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Edge & Christian posted:All in all the Serpent Society were kind of a fun/different dynamic for supervillains in the 1980s. When Diamondback decided to quit and team up with Captain America, half the team was still pretty cool with her as an ex-co-worker, and they even agreed to run interference fighting crime so she and Cap could finally go on a date. Between them and Dwayne McDuffie's earnest attempts to make Thunderball, Sorta Anti-Hero Or At Least Criminal Who Would Just as Soon Not Beat Anyone Up, they forever ruined the traditional event We're All Bad Guys, Let's Team Up to Destroy Humanity concept. Classy '80s Thunderball was a fun villain. I remember really liking those issues of Damage Control where he and John the yuppie were buddies.
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Feb 27, 2017 02:15
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 23:11 |
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muscles like this! posted:Is it just me or does everyone's butts look... off?  Whatever do you mean?
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Feb 27, 2017 02:37
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Edge & Christian posted:Surprisingly, a number of people in the Serpent Society decide this is a bad idea and end up helping 'the good guys' reverse this plan. I haven't read any of Gruenwald's Cap, but I am a complete sucker for working class bad guys being "not such bad guys," and teaming up with the heroes against true threats and actual evil villains. Was Thunderball's kinda-sorta face turn in this run as well, or elsewhere? Because as written by Bendis in New Avengers, they were always generic goons. EDIT: I didn't see Wanderer's post above when I was writing this. Was Damage Control the only place? I tried reading the TPB, but couldn't get past the art.
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Feb 27, 2017 03:02
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Thunderball's run under McDuffie (aka pretty much the only time his characterization is anything other than "one of the Wrecker's minions, you know, the black one") was pretty much exclusively in Damage Control, I thought it was also in some Acts of Vengeance tie-ins, but that was just his rehab of Chemistro, and his first work with the Mad Thinker that he later revisited in his Civil War mop-up issues. The comics in question I was thinking of were half of Avengers Spotlight (nee Solo Avengers) # 26-29, and Iron Man #251-2. Also Gruenwald's Cap definitely gets creaky at points but from his run from Cap #307 (introducing Madcap, as seen in the current Deadpool run!) at least through Streets of Poison is some really good of-its-era superhero stuff that dissects a lot of tropes and concepts of the Marvel Universe/superhero comics. Get much past issue #400 (Gruenwald wrote the book for like a decade) and you start hitting CapWolf and Steve wearing 90s Armor but I keep meaning to re-read the first half+ of that run, and this thread has added Quasar to my list of things I want to revisit from Gruenwald, who is responsible for an insane amount of stuff we kind of take for granted in terms of comic book worldbuilding, from the Marvel Universe handbook itself to a lot of formalized concepts/jargon about 'multiverses'/'canon'/etc. based on his fanzine writings in the 1970s. Also Damage Control is loving awesome, it was literally the first thing that I bought as a kid that made me start deliberately following writers and while the art can be off-putting (especially the Kyle Baker issues when he was in one of his 'let's try a new art style' phases) it's another really fun/clever explorations of how to tell different types of stories inside a superhero shell that along with Gruenwald's stuff is like the secret foundation of modern comics nearly as much as the Miller/Moore axis. Edge & Christian fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Feb 27, 2017 |
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Feb 27, 2017 05:17
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I won't say Gruenwald was a bad writer but it was kinda whiplash reading through the 40 years of Captain America DVD and going from JM Dematteis' high-minded psychodrama with Vermin, Baron Zemo and Red Skull with all the grandiose political statements to stuff like "I, NOMAD, AM BEING A JERK TO D-MAN BECAUSE I AM INSECURE! GRR!" and snake dudes. And yeah his 90s stuff is genuinely crummy.
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Feb 27, 2017 05:29
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Air Walker who in this picture looks like he has just smelled something unimaginably foul. Maybe Galactus took one of his boots off? No picture for Fer de Lance but I do have her game write-up! Nah, it's just as lame as her concept.
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Feb 27, 2017 06:50
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Edge & Christian posted:Also Damage Control is loving awesome, it was literally the first thing that I bought as a kid that made me start deliberately following writers and while the art can be off-putting (especially the Kyle Baker issues when he was in one of his 'let's try a new art style' phases) it's another really fun/clever explorations of how to tell different types of stories inside a superhero shell that along with Gruenwald's stuff is like the secret foundation of modern comics nearly as much as the Miller/Moore axis. I didn't make it that far. I think it started out with art by Ernie Colon, and it reminded me of the terrible political cartoons in the newspaper. I LOVE Kyle Baker, though! The Shadow, Justice Inc., and especially his own graphic novels: Why I Hate Saturn, Cowboy Wally Show, You Are Here, I Die At Midnight. His style has gone through a lot of changes, but those four in particular are GOOD comics.
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Feb 27, 2017 07:23
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Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:I didn't make it that far. I think it started out with art by Ernie Colon, and it reminded me of the terrible political cartoons in the newspaper. I LOVE Kyle Baker, though! The Shadow, Justice Inc., and especially his own graphic novels: Why I Hate Saturn, Cowboy Wally Show, You Are Here, I Die At Midnight. His style has gone through a lot of changes, but those four in particular are GOOD comics. I think Baker drew his issues of Damage Control in about fifteen minutes. They're bad. The third volume in general's got really sketchy art for some reason.
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Feb 27, 2017 07:58
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X-O posted:Day 17: Fer-De-Lance Her action shot is quickly opening a door
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Feb 27, 2017 13:04
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poly and open-minded posted:Her action shot is quickly opening a door Everytime she bursts through the door she and Captain America have to stand there silent for a few moments until the studio audience stops cheering.
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Feb 27, 2017 20:41
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I love that period of time where the Marvel editorial mandate was "Wolverine is popular; All new characters now require Knife-Hands™"
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Feb 27, 2017 22:08
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Day 18: Null The Living Darkness Here's another one that I'm not really that familiar with at all. I guess it showed up in some old Defenders comics that I never read. Seems like a basic monster design.  
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Feb 27, 2017 22:53
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"Null is a mystic life-form created over the ages from the collective unconscious of the 500,000 members of the extinct S'Raphh race, and as such has an unlimited ability to manipulate the forces of magic." First appearance: "Null terrorizes the town of Christianboro, Virginia." Way to really flex those mystical muscles and pick worthy targets, there, Null
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Feb 27, 2017 23:14
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A monster named "Null the Living Darkness" should really have a more interesting design than that has.
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Feb 27, 2017 23:17
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Well, thanks to the wonderful resource that is The Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe, we know of an Earth-20051 counterpart to Null the Living Darkness that is... different.
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Feb 27, 2017 23:31
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I like that design tbh. It's a bit shuma-gorath, but it's so much more creepy and interesting than like a green guy with gills or pointy ears.
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Feb 27, 2017 23:34
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His real/former name being Adam Henderson makes "Null, The Living Darkness" sound like he's just a 13-year old boy playing an RPG character. "Adam, come up for dinner!" "Mom. I told you to call me Null."
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Feb 28, 2017 02:05
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X-O posted:Day 18: Null The Living Darkness I think I just killed this fucker in Resident Evil 7 last night.
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Feb 28, 2017 03:19
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No Null in the RPG sadly.
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Feb 28, 2017 05:51
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quote:Current occupation: Nihilist, destroyer Nihilist sounds like a sweet job. Just sit around all day and do nothing. Of course, the pay is probably nothing too. Also I feel like the backstory of this character design is "the artist originally drew a beholder, but then legal made them change it just enough to avoid copyright infringement."
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Feb 28, 2017 06:46
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Ponsonby Britt posted:Nihilist sounds like a sweet job. Just sit around all day and do nothing. Of course, the pay is probably nothing too. Sure, but you wouldn't care.
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Feb 28, 2017 13:23
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delfin posted:Well, thanks to the wonderful resource that is The Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe, we know of an Earth-20051 counterpart to Null the Living Darkness that is... I read this comic and it was good as it sounds.
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Feb 28, 2017 15:49
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Everyone who followed Steve Gerber on Defenders seemed dead-set on making the book the "weird" team book counterpoint to [Avengers/FF/whatever], and JMD's tact seemed to rely heavily on demonic/occult stuff. One of his first stories was Hellcat getting possessed by a demon from THE SIX FINGERED HAND which led to a meet-cute with Son of Satan and their eventual marriage. He also largely set up a whole cosmology where there really was a SATAN who was the supreme evil being, and Mephisto and Satannish and Thog and all of the Satan-lites from previous Marvel books were like, his lieutenants. Schemes between different factions of demons ran through like his entire run, and over the next few years the team fought Dracula (who was also possessed by/combating demons), satanic rock star Asmodeus Jones, Ghost Rider (who at the time was literally a rebellious agent of Satan pre-Zarathos stuff), and as like the final Big Really Bad Demonic Thing That Had Taken Over the Squadron Supreme Universe, NULL THE LIVING DARKNESS, who hasn't been seen since outside of handbooks and that Marvel Adventures book. I feel like Paul Tobin and some of the other writers for those book picked out some of the characters by flipping through a handbook and daring each other to work in Null or some other obscurity. I had only read bits and pieces of this Defenders run, but in addition to leaning heavily on the satanic/demonic stuff, it also pushed way more Christianity-themed counterpoints into the Marvel Universe than anyone had outside of the occasional Christ Figure business with Adam Warlock or Wundarr. The team got stocked with Devil-Slayer (a guy raised in a Satanic cult who found God and now Slays Devils), Gargoyle (Isaac Christians, native to Christianboro, who tried to make a deal with the devil AVARRISH to get his town out of a recession, but got stuck in a Gargoyle body but also realizes the power of Godliness through his mistakes and turns against the demons and joins the Defenders. There was even Cloud, who certainly initially seemed like some sort of omnipotent androgyne cherub who decided to join the team but then got retconned into like a Cosmic Cube taking the form of two dead teenage siblings or whatever? Pretty sure the "Cloud is not an angel" thing came long after JMD took off. The old FF villain Miracle Man shows up as an amnesiac priest who is performing miracles for Jesus but it turns out he's hurt by Son of Satan's powers and because he's a bad guy he renounces God/his native powers to try to steal Satanic powers before realizing that Jesus Saves. I don't know what any of this means, but Null was created in no small part because the writer had already burned through and beaten almost literally every Demon/Satan big bad guy in the Marvel Universe by then.
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Feb 28, 2017 18:41
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Isn't J. M. DeMatteis a Quaker?
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Feb 28, 2017 21:01
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Why does that matter?
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Feb 28, 2017 21:14
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I mean, JMD grew up in Brooklyn playing in rock bands and writing for fanzines, and in his largely-autobiographical Brooklyn Dreams graphic novel the main character has an Italian dad and a Jewish mother and was raised Catholic-adjacent. His parents' background is true, who knows how much of the rest of the narrative is poetic license, but if I had to guess there weren't a ton of Quakers playing in garage bands in 1970s Brooklyn?
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Feb 28, 2017 21:28
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It doesn't, I'm just curious. I have a vague recollection of having read that he was somewhere but, not being familiar with his stuff outside JLI and to an extent Captain America, hadn't heard about him putting much religious imagery in his work. 
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Feb 28, 2017 21:29
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I may be overstating things, it's not like Defenders could pass for a Jack Chick or Spire comic or anything, but between his run on Defenders, some of his Spider-Man stories, and his recent work on Phantom Stranger, he's definitely more willing than most to play with Christian iconography in comics. It's probably not just Christian iconography either, pretty much all of his creator-owned work (Moonshadow, Greenberg the Vampire, Seekers: Into the Mystery, Brooklyn Dreams, Mercy) are a lot about people trying to find meaning and faith and redemption and etc. etc. in strange worlds that mishmash a lot of different faiths/belief systems together as 'real'. I haven't read most of these books in years (or at all) and I am basing this on equally hazily remembered interviews from the 1980s and 1990s. Regardless, I thought it was interesting how chock-a-block his Defenders run is on it, I agree it's much less obvious in some of his better known runs (though to be fair a lot of those involve him co-plotting and/or just scripting over Keith Giffen, who based solely on his public persona and writing history I would guess is far less interested in spiritual matters. Edge & Christian fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Feb 28, 2017 |
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Feb 28, 2017 21:54
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Hh. I picked up on that in JMD's Spectre run, but didn't think much of it because that's just how the character rolls. I'd like to see Null The Living Darkness take on Spectre.
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Feb 28, 2017 23:02
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Day 19: The Zodiac Here's something a bit different. A whole load of random characters. Themed villains! Bad designs! Pirate boots! Cybernetic limbs! Lobster claws! Cybernetic Lobster Claws! A man named Aquarius wearing a belly shirt! This post has it all!     Modus operandi: Criminal activities based on astrological themes X-O fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Feb 28, 2017 |
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Feb 28, 2017 23:42
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Man, I've read countless issues of Avengers books with lovely Zodiac storylines and all I can ever remember from them is that under the mask, the original Taurus looks just like Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force.   
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Feb 28, 2017 23:50
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Zodiac comes up quite a bit in old Shield/Fury stories. That double splash page that has been a BSS favourite for years of a shirtless Fury blasting through a wall on his jetbike has a dude (Scorpio?) wielding the Zodiac Key.
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Feb 28, 2017 23:57
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On the Zodiac, I remember a) Libra seeming pretty cool in Avengers Forever; and b) them being revealed as the shadowy masterminds at the end of the first or second Geoff Johns Avengers story arc, foreshadowing a plot which would never be revisited. Other than that, they are possibly my second-least favourite Bronze Age Marvel supervilain team after Salem's Seven, who are very possibly the worst recurring FF bad guys of all time.
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Mar 1, 2017 00:43
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Pretty rude of Gemini II to steal the Inbetweener's look. That's not cosmic-themed crime, not astrological!
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Mar 1, 2017 01:37
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Lobok posted:Zodiac comes up quite a bit in old Shield/Fury stories. That double splash page that has been a BSS favourite for years of a shirtless Fury blasting through a wall on his jetbike has a dude (Scorpio?) wielding the Zodiac Key. Hickman also uses the idea in Secret Warriors but his Zodiac is basically every big name spy organization tied together by an ancient secret.
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Mar 1, 2017 02:00
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Did PAD's Hulk deal with these guys? Or am I thinking of, like, a fake Greek Pantheon?
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Mar 1, 2017 02:42
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wow, for once the underwear on the outside makes things look less weird
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Mar 1, 2017 02:46
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HitTheTargets posted:Did PAD's Hulk deal with these guys? Or am I thinking of, like, a fake Greek Pantheon? You're thinking of the Pantheon. Descendants of characters from Greek myths or something. Wasn't Cloud from the Defenders part of Ego or something? I think it had a relationship with Iceman.
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Mar 1, 2017 03:21
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:wow, for once the underwear on the outside makes things look less weird That's actually the point of the underwear on the outside costumes.
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Mar 1, 2017 03:46
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 23:11 |
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There are 12 pages for this group in the RPG with stats for up to four different versions of some of the members...Why God WHY? ZODIAC  
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Mar 1, 2017 05:04
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