Ok, so I’m gonna go on a little rant on here.
I’m a marvel comics fan, my favorite comics were the young avengers comics and absolutely loved the dynamics between the characters. I particularly loved Tommy Shepherd, also known as Speed. Out of the entire lineup of Young Avengers, I somehow saw a piece of myself within his character. But his treatment in Marvel Comics definitely leaves something to be desired. Especially with the whole thinkfast breakup which is is my last straw.
First of all, the writers reasoning for breaking breaking Tommy and David up is ABSOLUTE HORSESHIT! Tommy has no connections to the x-men, no connections to Krakoa, ITS NOT EVEN CONFIRMED IF HE AND BILLY ARE MUTANTS OR NOT! (Which is a whole other ballgame I don’t wanna get into) Their reasoning is flimsy at best and bullshit at worst because of this, and it gets even worse when you introduce a new love interest so soon after they break up OFF PANEL with a seemingly insulting dig at Tommy within the comic.
Second of all, I’m worried how this will affect Tommy’s appearances in comics. The last time we saw him was the scarlet witch and quicksilver miniseries. He barely, if ever gets any appearances anymore and the ones he does show up in, he was with David (Which is probably why the writer thought Tommy was an X-men connection). Tommy is frequently left out of major story arcs and team-ups, leading to me feeling that he is somehow forgotten by the writers and creators at Marvel. While Tommy has been a part of the Young Avengers, he is often overshadowed by other more prominent characters like Kate Bishop, America Chavez, Cassie Lang who’s with Antman, Noh-Varr whos with the guardians of the galaxy, his mother, his uncle, even his own twin brother! He’s often underutilized as well and when he is there, he’s just the goofier version of quicksilver.
Third, we barely get any sense of actual character from him and in moments we do it’s just immediately dropped. First example: scarlet witch and quicksilver #3, where he actively mentioned Davids supposed death (cuz he definitely didn’t know that David was actually alive? I’m kinda confused about this?) and he seemed to be kinda disassociated from with stating he wasn’t there until Pietro snapped him out of it. This isn’t the first time someone has died and Tommy wasn’t there. He finds his mom’s dead body before Trial of Magneto and later in issue 1, seems disassociated when talking with Kevin. In the infinity comics, he states that people always forget about him. I see that he probably often finds himself overlooked and underutilized within the vast universe of superheroes.
Just to headcanon with fact: It’s somewhat implied he may have been neglected. I mean we barely know anything about his life before except that his parents were divorced and he was in and out of juvie until he was a teenager. Considering that they didn’t give a shit about him, leaving their child alone to the court system, and then not contacting him. (Though I doubt he would want that.) He so desperately wants a family, and he sees that in the young avengers, in the magnet family (even if they’re a little fucked up, they’re infinitely better). The team breaks him out, and a kid who looks exactly like him says they’re brothers and this powerful witch is their mother. He doesn’t want to believe it. He can’t believe it because that means he has another family that actually cares about him. Then they find out about everything Wanda went through and he takes in the connection even further. The team goes on a few missions and find out they could save his mom, and then they go through trauma via teammates dying and and the avengers/x-men fighting over his spirit mom. The team decides to breakup, he doesn’t want this to happen, the only thing he has being taken from him, he doesn’t want this to end. But it does, and it hurts, especially because his brother is willing to let go of it so easily. And it’s even harder because he’s living with him, his boyfriend, and other family who’s too nice and so he leaves and no one apparently cares. He goes on with heroics alone, working jobs, meets David and recruits him for a stakeout, then gets kidnapped by an entity. He then comes back almost a year later and has to take it in stride. He goes through so much traumatic and sad shit and either no one cares or they’re too busy. He doesn’t have much support. David seemed to be the only support he had and they’re broken up now. Wanda has her own shit, Pietro has his own shit, Billy has his own shit. HIS OTHER TEAMMATES HAVE THEIR OWN SHIT!
I’d imagine he’d have some type of resentment towards everyone, especially Billy. He has the perfect husband, perfect family, has a great relationship with their spiritual mother, and has unimaginable power. In the infinity comics master pandemonium seemingly implied Tommy has some kind of powerful potential, but we haven’t seen that yet. They haven’t even made any foreshadowing towards that. But I’d imagine after the whole break up with David, he’d have a mental breakdown from all the shit he went through. His boyfriend dying twice while he wasn’t there, after the second time David breaks up with him then gets a new boyfriend almost immediately (I don’t know the timeframe, I’m sorry), I’d crack too.
Considering all of this I introduce the following options:
1.) Put him in a new team. Have him be apart of a new team of youngish heroes, or better yet make him a mentor. He’s great with kids. I can’t think of any actual teams he could be on, but just let him be a part of a team. Please?!
2.) Have him interact with more characters. Have him interact with his family more. Wanda, Pietro, Lorna, Billy, fucking Magneto and Luna, give him more interactions with them. Have him mention talking to Kate Bishop. OR ELI BRADLEY ANOTHER CHARCTER YOU’VE SEEMINGLY FORGOT MARVEL!
3.) Give him his own miniseries. Or a fucking arc. I wanna see my baby do something cool, not play second fiddle to Billy for once. Billy gets several different comics to appear in and has so much power. Give Tommy a power upgrade like in the fanfics. Develop his powers more, like those headcanons where he could manipulate time and space. If the writers on ao3 can do that, you can do it too. Or better yet, have him be an antihero, that would absolutely fit him better. Didn’t he literally kill people when he first appeared? Have him be a bit more violent when dealing with bad guys. Not completely sociopathic, just a bit chaotic.
Anyway, please stop sleeping on Tommy Shepherd Marvel, he has so much more potential, you don’t even know.
Thank you for listening to my Ted-Talk!
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