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Post by rberman on Aug 22, 2018 11:51:03 GMT -5
I want to thank rberman for reminding me just how much I hate the New Mutant character Warlock. I hate him. I despise him. I hate him worse than I do Aquaman. His dialogue was irritating, his behaviour was annoying. I roll my eyes every time I see him, knowing that I'm in for some frustration ahead in this comic. His only saving grace, maybe, MAYBE is Douglock in later Excalibur issues. Yer darn tooting I said that. You're welcome! I can take or leave his characterization, but I always enjoy Sienkiewicz' renderings of him. Artists who draw him as cute miss the boat. He's not Number Five from "Short Circuit." More like something out of "H.R. Giger illustrates Harlan Ellison."
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Post by badwolf on Aug 23, 2018 16:41:41 GMT -5
I want to thank rberman for reminding me just how much I hate the New Mutant character Warlock. I hate him. I despise him. I hate him worse than I do Aquaman. His dialogue was irritating, his behaviour was annoying. I roll my eyes every time I see him, knowing that I'm in for some frustration ahead in this comic. His only saving grace, maybe, MAYBE is Douglock in later Excalibur issues. Yer darn tooting I said that. I liked him at the time, especially when Bill S. was drawing him, but I could easily see how he could be annoying. I haven't gone back and re-read those issues in a long time. He was perhaps one of those characters who stuck around for his arc and then went his own way.
As for Douglock, I can't think of anything more disturbing than an alien bonding with and reanimating the corpse of a friend. That should never have worked, and I don't know the writers were on who thought of it.
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Post by rberman on Aug 23, 2018 17:08:50 GMT -5
As for Douglock, I can't think of anything more disturbing than an alien bonding with and reanimating the corpse of a friend. That should never have worked, and I don't know the writers were on who thought of it.
That was Louise Simonson's idea. Her comments on the matter: "Doug had the Transmode Virus, so really you shouldn't have been able to kill him anyway, right? He would just come back in some other form, a more Warlockian form. So killing him was not that big a deal. I'd never kill a character if I don't know how I'm going to bring him back because it's comic books, after all. We had gotten a lot of letters from readers who hated him and thought he was boring and thought his powers were stupid and blah-blah-blah. They wanted us to kill him and there's nothing I like more than pleasing my readers. Lightning is going to strike me! Also, he had a difficult character to write and to draw. He was not a visual character. His powers were mental. He could translate languages, which meant that to get him to use his powers, you had to fool around every issue and have him translate something, and that gets a little old after a while. So there were a lot of reasons for Doug to go away. He died heroically saving Rahne in the "Fall of the Mutants" crossover. Then I got to do my and Bret Blevins' favorite New Mutants issue ever, the issue where Warlock carries Doug's corpse around trying to convince him to take energy and come back to life. That was the most understood comic I've ever done and I've done some whoppers. "Because it was funny as well as tragic, and a lot of people didn't get it, which was maybe my fault. A lot of kids did get it, though. I got a letter from a girl who said her brother had died and she said that her family reacted the same way. Her brothers and sisters divided up his clothes so that they could have that little piece of him. It was a nice letter. Every once in a while you get a letter form a kid who's got it. Usually it's a kid who has had a death in the family. The story resonates with them, but the other kids think it's funny. From the point of view of the characters, Warlock had never actually experienced death before. Among his people, energy keeps you alive. You can exchange energy and take energy from other things. As long as you have access to energy, you live. So he doesn't understand why his friend Doug won't take energy from him. Anyway, I loved that story. Those who loved it, loved it." (from "Comics Creators on X-Men")
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Post by badwolf on Aug 23, 2018 17:35:57 GMT -5
If Doug wasn't an exciting character, why didn't she just move him into the background and just use him occasionally when his abilities were needed? Why does someone who can speak and understand languages need to be at Xavier's school anyway?
I get that people mourn in weird ways but I'm sure none of them would want their loved one's body dug up and puppet-ed around. It could have been used for one issue, and the other kids could have said "No Warlock that's really wrong and here's why" and then he should have been laid to rest again.
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Post by Duragizer on Aug 29, 2018 4:27:24 GMT -5
I don't like Geoff Johns.
Admittedly, I haven't read much of his work, but what I have read's been some mixture of continuity porn and ultraviolence, two of the very things which've made modern comics published by the Big Two unreadable. And the whole "Rainbow Lantern Corps" thing? Sounds like something a bad fanfic writer would come up with. Oh, wait.
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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 29, 2018 4:58:54 GMT -5
The Johns work the I've read is solid. I have his Flash, Avengers and had his JSA run and I have to agree that he does pay a lot of attention to tying current continuity to the past. I guess Roy Thomas started it back in the 60's and he's carrying the torch these days as the person who has to tie every event together for the Superhero world.
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Post by chadwilliam on Sept 3, 2018 10:37:28 GMT -5
I don't like Geoff Johns. Admittedly, I haven't read much of his work, but what I have read's been some mixture of continuity porn and ultraviolenceI'm someone who is similarly baffled by his popularity given how much praise he's given for honouring/respecting the past while at the same time disregarding the spirit of whichever era people think he's evoking. I did read some of his Flash run and recall it being pretty good, but bringing back Psycho Pirate so you can have someone push his brains through the back of his skull, or the 'Me Am Not Bizarro Number One' so you can cover him in The Human Bomb's blood, or Phantom Lady so she can be impaled through the chest, or the Earth Two Superman so he can... isn't homaging anything any more than Dark Knight Returns homaged the Adam West Batman series because they both used Batman. Someone commented that Brad Meltzer's Identity Crisis wasn't a love letter to the 70's JLA as he claimed, but a 'Dear John' note - I think the same applies to Johns.
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 3, 2018 14:43:01 GMT -5
I liked Johns on Flash, early on and thought JSA was good, early on. However, there was such a derivative nature to his work that I had constant deja vous with the 80s. Really, that was DC, in a nutshell. I pretty much gave up trying to read most of their books as I had read the originals, in the day, and they were better. The level of violence and crapping on old characters was a contributing factor. I don't think he is terribly original and also don't think he can understand heroic characters, without making them into mental cases or neurotics, for "drama." You can have drama with stable minds, if you have some creativity. I don't find it more culturally relevant anymore than having costumed heroes talk like hippies was socially relevant at the dawn of the Bronze Age.
I think Johns is an average writer in a rather mediocre creative environment, which makes him stand out more, by comparison. I don't see where his elevation to a senior creative positions has done DC any favors, nor Jim Lee or Didio. They can't seem to wrap their heads around attracting new audiences and continue trying to squeeze what is left of the old (and that ain't much). I get the impression that the Hollywood people smile and pat him on the head and then do what they intended in the first place. I suspect the Warner execs don't even know his name, in the corporate environment. My guess is they are treated like kids and told just keep churning out stuff to maintain trademarks, so they can make real money on them elsewhere.
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Post by rberman on Sept 3, 2018 15:00:57 GMT -5
I suspect the Warner execs don't even know his name, in the corporate environment. My guess is they are treated like kids and told just keep churning out stuff to maintain trademarks, so they can make real money on them elsewhere. I came to this realization as well recently. This is why Disney doesn't bother selling comic books in their company stores, even a line of Disney-character comic books that they could easily command Marvel to publish. Disney has decided that selling comic books is a lost cause. But publishing comic books to maintain a thousand trademarked characters is a much more feasible endeavor. I wonder whether the creators understand their place in this pecking order.
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 3, 2018 17:31:13 GMT -5
I suspect the Warner execs don't even know his name, in the corporate environment. My guess is they are treated like kids and told just keep churning out stuff to maintain trademarks, so they can make real money on them elsewhere. I came to this realization as well recently. This is why Disney doesn't bother selling comic books in their company stores, even a line of Disney-character comic books that they could easily command Marvel to publish. Disney has decided that selling comic books is a lost cause. But publishing comic books to maintain a thousand trademarked characters is a much more feasible endeavor. I wonder whether the creators understand their place in this pecking order. This was apparent back in the 90s. Disney took the license away from Gladstone, who was doing well with it and decided to do it themselves; but, they did not put the comics in the Disney stores, nor in the parks and attractions. They had the bigegst environment to sell them and turned down efforts by the comic people to get them into their venues, with other Disney merchandise. Warner did the same thing with DC. They sold plenty of DC merch in the Warner stores; but, not the comics (though I don't know if that was always true, I visited a store one, with no comics in sight). What's hilarious is that the DC licensed products out there pretty much ignore the costume revamps that Jim Lee did (which sucked anyway) and continue to use classic Jose Luis Garcia Lopez (PBHN) models. By the way, Disney failed at producing their own comics and gave the license back to Gladstone.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 3, 2018 17:38:01 GMT -5
As for Douglock, I can't think of anything more disturbing than an alien bonding with and reanimating the corpse of a friend. That should never have worked, and I don't know the writers were on who thought of it.
That was Louise Simonson's idea. Her comments on the matter: "Doug had the Transmode Virus, so really you shouldn't have been able to kill him anyway, right? Er... no, he didn’t. Claremont had made it clear that Doug was unaffected by the transmode virus, and Louise had not changed the status quo. Sure, if he was to be brought back as a Warlock-type robot, it was possible to retcon in some kind of latent infection... but when he died, that hope did not exist (in the book’s continuity, that is). OR... you can come up with new ways to use his power, extending what “language” means to fit the story. Personally, I thought Doug had the most fascinating power of all the New Mutants. That issue was very, very good. Very tragic, but reflecting what would definitely happen if those extraordinary beings lived through such heart-wrenching events. I’m sorry to hear it was misunderstood! Is Doug back, now? He was clearly dead (and a ghost, too!) for a while, but I read he had come back when some villain started resurrecting a lot of characters several years ago. I hope he is. Killing heroes worked for Phoenix and Guardian, but became old very fast... and totally irrelevan5 when people started coming back within a few years (or months) of their demise.
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Post by rberman on Sept 3, 2018 18:34:26 GMT -5
That was Louise Simonson's idea. Her comments on the matter:... "He would just come back in some other form, a more Warlockian form. So killing him was not that big a deal. I'd never kill a character if I don't know how I'm going to bring him back because it's comic books, after all. We had gotten a lot of letters from readers who hated him and thought he was boring and thought his powers were stupid and blah-blah-blah. They wanted us to kill him and there's nothing I like more than pleasing my readers. Lightning is going to strike me! Also, he had a difficult character to write and to draw. He was not a visual character. His powers were mental. He could translate languages, which meant that to get him to use his powers, you had to fool around every issue and have him translate something, and that gets a little old after a while. OR... you can come up with new ways to use his power, extending what “language” means to fit the story. Personally, I thought Doug had the most fascinating power of all the New Mutants. That issue was very, very good. Very tragic, but reflecting what would definitely happen if those extraordinary beings lived through such heart-wrenching events. I’m sorry to hear it was misunderstood! Is Doug back, now? He was clearly dead (and a ghost, too!) for a while, but I read he had come back when some villain started resurrecting a lot of characters several years ago. I hope he is. Killing heroes worked for Phoenix and Guardian, but became old very fast... and totally irrelevant when people started coming back within a few years (or months) of their demise. Well I have some maybe good news for you, because Doug was one of many characters resurrected by Selene to fight the X-Men in the X-Necrosha storyline in 2009. And yes, his "language" ability was extended to a ridiculous degree so that he can now read that language of the universe (I guess gaining Firestorm/Molecule Man powers) and the "language of combat" (thus being a Deathstroke-esque ninja who can clobber the whole New Mutants team single-handedly). Witness the (excessive) power of the new Doug (which was dialed way back as soon as he was a hero again):
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 3, 2018 20:19:53 GMT -5
Thanks, rberman! Now THAT’s using Doug’s power in a creative way! Glad to see he’s back.
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Post by brutalis on Sept 4, 2018 9:20:04 GMT -5
I spent the entire 3 day holiday weekend WITHOUT reading any comic Books. There. I said it!
Sometimes a break is required to cleanse the mind and thoughts so you appreciate something even more.
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Post by chadwilliam on Sept 13, 2018 18:27:47 GMT -5
Alex Ross should just invest in a camera.
There. I said it.
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