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Stephen Robinson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5835
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| Posted: 28 October 2013 at 10:36pm | IP Logged | 1
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If Hal Jordan were *literally* without fear, he'd be insane. What I always understood as a kid was that Jordan was in *control* of his fear. He went into situations that would send other men screaming in the opposite direction and he did it because it was the right thing to do... you know, sort of like a test pilot or a superhero.
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Jeffrey Rice
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 10 September 2011
Location: United States
Posts: 1161
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| Posted: 28 October 2013 at 11:01pm | IP Logged | 2
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And now the rings find candidates "With the ability to overcome great fear". A compromise, but better than retro brain diddling!
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133334
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| Posted: 29 October 2013 at 5:34am | IP Logged | 3
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Regarding the Peter David revisionist GL origin, I remember that Hal was giving some sort of interview when he was asked about why the ring selected him above all others. When he responded, "Because I'm without fear," the host and the audience erupted into gales of uncontrollable laughter... Yet there are people who wonder why I can't stand his work!
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 29 October 2013 at 5:37am | IP Logged | 4
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And now the rings find candidates "With the ability to overcome great fear". A compromise, but better than retro brain diddling! This is the kind of idiocy that would insert a sequence into Batman's origin showing Bruce literally trying to turn himself into a bat, since in the origin he says "I shall become a BAT!" When writers lose their understanding that hyperbole is part and parcel of the language of superheroes, it's time to pack up and go home.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133334
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| Posted: 29 October 2013 at 7:27am | IP Logged | 5
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If Hal Jordan were *literally* without fear, he'd be insane. And if Superman was *literally* an alien, he'd have come from an entirely different genetic and evolutionary history, and would not look remotely human. C'mon!! PLAY the GAME! Otherwise, what's the point?
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Robbie Parry
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 June 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 12186
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| Posted: 29 October 2013 at 7:31am | IP Logged | 6
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I may be going off-topic, but I hate this shoehorning of things into the past, particularly Peter David's inserting of mental issues into Banner's past.
I like the idea of ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances. Like Peter Parker becoming Spider-Man. I'd hate it if a writer came up with a story that revealed the spider had human intellect and was an alien race who had decided, millennia ago, that Parker was going to become Spider-Man and that these same aliens manipulated the burglar to kill Uncle Ben, etc, etc.
Keep it simple, I say. Man gets bitten by radioactive spider. And then becomes Spider-Man.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133334
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| Posted: 29 October 2013 at 9:07am | IP Logged | 7
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I like the idea of ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances. Like Peter Parker becoming Spider-Man. I'd hate it if a writer came up with a story that revealed the spider had human intellect and was an alien race who had decided, millennia ago, that Parker was going to become Spider-Man
Missed the "Spider-Totem" epic, did you?
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Robbie Parry
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 June 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 12186
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| Posted: 29 October 2013 at 10:43am | IP Logged | 8
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Yes, haven't read a Spider-Man comic on a regular basis in years.
I do hear things, though (i.e. Osborn fathering kids with Gwen Stacey). I shudder to think what's been happening in Spider-Man's world whilst I've been away. :(
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Charles Valderrama
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4831
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| Posted: 29 October 2013 at 11:13am | IP Logged | 9
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Today's writers need to leave the origins of these characters alone and just try to tell good stories... is THAT so hard??? Respect the source material and tell stories 'moving forward' rather than 'looking backwards'. Even worse is that most readers don't see the problem.
I joke often that i can't wait till they reboot Harry Potter and make him a super-powered alien rather than a sorcerer... and the school will be replaced with huge Mother Ships with more aliens rather than students!!!!
-C!
Edited by Charles Valderrama on 29 October 2013 at 11:14am
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 29 October 2013 at 11:47am | IP Logged | 10
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Today's writers need to leave the origins of these characters alone and just try to tell good stories... is THAT so hard??? One of the worst thing to happen in comics in the last thirty years or so was MAN OF STEEL. Not because there was necessarily anything inferior about the product per se, but because, pretty much all by itself, it created a MINDSET. Before MoS, writers, artists and editors picked up a new assignment and understood that their job was to continue from the point at which they arrived. After MoS, it became all about "reboots". At the time I accepted the Superman assignment, many DC staffers had only recently become enamored with desktop computers, and computer terms were flying around the Office. "Reboot" was one. I have wondered many a time since, if I had come to Superman as little as a year earlier, before everyone was in love with computers, would I have been allowed to do the "fix" as I wished -- as a multi-issue in-continuity story that took Superman from where he was to where I thought he should be -- instead of as a "reboot". If I had, perhaps comics would not be in quite the same mess they are today. (Tho, truth to tell, the poison was already seeping into DC veins, and from there into the rest of the industry. The poison was called CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS.)
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Matt Hawes
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 16502
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| Posted: 29 October 2013 at 12:17pm | IP Logged | 11
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Robbie wrote:
| ... I shudder to think what's been happening in Spider-Man's world whilst I've been away. :( ... |
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It hasn't always been pretty, I can tell you! -- And you were lucky to have missed that "Spider-totem" story JB mentioned!
John Byrne wrote:
| ...One of the worst thing to happen in comics in the last thirty years or so was MAN OF STEEL. Not because there was necessarily anything inferior about the product per se, but because, pretty much all by itself, it created a MINDSET.... |
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Yeah, I agree that "Man of Steel" and all the other reboots that happened at DC after "Crisis on Infinite Earths" reset that universe was the start of the mindset. That period of rebooting, though, was arguably needed to get DC in line with the way comics were being written in the 1980s' and beyond, with heavier reliance on continuity and interaction between titles that Marvel popularized in the 1960s' through the 80s'.
The problem I have is that not only are the later reboots/revamps/re-launches unnecessary on the whole, and ironically, perhaps, they do more to complicate continuity, but I just wish that the publishers would leave the past alone already.
I am less annoyed with a bad story if that story isn't messing up the established lore. If they want to make a dumb story where Spider-Man grows an extra head, that's dumb enough, but I don't want to read that Aunt May was really a robot all along, and all those old stories I read were suddenly cast in a different light as a result of the revelation.
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Matthew McCallum
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 03 July 2004
Location: Canada
Posts: 2711
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| Posted: 29 October 2013 at 12:41pm | IP Logged | 12
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While neither is particularly preferable (or necessary), if forced to pick my poison I would rather have a reboot-and-start-anew over an in-continuity "Everything You Know Is A Lie!" revision that overlays a negative texture on past stories.
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