(no subject)
FUCK EVERYONE I'M GOING TO TALK ABOUT COMICS
Okay so I've been basically marathoning Inhumans. It's the first thing I ever read of Marvel, and it's still my favorite so far. There's this weird pattern with Inhuman stuff though, where it's either... shitty 70s shit, Kirby dots galore, or it's the most tragic fucking thing the writers could think of, or it's... really good. Nothing in between. Also their timeline is confusing as shit to work out. From what I can tell, their city was... somewhere in the Atlantic, and then it was uprooted to the Himalayas, and then they took it to the moon, and then for some reason they took it back to Earth for a while, and then back to the moon again. And then they turned it into a spaceship to cruise around the universe. It seems to me like that trip to Earth and then back to the moon was some writer just forgetting where they were located, or not wanting to do a retcon and so just sort of twisting things for convenience. Whatever. Okay. Inhumans.
I really like Black Bolt. hurrrrrkk. I don't usually like stoic, silent characters, and he's the epitome of both. He can't speak, because SUPRA POWERFUL VOICE BREAKS EVERYTTHIINNNGG, RIPS WORLDS APART, so he's just resigned to silence forever. His wife Medusa speaks for him. I was just sorta 'eh' on her at first, but she's really growing on me. When she and Black Bolt were young they were immediately betrothed for political reasons, and once they finally started taking an interest in each other they like... developed this sign language to use together? What the hell, that's adorable. She's also totally strong and resolute female character, and a righteous bitch when she needs to be. She flung bricks at Spider-Man, once. My hero. Also, if I had her job, I'd always be like UM HANG ON GUYS LEMME MAKE SURE THAT'S WHAT HE'S REALLY SAYING, ACTUALLY ALL HE DID WAS LOOK AT ME AND SORT OF NARROW ONE EYE, SO I GOTTA CHECK THE 'WHAT'S BLACK BOLT SAYING' CHART. But she's just got this interpreting shit down.
There's another guy that hangs out with them, who just... got the shittiest end of the stick. They've all mutated these super neat powers (Black Bolt has his crazy voice, Medusa gets some sweet prehensile hair, one guy learns Monk-Fu and can see everything's weakness, one guy levels fucking mountains when he stomps his cute little satyr hooves), but this guy? He's an amphibian. That's all he's got going for him. It's not even that he can breathe under water if he wants to, he's actually just uncomfortable if he's on land too long. He can't even talk to fish, so even Aquaman's got more uses than him. There's this one scene where they're like filling a room with water for him, and they close the door, and right then something big comes up. They all start running off and someone's like, "BUT WHAT ABOUT TRITON?" "IT'S OKAY, HE'S USELESS." I swear, that's verbatim. So they just leave him locked in that room and go get shit done. He's kinda like, D:?
I'm also a little amused at how they portray Black Bolt's power of electron manipulation, or whatever it is. It's channeled from the very fashionable fork strapped to his forehead, so sometimes it's these bolts coming from his forehead that... artists don't really know how to deal with. There's nothing like that in reality, so they can't use that. All they've really got to reference is Kirby dots of the 70s, so it's funny to watch them take that and try to like modernize it.
Also of personal interest is the character development! There's a lot of background on Medusa, they talk about how she used to be a "bad girl", before she started hanging out with Black Bolt. I have NEVER seen evidence of this. It sounds like a conveniently glossed over background. Although to be far, she does do a lot of running around and hanging out with the Fantastic Four and stuff, so she's kind of more involved than the rest of the Inhumans in that sense. But anyway, that's her toward the beginning, always sort of missing when she used to be active, and not sure she's cut out for royal life, and sort of unsure of herself sometimes. In the recent stuff I'm reading she is just in control. She snaps out orders from Black Bolt, defends his genocidal wishes, all that. I didn't say it was a change for the better, but it's definitely a change.
Then there's Black Bolt himself. I've been paying special attention to him because he's my latest RP goal. (NEVER-ENDING GAME OF CHARADES.) I pay special attention to how he communicates to everyone that's not Medusa, because communicating with Medusa is just the writers being cheap. Too easy, he looks at her and it's like telepathy. Anyway, there's a lot more of it in the beginning. A lot of pointing, gesturing, walking around and doing stuff. He makes his meaning clear, but he never stoops to acting something out, or writing something down. (Actually that's a lie, as of my reading now, he's written two speeches for his people. But no little notes.) Yeah. I'm pretty sure that that's going to be impossible in RP, and pretty sure that he's going to have to swallow his pride and write some shit down once in a while. As time goes by, he turns more and more into this black lump that sits around and watches everyone, and gets up only when someone's ass needs to be kicked. This corresponds with Medusa speaking more and more authoritatively for him. It feels almost like... they're detracting from his character to add something (potentially undesired) to hers. Either way, I'm not getting much for RP-note-taking from the current stuff, no matter how much nicer on the eyes the art is.
Back in the 70s, the Bolt-centric comics were a lot more interesting. There's a What-If story where he encounters... oh, someone from some pantheon, I can't remember who. The guy gets his attention as he's flying overhead so Bolt lands to talk to him, and the guy's like 'HEY BRO, GLAD TO MEET YOU 8D ...UNLESS YOU'RE SECRETLY A SPY OH FUCK YOU' and Bolt just stands there all :| He's brought back to this guy's Olympus or whatever, and has several one-sided conversations with the denizens. Interesting to read. Another story involves him seeing a little girl crying, so he goes to wonder what's wrong in her general direction, and ends up fixing her problem. It's really sweet. It's that sort of thing that I'm looking to for my characterization of him. In recent stuff, he's waging universe-wide war. He has no time to care about helping sobbing little girls or meeting strange guys that want to yell at him and then bring him home to meet the parents. If I took him from current canon and plopped him down in the middle of deadculture, he'd be like, Zombies? Helping people escape from them, trying to communicate without Medusa around? Fuck, that's peanuts. WHERE DID MY GIANT MACHINES OF WAR GO?
The only good thing to come out of the modern stuff (for the record, I'm talking 2005 and later -- there's some really sweet stuff from just before that, although it's 70s-80s that I look to for the Bolt characterization), is Maximus (see icon). Some of the earlier portrayals of him are just horrible. He's Bolt's insane (and yet genius) brother, who constantly tries to seize the throne from him. The early stuff makes him almost retarded-insane, drooling and stuff. Hang on, isn't he a genius, too? He starts getting interesting in that first arc I read, where Bolt manipulates him into THINKING he's taking over, just to use him in a scheme. The dialog they gave him was fantastic, and it was that version of him that I was playing in thespiderswalk. He hasn't sunk back to that earlier annoying interpretation of him since that 2003 arc. And the most current arc? He's delightful. He finally succeeded in taking over the kingdom because Bolt went missing, and for once he wasn't a total dick about it. He actually did some kingly things. So when Bolt got back again, he wasn't immediately thrown back into prison, but allowed to kind of... help out. A joint rulership. As the situation gets more dire, they look to him for more and more help -- and lo and behold, he provides! He goes back to his genius inventor roots and designs all these sweet machines for them, all the while keeping up a sort of Johnny Deppishly insane attitude about it. He gets excited over inappropriate things while everyone else is grimdark, he makes amusing and unwanted commentary -- it's cool. I like him. He's almost the comic relief character, which is okay, and he seems to have completely forgotten about his grudges against everyone, which is slightly less okay, but I guess could be explained by his joy at not being locked up anymore. It feels a little tiny bit like they've let me down on all the hatred building up he had for Bolt, that they're working together so well now -- but on the other hand, it really is good to see.
EDIT: I take it all back. WELL PLAYED, MARVEL. WELL PLAYED. I love Maximus fully and without complaint once more.
Um, what else... Oh, SPANNING THE AGES, as I've been doing, exposes up a good number of plot holes. Example: that weird trip back to Earth for one of the stories. Second example: Medusa and Bolt had a son, Ahura, who was deemed insane like dear uncle Max, and far too powerful like daddy. So they lock him up, where he grow steadily worse and worse. And yet, in this recent stuff, he's suddenly living with them and acting pretty much like a normal kid. Uh. Kind of a pretty big jump, there. Doesn't being given up by your parents to be locked away have SOME sort of mental ramification for a kid? No? Oh, okay.
In conclusion: I like oldschool Black Bolt, Medusa was cool and is getting... interesting... Triton is useless, Kirby dots, dawww Maximus.
Good to have that out of my system.
Oh yeah one last thing: A list of all the things Black Bolt has said out loud so far:
His mom's name (this was the 70s, forgot what it did)
NOOOOO (leveled a city)
... (exploded a Skrull)
Now. (destroyed a fleet of ships)
Goodbye. (armed a bomb)
NOOOOO (ripped the skin off that Caesar-looking guy)
seeing a pattern
Also, why do heroes look like totally different people with their masks damaged/destroyed?
Okay so I've been basically marathoning Inhumans. It's the first thing I ever read of Marvel, and it's still my favorite so far. There's this weird pattern with Inhuman stuff though, where it's either... shitty 70s shit, Kirby dots galore, or it's the most tragic fucking thing the writers could think of, or it's... really good. Nothing in between. Also their timeline is confusing as shit to work out. From what I can tell, their city was... somewhere in the Atlantic, and then it was uprooted to the Himalayas, and then they took it to the moon, and then for some reason they took it back to Earth for a while, and then back to the moon again. And then they turned it into a spaceship to cruise around the universe. It seems to me like that trip to Earth and then back to the moon was some writer just forgetting where they were located, or not wanting to do a retcon and so just sort of twisting things for convenience. Whatever. Okay. Inhumans.
I really like Black Bolt. hurrrrrkk. I don't usually like stoic, silent characters, and he's the epitome of both. He can't speak, because SUPRA POWERFUL VOICE BREAKS EVERYTTHIINNNGG, RIPS WORLDS APART, so he's just resigned to silence forever. His wife Medusa speaks for him. I was just sorta 'eh' on her at first, but she's really growing on me. When she and Black Bolt were young they were immediately betrothed for political reasons, and once they finally started taking an interest in each other they like... developed this sign language to use together? What the hell, that's adorable. She's also totally strong and resolute female character, and a righteous bitch when she needs to be. She flung bricks at Spider-Man, once. My hero. Also, if I had her job, I'd always be like UM HANG ON GUYS LEMME MAKE SURE THAT'S WHAT HE'S REALLY SAYING, ACTUALLY ALL HE DID WAS LOOK AT ME AND SORT OF NARROW ONE EYE, SO I GOTTA CHECK THE 'WHAT'S BLACK BOLT SAYING' CHART. But she's just got this interpreting shit down.
There's another guy that hangs out with them, who just... got the shittiest end of the stick. They've all mutated these super neat powers (Black Bolt has his crazy voice, Medusa gets some sweet prehensile hair, one guy learns Monk-Fu and can see everything's weakness, one guy levels fucking mountains when he stomps his cute little satyr hooves), but this guy? He's an amphibian. That's all he's got going for him. It's not even that he can breathe under water if he wants to, he's actually just uncomfortable if he's on land too long. He can't even talk to fish, so even Aquaman's got more uses than him. There's this one scene where they're like filling a room with water for him, and they close the door, and right then something big comes up. They all start running off and someone's like, "BUT WHAT ABOUT TRITON?" "IT'S OKAY, HE'S USELESS." I swear, that's verbatim. So they just leave him locked in that room and go get shit done. He's kinda like, D:?
I'm also a little amused at how they portray Black Bolt's power of electron manipulation, or whatever it is. It's channeled from the very fashionable fork strapped to his forehead, so sometimes it's these bolts coming from his forehead that... artists don't really know how to deal with. There's nothing like that in reality, so they can't use that. All they've really got to reference is Kirby dots of the 70s, so it's funny to watch them take that and try to like modernize it.
Also of personal interest is the character development! There's a lot of background on Medusa, they talk about how she used to be a "bad girl", before she started hanging out with Black Bolt. I have NEVER seen evidence of this. It sounds like a conveniently glossed over background. Although to be far, she does do a lot of running around and hanging out with the Fantastic Four and stuff, so she's kind of more involved than the rest of the Inhumans in that sense. But anyway, that's her toward the beginning, always sort of missing when she used to be active, and not sure she's cut out for royal life, and sort of unsure of herself sometimes. In the recent stuff I'm reading she is just in control. She snaps out orders from Black Bolt, defends his genocidal wishes, all that. I didn't say it was a change for the better, but it's definitely a change.
Then there's Black Bolt himself. I've been paying special attention to him because he's my latest RP goal. (NEVER-ENDING GAME OF CHARADES.) I pay special attention to how he communicates to everyone that's not Medusa, because communicating with Medusa is just the writers being cheap. Too easy, he looks at her and it's like telepathy. Anyway, there's a lot more of it in the beginning. A lot of pointing, gesturing, walking around and doing stuff. He makes his meaning clear, but he never stoops to acting something out, or writing something down. (Actually that's a lie, as of my reading now, he's written two speeches for his people. But no little notes.) Yeah. I'm pretty sure that that's going to be impossible in RP, and pretty sure that he's going to have to swallow his pride and write some shit down once in a while. As time goes by, he turns more and more into this black lump that sits around and watches everyone, and gets up only when someone's ass needs to be kicked. This corresponds with Medusa speaking more and more authoritatively for him. It feels almost like... they're detracting from his character to add something (potentially undesired) to hers. Either way, I'm not getting much for RP-note-taking from the current stuff, no matter how much nicer on the eyes the art is.
Back in the 70s, the Bolt-centric comics were a lot more interesting. There's a What-If story where he encounters... oh, someone from some pantheon, I can't remember who. The guy gets his attention as he's flying overhead so Bolt lands to talk to him, and the guy's like 'HEY BRO, GLAD TO MEET YOU 8D ...UNLESS YOU'RE SECRETLY A SPY OH FUCK YOU' and Bolt just stands there all :| He's brought back to this guy's Olympus or whatever, and has several one-sided conversations with the denizens. Interesting to read. Another story involves him seeing a little girl crying, so he goes to wonder what's wrong in her general direction, and ends up fixing her problem. It's really sweet. It's that sort of thing that I'm looking to for my characterization of him. In recent stuff, he's waging universe-wide war. He has no time to care about helping sobbing little girls or meeting strange guys that want to yell at him and then bring him home to meet the parents. If I took him from current canon and plopped him down in the middle of deadculture, he'd be like, Zombies? Helping people escape from them, trying to communicate without Medusa around? Fuck, that's peanuts. WHERE DID MY GIANT MACHINES OF WAR GO?
The only good thing to come out of the modern stuff (for the record, I'm talking 2005 and later -- there's some really sweet stuff from just before that, although it's 70s-80s that I look to for the Bolt characterization), is Maximus (see icon). Some of the earlier portrayals of him are just horrible. He's Bolt's insane (and yet genius) brother, who constantly tries to seize the throne from him. The early stuff makes him almost retarded-insane, drooling and stuff. Hang on, isn't he a genius, too? He starts getting interesting in that first arc I read, where Bolt manipulates him into THINKING he's taking over, just to use him in a scheme. The dialog they gave him was fantastic, and it was that version of him that I was playing in thespiderswalk. He hasn't sunk back to that earlier annoying interpretation of him since that 2003 arc. And the most current arc? He's delightful. He finally succeeded in taking over the kingdom because Bolt went missing, and for once he wasn't a total dick about it. He actually did some kingly things. So when Bolt got back again, he wasn't immediately thrown back into prison, but allowed to kind of... help out. A joint rulership. As the situation gets more dire, they look to him for more and more help -- and lo and behold, he provides! He goes back to his genius inventor roots and designs all these sweet machines for them, all the while keeping up a sort of Johnny Deppishly insane attitude about it. He gets excited over inappropriate things while everyone else is grimdark, he makes amusing and unwanted commentary -- it's cool. I like him. He's almost the comic relief character, which is okay, and he seems to have completely forgotten about his grudges against everyone, which is slightly less okay, but I guess could be explained by his joy at not being locked up anymore. It feels a little tiny bit like they've let me down on all the hatred building up he had for Bolt, that they're working together so well now -- but on the other hand, it really is good to see.
EDIT: I take it all back. WELL PLAYED, MARVEL. WELL PLAYED. I love Maximus fully and without complaint once more.
Um, what else... Oh, SPANNING THE AGES, as I've been doing, exposes up a good number of plot holes. Example: that weird trip back to Earth for one of the stories. Second example: Medusa and Bolt had a son, Ahura, who was deemed insane like dear uncle Max, and far too powerful like daddy. So they lock him up, where he grow steadily worse and worse. And yet, in this recent stuff, he's suddenly living with them and acting pretty much like a normal kid. Uh. Kind of a pretty big jump, there. Doesn't being given up by your parents to be locked away have SOME sort of mental ramification for a kid? No? Oh, okay.
In conclusion: I like oldschool Black Bolt, Medusa was cool and is getting... interesting... Triton is useless, Kirby dots, dawww Maximus.
Good to have that out of my system.
Oh yeah one last thing: A list of all the things Black Bolt has said out loud so far:
His mom's name (this was the 70s, forgot what it did)
NOOOOO (leveled a city)
... (exploded a Skrull)
Now. (destroyed a fleet of ships)
Goodbye. (armed a bomb)
NOOOOO (ripped the skin off that Caesar-looking guy)
seeing a pattern
Also, why do heroes look like totally different people with their masks damaged/destroyed?