The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

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NoOneofConsequence
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

Post by NoOneofConsequence »

For the longest time, I kept wanting to see a follow up to the original Watchmen where some hero or another stumbles across that reality 20+ years later, and all that is left is Dr. Manhattan and a post nuclear war wasteland. When asked about this, Manhattan would explain that after the initial shock of the fake alien attack wore off and no new signs of them appeared, the world and its governments went back to business as usual and a nuclear war still happened anyway. Because history doesn't end just because someone performed some grandiose action as the climax of their personal psychodrama.
What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly. That is the first law of nature.
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Ares
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

Post by Ares »

A thing I hate about Watchmen is the idea that the Comedian and Adrian are somehow right about the nature of humanity, because no one actually pushes back against them in any meaningful way. In another story, Dan would have been the one to talk back and offer counter arguments to all the BS they were slinging, but Moore had to make the Ted Kord analogy into someone relatively spineless.

It's extra annoying because Adrian's act is treated like some necessary tragedy, when it's really a man feeding his own ego. Adrian had access to Dr. Manhattan. He had time to burn, virtually unlimited resources, a genius intellect, access to folks like John and Dan, some of the greatest minds on the planet, and the best he could come up with was getting rid of John and faking an alien invasion.

There had to have been better methods. Hell, John can make an unknown number of copies of himself. With all of that power, resource and political pull, Adrian could almost certainly have worked on a quieter plan that would have maybe taken longer, and maybe wouldn't have let him "win" over the rest of the world, because he would have had to work with other people openly and as equals to make it happen.

If Watchmen is a tragedy, it's because Adrian isn't nearly as smart as he thinks he is, and he almost certainly made a bad situation worse. It relies so much on the worst aspects of humanity winning out to where it's just mired in misery, to the point I can't really take it seriously at times.
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Davies
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

Post by Davies »

Ares wrote: Wed Jul 27, 2022 9:09 pm
It's extra annoying because Adrian's act is treated like some necessary tragedy, when it's really a man feeding his own ego.
Eh. I question the necessary tragedy bit. The way that some of his last lines reference the Black Freighter story-within-a-story, about a man who commits horrific acts to prevent a threat that ultimately existed only in his mind, suggests that Moore intends for him to be understood as mistaken. As is the fact that, as I've said before, the Outer Limits episode that his plan was inspired by exists in that reality.
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NoOneofConsequence
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

Post by NoOneofConsequence »

For anyone interested, a pair of essays about Watchmen from the long gone QuarterBin site of 20 yrs ago.


The moral compass of Watchmen: https://web.archive.org/web/20040821210 ... pol17.html

The political world of Watchmen: https://web.archive.org/web/20040821211 ... pol25.html
What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly. That is the first law of nature.
Voltaire, "Tolerance" (1764)
csyphrett
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

Post by csyphrett »

Ares wrote: Wed Jul 27, 2022 9:09 pm A thing I hate about Watchmen is the idea that the Comedian and Adrian are somehow right about the nature of humanity, because no one actually pushes back against them in any meaningful way. In another story, Dan would have been the one to talk back and offer counter arguments to all the BS they were slinging, but Moore had to make the Ted Kord analogy into someone relatively spineless.

It's extra annoying because Adrian's act is treated like some necessary tragedy, when it's really a man feeding his own ego. Adrian had access to Dr. Manhattan. He had time to burn, virtually unlimited resources, a genius intellect, access to folks like John and Dan, some of the greatest minds on the planet, and the best he could come up with was getting rid of John and faking an alien invasion.

There had to have been better methods. Hell, John can make an unknown number of copies of himself. With all of that power, resource and political pull, Adrian could almost certainly have worked on a quieter plan that would have maybe taken longer, and maybe wouldn't have let him "win" over the rest of the world, because he would have had to work with other people openly and as equals to make it happen.

If Watchmen is a tragedy, it's because Adrian isn't nearly as smart as he thinks he is, and he almost certainly made a bad situation worse. It relies so much on the worst aspects of humanity winning out to where it's just mired in misery, to the point I can't really take it seriously at times.
On one hand, I agree that Adrian could have run for president or congress and instituted his changes through the system. He was smart enough for that.

On the other hand, he didn't win a lasting peace. He thought he had because people stepped back and looked around for a second, but he forgot some key points like the fact that without Dr. Manhattan around, there was no reason for the Soviet Union not to attack, that he would have to keep making squids and dropping them, that eventually he would be dead and someone would find out what he had done by going through his effects.

Basically he killed 5 million people for nothing, and wakes up to that after Dr. Manhattan tells him nothing ends. You can see it on his face.

It must have hurt his ego that Rorshach, a man who basically was dumber and more emotional, was right, and he was wrong.
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csyphrett
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

Post by csyphrett »

NoOneofConsequence wrote: Thu Jul 28, 2022 3:34 am For anyone interested, a pair of essays about Watchmen from the long gone QuarterBin site of 20 yrs ago.


The moral compass of Watchmen: https://web.archive.org/web/20040821210 ... pol17.html

The political world of Watchmen: https://web.archive.org/web/20040821211 ... pol25.html
I don't know if I agree with his assessment, but Moore obviously didn't know they limited terms for presidents before Jon Osterman became Dr. Manhattan and started putting electrical car chargers everywhere.
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

Post by NoOneofConsequence »

I think there may have been a mention somewhere of that amendment getting repealed, but I may be Mandella Effecting it.

As an aside, I always thought the film's opening should have skipped the low hanging fruit of the Grassy Knoll and instead shown Comedian taking out Oswald, with the idea that Kennedy got reelected and ended up being the one who deployed Manhattan to South - and possibly also North - Vietnam.
What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly. That is the first law of nature.
Voltaire, "Tolerance" (1764)
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Davies
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

Post by Davies »

NoOneofConsequence wrote: Thu Jul 28, 2022 1:25 pm I think there may have been a mention somewhere of that amendment getting repealed, but I may be Mandella Effecting it.
You're not, it's mentioned in issue four that "The papers are full of the President's proposed constitutional amendment, allowing him to run next year [1976] for a third term." I view the success of this as less plausible than the giant blue man; your mileage may vary.

EDIT: Ares, this topic is drifting quite a bit from discussion about petty stuff that posters would do as comics creators; should a new thread about "Watching the Watchmen With Annoyance" be started?
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Jabroniville
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

Post by Jabroniville »

Or y’all can wait for my Watchmen builds next month :P.

But it’s also important that Adrian specifically is treated as so smart that he can predict the future, and this is shown to be accurate in-story. So he has good reason to think that his way is correct. Like, Moore didn’t clumsily come into dumb answers- he out his WORK in.

And then that fat kid reaches for a random journal that could undo everything…
Libra X
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

Post by Libra X »

The pettiest thing I can imagine doing with the ex-Charlton crowd is putting them on their own Earth and casually dismissing WATCHMEN when writing the adventures of this Brave Old World: Mr Moore & Mr Gibson’s opus has gotten far too much attention already, time to do something different.

I’m not wholly sure what that should be, but ideally it would be much more Ditko than Moore! (Though I’m not immune to the temptation of introducing a Giant Squid Plot - no, not THE Giant Squid Plot, A Giant Squid Plot - so our superheroes can take one look and shrug “Just another Wednesday”.
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

Post by Libra X »

Oh, and I would absolutely LOVE to run a MULTIVERSITY story set on Earth-8 that showed local superheroes (and reformed villains) discuss their histories with Hollywood screenwriters and researchers - partly so we can get a better idea of who the local supers are and how they came to be, but also as the perfect excuse for some tongue in cheek nods to how much crazy, crazy comic book continuity the MCU et al have to wade through in order to get something marketable.

This would, of course, be the stuff of good-natured ribbing and Comic Book Fun (I’m not very good at spite and dislike the thought of being petty), but I’d like there to be a companion story that gives some texture to the previous tale or tales by showing The Thunderer of Earth-7 desperately seeking out media from across the Multiverse that depicts his now desolate, desecrated home world and trying to create as truthful a memorial of his friends, their loved ones and the proud history of their home as his unspeakably tragic situation permits.

If there’s one thing I loathe, loathe, loathe it’s seeing individual characters and whole worlds being introduced only to be immediately destroyed - it strikes me as profoundly wasteful and careless.
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Ares
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

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Way back when, Grant Morrison took over the X-Men. And it was terrible. I know there are folks who enjoyed it, but I couldn't stand the thing. I hated it for many, many reasons, but a major one was that Morrison decided to make Magneto into basically a parody of the kind of villain he'd been before Claremont, ignoring decades of character growth, storylines and so on because, as Morrison said:

"What people often forget, of course, is that Magneto, unlike the lovely Sir Ian McKellen, is a mad old terrorist twat. No matter how he justifies his stupid, brutal behaviour, or how anyone else tries to justify it, in the end he's just an old bastard with daft, old ideas based on violence and coercion. I really wanted to make that clear (when writing New X-Men).“

And Morrison isn't wrong to an extent, but there feels like there was always more to it than this. I'm not sure what it is, but Morrison didn't really revert Magneto to his pre-Claremont self, he basically created an entirely new character. But that was pretty much true of everyone in the X-Men under his pen. Almost no one was in character. It was a mess.

Now, why bring it up? Because after the Harley Quinn TV series . . . I don't agree with what Morrison did, but I kind of get it. The Harley Quinn series basically indulges in Rick and Morty style nihilistic ultraviolence while making the villains look good the only way you can make them look good: by tearing down the heroes. It can't actually make the villains sympathetic without making the heroes look worse.

It's emblematic of a lot of villains who have done legitimately terrible things be easily forgiven, largely because they tick certain boxes. Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn are two major offenders, but people like Killer Frost, Livewire and others are just easily forgiven and put on a hero team. Black Adam is the biggest offender to me personally, as the idea that this asshole wound up on the Justice League of all things just infuriates me.

Characters like Adam, Harley and Ivy can have their sympathetic qualities . . . but they're still bad guys. Dr. Doom and Magneto both have admirable qualities, but they're still bad guys.

So honestly, I'd go over ever 'reformed villain' of the last decade or so and see if they've actually put the work in to warrant reformation. Adam, Harley and Ivy? They absolutely haven't. They're villains. They're capital 'E' Evil. And they need to be treated as such. Adam is a mass murderer. Ivy would commit genocide if given the chance. Harley has aided the Joker in numerous crimes and has no problem killing people.

While I'm at it and in this mood, everyone who had their orientation changed in the last 15 years? It's getting changed back. Tim Drake, Alan Scott, Bobby Drake, etc? All straight again.

And all of the replacement heroes, spin off heroes or heroes with a shared name (Miles Morales, Jaime Reyes, etc.) would be gone over, and the vast majority of them would give the identity back to the original heroes. Characters worth keeping will get their own identity or powers and sink or swim on their own merit. Those that aren't get to retire without any malice. Except for a few, like Gwenpool. She dies.
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Ares
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

Post by Ares »

Also, retcon everything Tom King has ever written away. All of it. The man's apparent method for dealing with his mental health issues is to give everyone else mental health issues.
"My heart is as light as a child's, a feeling I'd nearly forgotten. And by helping those in need, I will be able to keep that feeling alive."
- Captain Marvel SHAZAM! : Power of Hope (2000)

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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

Post by RUSCHE »

Magneto is an example of "My pain justifies myactions." IIf he was not a mutant with vast powers and had survived his experience he might have had a chance at some healing.
The fact that he continued to suffer loss by either his Mutant nature or humanity's monstrous treatment of each other has doomed him.
He needs to go back to be the top tier Mutant boogeyman. The same for Black Adam, no way would Superman ever allow him into the Justice League. The love Harley gets by girls is off the charts and disturbing. She is a cold blooded murder, of innocent people at that.
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Ares
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

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RUSCHE wrote: Tue Dec 13, 2022 5:12 pm Magneto is an example of "My pain justifies myactions." IIf he was not a mutant with vast powers and had survived his experience he might have had a chance at some healing.
The fact that he continued to suffer loss by either his Mutant nature or humanity's monstrous treatment of each other has doomed him.
He needs to go back to be the top tier Mutant boogeyman. The same for Black Adam, no way would Superman ever allow him into the Justice League. The love Harley gets by girls is off the charts and disturbing. She is a cold blooded murder, of innocent people at that.
Magneto to me works best as the kind of tragic villain who has brushes with redemption but never manages it. To me he should be the opposite of Namor. Namor should be someone who is a good person but his worst impulses cause him to stray very close to the side of villainy. Magneto has a sympathetic motivation, but his actions are out of proportion to said motivation, and thus he needs to be stopped. He can be reasoned with, he can back down and he can show moments of compassion and understanding. And he could genuinely reform, but it would need to be a consistent thing that happens over a long period of time, and most writers just want to use Magneto as a bad guy again.

Black Adam works best as a kind of Dr. Doom level threat, the ruler of a country who does want to protect his people, but also has a massive superiority complex where he thinks everyone is beneath him. Adam literally thinks he's a god, and prefers to float a few inches off the ground rather than walk like a common person. He believes he's right and that the world would be better under his rule, but so does Doom. Adam is a living reminder of why it was so important for the Wizard to select Captain Marvel to receive his power.

I get to an extent why guys like Harley. She's a funny, sexy lady in a skintight outfit, and the abuse she receives from Joker triggers that protective side in most guys where we want to save her. But at the same time I feel most guys also recognize that she's the exact kind of crazy you're told never to sleep with.

Girls idolizing Harley . . . yeah, I don't get it either. Again, she's a funny, attractive woman (and some folks will claim she's a queer icon and a woman in STEM, so she's a role model), but again, the relationships she's in are usually horrible. With Joker, she's in an abusive relationship where she actively enables Joker's worst impulses and gladly goes along with attempts to maim, murder and rob people. With Ivy, she's in a co-dependent relationship where they feed into each other's worst impulses and gladly indulge in whatever evil acts the other wants.

Neither of these relationships are healthy. Neither of them are something anyone should aspire to or support. They can be entertaining, but only because they lead to villainy that heroes have to stop. I think people sometimes look at either relationship and try to pretend it's purely surface level where the Joker and Harley are some kind of supervillain Bonnie and Clyde, or Harley and Ivy are supervillain Thelma and Louise.

It's worse in the Harley Quinn show where they have to exaggerate and invent all kinds of negative aspects to Batman so that Harley can help 'fix' him via therapy. Again, breaking actual heroes down to build herself up.
"My heart is as light as a child's, a feeling I'd nearly forgotten. And by helping those in need, I will be able to keep that feeling alive."
- Captain Marvel SHAZAM! : Power of Hope (2000)

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