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Dan Marcoux
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Wha’ Happened?

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Posted: 18 November 2014 at 11:30am | IP Logged | 1  

• Previously unknown siblings. "The brother I/you never knew I had!" In
all my comicbook reading, this one has worked only ONCE, for me, and
that was with the introduction of Havok.

• Good guys become bad guys. Of course, I worked on what is probably
the Mother of such stories, with Dark Phoenix, but I have noticed a
current running along for some years now, where characters who used to
be good guys come back as back. Dates back a long way, too.
Remember when Mark Gruenwald decided Modred the Mystic was a bad
guy?

• Previously unknown offspring. I actually stopped one of these, in X-
MEN. Chris wanted Proteus to be Xavier's kid, but I balked. As soon as I
was gone, tho. . . .

• Everything You Know is a Lie. I have a fondness for a subtle variation
on this one, things are not always what they seem. The non-subtle
version has become WAAAAAY too popular, imho.

• The Impermanence of Death. Just about everybody who's ever worked
in superhero comics has played this card at least once -- which means
the card is so frayed at the edges there's practically nothing left! Time to
retire it -- or, at the very least, to think really, really, really, really had
before killing a character. (This is another one where Dark Phoenix
probably weighs heavy. A lot of people read that story and thought I
wanna do that!!)

--

Coming in a bit late to this conversation, but what little I know about
network soap operas (General Hospital, Days of Our Lives, etc.), it would
seem as though Comics and Soaps have quite a bit in common!
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Brian Hague
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Posted: 18 November 2014 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | 2  

Joe Zhang wrote: "I don't know if this counts as a cliché, but alternate-reality stories have been overdone. DC is the leader in this regard. They should be called "Dimension Comics".

I don't believe this is true any longer. Once upon a time perhaps, but even taking into account all of the Elseworlds titles out there, once you stack them against Marvel's multiple alternate timelines, event universes, parallel comic lines like MC2, 2009, & the Ultimate Universe, as well as Counter-Earth, Earth-S, and titles such as Exiles and What If, Marvel is probably running neck and neck with the competition at this point.

Dan, I think I've told this story before but years ago I was walking to a friend's house for lunch during the school day and telling her about the Madelyne Pryor storyline taking place in comics at the time, how Scott's girlfriend was apparently back from the dead after a plane crash and he didn't know if she was really Jean Grey or just someone who looked like her. She said the whole thing sounded really silly and exactly like what you'd expect to find in a comic book.

At her place, her mom had the soaps on and my friend curled up in front of the TV to watch. She filled me in on what was going on. It seemed our hero was in a dilemma. The woman he loved had died in a plane crash. Now she had shown up again under a different name, claiming not to know our hero at all...

"It's the SAME STORY!" I said, right down to the heroine's red hair!

As for the redemption of the villain cliche, I'd have to say that many of my favorite stories revolve around this theme to some extent or another. It was established during the 70's that Luthor would some day get over his long-standing, irrational hatred of Superman and wind up traveling the universe with him when they were both very old men. To this end, there were even flashes of humanity shown with the character long before that point. In a back-up story, he escapes jail solely for the purpose of giving his nephew a birthday gift. He opposes the plans of his Earth-2 counterpart to destroy the world. He reforms when he falls in love with a beautiful woman who it turns out was actually a trap designed to transport Superman to an alternate dimension when he kissed her at her wedding to Luthor. Luthor himself had come up with the plan and then induced amnesia in himself so that he could fall in love with her and play the role convincingly. Trouble was, he didn't count on A.) how much falling in love would hurt and B.) Superman figuring it out, albeit too late to save the woman herself from being lost in the dimensional vortex. Not the greatest story ever, but impossible if all Luthor is is a smug, preening bastard who really hates being compared to actor William Frawley.

Imaginary future stories written by Alfred show the Joker reforming, sharing lemonade with the retired Batman, and despairing of his useless son who has taken up his criminal mantle and is currently fighting the Dick Grayson Batman and Bruce Wayne Jr. as Robin. Wonder Woman from the beginning had the intent to not simply defeat but to reform her foes as she succeeded in doing with Paula Von Gunther. The Flash early on faced Mr. Element and Dr. Alchemy, both the same man who went on to reform as Heat Wave would later do. I think they even reformed Mirror Master and Brainiac at certain points in the early 80's, before replacing them with deadlier versions.

Marvel made a cottage industry of switching opponents to the winning side and keeping them there. Sandman is an odd case since he was shown as fairly irredeemable (with the possible exception of MTU #1 where he broke jail to visit his mom at Christmas) right up to the point where he was redeemed over a beer. JB insists Sandman's a murderer since he was on the FBI's ten most wanted list, but in the stories themselves, have they ever talked about who he killed or under what circumstances? It would seem in context that he somehow made the list solely on bank robbery charges. If so, then the reform could have stuck. It didn't. I'm pretty sure Sandman's back on the side of the devils and cringes to look back on his time with Silver Sable and her Wild Pack. As do we all.

Two of my favorite issues of What If are the ones where Spidey succeeds in showbiz and becomes a right bastard doing so and Dr. Doom heeds Reed Richards' warning and successfully contacts his mother in Hell, going on to become a hero to the people of Latveria. 

Back in the day before all villains were serial killers all the time, they tended to be driven individuals with specific goals in mind. If those goals could be met or left behind, then they didn't have to be villains any longer. The decisions they made mattered, often more than just being "bad people" defined solely by their actions in the past. Not that bad people don't exist. They do. In vast numbers and they are, by and large, irredeemable. But they are not very interesting and the stories told about them are often thin and unsatisfying. 

Literature has it's share of moustache-twirling baddies, but they're usually confined to one or two novels. It's difficult to do anything interesting with such characters over the long haul without at least visiting the possibility of seeing if there isn't something redeemable in their background or future.

Not that it's the best decision to make every time. See "The Tragedy of Darth Vader." Overall, though, I'm fine with the possibility of the guy the Thing punching in the nose today fighting alongside him tomorrow.

"Good guys to bad" however is a more slippery slope and a real problem, given that Marvel has fallen in love with this paradigm and has thrown a number of previously decent, admirable characters under the wheels of this runaway chariot. If Magneto is good, Professor X must be ____ (fill in the blank, gentle reader. No, wait. Never mind. We'll do it for you.) If Professor X is bad, then Cyclops who was his most faithful acolyte, can only become good by killing him. Which makes him evil. Which is okay because we brought his teenage self out of the past to be Good, allowing Today's wretched bastard Cyclops to be even more EEeeEvilll... Clever, no? No.

Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic, and all of the Illuminati members are a good deal shadier now than they were before the events of Civil War and War of the Kings when "difficult decisions had to be made" and "being a nice guy wasn't an option..." Good grief, Gwen Stacy is a corrupt little trollop in today's books. What the hell...? Wonder Woman's a neck-breaking violence junkie. Superman's a morally conflicted useless thumbsucker. Batman's a backstage puppeteer, designing deathtraps for his pals because, hey, there's no guarantee they will always be his pals. God forbid Aquaman or the Atom should turn against the human race. If they do, here's how I'll kill them... You know what would be cool? If the heroes were shown to have ALWAYS been cowardly little bastards! I have this idea here called "Identity Crisis" I'd like to share with you all....

Doing the right thing is hard. Writing about the people who do the right thing is not easy either. Coming up with the claptrap listed above? That is a f*ckin' cakewalk. Whew! Thank goodness we came up with moral turpitude as a modern comic-book concept! Now everything gets easy from this point forward! And all it costs us are the characters themselves! Ha! Bargain!! High fives all around! 

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Andy Meyers
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Posted: 18 November 2014 at 4:32pm | IP Logged | 3  

Bad guys becoming good guys. 

I don't have a problem with this one. Bad guys are more interesting to me. I read the first six issues of Luthor in JL and they weren't half bad. Luthor is the best villain in comics so he's difficult to mess up. 
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Petter Myhr Ness
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Posted: 19 November 2014 at 5:23am | IP Logged | 4  

Luthor is the best villain in comics so he's difficult to mess up.
--

But they HAVE, by putting him in a team consisting of the world's greatest HEROES!
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John Byrne
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Posted: 19 November 2014 at 5:45am | IP Logged | 5  

JB insists Sandman's a murderer since he was on the FBI's ten most wanted list, but in the stories themselves, have they ever talked about who he killed or under what circumstances? It would seem in context that he somehow made the list solely on bank robbery charges.

•••

When Sandman was "redeemed" I called the FBI, identified myself as a writer, and asked what it took to get on their Ten Most Wanted. Several things, I was told, but they all had one thing in common: killing people.

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Stephen Robinson
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Posted: 19 November 2014 at 11:20am | IP Logged | 6  

"Redemption" without consequence is one of the things
I dislike most about modern comics.

Generally, if a bad guy (the "good" Nazi in a movie)
changes his ways, he usually pays the price with his
life (taking one in the back so the hero can escape
and so on).

We see something similar in RETURN OF THE JEDI. Darth
Vader kills the Emperor but dies in the process. Vader
surviving and going on to lead a new Jedi order --
despite the fact that he's committed countless war
crimes and should pay for those crimes -- would be
morally unsatisfying. Yet, that's what happened with
Magneto and the X-Men.

Sandman isn't Galactus. He's not "beyond good and
evil." He should spend the rest of his life behind
bars -- even if he's "reformed" (there are a lot of
reformed men in prison who are still serving the time
for their crimes). And the fact that somehow a brutal
murderer was able to say, "Whoops!" and wind up in The
Avengers is just nuts.
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Stephen Robinson
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Posted: 19 November 2014 at 11:25am | IP Logged | 7  

Brian: As for the redemption of the villain cliche,
I'd have to say that many of my favorite stories
revolve around this theme to some extent or another.
It was established during the 70's that Luthor would
some day get over his long-standing, irrational hatred
of Superman and wind up traveling the universe with
him when they were both very old men.

SER: I'm not a fan of the '70s version of Luthor.
Superman is the world's greatest hero and represents
the best in all of us. So his arch foe should be...
not such a bad guy... really... it's complex. Huh?

Lex Luthor should be pure evil -- as inhuman despite
his humanity as Superman is humane despite his alien
nature.

I think where some people slip up is in confusing
Luthor with The Joker. Luthor isn't *crazy* nor does
he even pretend to be for his own purposes (as I like
to think The Joker does). So, yeah, *my* Luthor might
join the Justice League... but as a power play (and
"my" Luthor -- rather than Batman -- would do so to
secretly compile ways to neutralize them). The problem
would be the Justice League being dumb enough to trust
him as far as the front door.

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Andy Meyers
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Posted: 19 November 2014 at 12:56pm | IP Logged | 8  

Lex Luthor should be pure evil -- as inhuman despite 
his humanity as Superman is humane despite his alien 
nature.

Stephen,
It is just my opinion but I disagree. 

And—rule of thumb—those of us who root for the “good guys” are probably well adjusted. But writers must be fair and remember even bad guys (most of them, anyway) see themselves as good—they are the heroes of their own lives. Giving them a fair chance as characters can create some interesting shades of gray—and shades of gray are also a part of life.  
-Stephen King

 
Now again, just my opinion, but I don't see villains as pure evil. If they are depicted as such I feel as though they are less believable. Luthor seems as though he is the flip side to the American ideals that Superman represents. Superman cares about everybody, Luthor pretty much just himself (Luthor also seems like Capitalism gone wrong as well). One might conclude that I sometimes root for the bad guy and this makes me not very well adjusted. This might be true as well.
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Stephen Robinson
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Posted: 19 November 2014 at 1:27pm | IP Logged | 9  

I agree with Stephen King when it comes to my own
fiction. I like to give the antagonists in my stories
admirable qualities and the protagonists very real
flaws. However, I'm not writing superhero comics --
nor does Stephen King.

I "believe" the Luthor in GENERATIONS, for example,
and he's a rat bastard. There is a shade of gray
villain in that story, who Luthor manipulates, and we
do feel sorry for him and his inability to make the
right choices, which led to so much suffering. But
that type of villain isn't Lex Luthor. It doesn't make
a good counterpoint for Superman.

The comic book world is big and beautiful, so there's
certainly room for me to enjoy a Lex Luthor who cares
just for himself ("capitalism gone wrong") and who
might even consider himself the "hero" of his story
(SMALLVILLE and ALL STAR SUPERMAN as examples), but I
also don't want us to lose the JB Luthor of METROPOLIS
900 MILES. There is no "shade of gray" for the sick,
twisted monster in that story. And rightly so.
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Steve De Young
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Posted: 20 November 2014 at 12:04am | IP Logged | 10  

Several things, I was told, but they all had one thing in common: killing people.
-----------------------------
Whew...this stack of bootleg video tapes had me worried for nothing.
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Eric Jansen
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Posted: 20 November 2014 at 2:44am | IP Logged | 11  

I never saw Sandman kill anyone, but he certainly seemed capable of it. He always seemed like a ruthless thug.

One might think that MOST super-villains were dangerous enough to be put on the 10 Most Wanted list! ("100 Most Wanted"?)

And maybe Magneto HAS turned over a new leaf and deserves being accepted by the X-Men--but does that mean that the U.S. government is fine with him walking around free? Sure, I missed a decade or so of the X-MEN comics, so maybe they did some sort of pardon storyline to excuse his numerous terrorist acts and murders, but, yeah, there should be much more consequences than I've seen.
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Bob Harvey
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Posted: 20 November 2014 at 8:06am | IP Logged | 12  

As much as I hate to be the guy who registers just to disagree with the host (honest!), two of the FBI's current Ten Most Wanted fugitives are alleged to have stolen large sums of money but are not implicated in any killings. One (allegedly) stole $7 million in an armed robbery and the other is wanted for securities fraud.

If you go back to the very first Most Wanted list from 1950, there are three armed robbers who were never charged with killing (or attempting to kill) anyone. Same deal with 1963, when the Sandman first appeared. Half of the criminals on the list are bank robbers who were never charged with killing anyone.
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