An Unkillable Exemplar of Batman's False Hope

Marvel and DC are going to do another crossover this fall. Or two, maybe. Both Batman & Deadpool (Batman vs. Deadpool?), but one published by Marvel (in September, by Zeb Wells and Greg Capullo), and one by DC (in November, by Grant Morrison and Dan Mora.)

My initial reaction was to groan. I fully expect Wells to go a humor route, with lots of Deadpool making dumb jokes or comments - odds on a Batman v. Superman "Martha? Why did you say that name?" reference? 1:1? - and Batman being irritated by his inability to either get away from Deadpool or shut him up. Or an opportunity for Batman to fight somebody that can take everything he can dish out and keep coming. Could get old very quickly either way.

But Deadpool is, in some ways, a perfect Batman antagonist. Wade Wilson suffers from mental illness. A highly variable and extremely comic book-y type of mental illness, but mental illness all the same. He has done horrible things, hurt and killed people, in some cases without remorse. Maybe because they threatened people he cared about, but sometimes simply because he was angry at the way things were going in his life and they were convenient targets.

And yet. . .sometimes he does the right thing. He helps people who have been hurt or exploited. He saves the world. Sometimes he still doesn't do the right thing, but not for lack of trying. He really tried to be a good Avenger, really tried to live up to Captain America's belief in him. But he was too willing to trust someone else's judgment if they gave him praise, which is how he ends up following Stevil Rogers' orders during Secret Empire.

Most of Batman's arch-enemies are people with mental illnesses. That's why they go to Arkham, an admittedly shitty asylum, but pretty much all Gotham has if you want to treat them so they can re-enter society without being dangers to themselves or others.

Some times it even works! Harvey Dent gets better. The Ventriloquist gets better. The Riddler at least shifts his impulse to prove his intelligence to solving crimes as a p.i. instead of committing them. Harley Quinn gets better. Poison Ivy, so on. Most of them backslide, sooner or later. An endless cycle of progress, then regression.

Deadpool is almost a perfect example of what Batman's working towards. Without ever getting any real help from a mental health professional (Dr. Bong doesn't count, nor does Cable doing telekinetic brain surgery), Wade Wilson still has periods where he can function. Can have friends, have a home, have a family. Sure, he still frequently beats the crap out of people, but most of them are trying to hurt innocent people. Batman can't exactly throw stones about that.

I don't know if I'll buy either book when they come out, but I can't say for certain that I won't. Which is more than I would have expected at first glance. 

Royalty in Name Only

Something about Dragon Ball Z that amuses me is how, in between getting his ass kicked, Vegeta will keep talking about being 'Prince of all Saiyans.' By the time he's first introduced, two of the other three Saiyans in the universe have just died fighting each other. He's the prince of one full-blooded Saiyan (Nappa), and one half-blood (Gohan.)

The number increases a little bit over time. Goku comes back to life - twice! - Vegeta's got a couple of kids now (I don't know if we can count the time-traveling grown-up version of his son from another timeline as a 3rd kid), Goku's got another son. Gohan's got a kid if we want to count quarter-Saiyans. Broly's apparently in canon now, and maybe Vegeta's got a long-lost brother (Tarble or something like that, not sure if he's in continuity or that was another movie one-off.) Still, Vegeta's not even prince of enough people to fill a small classroom, even before taking into account that once Nappa dies, none of them defer to him as any sort of ruler, leader, or inspirational figure.

But it's not clear Vegeta really sees that as something a prince* does. When he's first introduced, he's just learned about the Dragon Balls via Raditz's communicator. Nappa asks if they'll use them to bring Raditz back, but Vegeta dismisses this as a waste of a wish. We know, from Raditz telling Goku, the Saiyans' homeworld was destroyed, and so the four of them (plus Gohan) are all that's left of their species.

You'd figure maybe Vegeta thinks it makes more sense to wish for the entire planet back. Give him back the subjects he was deprived of ruling. But no, he plans to wish for immortality for himself, and maybe Nappa (though I wouldn't have been surprised if he excluded his lackey.) You could argue he doesn't have any idea if the Dragon Balls can restore an entire planet. All he knows is the guy who killed Raditz (Piccolo), is certain they can resurrect Goku, a single person. That's fair, but he has no reason whatsoever to think they can make him immortal, yet that's his first thought.

It would be one thing if Vegeta was just a shitty ruler, who sees his subjects as objects that exist to serve him, to be terminated if they fail. That's how Frieza operates, killing loyal fighters and technicians if they make the mistake of delivering an update or communication when Frieza's in a bad mood.

But it's more like Vegeta's concept of being a prince doesn't actually require anyone for him to rule or command at all. He doesn't even need other Saiyans to grovel and tell him how awesome he is. He's not interested in bringing Raditz back once he dies. As soon as Nappa's back is broken, Vegeta kills him. He makes multiple attempts to kill Goku and Gohan, when they're all that's left of his people. Frieza took the Saiyans to the brink and now Vegeta's trying to nudge them over the edge into oblivion.

But a lot of his prince talk comes back to his efforts to surpass Goku. Vegeta figures that, as a descendant of a royal bloodline. Goku's a low-level commoner, descended from Saiyans of no particular note. When Goku opens a can of Triple Kaioken Whup-Ass on him, Vegeta's muttering about how he's an 'elite Saiyan warrior,' while Goku's a 'low-ranked fighter,' that shouldn't be able to deal out this kind of damage. When Goku hits Super Saiyan, Vegeta casts aside his belief about the Super Saiyan being a legendary figure that hadn't occurred for 1,000 years. If Goku can do it, so can Vegeta. And his Super Saiyan will be even super-er because of his bloodline.

With the Saiyans being a species whose existence seems to revolve around combat, prince is something closer to a champion. The prince should be the best Saiyan, meaning the strongest. That's why it doesn't matter if all the other Saiyans are dead or not. He doesn't need to rule them to demonstrate his status. His continued existence proves his superiority. He's alive and they aren't because he's stronger.

* I also wonder why he always calls himself a prince. His dad's dead, doesn't that make him king by default? Especially once Frieza's dead and Vegeta's no longer under his thumb.

Overlapping Time-Hopping

I was thinking recently about how, while many Marvel superheroes or teams may have time travel foes, you don't see a lot of crossover between the different groups of time travelers*.

Kang's the big Time Travel Guy at Marvel, and he does periodically go to war with other time travelers. But it's usually himself, meaning either the person he was/will become, or alternate timeline Kangs. Occasionally he and Dr. Doom cross paths, but it's not always a conflict. Even when it is, it's not necessarily a battle across time.

Mostly, though, I was thinking about the X-Men. They're littered with time travelers, both friends and foes. Cable, Stryfe, Bishop, Rachel Summers, Trevor Fitzroy, yadda yadda. There's a several, and they always seem to be trying to do something. Granted, sometimes the "something" they want to do is in direct conflict with the "something" one of the others is trying to do, so they may cancel each other out.

But not always. I could see the argument Kang doesn't care what they do, because if he's in the 20th/21st Century, it's to conquer it, so whatever outcome Cable hopes to achieve for 1,000 years from now is irrelevant anyway. But Immortus was usually more interested in controlling time itself, which seems like the sort of thing that might inhibit someone like Cable.

Or take someone like Zarkko, the Tomorrow Man. Not too impressive to look at, definitely not a first-stringer as villains go. A guy who traveled to the past to steal weapons he could use to dominate his peaceful era. But, again, resisting a would-be dictator seems like the sort of thing most the mutant-related time-hoppers would be ready and willing to do.

Beyond the notion that all these characters' goals on so different or on such different scales they don't conflict, the other easy answer is there have been conflicts like that, but with all the time travel involved, they're resolved in such a way we don't notice any changes to the timeline.

The thing that interests me is, most of the time travelers are used to fighting their enemies in one specific time. Kang fights the Avengers at whatever point he happens to show up to challenge them. Cable picks a specific point to stop Apocalpyse. They can pick the battleground (allowing for however accurate the writer wants their time travel capabilities to be.) Against another time traveler, that could go out the window, and it might be interesting to see who could adapt to losing that advantage the easiest.

* I'm less sure about DC, although Flash's foe Abra Kadabra's from the future, and I can't recall him tangling with the Legion of Super-Heroes or anything like that.

It's a Lightweight, Watery World

I came across a thread somewhere back in the fall, discussing the size of the world where One Piece takes place. The model someone posted listed the diameter of the planet at over 61,000 km. That's 10,000 km larger than Uranus, half the size of Saturn, 5x bigger than Earth. A quick Google search revealed arguments that it's actually around 35,000 km, or maybe over 420,000 km (3 times the size of Jupiter.)

To be clear, I have no idea what any of these measurements are based on. Presumably any mentions of height or depth in the manga or anime. Almost certainly extrapolating from maps we see of specific places, combined with references to distances or travel times. Maybe some data books? Probably also based on how long it takes the Straw Hats to get from one end of the first half of the Grand Line to the other, which would be half the circumference of the planet, plus average sailing speeds for the different ships they used.

Not sure how you incorporate the time they were drifting through the air with a giant octopus for a balloon, or the Thousand Sunny being able to rocket through the sky, but I'm sure those folks manage.

Back to the original point. There's also the above still of the Library on Ohara. Some people take this as a model of their world, meaning it's orbited by several moon. So the notion floated in the thread was, this is the Doylist explanation for how ridiculously strong everyone is, since even the "weak" characters survive falls or being thrown through walls that would kill any of us. The planet is huge, the gravity is higher, so these folks are all really strong from moving under heavy gravity. Kind of like early Superman (before it became the yellow solar radiation powering him), or Charlie-27 from the OG Guardians of the Galaxy.

It doesn't really work, since those characters demonstrate their strength and resilience in places they move to with weaker gravity. All the One Piece characters are on their birth planet all the time, minus the crazy guy that flew his giant airship to the Moon because he thought it was the proper place for a god like himself. And he says he's traveling to the moon, singular, and no one asks him to specify which moon, implying there's only one. There's also never a sign of multiple moons in the sky during any night scenes, which wouldn't be difficult to do if that was actually a feature of the planetary system Trigun, for example, made sure to show more than one moon, because that was part of the setting.

It's more likely the image is the current conception of the entire solar system, and those poor suckers are still trapped in a geocentric view of the universe. It would at least fit with their society, where you have a bunch of "nobles" living in a city atop a mountain, proclaiming they control everything and everyone else is theirs to kill or enslave as they wish. Of course they'd insist the entire universe revolves around them.

I wonder how that impacts navigation in a world so dependent on traveling at sea. You rarely see anyone sail at night, for example, or reference using the stars, even before the main characters got to the Grand Line, where the special compass always points to another island. But the observed difference in the movements of the stars when assuming they orbit your world, doesn't seem like enough to impact navigation, based on a brief look online.

Back to the gravity. What I'm thinking, the peculiar physics and resilience seen in One Piece aren't a result of their growing up on a huge world with gravity several times stronger than Earth's. Rather, while their world may be much larger, its gravity is actually weaker, due to a low density. My example was going to be Saturn, because I remembered my old astronomy books stating its gravity was only 93% that of Earth's, since it was less dense than water. The old, "It would float in water, if you could find a tub to hold it" bit. They appear to have gained new data, and its gravity is actually 107% Earth's.

Still, the basic idea holds. The world is largely covered by water, which is theoretically only as dense as. . .water. The islands scattered about vary in size, but most seem like they could be crossed on foot within a week, if not less. I don't think there are many the size of Cuba, let alone Greenland or Australia. There's one continent, actually a mountain range that encircles the globe (albeit broken up occasionally by water.) It rises from the sea floor, which is known to be 10,000 meters deep, and extends to at least cloud level.

I can't find anything more concrete on the height of the Red Line, though there are cities on clouds 10,000 meters up, and we don't hear about those colliding with the Red Line, so it may not reach that high. Even capped at less than 20,000 meters in total height, it's well above Mauna Kea, which is 10,200 meters from the sea floor to peak. Lower gravity would allow for taller mountains, like Olympus Mons on Mars, which is 24,000 meters high.

Given the lack of larger landmasses on the planet, and the amount of surface area covered by water, I don't know that there's much tectonic activity. Certainly not many active volcanoes. No evidence of recent plate tectonics, which might suggest a cooling core and mantle. Which would likely mean little to no magnetic field. You could probably handwave in something about cosmic radiation and Devil Fruits if you wanted, but I'm thinking in terms of what this means for the internal composition of the planet. 

Earth's high density is the result of its iron-nickel core. Same for Mercury. One Piece's Earth might lack those elements, or lack them in great amount, or they're diffuse throughout the interior. Occasionally there's enough activity to push some through the crust and you get an island. If there's no spinning core to create a magnetic field, all you have are each islands personal magnetic field. Why this only happens on the Grand Line and not any of the Blues, I don't know, but I might as well guess while we're here.

The Grand Line is banded by two stretches of water with no winds or currents, which suggests some sort of weird thing. Maybe there was one major event that created the Red Line (some sort of internal contraction that crumpled the crust in the middle?) and broke up existing current and wind patterns, creating a stretch of geologic time with limited activity, forming the islands in the Grand Line. The disruption of global currents created new ones in each of the "Blues", and that created deposition zones where material collected and over a very long time, built islands out of sedimentary rock, rather than igneous. Different composition, no magnetic field.

End result, the characters run faster, jumper higher, fall from great heights, and its easy because the gravity is low. If the planet does lack in heavier metals, you could explain how easily characters are knocked through or destroy buildings as the available stone being less sturdy and metal being somewhat scarce. Lower gravity would likely mean lighter, more fragile bones, since supporting the body would be easier, too. But we do see characters (especially Usopp) wrapped up in bandages or body casts frequently, without suffering any long-term damage. So the bones are light and break easy, but possibly that makes them easy to put back together.

Moonlit Dreams

So I was thinking about the different dreams we see in Moon Knight #24. Specifically, Jake's dream, but let's take them one at a time.

Marc's dream - or the one Morpheus cooks up for Marc - is him living the suburban life. BBQs in the backyard with the family. His parents, his brother (a successful lawyer), Marlene, Diatrice, a couple of other friends. He and Frenchie have some sort of business together. The nature of it isn't clear, but his parents approve, so probably not being a mercenary. Everyone other than Marc's dad is wearing relaxed clothing, Sabbatini gives everyone a smile (but not a Joker-esque rictus grin), Rosenberg leans heavy on soft, golden light bathing the whole thing. Idyllic.

Though it's interesting Marc snaps out of it before Frenchie actually shows up. Everyone other than Marlene and their daughter are actually dead, and so far as I know, Frenchie's alive, just not on speaking terms with Marc these days.

Skip Jake for a moment, hop over to Steven. He's got the big mansion, the pool, the estate. Marlene's there, too, along with a couple of other supporting cast members, Nedda and Samuels. The help staff, maybe, although I feel like the lady might be his financial planner. They're standing at the table while Marlene sits and, honestly, looks like she's playing an invisible piano, but they're gone when Steven arrives, still in a tie, presumably home from a long day making big bucks. Because it's night out, dark outside, the inside lit with more of an orange glow, and not as soft. The power of bright, artificial lights. Just for Steven and Marlene.

No Diatrice, though. Does Steven feel no connection to the girl, only think of her as Marc's daughter? Maybe that's accurate, I don't know how that would work with a system. Probably depends on the system. Steven may have made peace with the idea he'll never get to be a part of her world, even in dreams, while Marc still holds some hope he'll get unfucked to the point he could be a dad.

What comes after Steven's not much interest. By that point Morpheus is flailing for something to make Marc settle down and enjoy himself. Thus, the Avengers welcome him back, or he gets a chance to just fight a lot of people forever. They're more simplistic, surface-level attempts.

So let's go to Jake. Jake's throwing a party at his favorite bar, to celebrate winning big on the horses.  How big? Big enough for this one party, or big enough to be set for life? Who knows, but Jake's happy because he could invite everyone he likes. They got plenty of food and drink and good music and be out of the weather and the danger.

He's immediately in contact with Marc, wrapping an arm around his shoulder with a big smile. Everything's the purple hue Rosenberg uses for Jake's scenes. Absolutely drenched in it, to the point it obscures the faces of the people at the party. Is that because Marc doesn't know these people, doesn't have access to Jake's memories, or because it's from Morpheus' powers? For all Jake's claims that it's a party, things seem pretty subdued. Most people are just sitting, staring blankly ahead. Maybe all these people, like most of the ones in Marc and Steven's dreams, are dead.

The thing I really noticed, though, was that Jake says this was what he always wanted, to be able to take care of everyone. Marc wants a quiet life with his family. Steven wants Marlene and the big house back (Jake's dream is the only one where Marlene doesn't make an appearance, after Jake once asked Marc if he really thought he was the only one who loved her.) And Jake wants to take care of people.

It makes think, probably inaccurately, of Jake as sort of the heart of the whole thing. That it's his compassion that makes Moon Knight want to protect people. Minus that, you've just got a guy who likes to beat the shit out of criminals, like the Punisher. It's not how I would have thought of it, but it's something the comic made me consider, at least.

MacKay's already touched on the question of what Jake and Steven bring to the party, how Moon Knight is operating with his hands tied when only Marc gets to be in control. But that was a surface level, the contacts and connections those two have. Moon Knight's supposedly unique among Khonshu's fists, at the minimum never having all the fighting techniques put directly in his brain, but the presence of Jake and Steven probably factor in as well. So they each much bring something as a person, that Khonshu thought would help.

Lockjaw Makes Talking Tough

I've been re-reading the John Byrne/Ron Wilson 1980s Thing series, as a bit of a precursor to its Saturday Splash Page entry in a couple of months. In issue 3, Crystal and Lockjaw come looking for Ben, because Quicksilver is determined to expose he and Crystal's daughter to the Terrigen Mists, even though there's no telling what that'll do to a half-mutant/half-Inhuman child.

Crystal's opposed, but Inhuman society, among its other fucked-up policies, puts full control of that decision in the hands of the father. Even when the mother's a member of the royal family, and the dad's just some jackass that married into the society.

Ben and Lockjaw both step in, but what ultimately convinces Pietro to stop is when Lockjaw speaks, revealing that he's not just some mutated dog, but that his form is what the Mists did to him.

What I remembered recently was, in his first issue on X-Factor, Peter David had a scene where Jamie Madrox tries to talk with Lockjaw, because he heard from Ben Grimm about Lockjaw being able to talk. Pietro laughs and explains that was just Karnak and Gorgon using a microphone to have fun with Grimm, by making him think he found a kindred soul.

That's a weird way to reverse that. I get Byrne retconned Lockjaw in the first place, and Marvel certainly seems to prefer Lockjaw just be a mutated dog. But in-story, that's not the time where you play that sort of practical joke. A child's life is potentially on the line, and given Crystal's power, if Luna dies because of this, there's a decent chance a volcano erupts right under Attilian and kills everyone.

Doylist explanation #1: Peter David decided the Inhumans had enough dodgy shit in their society, with the Alpha Primitives and all, so dog-man was a step too far.

Doylist explanation #2: Peter David was just being kind of a petty dick. Not a stretch for the guy who put Rocket Raccoon in his Captain Marvel run as a throw rug, or who dismissed an appearance by Hulk and Doc Samson in Amazing Spider-Man (first part reviewed here) that did not appear to contradict his run in any way as a "dream".

Watsonian approach #1, Pietro's lying his ass off because that whole circumstance was him being wildly wrong and he doesn't want to cop to it. Karnak and Gorgon did it to trick Pietro, not Ben, as a last-ditch move to make him stop. Obviously Pietro isn't going to admit he endangered his only daughter's life because he couldn't bear the thought of her being "merely" human. Even if he likes to pretend he doesn't care what others think of him, it would probably help if his new teammates aren't all looking at him like something they'd scrape off their shoes.

Watsonian approach #2: Lockjaw can talk, but as Thing surmised in the first story, it hurts. He's sure as hell not going to spare any words for a dick like Pietro (who he's likely only too happy to get far away from everyone he cares about). Or simply to prove that he can to a slack-jawed gawker like Madrox.

Of course, as the kicker, Pietro would forcibly expose Luna to the Terrigen Mists years later. She survived, so I guess he had that going for her, but he lied baldly to cover his ass and wound up with his daughter hating his guts and his now ex-wife married to Ronan the Accuser and seemingly fairly happy. Ha, ha.

Once They Engage, They've Lost

I was reading some discussion of the Spider-Man vs. Juggernaut fight from Amazing Spider-Man #229-230. I think in regards to the differing opinion this story has compared to the Spider-Man vs. Firelord battle from Amazing Spider-Man #269-270.

One argument was that while in the latter story, Spidey ultimately just beats down the Firelord, which seemed improbable, here he tricks the Juggernaut into the wet cement. Setting aside this ignores the myriad number of things Spider-Man tried first against Firelord - stealing his staff, tricking him into flying into a building, tricking him into flying into a subway train, tricking him into a building set for demolition - Spidey is as surprised to find them sinking as Juggernaut. Exact quote: 'Huh? Well. . .How about that! Congratulations, Stumble-Foot! You slogged right into a recently poured foundation of wet cement!'

That said, in a sense, Spider-Man did trick the Juggernaut. One thing established very clearly in #229 is that, as the issue title says, Nothing Can Stop The Juggernaut. That includes Spider-Man. For everything he tries, Juggernaut basically never even slows down or changes course. Even when he walks through a building to scrape the webslinger off his back, it's still on his way to Madame Web.

This persists in issue #230. Again, nothing Spider-Man does actually hurts him. Not the steel girder he launches, not the wrecking ball he throws, not the brick wall that falls on them, not the loaded gasoline truck. All Cain Marko has to do is just keep walking to Black Tom's yacht and he's home free. Easy as that.

But he can't let it go. He lets himself be drawn into trying to crush Spider-Man personally, rather than just ignoring him. And every second he's going off-course to chase Spider-Man onto a demolition site or a construction site is a second he's not getting out of town. Which is another second Spider-Man has to either figure out a way to actually stop him, or just get lucky.

Which is what happens. Juggernaut didn't need to stop and pummel Spidey because he covered the eyeholes on his helmet. He was already walking straight at a brick wall to scrape Spidey off. Just keep going! But Juggernaut let Spider-Man irritate him enough to where he wanted to beat him to a pulp instead, and wound up doing it in a very bad place.

Same thing with Firelord. Once he recovered his staff and found Spider-Man gone, he could have just let it go. He hadn't been hurt, other than his honor (pride, really). Spidey high-tailed it out of there, which ought to have indicated he was sufficiently intimidated by Firelord. That could have been enough. Just leave the planet, or if he has to have pizza, don't act like a total Karen this time with the smashing of doors and melting ovens. But no, he had to keep flying around, looking for Spider-Man, determined to fight, and look where it got him.

"Necessary" Requires Some Level of Competence

As you are likely aware, I don't buy the current volume of X-Force. I do, however, see scans of it online here and there, and read Paul O'Brien's reviews. The book comes off as odd in the context of certain quotes I've seen from the writer, Benjamin Percy.

Percy has made a point, more than once from what I can tell, that X-Force in general, and the character of Beast in particular, is about examining the messy things people do in the name of nation-building. The underhanded, unfriendly-regime-toppling shit the CIA got up to. And so he states that Hank McCoy believes himself to be a, 'necessary bastard.' 

Hank feels he has to do stuff like turn an entire country into zombies so they don't produce drugs that can compete with Krakoan products. Or have the Five resurrect Wolverine as a nearly mindless weapon Hank can use to assassinate Senators.

The problem with this is that, while Percy's version of Beast has the "bastard" part down cold, he's fucking up on the "necessary" side of things. None of Hank's schemes seem to work out well. The zombification of an entire nation nearly backfires at their first stupid Hellfire Gala, and it's only the people he victimized being unbelievably understanding that keeps it from being a huge embarrassment.

His Wolverine puppet is so brain-dead it doesn't wait for Hank to turn off the security cameras, so Logan is caught on video murdering the Senator. His secret outer space prison where he conducts illegal experiments falls apart and he ends up imprisoned for a time. The dude fucks up everything he attempts.

Now, if the point Percy's driving at is a nation does not, in fact, require "necessary bastards", he might almost be pulling it off, considering Hank's Sideshow Bob-esque ability to step on every rake in the world, has yet to actually damage Krakoa's standing or safety in any demonstrable way*. If that were Percy's goal, it would seem like someone needs to actually, you know, remove Hank from a position to cause problems. Tell him Krakoa has moved beyond such tactics, or whatever mutant supremacist nonsense they're spouting these days.

But outside of Emma or Sage giving him the occasional talking to, Hank's received no censure whatsoever. Has not lost his official position, not been condemned to the Pit. X-Force still go on the missions he gives them, even though it should be abundantly obvious this is a terrible idea. Hank's written like when DC fucks up Amanda Waller and just make her cartoonishly evil and incompetent.

On the other hand, if Percy thinks nations do need "necessary bastards", whether because they want to build/maintain an empire, or simply feel outnumbered and besieged from all sides (either of which you could apply to Krakoa), then shouldn't some of Hank's plans actually work? Shouldn't we be seeing more evidence of him actually nipping a real threat in the bud, rather than create potential public relation time bombs the rest of the cast have to scramble to defuse?

If Percy wants to question the ultimate utility of even those successes - make it that Hank's turned himself into a monster for the equivalent of sticking fingers in a leaky dam - make them only temporary wins, or have unexpected effects. Some people in the zombified nation show natural or developed resistance, and this helps them make even better drugs. Or it turns out another nation was on the same track, several of them even, and Hank can't turn them all. Wolverine isn't caught on camera killing Senators, but it doesn't matter, as their successors run on the same platform and gets elected because, surprise!, killing a politician did not alter the demographics or beliefs of his electoral district.

The current approach seems like the worst of all worlds. Hank fails all the time, so he certainly doesn't demonstrate the necessity of his actions. Especially as Krakoa seems to be just fine no matter how badly he fails. But his ineptitude produces no negative consequences for him either, even though there are certainly enough people who know about his shit with the power to get him removed, and at this point, I can't see Hank having anyone in his corner to save his job, so the fact they haven't ousted him in favor of Sage (alcoholic or no), or hell, Gambit or Lady Mastermind or someone, just seems ridiculous.

* Although you could argue that's because the Quiet Council figuring they could let Mr. Sinister help clone them and there'd be no problems blew up first.

He's Murder in the Kitchen

It's almost Thanksgiving here in the U.S., and that means it's time to ask the question on everybody's mind:

How good of a cook is Frank Castle?

What do you mean, that wasn't on your mind and never has been? You won't spare a thought for poor Frank Punisher's (tip o' the cap to Jay and Miles Explain the X-Men for that name) culinary skills? Who else is gonna make Thanksgiving dinner for him? His family? They're dead, you know. You're so insensitive.

OK, OK, we all know Frank isn't celebrating Thanksgiving with anything other than shooting some guys trying to hijack TV shipments on their way to the big box stores for Black Friday. But the man has to eat something other than the smell of gunpowder and cordite, and C-4 does not have enough fiber for a man his age (however old Frank is these days.)

I think we generally see the Punisher eating MRE rations, or indistinguishable stuff out of cans. I know in Ennis' run he went to a pub at least once, because he was eating in a dark corner when that news broadcast came on about Nicky Cavella digging up his family's bodies. But at some point, before all the punishing, the guy lived a relatively normal life with a family*. They would have family meals, because that seems like the kind of family they were from his memories, and he must have cooked occasionally, if only to give Maria a chance to rest.

So, what's in Frank's kitchen repertoire? I'm assuming he knows how to make chili, or stew. All American men are supposed to know how to make those. Even I know how to make chili, and I'm about two steps above Homer Simpson somehow causing a fire make Corn Flakes. I'm sure he knows how to grill burgers or hot dogs, his dad would have taught him that. Scrambled eggs, toast, probably grilled cheese sandwiches, stuff like that.

That's pretty straightforward stuff, but I dunno, I feel like Frank would know some surprising stuff. The Tyger established that he like reading poetry, and that his mother encouraged it, over his father's half-hearted objections. Frank seems to be an only child, I could see his mother trying to pass on things she knows, Frank patiently listening and absorbing. Maybe he can make pie crusts from scratch, or he knows how to make really good cannolis, something like that.

Although I could see the argument that Frank makes these things technically perfect, but the food lacks soul or some other ineffable quality. Like he follows the recipe to the letter, but lacks that inventiveness or instinct that causes him to make a slight alteration that enhances the experience. I'm kind of like this, except I stick to recipes as closely as possible so I don't fuck up and waste a bunch of food. If I'm going to burn x amount of time cooking, I better get something edible out of it! Utilitarian, but it works, which was probably Frank's approach.

* It just occurred to me, I have no idea what Castle did for a living between when he came home from Vietnam/the Middle East/whichever American military boondoggle his origin is tied to currently, and when his family died. Was he still in the military, but as an instructor at a boot camp? Did he have a civilian job?

Not Choosing's a Choice, Too

One of the things that interests me about West of Sundown is the bond between Dooley and Rosa. Or, more accurately, what everyone else believes is the bond between Dooley and Rosa.

In issue 3, when Dooley tries to explain to Mr. Manor it wasn't his call to buy out Manor's loans to the bank and oust him from his saloon, Manor replies with the above argument. In issue 5, after most of the cast have settled down in Del Moro, Griffin has his own theory. It boils down to much the same, that being Rosa's Reinfeld is Dooley's way of absolving himself of making choices, or at least the guilt of making choices.

I'm not sure Griffin, who seems very excited at the opportunity to dissect people, has any grounds to judge anyone else. I imagine he would argue that he makes his own choices and accepts responsibility for them, and that's the difference between he and Dooley.

The question is whether either of them are correct. Dooley wanted out of the Civil War, something he seemingly got dragged into without any interest in it. Rosa offered him that, and so Dooley serves her in exchange. He guides her to people to eat, but tries to make it criminals. A robber baron who let child workers burn in his factory. A bunch of outlaws who think he's transporting something valuable and try to rob him. 

In that sense, Griffin's right. Dooley feeds these guys to the beast, and rationalizes it by saying God would 'bring charges' against them. Griffin is wrong that Dooley does this without guilt. It's clear even in the first issue that he seems troubled by what he's party to. Granted, that's after having traveled with Rosa for a solid decade, but that it's the first time we see it, doesn't mean it's the first time. So maybe Griffin was projecting there. He does not come off as someone who feels guilt about anyone he may have cut up or operated on over the years.

Is Manor right that Dooley doesn't want to make choices, and would rather someone else tell him its OK to do what he wants? Again, maybe on the first part, but not on the second. I think if Dooley truly wanted to kill people he considered evil, he would just do it, rather than waste time justifying it by claiming God would agree. And he has opportunities to shoot people at different times and does not take the shots. Griffin during the fight in town, Herman Jung in the final battle at the ranch. He opts to hit each of them with the rifle instead. He only shoots Jung when he's on the verge of killing Rosa.

That could be an unwillingness to lose his master, or it could be loyalty to a, I hesitate to call them friends, but it's more than an employer/employee relationship to be certain. And that situation only came about because Dooley insisted on trying to rescue the townspeople from Jung, even when Rosa walked away. That was a choice he made, and all the others - Griffin, the Monster, and eventually Rosa - followed his lead.

The thing we don't know is whether this is something that's just starting to develop, or whether it's been like this all along. Maybe Dooley has just begun to reassert himself, or question what he's doing. Possibly because for a time, he had to make the choices. During the long ship ride, Rosa was incapacitated, which meant Dooley could not rely on anyone but himself.

Don't Leave It to Chance

With Jed MacKay's run writing the Black Cat having come to an end for now, I was thinking back over it. Specifically his use of her luck power. My initial recollection was that the only time it came up was during her break-in of the Sanctum Sanctorum, when it messed with Sargon the Sorcerer's spells, turning the Flames of Faltine into pretty butterflies.

Going back and rereading the comics, though, that's not actually the case. During her escape with the painting in the first issue, it kicks in, causing Sonny Ocampo's moped to hit a rock that just so happened to be in the road, spoiling his pursuit. She has it turned off (apparently it's a subdermal implant these days) during her stunt at Stark Industries, but once Iron Man is occupied, she turns it back on and it causes the Head of Security to sneeze at an inconvenient moment, allowing Felicia to disarm her. And she used it to wreak havoc at Kade Kilgore's casino during her visit to Madripoor.

But all that's in the first volume. In the second, her power never gets used. She makes one reference to hopefully having luck on her side when she gets ready to rescue Dr. Strange from Knull, but there's never any point where it seems like she's actually affecting probabilities.

I was thinking maybe it's a matter of scale. For as powerful as a lot of the people she gets crosswise of in volume 1 are, they're still people. Sargon, Kade, Bethany Cabe, all just mortal at the end of the day. Knull  and the Gilded Saint are very different matters. But that wouldn't really work with her team up with White Fox in the Annual, or Lily Hollister (though she hardly needed the help to deal with her) the whole mess with the Infinity Stone people and Nick Fury.

So then I thought, professional versus personal. All the heists in the first volume were working towards this big scheme of the Black Fox'. Which Felicia thought was just to rip off the Gilded Saint's vault of its immense wealth. An audacious scheme, which lets her thumb her nose at Odessa and the Thieves' Guild, and is a nice little feather in her cap. The second volume is mostly personal matters. Setting right what the Fox has used her to accomplish, then curing her mother's cancer. Rescuing Dr. Strange is a little iffier (spellcheck recognizes that?), but it's Felicia trying to help save the world the way she's best suited: Stealing back someone that can help turn the tide.

Now why it would work like that, I don't know. Maybe, when it's something really important, and not just stealing for the thrill or the challenge, she can't rely on luck. She doesn't know how the probability altering is going to manifest. It might help her, but harm the person she's trying to help. She can't chance that Star was going to attack her, but her distracted or clipped by a bullet and hits her mother instead. So she keeps it turned off to avoid that danger.

Although there's another notion that might be kind of interesting, related to Longshot. Ann Nocenti's original mini-series established two key points about Longshot's powers, at least one of which is often ignored. One, that his power, in essence, pulls good fortune away from other people and gives it to him. Two, that his power only works when he acts out of pure motives. And I think that means purely "good" motives only.

What if Felicia's bad luck only works when she's acting selfishly? Even if she's helping her mother because she doesn't want her mother to die, it's still going to benefit her mother most of all since she, you know, doesn't suffer a slow death from cancer. That would be kind of funny, that she can't dose people with misfortune if she's trying to help someone.

Of course, it doesn't make any sense given her powers aren't like Longshot's, since hers are from a mechanical device implanted in her body. But the device is supposed to be messing with probabilities on a quantum level. In physics, observing a particle can affect its motion, where observe means interact. So at that scale, maybe Felicia's intent can affect how the device works.

Another Post About Krakoa

The Krakoa status quo in the X-books continues to generate a lot of discussion online. One of the arguments I've seen lately, revolving mostly around the books written by Tini Howard (Excalibur and X-Corp), is whether the books are following the thinking, "Colonialism and/or Capitalism is OK, as long as the right people are doing it." 

I've just seen bits and pieces online, but in the first case, the argument seems based on how Excalibur has essentially taken control of Otherworld, and put crazy-ass Jamie Braddock on the throne. OK, they didn't want Arthur or Merlin or whoever, but if Krakoa is so progressive and forward thinking, maybe encourage a representative form of government? But if you give the peasantry a voice, they might not go along with what Krakoa wants, so that's no good, is it?

I'm less clear on X-Corp, although there's definitely something about using the Madrox dupes as an unpaid, generally expendable labor force that seems to garner no benefits whatsoever. Unless you count Jamie Prime occasionally sending one of them to his kid's birthday party in his place. Which I wouldn't, but your mileage may vary.

Part of the issue is, the notion of "it's OK if the right person does it," is baked into the very concept of superheroes. Superheroes are traditionally vigilantes. When Spider-Man leaves a purse snatcher dangling upside-down from a light pole, he has no official legal standing. Ditto when Golden Age Superman busts into the governor's mansion and abducts the man to rush him to prison and make him cancel an execution. The X-Men were referred to as "outlaws" for most of Claremont's first run as writer.

In the real world, at least here in the U.S., vigilantes are these dipshit crackers walking around with AR-15s, who shoot the first black person they see in a place they don't want them, and then claim self-defense. They don't seem to be trying to help or protect anything but their ego and sense of superiority. In other words, real world vigilantes are terrible. In superhero comics, we roll with it. Partially because we know the protagonist's thoughts, partially because centralized authority (police, governments) are shown as inherently untrustworthy. Partially because superheroes are presented as reactive. Spider-Man sees a guy steal someone's purse before he webs him up. 

In one of the earliest Lee/Ditko stories, he webs up a bunch of guys hanging around outside a jewelry store. They rightfully point out they've committed no crime and call for the police, which forces Spider-Man to flee, kicking himself for being a dumbass. Even though the cop acknowledges those guys were probably planning a robbery, they hadn't done anything yet, and so Spider-Man had no business acting. Especially since he's just some guy in a mask, granted authority by no one other than his own sense of responsibility.

But Krakoa, even if it was formed to stave off an emerging machine singularity (reactive), is still trying to change things. Spider-Man isn't trying to change society by stopping purse snatchers, or even Sandman when he robs an armored car. Neither is Superman when he punches a giant robot. Mutantkind, by forming their own nation, their own society, which then takes a role at the forefront of not just world politics, but galactic politics, is trying to change things. It's a vastly bigger scope, affecting more people. That's fine, it can be an interesting story - not like this is the first post I've done about Krakoa - but the question of whether the ends justify the means, or if all that matters is whose finger is on the trigger, becomes a bit more important.

As with everything related to Krakoa, I wonder whether the creative teams established all this for the audience to critique, or whether they don't see any of it as wrong. Does Howard, for example, writing the book with the notion there's anything wrong with Excalibur just deciding Jamie's the new king, even though he's kind of nuts and kind of a sadist? Or are we meant to read it as tacit support because the protagonists are doing it? When Benjamin Percy writes X-Force as a covert kill squad that is seemingly beholden to no one, does he actually think that's a good thing for Krakoa to have, so long as they rap Hank McCoy on the nose with a newspaper (while not really punishing or curtailing his power) when he tries to make an entire nation into zombies?

There are definitely fans who take the approach anything Krakoa does is good and fine and A-OK. Like wiping out artificial intelligences because they could be a threat to mutants and don't count as people anyway. And I'm sitting here thinking, those are the exact same arguments guys like Senator Kelly and Peter Gyrich used to make for creating Sentinels to hunt down mutants. But I guess we can't blame the creative teams for fans being imbeciles.

For myself, I feel like if the writers legitimately intend to show the mutants have formed something better than human societies on Krakoa, it would make more sense to show them overcoming the forces aligned against them (ORCHIS, Merlin, various bigoted corporations) without resorting to playing their games. Right now, it feels like Krakoa does the same morally questionable things, they just do them better. (And given their apparent continued inability to destroy ORCHIS' space station/Dyson Sphere or whatever, maybe not even better). Wouldn't them not even needing to stoop to the sort of underhanded tactics of mentally manipulating someone to get them to give up their secrets or allies be even more impressive? A real, "We've evolved beyond your petty games," kind of moment.

Assuming, of course, the creative teams are actually trying to show Krakoa is something better. If the point is mutants are making a lot of the same mistakes and either can't recognize it or can't pull out of the tailspin, then keep doing what you're doing, I guess.

Familiarity and Contempt

Three issues into Defenders, I've noticed that Dr. Strange's teammates seem to find him annoying. At least, the Silver Surfer and Harpy do. Be curious to see what Cloud thinks, assuming issue 4 focuses on their perspective. Maybe it's owing to Strange plucking them out of the aether and throwing them into this whole mess, or maybe it's just a Defenders thing. Long tradition of people on that team being irritated by each other.

But this seems like an attitude I've seen elsewhere. Characters just being a little tired of Strange and his whole deal. True for Tony Stark to an extent as well. Some of that is younger characters, teen heroes who are going to naturally not be impressed with the old guys. Especially old guys who strut around like they're hot shit all the time. Some of it is probably a general cultural pushback. Marvel's early days were steeped in "the intelligent white guy knows best" stuff. Richards, Stark, Xavier, to the point it was sort of baked into the universe. They're the leaders, they're the ones that form a secret cabal to guide everything. 

That kind of thing gets more critical examination now, so there's some backlash. Characters aren't just going to nod along docilely with whatever those guys say. Not all the time, anyway.

But it could also be a fun way to play with how long all these characters have been around. For a long time - couple decades, at least - interactions between Marvel characters were typified by the "misunderstanding battle." The Fantastic Four perceive Spider-Man trying to bust into their home as an attack. The X-Men try to keep the Avengers from walking into a trap, so the Avengers think they're working with the villain. Everyone keeps bothering the Hulk. Eventually things get hashed out, and the heroes manage to work together long enough to get the job done and go their separate ways.

After a certain number of team-ups it's not feasible. Spider-Man's going to stop assuming the worst about Daredevil, and vice versa. Start thinking, "Something's wrong here," not, "Ol' Hornhead's gone bad!" there are ways around that. Clones, faking your death and changing your costume. With teams, it's easy enough to shift up the roster. Add someone the other heroes aren't sure of, like when Magneto joined the X-Men in the late '80s. Suddenly the X-Men could be a little more suspect. But given Marvel's (and DC) tendency to reset to particular status quo, even that's only kicking the can down the road.

So it moves into another phase, which I think became more prevalent in the mid-2000s. Might be able to tie it to Bendis writing the Avengers. Now, the fact practically everyone knows each other is a feature. If his Avengers team stumbles across Wolverine in the Savage Land, there's no big fight. They immediately team up, and Stark offers Logan a spot on the team. Storm can join the Avengers, Daredevil and Squirrel Girl, too, when she's not looking after Luke and Jessica Jones' kid. Oh, and she and Wolverine apparently know each other, too, somehow! By Jonathan Hickman's run, basically every character in an Avenger. 

There's even an Avengers team (the Uncanny Avengers) designed to pull from all the different little realms. Avengers, X-Men, Inhumans, Fantastic Four, the solo acts like Spidey and Deadpool. There are no fiefdoms any longer. Everyone networks, so everyone can call on anyone whenever they need.

It's a fact of life there are going to be people you just can't get along with. Where something about them, whether something major or something minor, is going to rub you the wrong way. The more people you meet, the more likely that is to happen. Even with people you might be OK with initially, the more you hang around them, the more their idiosyncrasies will either endear or frustrate you.

Maybe that's where we're at. The heroes of the Marvel Universe know each other enough to know who's trustworthy and who's not, but also which of those they'd be glad never to see again. There are definitely heroes who find Spider-Man incredibly annoying, and others who want nothing to do with Emma Frost and her casual disregard for the sanctity of anyone's mind. The ones who find Steve Rogers tiresome for his old-fashioned views, or his idealism (or maybe because of how many people fawn over him), and the ones who don't want to deal with Logan's tendency to rack up a bodycount, or Hulk's unpredictability. In a crisis, they can still work with them, because they're heroes and you put that stuff aside to do the job, but it's like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Reflections of a Teenage Bat - Inque

Inque, as we see her in the cartoon, is different from most of Terry's other foes. Most of his enemies are people with petty grudges or motivations. Feeling that they are owed more than they've received. Spellbinder is like that. Blight and Shriek as well. Then there are the idealists, the ones claiming to have some higher motivation. It may just be an excuse, but Mad Stan at least appears to have an ideology behind blowing things up. Kobra would fall in that category, as would Stalker, who doesn't go after Batman out of a grudge or for money, but because he wants a challenge.

Inque, though, is a professional. Her goal is money, but unlike Spellbinder, she's not trying to steal it because she feels unappreciated. You hire her, she does the job, you pay her, or else. She never seems to be fighting Batman because she's angry about a previous defeat. She's committing a crime, he finds her, they fight. Of his other foes, I think only Curare, a highly trained assassin, matches that approach. It's not personal. Batman is either a paycheck, or an obstacle, but not some scourge of their nightmares.

Inque tries to destroy Foxteca because Powers pays her. She fights Batman because he tries to stop her. She stows away on his Batmobile not out of some desire to unmask Batman and destroy his career because she hates him, but because it's valuable information.

When she escapes from custody with the help of the orderly that's fallen for her, she does capture Batman and use him to lure "the old man" into a trap. That could be viewed as revenge, because it was Bruce using the resources of the Bat-Cave to help Terry that beat her the time before. It could also be Inque knows he's out there and figures it's better to make him come to her at a time and place of her choosing, rather than give him a chance for an ambush. Batman's clearly not going to leave her be, and so the old man likely won't either. Better to just kill them and remove the obstacle.

(Curare's second appearance is similar in that she returns to Gotham hunting the last surviving head of the League of Assassins who put a price on her for failing a mission on her first encounter with Terry. It could be seen as revenge, but since they won't stop hunting her as long as they're alive, from Curare's perspective, it's a necessary step.)

Inque choosing not to kill Terry first, leaving him able to help Bruce when his heart gives out, does tip it into the revenge category, rather than simple pragmatism. But Ingue could argue Terry works best as live bait, and well, professional or no, Inque is more than a bit of a sadist. She enjoys toying with the dumb orderly, and she's fine with killing people by pouring herself down their throats until they choke or burst, or she tears her way out. Even though she could just cut them or strangle them quickly and efficiently.

Also, if Terry's alive, she might be able to use him as a shield if need be. In one of her last appearances in the series, she tries taking a hostage to make Batman back off. It's her poor luck she chose a disguised Superman.

Inque's one soft spot is her daughter, who she sends money, but rarely if ever interacted with until she needed help. It contrasts with Terry, who tries to maintain a presence in his mother and little brother's lives, even as being Batman pulls him away. He wants to protect them, but he doesn't want to do it like Bruce Wayne, keeping them at a distance, trying to control their lives. So even when they don't know what's causing him to be tired, or miss school, they still worry about him. As opposed to Bruce, who has basically alienated everyone who gave a shit about him by being a complete dick. Inque's daughter, who has only known her money through cash gifts, sees her mother's need for help as an opportunity to make some money. That's what she's been taught to value, and she's learned it well.

The brief Batman Beyond ongoing Adam Beechen wrote in 2011 established Inque had immigrated to Gotham from a country torn apart by civil war, and was then sold into slavery, sexually abused, escaped, only to later be experimented on while she was pregnant. Maybe that explains most of it. Not only treating people as a commodity, worth only what they can get you. But that if you have power, you take what you want. If someone tries to stop you, make sure they don't live to do it again.

Terry and Inque are both fight on behalf of others. Terry for Bruce, Inque for Derek Powers and his ilk. Terry takes to Bruce's mission quickly enough. Inque's more of a professional about it, because it's usually just business. She doesn't care why the person who hired her did so, just so long as they pay when she's done. Terry's been on the receiving end of people abusing their power, and decided to try and save others from a similar fate. Inque decided using her power for her own ends was the best way to go. If you can't beat 'em, get hired by 'em.

Inque, at a certain point, chose to be a weapon. Looked at the hand she'd been dealt, and decided she'd do what she was hired for. There's a freedom in that. She can choose who she works for, but she can also tell herself that whatever she does, it's not her. Someone would have been hired, if not her. Terry's more constricted. He's Batman, and that means working for Bruce Wayne, and doing things Bruce Wayne's way. But, for the most part, their morals align, so it works. Terry may not always agree, but their goals are the same.

But given how well he does as Batman with relatively little training, it wouldn't be too hard to see a path where Terry ends up a weapon like Inque. Maybe not a freelancer; more some bigshot's legbreaker. Someone that tells him the anger's fine, use it on the people I point to and you can do what you like. And once you're done, I'll pay you for it.

There's also the fact Inque was the subject of what were probably illegal experiments. She's a product of the same sort of ethically questionable work that Terry's father objected to. The same sort of work that got his father killed. So she's the cautionary tale of that. Terry fought a fair number of one-off enemies who were the result of accidents due to cost-cutting measures. Those people mostly lashed out in anger, and he had to try and calm them down, keep them from hurting anyone or themselves.

Inque's what happens when that person embraces the hand they were dealt, what can happen if that kind of work continues, and she's Terry's most dangerous opponent. The one I'm not sure he ever actually beats one-on-one. Bruce's involvement helps him twice, and Superman takes care of her once. Which should make Inque terrifying to Terry. Other heroes occasionally have that villain they can't beat alone. Venom was like that for Spider-Man the first several years of his existence. Bane took Batman apart the first time they clashed. But both of those guys were fixated on beating the hero. Venom wanted to kill Spider-Man for ruining their lives, and Bane wanted to test and destroy the Bat. Inque doesn't really give a shit about Batman, he's just in the way, or someone she's hired to kill. Makes you wonder what she would be like if it ever became personal to her.

What I Bought 9/24/2021

I was hoping to come away with more than one comic this week, but the store I typically used was closed Friday because the parking lot in the shopping center the store's in was being repaved. So I had to rely on the one that doesn't stock as many titles from smaller publishers. Damn asphalt crews.

Moon Knight #3, by Jed MacKay (writer), Alessandro Cappuccio (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - The gold kind of ruins the effect.

This is basically a fight issue. Dr. Badr, the other Fist of Khonshu, thinks the needs to teach Spector a lesson about how to fulfill that role properly. So they fight a bit, Badr seems to win and heads off to kill Reese and Ted, two of the vampires Spector spared in the first issue. Apparently, Khonshu doesn't like vampires because they kill people at night, during Khonshu's time. I mean, a lot of people kill people at night. Does that mean Khonshu doesn't like Blade, or the Punisher? Is Deadpool OK if he shoots people in broad daylight?

Anyway, Badr loses, but Spector lets him live. There's two main takeaways from this issue. One, Badr wasn't involved in what happened last issue. Which we already knew, but assuming Spector believes him, means Spector can know there's someone else out there gunning for him. Two, apparently all the other Fists of Khonshu, including Badr, got the memories of all the past Fists placed in their minds to teach them to fight a certain way. Spector's the exception.

Badr takes this as yet another sign Spector is a broken instrument he needs to set right, and Spector jokes that it must have been too crowded in his head already, but I wonder if Khonshu took a different approach. Maybe having all his Fists operate the same way was unsatisfactory. I don't know what process Khonshu uses to select them, but Badr is a doctor, and I assume was one before this. All he knows of fighting is what was placed within him. Spector was a fighter and killer by trade already. Maybe Khonshu wanted to see what happened if he just gave someone like that his blessing and left them to the work.

The fight's not bad, although, until the bit at the end with the bat, I don't really see what Badr is saying about the difference in how the two of them fight. He compares Spector's style to an animal, lacking the beauty he should have from all those past Moon Knights, but I didn't see anything particularly graceful in how Badr fights. They both like to lunge and throw a big haymaker. Moon Knight does uses his grappel thing to hit Badr in the face, but also does a leaping kick in the chest with both feet, which seems kind of fancy. Badr's the one who decides to leap off a roof and tackle Spector while he's dangling from a fire escape, sending them both crashing to the alley. Could be more proof Badr's not as hip to Khonshu's plans as he thinks.

Reflections of a Teenage Bat - Mad Stan

It's been almost exactly three months since the first of these looks at Terry McGinnis' recurring enemies and what they reflect about him. I started with Spellbinder, and as promised, we're moving to Mad Stan today.

 

(Artwork by Norm Breyfogle and Andrew Elder) 

Stan might be a bit of a cheat, honestly. He's rarely the main villain. In one case, Spellbinder uses him as part of a plan to turn the police against Batman by making it appear Terry killed Mad Stan. In another, he's really just the excuse the plot requires for Terry to miss a date with Dana, so she can be approached by a mutated guy that lives in the sewers.

And that's because Stan's not a particularly varied character. He's always out to tear down the government or elements of bureaucracy, and he always takes the same approach: Blow it up. He reminds me of the Evil Midnight Bomber, What Bombs at Midnight from The Tick, although I think Stan is slightly more focused. Only slightly, as he was prepared to blow up a Department of Health building because they were going to raise the fee for licensing pets. Although I'm surprised Mad Stan would risk his chihuahua, Boom-Boom, being logged in "the system."

Stan doesn't have much of a backstory. He never got an origin episode or issue of the comics, so we don't know what, exactly, made him hate and decry governmental systems and their effect on people, or why he decided the best solution was high explosives. Maybe there's a tragedy, Maybe he read a book that really spoke to him. Maybe he just enjoys it.

Like Terry before he became Batman, Stan's anger is unfocused. Terry would lash out at Jokerz, his father, school bullies, whoever. Stan ostensibly targets "the government", doesn't there's no real plan behind it. No, "take this out first, to cripple response when I target this other thing." Across his appearances he tries destroying a library because there's too much information for people to process, then targets a re-election fundraiser for the district attorney, and the aforementioned attack on the Department of Health over pet licenses.

Stan is the adolescent who can see that there are things wrong with society around him, but can't see how to fix them. So he decides the proper response is to just destroy them instead. Maybe Stan has some big plan to build things back up properly after, but more likely he's not given it any thought. Or he hasn't since he decided tearing everything down was the best first step.

That's possibly the path Terry was on before his father died. Going through life angry for reasons he couldn't really explain, picking fights to give an outlet to that anger. Now he. . . gets to put on a strength-augmenting costume and beat people up. Typical caveats about vigilantism aside, Terry is generally trying to protect people from those intending direct harm. Stan probably thinks he's helping people by attacking the structures he believes are strangling their lives, but he doesn't seem terribly concerned if any of the people he intended to help get blown up in the process of him helping them.

At the end of the day, Stan decided to just indulge his anger to its full extent. His dog is safe, but anyone and everything else is shit outta luck if he decides to blow something up while they're nearby.

Not Every Dog Gets to Have Their Day

One thing I like about the Marvel and DC universes is that even though there's a hierarchy, the big-time heroes and villains and the street-level types, almost any can beat any other character on any given day. The advantage of the shared universe concept, I guess. Decades of different writers and artists working in the same sandbox. Each with their favorites, or their axes to grind, or whatever.

So you end up with a situation where yes, Spider-Man has lost to Stilt-Man - twice! - but he's also beaten the Firelord and stopped the unstoppable Juggernaut. Good day for him, or bad day for Cain Marko, doesn't matter, it happened. And heck, the next time Spidey sees the Juggernaut, he might get trounced

Even if when there's Jim Starlin insisting that Thanos totally never lost ever to anyone other than himself or Adam Warlock, no way, or Jeph Loeb creating the Red Hulk who can beat up everyone, there's gonna be another writer later on that's going to, restore equilibrium, let's say.

It's something I was thinking about in contrast to shonen anime, another thing I generally enjoy. The problem there is the hierarchy is much more rigid. There are boss villains, and they are basically only going to lose to the main character. Krillin and Yamcha are never gonna get to beat the planet-threatening menace of the moment. The best they can hope for is maybe they get to score one good hit.

I sorta touched on this, jeez, fourteen years ago, but I like the notion that if the Big Hero isn't there, the others will find a way to save the day without them. And with Marvel or DC, where plenty of the heroes who can't juggle planets get their own books and their own time to shine, we get to see that. With manga or anime, where there's one series, with largely one creative vision behind it, not so much. The answer to, "How will they win without Series Protagonist?" is apparently, "They won't, they'll just die."

Maybe my issue is that the main characters are usually ridiculously fast and strong and so it feels like they win because they're faster and stronger. That's fine and all. Sometimes it's fun to watch or read a beatdown, especially if the character's got it coming. But I also enjoy characters winning against those sort of odds, whether it's through being sneaky, or clever, or just really determined. (To be fair, there's no shortage of characters in shonen animes winning fights because they're really determined.)

Sometimes, it's just nice to see an unassuming character save the day, get the big win. Even if it was a little lucky, or they just had the approach to exploit a particular weakness or whatever.

Don't Downplay the Value of Revenge

So I watched the Loki series as it was coming out last couple of months. It's enjoyable enough. I actually finished all of it, unlike Falcon and Winter Soldier, where I never watched the last episode. OK, SPOILER warning thing for the end of Loki, even though it's just the jumping off point.

Final episode, Loki and Sylvie confront Kang, the one behind the TVA, the organization that decided they both needed to be erased to preserve some Sacred Timeline, which Kang just so happens to be in control of. Blah blah, greater good, blah blah, avoid multiversal war, blah blah. Since they've moved past some critical point where Kang no longer knows what's going to happen, Sylvie takes her revenge and kills the guy responsible for saying she needed to be imprisoned or erased, rather than accepting his offer for her and Loki to run the TVA in his place. The latter being what Loki wanted, but she booted his butt backed to the TVA so she could take care of business.

Sylvie is then shown alone in the citadel looking forlorn after killing Kang, so at least a couple of different reviews I saw comment how it's showing revenge is a hollow pursuit, and, you know, let's just hold on there a second.

I'm not going to claim revenge cures all ills, but I don't think getting payback on someone who wrongs them (and I'm speaking of revenge on a specific person who actually harmed them, not just lashing out at everyone) is without merit. The notion one isn't just a powerless pawn, who can be fucked with or tormented by some joker who thinks he's got the right, that's got some value. That they can push back, even if nobody is on their side. Revenge doesn't have to be killing them. It can be financial ruin, or simple public humiliation or exposure. Appropriate to the level of the wrong committed.

Yeah, yeah, I hear you. "Two wrongs don't make a right, Calvin." First off, stop wagging your finger in my face like you're Marge Simpson and show me the math behind that statement. Secondly, that's the beauty of revenge. You're not worrying about "right" necessarily. At least not any objective form of the term. It's like in space, right or left is relative to your position.

The argument seems to be that if you devote your life to revenge and you get it, what's left? The answer is usually presented as "nothing," but I think it's actually, "the opportunity to figure out what comes next." If someone is fixated on revenge to begin with, they probably aren't open to seeing anything else anyway. They've been hurt, and in all likelihood, the person or persons responsible skated scot-free for any number of reasons. Until that's addressed, there isn't anything else for them anyway. They could try to pick up the pieces and go forward, but if their life was turned upside-down, and seemingly no one cares, is there a point? Couldn't it just happen again, especially if the one responsible is out there? You have to deal with the instability in the ground before you can build anything new.

The mistake is I think people figure if revenge is really meant to be worth something, the person should be immediately fulfilled, joyous at the culmination of their struggle. And maybe they should, but if it's been a long, difficult time, they may need to process. For me, with things I've spent a long time trying to accomplish or complete, the moment they're done isn't always one where I celebrate ecstatically. Sometimes I'm stunned it's over, sometimes I'm just relieved. That's for things far less serious than trying to take revenge on someone.

It's fine to have stories where the character achieves their revenge and feels lost or empty after. But sometimes people are going to be happy after they get their revenge, or at least finally able to move on.

Reflections of a Teenage Bat - Spellbinder

I've been kicking around the notion of looking at what Terry McGinnis' most common villains reflect about him since I bought the box sets of Batman Beyond from a coworker of Alex during his years in the Town He Tries to Forget. That was a decade ago, and I just kept putting it off. 

There's three villains that show up three times in the 52 episodes. Maybe four, because I don't remember Shriek showing up a third time, but the episode summaries insist there's one where he buried Batman alive and Bruce and Max have to find him. So maybe I'll get to him, but let's talk about Spellbinder.

Spellbinder's shtick in Batman Beyond is basically he's a disgruntled civil servant. More specifically, a school psychiatrist who gets fed up with listening to teenagers talk about the problems their rich parents will fix while he works for relative peanuts. So instead of using hypnosis to help them reach the root of their problems, he uses it to let them experience their fantasies, while they're actually committing crimes for him. When that first scheme fails, he tries a VR interactive experience thing that is highly addictive, so they'll willingly steal to pay for another turn. His third appearance, he gives up on getting people to steal for him, and instead tricks the police into thinking Batman killed Mad Stan (we'll probably get to Mad Stan the next time I do one of these).

Terry's thing is that he had a lot of anger about a lot of stuff. Probably the failure of his parents' marriage, certainly about his father Warren's willingness to be the good corporate drone and eat shit with a smile. Then Warren's murdered, because he was going to stand up and do the right thing, and there's even more anger. And Terry ultimately, once he's gotten his hands on Batman's suit, uses it and his anger to fight crime. Protect people from people with power who try to abuse it.

Spellbinder obviously took his grudge and his power and used it for himself, which is Villainy 101. He's also a twisted reflection of both Terry's father figures. Warren McGinnis in the sense that both of them are ultimately workers beholden to higher authorities. Spellbinder worked at a school. He's got rules and regulations he's gotta follow. Every few months, he's probably gotta bring something to put out in the break room. Chip in for community coffee even if he doesn't drink it. Be there for school dances and shit.

Terry's dad is a researcher, and a good one. But at the end of the day, he works for Wayne-Powers, and so he answers to a shitbag like Derek Powers. He doesn't have much control over his life. He's forced to do ethically questionable things or risk his job (or his family's well-being.) Warren decided to stand up against his boss, while Spellbinder decided to punch down at his patients. Differing responses to the pressure of being a cog in the machine.

Bruce Wayne is no cog. He's either the one controlling the machine, or by the time the series begins, a person with enough money to remove himself from the mess entirely. But Spellbinder mirrors Wayne in that he manipulates teenagers to do shit for him. His first two appearances are both about Spellbinder getting high school kids to steal for him, so he doesn't have to be at risk. Bruce isn't Batman anymore because he couldn't hack it. Because he didn't think he could actually protect people without becoming something he despised (a killer), not because he wasn't willing to risk himself. And Terry approached him, which makes a difference. 

But Bruce definitely understands what makes Terry tick, and he certainly uses that to his advantage. Terry wanted the chance to bring his father's killer to justice, and he got that chance because Bruce Wayne let him use the suit. Just as Spellbinder can use what he knows about his students to make illusions or hypnotic suggestions that are most effective on them. Terry works better when he has something to push back against, so Bruce is in his ear all the time, giving him that something if nothing else is available. Maybe Terry would have gone off the rails badly without that opportunity, and so Wayne is ultimately looking out for him, while Spellbinder doesn't give a damn about people who are supposed to be able to trust him to help.

Although there's also that episode of Justice League Unlimited where Terry has been Batman for years and is clearly chafing under Bruce forcing him to keep secrets from Dana and do everything Bruce's ways. A universe where Bruce Wayne is a bitter, lonely old man estranged from every former love and protege, with a Gotham even shittier than his was. Basically defeated on every conceivable level. So maybe Bruce isn't looking out for Terry, and is using him as much as Spellbinder does. 

But that episode also said Terry was genetically Bruce's son due to some bullshit Amanda Waller set up to try and make sure there was always a Batman, and that's honestly better left shoved into a dustbin and forgotten.

The third episode is really more about Barbara Gordon as Commissioner, and her doubts about both Bruce and Terry. She knows Terry's Batman, knows why he's Batman. Knows about his anger issues in the past. Knows from experience how Bruce Wayne can twist people around and drive them until they burn out. So it's not hard for her to think Terry could go too far and kill a bad guy. Still, Spellbinder's shifted his style a bit. Still manipulating others, but instead of targeting the relatively powerless, who inevitably lead the authorities (or Batman) right to him, he targets the authorities to send them to Batman. Plays off the fear of vigilantes. Sure, it's fun to see someone in a costume saving lives and punching bad guys, but that's only as long as you agree with who they're punching, and how much damage they're doing. It doesn't take far to tip the perception from "costumed do-gooder" to "loose cannon."

Spellbinder's ultimately the guy with no power for years, feeling put upon and powerless, who then abuses his power as soon as he gets some. (Pretty sure Darkseid made a demonstration like that once on Apokolips by turning his slaves into overseers.) The kind of person teenagers suspect most adults are; ostensibly there to help, but really there to control and condescend to them.

It's A Society, I Guess

I wonder what the endgame is for the whole "Krakoa" set-up in the X-Books. Long-term, I'm sure it all falls apart somehow and mutantkind ends up fragmented, with a certain group of mutants living in a big house in New York State calling themselves X-Men.

But more in terms of what the creative teams are thinking now about where they're sending things. Maybe that's all Jonathan Hickman's ball, but I assume the other writers are at least being consulted, or bringing some ideas to the table.

Krakoa is described by most of the mutants living there as the wonderful place. Mutant utopia. Much better than all those limited human societies in every way they tell us repeatedly.  I don't mean just by the citizens who live there, ignorant of the secret kill squad with absolute authority to do seemingly whatever they want. I mean even the folks (like ol' Chuck Xavier) who are hip-deep in the ethically questionable shit are convinced they're doing so much better while they simply emulate the worst habits of human societies.

The cronyism (how many mutants who died horribly are still waiting for a chance while Pixie gets moved to the front of the queue after encouraging a bigot to blow her head off with a shotgun on a dare). The convenient loopholes ("we said kill no human, but these intelligent beings don't count as human, so murder the shit out of them"). The hypocrisy (Maddy Pryor's a clone so she can't be resurrected, but so are the Cuckoos and they're all running around. Or hell, the fact Maddy has her own entirely unique and distinct memories not shared by Jean Grey should move her beyond simply a clone). Or the bloodthirstiness (why does a depowered mutant have to be killed in ritual combat in front of a crowd to be reborn with their powers?) It's unclear what sort of educational system they have, beyond having the kids work on combo moves (cool, but maybe of limited practicality).

I assume the writers are intending to highlight the faults of the braintrust running Krakoa. The limits of their thinking. They've mostly agreed to not go with the Magneto/Apocalypse approach of wiping out or subjugating all humans. Closer to Xavier's idea of coexistence. But it's always felt like Xavier intended that as mutants living in a combined society with everyone else on Earth (more like Morrison's conception.) Most of the laws and social mores would already be in place, but tweaked and expanded to be more open and accepting to mutants and their perspectives.

They're still doing that to an extent, since Krakoa's leader communicate with other nations' leader, engage in trade and p.r. battles and so on. They seem quite good at capitalism. But having established their own nation, rather than melding into existing ones, they have to put everything together themselves. They don't seem to have any idea how to do that. They've overcome death (or managed a workaround at least), which is very cool. They've mostly ceased the infighting between different philosophies that's marked most of the X-Men's history. Beyond that, I'm not sure what they're doing.

I don't know if that's on the writers, that they can't conceive of a truly new society or way of doing things. Or it's meant to be on the characters. They've been struggling just to stay alive so long they never thought this far ahead. And dying doesn't matter now, so why worry about it? Like the college kid on their own for the first time who decides if no one's going to make them go to class, they're gonna sleep in as much as they want. Also, they're going to eat a ton of Twinkies all the time because they can do that now. 

No, that wasn't my college experience. Well, some variation of the Twinkies thing was at different times, but not the sleeping in thing.

The know they don't want to do education like humans, but haven't devised an alternative, and it's not clear anyone is actually working on one. There were already systems and models to work off before, so there was no need to devise their own. But if they've dismissed those other systems as inferior human crap, then what's left? Krakoan leadership: *collective shrug and shake of the head*

Nightcrawler's supposedly trying to devise some sort of belief system, or maybe morality in a society that sees death (or dying, or killing) as no big deal, but a) he's seemingly working alone, which rather limits perspective, and b) he's not making any headway.

But if the end goal for this whole Krakoa status quo is for everything to collapse because the leaders did such a lousy job building a functioning society, is that really a great look for your ostensible heroes? Hey, you finally created a place where mutants could feel secure and meet humans on equal terms, with equal protection, but it was a mess of a place predicated on suffering, and pain, and bending your own rules whenever it suited you. 

I suppose it could be laid as commentary on the characters. That this is not the sort of role they were created for, and they're poorly suited for it. That, having created this safe nation, they needed to step aside for other mutants with gifts better suited for creating a fair and just society. The issues in stretching certain characters beyond tolerances or sell-by dates. I don't expect that to be the case.

More likely Krakoa is eventually destroyed in some big event thing by external forces. That way the writers can shuffle the X-Men back to more familiar waters, without having to necessarily paint them as big fat failures. The society would have come together if they'd just had a little more time. Darn that Symbiote-Encrusted Thanos-Blood infused AIM Thor!