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

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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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NoOneofConsequence wrote: Wed Nov 10, 2021 1:05 am I always figured Gladiator must have been the last member of the Shiar's counterpart to the Eternals, sort of the same way the Skrulls were apparently (at one point) their race's Deviants who managed to win and wipe out the baseline race and Eternals counterpart.
I say last member, as it fits with him being the Superboy expy of the Imperial Guard-as-LSH.
They went with a variation of this in Gladiator's backstory. The idea is that his people have the "Gladiator process" that they can undergo, which takes them from a race of medium-level flying bricks to Superman-class powerhouses. He was part of a group selected to be the first representatives of their people (the Strontians) in the Shi'Ar, but apparently their species as a whole was decimated (potentially be a Shi'Ar leader who felt threatened by the potential of the Strontians) so that there's only a handful of them left in the universe.

I'd go with the idea that the Strontians are a kind of "pseudo-Eternal", one whose people are on the cusp of achieving Eternal status, and who have figured out a way to artificially accelerate the process to make them full Eternals, resulting in people like Gladiator. However, the process is flawed in that it requires constant psychic reinforcement in a way most Eternals don't require (hence the 'I lose my confidence, I get weaker' aspect) and it makes them vulnerable to a unique form of energy.

I'd say something similar happens to most versions of Hyperion, that his people were "pseudo-Eternals" and when he was sent someplace else for his safety, the spaceship had technology in it that helped unlock that Eternal potential. The trade off was that Hyperion would slowly come into that power as he grew up, so that he lacked the confidence issue, but he retained the unique energy weakness because the process is imperfect.

The technological augmentation might also have limited their potential for developing the telepathic and energy/matter manipulation aspects of the Eternal powerset, basically making them batteries of cosmic energy that can augment themselves physically, fly and project energy, but not the more esoteric stuff.

The result are two people who have a level of power most Eternals could only attain after centuries of dedicated training (they basically have the physical might of Gilgamesh with the flight and energy powers of Ikaris), but their total potential is stunted because they're imperfect examples of the Eternals process.
And have I ever mentioned that I'm apparently one of the five people who actually liked The Forgotten One as Gilgamesh during the post-Inferno Avengers?
I liked Gilgamesh as an Avenger in concept more than execution. The idea of an immortal flying brick with some limited psychic, matter manipulation and energy powers is very fun, and could lead to some unique scenarios. Unfortunately, the post-Inferno team was very limited in size and personality (it being Steve, Thor, Sue and Reed in addition to Gilgamesh), and having Thor on the team made Gil somewhat redundant. They basically had similar personalities, outlooks on life, abilities and so on. Basically, the post-Inferno Avengers were all these very serious people, and someone like Gil needed a few more lighthearted folks to bounce off of.

On a larger team of, say, 12 Avengers or even a smaller team where there were more diverse personalities, Gil would have worked fine. I once described Gilgamesh as "if the Belmonts had a baby with Hercules". His whole schtick should be seeing some monster, being able to identify it, tell his friends its weaknesses, and either take it down himself or give them the tools on how to beat it. The challenges of the modern day could even have him start to develop his other abilities, or reveal that he's got some unique applications of said abilities that make him a more effective monster hunter. Fighting something that's vulnerable to silver? He temporarily transmutes the air around his hands to coat them in silver so that he can kill the thing with his semi-bare hands. He also had developed a "blindsight" radar power to compensate for his temporary blindness, and remembering that he has that in addition to some monster sensing power could be fun.

I mean, that's the tragedy of the Eternals: their abilities give them almost endless opportunity for unique powers, skills and characters, especially since how they develop those powers actually tells you something about the characters themselves. But no, Gaiman did them dirty by making them bio-robots with programmed abilities, and then the movie . . . well, the less said the better.

Gil also needed a better outfit, possibly a remake of that Kirby-esque design he had when he fought Thor. Or something other than the bull helmet or the extra bland skirt and boots.
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

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I think if I were to have Gilgamesh as part of my ideal Avengers team (ten or twenty years ago, when I last really paid attention to comics), it would probably be lead by Captain Marvel (Monica), and include USAgent, Quicksilver, Moondragon (with the joke being that those three actually end up liking each other), the second Spider Woman, Songbird, Tigra, Beast, the second Yellow Jacket, Reptile, and Dr. Druid. Because I am just really weird.
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

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Ares wrote: Wed Nov 10, 2021 2:53 am They went with a variation of this in Gladiator's backstory. The idea is that his people have the "Gladiator process" that they can undergo, which takes them from a race of medium-level flying bricks to Superman-class powerhouses. He was part of a group selected to be the first representatives of their people (the Strontians) in the Shi'Ar, but apparently their species as a whole was decimated (potentially be a Shi'Ar leader who felt threatened by the potential of the Strontians) so that there's only a handful of them left in the universe.

I'd go with the idea that the Strontians are a kind of "pseudo-Eternal", one whose people are on the cusp of achieving Eternal status, and who have figured out a way to artificially accelerate the process to make them full Eternals, resulting in people like Gladiator. However, the process is flawed in that it requires constant psychic reinforcement in a way most Eternals don't require (hence the 'I lose my confidence, I get weaker' aspect) and it makes them vulnerable to a unique form of energy.
I like the idea of making the Imperial Guard as different as possible as the Legionnaires they are inspired by.

So instead of Gladiator coming from a race of Kryptonian-powered Strontians, I fanwanked that he was the engineered champion of the planet, whose population were small skinny grey aliens with mild telekinetic powers, who had bred a small caste of big musclebound people to settle conflicts between themselves years ago. The tribes in conflict would put their biggest brute out front, and all sit down to meditate, projecting all of their telekinetic strength to him, making him superhumanly strong and tough. Generally, the tribe who had the most and best psychics would win, but the ability of the 'brute' to channel all that psionically-lent strength would matter as well. Thousands of years later, they are part of the Shiar imperium, and Gladiator is the product of centuries of genetic engineering, and has low-class superhuman strength and toughness himself, but also benefits from *thousands* of Strontians back home spending 6 hour shifts meditating and loaning him vast levels of telekinetic enhancement to his strength and toughness (and ability to fly, and pyrokinetic heat beams).

And so there wouldn't be an entire race of Superman-level Strontians, since it's a major effort of Strontians all over their world maintaining Gladiator's ridiculous power levels. (And why his power can sometimes be shut down, by disrupting his confidence and his psionic link with the thousands of Strontians sustaining his power level.)
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

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in the face of the dark crisis, the CBR community has had a string of threads like this. the continuity cops/everything happened spotlights some people with my reading habits which was weird to see.
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

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csyphrett wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 7:43 pm in the face of the dark crisis, the CBR community has had a string of threads like this. the continuity cops/everything happened spotlights some people with my reading habits which was weird to see.
CES
DC fans are all "Crisis"ed out by this point. Crisis used to be synonymous with THE mega event in comics. Then Infinite Crisis happened and, while the build up was impressive, the payoff was both lackluster and disrespectful to the original Crisis event. Then Final Crisis came and had nothing to do with Crisis save that Barry was brought back. Then we got Flashpoint, Doomsday Clock, the Dark Multiverse, and now the Dark Crisis.

DC has completely stripped big events in general, Crisis in particular, of their meaning and significance. It just happens too often, things are too convoluted and there's no real cohesion.

No one believes for a second the Justice League are really dead, no one cares about Jon Kent as Superman or his replacement League, and the Dark Multiverse as a concept is just an infinite bundle of stupid.

People just don't care, and their waiting for some sign of a return to sanity before they even think about caring again.
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

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When everything has happened, nothing has to paraphrase my old pal, Buddy Pine
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

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Ares wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 8:47 pm People just don't care, and their waiting for some sign of a return to sanity before they even think about caring again.
Eleven years and counting. Some of us doubt that the return to sanity will ever happen.
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

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I think both companies have totally Evented themselves to death at this point.

Meanwhile, a very petty part of myself would, if made head of Marvel Comics, probably be a total dick and announce that the people who did that Miles Moralis as Thor comic are now going to be doing every single Miles Moralis story for the next decade. Including the next major event Crisis of Infinate Miles Moralises. And its follow up, World War of the Secret Realm of Miles Moralis.

I feel that the breakout characters from this will be The Amazing Milespool and MileS Marvel.
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

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Looking at some of the older Charlton Comics characters, I think if I had the option, I'd have a crossover between the Charlton Comics characters and the Watchmen, and just have the Charlton heroes destroy the Watchmen heroes on every level. Physically, morally, etc. With the exception of Nite Owl II, whom Ted actually talks to, and Silk Spectre II, who stands down when Ted just want to talk with Dan.

Especially old silver arms Captain Atom vs Dr. Manhattan. Dr. Manhattan would be doing his spiel, and then the Captain just starts kicking his ass. The captions would talk about how, looking purely at his feats in the original series, Dr. Manhattan is only a godlike entity in the world of Watchmen. His most godlike attribute is his disconnection from modern time, which is as much a hindrance as it is a help. People treat him like he's some sort of reality warper in the vein of Proteus or the Phoenix and there's nothing to justify it. The idea that he could be responsible for the Nu-52 as per Doomsday Clock is just silly.

So Captain Atom just straight up kicks Manhattan's butt in a fair fight, dismantles everything about him, maybe even drains enough of Manhattan's energy to de-power him or at least re-connect him to linear time.

As for Ozymandias, it wouldn't be Judomaster or Peter Cannon that take him down, but Ted Kord. Cannon might be Ozy's source hero, but Ted more appropriately opposes Adrian on a moral level, and seeing Ted wipe the smug off of Adrian's face would be lovely to see.

Rorschach wouldn't be spared either. However principled his stance against Ozy might have been, his inflexibility, obsession and brutality make him bad in other ways.

And as an extra middle finger, I'd have the Comedian quote a few lines from the Peacemaker TV show and showcase how the TV Peacemaker has WAY more in common with the Comedian than the comics Peacemaker, who again, kicks the Comedian's ass and tears down that portrayal.
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

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I always thought that it was an odd choice that Peacemaker was made a schizophrenic when DC added him to Checkmate. Why would you make this guy a loon, and take away his ability to build weapons to counter problems? The only thing he used to show he had a bigger arsenal was his jet pack.
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

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The situation is a bit more complicated (and yet oddly simpler) than that. Peacemaker was reintroduced to the post-Crisis DCU in 1987 in the Vigilante series, written by Paul Kupperberg, where he was portrayed as a violent maniac barely in control of himself, in sharp contrast to most of his Charlton portrayals. He's basically used to get rid of the temporary replacement Vigilante so that Adrian Chase reclaims the role and destroys his mundane life for good, while also making a few antagonistic appearances later in the series.

Then, in 1988, he got a mini-series, also by Paul Kupperberg, that completely retcons his origins and backstory, revealing that his father was a Nazi war criminal who had committed suicide in front of him. (I suspect that this might be a partial reference to Arnold Schwarzenegger's family history.) This was also the series that suggested that he was schizophrenic, though it's not really clear whether the author intends for him to be understood that way or whether he is legitimately being haunted by his father's ghost. Then, once again, Paul Kupperberg brought the character into Checkmate.

It basically comes down to "this is what Paul Kupperberg wanted to write, and he had enough pull to get it published".
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

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So the same situation as Green Arrow and Green Lantern being twenty years older than their peers until they both died
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

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It's a shame that Peacemaker of all people had all of that weirdness slapped on him. The Charlton guys really got the short end of the stick in DC, with Captain Atom being the one who got the biggest push . . . only for the plan to be to turn him evil, and after that got derailed they floundered with what to do to him. When they started making HIM more like Dr. Manhattan, something had gone wrong.

JLI turned Blue Beetle into a joke from which he would only briefly recover from for short instances, Peacemaker was made into some deranged psychopath with Nazi's in his background, Nightshade got completely reinvented over and over, Son of Vulcan was killed off during War of the Gods, DC didn't do it's work to maintain the rights to Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt, the Question saw some brief success but was then pushed to the side and killed off, Judomaster was replaced, brought back, crippled and replaced again, etc.

With Peacemaker, it's an incredible shame he got used in that way because his Charlton presentation was that of the son of a diplomat that loved peace so much he would FIGHT for it, NOT kill for it. He specifically used non-lethal weapons because he was determined to cause the least amount of lasting harm as possible. It was kind of a nice nod to the kind of morality the Lone Ranger had, where he specifically used silver bullets as a calling card and to remind himself that, "All life, like silver, is precious", and thus why the Ranger never killed unless necessary.

Peacemaker was basically the embodiment of that speech Storm Shadow gave to Billy over in the pages of G.I.Joe:

Storm Shadow: "Punishment and revenge simply continue the cycle of of ignorance and violence that created the problem in the first place. We, of all people, must abhor violence in all it's forms..."

Billy: "How can you say that? We're martial artists and warriors!"

Storm Shadow: "The only logical and rational purpose for mastering a martial art is to become non-violent. If we deny that violence is inherent to the universe, we surrender to it... we must instead strive to master it, and put it aside. We take no joy in it. We must love the goal, not the means. Doesn't the warrior face the same paradox? Does the Doctor love the disease? Does the pious man love the sin? Nobody hates war as much as the warrior, for he has seen the ugly face of it. But in the end... he fights."

Billy: "Then no matter what we do, we're wrong?"

Storm Shadow: "Absolutely. We are always in the wrong. Politicians and lawyers spend all their time apportioning out the blame, being careful to avoid any themselves... We are guilty. We are guilty in believing in something as obsolete, forgotten and despised as... honor."


So seeing him turned into a "douchey Captain America" while Vigilante goes form a cautionary tale of taking vigilantism too far into some Deadpool knock off is . . . well, it's a very James Gunn thing to do. Don't even get me started on what they did to poor Judomaster. I don't deny that his presentation of the Guardians of the Galaxy can be entertaining, but he basically just takes the name and some surface level qualities and makes up completely new characters.

It's arguably the opposite of what you're supposed to do with adaptation, which is to scratch away the surface stuff and find out what the core elements of the character are, and then adapt those to the best of your ability. If "name, surface concept and nothing else" was the route he was going for, he should have found characters that fit more what he wanted to tell.
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Re: The most petty thing you'd do as a comics creator

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I too thought the idea of Peacemaker as a diplomat, using only non-lethal weaponry, is a really neat little idea, even if the Charlton execution was pedestrian to sub-par (Charlton was really NOT where top-talent wanted to be, except for Ditko, who was willing to forego money and exposure for his art). The DC take on the character was absolute comics Dark Age junk, with Peacemaker's death being a mercy killing. Vigilante? Yeah, honestly not much at all more than DC envying the Punisher's success. So, I'll at least give the HBO series cred for improving on what DC did with the characters, and making them entertaining. But yeah, the Charlton guys really mostly got shafted-Captain Atom, Question, and Nightshade (in Suicide Squad) all had a few years success (though each was pretty significantly changed from their original versions), then went into comics limbo. Poor Ted can't seem to catch a break since the JLI days. The others may as well not even have appeared in the DCU.

As far as the GOTG...well, I've liked the first two films a lot, and I can't say James Gunn changed them any more than the MCU did Iron Man, Falcon, Hawkeye, Hank Pym (for the better!), Zemo, etc. I just accept this are alternate universe versions.

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

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greycrusader wrote: Wed Jul 27, 2022 3:38 am I too thought the idea of Peacemaker as a diplomat, using only non-lethal weaponry, is a really neat little idea, even if the Charlton execution was pedestrian to sub-par (Charlton was really NOT where top-talent wanted to be, except for Ditko, who was willing to forego money and exposure for his art). The DC take on the character was absolute comics Dark Age junk, with Peacemaker's death being a mercy killing. Vigilante? Yeah, honestly not much at all more than DC envying the Punisher's success. So, I'll at least give the HBO series cred for improving on what DC did with the characters, and making them entertaining. But yeah, the Charlton guys really mostly got shafted-Captain Atom, Question, and Nightshade (in Suicide Squad) all had a few years success (though each was pretty significantly changed from their original versions), then went into comics limbo. Poor Ted can't seem to catch a break since the JLI days. The others may as well not even have appeared in the DCU.

As far as the GOTG...well, I've liked the first two films a lot, and I can't say James Gunn changed them any more than the MCU did Iron Man, Falcon, Hawkeye, Hank Pym (for the better!), Zemo, etc. I just accept this are alternate universe versions.

All my best.
I feel like the Charlton heroes got the same kind of Post-Crisis "stepchild" treatment the Marvel Family and similarly 'acquired' characters received. They could be used, but to some creators and editorial they were seen as lesser and more expendable, and for some reason were subject to a lot of mockery or deconstruction.

And I wouldn't have as big an issue if the success of the movies didn't mean that those portrayals are now the more well known ones, and can influence the source material in negative ways.
"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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