#meta: marvel

[artbyblastweave]

A while ago I made a post criticizing Overwatch for leaning into superheroic, noble imagery and branding despite the core gameplay loop consisting of around a dozen people who are canonically supposed to be on the same side throwing down for unclear reasons. This same criticism does not apply to the recently-announced Marvel Rivals, as a dozen Marvel superheroes fighting to the death for unclear reasons is more or less a one-to-one adaptation of the source material

[tarragonthedragon]

Cyclops gets such a rough deal man. imagine having brain damage that caused you to uncontrollably shoot laser blasts out of your eyeballs destroying everything in sight that you had to worry about literally 24/7 and also you had to supervise teenagers throwing cars at each other because your father figure and his ex are taking leftist infighting to the streets and also on top of that whenever you show any amount of concern over this situation people are like "jeez what a buzzkill. loosen up control freak. why can't you be all chill and cool like wolverine" meanwhile wolverine is having his amygdala forcibly removed by the us military for the third time this month

[mischievous-thunder]

Logan not only held onto the photograph after the fight until he fell asleep but also kept it with himself until what he thought was going to be his last conversation with Wade.

Just prior to going into the chamber to destroy the Time Ripper, Logan gave the photo back to Wade because the man didn't think that he'd make it. He wasn't someone who expressed their emotions too eloquently but in that moment his expressions and voice conveyed what his heart truly felt. Seeing Wade teared up and realising that that moment could be their very last together, Logan let the voice of his heart take over.

That was their declaration of love.

[hurtspideyparker]

fun fact: Bucky never voluntarily fought!

He was drafted into WWII, brainwashed against his will for 70 years, targeted and forced to run, then pulled into his best friend's wars, and finally feels he must atone for all the harm he was forced to do. He didn't want to be here, and he can't escape

[velvet4510]

If it weren’t for Billy creating the Road, Sharon would’ve died completely alone, never again having a taste of sisterhood or adventure.

If it weren’t for Billy creating the Road, Jen would never have unbound herself or regained her power.

If it weren’t for Billy creating the Road, Alice would never have known what her mother did for her or broken the curse, achieving what her ancestors could not.

If it weren’t for Billy creating the Road, Lilia would never have achieved closure within herself or understood her own purpose in life.

If it weren’t for Billy creating the Road, Agatha would never have learned to love a child again or realized that she could still be more than just a killer.

Every member of the coven, whether they physically survived in the end or not, was given something immeasurably valuable by Billy through his Hex of the Road.

He may have “killed” some of them.

But in truth, in one way or another, he saved all of them.

[dandelionjack]

99.9% certain that this is going to be the Spider Anansi, the West African folklore character associated with storytelling and trickery

here, the Doctor is wearing African clothes, in a place that seems like it’s somewhere in Africa

same episode; the man is saying to the Doctor “you need to tell a story”

[incorrectbatfam]

Back when I worked at a restaurant, we would have this one DoorDash guy who had honest to God the worst timing ever. I never learned his name but he looked like a Mark and he had a special talent for showing up as something was happening. One time he came to pick up an order as the police were escorting someone from the bar for trying to assault the bartender and Mark was just standing in the middle of the entryway like🧍‍♂️asking about a burger that hadn't been started yet. Another time, he showed up as the kitchen was on fire and didn't understand why he couldn't pick up his order anyway even after my boss explained it to him three times. There was also the time he showed up and twenty seconds later, our POS system spontaneously imploded and our boss—the only person who could fix it—was out that day. Mark was an omen. Every time we saw his car pull up, there would be a collective sense of exhaustion mixed with dread.

Anyway, I think every piece of superhero media needs a civilian background character like Mark whose sole purpose is to get in the way and Fuck Shit Up by simply existing.

[reallyunluckyrunaway]

You have to earn that title damnit.

[thestarlightforge]

“Because the truth is too awful” could be taken so many different ways.

“Because it was simple. He was a boy, and sometimes, boys die. He went to sleep, kissed me goodnight and his mother needed him home. And I couldn’t save him.”

“Because he was the abomination. Not the Darkhold, not me. I got addicted to power and had succubus magic I couldn’t always control, but he was the one who couldn’t live without murder.”

“Because I kept killing after he was gone, when he didn’t need it anymore. I used his song to murder innocent witches, even though he died to stop the bloodshed.”

“Because I didn’t respect his choice, Rio’s job or her motherhood, and let him go. I kept killing in a desperate attempt to get him back—and blamed his mother, my love, for his death—even though he was always going to die, I always knew that, and his life was a miraculous gift.”

It’s all of these. It’s none. I love Jac Schaeffer for that, and so hope we get more chapters.

[jessmalia]

This has been said before by people better at articulating their opinions than me, but the bad reception Black Widow got from male MCU fans is about so much more than just the simple concept that it's a superhero movie starring a woman, but the fact that it's so clearly a film by women for women. It's in all the little things, like all the amazing braids sported by the female characters instead of having them constantly fight with their hair down, Yelena and Natasha being excited about the vest and all its pockets, zero sexualisation of any of the Widows, the forced hysterectomy being discussed matter-of-factly, and the women getting to wear minimal to no make-up in settings where that makes sense. But it's also in the big things, like the story centred around the epidemic of girls being subjected to human trafficking with a theme of reclaiming your anatomy and freeing other female victims, both others’ and your own.

Obviously this doesn't mean that every single woman on earth is automatically gonna identify with and like the movie, that's an impossible achievement. But it is a movie that's so much more than pandering, and these geeks are just completely incapable of inserting themselves into a point of view different from their own.

[artbyblastweave]

I've been reading through some of your old asks since I remembered you were where I heard about Worm, and recently you wrote about how "deconstructions" of the superhero genre are often uniformed and lazy pastiche from people who seem to have not bothered engaging seriously with the source material. (There's a great quote from Ursula Le Guin about writers and critics all too often disregarding genre fiction, hence why the literati alll thought Harry Potter was original back in the day)

But you made the point that big two comics have been dealing with most of the plot holes in the genre for decades, and cited a few specific examples. I'm by no means a new comer to comics but I've largely stayed away from big two, and so I'm wondering, if you are so inclined, if you could share what you consider "required reading" to help me get started?

It seems like a fascinating thing to read about, and I love tracing genre histories.

Yesterday I finally finished a long long rec-list for @worlds-smallest-creature, which was a mix of foundational texts and stuff I personally thought was neat. I'm going to pare down and amend the list to ten comics that are particularly useful for getting a feel of the Big-Two space; comics that, if you read them, will instantly make significant portions of the references and in-jokes much more legible. Note that this does not universally map to high quality, ( though it does for most of them) just utility for understanding the genre and the space as it stands:

Watchmen: By Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. The big deconstructionist comic, most directly in conversation with the two-and-a-half generations of superheroes that had been published when it first came out in 1985. This is the comic all other superhero deconstructions have been chasing and it's tonally informed basically everything that's come after.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns: Frank Miller and Klaus Janson. The other big deconstructionist superhero comic of the 1980s. While nothing in it is actually canon, it hugely (and arguably negatively) informed the writing of Batman as a dark-gritty-anti-hero and gave rise to the endemic "Batman vs Superman in a fight to the finish" thing; like Watchmen, it's also a rumination on what went unsaid politically in the Silver Age of Comics. Huge amounts of the Batman Mythos are either repudiating this or parroting this, for better or for worse.

Marvels: Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross's gorgeously painted retelling of the first 30 years of the history of the Marvel Universe from the perspective of a photojournalist, from the first appearance of superheroes in the 30s to roughly the start of the Bronze Age. In addition to being a comic about the existential horror of being a normal person living in a world with Big Two superhero dynamics, it's also an excellent primer of the major players and plot beats from the front half of Marvel's publication history.

JLA/Avengers by Kurt Busiek and George Perez: One of the last intercontinuity crossovers published by Marvel and DC before they started circling the wagons on their respective IP. A major thrust of the piece is the two teams reacting with horror to the business-as-usual of their counterparts universe, in a way that's meant to highlight the historical differences in writing trends between the two; it also contains basically Every Single Superhero Who'd Ever Been Published Up Until 2004, making it a pretty useful who's-who birdspotting guide of both settings.

Astro City by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson and Alex Ross: An anthology series set in a constructed pastiche Big-Two universe, following the lives of dozens to hundreds of characters as they make their way in the titular Astro City, the longstanding superhero capital of the world. Because the setting contains direct pastiches (and therefore commentary) on basically every significant Hero and general archetype who shows up in both Marvel and DC, and because every one-or-two issue vignette is usually in direct conversation with a specific trope or standing question raised by those characters and those settings, blowing through as much Astro City as you can will allow you to infer huge chunks of the decades-long history that it was written in conversation with- the type of characters who were published in each decade, the type of adventures they were going on in the 60s vs the 30s vs the 90s, and so on.

(Is this three things in a row by Kurt Busiek, you ask? Yes, because he's basically the on-call "thoughtfully root around in the guts of the architecture of Big Two Superhero Comics" guy.)

JLA (1997) By Grant Morrison and Howard Porter. This one was an ongoing, and it presents an interesting balancing act between being, essentially, a platonic example of the thing- no aggressive deconstruction, just a through and through superhero comic that balances accessibility to new readers, high-quality, high concept stories, deliberately enmeshing itself in remixed high-context deep-cuts from the silver-age, and having all sorts of odd little inscrutable asides that are the result of weird decisions being made in other books. Superman's blue and has lightning powers, roll with it. There's an Angel From The Actual Bible hanging around because they couldn't get the rights to Hawkman, roll with it. This thing is essentially training wheels for the reality that almost any big-two ongoing worth reading for any reason is doomed to be jerked around and informed by the larger editorial context at the time, which you might only know bits and pieces of going in; a sufficiently gripping comic will reel you in regardless.

Uncanny X-Men by Chris Claremont and a whole bunch of artists. Claremont's run from the 70s to the 90s was a development site of a huge number of enduring cape tropes- in particular a lot of the ones related to superpowered factionalism, dialing in on relatively specific and well-defined powersets applied to problems in a puzzle-logic kind of way, shoring up the "Mutant Metaphor" as a parallel to civil rights movements, and a lot of stuff related to bad futures and time travel. By virtue of the amount of time he spent in creative control of the book it coheres better than the average big two thing (though that's not necessarily the same thing as it being universally good.) To this day the genre is plastered in the thumbprints of Days of Future Past and The Dark Phoenix Saga, so those will both be useful context.

Ultimate Spider-Man by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley. A reboot and retelling of Spider-Man for a 21st century audience, which was so meteorically successful that the Ultimate Universe- a condensed, lean, and heavily politically barbed reboot of all of Marvel's major properties- was spun off from it. On top of being a very good comic, Bendis's background in crime fiction writing, decompressed style and ear for naturalistic dialogue became something of a house style at Marvel for a while and heavily influenced the space generally; the DNA of this one can be found all over the place. This remains probably the best self-contained Spider-Man run ever produced.

The Authority By Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch. The premiere cool new superteam of the late 90s/early oughts; paradoxical revolutionary authoritarians willing to lay waste with abandon to all the evils of the world that normally go untouched or get off with a slap on the wrist. This book was extremely stylistically important in its embrace of a cinematic 'widescreen" pacing intended to make the comic feel like a breakneck blockbuster movie, and significant chunks of what was to come over the next decade ate its lunch stylistically. This team evolved out of Stormwatch, a Jim-lee 90s-antihero outing that Ellis took over with issue 37, hollowed out and wore like a skinsuit in order to write the same kind of genre commentary spec-fic story he liked to. Ellis's work on that run is useful context for The Authority, and a pretty good read, but not strictly necessary.

The Ultimates V1 and V2 By Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch. Millar was the guy who took over The Authority from Ellis after issue 12, and The Ultimates- the version of the Avengers created for the above-mentioned Ultimate Universe- was his attempt to create a superhero team with essentially the reverse characterization from The Authority. Where The Authority were quasi-left-anarchist mavericks willing to coup the president if that's where their fight against evil took them, The Ultimates were characterized as a gaggle of incompetent, jingoistic stooges who solved only slightly more problems than they personally created, backed Bush to the hilt with the illegal invasion of Iraq, and represented a massive escalation in an international superhuman arms race that was implied to be on course to end the world. Because of the book's massively uncharitable characterization of literally every member of the Avengers lineup with the exception of Thor, and because of Millar's deep-seated edgelord sensibilities, this book is regarded poorly by many. (I like it as satire.) However, it (and the rest of Ultimate Marvel) represent the single biggest aesthetic influence on basically every Superhero film of the 2000s onward and the MCU in particular- despite arguably being an aggressive attack on the enterprise the MCU would become.

I'll round the list out with Alias by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos. This was Bendis's other keys-to-the-kingdom-granting outing at Marvel. A noire piece following Jessica "Jewel" Jones, a retired superheroine-turned-PI, as she roots around in the dirty laundry at the outer edge of the superhero community; similar to Astro City in how it uses "edge-case questions" about how superhero settings would work as the launchpad for sad (and frequently anticlimactic) little excursions about the Human Condition. The DNA of this one is also floating around in the space.

Happy Reading!

[emdashbitch]

Bucky's blue color coding is one of my favorite consistencies with him, as well as how consistent red is with negativity for him.

His blue coat during the war always makes me smile?? Every chance Bucky gets he picks blue.

Blue was still a feminine color back then, it only really became considered masculine and pink a feminine color heading into the 50s. It's just interesting to me that Bucky consistently picks blue, his all blue suit to Sarah's funeral is the equivalent of wearing an all pink suit now.

Steve's costume was designed for him based off the flag and aside from one greyish-blue jacket after his mother's funeral, he mostly chooses to wear muted, warm tones like browns, yellows and reds like other men in CATFA, especially Howard who wears a lot of red during CATFA. In the modern era Steve does also wear a lot of blue, but that could just be because of modern influences idk.

Every time we see Bucky dressed in something he would've chosen for himself pre-war it's blue, and even post-Winter Soldier he mostly wears blue with only once wearing a red shirt (when he was in hiding in Romania, when he presumably didn't have the liberty of being picky.) I'd almost say Bucky associates red as a negative color... Arnim Zola's bow tie he would've no doubt been wearing while he experimented on Bucky, Red Skull, blood, the HYDRA symbol, the Red Room, the Winter Soldier notebook, the red star on his arm, the Iron Man suit, the wall in his apartment in Romania (and arguably his red shirt in Romania too, since he was on the run and then mind controlled wearing it.) To a MUCH less severe degree, his and Sam's hostility with each other follows Sam's whole run with the red Falcon suit. Also lmao the suit he asks the Wakandans for for Sam is a lot less red than Sam's comic book CA suit is, the wings for example. This part is a reach but it's still a funny coincidence.

[mischievous-thunder]

Wade, during an argument: Now you sound like those boring unromantic people.

Logan, deadpanning: Says the one whose idea of flirting is to kidnap an unsuspecting drunk man at gunpoint from a bar.

Wade: YOU LEANED AGAINST MY GUN OMG YOU-

Logan, smirking: -Which further proves that I'm neither boring nor unromantic.

[hurtspideyparker]

the fact that even though Peter had a very difficult life he had a FANTASTIC support system. Adults advocating for him, friends who were unwaveringly supportive, strong community connections and a great education. I always think about the moment on the rooftop after May has passed and the way his friends knew where he'd be and what he'd need, that embrace. The world hates Spider-Man but it loved Peter Parker

Loved, past tense, because then he loses absolutely ALL OF IT. His future, friends, family...

Thank goodness my boy has resilience for days because No Way Home would take out most people for good

[velvet4510]

We all knew Rio was Nicky’s other parent but it’s glorious to see it firmly confirmed and so no hater is able to deny it anymore.

And now we can really bask in just how deep and unique the writing is for that final episode.

From conception, Nicky was half-life, half-death.

Death isn’t supposed to create life. It’s a total paradox that explains why Nicky was meant to be stillborn. How could the child of Death live? Agatha becoming pregnant must’ve turned Rio’s world upside down.

Also Rio doesn’t see death as a tragedy. How could she when it’s her job? When it’s the natural order of things? Before meeting Agatha, it never crossed her mind that death could be seen as bad.

But it’s when she fell for a living human, a mortal, that she finally saw what death means for humans. How much pain and fear and grief it brings.

And suddenly here’s Agatha pleading and pleading for her to NOT do her job, to NOT take their child with her. If she does this, she’ll break Agatha’s heart - the antithesis of her understanding of death. Rio suddenly comprehends that as long as Agatha lives on, there’s no way for the three of them to ever be together as a family. No wonder she chokes back tears.

As for Agatha, she only has the living person’s perspective. How could Rio want THEIR child to die? It’s the antithesis of parental instincts to want or allow your child to die. Death or no Death, surely Rio can see why this would be wrong?

Agatha and Rio are looking at the situation through totally different and incompatible lenses.

So out of love for Agatha alone, Rio lets Nicky’s “life” half take over not just for a few hours or days, but SIX WHOLE YEARS.

Then when Rio can’t stretch the rules any longer and she comes for him, Nicky knows her. He does not fear her, or where they are going. How can he, when she is his mother, when she needs him home?

Then Rio pays the price, as Agatha cuts ties with her and wants nothing to do with her anymore.

I also think this explains why Rio is so determined to kill Agatha herself or to let the Salem Seven do it, during the rest of the show. Again, as Death, she doesn’t see death as bad, or a harm, or a pain. If Agatha dies, then Rio can take her to Nicky and they can finally be a family. But Agatha doesn’t want them to be a family together. She still sees what happened as a loss and betrayal that Nicky would never forgive her for - the opposite of how Rio views it.

Ultimately, Agatha makes herself into a ghost who can’t cross over to where Nicky is, and Rio’s dream of her family being together is shattered.

Truly one of the greatest and most profound tragedies in television history, let alone MCU history.

[ironshieldchild]

they really have a habit of thinking about each other when the world is ending, huh.