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Post by Icctrombone on Nov 17, 2014 10:30:09 GMT -5
The Scarlet Witch. You could read her 1960's Avengers appearances all the way through and still have no idea what her powers were supposed to be. "Hex bolts" or something like that. Yawn. Her "personality" was defending her jackass brother and falling in love with a robot. When they finally noticed that no one knew what her powers were, someone came up with the vague and awkward "altering probability" description...I think I remember her actually using her power to make someone trip once! Yawn. Then, when "probability-altering" didn't really catch on, Englehart (I think) decides to make her a "real" witch, and that struck me as both obvious and desperate, and still hopelessly vague. (She also becomes the first mainstream superhero, so far as I'm aware, who proselytizes, converting her teenage neighbor to Wicca, which never sat well with me, nor would it have if she'd guided the team to Islam, Christianity, Mormonism, Judaism, etc.). I know lots of people seem to love this character, but since 1971, I've just never been able to feel anything more positive than utter disinterest. Good point. |
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Post by Cei-U! on Nov 17, 2014 12:17:29 GMT -5
For example, there's a lot about the Bat mythos that I find morally and ethically repugnant-- I mean, here's this mentally ill, traumatically stunted man-child beating up on criminals because he's rich enough to be allowed to behave in such a manner-- but there's a lot of really great Bat-stories. I don't really like Batman, but I find him a great "engine" for telling stories. Ah, but what you're describing above is the post-Miller version of the character, which a whole lot of us see as a perversion of the entirely rational and occasionally fallible "world's greatest detective" version that dominated from the 40s to the early '80s, the deputized agent of the Gotham Police Department and honorary member of dozens of law enforcement agencies around the world, the best friend of Superman and trusted (and trusting) co-founder of the Justice League, in short the Batman we love. Cei-U! I summon the repulsive revisionism! |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 17, 2014 12:36:54 GMT -5
As I recall, the story was even conceived without doppelgängers, using the actual Charlton heroes. DC then decided they wanted to use those heroes (the rights for which they had bought) for something else… and so Captain Atom became Dr. Manhattan, Blue Beetle Night Owl and so on. Kind of. Moore actually started working out Watchmen with the MLJ heroes, The Mighty Crusaders, in mind. Obviously they weren't available and this was still at the initial idea gestation phase. Then DC bought the Charlton heroes as a gift for Dick Giordano and they were worked into the plot. However, Dick didn't want his toys messed up so Moore created the dopplegangers. This is per Moore's interview with John B. Cooke in Comic Book Artist #9. And I'll go ahead and be pedantic (not toward you, Ben) and point out that The Watchmen aren't characters. That name never existed as a team. It's the name of the book. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 17, 2014 15:44:11 GMT -5
Hal Jordan and Barry Allen till my dying day. Is the correct answer  , with Superman marginally behind. I can't put my finger on preceisely why those two are so dull, but mein gott they are! Superman gets it for the ridiculously-overpowered level he gets written up to. |
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Post by thebeastofyuccaflats on Nov 17, 2014 17:55:36 GMT -5
When the outrage over the "pussifying" of Dr. Doom in the new FF flick came up, I immediately thought: "#$%* off, when Warren Ellis or a couple other distinct folks aren't in charge of him, he's a shrill, impotently angry goofball who refers to himself in the third person." He's essentially a dead-serious, irony/commentary-free, not as fun cousin to The Monarch from the Venture Bros (again, at least normally).
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fuzzyblueelf
Full Member
People of Color doesn't mean Red Plastic
Posts: 124 
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Post by fuzzyblueelf on Nov 17, 2014 18:14:19 GMT -5
Vision - Sad Trombone noise.
THERE IS NOTHING FUN ABOUT HIM. He's a mopey giant Plastic manbaby.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 17, 2014 18:16:54 GMT -5
He's essentially a dead-serious, irony/commentary-free, not as fun cousin to The Monarch from the Venture Bros (again, at least normally). This is amazingly accurate. |
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fuzzyblueelf
Full Member
People of Color doesn't mean Red Plastic
Posts: 124
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Post by fuzzyblueelf on Nov 17, 2014 18:19:46 GMT -5
yay Venture Bros reference!
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Post by Deleted on Nov 17, 2014 18:39:12 GMT -5
I guess that's why the X-men was cancelled. Was it? It went into reprints but wasn't pulled. Then Claremont came along and gave it a huge kick in the ass...and it became awesome. |
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Post by fanboystranger on Nov 17, 2014 18:45:28 GMT -5
For example, there's a lot about the Bat mythos that I find morally and ethically repugnant-- I mean, here's this mentally ill, traumatically stunted man-child beating up on criminals because he's rich enough to be allowed to behave in such a manner-- but there's a lot of really great Bat-stories. I don't really like Batman, but I find him a great "engine" for telling stories. Ah, but what you're describing above is the post-Miller version of the character, which a whole lot of us see as a perversion of the entirely rational and occasionally fallible "world's greatest detective" version that dominated from the 40s to the early '80s, the deputized agent of the Gotham Police Department and honorary member of dozens of law enforcement agencies around the world, the best friend of Superman and trusted (and trusting) co-founder of the Justice League, in short the Batman we love. Cei-U! I summon the repulsive revisionism! That brings up another interesting tangent, I think-- how much does your first experience with a character color your impression of them? Because the first Batman I ever encountered in comics was the post-Miller Batman, and I think that's really informed my opinion of the character. To be honest, I actually prefer '70s Batman comics to the vast majority of the post-Miller comics (outside of LotDK), especially Englehart, O'Neil, and Goodwin's work with the character, and my favorite version of the contemporary incarnation is by Matt Wagner, whose work seems more in line with the classic Golden Age interpretation of the character. Yet, even when I read those comics, I can't escape the image of Batman as this incredibly damaged individual. When I go back and read pre-Miller Daredevil, I have the same reaction. My image of Cyclops, as I mentioned in my earlier post, is so formed by the Simonson's work with the character. To spin the pendulum the other way, one of my biggest problems with the Avengers franchise since Dsiassmbled was that they turned Hawkeye into this grim, brooding character rather than the sarcastic, cunning bowman I had grown up with. (Thankfully, Fraction's Hawkeye series brought him back to his real self.) |
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Post by gothos on Nov 17, 2014 18:54:20 GMT -5
The Scarlet Witch. You could read her 1960's Avengers appearances all the way through and still have no idea what her powers were supposed to be. "Hex bolts" or something like that. Yawn. Her "personality" was defending her jackass brother and falling in love with a robot. When they finally noticed that no one knew what her powers were, someone came up with the vague and awkward "altering probability" description...I think I remember her actually using her power to make someone trip once! Yawn. Then, when "probability-altering" didn't really catch on, Englehart (I think) decides to make her a "real" witch, and that struck me as both obvious and desperate, and still hopelessly vague. (She also becomes the first mainstream superhero, so far as I'm aware, who proselytizes, converting her teenage neighbor to Wicca, which never sat well with me, nor would it have if she'd guided the teen to Islam, Christianity, Mormonism, Judaism, etc.). I know lots of people seem to love this character, but since 1971, I've just never been able to feel anything more positive than utter disinterest. I don't love Wanda but I've never found her powers problematic. She points and things go wrong in some unspecified way. But even though this can be a pretty bad-ass power-- in the Red Guardian two-parter in AVENGERS I believe she causes a tank to fall apart-- a lot of readers haven't found those powers felicitous. Maybe it's precisely because they aren't predictable that some readers don't like her; making things fall apart doesn't sound as bad-ass as shooting lightning bolts. I would have to read the "Wiccan neighbor" subplot again to be sure, but in my memory it didn't register as proselytizing. If it was the neighbor who expressed interest, and Wanda simply told her about her faith, is that proselytizing? Another POV on that subplot relates to a frequent complaint that most 1960s Marvel heroines had no lives of their own, least of all in the form of passing time with girl-friends. In part, Englehart might have been playing to that deficit. |
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Post by gothos on Nov 17, 2014 18:58:07 GMT -5
I guess we're really focusing on well-known boring characters, 'cause so far no one named is as boring as a lot of the also-rans of the nineties. I happened to be going through a batch of "N" comics, so I read through the first issue of NINJAK, just because I remembered nothing about the comic. "Thought I was gonna die--"
I guess I've always found the Silver Age Atom somewhat boring. His size-changing stunts were nowhere on a par with Flash's speed tricks,Green Lantern's ring-powers and Hawkman's archaic arsenal.
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Post by Icctrombone on Nov 17, 2014 22:29:39 GMT -5
I guess that's why the X-men was cancelled. Was it? It went into reprints but wasn't pulled. Then Claremont came along and gave it a huge kick in the ass...and it became awesome. Issue 92 was January 1975. GS X-men came our April 1975. But 67-92 were all reprints. It was a failed book. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Nov 17, 2014 22:31:13 GMT -5
Vision - Sad Trombone noise. THERE IS NOTHING FUN ABOUT HIM. He's a mopey giant Plastic manbaby. He was one of the most popular Characters in the 60's and 70's. I think it went downhill when he got married. |
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Post by berkley on Nov 17, 2014 23:09:25 GMT -5
I have to chime in with those who have never found the Scarlet Witch of any interest. In my case it started for the most superficial of reasons: I disliked her colour scheme - that red on pink costume, the headpiece thing, whatever it was supposed to be; then it progressed to her personality - sort of whiny and complaining in the early days, IIRC; and finally her powers - so vague that they made it all too easy to extricate her team-mates from some seemingly hopeless predicament.
In one way or another all those flaws have been addressed over the years, but I've never gotten over my initial dislike.
Same with the Wasp: I suppose she was meant to be charmingly whimsical or something in those early Avengers comics but I always found her just plain annoying. A spoiled rich girl who could always be counted on to start pouting or go into a snit when she didn't get her way.
And again, they've tried to remedy these problems over the years, but I still can't stand the character.
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, with Superman marginally behind.
