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Gatts posted:The best spider product out there now is the Newspaper strip. This has always been true. And always will be.
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Apr 30, 2014 01:23
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evilmiera posted:The comic has gone on for too long with too much old baggage from bad or badly edited writers. Ultimate proved (until Ultimatum) that the characters can still be good, if handled with some more care and given a somewhat clean slate. "Too much old baggage" has very little to do with it. Rehabilitating characters and starting from a somewhat clean slate are trivially easy things to do in comics, even without reality-altering retcons. It's the bad writers and the fans who refuse to stop giving them money for their lovely work that are the problem.
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May 29, 2014 00:34
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Lurdiak posted:Don't forget the bad editors who put out strange edicts about the character's age and relationship status but don't seem to care about anything else the writers do. I mostly agree with you but I can't really blame them for preferring that Spider-Man not be middle-aged.
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May 29, 2014 02:38
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Zore posted:I still don't get how being married equals being middle-aged. I wasn't talking about the marriage part, really. But yes, being married and having a kid are generally seen as milestones in life that age you. I would love to read stories about Spider-Man that include him having a wife and kids, and in fact that's why I liked the old Spider-Girl series. But they aren't really things that are conducive to a mainline continuity designed to last for decades and remain amenable to whatever innovations and changes to the character's status quo the editors want. Whichever editor said Spider-Man is about youth wasn't really wrong. And marriage and children aren't a part of youth. They're things that are supposed to signify that you've basically figured your life out, more or less, and that's kind of anathema to the spirit of the character. Maybe this is just a problem with wanting characters to last indefinitely. But the way I see it, you either concede that Peter is never going to fully grow up or you set a permanent end date for the character, wrap up his story for good, and introduce a new character to fully and completely take on the mantle for the foreseeable future. But I doubt that's going to happen any time soon.
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May 29, 2014 23:27
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So I haven't been into comics for a while, and I was wondering....why is Peter suddenly some sort of mega-super-genius on the level of people like Tony Stark and Reed Richards? I have to say it rubs me the wrong way. The guy's super smart, but he never used to be that super smart.
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Apr 3, 2016 22:28
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Wanderer posted:He always was, but he was never in a position where he could really leverage it. He invented the webbing and the web-shooters himself, as well as an electronic tracking beacon that he can home in on psychically, and he's got a consistent history of coming up with scientific solutions to the villain or problem of the week. Yeah, because he's a really smart science geek in comic book world. Science doesn't work the same way in the MU as it does in the real world. That doesn't mean he's the in-universe equivalent of an Einstein or a Howard Hughes like Reed and Tony are. He was never really presented that way before. I'm not saying don't progress the character and show him having some actual professional success for once in his life, but portraying him as being literally one of the smartest human beings on the planet and an intellectual rival of a dude as crazy smart as Mr. Fantastic? That just comes across as fanboy-ish power level wankery to me. quote:Traditionally, the problem has been Spider-troubles interfering with his education, or keeping him from consistently being able to keep hold of the kinds of resources that Tony or Reed have. In the fields of chemistry or DIY electronics, he's probably top-ten MU and has been for quite a while. How so? The Marvel Universe is absolutely lousy with two-bit heroes and villains who manage to cobble together amazing gadgets that would make them unparalleled scientific geniuses in the real world. Is Stilt-Man one of the greatest scientific geniuses in the Marvel Universe now? No, he's just a smart guy with an aptitude for scientific engineering. I remember there was an old comic where Peter actually tried to market his web fluid to a science corporation to make some money off it, and they weren't interested, because it wasn't really terribly useful for any application beyond "being Spider-Man". Peter's obviously smart as hell for being able to come up with something like that at age 15, but in the context of the Marvel Universe it was never presented as some sort of earth-shattering feat, and that was intentional. There's a reason the movie adaptations have always had such trouble when it comes to explaining the web-shooters. Cnut the Great fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Apr 4, 2016 |
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Apr 4, 2016 20:40
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ImpAtom posted:Peter didn't just cobble together amazing gadgets once. He did it on a regular basis near-constantly and was shown to be educated enough that high-end scientists like Connors or Octopus actually found him impressive and said he had amazing potential. He's often portrayed as being really smart and in a diverse number of ways. Like he isn't just good at tinkering he's capable of doing things like creating a cure for monsteritis with some notes or adapting his webbing formula for all sorts of things without any resources. Yes, and it always played off with Spider-Man confidently exclaiming, "Luckily, I'm a science major!" He could do those things because he was an exceptionally bright, exceptionally clever science nerd, not because he was some sort of super-mega-genius on a Top 10 list of world's smartest. It was the Silver Age, man. Even within that tonal context, it was always made clear that Peter was mostly just an average guy who happened to have a higher-than-average aptitude for science. He always had to go to someone like Curt Connors for help when he needed to do some genuine super-science, and it wasn't just because he was strapped for resources or just didn't have enough time to read the right books, it was because he was just plain out of his league, like a normal-rear end person would be. Everything else Peter whipped up was the comic book equivalent of a gifted tech enthusiast doing engineering projects in their garage. Like, creating an electronic tracking bug really isn't that mind-blowing of a feat when you look at what everyone else in this universe is constantly up to. quote:That's always been a bit of a joke because a company that can't figure out how to make use of an extremely strong adhesive that dissolves cleanly in an hour is really dumb. Like again, think about that: Yeah, and yet the comics went out of their way to show that, in the Marvel Universe, it's still not that impressive in the grand scheme of things. Science is way easier in the MU than it is in the real world. The Vulture invented a harness that grants its wearer the amazing ability to fly through the air at extremely high velocity, at any altitude, in a fully controlled manner, for extended periods of time. It is impossible to overstate how loving insane a scientific accomplishment that is. But that aspect is hand-waved away as being because the Vulture is a former electronics engineer. So why did he decide to use his amazing invention to rob banks instead of just patenting his technology and making billions? Because in the Marvel Universe it's just a very clever bit of engineering. Otherwise, it's not particularly revolutionary or mind-shattering. Peter did some impressive amateur chemistry and came up with something that suited his specific needs as Spider-Man but isn't really that useful for anything else. If you analyze it using real-world logic then yeah, you'll be forced to conclude that Peter Parker is probably a scientific genius worthy of being spoken of in the same breath as guys like Tesla. But that would be silly, because it's a comic book, not the real world. Peter Parker is a relatively relatable every man who by sheer chance was granted amazing powers and ultimately decided to use them for good, not a once-in-a-generation intellectual prodigy of historic proportions who also got superpowers. It's like the core of the character. It's why it's so satisfying to see him outwit guys like Doc Ock who are, on paper, far more intellectually capable than he is, but much less able to think creatively in the moment.
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Apr 5, 2016 18:56
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Boogaleeboo posted:Yes it is. It's so insanely useful in like a hundred billion ways, probably the most obvious of them just giving them to cops to launch at assholes in grenade launchers. Presto, now random cops can stand up to like 70% of super-villains instantly on the cheap. gently caress, they are New York cops. Enjoy your rampage when six guys mag dump a bunch of those at you and you suffocate to death. "He had a rhino suit and he was coming at me" he said, shortly before his grand jury acquittal. Christ at least they give the pretense that a lot of Reed's inventions are so complicated and expensive they can't really be used in any useful mass market sense [Which is it's own type of bullshit, but whatever, lets go with that]. "Notoriously broke man-child can generally scrounge up enough money to make a ton of this on the go" puts his webbing in the realm of "There is no possible reason not to use this for everything it could conceivably work on". I think you're missing my point. My point is essentially exactly this: quote:You just have to ignore certain things because status quo is God. The reason Peter was able to invent web shooters at age 15 is because any spider-themed super hero needs some way of creating webs, and Stan Lee wasn't too keen on the idea of Peter shooting gobs of white goo out of his rear end like a real spider. There's no reason to read anything else into it, and up until relatively recently, most writers made a conscious choice not to--and for good reason. Lurdiak posted:Pete as Tony's number one assistant was pretty much the level of genius most appropriate to his character. Smart enough to keep up and offer some valuable insights here and there, but not so smart as to actually compete with the big boys. Yeah, this is how I always saw him, and I thought it was a reasonable balance to keep Peter very smart but still relatable. He's intelligent enough that people like Tony and Reed genuinely respect and value him for his insights, but that doesn't mean he's ever going to be able to compete with them in a no-holds-barred science off. Peter's main advantage is that he approaches things from a unique intuitive perspective which guys like Tony and Reed are too wrapped up in their own big brains to ever be able to understand. Like in Spider-Man 2, the reason Peter is able to find the fatal flaw in Octavius's experiment is precisely because he approaches the problem from more of a human perspective as opposed to a strictly scientific one. Octavius kind of just rolls his eyes at Peter because of course he thought of all that, and of course he took all the proper precautions (or so he's convinced himself). Octavius is basically too smart for his own good, and it's made him arrogant. It's not that Peter understood something about the experiment that Octavius didn't; he just placed a higher priority on the negative effects the experiment might have on other people. Squizzle posted:Instead of framing this as finding the One True Reading of Spider-Man's mechanical acumen, I think it's more productive to acknowledge that a reasonable cross-section of prior Spider-Man fiction supports the current super-inventor direction—not exclusively supports it, but that it's one of many possible valid interpretations of what came before. Given that, it's more interesting to consider things like why this Peter Parker was appealing to Slott/editors, how this storyline might change what works as a reasonable interpretation of Spider-Man in the near future, why shooting webs is awesome, or literally anything other than whether or not Peter Parker is as sciencey as the story right in front of us is telling us that he unambiguously is, at least for now. Well, I don't find it terribly compelling. I mean, Iron Man already exists. I don't mind the idea of Peter temporarily being in a situation that's kind of similar to Iron Man's, because it's interesting to see how a character like Peter would react to that, but the version of Peter we're getting just seems to be wanked all to hell, so it's hard for me to care. I mean, I can't even begin to relate to being that smart. I'm a loving idiot. At least with the old version of Spidey, I could at least pretend I could ever possibly be in his shoes. But mega-super-genius Spidey? I just don't possess the capacity to delude myself. I've still got Miles at least, but it would be nice to have a relatable adult Spider-Man too. Cnut the Great fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Apr 6, 2016 |
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Apr 6, 2016 06:32
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Blockhouse posted:So you're the person unable to related to a married Spider-Man? I didn't think you actually existed. Why wouldn't I be able to relate to a married Spider-Man? Are you implying I'm destined to die alone and unloved? Thanks, pal.
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Apr 6, 2016 17:59
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Blockhouse posted:it was more implying "I can't relate to a super-genius!" is the same line of thought as "I can't related to a guy married to a supermodel actress!" which in both cases are complaints I just can't wrap my mind around someone actually having. I can relate to a supergenius. But it's in a different, slightly more removed way than I relate to a non-supergenius. That doesn't strike me as all that odd, given that I am not a supergenius, never will be, and couldn't even imagine what it would feel like to be one. I can certainly relate to Reed Richards in certain ways, for instance, but there's still some level of remove there that wasn't there for me when it came to classic Spider-Man. I suppose you could say the same thing about the Spider-Marriage, but to me it seems like that's a bit different. Most normal people know what it's like to be in a committed relationship. By that token, I admit it doesn't matter one way or the other to me whether Spider-Man is married, single, or in a long-term relationship in the comics. While I disagree with the way the marriage was undone, I can see the storytelling logic in the desire to not have Peter permanently married off. You can still tell stories about Peter's long-term relationship with Mary Jane, who is probably always going to be implied to be the one he's destined to end up with. You can do that whenever you want. You can put them together and keep it that way for years and years and years and the only difference from the old days will be that they aren't legally married. But if any writer ever wants to go in a different direction for a little while to open up new storytelling possibilites, it allows them to do that without having Peter and MJ go through a messy divorce, thus permanently tainting any future storyline where they get back together again--which will always happen, because come on.
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Apr 7, 2016 06:34
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