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Adam Schulman
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Joined: 22 July 2017
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| Posted: 24 July 2017 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | 1
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Thor was mainly more interesting than Don Blake because once we found out that Don Blake wasn't "real" (what year was that?) there was no reason to develop his character.
(Although potentially there could have been a reason if Marvel writers had been interested in going down that road to a pretty frightening story -- Blake discovers all his memories are false, his personality isn't the "real" personality, and he can't deal with it and he demands that the Norse gods allow him to be as "real" as Thor, and...things go from there.)
I agree with Dave that Barbara Gordon was more interesting as Oracle than as Batgirl. I just never quite understood why, in a world of super-science and magic, she didn't try to get her spine (?) healed before the New 52 reboot. Granted, I never read BIRDS OF PREY regularly, and yes, you could say the same about Professor X, except that sometimes he was in fact walking again, and then not, and then...
But anyway, Barbara could've remained Oracle, a behind-the-scenes character, even if she was no longer paralyzed. I would've liked that better than her becoming Batgirl again, to be honest.
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Eric Jansen
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Joined: 27 October 2013
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| Posted: 24 July 2017 at 11:15pm | IP Logged | 2
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I wouldn't include Daredevil, Thor, or even the Invisible Girl in this list. Miller, Simonson, and Byrne simply knew how to handle these characters properly, while most other people didn't. The ones that came strongest to mind are ones that were really reinvented--characters I would have liked whether they had any history or were totally brand new.
GREEN ARROW--O'Neil & Adams' bearded liberal with a real heart. (Sadly, we haven't seen this character in a story for decades! He might as well be dead.)THE HULK--He started as a three-toed, grey, flying misanthrope and somehow evolved (devolved?) into a dumb, green, misunderstood monster with a heart of gold. (And then Peter David brought back the grey misanthrope and made him canon. sigh.)
IRON MAN--While the earlier Iron Man was okay, Tony Stark and his private life were dull and uninteresting, making the whole thing second-rate. When David Michelinie, John Romita Jr., and Bob Layton took over, they made Tony Stark interesting and IRON MAN became one of my favorite comics. (And it's their version more than anyone else's that became the billion-dollar linchpin of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.) PHOENIX--Jean Grey was pretty and Marvel Girl was...not that great. Then, she became Phoenix and became amazing. Instead of being killed, she should have (could have) been given her own comic and become Marvel's own Wonder Woman. (But every version of her that came in the years after paled in comparison.)
HELLCAT and TIGRA--"Archie" copy and Romance Comic survivor Patsy Walker had certainly run her course. Greer Garson/the Cat was a failed super-heroine with a good design (but, still, something was off). Someone (Steve Englehart, I assume, for part of it at least) had the great idea to give Patsy the Cat's costume and then Greer became Tigra. One lousy character became two great characters! Patsy's red hair looked perfect with the Cat's blue and yellow costume, and her personality was great. Hellcat could have been the new, female Spider-Man; Tigra is just iconic and her best days could still be ahead of her.
Sadly, I'm reminded of what JB said (I'm paraphrasing) about Shooter "fixing" Marvel (which was good) but then he "KEPT fixing" it (which was bad). All these characters I list were fairly bland when they started, then they were "fixed" (new costume, new personality, even new name) and became iconic favorites...and then later creative teams "kept fixing" them, making them unattractive or unworkable.
Edited by Eric Jansen on 24 July 2017 at 11:20pm
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Adam Schulman
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Joined: 22 July 2017
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| Posted: 24 July 2017 at 11:43pm | IP Logged | 3
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Eric -- the Green Arrow you love is the one currently appearing in GREEN ARROW. And I'm enjoying it very much.
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Eric Sofer
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 31 January 2014
Location: United States
Posts: 4789
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| Posted: 25 July 2017 at 3:44am | IP Logged | 4
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Part of this discussion that amuses the hell out of me is perspective. I grew up with a LOT of these characters. Some folks didn't and see different changes than I do... and different descriptions of earlier presentations of the characters..
Not bad, not good, certainly neither right nor wrong - just entertaining from seeing them through others' eyes.
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Dave Phelps
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Joined: 16 April 2004
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Posts: 4178
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| Posted: 25 July 2017 at 4:55am | IP Logged | 5
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Anthony J Lombardi wrote:
| Different from what they were when they were originally created. Whatever that change may have been or how that change came about is of no consequence I think. |
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Fair enough. Just trying to differentiate between changes in character vice changes in context. That said, Alan and Jay are actually poor examples because the Alan and Jay of All-American and Flash Comics are pretty different that the Alan and Jay of JSA, so oops. :-)
Adam Schulman wrote:
| I just never quite understood why, in a world of super-science and magic, she didn't try to get her spine (?) healed before the New 52 reboot |
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Didn't really suit the premise of the character. The whole point was here's a person who trained to do one thing and can't do it anymore, so she has to do something else that made her even more effective, albeit in a different way.
It's a similar situation to characters like the Thing and the Hulk. There's no logical reason why they can't be cured, but if you do it takes away from the character so you don't.
Eric Sofer wrote:
| Some folks didn't and see different changes than I do... and different descriptions of earlier presentations of the characters.. |
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That's a quibble I have with Anthony's original premise:
QUOTE:
| We often speak of liking characters the more the way they were when first created. |
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I see it more as a tendency to prefer characters as they were when we were first introduced to them (or at least first started liking them). For example, I wonder how many of the people who think of goateed Oliver Queen as a "good change" picked Brave and the Bold #85 and Justice League #75 off the rack after following his strips in Adventure Comics vice those of us who were introduced to him that way and came to know the bare-chinned version later.
Or Peter Parker - JB "met" Peter in the early days and says he never should have graduated high school. Several folks here started reading in the 70s and are good with him being in college but didn't want it to go any farther. A year after I started reading Amazing Spider-Man he quit school and a few years after that he got married; neither of which I had much of a problem with. So it goes.
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Wallace Sellars
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Joined: 01 May 2004
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Posts: 17671
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| Posted: 25 July 2017 at 6:28am | IP Logged | 6
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It's a similar situation to characters like the Thing and the Hulk. There's no
logical reason why they can't be cured, but if you do it takes away from the
character so you don't.
—
JB's explanation of why Ben can't be "cured" works really well. (At least I
think it was JB's explanation.)
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Philippe Negrin
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Joined: 01 August 2007
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| Posted: 25 July 2017 at 6:41am | IP Logged | 7
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ahem...Wolverine ? I mean, based solely on his first appearance, who would have thought he would became what he became ( and I'm stopping at mid/late 80s)
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Leigh DJ Hunt
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Joined: 20 February 2008
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| Posted: 25 July 2017 at 10:05am | IP Logged | 8
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Also, it's funny that Franklin is much younger than 14 NOW in comics than he was when JB took over the title. I'd put his age around 10 maybe? ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------- Which reminds me - I'm currently reading the Hickman run on FF and there we have (among many many other things) the young Franklin and Valeria alongside elder versions of Franklin and Valeria alongside Reed's dad and Kristoff etc etc.
Nathaniel Richards - is a character that I loved in the story where JB used him but he's become a real crutch ever since and just seems to 'diminish' Reed.
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Anthony J Lombardi
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Joined: 12 January 2005
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| Posted: 25 July 2017 at 10:38am | IP Logged | 9
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ahem...Wolverine ? I mean, based solely on his first appearance, who would have thought he would became what he became ( and I'm stopping at mid/late 80s) ``````````````````````````````````````` I liked him more in the beginning. As much as I have a fondness for what what Cockrum and JB did on the X-men with the character. That lead to the downfall of my opinion of the character. Let me be clear here It wasn't JB and Cockrum who are to blame. It's the writer and artists who followed them. Who went overboard and destroyed the character for me.
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Stéphane Garrelie
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Joined: 05 August 2005
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| Posted: 25 July 2017 at 11:12am | IP Logged | 10
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Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell) Jim Starlin or Doug Moench/Pat Broderick version.Jean Grey as Phoenix in her Claremont/Byrne days. More human than ever before, or after.
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Michael Penn
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| Posted: 25 July 2017 at 11:57am | IP Logged | 11
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QUOTE:
| JB's explanation of why Ben can't be "cured" works really well. (At least I think it was JB's explanation.) |
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Wallace, for me so much of what I have treasured right from the start of JB's FF run is a product of how he directly built upon in excellent ways elements that were already in a related excellent form in Lee-Kirby, e.g.:
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Eric Sofer
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| Posted: 26 July 2017 at 3:43am | IP Logged | 12
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As for Barbara Gordon... she is unable to walk due to damage to her spine. In a JLA arc - I think it was World War III - Grant Morrison set it up so that everyone on Earth got Supermanic powers to defend themselves and Earth...
...at which point, the damage to Barbara should have instantly healed permanently. (She did stand up and fly in the book... but then, it was back to status quo.) Similarly, anyone on Earth with any disease should have been instantly and permanently cured. Damage should have healed - a missing limb wouldn't grow back, but nerve damage could have healed up fast.
It was a grand and tremendous gesture... but such occurrences have consequences. Trauma due to Galactus' appearance is one thing... getting Kryptonian type super powers.
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