Character Rehab II: Back in the Habit
 

By far the worst second-thread title I have ever foisted upon this forum.

I want to make it clear I don't think businessmen are evil for the sake of greed, I just think they're well, greedy for the sake of greed, as well as power and priviledge, which leads to them doing a lot of awful things to people they just don't give a shit about, because it makes them richer and more powerful and they know they can get away with it. I don't know that you're necessarily going to find that better than the other way, but there you are.

Speaking personally this is because Marvel at least still makes some comics that I can actually read whereas in DC's case it's pretty uniformly somewhere between utter indifference and outright loathing.

But no harm talkin' Marvel too so:

Wolverine

Aside from my previously stated feelings about the character, I think the number one thing I would do is make him goddamn short again the way he's supposed to be. Any given portral of him anymore he's what like, five foot eight? Five ten? I still can't stand that the movies made him taller than damn Cyclops.

Much that I hate him now I will go so far as to say he was actually a basically somewhat likeable character back when he was the little dude with minimal powers who got the tar knocked out of him and then got back up and got the tar knocked out of him again so all other claw-removing plans aside (though I would totally get rid of the stupid-ass claws) I would make him be that again.

Darkhawk

I would do nothing because Darkhawk is awesome and Brian Clevinger is a retard.

Daredevil

I would like to see comics about somthing that actually resembles "Daredevil: The Man Without Fear," as opposed to "Daredevil: The Guy Whose Life Is Continually Falling Apart And His Wife Is Leaving Him And Why Hasn't He Killed Himself Yet?" I mean I'm not saying toss out the latter entirely I'm just saying let the dude live up to his billing a bit more. In any given Daredevil comic there should be at least one scene where he like, leaps blindly off of a rooftop, catches a handhold that he himself could not have known was there, flings himself through a window and kicks his archenemy in the throat. I don't think that's so much to ask.

Also his origin is like three characters' origins rolled into one; I don't think you can get rid of Battlin' Jack Murdock or Stick & The Hand so I would probably just ditch the Science Origin in favor of Hand-based ninja-senses or some crap like that.

Stephen Strange

I don't have a lot to say here actually except that I am told Brian Vaughn wrote a miniseries about him that was actually quite good and gave him a semi-reasonable power range. Also that Mashirosen is 100% correct about the Orpheus thing.

Deadpool:

More Deadpool is always good.

The Hulk: Give SMASH a rest. It's been overdone.

Iron Man: IT'S A SKRULL AND SO IT SHALL BE.

Spider-Man is dead.

From the previous thread
That reminds me of something from this post which is very long and mostly about something else so I'll just excerpt and summarize part of the relevant bit: That thing that your sort of feel? At DC it's explicit policy, and: some guy named Cris Sims agrees with you that this is a terrible thing.
Daredevil had a wife? I thought Bullseye was following him around chucking household objects through the skulls of every woman who even looked at him, how'd he get hitched? Did he meet a woman with an adamantium skull? ALSO: Clearly the Man Without Fear is not afraid of a life devoid of joy.

Elektra - Stop killing her. Seriously. Like, you know you've made it big as a villain in the Marvel universe when you get to kill Elektra. A few months ago she was on the cover being gutted by, like, Bullseye or something. I just thought it was funny that she looked surprised.

And then they slipped her in as a skrull after that which kicked up the whole Secret Invasion thing, which I can forgive, but christ if you're going to kill her stop bringing her back or something.

Hulk - Stop making him a protagonist. He's a great villain - a nice scientist guy who likes doing the right thing on the inside, but a hideously powerful nigh-indestructible war machine when he gets angry - so fuckin' make him a villain. World War Hulk was a good thought if the entire thing didn't get derailed by some guy popping out and loudly proclaiming "IT WAS MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" right at the end, thereby, I dunno, getting Bruce off the hook for his awful world-smashing crimes.

EDIT
From what I understand he's like #1 on the Worst Boyfriends To Have In Comics, because every time he hooks up with someone they end up getting killed horribly.

I think Tony Stark was #3 or something, but that's mostly having to do with sleeping with She-Hulk so he could plant a power-nullifier on her.

?

The person popping out at the end saying "It was me!" was to get Reed, Tony et al off for their giant crimes. Prior to that the Hulk was pretty much justified by the aforementioned having killed his planet.

Re: Sherlock Holmes,

It can work. Watching some of the better thought-out adaptations that used the deerstalker I had the impression that it was sort of used as an expression of Sherlock Holmes eccentricity. Of course, it's not like it's ever explicit, so maybe no thought was put into it and the eccentricity of the rural outdoorsman type clothes in London and the eccentric nature of the character just happen to coincide. I guess that if other characters take notice of it, giving some of them an excuse to sort of give a disdainful look at Holmes, it can work that way.

In addition, it could play into Sherlock Holmes seeing himself as a hunter of some sort, or being figuratively represented as one.

But really, if it's not being worked with (which is most of the time at least), it's the kind of artefact that can only hinder the character, first by providing part of a substitute for an actual portrayal of the character (hence a 'fetish'.) But I guess that it always comes down to hacks being the actual problem.

Wolverine,

In addition to working to flatten the character, the whole Tall Wolverine thing just works against theme. A wolverine is pretty much defined as being ten pints of mean in one pint of runty. And then there's the comparison to Cyclops. Isn't he supposed to be... I don't know... kind of cyclopean?

In the X-Men movies he wasn't a cyclops in stature and might so much as he was just a big throbbing one-eyed snake.

Batman.

I want to see more of his detective skills. They are what make the character great to me, and it seems like his mental skills have taken a back seat to his gadgets and fists. Now not to say that gadgets and fists are cool, but I would like to see a little more of the legwork that leads up to him punching a villain in the face.

Also, possibly an alternate universe comic where he basically kills/captures/removes from the equation every superhero on the planet. Since he more than likely has ways kills/captures/removes from the equation every superhero on the planet (I mean come on. Batman is really fucking paranoid.) I want him to have to use his emergency protocols. Maybe because the superheroes go rogue, but I would probably enjoy it more if he was hallucinating or became mentally ill and just perceived them as rogue and then went like super underground as he fights a guerrilla war on the superhero, and maybe villain, population.

Well it was shown in one comic that Batman has plans to take down each member of the Justice League just in case.
And when Martian Manhunter went all burny (Infernus?) he was taken down by Plastic Man who was brought into Justice League at Bat's request.

I think this could be a cool idea as a one shot. Especially if it incorporated your other idea and used lots of batman brainwork.

The only problem with brainwork is that thought bubbles have kind of gone out of fashion. You could bring them back or go with the classic of giving him a stupid sidekick who needs everything explained in great detail.

Or go with the current, and most excellent, standard: caption boxes.

You could have a hero that has a split personality, and he is constantly bouncing ideas off of it. Anyone that has seen Mr. Brooks knows what I mean.

...Huh.

I think I missed something. Well everything else I said I stand behind.

I've been thinking about writing a long Superman novel for awhile, wanting to let it stew while I implement my plan to be a published writer with a chance of getting DC to license the characters. I agree about taking away the dark gods of the universe and the rest of the superpowered folks.

In my own way, I had an idea that he'd be fighting corruption. The most important parallel I had for the book was Superman, who had been granted awesome powers as a result of who he was, and Lex Luthor, granted nothing, who rose from the slums with nothing but his own intellect, thinking himself above laws and other men. He'd be a Nietzschean superman to do battle with our hero Superman.

Then I thought of villains Superman could actually fight, and I considered the 100, but decided to go with Toyman. I think, if LexCorp bought out Schott Toys, that the Toyman would be an interesting enemy for Superman. The little man that Superman usually fights for, but one who has given in to his dark side.

It's not written yet, as it's an ambitious project and I want to research it properly first by watching where Superman went wrong. Lois and Clark, Smallville, etc.

If you have an ambitious project you want to add to superhero comics I suggest staying the fuck away from DC.

Well, it wouldn't work with a bunch of Captain Ersatzes, let me tell you. Only way I'd do it would be if I could license the Superman properties for the novel.

And again, we're talking years down the line.

Man, it's not Hugh Jackman's fault that he's simultaneously the best guy they could've picked for the role while also being 80'9" or something. Being 5'4" myself I also prefer tiny sawn-off Wolverine, but it doesn't kill me that he's a little taller these days, if only because Hugh Jackman's influence also means there's less tendency to draw the horrible '80s helmet hair.

If you're trying to tell me the world's run out of burly 5'2" dudes with a chip on their shoulders such that they couldn't have found one with Hugh "Van Helsing" Jackman's acting range then save it sister, I ain't buyin'. Hugh Jackman's just the best guy after you throw out every guy in the world who actually would have fit the role but gets excluded because Wolverine is The Leading Man and thus must be a Tall Bastard, just as Cyke is his Competitor and thereby must be Slightly Shorter and a Sniveling Douche. Because it is carved into the very bedrock of Hollywood that any deliberately subversive or non-normative element in any given work of fiction must be thrown the fuck out and turned into the same homogenized crap which it was originally interesting for having rejected.

...Don't mind me, I just watched the Watchmen trailer.

That's a lot of words for "Hi, my name is Fifthfiend and I have a short man complex like whoa".

I don't think you can blame Hugh Jackman for spending the entire movie trilogy making the movie like this:

http://www.shortpacked.com/comics/20060605cyclops.png

I really liked X-Men and X-2, but I had hoped that they would bring Cyclops more to the foreground since he spent the entire movie series being "The Leader" but not even really all that relevant. You could have thrown anyone in there and they'd have been forgotten.

No offense, but Seil got banned for a reason. I'd really like it if people made their own points instead of relying on posting webcomics to do it for them.

I didn't realize we were coming down that hard on comic/image linkings. So, okay, won't happen again.

Could you repeat that, I couldn't hear over the sound of your raging Jackman fanboner.

I don't have a detailed plan as to how it could be done, but in the Marvel Universe, Iceman needs to have his own book, or at least a storyline that kind of focuses on him in a way that isn't just I'm Turning Into A Solid Block Of Ice But Give It A Couple Months I;ll Get Better. He's an Omega-level mutant, time for him to start acting like one.

I'm pretty sure I've said my fantasy DC Comic. It would involve resurrecting Ted Kord, killing off that Hip New Teenage Blue Beetle Of Magic, and being a cool James Bond-type adventure comic featuring a genius inventor who makes cool gadgets and dresses like a bug.

In terms of stuff that isn't Marvel/DC, I'd do a comic in the Buffyverse where Spike wasn't perfect and got all the girls and could do no wrong, and Angel wasn't basically the universe's bitch while Spike was awesome.

I would kill Spike and Angel and Buffy and Willow and goddamn, goddamn annoying little sister whose name I forget and then send Giles, Faith, Xander, Anya, Dracula and Renee to join Melaka Fray at the battlefront of a grim dark future where there is ONLY WAR, in a comic titled HOLY SHIT THIS COMIC IS AWESOME YOU'RE RETARDED IF YOU DON'T BUY IT RIGHT NOW.

I'll back up that Buffy thing, considering a while ago I was dating this girl who loved Spike and I was like "But..he's like made to be the show's hardcore XTREME badass."

I just want to point out that I deliberately didn't use my mod colors there because Mirai, that's really me asking you to lay off the image posts as one NPF member to another, in the interest of helping the forum stay the kind of place we came to enjoy it as, where people actually talk about things instead of image macro'ing each other to death. I mean it's not so out of place in General, but I'd kind of like to keep it out of more topical conversations, y'know? But my post does come across as way more harsh than I meant it to be, and I apologize for being a dick when you didn't do anything wrong, really.

I'm sorry? You represent the Lollipop what now and wish to welcome me to something-land?

But I like Willow. And Angel. Except not comic Angel. I like Angel on Angel, in about the third season. But yes, kill kill kill Spike and Buffy.

Oh, and her name is Dawn.

I would but we're full up on witches. I REGRET NOTHING

fight fight fight fight.

Okay seriously tho, I see both DC and Marvel getting too full. I say one massive reboot is in order.

Marvel: Have one last final crossover event. Make it so the Watchers have deemed earth 616 too beyond saving and so they plot to end the universe. They think they can stop them but slowly each hero is removed from existance, starting with Wolverine. Until finally it is only one person ( a nameless being from the shadows) one of the watchers say, "Then there was none," and gone is the entire series, only to have a total restart, wipe the slate.

DC: Remove Supe's godliness and make him more vulnerable to green rocks. And make sure it stays consistance in his weakness.

Mod color or no, you telling me to do something is pretty scary. But no hard feelings, I understand that it was a request.

Point that I was trying to make; X-Men was kind of Wolverine's spot in the limelight, and I figured that eventually it'd get around to everyone else in turn, but like most things X-Men related it turned into "Its all about Wolverine, baby!" pretty quick, X-3 being the best (worst?) example.

That's very sad. I'm sorry to hear that.

Why does this have to be a story? Why not just have a press release that says: "This continuity shit is fucked, we're done," and just have your restart right away without inflicting another goddamn crossover event, quite possibly the worst crossover event ever, on your audience?

I assume you refer to Jaime Reyes, and therefore also that you are everything that is wrong with comics.

I mean, let's leave aside your flawed assumption that Jaime cannot possibly live at the same time as Ted, and go with this:

In this corner, we have Ted Kord, a character first introduced in 1966, who survived the death of his originating publisher. His story has, for better or for worse, been told over the course of thirty nine years! Aaand in this corner, we have Jaime Reyes, the new guy, who has existed for less than two years. One can live, one must die! And clearly, Ted is the one who's got more juice left in him, 'cos he's a fresh character and Jaime's had all the story squeezed out of him OH WAIT.

I mean, if Jaime had turned out to be some kind of awful racist caricature of Mexicans instead of being totally awesome like he is, I would see the need to sweep him under the rug. But as it is I don't see any reason to follow your advice except "Blue Beetle should be the way he was in the Good Ol' Days."

No, I just like my James Beetle idea...I guess we don't have to kill Jamie. He can, uh...he can stay.

EDIT: Actually yeah, you're right. I just really wanted the old Ted back and I didn't really think about freshness of character. Fair cop.

EDIT 2: But can we all agree that All-New Atom is bad?

I think were I ever to do a full-scale universe reboot I think instead of yet another depressing story about evil winning I would pretty much do the opposite of Mac's thing. Just do like a year of non-stop happy endings, reconciliation, tying up loose plot threads, villains being defeated once and for all, redeemable villains being redeemed, all that kind of thing. Tie the whole thing off with a "Hey, thanks for reading, guys!" and start the whole universe over from there.

Every comics fan thinks that every other comics fan is what's wrong with comics. Indeed, some people might argue that people cheering a long-time popular character getting shot in the head, subsequently getting replaced by Random Teenager Who Has Nothing To Do With Anything - in maybe the ten millionth example of that plot-device being used - are Everything That's Wrong With Comics. Heck if the Blue Beetle is in fact so beaten to death as a concept, would it kill them to just, like, create an actually new character? Jamie Whasisface walks into his backyard and finds a glowing cricket and so becomes the Green Grasshopper; that would have been so hard? It's not like every significant element of the character hasn't been replaced with generic Invasion of the Body Snatchers evil-aliens shennanigans, there's nothing there that required one of the last few honest to goodness Science Superheroes to get shot in the head so the ten millionth teenager could walk into his backyard or into the woods or into the alley behind a bar and go "i can haz superpowe rs! ololol"

Character Rehab

Captain America
OK, he's dead. And Bucky, who was dead, is now the new Captain America. Let's leave Rogers dead this time. Bucky can go do the Captain America thing on the Avengers. But for a Captain America monthly title, let's go back in time. As a community outreach project, Captain Bucky has storytime with urban youths at a local library. There, he tells the kids stories about how Captain America, the other one, once punched Hitler in the face. Or stories about Cap's stint as Nomad, Man Without A Country, and how Nomad slammed his shoe on Khrushchev's head.. Stories that inspire the ideals that Captain America stood for. The book shouldn't rehash past stories exactly, and using Bucky as a narrator gives you the license to ignore continuity if you have to sometimes.

Superman
OK, it's easy to deconstruct Superman. I'd like to see a reconstruction project like the story I've been tossing around my head. You know the conflict isn't whether Superman can beat the Toyman. The conflict is how much Supes agrees with the Toyman's motive, if not his methods. You don't defeat Lex with an uppercut; you need to somehow stop his plans.

The Justice League
My ex-roommate always had an idea of doing the Fall of the Justice League like the fall of Arthur's Knights, with Superman as Arthur, Lois as Guinevere, and Batman as Lancelot. I just think the JLA needs to be scaled back. Bats isn't a team player. This alliance should be an epic event, maybe the yearly Crisis. Not a monthly issue.

Multiverses
As I said before, I'd license the 52 and the 616 out to various head writers and fuck continuity. They can deal with the continuity they want to deal with, and if Frank Millar wants to make Wonder Woman a whore while Batman calls people retarded, he can totally do that in his own corner of the 52.

fifth, the big problem I have with your superman idea is that nothing about that says "SUPERMAN!!" it's a cool potential idea for a new superhero, but not necessarily a superman thing,. so, heeeeere we go!

Superman: I love the DCAU, so he needs to borrow from that, kill all the "God" noise(the wank) he's super strong, like throw tanks strong, but not crazy, cant move a planet(There's you're "Humanizing element", he's got freaking limits) he's just this really nice guy who geniuinely wants to help people, real deal Big blue boyscout. Primarily I want him saving people, because he's a "superhero" not a "vigilante" he is always concerned with saving the world less with fighting evil, his beef with Lex Luthor is He's always putting people in danger, less cause he's a jerk.

Batman: I always pictured him as more a vigilante than superhero, he saves people because he can't stand to see innocents die,due to his personal issues, he wants to catch the badguy more, but saving the hostage tied to the bomb is his choice because it would give him flashbacks of his own trauma, or because it would give the villian pleasure if batman does something "evil" and batman WILL NOT let the badguy win.He does'nt kill because he won't be like them, he probably supports the death penalty, but he won't kill someone himself, he hates criminals and villians that much.
"Criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot" are not the words of a guy who wants to help people for the sake of helping people. He's smart, a detective, and a psuedo ninja rolled in one, but he simply can't do the impossible, he can't outfight someone who is stronger than him, so he outsmarts them, but at the same time, since he can't think faster then the Flash moves, he can't use his wits against insanely insurmountable odds, I'm sick of all that " thirty minutes of preptime" fanwank mess.
and that's why robin's there,

Robin is once again, the contrast to Batman, Batman is focused on getting the badguy, because the badguy who killed his parents got away, whether or not he get's caught in bat's life time is up for grabs. Robin's parent's murderer on the other hand was captured by batman, robin is more struck by the loss of his parents, he wanted to save them, he wants to save everyone. He wants to save people more than beat up criminals, maybe because he lived a harder life than bruce, met some shoplifters in his travels as a circus kid, understands that not all criminals are evil, whereas, bats was always a rich kid who saw criminals as pure badguys. Bruce has him along because it's impossible for him to do everything, and being a genius, he realizes this. plus the whole protege, lost family, "just like me when I was your age "schtick

Wolverine: keep the claws, because wolverine without his claws is like Cap withought his sheild, spidey withought his web-shooters, or supes without his cape, it's his primary power and major visual fetish.
But make it obvious that an unbreakable knife is not nearly as cool as people seem to think it is. In other words if his hands are tied away from each other, he's farking screwed, tone down the healing factor, keep him restricted to the X-men and their world. He's a member of their team, he needs to stay there, he works as the unstable guy on the x-men. Make him less an ultimate strategist and fighter and more a crazy-ass dude who will try to rush the hulk, then get his ass handed to him. Wolverine sometimes gets played as batman currently is, able to take on anyone, because he's "the best at what I do" No wolverine, you don't have connections everywhere, you can't beat anyone at chess, you can't stealthily track anyone with super advanced surveilance tech or super-human senses, or pretty much anyone skilled at anti-tracking maneuvers, and it's possible for people to sneak up on you.

Spider-man: I like spidey's old way, where most of his parker drama came from keeping his secret, and less from aunt may or mary-jane being in threat of space-rape or some nonsense. The majority of Spider-man's Peter Parker issues should come from the results of him not taking part in the normal world, because he's dealing with spider-man stuff. Make him outsmart his villians, not in an L sorta way, but in the trickster archetype way he used to do, figuring out the flaws in his opponents as he fights them, I.e.
you've got electric powers? here's a convieniently placed water hose for me to spray you with. You can fly on a mechanical glider, throw explosives, and have super strength on par with mine? okay, web-up your gliders exhaust, you can't fly any more, jump around over head while your waste your bombs throwing them in the air, then jump down and get in a dodge happy fight with you, because you don't have a spider-sense. No more of that Van-damme, "get my ass handed to me, then get my second wind and just beat you up" stuff. Make the spider-sense more of an actual power, because one third of the time we get "I dodged that bullet thanks to my spider-sense, and plot necessitated villian death" and two thirds of the time we get "oh, my spider sense is-OW! CRAP GET OFF ME!" mechanical web-shooters, yeah, i know young, single Peter parker who's just outta high school is "classic" but it's been too long, he's a grown man now. He's in his mid to late twenties, living with mary jane, his aunt may and mary jane both know he's spidey, ut the world does'nt, so he has to deal with that. Works at the bugle, taking pictures of spider-man, and all that jazz.

Isn't this pretty much what they do now? Goddamn Batman isn't in mainline continuity or anything, and past that it doesn't really matter whether it's somewhere in DC's multiverse or just its own standalone (utterly shittacular) thing.

I find this funny as the core of my idea is "rip-off the fuck out of Action Comics #1."

I mean I acknowledge that my idea won't say "Superman" to anyone who's read Superman as he's been written for the last, say, fifty years. I just think that this is because Superman has been completely miswritten for basically the entirety of the last fifty years.

I think this actually gets at my main interest in getting rid of them. Cut the superficial visual crap out of the character, and it might actually force somebody to actually poke at whatever actual substance there is to him, past all the SNIKT BUB SNIKT BUB SNIKT crap. I mean hell he is a samurai and a special-ops dude and all that crap right? Wouldn't cool to make him actually use some of that for a change, instead of going up to every group of random thugs and being like "HAY U IS LAMERZ CUZ I ARE SPECIAL OPS SAMURAI DOOD, SNIKT BUB SNIKT BUB SNIKT BUB SNIKT SNIKT SNIKT."

I dunno, possibly I'm just sick of the "Wolverine has claws, therefore he can totally fight the Hulk" that you get in his comics these days, and the claws seem to be the major centerpiece of that attitude. So toss 'em, says I.

It's the X-Men! Visual crap isn't superficial.

My mind is boggled that in that roughly appropriate picture, you'd zero in on the iconic 'SNIKT' and not on the flotsam, trendy bullshit like 'samurai d00d.'

The claws aren't that much of a crutch if they had to throw in so much over the years to avoid going deeper.

I always though ditching Wolverines calws and making his hands claw like would be kinda neat.

That would be Lady Deathstroke.

Or Sabertooth as they both had them, just her's extended.

Really what gets me about the claws in general is they seem to be sharp enough to seamlessly cleave through just about anything. While I have no issue with Adamantine being the end-all of crazy super metals, I dislike how it gets to also cut through everything like butter. Let's at least the laws of friction and such affect Wolverine's claws would go a long way to making them more "down to earth" as it were. Plus I never saw him in my mind as being physically strong enough to drive metal claws through a lower grade solid steel door or a Sentinel. It just seemed kinda silly.

Kill a bunch of heroes, create a new title called "Tales of Legend".

There... Continuity move foward with less bullshit and new people, and the old guys and people wew ant dead (WOLVERINE) can still tell their new stories in a title that puts then IN THE PAST) done!

Oh, I know a big one for me. The X-statics. They're dead. All of them.

We burn all copies of these crapy stories of sub-standard mutants and their escapades trying to film the worst version of MTV's Real World ever. Then we learn from our mistakes and never ever make that kind of crap again.

What I'd like to see is a good story about a roving band of young mutants, out to help others and show the world that mutants are kind people too. Even if their powers are scaled back they could help some Midwest farmer solve his environmental issues/big business encroaching problem, then shoot on over to the east/west coast to help some inner city children learn that gangs are bad and help clean up a neighborhood from some punk gang lead by a mutant giving mutants everywhere a bad name. You could have some nice little comics with a message and still get in your action and adventure at a reasonable level.

So it would basically be X-Men: First Class except in-continuity and with a do-gooderey social agenda?

Because I would read the shit out of that.

Yeah I know. I would buy the hell out of that....instead of cut myself every time I walk past an X-Statics comic at the store.