The Big Picture: Going Green: Part I

[pwnsore]

You should try replacing the faces you use in the episode with rage faces for a week or two. Lols would be had.

 

[NKnight]

Very nice sequel hook. I'm waiting anxiously.

 

[coogs42]

The MTV Movie Awards were NEVER relevant, nor is any similar award that's left up to a public vote. They are an excuse to sell a BOATLOAD of advertising by assembling hundreds of famous/popular celebrities together in one place because it's bad P.R. to look ungrateful by not showing up to maybe get a priz - nothing more, nothing less. Yes, I remember when they used to have funny sketches and joke prizes, too; but the "main" show was still meaningless B.S.

The only thing sadder than being "upset" that the MTV Awards were a giant "Twilight" party is being SURPRISED by it

The only public voted film award show that is any good is the UK's Empire Awards, mainly for the films that won and the fact that the films nominated and the films that win are chosen by film geeks. For example in this years show the awards were:
Best Film - Inception
Best Director - Edgar Wright - Scott Pilgrim
Best British Film - Kick-Ass
Best Actor - Colin Firth - The King's Speech
Best Actress - Noomi Rapace - The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Best Comedy - Four Lion
Best Horror - The Last Exorcism (only bad category of the show)
Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
Best Thriller - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Best Newcomer - Chloe Grace Moretz - Kick-Ass/Let Me In (the only category MTV got right in their equivalent)

Plus, the Twilight films have never won any awards Empire gives out. But in the UK we get the much worse National Movie Awards, to indicate how bad they are, they make the MTV awards look like the f'ing Oscars.

 

[CrashBang]

Could someone explain to me how this buisness with the colors really works?
I mean with superman it is like "Here is Cryptonite!" "Blarg" is it the same way with the green guy and a yellow shirt?

Green is the colour of willpower, it resides in the middle of the emotional spectrum, right next to yellow which is the colour of fear. The green ring used to be impervious to yellow but, as Green Lantern: Secret Origin tells us, Hal Jordan was able to break that rule and now everyone can... I think. When Sinestro was banned from the corps for becoming a fascist dictator, he went to the antimatter world of Qward and forged a yellow ring to fight the lanterns with. Upon Hal's return in Rebirth, Sinestro went out and created his own Yellow Lantern Corps (The Sinestro Corps). When the two duked it out, the prophesy of the Blackest Night (from the book of Oa) began to come true, at which point every colour of the spectrum (ROYGBIV) was granted it's own rings, power batteries and chosen members. Each colour represents an emotion, the very thing the guardians of the universe believe causes chaos. Red is rage, orange is avarice (greed), yellow is fear, green is willpower, blue is hope, indigo is compassion and violet is love. Each of the corps is pretty badass in its own way and the Blackest Night series is absolutely brilliant
Hope that helped! Also I did miss out a lot but yeah, you get the gist... or not, I donno. You get used to it all

 

[maximara]

Snip

They didn't cut Hal to make Kyle, they cut Hal because Green Lantern dropped below the threshold for cancellation, like it or not Green Lantern was changing, if Hal didn't die the book would simply have been cancelled. The new issues coming out weren't anything out of the normal, and it's not like they weren't betraying their own continuity

That was NOT my point. It was not so much killing Hal that was ticking off Hal fans as the whole story we got required the Guardians, Hal, and the entire GL Corp to have IQs below that of a cinderblock and ignoring what little Post-Crisis continuity there was.

Furthermore there was a way to get Kyle without "cutting" Hal--follow Gerard Jones' original plot following it up with Hal starting a new corp with Kyle as its first member.

Never mind Green Lantern HAD ALREADY been cancelled with issue #224 in 1988. If Hal wasn't selling books in 1988 to save Green Lantern why did DC think he was going to sale books in 1990? As Supergirl shows many times it is not the CHARACTER that is boring but the way they are written do why kill them off rather than shove them into comic book limbo until you figure out what to do with them?

 

[SpaceMedarotterX]

That was NOT my point. It was not so much killing Hal that was ticking off Hal fans as the whole story we got required the Guardians, Hal, and the entire GL Corp to have IQs below that of a cinderblock and ignoring what little Post-Crisis continuity there was.

Furthermore there was a way to get Kyle without "cutting" Hal--follow Gerard Jones' original plot following it up with Hal starting a new corp with Kyle as its first member.

Never mind Green Lantern HAD ALREADY been cancelled with issue #224 in 1988. If Hal wasn't selling books in 1988 to save Green Lantern why did DC think he was going to sale books in 1990? As Supergirl shows many times it is not the CHARACTER that is boring but the way they are written do why kill them off rather than shove them into comic book limbo until you figure out what to do with them?

The problem with that? those issues were the same old shit that was causing the sales decline. I realize that Green Lantern was on it's third volume, what do you take me for? Kyle wasn't created and then they decided "Oh were not going to go with Gerads idea" they went "Green Lantern is simply not selling, we need to reinvigorate the WHOLE fucking concept." The only problem with Emerald Twilight was it being 3 issues instead of the required 6 for such a big change. What do you expect when 3 issues are written back to back with 3 different artists simply so they can get out on time.

And the thing that kicks you in the nuts further? KYLE RAYNER SOLD. The new concept? sold a fucktonne and no Gerad Jones rehashing the same old shit he'd been doing all volume was not going to change that. Wanna know why sales for Volume 3 failed? because Ron Marz left the book and Judd Winick and ESPECIALLY Ben Raab the fucking hack couldn't fill the boots.

Hal was made intresting for the first time in his entire god damn career as a character when he took the stage as the tragic Anti-Villain, bombarded by grief and loss and confronted with a new hero who was every bit as related to the villains he fought as he was to the reader.

Kyle and Hal both had their grief, Kyle was the hero who had a good life and then with the Ring came blood and the death of his loved ones, being smacked around by Neron and New Gods, finding out that he left no markings on the future, failing to be there every damn time. And Hal was the same! he failed to protect Coast City, he failed the Justice League, he failed the Green Lantern Corp! Hal wasn't some mustache twirling villain, he was a good guy who just wanted his life back. He wanted Barry Allen back, his city back, when he finds out that Kyles girlfriend died he offers to bring her back too, genuinely sorry that she died and Kyle had been through what he had!

And when he died and became the Specter? he became even more intresting, because he showed such human sadness about never being able to be with Carol and Tom again. Hell Emerald Knights was the best selling book of that era not because it featured Hal, but because it featured Hal as written by Ron Marz.

Geoff Johns has played more fast and loose with the continuity than anyone did. You can go back to 'assuming' that a 'new' green lantern corp, with the same god damn name and some new faces would have brought the same sales spike, would have saved the book. I'll go on understanding that it was a gamble that paid off explosivly.

But obviously you're just going to retaliate that I'm missing your point so lets get some things out of the ways, and others when I get to trawl through my stack of GL comics and piece together continuity (RESEARCH!)

Kyles ring wasn't Hal's ring, not really. It was a crushed ring, recreated by Ganthet, still tied to Hal Jordan by being the original owner, but possessing different features. Ganthet didn't instill a weakness or limitations because he wanted his new choice to have the best shot he could. Also putting on the ring didn't have it expell his guilt and sadness, it was him trying not to contfront the grief of Alex being dead that caused Oblivion to be expelled.

Sinestro never did anything with his ring 'For Personal Gain' what he did with the ring was use it to 'Round up Criminals' not for his own personal gain but because he believed in instilling order. Yeah I know this stinks of 'bullshit' when Yalan-Gur got away with the same crap, but Yalan-Gur also did it successfuly for YEARS before the Guardians put a stop to him. They kinda suck like that.

The Poglachi were using rings created by the QWARDIANS if you remember, that harnessed 'Anti-Oan Energy' and... okay honestly I barely remember the facts from the Lord Malvolio crap other than it being said in interviews as a way to 'get out' of turning Hal into a villain later on. Which didn't make sense to me due to the above.

All Guardian action/inaction can pretty much be summed up as 'The Guardians are fucking stupid' they really are. Smart enough to create intergalactic society but dumb enough to not understand concepts such as grief. Even after they came back with the Zamorans they understood things like humor and curiosity, but were also content to let a moisac of alien races dragged out against there will slaughter one another to see the results.

I don't see what Hal not being fearless has to do with Emerald Twilight, since even during Gerad Jones run when the ring is out of energy (and thus shouldn't be able to do diddly squat) Hal remained exactly the same. Hal also took up multiple rings because he was INSANE WITH GRIEF, his constructs werent anymore powerful.

Yalan-Gur and the Fist of the Guardians are indeed grevious plot holes, both of them explained away by the obvious "Guardians are complete cocks" the third plot point is not stopping them when their lives were at stake, which again falls under the "Guardians are Idiots" idea.

The thing is... the Guardians ARE idiots, they take way to long to deal with any situation

In the end I simply post this

"I would have loved to write 'ET' over six issues. I think that's about the length that would have been necessary to really make Hal's descent believable and tragic. So what we ended up doing was a bit rushed because of circumstances, and I regret that. But if I'd had six issues, the events would have been generally the same. I just would have had more room for the character stuff. Sometimes you just have to play the cards you're dealt."

Despite Marz's wish to further explore the psyche of Hal Jordan, as he said, many things were set in stone and he did what he could to create the best story, given the requirements. "I had a few pages of notes from editorial, dictating the broad strokes of what needed to happen: Hal goes nuts, wipes out the Corps, kills Sinestro and blows up the Central Battery and the Guardians. The details were up to me. I decided to have Hal kill Kilowog on camera, because I felt we needed to feel the loss of a more known character to make this thing have some weight. I decided that Ganthet would be the one Guardian to survive, since he'd had some previous exposure.

"I've never given much thought to what I would have done differently, because that wasn't a possibility at the time. As I said, though, more pages to tell the story would have been great.

 

[Jyggalag]

That actually sounds cool. Anyone know where to read these comics?

 

[SpaceMedarotterX]

That actually sounds cool. Anyone know where to read these comics?

Do you mean are there scans of comics online like Manga has? no. DC has yet to take to the digital distribution market (they will be with the oncoming Post-Flashpoint event) and The trades for Green Lantern are... Sketchy at best. (DC has never really been good at the whole Trade Paperback thing)

It also depends on where you want to start, and which Lantern you want to read about.

 

[Cocamaster]

Another week, another jab at some conservative spokesman.

Look, I'm no fan of Beck, but this is becoming transparent, cartoony and ridiculous. It is as if you are bending your topics just to get a shot at these people...

Take the high road.

Other than that, pretty informative piece. Can't wait for part 2.

 

[ZeoAssassin]

i think i already know what happens, of course 99% of MY comic knowledge is 2nd hand from internet entertainers (Linkara and such) i believe the movie is also going to have something similar to what Bob will talk about next week

slightly off topic but i wonder if Bob will talk about the other rings at some point...maybe i am wrong but i think there are as many rings as colors in the rainbow that represent different emotions, with black royally fucking up that whole DC universe...that would be a good comics are weird segment =D

 

[Kuth]

This is why I don't read American Comics.. they take a story, and make a freeway out of it.

 

[uguito-93]

I know I might get torn apart for this, but that actually didn't sound that bad too me. I think it was an interesting twist to make the Green Lantern go insane and turn into a super villain.

 

[maximara]

That was NOT my point. It was not so much killing Hal that was ticking off Hal fans as the whole story we got required the Guardians, Hal, and the entire GL Corp to have IQs below that of a cinderblock and ignoring what little Post-Crisis continuity there was.

Furthermore there was a way to get Kyle without "cutting" Hal--follow Gerard Jones' original plot following it up with Hal starting a new corp with Kyle as its first member.

Never mind Green Lantern HAD ALREADY been cancelled with issue #224 in 1988. If Hal wasn't selling books in 1988 to save Green Lantern why did DC think he was going to sale books in 1990? As Supergirl shows many times it is not the CHARACTER that is boring but the way they are written do why kill them off rather than shove them into comic book limbo until you figure out what to do with them?

The problem with that? those issues were the same old shit that was causing the sales decline. I realize that Green Lantern was on it's third volume, what do you take me for? Kyle wasn't created and then they decided "Oh were not going to go with Gerads idea" they went "Green Lantern is simply not selling, we need to reinvigorate the WHOLE fucking concept." The only problem with Emerald Twilight was it being 3 issues instead of the required 6 for such a big change. What do you expect when 3 issues are written back to back with 3 different artists simply so they can get out on time.

And the thing that kicks you in the nuts further? KYLE RAYNER SOLD. The new concept? sold a fucktonne and no Gerad Jones rehashing the same old shit he'd been doing all volume was not going to change that. Wanna know why sales for Volume 3 failed? because Ron Marz left the book and Judd Winick and ESPECIALLY Ben Raab the fucking hack couldn't fill the boots.

But this point to this being a WRITER problem and not a character problem.

But obviously you're just going to retaliate that I'm missing your point so lets get some things out of the ways, and others when I get to trawl through my stack of GL comics and piece together continuity (RESEARCH!)

Kyles ring wasn't Hal's ring, not really. It was a crushed ring, recreated by Ganthet, still tied to Hal Jordan by being the original owner, but possessing different features. Ganthet didn't instill a weakness or limitations because he wanted his new choice to have the best shot he could.

Regarding that RESEARCH you were talking about here is how Lord Malvolio's ring worked against a YELLOW space station:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/854/acwglmal18.jpg
Blow up real good didn't it? GL rings are not supposed to do that!

Hal thinks about how he is using Lord Malvolio's ring:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/710/acwglmal35.jpg

Then we find out that it has all been a set up:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/62/acwlmal36.jpg

So when Hal went crackers he was wearing Lord Malvolio's ring which DID effect yellow and THAT is how you do REAL research.

 

[goliath6711]

In researching about HEAT, I found an actually not bad blog post (words I don't often put together) in regards to the topic.

http://talestomildlyastonish.blogspot.com/2006/01/understanding-fanboys-dont-encourage.html

It even goes further and talks about the consumer's (or more specifically fan's) say in what creators/publishers put out, i.e. not much. Pretty decent read and food for thought.

Thank you so much for posting this link. I just got through reading the entire article and I could not agree with it any more. These two paragraphs should be etched in giant solid gold plaques and hung on the walls of every comic book studio, motion picture studio, video game company, television network, and basically anywhere that a work of fiction is being created.


"But worse than the ridiculous plot is the real message "GL: Rebirth" sent to fandom: Throw a big enough tantrum, and you'll get your way. Screw bargaining, despair, and acceptance; stick with denial and anger for long enough, and be loud enough at it, and your loss will be magically whisked away when someone who sympathizes gets the power to make decisions. That's a really lousy moral, but "Rebirth" is a really lousy comic.

Reality check: The fans are not in control. Or at least, they shouldn't be. Creators are on top of the chain; without their work, the entertainment wouldn't exist in the first place. Publishers are next; without their connections, the entertainment wouldn't be able to reach anyone. The fans are dead last; they are there so the creators have someone to communicate their message to. They are vital in interpreting and approving or rejecting the message, but they should not, they cannot control the message. If they do, the serpent begins to devour its tail, and the twilight is truly upon us."


I want everyone to remember those words the next time they whine about how something that is done to their favorite character/franchise to make them progress to another level that they don't like.

 

[maximara]

In researching about HEAT, I found an actually not bad blog post (words I don't often put together) in regards to the topic.

http://talestomildlyastonish.blogspot.com/2006/01/understanding-fanboys-dont-encourage.html

It even goes further and talks about the consumer's (or more specifically fan's) say in what creators/publishers put out, i.e. not much. Pretty decent read and food for thought.

Thank you so much for posting this link. I just got through reading the entire article and I could not agree with it any more. These two paragraphs should be etched in giant solid gold plaques and hung on the walls of every comic book studio, motion picture studio, video game company, television network, and basically anywhere that a work of fiction is being created.


"But worse than the ridiculous plot is the real message "GL: Rebirth" sent to fandom: Throw a big enough tantrum, and you'll get your way. Screw bargaining, despair, and acceptance; stick with denial and anger for long enough, and be loud enough at it, and your loss will be magically whisked away when someone who sympathizes gets the power to make decisions. That's a really lousy moral, but "Rebirth" is a really lousy comic.

Reality check: The fans are not in control. Or at least, they shouldn't be. Creators are on top of the chain; without their work, the entertainment wouldn't exist in the first place. Publishers are next; without their connections, the entertainment wouldn't be able to reach anyone. The fans are dead last; they are there so the creators have someone to communicate their message to. They are vital in interpreting and approving or rejecting the message, but they should not, they cannot control the message. If they do, the serpent begins to devour its tail, and the twilight is truly upon us."


I want everyone to remember those words the next time they whine about how something that is done to their favorite character/franchise to make them progress to another level that they don't like.

The problem is that by accepting or rejecting a message the fans ARE in control. Creators and publishers are in this to make money and ticking off your fan base with a my way or the highway mentality is NOT the way to do it. It was that mentality in ''Enterprise'' that effectively killed off the Star Trek franchise for so many years and nearly did the same to Spiderman by dragging on the Clone Saga to the point of idiocy.

Furthermore as demonstrated by the fate of Jerry Siegel's "K-metal from Krypton" (1940) and Piers Anthony's "But What of Earth?" (1989) creators aren't that much in the driver seat either. In fact, it can be argued that publishers are not as vital in the internet age as in days gone by given the success of Fogilo's Girl Genius, Smith and May's "Roswell, Texas", and several others.

 

[maximara]

snip.

At the same time, it's easy to complain people are against you if a choice is made you don't like. More often than not our own biases and perceptions cloud things.

Take Civil war. You seem to ascribe that it's an "evil right wing" Iron Man vs a "good left wing" Captian America. Based on the War on Terror, that may be justifiable, but look at it in a different light: Iron Man was for creating a big government program that put restrictions, standards and expectations on heroes while Cap fought for individual freedom for heroes and to not be forced into a controling government. Who's left and right wing now? And the end moral of things was that the big beurcratcy a) didn't work and b) got derailed by someone with an alternative agenda.

Still, I won't argue a lift leaning bent is the nature of the superhero comic. The whole premis is based on the idea of people with great power feeling they should help others with it for no reward, or learing that self serving motives get them nowhere (Spider-Man, Booster Gold). On the other hand, how much of that is due to the silence of the right. I don't mean they haven't complained about balance loud enough. I mean they don't seem to try for their own creative works. If, as they claim, the demand is out there with 50% of the population, they'd be doing a service and proably make a few bucks in the process. The same goes with taking on "liberal Hopllywood". If an overweight pothead from Jersey can become a world fameous director, a few more on the right could give it a try instead of bitching that other people alter their creative visions to appeal to their worldview. There is room for both sides to exist, but someone has to create the other side, and it isn't likely to be someone that doesn't honestly beleive in it.

Well, it's like this.

Originally in The Civil War, they set it up to be a situation where both sides were equally right.

The Pro-Registration crowd was pretty much argueing that like it or not super beings are incredibly dangerous, and that it's ridiculous to say that they should not be accountable to anyone except for themselves, and that society should just have to deal with that. Basically the attitude was that all super heroes should operate under similar guidelines to the The Avengers, or The Fantastic Four. Unlike various X-men titles, this was not some kind of cover for a shady genocide plan, nor was it singling out Mutants since pretty much anyone with exceptional powers whether they be based on mutation, scientific alteration, or heck just highly advanced weaponry, would be handled the same way. Someone has a problem with a super hero, they can then find out who it was, and have them served papers much like has happened to both The Fantastic Four and The Avengers at various points.

The Anti-Registration crowd was pretty much making an arguement based not just around individual liberty, but also the basic arguement that if heroes were made accountable for their actions or hunted down actively, it would make dealing with a lot of super villains substantially more difficult. After all your typical hero dons his mask to break the law and probably commits dozens of crimes a night, ranging from breaking and entering, to illegal surveillance, to assault. In a world where villains like Doctor Doom have diplomatic immunity, do you really want heroes to worry about the law? What's more, when it comes to say saving a hundred people, do you want a hero to avoid taking action because his plan might involve say trashing someone's car by using it as a projectile, which could get him taken to court? The basic arguement being that super heroism would become impossible for largely the same reasons you saw at the beginning of the movie "The Incredibles", except unlike that movie you'd probably start seeing cities flattened almost immediatly if the heroes weren't quick and effective in their response.

The original point being that both sides were correct within the context of that world. Of the two sides, part of the point was that the Pro-registration side is arguably more sane, which to begin with was intended as a kind of counter-point to all of the stuf floating around in the X-titles, along with the specific mention that you had all of these super heroes who WERE operating in an accountable fashion without any real problems.

The situation became de-railed and turned into yet another X-men scenario rather than being anything differant, by writers wanting to make it more of a "liberty vs. security" issue and try and make it seem like the paranoid persecution of "maybe" terrorists, and similar things.

The problem was that as anyone who has actually READ "Days of Future Past" (1980) knows the Sentinels did NOT stop at just mutants but went after ANYONE with superpowers. Furthermore Civil War ignored all the times said Sentinels had gone on a property destroying person killing spree through the heart of a population center. WHERE was the outrage over all THOSE deaths and destruction which given the compressed time scale of Marvel must have been occurring every third month?

Besides Captain America had already seen Executive Order 9066 (which included Germans and Italians) quickly turned into a method of discrimination to deprive people of their rights and property. Never mind that as demonstrated by Thunderbolt Ross and Henry Peter Gyrich all you needed was one overzealous GOVERNMENT nutter getting their hands on that data and abusing their power.

This ignoring the fact that at times various villains have either taken control or replaced key government operatives. In fact, thanks to nanites Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker had Henry Peter Gyrich under his control. The head of a CRIMINAL TERRORIST organization bent on world domination could get access to data on EVERY registered hero in America. What a brilliant idea, NOT! If that wasn't bad enough there was a time when the Deltite LMDs of SHIELD went nuts and took over not only SHIELD but HYRDA as well (Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. #1-6 (June-Nov. 1988))


Face it given the history of the Marvel universe there was no way the Pro-Registration side could have looked like anything but a bunch of modern day clueless Joseph McCarthy nutters.

 

[Therumancer]

snip.

At the same time, it's easy to complain people are against you if a choice is made you don't like. More often than not our own biases and perceptions cloud things.

Take Civil war. You seem to ascribe that it's an "evil right wing" Iron Man vs a "good left wing" Captian America. Based on the War on Terror, that may be justifiable, but look at it in a different light: Iron Man was for creating a big government program that put restrictions, standards and expectations on heroes while Cap fought for individual freedom for heroes and to not be forced into a controling government. Who's left and right wing now? And the end moral of things was that the big beurcratcy a) didn't work and b) got derailed by someone with an alternative agenda.

Still, I won't argue a lift leaning bent is the nature of the superhero comic. The whole premis is based on the idea of people with great power feeling they should help others with it for no reward, or learing that self serving motives get them nowhere (Spider-Man, Booster Gold). On the other hand, how much of that is due to the silence of the right. I don't mean they haven't complained about balance loud enough. I mean they don't seem to try for their own creative works. If, as they claim, the demand is out there with 50% of the population, they'd be doing a service and proably make a few bucks in the process. The same goes with taking on "liberal Hopllywood". If an overweight pothead from Jersey can become a world fameous director, a few more on the right could give it a try instead of bitching that other people alter their creative visions to appeal to their worldview. There is room for both sides to exist, but someone has to create the other side, and it isn't likely to be someone that doesn't honestly beleive in it.

Well, it's like this.

Originally in The Civil War, they set it up to be a situation where both sides were equally right.

The Pro-Registration crowd was pretty much argueing that like it or not super beings are incredibly dangerous, and that it's ridiculous to say that they should not be accountable to anyone except for themselves, and that society should just have to deal with that. Basically the attitude was that all super heroes should operate under similar guidelines to the The Avengers, or The Fantastic Four. Unlike various X-men titles, this was not some kind of cover for a shady genocide plan, nor was it singling out Mutants since pretty much anyone with exceptional powers whether they be based on mutation, scientific alteration, or heck just highly advanced weaponry, would be handled the same way. Someone has a problem with a super hero, they can then find out who it was, and have them served papers much like has happened to both The Fantastic Four and The Avengers at various points.

The Anti-Registration crowd was pretty much making an arguement based not just around individual liberty, but also the basic arguement that if heroes were made accountable for their actions or hunted down actively, it would make dealing with a lot of super villains substantially more difficult. After all your typical hero dons his mask to break the law and probably commits dozens of crimes a night, ranging from breaking and entering, to illegal surveillance, to assault. In a world where villains like Doctor Doom have diplomatic immunity, do you really want heroes to worry about the law? What's more, when it comes to say saving a hundred people, do you want a hero to avoid taking action because his plan might involve say trashing someone's car by using it as a projectile, which could get him taken to court? The basic arguement being that super heroism would become impossible for largely the same reasons you saw at the beginning of the movie "The Incredibles", except unlike that movie you'd probably start seeing cities flattened almost immediatly if the heroes weren't quick and effective in their response.

The original point being that both sides were correct within the context of that world. Of the two sides, part of the point was that the Pro-registration side is arguably more sane, which to begin with was intended as a kind of counter-point to all of the stuf floating around in the X-titles, along with the specific mention that you had all of these super heroes who WERE operating in an accountable fashion without any real problems.

The situation became de-railed and turned into yet another X-men scenario rather than being anything differant, by writers wanting to make it more of a "liberty vs. security" issue and try and make it seem like the paranoid persecution of "maybe" terrorists, and similar things.

The problem was that as anyone who has actually READ "Days of Future Past" (1980) knows the Sentinels did NOT stop at just mutants but went after ANYONE with superpowers. Furthermore Civil War ignored all the times said Sentinels had gone on a property destroying person killing spree through the heart of a population center. WHERE was the outrage over all THOSE deaths and destruction which given the compressed time scale of Marvel must have been occurring every third month?

Besides Captain America had already seen Executive Order 9066 (which included Germans and Italians) quickly turned into a method of discrimination to deprive people of their rights and property. Never mind that as demonstrated by Thunderbolt Ross and Henry Peter Gyrich all you needed was one overzealous GOVERNMENT nutter getting their hands on that data and abusing their power.

This ignoring the fact that at times various villains have either taken control or replaced key government operatives. In fact, thanks to nanites Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker had Henry Peter Gyrich under his control. The head of a CRIMINAL TERRORIST organization bent on world domination could get access to data on EVERY registered hero in America. What a brilliant idea, NOT! If that wasn't bad enough there was a time when the Deltite LMDs of SHIELD went nuts and took over not only SHIELD but HYRDA as well (Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. #1-6 (June-Nov. 1988))


Face it given the history of the Marvel universe there was no way the Pro-Registration side could have looked like anything but a bunch of modern day clueless Joseph McCarthy nutters.

Well, see one part of the entire equasion is that due to your personal political leanings you think that McCarthy and Executive Order 9066 were entirely bad things, both of which can be massive debates in their own right.

The issue in Marvel is one where the arguement was being made against the accountability of super humans to anyone except for other super humans. Basically saying that "the law applies to everyone, except for these guys that have powers". You invent a new blaster weapon that makes you above the ordinary person, congrats you can now break the law with imputiny!

See, the issue is one where we have heroes who are quite blunt in saying that the law doesn't apply to them, and are willing to mete out what they consider to be Justice. Property destruction, tresspass, illegal surveillance, all of these things are routine behaviors for costumed adventurers and vigilantes. While arguements can be made that it's nessicary (as I pointed out with guys like Doctor Doom), from a legal perspective it's no differant than saying say all blonde haired and blue eyed people don't have to follow the rules of society but everyone else does.

In pretty much every case you've given your looking at situations where the problem wasn't the policy, but an X-factor (so to speak) that caused things to go wrong. Such as the whole assumption that any AI is by it's very nature going to go berserk and turn on humanity. Things could just as easily go in an Asimov direction with robots being people's friends and protectors, it's just that this doesn't make for as good of a storyline on a large scale (it only works when it's a singular robot usually). Incidently there are also numberous cases in marvel of Technology being used successfully, I don't believe AIs figured into this (except through nanites in the video game version) and remember this was being spearheaded by both Tony Stark AND Reed Richards.

I mean I get it, your someone who would be supporting the other side, and that's the entire point of "Civil War", both sides were right, and cases could be made for either. They wound up de-railing things far more in your direction though for the purpose of making a political statement about then-current politics. Part of the entire point was that we didn't have closet racists like Gyric running the show, we had a lot of public heroes pretty much saying "okay, this needs to be done".

 

[goliath6711]

In researching about HEAT, I found an actually not bad blog post (words I don't often put together) in regards to the topic.

http://talestomildlyastonish.blogspot.com/2006/01/understanding-fanboys-dont-encourage.html

It even goes further and talks about the consumer's (or more specifically fan's) say in what creators/publishers put out, i.e. not much. Pretty decent read and food for thought.

Thank you so much for posting this link. I just got through reading the entire article and I could not agree with it any more. These two paragraphs should be etched in giant solid gold plaques and hung on the walls of every comic book studio, motion picture studio, video game company, television network, and basically anywhere that a work of fiction is being created.


"But worse than the ridiculous plot is the real message "GL: Rebirth" sent to fandom: Throw a big enough tantrum, and you'll get your way. Screw bargaining, despair, and acceptance; stick with denial and anger for long enough, and be loud enough at it, and your loss will be magically whisked away when someone who sympathizes gets the power to make decisions. That's a really lousy moral, but "Rebirth" is a really lousy comic.

Reality check: The fans are not in control. Or at least, they shouldn't be. Creators are on top of the chain; without their work, the entertainment wouldn't exist in the first place. Publishers are next; without their connections, the entertainment wouldn't be able to reach anyone. The fans are dead last; they are there so the creators have someone to communicate their message to. They are vital in interpreting and approving or rejecting the message, but they should not, they cannot control the message. If they do, the serpent begins to devour its tail, and the twilight is truly upon us."


I want everyone to remember those words the next time they whine about how something that is done to their favorite character/franchise to make them progress to another level that they don't like.

The problem is that by accepting or rejecting a message the fans ARE in control. Creators and publishers are in this to make money and ticking off your fan base with a my way or the highway mentality is NOT the way to do it. It was that mentality in ''Enterprise'' that effectively killed off the Star Trek franchise for so many years and nearly did the same to Spiderman by dragging on the Clone Saga to the point of idiocy.

Furthermore as demonstrated by the fate of Jerry Siegel's "K-metal from Krypton" (1940) and Piers Anthony's "But What of Earth?" (1989) creators aren't that much in the driver seat either. In fact, it can be argued that publishers are not as vital in the internet age as in days gone by given the success of Fogilo's Girl Genius, Smith and May's "Roswell, Texas", and several others.

I can only comment on Star Trek since I haven't read anything else on that list.

So you're saying that from the end of "Enterprise" (2005) to the movie "Star Trek" (2009), the franchise went from completely dead and buried to resurrected in just four years? It took ten years the first time from "The Original Series" (1969) to "The Motion Picture" (1979). And you do realize that they revitalized the franchise with a movie that negates everything that happened in every previous Star Trek movie and television series EXCEPT "Enterprise." A movie that, while is one of my absoulte favorites, is pretty much despised by hardcore Trek fans for that reason.

And in case you're wondering, I was a fan of "Enterprise" and watched every episode from the first to the last.