#fidelis comics

[ungoliantschilde]

some Semper Fi' covers by John Severin

[sesshaxiii]

LaS Ch.7 Pg.3 Introducing, Des! Co-owned by @trak-the-pichu First Page – PMD Las – Ch.1 Pg.1 Last Page – PMD Las – Ch.7 Pg.2 Next Page – PMD Las – Ch.7 Pg.4

[mariocki]

Stuart Damon guest stars as Texan oil baron (and Simon's new bff) Rod Huston in The Saint: The Ex-King of Diamonds (6.17, ITC, 1969); this episode was the direct inspiration for Roger Moore's subsequent series The Persuaders! (ITC, 1971 - 72)

[reasoningdaily]

Tracy Morgan: Bona Fide - Full Special

Lets Laugh cause Tracy is on a roll in this one

[heroesriseandfall]

Introduction to Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying, April 1990

Introduction by Dennis O'Neil for Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying (1990 collected edition)

Transcription below the cut/readmore.

INTRODUCTION by DENNIS O'NEIL

Robin was gone. We needed a new Boy Wonder. There had been two previous Robins. The original first appeared less than a year after a new costumed hero called Batman made his debut in DETECTIVE COMICS #27, to instant success. Some time within the next eleven months, his creators, artist Bob Kane and his writer-collaborator Bill Finger, decided to give their dark, obsessed hero a kind of surrogate son, Robin, who was hailed on the cover of DETECTIVE #36 as “the sensational character-find of 1940—Robin, The Boy Wonder.” Over the next 40 years, Batman’s fortunes varied: always, however, Robin was at Batman’s side.

He served a couple of functions. If Batman were real (and it may shock some of our more avid readers to learn he isn’t), and if he were the grim, obsessed loner he is often portrayed as, Robin, with some help from Batman's faithful butler Alfred, would keep him sane; a man whose every waking hour is focused on the grimmest aspects of society, who is unable to release the effects of seeing his parents murdered, whose life is an amalgam of sudden violence and lonely vigilance, would soon skew into a nasty insanity if he did not have someone to care for, someone to maintain a link with common humanity. But Batman is, of course, not real. (My apologies to avid readers.) He isn’t exactly a fictional character—more on that shortly—but he does not and could not exist as a living, breathing human being. That doesn’t make Robin any less useful: he serves the same functions in the Batman stories as Watson served in the Sherlock Holmes canon and the gravedigger serves in Hamlet: like Holmes’s faithful doctor, Robin is a sounding board, a person with whom the hero can have dialogues and thus let the reader know how brilliantly he’s handling matters and like the gravedigger, he occasionally provides a bright note in an otherwise relentlessly morose narrative.

Which is why I was a trifle uneasy when we—the editorial staff of DC Comics—decided to let our audience decide whether he would live or die. It came to be known in our offices as the “telephone stunt.” We had a character, Robin, the readers didn’t seem terribly fond of. This wasn’t the original Robin, the “character-find of 1940”; that Robin was Dick Grayson and he had graduated from sidekick to bona fide hero who fronted a group of evil-fighting adolescents, The Teen Titans. In 1983, it was decreed that Robin should grow up and assume a crime-fighting identity of his own—become his own man, as befitted the leader of the mighty Titans. He left Batman’s world to assume the name, costume, and persona of Nightwing. Gerry Conway and Don Newton replaced him with a second Robin, Jason Todd, whose biography was virtually identical to that of Dick Grayson. Why not? Gerry and Don were not trying to innovate, they were simply filling a void. The assignment they were given was simple: Provide another Robin. Quickly and with as little fuss as possible.

In 1986, Max Allan Collins inherited the Batman writing assignment and told his editor he had an idea for an improved Jason Todd. Make him a street kid, Collins said. Make his parents criminals. Have him and Batman on opposite sides at first. Sounded fine to the editor and, since DC was in the middle of a vast, company-wide overhaul of storylines anyway, Collins was told to go ahead. I was the editor; I did the telling. And I’d do it again, today. Collins’s Robin was dramatic, did have story potential. But readers didn’t take to him. I don't know now, and will probably never know why. Jason was accepted as long as he was a Dick Grayson clone, but when he acquired a distinct and, Collins and I still believe, more interesting backstory, their affection cooled. Maybe we—me and the writers who followed Collins—should have worked harder at making Jason likeable. Or maybe, I guessed, on some subconscious level our most loyal readers felt Jason was a usurper. For whatever reason, Jason was not the favorite Dick had been. He wasn’t hated, exactly, but he wasn’t loved, either. Should we write him out of the continuity? It didn’t seem like a bad idea, and when we thought of the experiment that became the telephone stunt, Jason seemed the perfect subject for it. The mechanics were pretty simple: we put Jason in an explosion and gave the readers two telephone numbers they could call, the first to vote that Jason would survive the blast, the second to vote that he wouldn't.

It was successful—oh my, yes. We expected to generate some interest, but not the amount or intensity we got. As soon as the final vote was tallied—5271 for Jasons survival, a deciding 5343 against—the calls began. For most of three days, I talked to journalists, disc jockeys, television reporters. We got a lot of compliments. They ranged from a critic’s liking our stunt to the participatory drama of avant garde theater to the brilliant comedy team of Penn and Teller expressing mock envy that we beat them to “the kill-your-partner-900-number scam.” But then came the backlash, ugly and, to me at least, totally unexpected: one reporter claimed that the whole event had been rigged—that, in fact, we had decided on Jason’s demise ahead of time and staged an elaborate charade; a teary grandmother said that her grandchildren loved Jason and now we’d killed him; several colleagues accused us of turning our magazines into a “Roman circus.” Cynical was a word used. And exploitive. Sleazy. Dishonorable. Wait a minute, I wanted to reply. Jason Todd is just a phantom, a figment of several imaginations. No real kid died. No real anything died. It’s all just stories—

I would have been wrong. Batman, and Superman, and Wonder Woman and their supporting casts are quite a bit more than “just stories” if, by “stories,” we mean ephemeral amusements. They’ve been in continuous magazine publication for a half-century, and they’ve been in movies, and television shows, and in novels, and on cereal boxes and T-shirts and underwear and candy bars and yo-yos and games—thousands of ventures. For fifty years. Fifty years! Although the circulation of our magazines is relatively modest, these characters have been so enduring, so pervasive, they have permeated our collective consciousness. Everybody recognizes them. They are our post-industrial folklore and, as such, they mean much more to people than a few minutes’ idle amusement. They’re part of the psychic family. The public and apparently callous slaying of one of their number was, to some, a vicious attack on the special part of their souls that needs awe, magic, heroism.

We had promised to abide by the telephone poll, and we would. But within a few days, it became apparent that we’d have to begin growing another Robin. We had forgotten that Batman exists outside the pages of our comics, is not the exclusive property of DC’s editorial staff; because he is both popular and imperishable, hundreds of others have some legitimate interest in him (not the least of whom are the readers who, for one reason or another, had missed the voting.) Our medium may have kept him alive, but others have added immeasurably to his success. When we began hearing from them, the consensus was that a Batman without a Robin wasn't quite a Batman. I wasn’t surprised. Nor did I disagree, particularly. So our problem became: how to create Robin III without generating the hostility that plagued poor Jason. Dick Grayson was the answer. If, as we thought, readers felt Jason had somehow usurped Dick’s place, then we should link the new Robin to Dick—give Robin III his predecessor’s stamp of approval. One writer had done almost all of the Dick Grayson material DC had published for a decade: Marv Wolfman, co-creator (with George Pérez) of the New Teen Titans. That made Mary the first, and really only, choice to undertake the task of giving Batman a new helper. And if we were using Marv, why not have some of the story happen in the pages of THE NEW TITANS, which he was already writing, and thus be able to take advantage of the very considerable talents of Marv's collaborator on the Titans, George Pérez? George volunteered to co-plot the story with Mary and do layouts on the TITANS episodes, and editor Mike Carlin enlisted Tom Grummett and Bob McLeod to complete George's graphics work. I asked the regular BATMAN artists, Jim Aparo and Mike DeCarlo, to handle the BATMAN issues. Finally, we chose a name for Robin III—Tim Drake—and, after a couple of editorial conferences, six gifted gentlemen retired to do what they do best.

The result seemed worthy of being collected between one set of covers, to be read as a graphic novel. We decided to do that and you’re holding the result. I hope you enjoy it. But please don’t think it’s the end of the Robin III saga. Dick Grayson’s lasted 50 years, after all, and Tim Drake does have his blessing.

Dennis O’Neil

April 1990

[celaenaeiln]

If you've watched the Young Justice show, what do you think of Bruce and Dick's relationship there? Seems to me that it's less "unhealthy" than the main comics. Just wanted to ask because to me, you're the bona fide expert on Dick and Bruce, and also one of my favorite people on this site. Love your blog!

THANK YOU!! 🥰💞💕!!!

To be honest it's been a very long time since I've seen Young Justice but I think I know what you mean. It's very supportive right? Like in the comics Bruce is very involved in Dick's life and actions to the point that Dick runs away or gets mad or cuts Bruce off because Bruce is just too much for him. And Bruce praises dick often and also places in extreme stress because he places him on a pedestal.

In the Young Justice show, there's much fewer interactions with Dick and Bruce. But he's much better at being a dad.

Canonically, people around Dick attribute his sometimes difficult personality as a consequence of his relationship with Bruce:

New Teen Titans (1980) Issue #28

The Titans (1999) Issue #15

Like comics Bruce has given Dick severe Daddy Issues and Dick internally constantly questions himself and seeks validation because of Bruce's hot and cold attitude. Dick sees it as a failure on his behalf because if he was excellent enough Bruce wouldn't pull away right? Things would go back to the way they used to be and Bruce would rely on him again. But Bruce is suffering from the worry of putting too much burden on Dick's shoulders but also distancing himself from everyone when something bad happens. Because not only has Bruce given Dick daddy issues, he's also given Dick an extreme case of Eldest Daughter Syndrome and Dick thinks it's his sole responsibility to keep this family running. Which doesn't help because Bruce ALSO thinks it's Dick's responsibility to keep this family running.

Batman (2011) Issue #14

"I can barely keep control myself, Dick! And I can't take the risk. I'm asking you to keep this to yourself for now. I'm asking you to help me protect them."

Bruce literally treats Dick like a parent to the rest of the family. But at the same time he oscillates between treating Dick like a son vs a partner and Dick as a result has developed so many complexes as a result of him filling in every single role Bruce wants him to play.

In the young justice show, Bruce doesn't place every single one of his responsibilities on Dick's shoulders. He tries to take care of them himself. He's self-aware.

So definitely healthier than in the comics. In the comics they're toxically co-dependent but in the show they're caring and independent. Both are interesting in their own ways but yes, you're very right that the show is a better way to depict their relationship because Bruce is a good dad there.

[hopemariposa]

reasons why you should watch Ducktales (2017):

from a totally not mentally ill (/j) girl who has never ever obsessed over this show and has never ever seen it ten times over and has never ever had a bias towards this show :))) ily

the animation is lowkey a slay. I live for the faux comic book style. it scratches an itch in my brain.

I love Louie. I love Louie so much. he is precious, a cinnamon roll, and if anything were to happen to him, I would unalive everyone in this room and then myself.

the “found family” trope has been and always will be the best trope (imo). and this show has sooooo much of it and I literally cry over it (yes, I do cry over everything. back off)

launchpad mcquack.

precious precious man.

the storyline is kind of……… wonderful???? like there’s a lot of mirroring of the past, wholesome moments, and just… fun??? (Disney please bring it back or do a spin off I beg you 🙏)

this is one of those Disney shows that’s weirdly… funny? watch s3:e2 “Quack Pack” if you don’t believe bc that episode is a bona fide RIOT

also, the “filler” episodes don’t necessarily feel like filler episodes. most have some relevance to the ongoing plot, and if they don’t the adventure is too fun for you to care anyways

for instance? my fav episode “Quack Pack” (as listed above) is a filler episode. but it is semi-plot-relevant, and comedic perfection. it also gave us this screenshot:

need I say more?

yes. I won’t shut up about this show.

honestly, in a world full of tv shows that don’t give a crap about their integrity, Ducktales is a masterpiece. and I’m not just saying this because I wish more people would join the fandom. that’s a perk

once again I leave you with this:

me n the boys jamming out to the Ducktales theme song:

[miauta]

ajjaha idk if im Seeing stuff again but in the latest chapter of your happy ending qsmp comic, wqas cellbit 'fiding' doied scene inspired or a nod to the Iconic shinning scene ? if not it still cool to see the idea come back even if not voluntary kkk (great comic i love the dragons eggs design so much aaaaaa)

Yup! That one was intentional uwu We need to respect the classics

[tomcat-tapes]

Shamelessly posting my X-Men sona Pip Felidae aka Lynx

Made him years ago, just your average orphaned mutant that Erik finds and drops off at the school for Charles who in turns dumps them onto Logan cause as much as he refuses to get attached that man collects kids like nobody’s business. Wolverine is a bona fide girl dad with Rogue, Jubilee, and Laura. What’s one more adhd child right?

Pip is FtM in the works of making a coming out comic, just been rewriting it😭

They have a very noticeable feline mutation, while modeled after your average house cat I thought the name Lynx was just funny for a hero name.

Anyways imma stop blabbing about him now sory

[skaruresonic]

https://www.tumblr.com/skaruresonic/758528409170313216/yes-woolie-you-can-win-any-argument-if-you-just

I want to point this it. The person defending the comic unknowingly completely eradicated any ground their argument could have stood on.

"Criminals don't deserve to be free if they're gonna hurt people"

Then why does IDW Sonic keep letting his villains run off scott free when he himself acknowledges that they're gonna continue being evil and hurting innocents?

The single real and true answer is that this comic has abysmal writing. But stans don't want to accept that. They'd rather make up increasingly baffling conspiracy theories.

Exactly. It gets even worse when you realize Sonic presents himself as an arbiter of freedom: he wants people to do what they want, as long as it's the "right choice."

He is the one who decides what is right. He may not explicitly come right out and say so, but that is what he says through his words and his actions. And rather than accept the notion that some people will choose something other than what he wants, he'll punish you by chewing you out or beating you up, despite any mitigating circumstances, such as Surge's abuse at Starline's hands or Metal Sonic and Eggman TELLING HIM THE KILLER ROBOT HAS NO FREE WILL.

The only thing more dangerous than an authoritarian is an authoritarian who's a fucking idiot.

That may or may not be the comic's intention, but that's what ends up being the takeaway when we're given these lengthy lectures about the supposed sanctity of freedom, only for Sonic to betray his own principles.

He doesn't give a shit about anyone's pain. That much is clear.

He leverages Shadow's trauma against him to win an argument.

He ignores how Espio is grieving the loss of his friends to obnoxiously argue "oh so we should murder everyone, huh, Espio? is that what you're saying? we should never give anyone a chance?"

He makes fun of Belle at several points and even looks annoyed when she's angsting about her situation in one instance.

He claims he'd be willing to give "even [Eggman and Starline]" a second chance, only to eulogize Starline with "big oof."

He ignores Surge's pain just to say he'll kick her ass, then eulogizes her with a line so cold you'd think it came out of Eggman's mouth.

He shuts down Tails' misgivings about Metal's release not once but twice.

He drops the "Surge is dead" bomb on Kit without any real tact or follow-through to make sure the traumatized child is okay.

He tells Kit that Surge is "hurting herself."

Yet he throws a fucking pity party for himself in issue 23 about how Eggman "makes him pay" for daring to believe in the "good in people" every day.

Cry me a river. Kick rocks. Get bent.

IDW!Sonic lacks the emotional intelligence to distinguish when someone in pain is lashing out vs. a bona fide unrepentant asshole killing people for fun.

To him, both are the same errant children in need of a paddling. Just as he'd lack the pragmatism to seal the Erazor Djinn in the lamp because muh freedom, he'd lack the empathy to comfort Shahra afterward.

[sesshaxiii]

LaS Ch.7 Pg.2

Reenter, Lady Fidelis

First Page – PMD Las – Ch.1 Pg.1 Last Page – PMD Las – Ch.7 Pg.1 Next Page – PMD Las – Ch.7 Pg.3

[cantsayidont]

I keep seeing people point to the STAR TREK: TOS episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" as an example of STAR TREK's progressive bona fides, which really gets up my nose because "Battlefield" is, along with "A Private Little War," "The Omega Glory," "The Paradise Syndrome," and a couple of others, among the half-dozen or so most politically unsavory TOS episodes, a statement of unvarnished white liberal contempt toward the civil rights movement.

First, like a lot of TREK, and like the superhero comic book stabs at "relevancy" in this period and afterward, the episode is, at a structural level, constructed to let the white middle-class liberal hero sit in judgment on contemporary social issues that only incidentally affect him, but which he is privileged to weigh from a position of presumptive neutrality. This is a common feature of the series, but it becomes especially pointed here because when this episode aired in January 1969, no viewer over the age of about 6 would be likely to miss what it was talking about; the episode originally aired just a little over nine months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

It is noteworthy, then, that the script goes to particular lengths to distance Kirk and the other Enterprise regulars from the racial conflict between the black-and-white aliens Lokai (Lou Antonio) and Bele (Frank Gorshin). Spock goes so far as to insist that they are wholly outside known standards of "genetically possible" "gradiations of color" in humanoid beings! At no point does any of the crew express any sympathy or identification with Lokai; Chekov and Sulu regard racial persecution as an historical curiosity with which they have no experience, and even Spock, who experiences racial persecution on the regular, dismisses both Bele and Lokai as hopelessly irrational.

This is curious insofar as Lokai clearly describes conditions of material oppression that any Black person in America would immediately recognize: He says Bele's people "raided our homes, tore us from our families, herded us together like cattle, and then sold us as slaves," and that after slavery ended on their world, Lokai's people continued to be second-class citizens, "denied the simpest bit of decency that is a living being's right." They were even drafted into "a war on another planet," a clear reference to the then ongoing Vietnam War; this was the era when Muhammad Ali nearly went to prison for refusing conscription. Notably, Bele doesn't deny most of this except to chide Lokai's framing of it, telling Kirk, "They were savages, Captain. We took them into our hearts, our homes. We educated them."

Nonetheless, Kirk's primary reaction to both Lokai and Bele is annoyance. Kirk is not concerned with justice, or addressing historical injustice; his sole concern is the maintenance of Federation civil order. As is often the case on TOS, this is framed in economic terms: The Enterprise is supposed to be heading to a medical decontamination mission on the planet Ariannus, whose urgency is underscored by its importance "as a transfer point on regular commercial space lanes." (Kirk notes that the bacterial contamination he's supposed to address may "render it lifeless unless checked," but he presents that as an afterthought to the commercial urgency of the situation.) Kirk is also concerned with Lokai's appropriation of a Starfleet shuttlecraft, which appears to completely undermine any sympathy he might have otherwise had for Lokai. This also seems to be the position of Kirk's superiors; Uhura reports that Starfleet is entirely sympathetic to Bele and is likely to grant his request "after a hearing at Starbase," once the legal formalities have been observed. (Significantly, the possibility that Lokai might have a claim to political asylum, even temporarily, is never suggested.)

Kirk is SO preoccupied with maintaining economic, civil, and legal order that he's prepared to destroy the Enterprise himself rather than concede any ground even rhetorically. There is an apparently unintended parallel here with the revelation at the end of the episode that Cheron is now lifeless, its entire population wiped out by the racial conflict of which Lokai and Bele are the sole survivors, but the episode pretty obviously expects the viewer to find Kirk's position sensible and principled.

The episode's obvious thesis is that Black Power and Black protest are just as bad as the bigotry Bele represents, a kind of racial horseshoe theory underscored by Spock's eventual declaration, "To expect sense from two mentalities of such extreme viewpoints is not logical." Presumably, the "correct" course for Lokai's people would have been to accept their second-class roles in post-slavery Cheron society, work toward the furthering of economic order, and patiently wait for the "normal" forces of social evolution to bring about justice through legal means, and the episode unequivocally indicates that their failure to do so bears equal responsiblity for the apocalyptic genocide Spock says has taken place on Cheron. (There's an ugly parallel here with the racial politics implicit in the 1968 film PLANET OF THE APES, which kicks off what is at its core a very racist series.)

Throughout the episode, the script tries to play up the irrationality of Lokai and Bele by emphasizing that their conflict has taken place over thousands of years, but because we don't have any idea what their normal lifespan may be (there's no indication that their survival over the course of 50,000 years is due to suspended animation or time travel), or even how long they consider a year, this carries little weight, and it can't overcome the obvious familiarity of the conflict. In the real world, the American Civil War had only passed out of living memory about two decades before this episode was written, and until the passage of the Civil Rights Act less than four years earlier, it was still perfectly legal in many parts of the U.S. to refuse to hire, rent to, or sell to people of color, or to pay them less or charge them more based on race.

That Kirk's crew considers this ancient history is not the problem with the story; the problem is that the episode takes the obvious position that Black Americans should just get over still recent — and still ongoing, now as well as then — injustice and persecution. That's not a progressive viewpoint — it smugly exemplifies what Martin Luther King had called "allies more devoted to order than to justice." I imagine it was infuriating then except to the most self-congratulatory white liberal viewers, and it has not aged well at all.

[ao3feed-brucewayne]

Lost Bats

by collywog_5 SLEEP ALL DAY. PARTY ALL NIGHT. NEVER GROW OLD. NEVER DIE. IT’S FUN TO BE A VAMPIRE. OR “Oh, please.” Green Lantern cut them both off. “For one, Vampires aren’t real: not on Earth, and not in Gotham. I’ve scanned Batman, he’s a bona fide Earthly man. Secondly, Batman is never late, so WHEREVER HE’S LISTENING IN FROM, HE’S BEING AN ASSHOLE AND MMPH—” A figure dressed in a very distinct black and blue uniform tackled Green Lantern from above, rolling him to the ground. The attacker was already two steps ahead, immediately disabling any defensive attempts with his hand smothering Green Lantern’s reactive mouth. He moved with a wild and unflappable force, like a gargoyle, made to endure through centuries of war and frighten away unwelcome visitors. The Flash and Black Canary startled, taking defensive positions. “Shhh,” the man taunted, disturbingly still. Dinah caught the sight of a deranged smirk, and a bird insignia on his chest. “You keep yelling that loud, someone’s gonna come along and drain you of your blood. Do you read me, Hal?” OR, Another DC Vampire AU that is very heavily inspired by Lost Boys. Tags will change! Words: 2911, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics), Robin (Comics), Justice League - All Media Types, DCU Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence Categories: Other Characters: Dick Grayson, Tim Drake (DCU), Bruce Wayne Relationships: Tim Drake & Dick Grayson Additional Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Cryptid Batfamily (DCU), Unreliable Narrator, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Hallucinations, Mentioned Jason Todd, Batfamily Meets the Justice League (DCU), Dick Grayson-centric, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Tim Drake is Robin (DCU), POV Alternating, Hallucinating Dick Grayson, Dick Grayson Has Mental Health Issues, Dick Grayson Has Issues, Inspired by The Lost Boys (Movies), Angst, Humor, Banter via https://ift.tt/LKaJUSB

[julie-su]

In Archie sonic, why and how are fire ants basically omniscient?

Originally, it was that there was just that many of them, and they were so small, that they could communicate amongst eachother telepathically (a common trait for insects in media to have); we can see this in play in KTE #25, where the fire ants help Steppenwolf to defend against a threat. It is assumed onwards that this is how the fire ants operate; we start to see less of the Fire Ants other than Archimedes, Semper Fidelis, and Deo Volente.

(Knuckles the Echidna #25; Childhood's End. Written by Ken Penders, Pencilled by Manny Galan, Inked by Andrew Pepoy, Coloured by Mark Bernardo, Lettered by Vickie Williams.)

You'd have to use a bit of suspended belief, but 'telepathy' and 'electromagnetic communication' is a common trope for insects in all kinds of comics and cartoons - especially for something that the average person might think of as a 'hivemind species' - so, there it is. There are very many of them, and they can link up to tell the others what's up, which in turn informs the echidnas! A symbiotic relationship that seems to be time-honoured in their society.

Well, that's the basics, at least... This goes a little off the rails as time goes on, but at the very least, we can extrapolate all future events to do with the omniescence of the fire ants over the lifespan of the comic from here.

[thevindicativevordan]

I'm conflicted about the Maker as a character. On one hand, he's a great dark reflection to 616 Reed. He's what Reed would be if he never were confronted by the damages his ego might cause (in 616 Reed's case, the fact that it was his ego that made his loved ones change forever, while the accident was Doom's fault in 1610). He is arrogant, selfish, hyper-competent and a super-scientist-genious who, instead of fiding solutions with humanizing elements to the world's problems like 616 Reed does, doesn't care about ethics or morality, instead trying to create a perfect world regardless of how many have to die or suffer for it, whom he doens't spare a second thought for or feel guilt about.

On the other hand, I feel that WHAT he is is more interesting then HOW he became this way and WHY, and I kinda need to know the how and why to fully understand and appreciate him. I've recentely read the Ultimate Doomsday trilogy and the reasons for Reed to turn bad, the turning point to be precise, and what he was plannig exactly were… unclear to me.

His demeanor seems to change according to the writter as well. I've read the first 12 issues of Ultimate Comics: Ultimates and Hickman writes him as calm and condescending, someone who doesn't show his strong emotions, which is great. But after Humphries start co-writing from issue 10 to 12, his characterization and voice change. He is much more extrovert, so to speak, more prone to showing emotions, and he seems more generic. Also, some writers write him as still loving Sue, while Hickman doesn't seem to write him that way (the Maker doesn't show interest for the Sue in Secret Wars and he kills 6160 Sue).

I think what I want to ask is: do you also think the Maker has been inconsistently written as a character? And do you also think that the why he does things and the how he became the way he is are necessary for enjoying/understanding his character?

Oh he's a fucking incoherent mess. As a concept he's great, as an evil Reed under Hickman he's great. As the evolution of Ultimate Reed he makes zero sense.

Bendis depiction of his "fall" was awful and incoherent. Under Bendis, Reed instantly becomes the type of guy willing to commit cold blooded murder against both his family and other heroes for no real reason. If Reed is pissed about the military controlling everything, why is he trying to kill Peter Parker? Shouldn't he be trying to kill Nick Fury and destroy SHIELD? That at least would make sense, Ultimate Nick Fury is a fucking awful person. Instead he murders his entire family instead of just his asshole dad because... I don't know, he's just evil now. A writer can't write someone smarter than them, and Bendis is just not the guy for tackling the world's smartest heroic mind descending into villainy. Reed's plan is dumb and paper thin.

A better approach would have been that Reed creates minions and has them attack various heroes and SHIELD, but only the attack on SHIELD is genuine. All the attacks on heroes are false flags designed to fail, Reed even has them attack himself and his home to make it look like he's a victim too. Only his dad gets killed because his dad was the one Reed hated. Reed's plan is to kill off the military handlers, and bring the heroes together to solve a threat by themselves, in hopes that everyone will see they don't need to be taking orders from SHIELD. Heroes can solve problems on their own. Reed also wants to reunite the Fantastic Four and thinks that this could remind the other three why they need each other. Of course the other heroes find out that Reed is responsible and attempt to bring him in, with Sue, Ben, and Johnny turning on him being what sends Reed off the deep end. He becomes the Maker and resolves to build a family in his image which will be what he wants them to be.

Other writers desperately tried to reconcile Ultimate Reed with how Bendis portrayed his fall but it just never worked. Hickman had the right approach, he threw Reed into the City where times passes at an accelerated rate to justify the changes. Maker isn't human anymore, not really. He's been alive for so long that his perspective on everything has changed - or so it seems. It's tough to talk about Maker in Ultimates because Hickman never got to finish his story. No doubt in my mind that the Maker storyline was meant to run for a while, but Humphries understandably didn't want to be saddled with another writer's storyline forever. My recollection is that Humphries worked off of Hickman's notes, and while the execution differed it's possible that some of what Humphries did was Hickman's intention.

Some of what Maker does under Hickman doesn't make sense if Maker is as cold and pure logic-based as he tries to come off as. For example the City is on Earth instead of the moon or whatever because the City needs a "solid foundation" which presumably means Earth like conditions. Ok - why the hell does Maker put his City in Europe? Why not Antarctica or some other remote location? In Hickman's New Avengers, Maker recreates the City in a remote region of South America, which means he had other options. Putting his City in Europe feels like he was itching for a fight. Obviously there was quite a bit of gap in time between when Hickman wrote those two issues, but then there's other odd behavior. Why does Maker insist on humiliating Thor by forcing Thor to serve as his messenger instead of just... sending a message? Why bring Falcon in and show off the City instead of kidnapping world leaders for the same effect? My belief is that Hickman does not intend for Maker to be pure logic. Spite is definitely a big part of what drives him. On some level Maker was clearly itching for revenge and for praise from his former comrades. He wanted to hurt them and impress them, or at least rub in their faces what he had achieved.

Wish Hickman would share what the original plans were, but if Humphries really was working off his notes I could totally buy that Maker was going to be brought down by a need to impress Sue. He'd bring her into the City to brag and flex on her, the jilted boyfriend simultaneously hoping to hurt her for leaving him and win her back, and she would bring him down. Unlikely that Hickman would have Reed outright admit that the way Humphries did, but as an undercurrent to his actions he may not even be aware of himself? Yeah I could buy that. As for why he doesn't care about the other Sues, he spells out in Secret Wars: they're not his Sue.

Even Hickman has him admit that he's wondered what his life would have been like if he had gotten the life 616 Reed did. Plus there's his whole torturing of 6160 Reed. He could have killed 6160 Reed along with the other three, but he didn't. Instead he turned the guy into Dr. Doom and attempted to break him. Why? What purpose does that serve? 6160 Reed knows Maker hates him but can't figure out why. My theory is that it's because Maker is trying to take a Reed who is similar to 616 Reed and transform the guy into a monster like him. It's his middle finger to 616 Reed. Maker wants to prove that 616 Reed isn't better than him, if Mr. Fantastic had lost his family and been put through hell like Maker had, he would break too. That 6160 Reed is, so far, not a monster like Maker pisses Maker off. It's not logical to keep 6160 Reed around, and doing so leads to Maker's fall.

Hope that long winded rant clarified my thoughts for you. Moving on to the second part, do we need to know the how and why of Maker to enjoy him? Depends on how he's used. Something like Cates' Venom run, no. Maker is just an Evil Reed there, we don't need his backstory to understand that he's a power hungry bastard out only for himself. Per Cates himself, Maker is there because he wanted a dark reflection of the Peter/Mr. Fantastic relationship, and it's enough that Maker is a villain working with a dark anti-hero Venom to help facilitate that. Now in Ultimate Invasion, yes you do need to understand the how and why. Problem is that it's not clear why Maker does a lot of what he does. His creation of the Ultimate Illuminati is explained and makes sense, but what is his endgame? What does he want 6160 to become? I can't tell you. No clue at all what his endgame is supposed to be. Does he want to turn the world into a global version of the City? Does he genuinely want to make a utopia? He seems content to let his underlings run their fiefdoms with a relatively free hand. 6160 America appears to be much more advanced thanks to the technocrats running things. Even allows Howard Stark and Bruce Banner to express misgivings about his rule. Public seems to think he's a great guy, presumably he didn't kill a shitload of people to build his society this time around. We needed more info on what his plans were and we didn't get them.

Maker is a fun character and also an inconsistent mess. One does not always preclude the other. Now my personal opinion is that he's approaching the end of his lifespan, I think Hickman needs to give him an ending. Whether that's death or something else I don't know, but a confrontation between Maker, Mr. Fantastic, and DoomReed is all that's left to do with him I feel. Hickman is really the only one who has used him to his full potential anyway. Give him a proper send-off to close the door on the old Ultimate Universe as we move into the new one.

[celaenaeiln]

did you ever find out where the quote you mentioned on your Dick Grayson personalities post is from? "The man has a temper that could start wars. And a smile that could end them." ?

This from THIS POST.

I didn't!! I think about this all the time but I don't remember where it's from. 😭😭

It's definitely not from any comic though. It wasn't used in reference to any comic character, I just found it very apt for Dick Grayson.

I think it's my favorite quote for him alongside this one:

"Sophisticated and vulgar. Cheerful and cruel. Magnanimous and cunning. Pacifist and Bona fide sadist. Because the entirety of his life is comprised of extreme dual-natures, he is also known as the Mad Pierrot.”

From the Dick Grayson Multitudes Post