| Posted: 29 January 2019 at 11:56am | IP Logged | 12
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I like pink very much, John.
"Fixing" Cyclops might well be done at some point - it surely seems as if Claremont wanted to in the X-Men/Alpha Flight two parter - but that's where we mess with continuity again.
In the Marvel universe far more than in the DCU, there are characters who need (or at least needed) to be physically "fixed" in this manner - Don Blake was lame, Tony Stark lived on death's edge with that shrapnel, Matt Murdock was blind, Bruce Banner was the Hulk, and so on.
But "fixing" them messes up that continuity again! It changes the characters too far, and messes up their motivations.
Unfortunately, it's too easy, and I have no idea if current Marvel heroes have been "fixed" or not. But what would that have done to Cyclops, for example? No longer constantly worried about hurting or killing someone... what direction would his personality have gone?
Or one of the biggest ones - our Mr. Byrne had Franklin Richards change the Thing. At that point, Ben Grimm had the dinosaur epidermis again, and it was irreversible by any standard methods; it needed "wish magic" to change him back to rocky skin, which is what Franklin did, so that Ben's mental attitude wouldn't be devastated.
What if he had gone a different direction? "Uncle Ben is so sad with dino skin... and he's accepted rocky skin, but it still makes him sad. I'll just change him so that he looks like he used to, but still as strong and tough as the Thing!" And Ben Grimm goes back to his humanic form, but still as strong as the Hulk (give or take.)
Yeah, it's a reasonable direction. It might even work. But it destroys the nature of the character. Remember, these are comic characters, not real people; some of them are SUPPOSED to have flaws. Superman and Manhunter from Mars gotta have weaknesses. Bruce Wayne's and Dick Grayson's parents have to have died*.Green Lanterns have to have a weakness.
*Although Alan Brennert did an excellent alternate take on this in his "To Kill A Legend" in Detective Comics #500.
Normal people - even with super powers - aren't as interesting as those with twists or flaws, physical or emotional. Shucks, Stan knew that when he created Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four. Considering how things turned out after that... maybe he was right.
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