I think the problem with the Ventriloquist picture is that Wesker looks WAY too confident while Scarface has an almost hesitant look on his face... Anyone who doesn't know it's supposed to be the other way around really shouldn't be illustrating them!
Yeah, Arnie's manner and those dark glasses both make him look less like Arnold Wesker and more like Doctor Octopus if Otto had decided to style his hair after Larry rather than Moe.
I think the idea behind the whole 'beyond evil' thing is that you can at least theoretically reason with someone who's evil - after all, they must have made some sort of conscious choice to get to this point, and choice implies reason. Madness, however, is basically chaos (in this context, anyway), and you can't argue with chaos. I'm not saying such an assumption is right, mind you, but... I wonder whether the idea behind that Two-Face piece is that all the faces on one side represent good people, and the other side represents bad ones? Because I honestly can't see much difference between the two. I agree, that is a weird Riddler picture, but an interesting one, nonetheless. If nothing else, it's a memorable spit-take. (Hold the phone; just thought of something - if Eddie is being drawn as a human question mark here, then is he meant to be spitting out the dot at the end
( ... )
Yeah, I think the '90's tend to get a bad rap, comics-wise. True, there were some ridiculous aspects of it, but it gave us some truly awesome stuff that people are still talking about today - the Death of Superman saga, Knightfall, Marvel 2099, No Man's Land, etc., etc. Furthermore, while it was far from immune from the Earth-Shaking Crossovers that plague the industry, at least it wasn't resetting continuity and killing off everybody every five minutes or so.
DC was actually rather good in the 90s, but Marvel, for the most part, was a mess. The bad thing isn't current DC wants to be the 90s' DC, but the 90s' Marvel.
Oh, and since psychopathicus brought it up, let's imagine what powers the villains would've gotten if they DID deal with Neron!
* Two-Face: the power to make things explode by flipping his coin, a la the cover to that 80s Mike W. Barr story. * Ventriloquist: Scarface being able to act independently of him (win-win!). That, or being able to control other people like puppets. * Zsasz: The power to shed his skin and re-generate a new one at will, for when his current skin has no more room for tallies. * Riddler: The power to resist any and all attempts to "badass" him up, including mohawks, bishie-redesigns, and poorly-thought-out mysteries involving "masterminds" in bandages. :P
That would be really inconvenient for him, considering how many times he flips that thing. 'Tea or coffee, Two-Face?' 'Hmm...' *flips* BOOM! 'AARGH!' '...Well, neither now; they're all on the walls. Drat you, exploding coin!'
...For a number of reasons, I am extremely glad that they didn't go with that. Scarface is creepy enough already, thank you.
I'm picturing Zsasz living in a palatial mansion somewhere, the walls hung with his old, completely scar-covered skins, which have been cured and stretched over picture frames...
Given that he always winds up going back to his old self, doesn't he have that power already?
Devil's Asylum (the Grant-written one shot tie-in) was good. It didn't even demand you to know the first thing about the crossover, since even Neron's appearance can be explained as a hallucination. Although the villain's reasoning on why he would get Batman's soul for something that was exclusively his own fault was full of holes (Leaving even one person to die automatically damns your soul forever, even if it's to save several more? Huh
( ... )
Maybe the Joker was undergoing one of his sporadic attacks of patriotism? American supervillains don't take handouts! (Even in Emperor Joker, he technically "earned" his powers through conning Mxyzptlk).
Either that, or he was Genre Savvy enough to know that Neron would screw him over if he asked for anything big.
Or maybe he's just lying his ass off, and Neron actually gave him something totally different. Hell, he might've not asked for anything in the first place, and just joined Neron on a whim.
Well, his list in Last Laugh seems to indicate he DID make a deal with Neron.
I heard there was a fanfic where his inability to die no matter what happens to him was actually something he got out of a deal with the Devil, which I think could have worked in continuity if they hadn't touched upon it too regularly.
If he was being all that patriotic, he wouldn't have asked for Cuban cigars. My personal impression was that the Joker took the whole 'selling your soul' thing with the same level of seriousness he takes everything else - i.e, none at all. He has, of course, eagerly accepted world-altering powers on more than one occasion, but Neron clearly wasn't offering those, so he wasn't interested. Didn't mean he didn't want to join in the fun, though, so - cigars! Why not?
This almost certainly isn't what was intended, but I can't help thinking that Eddie is spraying paint on the wall to make art, as I did in primary school. Or maybe it's just too hot. Who knows?
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I wonder whether the idea behind that Two-Face piece is that all the faces on one side represent good people, and the other side represents bad ones? Because I honestly can't see much difference between the two.
I agree, that is a weird Riddler picture, but an interesting one, nonetheless. If nothing else, it's a memorable spit-take. (Hold the phone; just thought of something - if Eddie is being drawn as a human question mark here, then is he meant to be spitting out the dot at the end ( ... )
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Thanks, Bob Harras!
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* Two-Face: the power to make things explode by flipping his coin, a la the cover to that 80s Mike W. Barr story.
* Ventriloquist: Scarface being able to act independently of him (win-win!). That, or being able to control other people like puppets.
* Zsasz: The power to shed his skin and re-generate a new one at will, for when his current skin has no more room for tallies.
* Riddler: The power to resist any and all attempts to "badass" him up, including mohawks, bishie-redesigns, and poorly-thought-out mysteries involving "masterminds" in bandages. :P
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That would be really inconvenient for him, considering how many times he flips that thing. 'Tea or coffee, Two-Face?' 'Hmm...' *flips* BOOM! 'AARGH!' '...Well, neither now; they're all on the walls. Drat you, exploding coin!'
...For a number of reasons, I am extremely glad that they didn't go with that. Scarface is creepy enough already, thank you.
I'm picturing Zsasz living in a palatial mansion somewhere, the walls hung with his old, completely scar-covered skins, which have been cured and stretched over picture frames...
Given that he always winds up going back to his old self, doesn't he have that power already?
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Either that, or he was Genre Savvy enough to know that Neron would screw him over if he asked for anything big.
Or maybe he's just lying his ass off, and Neron actually gave him something totally different. Hell, he might've not asked for anything in the first place, and just joined Neron on a whim.
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I heard there was a fanfic where his inability to die no matter what happens to him was actually something he got out of a deal with the Devil, which I think could have worked in continuity if they hadn't touched upon it too regularly.
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My personal impression was that the Joker took the whole 'selling your soul' thing with the same level of seriousness he takes everything else - i.e, none at all. He has, of course, eagerly accepted world-altering powers on more than one occasion, but Neron clearly wasn't offering those, so he wasn't interested. Didn't mean he didn't want to join in the fun, though, so - cigars! Why not?
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No, I blew through a straw with paint on the other end. None of my schools were quite that stupid.
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