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Post by Deleted on Dec 1, 2021 7:18:48 GMT -5
Magpie. Not sure she’s ever topped her Man of Steel appearance, subjective though these things often are.
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Post by chadwilliam on Dec 1, 2021 12:40:37 GMT -5
Perhaps more "never had their full potential realized" than "never used correctly" but here are two characters who seemed to go in a different direction after their debut promised so much more:
- Alan Scott was introduced as an everyman who stumbled upon a mysterious lamp which seemed charged more by black magic than anything advanced technology could account for. We learn that the lamp is not to be trifled with and can bring death as effortlessly as it restores life so use it cautiously, especially as it appears to sentient what with its "First, I shall bring death..." proclamation. But if you're expecting the sort of "You need to get ring of that ring, Alan! It's possessed! It's controlling you!" set-up you generally get following such a back story... well, I don't know what to say. I've read the first Golden Age Green Lantern Archive and it isn't long before the ring is treated as a sort of a benign, telepathically controlled tool (albeit a very advanced tool, but still something you can just stick in your pocket and forget about when not in use).
- I remember the original Human Torch, Jim Hammond paying a visit to his creator in his second appearance either looking for answers or acceptance or for sheer revenge (I haven't read the series in a while) but after this, did his being an android ever mean anything, at least, during the Golden Age? Seems strange that he should go from Frankenstein Monster to Johnny Cleancut in the space of, what, a few issues?
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Post by coinilius on Dec 2, 2021 23:00:16 GMT -5
An outstandingly classic example of misguided writing.
Without any input from Kirby, SILVER SURFER #1 gave the Surfer an origin that actually managed to COMPLETELY CONTRADICT everything about his character and personality that had been published up to that point!
A few years ago, a rumor came out that there were 3 different writers-- all uncredited-- who actually did the stories in that run of SILVER SURFER: Roy Thomas, Denny O'Neil & Archie Goodwin. As soon as I read that, I found it very believable. Roy's work was always overly-serious and pretentious; O'Neil's was the same, but if anything, even more downbeat and depressing (that pretty much sums up that entire run). Only Goodwin was a really decent writer... and my suspicion was, that he did the ONE issue that dealt heavily with science-fiction concepts, as it seemed better than the rest. (#6: "Worlds Without End")
In a more subtle and insidious way... Kirby was writing an origin for Galactus to appear in THOR... but somewhere along the way, the pages he did were published completely out of sequence, spread out over several issues, and with the dialogue totally altering everything Kirby had done when he wrote the story originally.
This is what happens when you have one guy doing the writing... and ANOTHER guy deliberately IGNORING everything the 1st guy did, altering the published work so it bears almost no resemblence to what the actual writer had intended.
Interesting - I remember an article in the Kirby Collector that tried to reconstruct Kirby's original intentions for the Surfer - have they ever done something similar with that Galactus origin story in Thor? I agree that it's always seemed an oddly un-Kirby-like thing to do with the character but I've always just written it off as a momentary lapse in judgment. It would be fascinating to see what he actually had in mind at the time. I’m pretty sure they did, but it’s been a while… maybe I’m thinking of an a discussion Tolworthy might have had? I think there was an issue of the Jack Kirby Collector that was about Galactus’ origin and it involved the Watcher?
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Post by berkley on Dec 5, 2021 0:21:31 GMT -5
Interesting - I remember an article in the Kirby Collector that tried to reconstruct Kirby's original intentions for the Surfer - have they ever done something similar with that Galactus origin story in Thor? I agree that it's always seemed an oddly un-Kirby-like thing to do with the character but I've always just written it off as a momentary lapse in judgment. It would be fascinating to see what he actually had in mind at the time. I’m pretty sure they did, but it’s been a while… maybe I’m thinking of an a discussion Tolworthy might have had? I think there was an issue of the Jack Kirby Collector that was about Galactus’ origin and it involved the Watcher?
I'll have to look through my Kirby Collectors some time to see if I can find it, if there was one. I don't have every single issue, but most likely if Galactus was on the cover or if I noticed that there was a related story inside I would have bought it.
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Post by coinilius on Dec 5, 2021 4:21:07 GMT -5
Looking online, an article at the Jack Kirby Museum mentions that the 1977 Jack Kirby Collector 14 has a story on the Galactus origin, if that helps the search.
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Post by Cei-U! on Dec 5, 2021 6:21:12 GMT -5
- Alan Scott was introduced as an everyman who stumbled upon a mysterious lamp which seemed charged more by black magic than anything advanced technology could account for. We learn that the lamp is not to be trifled with and can bring death as effortlessly as it restores life so use it cautiously, especially as it appears to sentient what with its "First, I shall bring death..." proclamation. But if you're expecting the sort of "You need to get ring of that ring, Alan! It's possessed! It's controlling you!" set-up you generally get following such a back story... well, I don't know what to say. I've read the first Golden Age Green Lantern Archive and it isn't long before the ring is treated as a sort of a benign, telepathically controlled tool (albeit a very advanced tool, but still something you can just stick in your pocket and forget about when not in use). The origins of the Golden Age GL's ring were explored in five 1970s issues of Green Lantern (#108-112), which prominently featured the ring's sentient intellect. It includes a scene where the ring kills a criminal who tries to use it. You can read about in the second part of my Earth-Two Guide here on CCF.
Cei-U! I summon the Green Flame of Life!
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Post by Rob Allen on Dec 5, 2021 21:07:28 GMT -5
The origins of the Golden Age GL's ring were explored in five 1970s issues of Green Lantern (#108-112), which prominently featured the ring's sentient intellect. It includes a scene where the ring kills a criminal who tries to use it. You can read about in the second part of my Earth-Two Guide here on CCF. Which can be found here: classiccomics.org/thread/498/ccf-guide-earthNo one has posted to that thread in five years, so I had to search for it. Figured I'd save everyone else the trouble. Now I'm going to bookmark it.
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Post by beyonder1984 on Dec 25, 2021 11:27:15 GMT -5
In many ways, most villains ought to be one-shots, but as seen since The Joker, readers demand them to continue to hound the hero. Look at Doomsday, Venom, Bane, or Carnage: no creative reason that they lasted so long, it was just for commercial purposes.
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