#squadron supreme

[coolcomicbookcovers]

[artbyblastweave]

It's always irked/baffled me that the fake Marvel version of the DC characters (the Squadron Supreme) have had multiple comic book series centred around them and are reasonably public characters, whereas no fake DC version of the Marvel characters has managed to survive more than one universe reboot. Why do you think that is? (Might just be because Marvel has more of a tradition of sniping at DC--doing the Squadron Sinister is a natural leap from making jokes about the Distinguished Competition on the letters page, after all!)

I think it's because what was effective and innovative about Marvel's approach to superheroes from the silver age onwards got so thoroughly into the creative groundwater that there's nothing really left to do with direct pastiche. For example, the DNA of Spider-Man lives on in basically every teen hero produced from the 1960s onward, at DC and at Marvel and in the culture more broadly- Danny Phantom and Jake Long and every other wake-up-go-to-school-save-the-world SatAM cartoon. If you're DC, and you've got Blue Beetle and Batman Beyond playing roughly in that same teen-hero space and iterating on it sincerely, what's the actual value-added of doing a more direct Spider-Man parody, Squadron-Supreme style? What's left for such a character to do? Hence why Lord Havok and the Extremists are just kind of, whatever, they're around. A direct pastiche of the Marvel style of supervillains isn't enough to be interesting when DC has also been doing Marvel-style supervillains for decades at this point.

But the thing is that in my opinion, that rachet kind of only goes in one direction; DC was able to emulate and integrate basically every innovation of Marvel, but Marvel has never really been able to retrofit the archetypes of the Justice League into their setting except as part of a commentary on how those don't fit in particularly well with their house brand. Every Superman pastiche introduced at Marvel- Sentry, Blue Marvel, Sun-God, Hyperion- eventually hones back in on how different Marvel would look for the presence of such a figure. Once you've got those pastiches hanging around, though, they're fertile ground for creators who want to deconstruct Superman specifically without the restraints that DC would impose- which is where we get both the original Squadron Supreme miniseries and Straczynski's rebooted Supreme Power.

[artworkmartins]

Earth-199 In the 41st century, the Squadron Supreme is the group of heroes keeping Kang's 'peace'

[superheroes-or-whatever]

Zarda in Avengers Assemble

[browsethestacks]

World's Finest: Hyperion And Nighthawk

Art by Michel Fiffe

[evilhorse]

Alter Ego #188

[rei-ismyname]

Heroes Reborn - Mags & Chuck angst

To be frank, I barely paid attention to Heroes Reborn. What I did see was deeply derivative with nothing new to say. However, I'm a sucker for these loser husbands eye fucking each other and acting like lovers. In short, a temporary AU happened and Chuck died at a protest.

Hey fellas, is it gay to live inside your homie's mind?

Emma Frost, Jubilee, Frenzy, Rogue and Mags head into Magneto's mind to save Charles. No idea why Cyclops has that hat on.

'At least you two would have each other.' Well said, Emma.

Kiss, kiss, kiss! Oh, wait, he's not alive. What's the point of being a psychic entity living in your boyfriend's head if you can't bang? Maybe they're ace in this world. The rest is terrible, but I read it and extracted the good shit so you don't have to!

[why-i-love-comics]

Squadron Supreme info page

art by Alex Ross