Talking About A Fat Guy On Thanksgiving

Specifically, Mojo. Because what topic could be more appropriate for the holidays than a fictional representation of crass commercialism that TV executives so covet? Maybe I should have saved this for Christmas. Or Sweeps Week, if I knew when that was. But who has the patience to wait for stuff these days?

Moving on.

Mojo's currently messing around with Rocket Raccoon and Groot after captured them and putting them in ridiculous staged adventures to boost his ratings. Which is how I wound up thinking about him. I haven't read a lot of comics with Mojo in them (counting the first two issues of Annihilators: Earthfall, I think it's less than 10), but I'm curious about the change in his presentation. The Nocenti version from the Longshot mini-series reminds me of a child, albeit an extremely powerful one. He acts without considering consequences, or is completely unaware of them. He's a bit silly, and prone to panic, but he's still dangerous. His very presence on Earth was toxic to everything around him, without any active effort on his part. If he put his mind to it, he was a threat Dr. Strange was hard-pressed to deal with.

The later versions seem less, hmm, "simple-minded", perhaps. He has a greater awareness of his power and influence, and his attention span seems to have improved, but he's a bit crazy, in a Robin Williams' character kind of way. It feels like an act, which if I accept that Mojo's making himself part of his shows, could be his idea of being an interesting character, to boost his ratings. Either way, he does seem to be capable of forming ideas and holding to them for at least a little while, whereas the Longshot version didn't seem to know what he was doing half the time, or remember why he was doing it. I'm not sure which version is more cruel. The Nocenti version is at times unaware of the suffering he causes, and the rest of the time he doesn't care. The later version seems aware, but it's all part of the show, so it's for a good cause (as far as Mojo's concerned).

I wonder if the shift in Mojo's character could relate to the repeated mindwipings Longshot's suffered. Longshot is continuously being reset to a blank slate, and has to start building up who he is all over again. He gets to start his character arc from scratch, and he doesn't always end up in the same place. The Longshot that was on the Australia-era X-Men wasn't the same as the Longshot on Bedard's Exiles. They both had a bit of that cavalier style, but Claremont's was more of sweet, curious kid, and Bedard's had more of a hard edge. He was still a nice guy, but the warrior part of him seemed to have taken a firmer grasp (which might make a certain amount of sense for a guy trying to lead a revolution).

Longshot is forced to start over, but Mojo keeps going. Is his later personality his own attempt to change himself, or is it that he keeps moving down the same path, and where it leads is a overacting ham? That'd be kind of interesting, Longshot stuck in a cycle of rebirth, so to speak, while Mojo keeps plodding along to some final end. Or, here's a question: what happens to Longshot's memories when they're removed? Those recollections, emotions, personal reactions to Longshot's adventures would be like DVD commentary, or a remastered edition. Which sounds like something Mojo would value keeping. Is it possible he stored them within himself, and they've brought about this change? Experiencing the world through Longshot's eyes gave him a greater awareness of the world, but for Mojo, that only gives him a better idea of how to exploit it, because he understands the players and their motivations better now.