#superhero thoughts

[gangler]

X-Men fans will endlessly relitigate the issue of Cyclop's eye beams. "They're not lasers! They're concussive force"

I really think it's just an issue of visual communication. Concussive force doesn't look like a red beam. It looks like a boxing glove. Green Lantern does that shit all the time. Nobody's ever confused when he launches a giant green boxing glove at somebody, thinking it should be hot or something.

But nobody wants to engage in clear visual communication with Cyclops, because shooting boxing gloves out of your eyes would look stupid as hell. So we're in this constant position of drawing his eye beams like lasers or heat vision and then having to correct people when they misunderstand.

[gangler]

It's weird to see internet discourse morph.

Like, when Deathstroke started getting rebranded as a Batman villain, a common talking point is that he really has more history with Nightwing. Which is just true.

But somehow that's morphed into some new sect of people claiming that Deathstroke is a Nightwing rogue primarily, and getting mad at Robin for "Stealing" his rogues by having run-ins with Deathstroke.

But that's just plain incorrect. Deathstroke was always a Teen Titans villain first and foremost. Nightwing inherited Deathstroke from his time on the Teen Titans, much of which he was Robin for.

So, like, yeah, the current Robin is on the Teen Titans, as they pretty much always are, and he gets all the Deathstroke baggage that comes from that, same as Nightwing did. Like, that's the entire reason Dick had a decade and a half of history with Deathstroke before he even got his first solo title.

[gangler]

I've never gotten the argument that Batman's fault in Tower of Babel was not telling the rest of the league that he's making these plans.

I get that it's the intended theme. It's a story about trust.

But like, they all fight eachother so much, why would you not just assume that everybody has something in mind for the next time somebody's brainwashed or some shit.

"Wow, Batman! How'd you know what to do when the Pied Pieper turned me against you?" That's not a conversation that's happened in the last seventy years? It's a complete shock that this man has spent any amount of time meditating on this issue.

I don't believe for a second that Wonder Woman doesn't know what she's gonna do if Batman ever turns on her. She just hasn't written it down in some insecure location where villains can find and exploit it.

If we wanna say Batman's fatal flaw was terrible information security, that makes perfect sense to me. But these contingency plans just seem like such an awkward vehicle for a trust arc.

[gangler]

One thing that does kind of bother me about cape fiction is it’s just kind of taken for granted that “hero” and “crime fighter” are interchangeable terms.

Like, obviously some characters like Batman, crime is a central motivator of their character, and theme of their stories.

But other characters just kind of get assumed to be on some crusade against crime by nature of being a costumed do-gooder.

Like right now this thought process is prompted by a sarcastic remark about Ant-Man. “I am Ant-Man! My power is to shrink down to ant-size, which is a totally useful crime-fighting power, right?”

Like, that’s not really a part of Ant-Man’s essential character diamond when you get right down to it. There’s nothing in particular about this dude’s backstory and motivation that lays out that he needs to be fighting crime, but crime is assumed to be what he’s fighting. Of course, in this instance it was just a fan, but I think a lot of creators do it too. A character will see that lives are in danger, and rise to the occasion, and then that’ll kind of smoothly transition into them patrolling the streets looking for muggers as if it naturally follows.

[gangler]

Somebody on twitter proposed that Batman could be doing more to help the poor and now my timeline is freaking the fuck out.

Pulling the “This rhetoric is only ever said by people who’ve never read a Batman comic in their lives” card, like a couple lines every dozen issues referencing his charity work are all you need to smooth over that he’s orders of magnitude richer than even the real life richest men in the world and lives in a city with hungry people while he builds hideouts on the moon to stash all his high tech gadgets. Clearly only somebody who’s never read a batman comic in their life would think he could still do more!

Pulling the “He’s not real, you know.” line as if it’s never occurred to them before now that people will discuss the real world through the lens of fiction. That maybe the dude’s trying to make a point about the wealth disparity in the world around them rather than literally proposing we tax Batman to solve all our social ills.

Doing the “This is so tired. How many times do we have to have this conversation?” bit as if there’s not some inherent repetition in discussing a pop culture icon that’s been endlessly reiterating on the same themes since the forties.

It just never ceases to amaze me how ill equipped Batman fans are to handle this most milquetoast of talking points.

[gangler]

In the leadup to Superior Spider-Man, Doc Oc switches minds with Peter Parker. Peter then dies in Otto’s body, and is shown joining Uncle Ben in heaven.

The thing is, the story almost immediately turns around tand takes the attitude that overwritng somebody’s mind doesn’t change their immortal soul. Peter’s soul is still in fact in his original body, struggling against a brain that thinks it’s Otto Octavius.

After Peter regains his body, Otto starts overwriting various clones and stuff with his mind through the same process that started this arc, but there doesn’t really seem to be anything to indicate that the original Otto’s confused soul isn’t still up there in heaven with Uncle Ben. That’s gonna be an awkward conversation some day when real Peter dies.

[gangler]

Kraven The Hunter’s Motivation is nonsense.

Like, he’s a great hunter. He’s hunted all sorts of crazy beasts. He decides that Spider-Man is the most dangerous game and starts hunting him.

Which, like, I can buy that early on in Spider-Man’s career, but they introduced so many more dangerous characters than him over the years.

When Kraven successfully killed Spider-Man he decided he had nothing left to live for. When his daughter brought him back from the dead he was pissed.

Like, really? Can’t think of anything else you’d like to do? Go hunt Thor or something. Go hunt the fucking Silver Surfer! Go Hunt Molecule Man! How exactly did you get so fixated on this broke dude in Manhattan?

[gangler]

If Big Barda had a daughter, and named her daughter after herself.

Would the daughter be Big Barda Junior?

Or just Small Barda?

What’s the naming convention here?