#farley fleeter

[ben-miller-art]

Blue Beetle Villains - Madmen

Lead by Farley Fleeter First Appearance: Blue Beetle #3 (1967)

Being that these guys are Blue Beetle's oldest villains, it's interesting they haven't found a very strong footing in comics. Writer's that feel inclined to include them kinda toss them around, use them as pawns, or change up their MO completely, but nothing ever really sticks. They are essentially a blank slate, not usually having any powers and basically just being a goofy street gang. Now I normally hate trying to reinvent characters to be "trendy" or "appeal to the youth," but I think these guys are one of the few characters that are naturally built for it. I'd lean into them being a sort of malicious tiktok "hype house" type crew. They've been presented as attention seeking, stunt pulling criminals, sometimes looking to build their ranks, so doing this through social media would be a highly effective plan. They can post videos of vandalism, stunt, pranks and soft crimes online to garner an audience and recruit members. Slowly they build a following and pull off more dangerous and criminal acts. Plus the have an iconic look that can be branded and mimicked by their followers. All this PLUS the added footnote that Blue Beetle is a legacy character who is now (usually) a much younger teenager in Jaime Reyes, adapts them into his world.

[thenixkat]

Do gotta say that I'm not happy with the uses of Ted's rogues, the Madmen outside of his comics. Like writers refuse to let them just be normal dudes with a gimmick who's entire thing is that they're just a hired distraction.

They wear grease paint and bright clothes and do wacky annoying acrobatic shit to keep attention on them while the people who hired them can commit crimes in peace. They aren't comicbook land 'crazy' people or anything like the Joker or the Creeper.

They're literally just some guys doing shit for a paycheck. They don't have powers either, they don't need them because their thing is jumping people. They're literally just street-level thugs that jump people and are distracting on purpose.

And like in their normal stomping grounds, the only superheroes they really encounter are two largely solitary nonpowered guys. They don't need anything else.

Nightwing 2002 decided that Fleeter has mind control powers and that the Madmen follow him b/c he makes them. Which is just a shitty interpretation. B/c clearly no one would join a gang unless they were being forced to. And it totally doesn't make our heroes look like terrible people having them beat up people being blatantly mind controlled and begging for help.

And also I have to assume they gave Fleeter the mind control powers to 'justify' him being held at The Slab (a prison that is blatantly a crime against humanity that keeps people convicted of crimes in suspended animation for their whole sentence as far as I was able to gather) so he could be Jokerized. To have the story in the first place. B/c clearly there's no other reason to have some of Ted's villains show up elsewhere. It's not like anyone could have done something with folks mistaking The Madmen for Jokerized fuckers when they were literally just doing their normal thing.

And then we get the DCAU, Justice League cartoon tie-in comics where the Madmen show up renamed to the Madniks. Which I will say that the Madniks is a cuter name than the Madmen. But they've been turned into 'crazy' people wereclowns ala the DCAU version of the Creeper in practice instead of just being some dudes.

And even more disrespectfully, the comic insists that Ted, who'd been handling them for years, doesn't know how to track them down and can't handle them. Which is why Batman has to team up with the Creeper to stop the Madniks. Heavens forbid Ted be allowed to do shit in a team book and there's other heroes available.

[snapiphany]

Nightwing, Vol. 2, #63

[thenixkat]

Thinking about how when the Hub city was under the dome and the government turned to tyranny how the Madmen became freedom fighters

And how they criticized another villain for just being on some fuck shit when he did just did some evil shit for the sake of doing evil

And how Fleeter and his gang just straight up retired rather than fight superheroes

And about how if a writer really wanted to lean in on some of the stuff from the 86 blue Beetle run... Fleeter and the Madmen could end up having the most complicated frenemy situation with Blue Beetle 2.

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[thenixkat]

Damn, not only did Ted get done dirty by DC but his cast also got fucked over to hell and back. The vast majority of them are largely just forgotten about other than like Ted's shitty dad who occasionally gets a mention. I'm pretty sure the Madmen and Carapax are the most recurring ones and you can see how much fuckers did no research in handling them.

(I'm leaving the Blue Beetle movie Carapax out of this since... that is whole ass an entirely different dude just using the same name Carapx and borrowing some of the the design elements of the other Carapax.)

......

But like the whole Fleeter has mind control powers thing? I'm 99% certain that someone misinterpreted some shit in Extreme Justice where he was present. But fuckers just kind of ran with it and like? If Fleeter could mind control people, why the fuck wouldn't he use his mind control on Blue Beetle? Ted is not immune to mind control.

But also at their core the Madmen are a group of professional distractions. Bad guys pay them to distract the cops and superheroes while they do their evil scheme, that's their thing. It's not that fucking hard to get right.

But apparently it's too fucking hard for DC. No we got writers deciding to run with the Fleeter has mind control misinterpretation and make the Madmen Fleeter and a bunch of randos he's mind controlling which undermines the whole premise of the Madmen. Plus a bunch of mind controlled randos would not have the same type of athleticism and this the same threat as a bunch of fuckers who are intentionally a professional distraction. Frankly it's fucking nerfing the Madmen and that's disrespectful as fuck to Ted too.

Just making the individual members weaker and giving the group one singular guy you really need to take out to beat them just cause fuckers refuse to actually look shit up is infuriating.

And that interpretation of them as Joker-like 'loonies' in the DCAU tie in comics is about as fucking bad. They are not mad people, they are acting b/c they are *paid* to distract people.

(yes, in their first showing in Charlton Comics they opportunistically robbed people but was clearly them transitioning from originally being a gang of bank robbers to something else)

......

And then Carapax's return in DC comics, in one of Jaime's runs, reeked of fuckers made assumptions and didn't actually look shit up. At least not in-depth.

Ted did not defeat Carapax using his technological knowhow. Ted mostly just repeatedly dumped Carapax into deep bodies of water and hoping he didn't come back out. Which, was frustrating that Ted didn't really try to figure out how to beat that robot but there was also a lot of other shit going on with Ted towards the end of his solo, perhaps he wasn't on his A game.

But the human consciousness in Carapax is an archeologist, not someone who knows shit about machines and computing therefore he should not have been able to turn himself into a steampunk robot when he came back.

It bugs me so much.

My kingdom for the Blue Beetle 2 characters getting some respectful treat some day.

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[do not add undescribed images to my post]