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Post by james on Apr 1, 2024 12:10:09 GMT -5
I had put in a post about how I was rereading my TNTT trades to see how well they held up. And while overall they are enjoyable the one thing that I can’t stand is Changeling. Gar’s super sexist remarks not to mention his one liners made me wish that after he was shocked by Terminator in issue 10 he died. Was this Marc Wolfman and Perez’s sensibilities? Just an observation.
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Post by MDG on Apr 1, 2024 12:36:24 GMT -5
I had put in a post about how I was rereading my TNTT trades to see how well they held up. And while overall they are enjoyable the one thing that I can’t stand is Changeling. Gar’s super sexist remarks not to mention his one liners made me wish that after he was shocked by Terminator in issue 10 he died. Was this Marc Wolfman and Perez’s sensibilities? Just an observation. It's just how they handled his "characterization." In the Doom Patrol Gar was pretty much a brat. |
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Post by james on Apr 1, 2024 12:48:03 GMT -5
I had put in a post about how I was rereading my TNTT trades to see how well they held up. And while overall they are enjoyable the one thing that I can’t stand is Changeling. Gar’s super sexist remarks not to mention his one liners made me wish that after he was shocked by Terminator in issue 10 he died. Was this Marc Wolfman and Perez’s sensibilities? Just an observation. It's just how they handled his "characterization." In the Doom Patrol Gar was pretty much a brat. I have always wanted to read Doom Patrol with the undertanding that Gar is Gar. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2024 13:24:34 GMT -5
I read New Teen Titans while I was going to school, and Gar's personality reminded me of plenty of kids I knew. There were always those guys who talked obnoxiously, hit on girls all the time, and plenty of awkward flirting all around. I can look back at that age and see it for what it was, and realize lots of kids were just overcompensating, but that's adolescense for you. So I don't think it was to glorify sexism, Gar always seemed portrayed as a bit of a twit who had redeeming moments at times but couldn't help put his foot in his mouth a lot.
I get the spirit of your comment though. I struggle with Levitz and the Legion at times, much as I overall loved his run with Giffen, where they made Phantom Girl and often accompanied by Shadow Lass being extremely mean, often to Timber Wolf. I don't remember being as bothered as a kid, but now when I reread it seems so cringy.
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Post by james on Apr 1, 2024 13:27:47 GMT -5
I I don't remember being as bothered as a kid, but now when I reread it seems so cringy. I agree. As a kid I just thought he was hip and cool and my favorite member of Titans. Now I look back and wish Donna or Robin would just slap him. |
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Post by tarkintino on Apr 1, 2024 14:44:05 GMT -5
I I don't remember being as bothered as a kid, but now when I reread it seems so cringy. I agree. As a kid I just thought he was hip and cool and my favorite member of Titans. No I look back and wish Donna or Robin would just slap him Why? Teenagers with raging hormones (along with the personality extremes that often go along with it) are common to that age. Teenagers behaved that way long before TNTT comic, and still act that way, which gave more variety to the main characters, rather than all being ultra-serious or driven like Dick Grayson. |
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Post by james on Apr 1, 2024 14:55:31 GMT -5
I agree. As a kid I just thought he was hip and cool and my favorite member of Titans. No I look back and wish Donna or Robin would just slap him Why? Teenagers with raging hormones (along with the personality extremes that often go along with it) are common to that age. Teenagers behaved that way long before TNTT comic, and still act that way, which gave more variety to the main characters, rather than all being ultra-serious or driven like Dick Grayson. Ok fair point. |
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Post by tonebone on Apr 1, 2024 15:03:27 GMT -5
There has been a lot of talk lately about the new Netflix "Avatar The Last Airbender" series and how they took the Sokka character and toned down his sexism and mansplaining, and how it really weakened his character arc. This was in an effort to make him "more palatable" to a new, more enlightened, generation.
I think if you sand down the rough edges of characters' flaws, you end up with boring characters. If Gar's personality grates on your nerves, then he's a grating character. But he is who he is. That's not saying that he was "endorsed" by the unenlightened backwards savages of the 80's... it just means he's a type of character that was prevalent in that time. He was still grating then, if not more familiar.
Things that "have not aged well" usually have aged just fine, just maybe not in the same way you have. Or better yet, they are static creations, frozen in time, and have not aged at all, while the reader has.
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Apr 1, 2024 16:45:36 GMT -5
I'm going to try not to derail this thread as I don't know much about the character in questions besides the Teen Titans cartoon. But I agree with tonebone about Sokka. After many, many attempts to get me to watch it by our oldest boy, "making him more palatable" will completely flatten any stories they try to tell. Not every character can or really "needs" to be sensible. And besides as far as I can remember Sokka does "come around" when it comes to his more negative qualities through the journey and making the friends that he did. You could really say the same about Toph's abrasiveness that softens and her ego comes down a few notches as she learns teamwork. I think these kinds of characters are what distinguish a story being told that can maybe teach the reader about how other people work. It gives us a broader scope of humanity and how we are all different whether our negative qualities show or not.
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Post by Cei-U! on Apr 1, 2024 18:50:45 GMT -5
Gar was my favorite character in NTT precisely because he was an overcompensating jerkwad and thus the only Titan who actually acted like a teenager.
Cei-U!
I summon the adolescent angst!
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 1, 2024 21:20:26 GMT -5
Yeah, Gar was being a teenager; but, he did slowly grow out of it and become more serious. That is the point of such traits, for a character you want the audience to like....eventually. Take them through a journey. Just as teenagers mature and grow out of behaviors like that (hopefully, but we have plenty of examples who have made it to their 70s who prove some people never mature) and that journey can make for great stories. Speedy could be a bit of a pain in the ass, but matured quite well, post drug addiction story. Jack Knight, in Starman, started out as pretty much a p@#$k, but becomes a hero, by taking a stand for something and protecting people, finding he likes the feeling and taking more and more responsibility for Opal City and the people in it. That is maturity....the taking of responsibility for your own life and the world around you.
I don't think Gar represented either Marv or George, as both handled mature characters well and had far more of them than those like Gar. Marv's characterization of Richard Rider, in Nova, was nothing like that.
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 1, 2024 21:21:43 GMT -5
ps I felt that Wolfman was actually trying to take some of the edge off Jason Todd, when he appeared in the Titans series, before he was killed off (He got better).
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Post by k7p5v on Apr 2, 2024 1:31:52 GMT -5
ps I felt that Wolfman was actually trying to take some of the edge off Jason Todd, when he appeared in the Titans series, before he was killed off (He got better). Sounds interesting. For what it's worth, I'll always prefer this version of the Jason/Roy friendship over the N52/trucker-hat version...  |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Apr 2, 2024 2:33:42 GMT -5
Gar was my favorite character in NTT precisely because he was an overcompensating jerkwad and thus the only Titan who actually acted like a teenager. (...) Yeah, he definitely acted like a lot of the teens I knew back then, but he often talked like a '50s mobster (e.g., neither I nor any of my fellow early '80s teens ever said 'wotta dish!' about a girl). |
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Post by kirby101 on Apr 2, 2024 8:28:47 GMT -5
There are a lot of things we loved when we were young that doesn't "hold up". It doesn't mean we were wrong when we loved it, or wrong now when we no longer think it was good.
And to not use comics here, I can think of cartoons and movies that I loved, that when I see today as total crap.
I have seen people praise the 80s Transformer movie as if it was Lawrence of Arabia. I tried to watch it recently. It's a silly, bad cartoon. It's okay if you loved it when you were 9, but acknowledge that it is not a masterpiece.
As far as comics. I think the Thor review thread by Icctrombone and Hoosier is a good example of how to do a balanced look at these things. They understand that there was a lot of Silver age silliness going on that we didn't see when we were young. But at the same time affirm that the stories were fun and the art was very good.
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