Even though he's hardly a factor in the comics I purchase, I'm really frustrated with Max Lord being on the loose. I want him stopped, revealed as the scum he is, then thrown in jail with some telepathy-dampening helmet bolted into his skull.
There's a few reasons behind the intensity of that feeling. I think part of it is simply that even if I'm not reading comics where he's up to no good, I'm reading reviews of them, hearing about them, seeing solicitations for them, and it makes it feel like he's been running around free longer than he really has*.
Part of it is what he's done, one thing in particular. I don't know what his actual scheme these days is, but for some reason, the fact he's made it so people believe Ted Kord killed himself really irks me. He didn't just deflect responsibility for his actions, which I'd expect from a villain, that has to damage Ted's reputation as well. Why go that route? If Max can find the power to make practically everyone in the world forget him**, he can't make it so some other poor schmoe gets tabbed as the evil head of Checkmate who killed Ted Kord? Hell, pin it on the Joker, or Onomatopoeia. That guy doesn't even talk, how could he dispute the accusation?
The third part is, I don't have much confidence Max will eventually face justice for what he's done. Or if he is captured and thrown in jail, it'll be written so that it's all part of some larger scheme he has, so he really isn't being defeated at all. With the exception of Cosmic Marvel stuff, I don't expect the heroes to win as often as I used to. Maybe it's the cycle of event stories, where the end of one seems to feed the start of the next. I suppose I shouldn't feel like that. Marvel's heroes did stop Osborn and throw him in jail, and the Lantern Corps stopped Nekron, but I still expect both those villains to bounce back shortly, their defeats barely qualifying as setbacks. I glanced through this week's Avengers Academy in the store and from what I saw of Norman, he doesn't look very bothered about being in prison. If he were raving, demanding to be let out, deluded into really believing he's serving the best interests of the people, or drugged into a stupor to keep him from going on a similar rant, I think I'd feel better about his defeat.
* After Wonder Woman snapped his neck, was it ever revealed to the world how much dirt he was up to? I don't think so, because they couldn't risk it being found out Max was controlling Superman, but the downside is the public at large wouldn't recognize that he was a bad guy, so he'd escape that scorn even if he hadn't wiped knowledge of his existence from the entire world.
** I'd ask where the Spectre is, because I don't see how this could work on him, but I'm used to him being useless when it comes to these sorts of things.
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Oh Max. I'm not even sure that this fruitcake running around messing with people's minds IS the "real" Max Lord. I STILL think that Max has been taken over by something, maybe Kil%ore or something, or a shapeshifter, and the REAL Max is living on Kooey Kooey Kooey with the rest of the dead JLI. Except that they're not really dead, they're just on vacation...yes, that's it, vacation!
I'm very good at being in complete denial.
sallyp: Sometimes denial becomes prophecy, though. After War Games, I used to insist Spoiler wasn't really dead, she'd just been injured and her mother moved the two of them to either St. Joseph, MO, or Springfield, IL to get away from the costumed crazies.
It turned out Steph actually went to Africa with Leslie Thompkins, but close enough.
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