#wildbow comics

[bodegadulac]

So, apparently some of you aren't aware???

Wildbow comics is fucking old, but i might as well start easy and tell you the lore of pre Apollyon Wars Taylor.

(Actual first appareance of Taylor Hebert and the homage i did for badly drawn worm)

Around the 60s Wildbow comics finally won a whole shitshow of a lawsuit against DC comics, that at the time was suing whatever superman shaped characters they could find, and Wildbow had several superman ripoffs, so, in the meantime they tried to create new more original characters, one of them was Aegis, the human shield.

He was hip teenager that had to deal with both teenager problems and superhero problems yadda yadda, and one of those troubles was falling in love with the creepy supervillain.

Taylor Hebert was created as both a supervillain and a love interest of Aegis, as well as a clear parody of spiderman, having a similar background as bullied teens that got bug powers, but while Peter got bitten by a radioactive spider, Taylor got cursed by the Skittering Scarab medallion (wich was a blue beetle rip off instead).

This silver age Taylor didn't go by skitter (and she wouldn't be called that until the Apollyon Wars reboot) but instead she was bug girl, and she had more vaguely insect powers (stenght, agility, endurance etc)

The thing that made her different from others was that she was a sympathetic villain that never went to far. She was esentially a teenager lashing out, just in the more augmented reality of comics. And that made it very interesting to flirt with redemption, but there was one thing that prevented that from happening...

[bodegadulac]

What do you think of the edgy Wildbow comics reboot from 2011?

Well, isn't that a hell of a question... and honestly after 15 years i have a lot of mixed feelings about it.

For those who don't know, the 'Parahumans' line was the 2011 reboot of Wildbow comics.

It was the result of the 2010/2011 event Valhalla, were Defiant  trying to get Dragon back from the dead accidentaly breaks the timeline. Valhalla itself was pretty good, I really liked the dynamic between Collin and the alternate good Jack and i really like message about letting go...

What i didn't like was editorial using it as an excuse to reboot Wildbow comics because Daniel Chambers (From wich Glenn Chambers got his name, they were mocking him) didn't like the post Apollyon Wars status quo (which was 40 years ago btw).

And thats how we got the least fucking organized innitiative ever that was just so fucking edgy...

So, what did i like and what did i not?

Well, i will start with thr obvious, they had no fucking plan, they just went there and did shit and most titles got cancelled within a year.

It was just edge and nostalgia, Chris got regressed from Armsmaster 2 to kid win, they retconned out the third new wave sibling, they fucking killed mouse protector for being too corny etc (and dont let me get started with them using one fucking line of the original new wave #1 to justify Amy's crush).

They gutted the WB magic sphere by making it it's own separate universe under the Otherverse imprint.

They killed Hero because he had morr chemistry with legend than with Alexandria.

And everyone was just such an asshole.

But then you have the good things...

Firstly, you will say they are overdesigned but i really like the Worm looks of some of the characters.

I do apreciate the creative freedom given to the writers.

And i really apreciate that they got John McCree to write the Skitter series. And like, i really think he made it work, it was edgy but it had substance, and it really elevated her from one of the random wards with a redemption arc into a household name (She is in Protectorate nemesis and Wildbow vs Sega 5 for a reason).

So, even after most of the line was cancelled after the Deluge event, Skitter kind of continued, and they kind of gave the entire parahumans setting to John, while Chambers quietly brought the old continuity line with Wildbow Reborn.

You really can feel the shift of parahumans before and after John took over wich leads to the next point. I really like that he kept all the edgyness and assholes, and it's very funny because you can tell he does it on purpose and that he makes it part of the point.

The rebrandin from Skitter to Worm was very good in the long term, with the main flagship skitter book and the glimpses of the wider world.

I specially like that he got a bunch of randoms from the Tales of the Slaughterhouse anthology as the main antagonistic force and how he used the triumvirate's mischaracterization as the basis of the cauldron twist.

So my opinion is, the 2011 reboot got good under McCrae, but when it got good it got really good.

So, you should totally read Worm, it's sequel Ward. And John's indie works Twig and Seek.

Man, i really hope he comes back to WB...

[bodegadulac]

I'm very curious about the WB comics version of Panacea. Like, I assume she was originally a supporting character introduced to handwave how supers could get punched through a building and be fine the next episode, but how did we get from there to the grimdark mind-control incest plot?

If you want an Amy retrospective you will pretty much get a new wave retrospective, because they are very interlinked (and a bunch of Amy's later characterization comes from some very specific new wave stories).

(Brocton Bay #1, with the early deformed dynamite and the first appareance of Lung the oriental dragon)

So, in the late 50s Wildbow comics found itself in a very messy legal situation because DC was suing every superman shaped character and WB Comics had 5 very superman shaped characters, so during it Wildbow kind of started throwing shit at the wall to see what would stick. And thats how we got the Brocktom Bay Brigade in the 60s, the first in a new wave of heroes (Yeah, thats why they got that name later).

Their backstory was simple, 4 adventurer's travel too deep into a cave in the amazon forest were they find a shinning meteorite, now they have superpowers. Now they have to defend their hometown from eeeeeevil.

They are Manpower, Lady photon, Brandish and The Dynamite (Fun fact, flashbangs were created by the british years later).

You would be forgiven if you thought it was a fantastic four ripoff, because it kind of was but in my opinion it's vibes were more doom patrol than ff.

But more importantly, they were fundamental pillars for the WBU. A lot of iconic things you think about when i saw Wildbow come from their original series.

Lung, Kaiser and the empire (who weren't nazis yet, but also they were absolutely a metaphor for nazis), Abaddon, Marquis and Brockton bay as a city itself. All came from the first, and only, Brockton Bay Brigade series.