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Brian Hague
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Posted: 15 February 2018 at 11:45pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

Courtney Whitmore, the second Star-Spangled Kid, later Stargirl, was the step-daughter of the original Star-Spangled Kid's grown-up sidekick, Stripesy.

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Brian O'Neill
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Posted: 16 February 2018 at 2:51am | IP Logged | 2 post reply

Rebecca, Green Lantern(and his wife. the Harlequin)had a daughter (Jade) and son (Obsidian) who were on the team, while Wonder Woman married Steve Trevor(surprise!), and they had a daughter named Fury.
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Adam Schulman
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Posted: 16 February 2018 at 5:44am | IP Logged | 3 post reply

The Elongated Man's wife Sue Dibny was pregnant at the time of her murder at the hands of her friend, Jean Loring. Jean's motivation was to get her husband and the men of the JLA to protect their wives and girlfriends the way they used to, back in the good old days.  

***
From what I recall reading Sue's death was an accident. Jean went round the bend later and I guess she retroactively justified it.

All this happened in IDENTITY CRISIS, a mini-series by Brad Meltzer that never, never, never should've been written. Truly awful. (Aside from the nice art by Rags Morales.)
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Jim Petersman
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Posted: 16 February 2018 at 6:12am | IP Logged | 4 post reply

"All this happened in IDENTITY CRISIS, a mini-series by Brad Meltzer that never, never, never should've been written."

***********************

That series was one of the final straws for me. It was around this time that I found myself actively disliking these "heroes." If I didn't quit reading Marvel and DC at the end of this series, it wasn't long after.
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Stephen Churay
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Posted: 16 February 2018 at 9:45am | IP Logged | 5 post reply

The Ed Brubaker run on Captain America.
It wasn't super violet. It didn't display
any nudity. Once it suggested that Bucky
and Natasha had just go I'd had something
other than working out.

My son, who was 3 or 4 at the time asked
me while we were at the comic shop,
"Daddy, can I get the Captain America
comic too?" "No son. I'm sorry, but it's
too grown up for you." And it was. The
tone and themes covered in that book were
way too adult to give to a kid that young.
He's 9 now, and I'd still have a hard time
justifying it.

Sadly, i felt like JB spent tbe better
part of a decade trying to turn back the
clock on comics. Doom Patrol, Trio, Triple
Helix all felt like books that came out
anywhere from the late 60's to the early
80's. I loved them for it. As has my son.
But sadly, the tidal wave of aging fanboys
was too great to push against.
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Eric Sofer
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Posted: 16 February 2018 at 10:26am | IP Logged | 6 post reply

ITEM: "...Wonder Woman pulls the Cheetah's tail/spine off and beats her to death with it..." She did WHAT?!?!? That sounds a little like what I heard Warren Ellis was once writing, but... who the hell is editing these books and letting this stuff hit the pages?

ITEM: Triplicate Girl was rather a superfluous character in the Legion of Super-Heroes (literally :), and killing one of her selves was a way to have a serious change to show how deadly Computo was, while not really getting rid of the character. it was a 60s death that was kind of acceptable. Had it been written in the 80s, we'd have seen Luornu return to Cargg sooner or later, and we would have seen how she was truly handicapped. Everybody else could split in three... but she could only split in two. Still, it was the 60s, and that was as close to death as any human character was going to get.

ITEM: Batgirl. Wow, there's a character who had it rough! She fought a foe who beat her so bad that she was going to give up being Batgirl... and even when she didn't quit, she was awfully hesitant. Then, her memories were erased, and had to be restored (from cassette tapes, no less.) In "The Killing Joke", she got shot through the spine, which caused permanent damage (even getting Kryptonian-level powers didn't fix it.) If DC needed a punch-toy female character, it sure seemed to be her. As memory serves, she was created in the comics as a response to the Batgirl TV show (which never materialized), but even so... another female character was acceptable. And Supergirl needed a friend... :)

ITEM: Jean Grey got more exposure, dead, than some of the other X-Men (Iceman, Havok, Polaris) got being alive! Right after the Death of Phoenix, it seemed Chris Claremont couldn't leave her alone... I think there was a serious Jean Grey/Phoenix reference in every book for like a year. And yes... Kitty Pryde dressed as Dark Phoenix, and ANYONE was fooled? Oy vey.

ITEM: Ms. Marvel had the treatment too, between being raped and kidnapped by Immortus' son/clone Marcus (acceptable to her by that "boost" from his machines.) Then she lost her powers and memory by an attack by Rogue... and COME ON! Claremont wrote this, and at the time, we had seen ONE way that Rogue stole powers... by kissing the target. You can tell me he wasn't titillated by this implication, but I wasn't born yesterday. Of course, he's the one who gave Carol rage against the Avengers because they... accepted that she had said and done what she wanted, and didn't stop her? Yes, LATER, they found out that she was being mind controlled... but in Avengers #200 and Avengers Annual #10, they realliy felt she was acting from free will. Getting mad at that was pretty damned dumb.

Unfortunately, in the #MeToo style, it seems that if someone had to be abused or killed in comics, it was the female characters. But the REAL issue was the attempt to inject more real world drama into the books. Why bother? If these heroes had to face the Joker or Magneto every month, did they REALLY have to be subjected to mugging, rape, abuse, or murder? I think that was the worst direction they could have gone.

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Adam Schulman
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Posted: 16 February 2018 at 12:06pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

 "...Wonder Woman pulls the Cheetah's tail/spine off and beats her to death with it..." She did WHAT?!?!? That sounds a little like what I heard Warren Ellis was once writing, but... who the hell is editing these books and letting this stuff hit the pages?

***

I'd never heard about this, and I don't think it's true. If true it was in some ELSEWORLDS title, not WONDER WOMAN. 

Didn't Claremont establish that it was the Avengers who were also being mind-controlled, not just Carol Danvers? 

I think the Ed Brubaker run on CAPTAIN AMERICA would've just been too incomprehensible for a nine-year old. A twelve-year old might've "gotten it."

And thankfully Starfire is now back to her old self (albeit with a different hairstyle). 
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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 16 February 2018 at 1:11pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

"Courtney Whitmore, the second Star-Spangled Kid, later Stargirl, was the step-daughter of the original Star-Spangled Kid's grown-up sidekick, Stripesy."

"Green Lantern(and his wife. the Harlequin)had a daughter (Jade) and son (Obsidian) who were on the team, while Wonder Woman married Steve Trevor(surprise!), and they had a daughter named Fury."

Thanks for the info. It was hard to keep up on the Earth I and II doings back in the day even with a lot of "Rascally Roy" footnotes. I had some All-Star Comics/Squadron in the 30-50 cent times and there were things I never did get straight even there.

---

I'll be glad to know I'm getting/got things about Batgirl and Cheetah wrong. I could swear I saw a splash panel of Batgirl being shot that was very gory. Could blame The Comics Journal maybe? I got some later news about what went on in the super-universes through their pages circa late '80s-early '90s.

Yes, disrespectful to all superheroes... emphasis on the heroes part perhaps. There was a lot of 'going dark' in the wake of Phoenix wasn't there? The direct sales gave them much more reactive feedback to what sold over the general bales to the newsstands system and they began really pandering to that while (perhaps inevitably) losing the general/casual reader outside specialist shops.
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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 16 February 2018 at 1:20pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

This might seem a weird place to make this point, but (don't laugh) one of the biggest things I think John Byrne brought to super-people comics was how he drew actual clothes that were interesting on the characters (when not in the trademarked costumes of course).This was a major thing for me anyway in making what i was reading a little more real, about real people i could relate to. I used to pour over Sears and Spiegel catalogues like guys might pour over those military gear guides! I can;t think of another comic artist who paid the attention to characters clothes, they were always bland and generic. Maybe Steve Leialoha did though, when there was a chance, I know he did later in Spider-Woman, and Paul Smith was another who showed the same consciousness... Kerry Gammil possibly also.

If female readers are wanted I guarantee more reflection of fashion (but not as in bizarre runway show stuff) would help without being the Millie The Model /Katy Keene reader participation thing. Flashback... there was some kind of design-a-costume for Kitty thing in X-Men, and that was great to see, friendly even. :^)


Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 16 February 2018 at 1:21pm
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Robert Shepherd
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Posted: 16 February 2018 at 3:01pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

(don't laugh) one of the biggest things I think John Byrne brought to super-people comics was how he drew actual clothes that were interesting on the characters

***

Not laughing here - I was just thinking the exact same thing while perusing some JB pages not 2 days ago.
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Stephen Churay
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Posted: 16 February 2018 at 3:23pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

You mean grounding characters in the real world can
happen by giving them interesting civilian clothes? I
thought the point of the thread was to prove you have to
either rape or kill someone to get that real world grit
feeling.

Funny enough, I just, and I mean "just", finished reading
Alpha Flight 13. Everybody is wearing cool looking
civilian clothes.

Edited by Stephen Churay on 16 February 2018 at 3:24pm
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Brian Hague
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Posted: 16 February 2018 at 8:10pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

Stephen, while "writing for the trade" was the cool thing to do and Ed Brubaker was popular during his run on Captain America, I picked up an issue on the advice of friends. In it, the Red Skull's sidekick, Crossbones, got it into his head that some anonymous housewife living out in the suburbs was really the Skull's daughter, Mother Superior, and that SHIELD had brainwashed her into forgetting her actual identity. 

Now, of course, to be one of the common cattle is a shameful thing and to be the daughter of the Skull a glorious one, by super-villain reckoning, so he broke into this woman's home and began torturing her. Shouting at her, threatening her, hitting her, and drowning her repeatedly in her bathtub.

Turns out, whattaya know, Crossbones was right, and yes, the good guys had brainwashed this villainess into accepting a life as just an everyday normal person and Crossbones' insistent, brutal torture of her was just the ticket she needed to clear her head and get back on track. See, he was doing the woman he tortured for the length of an entire issue a favor.

This was during the time when an issue of any given comic really equated to less than a full chapter in a Brad Thor or James Patterson novel, and EV-erybody writing comics thought they were the next Brad Thor or James Patterson, so if you had bought your son a Captain America comic that month, as I'm sure many parents did, you'd have gotten a comic with no Cap in it (none that I can recall) and instead, lots of painstakingly rendered, moody torture of a woman begging her attacker to stop while he continued on and on and on, beating her and holding her head underwater repeatedly...

...Until she smiled and thanked him.

Strangely, I am not a fan of the Ed Brubaker run on Captain America. Go figure.

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