The Scorpion

Liam | 28 | He / Him I mainly post about comics, but also just about anything else that I'm into.

[macgargan]

✋ How does commissioning fan art work? Asking for a friend. Like, how do you find artists? What sort of prompts are generally expected? Most of my specific interests are fairly niche, so it's not as simple as "well, follow the artists in the tags" because there's rarely any for my blorbos. 😭

[macgargan]

Well, I saw the news. Not sure how to feel about it. I'll reserve judgement, I guess.

[macgargan]

Hood's plot in Ironheart is so boring. I'm in shambles.

[macgargan]

The first three episodes of Ironheart are really good! I feel like the last three will be what really makes or breaks the show. I'm not sure how I felt about Episode 3 overall, but I do like the characters. It's super charming.

Now for the spoilers: I'm really trying to be optimistic about the characterization in the show. The gay little gang Parker built for himself is so in character. Killing people who leave the crew and guards is not. It's so central to his character how much he doesn't want to kill people that it feels really weird to have him do it so carelessly.

I want to believe that it's going to be explained later as an out of character action, but John said he likes to be there when people are "let go", so... Mostly wishful thinking, ngl.

Also, not really sure about Riri leaving someone to fucking die. So... Y'know. We'll see how that plot thread pans out, I guess. I love her so much though. I really hope it pays off, otherwise it's going to suck so much. I was really vibing with the first two episodes.

[macgargan]

Another day, another thinking about how little people actually know about Mac Gargan and all the misconceptions there are about him.

[macgargan]

Me, wandering down the halls, shouting and waving around a TPB: Sentry (2000) set up an interesting character dynamic and Marvel wasted it.

[macgargan]

Unfortunately, with the new popularity of Sentry I am thinking about Billy again. I am and always will be so distraught over the treatment he got in Sentry (2018). Having him turn on Bob and having Bob brutally kill him was so fucking weird.

There was such a cool story there. You've got this guy, right? He's physically disabled, and suffers nightmares he can't explain or can't quite remember. Something in his life feels like it's missing. Huge stretches of time. Except it doesn't actually. It's more like an itch that he can't quite scratch or a picture that doesn't quite come into focus. A vague something. Because people didn't just forget Sentry and the Void. They stopped being able to perceive anything related to them.

And you have Billy. Not only Bob's sidekick, but also someone who lost his arm to the Void. So much of his life was touched by the both of them, and comics don't even acknowledge it, because he was just a side character and most of Sentry's story was kind of cobbled together.

But like... Billy was forced to forget not once, but twice and then Sentry came back for good, but this is Dark Reign era and everything is absolutely fucked. What do you even do in that situation? How do you cope? He's been gone for so long that he has no connection to the hero world anymore, and nobody would think to check up on Sentry's old sidekick.

It's just such a deep untouched well to tell an interesting story about trauma and the isolation that sort of thing can cause. But, no. Lets have him steal Bob's blood to get Sentry powers again, and then have Bob beat him to shit with Invincible levels of gore, because Bob doesn't care about anyone anymore and is sad and pathetic.

[tinymintywolf]

saw thunderbolts a second time this weekend 😀

[columboscreens]

[macgargan]

I've been back for like 5 minutes...

[macgargan]

I think my favorite change to the Sentry in Thunderbolts is making the Void a non-lethal force. Obviously, if people aren't un-voided like the scientists in the lab, he can be lethal, but generally speaking his powers aren't. His powers aren't even inherently "evil". Being able to show someone their traumas like that could be incredible in a therapeutic setting.

In the comics, it made more sense narratively for Void to be the way he was. A force Bob didn't know about "balancing the scales", but comics Bob has always felt like a mix of ideas that kept getting stacked one on top of the other. His introduction was a cool concept, but once they got past the gimmick they didn't know what to do with him, so they kept throwing things at him. He became spaghetti code, basically.

Lost my train of thought, but yeah. It definitely feels like an updated version of the character. When shifting to more concretely focus on the mental health aspects of the character, they could have continued the trend of making mental illness "scary" or inherently bad, but they didn't and I really love that.

[macgargan]

I miss my wife (Mac Gargan), Tails. Anyway, you can find me on BSKY.

[macgargan]

If this is tumblr's layout moving forward, I am almost certainly quitting the site. I don't understand how @staff can say that the site is too confusing for users and then?? completely reverse the layout they've been using for years. I don't see what the purpose of this is other than to alienate users who have been on the site for years.

Can I get used to this layout? Yeah, probably. Do I want to stay on and support a site that is clearly going through an identity crisis without care or consideration for it's users or what made it unique in the first place? No.

I'm also @macgargan over on cohost, and I'm probably going to explore migrating over there. I would rather learn to use a new website than stay on a site that could radically change over night with no rhyme or reason.

[macgargan]

Having re-read Spider-Man 2099... I gotta say I hate Father Jennifer AND Gabe as the Goblin. I can see the textual clues that pointed to Jen being the Goblin, but... it doesn't make sense.

Aesthetically, the Goblin borrows very heavily from Gabriel's aesthetic. Not only because the bumps on it's head mimic the glasses he's always wearing, but because the trail of light left behind him when he flies, and fire feel like homages to the Firelight persona. We also don't get a good explanation of where she could have gotten the suit from, or why a devout priest chose a demon as her anti-hero persona.

Gabe having a character arc of becoming so fed up with Miguel and Spider-man that he tries to take on a hero persona of his own makes more sense. The aesthetic fits him, and he has enough technical know how displayed to explain how he could make the suit himself. But all of Goblin's lines prior to David's departure were written for Jen, and it shows if you pick it apart.

Also like??? What was up with Gabe thinking he was dreaming about the future end of the world?? Spider-Man 2099 is just honestly a pretty poorly written book all around, in my opinion and it's pretty unfortunate.

[macgargan]

Blissfully forgot how racist the Spider-Man 2099 comics are.

[macgargan]

This is genuinely all I ever wanted out of comics after seeing Mac and Miles interact in Absolute Carnage. I'm feasting.

[ewzzy]