Really? Haha, wow, Marvel is more insane a setting than I remember. Feels like something like that would hit a critical mass where if anyone has access to hyper-science, what the purpose of dedicated superheroes are. I mean, OTHER than printing money with 0 effort.EternallyBored said:
Say hello to the new Iron Woman
- Thread starter Jarrito3002
- Start date
Recommended Videos
Hm, didn't get a notice about this quote, sorry. As per my reply to EternallyBored, I hadn't been privy to just how ludicrous the base tech level in Marvel had gotten(I only periodically catch up on major story arcs and stuff). So yeah, I guess contexted like that it would fit. Just, compared to reality, even MIT students wouldn't have access to materials to build a compact nuclear reactor in their dorm room, super genius or no.Happyninja42 said:
I dunno, I guess my sense of relative scale to a totally normal, non-giga-super-genius character in Marvel is completely screwed at this point. I mean, obviously writers are gunna shoe-horn in any reason or plot device to do whatever whimsy they want, but it feels like about the time that any random person can fart and build a trans-dimensional teleporter, it undermines all interest and intrigue of the characters we should be finding special.
I hope they introduce some freakin flaws to her. People who are 100% perfect are boring. That is the one thing I like about Iron Man from the movies. Yea he is smart and rich, but he is a horrible broken person.
Hell, even Rey from Star Wars wasnt this perfect, and she became a Jedi master and one of the best pilots in the galaxy in like 5 minutes without any training/experience whatsoever.
Hell, even Rey from Star Wars wasnt this perfect, and she became a Jedi master and one of the best pilots in the galaxy in like 5 minutes without any training/experience whatsoever.
Marvel and DC superscience pretty much work because the timelines get reset at some point, so all those awesome inventions that should have turned Earth into a sci-fi Wonderland 30 years ago just kind of poof out of existence.Areloch said:
For the timelines, DC and Marvel tend to reset the time period and technology through events, so technically every decade or so all the superscience and its potential effect on civilians or society at large gets reset with whatever major event happens, you'll see stuff like heroes curing major diseases or the super rich and superscience heroes coming up with all kinds of gadgets they talk about releasing to the public, but then Superboy Prime punches reality, or Darkseid get a hold of the anti-life equation, or someone finds a cosmic cube, and suddenly the heroes are back to being relatively new while the world has advanced to the 1970's,80's, or 90's technology wise. Some are time locked, like Magneto always being involved in WWII, but most heroes get their origin stories updated every decade or two, like how Iron Man went from being captured in Vietnam, to captured in the Middle East.
Also, the "Reed Richards is Useless trope", which is still used, but not as often anymore, back in the day it was the preferred method of handling superscience, have a hero invent something world changing, have them use it once, then never mention its existence ever again. Which is why Tony Stark has been building Ark reactors since Vietnam, but cars in 2016 Marvel still run on gasoline.
Its a bizarre effect of comics companies trying to merge all their superheroes into one world while still keeping it looking recognizably like our Earth today, its very complicated, and I honestly don't blame non comics fans for thinking its a pointlessly convoluted mess.
It's probably not a good idea to start comparing comic books to reality.Areloch said:
For one thing, literally none of the most famous superheroes would even still be alive to care that their legacy is being adopted by other people.
Well I've seen one article state that she reverse engineers one of his suits. Pretty sure it was from Bendis himself but I could be wrong. Not sure how she would get her hands on a suit of his to reverse engineer, but if that is the case, then that's way easier to deal with, if you are worried about believability in a world with time travel, fortune telling, space science gods, spider people, mutants, and every other crazy thing under the sun. But sure, let's worry about the access level for tech in a school and make sure that's accurate to life! xDAreloch said:
I'm teasing a bit, I just find, considering all the other crazy stuff that we accept as fans, to draw the line at "where did she get this tech?" seems a bit off. I mean if Peter Parker can (at least in some variations), come up with wrist mounted web shooters, AND come up with a chemical concoction that has the tensile strength of actual spider webbing, but on a human scale (something today's science can't do mind you), and he was able to do that by scrounging for parts, when people like Tony didn't even think of it, I'm willing to allow a girl to make a rocket suit. Besides, we don't know if it has an arc reactor in it. For all we know, her original mockup suit only has enough power for like, one flight. It's a proof-of-concept or something, and that get's his attention.
Bottom line, we know nothing about what's actually going on with the character's origin, other than some very basic concepts and details. Until the actual issue comes out, we should probably give her the benefit of the doubt.
Yeah, I know. I'm just grousing because I find the general handling of Marvel/DC profoundly absurd from a setting standpoint. Frankly, I think comics as a storytelling medium would probably be better served by having separated, beginning-middle-end arcs rather than constant reboots, recycles, rehashes and remixes.Happyninja42 said:
But that's never happening, so not much point in hoping.
To be fair, they do a lot to ground it all in a modern setting, while simultaneously making it so incredibly detached from reality it makes you wonder why they bother with Trump-expies or setting anything in what looks like a 1:1 replica of modern-day New York. If they're gunna completely toss out reality so you can have whatever crazy story they're rolling at the time, it feels aggressively lazy to hamstring themselves to a modern, real-life proxy setting for everything - except when it isn't.shrekfan246 said:
Like I said to HappyNinja, mostly just grousing because I dislike how they do storytelling, but my grousing doesn't really impact anything and it's not gunna change, so eh.
Ah, man I totally forgot about that trope. Yeah, like I've said, it feels super lazy to just have all that build up, soup up everything, fix everything, make everything better and then boop, we hit the reboot button and we're back at the beginning! Again! Only THIS time, all the characters are exactly the same! Unless they're not! See you all next year for the next reboot!EternallyBored said:
Just let the characters die and come up with some original stories! (Which will never happen because reboots are like printing money with even less effort than owning a printing press)
Honestly, comparing Riri's and Tony's mary sue level is a bit unfair. Iron Man was created in the early sixties for an age demographic of people in single digits. We were young, stupid, and none of these tropes had been as badly overused as they are, and most didn't even have a name. I mean, starting from that point, what will she fight: an evil twin that wants to destroy good things because evil is better? Someone in million dollar power armor stealing a few thousand from a bank? A lot of stuff that worked when comics started doesn't fly anymore. Hell, stuff from the bronze age can be hard to swallow (just re-watch some old Superfriends episodes, or everyone's favorite from the 80s FF cartoon, Reed beating Magneto by holding him up with a fake wooden gun.)
I don't know. I think it's reasonable to ask if you're creating a new character, why start with an origin point people have long since called tired and overdone? Moreover, unless the complaints are right and she was created to be "look how awesome and perfect I am" and you don't want to admit it, why be hostile to the question? Are we so anxious to shout racism / sexism we can't stop to say, okay, I see how you get that, but fault X Y or Z is coming down the pike to add to her character? She isn't going to get the decades Tony did to develop alcoholism, a guilt complex over how her armor is used, or the general arrogant shitiness Tony's had the last 25 years or better (fun fact, Tony lying and manipulating Rhodey is what lead to him becoming "War Machine" and not just a replacement Iron Man). Hell, even the first movie didn't get halfway before establishing Tony as a bit more Rainman than genius (engineering savant, can't remember social security number).
Though the thing I have the most problem with is the age. Savantness aside, when did the old guard lighten up on full time superheroing from teenagers? In my day you couldnt' be an Avenger until you were 18, and those under that were discouraged from getting involved. Yeah, some sliped through in the past, and they did eventually get the need to provide training, but full on stick in the mud Iron Man saying, you 15, sure, go face the Mandarin and Fin fAng Foom", yeah, I don't see it.
I don't know. I think it's reasonable to ask if you're creating a new character, why start with an origin point people have long since called tired and overdone? Moreover, unless the complaints are right and she was created to be "look how awesome and perfect I am" and you don't want to admit it, why be hostile to the question? Are we so anxious to shout racism / sexism we can't stop to say, okay, I see how you get that, but fault X Y or Z is coming down the pike to add to her character? She isn't going to get the decades Tony did to develop alcoholism, a guilt complex over how her armor is used, or the general arrogant shitiness Tony's had the last 25 years or better (fun fact, Tony lying and manipulating Rhodey is what lead to him becoming "War Machine" and not just a replacement Iron Man). Hell, even the first movie didn't get halfway before establishing Tony as a bit more Rainman than genius (engineering savant, can't remember social security number).
Though the thing I have the most problem with is the age. Savantness aside, when did the old guard lighten up on full time superheroing from teenagers? In my day you couldnt' be an Avenger until you were 18, and those under that were discouraged from getting involved. Yeah, some sliped through in the past, and they did eventually get the need to provide training, but full on stick in the mud Iron Man saying, you 15, sure, go face the Mandarin and Fin fAng Foom", yeah, I don't see it.
At least we get rid of SGU!AccursedTheory said:
>.>
Which some people liked, I guess!
<.<
The most disappointing part is that they basically said "hey, you know that 20 years of creativity that made you all love the franchise? Well, fuck that, we're going back to the guy who hasn't made a good movie since Independence Day!"
Which, in fairness is what SYFy did with the series anyway, minus the Independence Day part.
still, I can't bring myself to care. Mostly because SyFy wasn't going to give it any love anyway, so I can not watch Stargate 2: Will Smith is dead in this one, too! as well as I could not watch a movie that didn't come out.
It has nothing to do with that, though. You can brand a name like Iron Maiden and not only has Iron Maiden done it in most entertainment niches, but other people have done it for metal companies and the like. They could probably get away with it in comics, maybe even in film, but there are so many trademarks I doubt they could do any merchandising at all.
Iron Man is a song title, which doesn't offer the same type of protection. The song Iron Man would at the very least have to provide market confusion, with a judge deciding that there is some reasonable confusion of the brand. It also doesn't hurt that both the band and Marvel apparently enjoy the association, going so far as to have a verasion of the song in the first IM movie and have Tony wearing a Sabbath shirt in The avengers.Happyninja42 said:
Iron Maiden is a band name, trademarked for goods and services, mostly in entertainment, and is a different beast.
And it'd be an especially big problem if she was, in fact, rocking out to Maiden.Happyninja42 said:
Anyway, knowing Speedball/Penance requires knowing too much about the comic book version of Civil War. Which is to say, anything. However, Penance could only use his power when he was in pain, so he had a suit with hundreds of spikes poking into him. Not quite the same as an iron maiden, but close enough for jazz.
Well, yes, but the number of toys you can sell is important to getting someone into kids' homes. I used to have multiple Iron Man figures before I'd read an Iron Man comic. I imagine this has something to do with his ubiquity, when there are so many guys like him out there.
Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan are pretty much the main (stable) supporting cast of Tony's life in the comics, something which carries over into the movies. Not so much Hogan, but Pepper is vital to Tony's functioning on any even remotely adult level. Pepper even gets injected with Extremis in 3.
Granted, I don't collect comics like I used to. They may have both been killed off by now. Several times, if Marvel is still Marvel.
I would think just the fact that Pepper has been featured in the movies would be a good selling point for her being Iron Woman.
Because you have to operate under the idea that there's any internal consistency to these complaints. Legacy heroes aren't new, and they didn't really seem to be a problem until they started introducing women and people of colour. You'll notice the complaints shifted when the identity of Thor was revealed, for example.
Comic books spent over half a century pandering to straight white boys. And now that they're not the only audience, it's a problem. It's a problem if they create new characters if they create legacy characters, and if they use established characters. The only way to stop the complaints is to uphold the status quo and market solely to straight white male nerds. Which is sort of amusing to me, since most of the "fans" who are upset only exist because the Big Two changed their focus in the 70s and 80s. And to an extent, I'm one of them.
I was just having fun with it. Though the Slurm thing is totally going to happen.trunkage said:
That... really isn't just something comic books do. And the argument could be expanded to cover basically any setting that uses the real world as its basis, regardless of era.Areloch said:
People use real-world locations because it's fun to have a bit of familiarity mixed in with the wacky wild weirdness. How much less iconic would the opening stage of Deus Ex be if they weren't allowed to use the Statue of Liberty as the thing you're infiltrating? How much more forgettable would Sid Meier's Pirates! or Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag be if you weren't a Caribbean buccaneer? M*A*S*H wouldn't even exist if they couldn't set something during the Korean war, and forget about films like Blade Runner or Back to the Future or The Terminator or Robocop or Die Hard or... etc.
Maybe I'm expounding a bit far beyond what you really mean, but that's kinda the logical conclusion of your argument that fictional stories shouldn't "hamstring" themselves by... being superficially tied to the real world.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I understand how tiring it can be to people to just see that the stories are neverending, but that doesn't really have anything to do with the fact that they're set on Earth (and, of course, it ignores that plenty stories set in the Marvel universe in particular don't take place on Earth, though admittedly they're still presented as a modern-day sort of thing). Stories set in fictional worlds are just as susceptible to having more and more tacked on endlessly or being rebooted over and over again.
.....please no. Ugh, no, I so don't want to see that.Something Amyss said:
Happyninja42 said:
Sorry, I was making that comment in regards to the other young, black, female engineer character that was mentioned earlier, and then asked why they don't use her. My point was that I've never heard of her, and likely very few people outside of die hard Iron Man fans have heard of her, so she has no draw power for the market. Hence why they wouldn't use her, and would instead make up a new character for the role.Something Amyss said:
Marvel doesn't so much as reset as it has a sliding time-scale. Where some events are always a short time ago. Like it's been 11-something years since the Fantastic four had their rocket accident.EternallyBored said:
It actually became canon in recent Ultimates. If you haven't been reading (and you should it's great). Some events are fixed points in time as you say above, Captain America always fought in WW2. But the current time period is sort of tipping point for realities and timelines. Certain people/events are needed for multiversal stability, so they sort of get yanked forward and the timeline corrects around it. Some heroes become aware of this trying to reverse it, before finding out it's beyond them and not necessarily a bad thing. It was delightfully meta.
It meant those stories where Captain America quit because of Watergate are canon. Because it was 70's Cap at the time. But for Cap of the present that was adjusted by the timeline to be a more recent scandal.
I wanted to include the sliding time scale thing, but my post was getting lengthy, and I wanted to use an example that was easier to explain, as the sliding scale is something that takes a few paragraphs to properly explain. I always liked to think of it as Marvel prefers to do soft resets and DC prefers hard resets.WolfThomas said:
You are entirely right though, Marvel prefers to use the sliding time scale to adjust their events. I can't think of a good way to describe how that effects supertech, from my experience they seem to just handwave it most of the time, so the truly sci-fi stuff is always back at the beginning of the scale, so we never see more than just the beginning of its effects. I.E. Tony's origin seems to always be about a decade or so in the past, so the effects of the invention of the arc reactor and all his other stuff is always only just starting to make it to the public, same with Reed Richards and so on.
I have also just started on the Civil War II related stuff, so I'm open to suggestions for recommendations. I've got some criticisms so far, but I'm a lot more optimistic about this event than I ever was about the first Civil War.
I really like the younger generation they are setting up, it has a sort of classic Teen Titans feel in a Marvel sort of way. That, and I like the idea of the younger heroes fucking off to form their own team because they got sick of the adults fighting each other rather than the villains that are still attacking while we do the Civil War II: Electric Boogaloo.
I've always like the sliding time-scale and soft resets because it's nicer than saying "all these stories are no longer valid". That DC does now and again.EternallyBored said:
You're right about the technology. It's always at or around the start of this "Heroic Age" that gets pulled forward. Which explains as you say why we don't 50years of ARC technology. Though Marvel technology even on a civilian level is slightly ahead of ours. With things like Parker industries amazing smart phone recently.
Marvel's new Ultimates is great. It feels like an in-universe version of Wildstorm's Authority (or at least the Warren Ellis version). A team of superheroes dealing with far beyond the simple super villain or alien invasion.
Yeah I'm quite excited by the Champions line up. I love Amadeus Hulk, Miles Morales and Ms Marvel. I kind of wish the older generation of teenage heroes would step up into the adult scene though. Young Avengers like Kate Bishop, Patriot, X-men like Armor, Hellion, Prodigy etc.
The new Nova is fun, but I miss Richard Ryder. Here was a teenage hero who was actually allowed to grow and mature into a competent adult hero.
From what I can remember? Stealing parts from other student's projects. I'm PRETTY certain that's what happened at least.Areloch said:
Which is Stupid considering Dr. Doom had a ton of reasources given to him to do science with. You'd figure a 15 year old (yeah right she's 15) prodigy would practically have the school throwing her materials.
Are people still trying to say that Rey is not a good character? Give it up already you aren't convincing anyone new so stop trying to shoehorn it into every discussion
(Sigh of course they will keep doing it right?)
(Sigh of course they will keep doing it right?)
Riri building her suit at MIT isn't a big surprise. After all Tony built a Iron Man suit in the back of a Radio Shack and took off to help the Avengers fight Godzilla (though a mutated one because Marvel had lost the license at that point).
As to the technology argument. It has been shown on page that Reed Richards essentially blackmails companies into paying him not to release new technologies and inventions. I kind of think at times that Reed is a bigger arsehole than Doom. I wouldn't be shocked if the other super-scientists take a similar stance to things.
I actually think that people like Jane Foster as Thor shouldn't be on the main Avengers roster either. Yes she's got a decent powerset but that doesn't give her the centuries of combat experience that the Odinson has.
As to the technology argument. It has been shown on page that Reed Richards essentially blackmails companies into paying him not to release new technologies and inventions. I kind of think at times that Reed is a bigger arsehole than Doom. I wouldn't be shocked if the other super-scientists take a similar stance to things.
I actually think that people like Jane Foster as Thor shouldn't be on the main Avengers roster either. Yes she's got a decent powerset but that doesn't give her the centuries of combat experience that the Odinson has.
