted:I love that Fat Colossus is there, almost definitely a jab at that one cosplayer who shows up at cons. I like to think he's an alternate, heroic Blob. Even though that doesn't quite make sense.
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Sep 7, 2011 06:53
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Tatum Girlparts posted:Good point, completely forgotten that those kids have all had literal firsthand experiences with magic, so yea if mom's got her clothes torn up and magic pages (I assume?) all around her and goes 'nah the demons made me drink' I'd probably go 'oh, yea, the demons, those things we've all encountered as malicious spirits that feed on our worst elements? Ok cool you get one for demons." Those aren't magic pages, they're pages from the Alcoholics Anonymous handbook.
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Apr 8, 2013 06:55
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Hollis posted:It's because they'll be doing it out of love not hatred, theyre not punishing them for their deeds their punishing them to make them better. It defeats the whole purpose of hell. It's no longer punishment it's reprogramming. I don't think it's that. Imagine the difference between a stranger punching you and your parents being really, really disappointed in you.
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Apr 18, 2013 22:18
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"Relatively easily"? Those games are mad hard. I mean, maybe if you use a guide...
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May 27, 2015 19:43
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Red posted:Well Given the previous panels with She-Thing, I can only read this as angry, bitter laughter shouted in monotone.
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Aug 31, 2016 18:04
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Scaramouche posted:I'd agree he has odd motivations. Usually his crimes aren't for money, instead being some other reason. This is actually true of a quite a few batman bad guys, off the cuff it seems like these motivations are most prevalent (in my opinion): For what it's worth, my read on Two Face is that while he's a classic gangster in terms of MO, he's also obsessed with the influence of random chance in an uncaring universe. A cruel turn of fate ruined his looks, his career, his sanity and effectively his life, and now in each crime he plays that out again on his victims by subjecting them to a coin toss to see whether they will live or die (or other good outcome/bad outcome duality). It's sort of like a twisted, long-form method of trauma processing, and it roots from the fact that he sees what happened to him as essentially unfair, unstoppable, and unlucky, rather than being the consequence of a sequence of actions. He wants to recreate that dynamic - of unfair, unstoppable bad luck - over and over again with his crimes. I'd say he's a nihilist, but he's a bit too petty for that. His main "thing" is re-enacting his own trauma through arbitrary injustice carried out on others.
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Oct 22, 2016 22:31
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Yeah, the point of him is that he sometimes does good things. His true "evil" is that he's abandoned moral responsibility rather than him simply being a cruel man with a gimmick.
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Oct 24, 2016 18:18
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It's not a gutshot, is it? Cap says it's clean.
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Nov 6, 2016 23:47
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Cap having a gay best friend and doing a pro-gay story in the early 80s at the height of the AIDS crisis is pretty cool, even if it does look a little goofy at times from a modern perspective. I had no idea that was ever a thing.
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Nov 12, 2016 01:38
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I'm pretty sure Bucky was still dead at that point, so it's contrasting the loss of one friend with what Cap fears is the loss of another. But don't quote me or anything, I haven't read the source material in full.
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Nov 16, 2016 00:43
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I haven't read the comic, but the hate seems a little overstated. At absolute worst it's slightly undercooked jokes, not the worst thing that ever happened to you personally.
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Dec 11, 2016 20:56
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drrockso20 posted:I'm fine with the writing in her book(indeed Squirrel Girl is probably my favorite character in the current MU), but I really wish they'd get a better artist, Henderson is one of the worst artists at Marvel right now Disagree. She has a style and it's cartoony and blocky which is fine for the tone of the book. There's no lack of artistic skill there, just efficient decisions about how she wants to communicate the feel of the comic.
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Feb 9, 2017 10:46
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Killing Shriek and Inque is weird because those are probably Terry's most high profile rogues with consistently good stories that stand the test of time. I guess there's Curare, Spellbinder, and not-Kraven, but none of them are all that compelling in comparison.
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Apr 27, 2017 15:18
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It's funny how the Injustice tie-in comic is way better than the games' abominable story mode, but still works hard to incorporate the goofy canon established by the game, and then the game returns the favour by just treading all over the comic's storylines and invalidating them at random.
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May 19, 2017 11:17
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I can't believe Gatecrasher and the Technet are in a modern day book getting straight up moments. That's great.
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Oct 16, 2017 01:31
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Yeah for a long time Killer Croc was supposed to just be a guy with a terrible skin disease who was mentally ill because he had been ostracised and picked on from childhood. I think his scaly skin also gave him a degree of congenital immunity to pain? I don't even know if the, "no, he's an actual crocoman!" thing was on purpose or just some writers not paying close enough attention. He degenerates into being more and more bestial mentally after being reduced to living in the sewers and eating rats, but the tragedy of that is meant to be that he's an actual human person who's just unbelievably deprived.
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Feb 23, 2018 09:23
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That was Croc from his early 80s inception though. Like, you might assume he started out as "mean lizard guy," and the tragic backstory thing was added later because it was in vogue for Batman villains, but it was actually the other way around. Croc's first appearances have him as an unstable gangster who's been bullied and ostracised all his life for his skin condition. He comes to Gotham and attempts to take over the mob by intimidating their leaders into letting him run the rackets, which he successfully does for a while. He's smart and calculating, but suffers from deep insecurity and anxiety about other people looking at or talking to him that roots from the childhood abuse he received for his skin condition. There's one memorable moment where Batman finds Croc's apartment, enters it, and Croc immediately starts trashing the place in a rage because this was his One Safe Place and now that someone else has crossed its threshold, it's ruined and must be destroyed. It's not even about Batman finding his hideout, it's just that he wanted his home to be totally serene and free from judgement, and if anyone other than him has set foot in it at any point, he can't feel that way about it any more. His fall from vague respectability happens after he tussles with Batman and subsequently Bane, gets knocked into a storm drain, and spends months in a fugue state eating rats. But Croc used to like, wear suits and have sophisticated plans and stuff.
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Feb 23, 2018 12:19
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So this month's Snagglepuss features a love triangle between Arthur Miller, Joe DiMaggio, and Marilyn Monroe.   This comes after a sequence earlier in the issue where we get DiMaggio's perspective on how Marilyn represents the ultimate normativity that he, as the son of immigrants, never had access to before. It's a nice inversion.
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Mar 14, 2018 12:41
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  Snagglepuss is straight up the best thing DC is publishing right now, for me at least. It's packed with deft metaphors and taut characters and, into the bargain, the art is really lovely and well-composed. There are sillier moments too. It reminds me a lot of Bojack Horseman for obvious reasons (talking animals co-existing with humans in the world of showbusiness, combining silly gags with dramatic character study), but also of the Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller plays it's constantly riffing on, and also of Alan Moore at the height of his powers with how the story weaves interpersonal drama deftly through the figurative lens of McCarthyism, homophobia, and the threat of nuclear annihilation. I'd really recommend anyone who hasn't read it yet give it a look. I have a feeling this is a book that might slip under the radar, and it really doesn't deserve to.
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Apr 6, 2018 12:39
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GrandpaPants posted:I'm curious, does it being Snagglepuss/having anthropomorphic animals do anything to enhance the story or is it mostly for recognition/sales, despite the, uh, distance it has from the source material. There are moments (mostly gags) where it comes into play. Quickdraw McGraw is a cop who comes from a long line of police horses. Squiddly Diddly gets work as a stagehand because he has so many limbs. In the plays Snagglepuss directs, there are human actors who play animal characters by wearing goofy looking cardboard snouts and ears. It's definitely not the focus, but kind of like Bojack they make a little hay with it. Mostly it uses the surreal comedy of these moments either as a palate cleanser, or to create a comparison between how weird and unreal this is and how weird and unreal the actual history of McCarthyism and the cold war could at times be. Historical events like the execution of the Rosenbergs and the kangaroo court hearings held by the House Committee of Un-American Activities are contrasted against the really surreal animal stuff, and it creates an overall impression of a strange and dehumanising period in history.
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Apr 6, 2018 14:32
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It turns out Hulk is immortal and was just convinced enough that he was dead to keep lying there. The new status quo for the character is that he always comes back after he dies, and the intention seems to be for his book to have more of a horror comic-y feel than Hulk normally does.
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Apr 9, 2018 08:57
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Bruce was worried about about being a danger to others, and gave Hawkeye a special arrow that he thought would be able to kill him, and the Hulk, for good, along with instructions to shoot him with it if it looked like the Hulk was beginning to emerge. In the pretty terrible Civil War 2 event, an inhuman who had reliable visions of the future prophesied the Hulk going on a rampage and killing a bunch of heroes, causing a bunch of heroes to go and confront Banner at his house. Hawkeye thinks he sees a glint of green in Bruce's eyes, and shoots him stone dead with the special arrow. He wasn't permanently dead, though, and only stayed dead so long because he was convinced the arrow had killed him and Banner didn't want to be alive anyway, so was suppressing the Hulk from resurrecting himself. But this is sold as, "oh, it really SHOULD have killed him, except it turns out the Hulk is actually 100% no backsies immortal and just resurrects himself after dying".
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Apr 9, 2018 13:44
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Lurdiak posted:A Punisher book talking poo poo about soldiers is even less likely than a Punisher book saying guns suck rear end. Actually a lot of Punisher books feature corrupt authoritarian soldiers as the villains. Frank has gone up against evil squads of US marines and the SAS more than once.
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Jun 18, 2018 19:08
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Also I think the Punisher's origin itself is arguably cynical about military service. Characters like Reed Richards and Captain America were forged into heroes in the heat of battle, but the Punisher was twisted, shaped and broken by the pointless terror of Vietnam, reflecting the era of his creation's growing cynicism about war. Now, sure, a lot of his books are oo-rah macho authoritarian fantasies that worship police and military violence, but there are also some more self-aware ones that say, hey, Frank is a broken monster because being a soldier broke him, and that violence reappearing back home in the form of mob violence taking his family sealed the deal. Arguably it's a pretty deft metaphor for shellshocked vets being unable to "turn off" their violence and anger when their war is over.
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Jun 18, 2018 19:13
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To be triple clear though, that's easily the minority of Punisher appearances, and it doesn't really hit his fanbase like "gun man shoot crimer" does.
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Jun 18, 2018 19:16
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Yeah, for all his foibles Ennis hates the military-industrial complex and will take any opportunity to illustrate its worst excesses.
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Jun 18, 2018 19:31
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Endless Mike posted:Reed being a former soldier hasn't been relevant to his character in like 40 years. I'd argue that his position as the head of the family, man of the house, adventurer for all seasons and explorer of distant climes is pretty well tied up in the old archetype of what it once meant to have been a soldier. Military service was meant to round you out, give you experience of the world, and fill you with masculine energy. In the last twenty years or so, sure, maybe less so. But Reed as the FF's paterfamilias who is also kind of a nerdier Doc Savage archetype has been vital to the character, and that's tied up with what military service used to indicate when America was less cynical about sending its young men to war.
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Jun 18, 2018 19:36
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I think in modern canon he was a communications specialist. It's been minimised a lot in his backstory since the Lee/Kirby run, for sure (and that has coincided with his character becoming less "two-fisted scientist who leads his family fearlessly into danger" and more "arrogant genius with a heart of gold"), but I'd argue that the very fact that his character used to be closer to the former says something about how his military backstory influenced his characterisation.
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Jun 18, 2018 19:44
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evilmiera posted:It is worth remembering many polytheist gods were depicted as assholes for a variety of reasons, partially to make them easier to sympathize with from a fallible mortal perspective, partially to get around the problem of evil. If the gods weren't perfect, then there was no need to think about why we didn't live in a perfect world. The venality and cruelty of the gods also reflected a more authoritarian worldview. If you read the Iliad, one of the central themes is, "the gods are tyrannical autocrats, and justly so - they are more powerful than us, and therefore it is folly to defy them". Hubris is the defining sin of ancient Greek narrative for a reason - because it reflects an ingrained social belief that trying to upset the social order and disobey your betters is dangerous and foolish. It's explicit in a lot of ancient Greek myth and writing that the gods rule purely by virtue of their ability to exert their will with brute physical (or magical) force, not because of any extraordinary reserve of wisdom, justice, or moral rectitude. More bizarrely to our modern egalitarian worldview, this is often also presented as a natural good. See: the myth of Arachne, where a woman who is a better weaver than Athene gets turned into a spider because she bruised a god's pride, and the moral of the story is "don't try to exceed your betters, don't act out of turn, cower before authority or you'll be punished". A lot of ancient Greek myth-making reflects a culture deeply enamoured with brutal oligarchy.
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Jul 15, 2020 05:54
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Sephyr posted:This. I can only suggest John Dolan's "War Nerd's Iliad", as it re-tells the story in a fun, pulpy, interesting fashion divorced from the classics wankery. The gods are like a quarrelsome mafia family, Zeus not smarter or wiser than anyone else, just -stronger-, and mortals both just and foul, are just excuses for them to do their thing. This sounds dope, I'll have to check it out. Thanks for the recommendation!
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Jul 16, 2020 00:47
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