#supervillain civil wars

[spearhafoc]

The Apex Society #25 Page 13.

[imthefailedartist]

I'm re-watching CA: Civil War and the government got a lot of nerve.

I don't remember not a damn thing that happened in these movies. I feel like I should be VERY concerned by that.

Wait, I thought this was after Winter Soldier? Speaking of Bucky, is the show canceled? Will I not get more of Bucky flirting with Sara(h)? That's really the only reason I've kept watching these movies after Endgame.

Wait?! Bucky killed King T'Chaka?

I thought Daniel Brühl was a part of Hydra.

Vision is sexy as fuck.

To be fair, everybody in Sokovia and the rest of the world would be dead if Ultron wasn't stopped. But also if Tony hadn't made Ultron in the first place. . . But also, if the government hadn't made Cap and all those other superfreaks, none of this would be happening.

And nobody talk to me about the Mutants or X-Men. I don't give a fuck. I hate them.

Superheroes need supervillains. Otherwise, what do you need superheroes for?

Damn why did they kill Pietro. He was so hot. This movie could use him.

Was they gone have Cap fuck his step niece? Ew. What man wrote this. Also, a blonde. Ugh. At least use paltino.

The craziest part of this "Civil Warc. Is that the solution is that the countries need their own superheroes. But of course, American imperialism wouldn't allow that. So, of course, they are going to send Americans to fight because that way, they can spy and infitrate and weave they xenophobic ass fingers in others' way of life to try and homogenize the world.

I forget T'Challa is in this. I'm crying.

Oh, I got my answer, burnt up Frank Grillo does comeback into play. Was he supposed to be a bigger character?

How invincible is Cap? I assume it had limits. Take his head off he's dead dead. Drown him, he's dead, but he comes back no matter how long after you pull him out the water. Maybe it's like Stefan in the safe on The Vampire Diaries drown and drown and drown and drown again.

Maybe he's invincible to decapitation so long as the parts are close enough together, they'll reattach.

Aunt May should've smashed Tony.

Not enough people hand things to Tony in this movie. It's my favorite quirk.

They just kissed. Eh-yuckh!

They keep showing ads for Jersey Mike's and now I want one.

Tom Holland is my favorite non-animated Spider-man. His movies finally get the tone right.

Wanda, girl I get it, I too, would fuck the computer man. I know Vision can Google new ways to make you see the fifty states and make you see em at the same time.

They fought in that tunnel for thirty miles, and Warhammer shows up at the last minute like he's stopping something?

Paul Rudd is a handsome man. Even more than Cap in this movie.

Cap looks like generic white man #5 in this. He needs the beard.

Hawkeye and Black Widow on opposite teams?

I need more Sam and Bucky banter.

I hate the black hand on the silver arm.

[asha-mage]

🌶️

The MCU's Spiderman is not a poor execution of Peter Parker's character concept. He's not even poor execution of Miles Morales's character concept.

He is a poor execution of Terry McGinnis's character concept.

Peter Parker and Miles Morales both have so many fundamental pieces to their characters that are just missing for the MCU's Spiderman. Familiar names are floating around him- Aunt May, Mary Jane, Ganke Lee- but the fundamental ideas that make up Peter or Miles arcs just are not there. Themes like Miles's family expectations, Peter's constant money struggles, and the balancing act of doing good vs trying to live your own life are all absent. Even the idea of power and responsibility isn't properly introduced until the THIRD MOVIE when that really should been the central theme from the beginning.

Rather the MCU Spiderman has way more parallels with Terry McGinnis. Both are young hot shot teenagers who end up being taken under the wing of established and experienced hero who is on their way out. Both have complex relationships with their mentor which in a lot of ways serves as the driving force of their character arcs. Both gain high tech suits which enable their heroism. Both are viewed (or at least supposed to be viewed in MCU Peter's case) as heirs to the legacy of this hero.

It falls apart when you get into how they are different. While Uncle Ben is implied to have existed and be dead by the time MCU Peter is introduced in Civil War it's never actually confirmed and never properly comes up. Meanwhile the death of Terry's father is essentially the inciting incident of Batman Beyond: it's what motivates and drives Terry and the murder and it's fallout are the main focus of the first two episodes of Batman Beyond.

What's more MCU Peter's relationship to Tony is grounded in the fact that Tony just shows up one day and essentially taps him to join the Avengers. Bruce by contrast initially tosses Terry out on his ear, and when Terry turns up seeking justice for his father Bruce can't offer him anything but 'go ask the cops for help', and when that goes exactly as poorly as Terry said it would, Terry breaks into the manor steals the Batsuit and goes to stop Powers himself. Terry has active agency in his own choice to be a hero, which helps define his relationship with Bruce and to heroism. While MCU Peter was doing his own superheroics prior to Tony showing up in Civil War (not that he ever does much of that in future movies) his relationship to Tony is defined by Peter's dependence on him and his quest for Tony(/the Avengers)'s approval. And because they don't even bother name drop Uncle Ben or flashback to him, we're left with the impression that the main thing driving MCU Peter is that quest for approval. His motivations are never more complexly explored, and we don't even really see him just running around Queens stopping muggings or car crashes or anything that hints he enjoys or feels the need to actually help people.

And I think that gets into the final and most important difference between the two. Gotham not only needs Batman, it visibly and obviously and terribly needs Batman. Batman Beyond leans into this because decades without a Batman have left Gotham a cyperbunk dystopian hellscape. The city needs someone to stand up to the darkness, to be a symbol of hope, to be aspirational. Terry taking up that mantel means fighting supervillains, yes- but mostly it means doing what the original Batman did. Solving murders, stopping muggings, rescuing people from burning buildings or fighting off street gangs like the Jokerz.

But even in the earliest MCU movies, New York only needs superheroes when the current world ending threat shows up. Otherwise the city is all bright shinny clean streets filled with haplessly content citizens. This is the only reason that Vision's position of 'Our very strength invites challenge' in Civil War makes any sense- because the only purpose of these Superheroes is usually to fight a threat they where somehow responsible for creating. And this problem hits 'friendly neighborhood Spiderman' the hardest because he only has a responsibility to use his great power to solve problems, if their are problems in need of solving. Most of Peter Parker's (and Miles Morales's, Gwen Stacy's, or any other Spiderperson's) day is not fighting alien armies or netherworld gods. It's stopping break ins, rescuing people from car crashes, or dealing with other small scale local threats, that none the less benefit from someone with his abilities to make them better. Either New York in the MCU is an ideal utopian city where the police have everything handled apparently (which ha!) or Peter is apparently not interested in stopping bad things from happening. He spends so much of the first movie basically begging Tony to give him superhero things to do, not realizing that he could go outside and find people that need help on his own.

In conclusion MCU Peter Parker isn't 'regular Peter Parker but not an underdog', or even 'Miles Morales but white'. He's 'Terry McGinnis but without any agency in his own heroism'.

[artbyblastweave]

So, both Marvel and DC periodically do "fascist takeover of America" crossover events. The one I read the most of was the 2006-2010 mega-arc spanning Avengers Disassembled and Siege, where the high-profile superheroic fuckups of Avengers Disassembled, Secret War and House of M create the political climate necessary for Civil War, and the subsequent government consolidation of power over superheroes, the regulatory infrastructure created downstream of that, is then directly implicated in Norman Osborn's eventual soft takeover of the American Security State- at least until he overplays his hand and gets curbstomped in the usual status-quo reset manner. On balance I genuinely really liked this arc, which is at least partially down to nostalgia- but part of it is that I very broadly find the whole thing plausible, essentially a four-color and comparatively toothless implementation of the ideas Bendis and Millar were playing with in the Ultimate Marvel sandbox. It raises questions about Superheroic accountability that the really aggressive shooters for that idea can't really weasel out of- accountability to who? You think the fucking Bush Administration should get to sign off on what superheroes can and can't do? The freaks who got millions of people killed in the middle east with a fake-nuke fig-leaf over their hardon for the gun salesmen?

(I call this a toothless implementation because Ultimate Marvel had Bush personally, directly deploy Captain America and company in Iraq. Mainline Marvel gestured at this but, due to the number of authors involved, ended up being a lot more thematically confused in regards to whether they liked the government or not. I like Ultimate Marvel.)

Anyway. The thing about the "fascist takeover of America" plot is that even though it's typically gesturing at plausible real-life concerns- The Military Industrial complex run amok, the NSA with superpowered attack dogs, and so on- it always ends up doing so from within the superheroic idiom in a way that robs the real-life referents of their power. A slick demagogue takes over the government, but that demagogues a conventional supervillain and once you unmask him and punch him out everything is back to normal. The CIA has unleashed an army of killbots but once you destroy the secret killbot factory and arrest five or six people all is normal again in heaven and earth. There's always some inner circle, always some prime mover you can beat to a pulp about it. It's never painted as just the inevitable consequence of a significant chunk of the American populace being subsapient authoritarians who elect a bunch of criminal maniacs to enact an unmanaged suicide of the modern administrative state.

There's an extent to which doing something like this is always going to fall outside of the big-two mandate because going all in on what I'm about to talk about would put so much of a lie to the basic aspirational premise of the thing so as to make it unrecoverable. But a story I'd really like to see is a registration act situation where the superheroes are integrated under government power, it's cool, it's cool, and then over the course of a couple administrations, a couple economic downturns and maybe an adventurist overseas war it very pointedly becomes uncool. Some cornfed fascist slides into the oval office, and there is no genre-specific mitigating element. It's not because of his mind-control powers, it's not because he's a catspaw for a supervillain or an ancient conspiracy. It's just the the proven American propensity for electing evil morons- or possibly the proven American propensity for electing evil genteel politicians, norms-and-civility ghouls who drone strike exactly as many weddings as the evil morons, if not more. And now the political moment has beaten down the gates to the walled fairyland garden of the superheroic cops-and-robbers runaround, and superheroes find themselves being sicced on campus protests and whistleblowers and overseas targets, every other evil exercise of power associated with the cops and the military and the national guard, and there's no smoky backroom you can beat up to ensure a return to normalcy, because this is normal. This isn't what they signed up for. This is exactly what they signed up for.

[traincat]

Hi, it's me again, with another comics question 😅

So, I will preface this by saying I really don't know much about Marvel's Civil War beyond the mcu (from what I do know I can gather that the Accords are rather different in comics than in the movie because I fear I'd be team iron man in the mcu but very anti-tony in the comics). Anyways, I know some main points- Peter starting off backing the Accords & revealing his identity, the F4 being against the Accords, Peter eventually deciding to switch sides and being bridal carried™️ by the Punisher.

I really don't want to read through ALL the civil war comics but I guess I'm wondering about the motives behind Johnny & Peter's positions. Why does Peter choose to back the Accords when literally every other vigilante recognizes it as a really not great idea? (Is it the /responsibility/ of it all? Do the F4 go against it as a team or is there infighting there? Do Johnny and Peter ever actually fight each other directly? Do they talk?

I'm so sorry for the bombardment of questions, but I guess they all boil down to: what comics do you recommend for someone (me) that wants to see Peter & Johnny's roles/relationship to the Accords, especially if they interact?

Thank you in advance!!!!!!! (I always appreciate the amount of effort that goes into your responses 🩷)

Okay, let's talk Civil War. Please note it's been a hot minute since I read it, and I'm not revisiting it beyond my refs folder, because I don't respect Civil War as an event enough to do that.

First off, what IS 616 Civil War, and how does it kick off? Let's find ourselves on the map. The year is 2006, and Peter Parker is on the Avengers because Brian Michael Bendis hates me personally. The New Warriors, a team of younger superheroes, have reformed themselves as a reality show, and are filming in Stamford, Connecticut. One of their members, Namorita, confronts escaped supervillain Nitro, whose power is exploding. And the extremely obvious happens.

The problem? In addition to killing Namorita and several other heroes, the explosion also kills sixty nearby school children. The government subsequently passes the Superhuman Registration Act, which would require powered individuals operating as heroes to register with the government and be subject to official regulation. Failure to do so results in imprisonment in a facility built in the Negative Zone. That part is not public knowledge.

So where are Johnny and Peter in this? For Johnny, it's pretty simple. You see, Johnny and Namorita used to date -- it's the first of what I call Johnny's "celebrity" relationships, where I think the appeal for him was being seen with another celebrity as opposed to any genuine attraction. (See: Kourtney, Darla Deering.) Namorita and Johnny broke up a long time ago, because they never spent any time together in the first place.

(FF v3 #55) It's very important to Have A Girlfriend so people know you're straight. What do you mean you should want to do literally anything with her.

The problem is, the relationship WAS incredibly public at the time. So Johnny is very much known as Nita's ex, and the anger surrounding Namorita's actions is boiling. While out on the town, Johnny is violently assaulted and knocked unconscious before he can flame on. The crowd then proceeds to beat him into a coma.

(Civil War #2) He wakes up at some point in here, but Johnny's involvement in Civil War is very limited after this. When Sue leaves the pro-Iron Man (and SHRA) side to join Captain America, he goes with her. That's pretty much all there is to it.

Now, as previously mentioned, Peter has been with the Avengers at this point in time. He's also living in Avengers Tower with Aunt May and MJ at this point, because his apartment and Aunt May's house were destroyed. Long story, only kind of interesting. He and Tony have gotten pretty close. This is where the Iron Dad fanon originally came from -- and I wouldn't ever personally say it's a father-son dynamic, there is an air of mentorship to it. (How in character I find this doesn't matter for the sake of this post.) Suffice to say, during this period, Tony and Peter have become close. And Tony is really going hard for the Superhero Registration Act, so he enlists Peter's help.

(ASM #529) 1) He's going to regret that. 2) Hahaha like Peter promising something means literally anything 75% of the time.

This is when Peter starts wearing the Iron Spider costume, as designed by Tony. It's also when he takes off the mask in front of the whole world and reveals his identity as Peter Parker.

(Civil War #2) He's really gonna regret that.

Things go uh. Bad. See, the thing with Peter is that he doesn't keep his identity secret for his own sake -- it is always to protect the ordinary people in his life. He's promised nothing will happen to them, but obviously as soon as his identity is out, there's a target on their backs. And Peter has a lot of enemies.

(ASM #533) It will.

Going to take a break here and say that Tony, especially from the Spider-Man side of things, does not come off as especially sympathetic during Civil War. I'm not an Iron Man expert and I'm not here to either defame characters or discuss about whether Civil War was particularly in character for anyone, including Tony. That's for other people who have the necessary background to talk about Tony's characterization in depth. I'm just here to talk about Peter's poor life choices.

(ASM #533) "I call you boss because I know it bugs you. Don't start taking it too seriously." A big part of Peter's characterization that I think gets overlooked is that, consistently, since he's been fifteen years old, he has almost always physically been the strongest person in the room, and he certainly believes the smartest. A lot of his interactions with Tony in ASM come with Peter's underlying belief that he could crack open the Iron Man suit like a crab claw.

(ASM #535)

Slowly, through a combination of things, Peter's faith in Tony and pro-Registration side disappears. Again, I'm not rereading Civil War, sorry. Anyway, he switches sides. The problem? He's still wearing that damn Iron Spider suit, which Tony can lock.

Well, I mean. Theoretically, that's a problem.

(ASM #536) This doesn't have anything to do with the main story really, I just wanted to post it because he's hypercompetent, and it's hot. My blog, my rules.

Yadda yadda yadda, Tony sends a team of supervillains to capture Peter, yadda yadda yadda, big fight, yadda yadda. This is where that famous scene of the Punisher bridal carrying absolutely beat to hell Peter comes from.

(Civil War #5) Hi Frank. Also in writing this post I discovered my Civil War refs are a mess.

Anyway, from here on, stuff happens, big superhero fight -- it's not too important from the Spider-Man side of things. What is important is that the aftermath of Peter's decision to unmask leads directly into One More Day, or the infamous Devil Divorce storyline where Peter sells his marriage to Mephisto in order to save Aunt May's life after she's shot by the Kingpin's assassin. I'm not going to go into all of that here, but I am a rare One More Day stan. I actually think it's a stunning piece of Peter Parker characterization -- it just led directly into a whole bunch of other stuff I hate, and the aftermath of it (the erased marriage and associated retcon) has gone on far too long. But that's not One More Day as a standalone story's fault. (People who complain that Peter chooses May over MJ miss the point entirely that Peter DID choose MJ over May, initially and instinctively -- the bullet was supposed to kill MJ, and Peter tackles her out of the way, leaving May in the path. THAT'S the whole thing and why Peter can't possibly make any other choice. Because he already made the choice, and the woman he views as his mother suffered for it.)

As for Spideytorch interaction in Civil War, there really isn't much to say. Johnny's in a coma for a chunk of it and Peter's got his own drama going on. Even when they're on the same side again, they don't really interact. Immediately post-Civil War, when Peter is hiding out in a shitty motel with Aunt May and MJ, Steve does ask Johnny if he can get in touch with Peter, since he's the closest with him.

(ASM #537) But it's Steve who goes to meet Peter, not Johnny. Shame.

As for comic recommendations. Oof. Civil War is kind of tricky -- I think if you're going to read it, it's best to read the main series, Civil War (2006), which is fairly short all things considered and very fast moving. It's basically the first of the big "modern events" which meant they hadn't yet nailed the practice of making it as awful as possible for everyone to follow. For Peter's involvement, I would read Amazing Spider-Man #529-537. (Pacing was different back then, she said, smoking a cigarette and staring wistfully out at the water.) It's not NECESSARY, but I would read from #538-543 just because it's GOOD. (#544 is the beginning of One More Day, and requires a different reading list.) This is where he confronts the Kingpin in prison and it's honestly so good. Top ten Spider-Man scenes of all time.

(ASM #543) I think about "it takes three seconds" all the time. Sidenote but JMS really has the perfect Peter voice, the best out of every modern Peter writer. Look how well the dialogue hits here, and the rhythm of it. No pointless joking, no rambling. Just beat, beat, beat.

I also think Civil War: Frontline is very good if you want Peter Civil War content. It's more Bugle-focused, which is really fun if you enjoy that set of characters.

Like I said, Peter and Johnny really don't interact during Civil War, and beyond getting violently assaulted in the first issue of Civil War #1, Johnny's not majorly important to the plot. Which is, uh. Very typically Johnny. Hey, at least it wasn't actively a homophobic hate crime this time, right? (Looking at you, Zodiac (Dark Reign). Don't read it, just know that's literally what happens.)

Here's a cute panel of him playing board games with Franklin and Val though.

There is significant infighting with the FF, where Reed sides with the pro-Registration side and even designs the Negative Zone prisons. Sue switches sides shortly after Johnny's recovery, going to Steve's side, and Johnny goes with her because that's what Johnny does. Ben, on the other hand, takes a neutral stance for the majority of the event.

If you do want to read anything for Johnny from it, there's a really good issue of Fantastic Four set while he's in a coma, though it's mostly a Ben character piece. (And a very good one.)

(FF #538) Listen, the only sensible person during all of Civil War was Ben, who was Team France. He went to France.

[eugenedebs1920]

You know!? It ticks me off this perception that Donald Trump, J.D. (Jerkin Dicks)Vance, even Musk, is somehow manly. I mean, Trump and Ol Jerkin D wear more makeup than my wife! You can’t say that’s all just for television. Musk looks like if Smeagal had only kept the ring for 250 years as opposed to 500. His Prrreeeccciooouussss. None of those guys project masculinity. It’s the varsity cricket team and their weird gangly friend.

Does anyone remember when Trump tried to act like he knew how to use a shovel 🤣🤣🤣 That sh*t cracked me up!! Like ‘MFer, where have you seen someone attempt to shovel like that!?’

Then J. Dick Vance projects uncertainty in his sexual identity. It cool if your gay, but don’t fight being gay so much that you are viscous to women and marginalize those who’ve figured out who they are and are not overcompensating for it. it’s coo Jerkin D! We’ll still hate you either way.

I’m pretty sure Musk is a supervillain. But like if Dollar General had a comic book action figure series.. He’d be the main villain in that. Corneal Creepy McBillions, somethin like that.

These guys definitely got picked on in grade school and vowed to get revenge by making everyone else miserable. Thanks bullies! 😑

Speaking of. If you haven’t constantly put people down, talk sh*t on people, (I realize the irony as I’m sh*t talking these f*cks but, physically I don’t think any of them could take me, but power wise, what they could have done to me!! They’d ruin my world..) pinpoint and pick on a vulnerable individual or group, pretty much, if you get hard by making people laugh at or join in on teasing or bullying someone, that itself reeks of insecurity. It shows the flaws in yourself, you’re hiding by putting those flaws onto others before someone sees them in you. Trump is the master of that! If he accuses someone of something, he’s definitely guilty of it.

It doesn’t make you any less of a man to be kind. It’s isn’t a feminine to treat women with respect. It doesn’t make you macho to be a prick. Being racist and ostracizing immigrants doesn’t protrude masculine traits.

You know what women find sexy. Confidence. Knowing who you are, what your values are, compassion, knowing the difference between proper and improper, and sticking to those principles regardless what others would say or entice you to do. Being a good person, because that the good thing to do, proud of oneself, but knowing there’s always room to grow and learn.

I certainly don’t see what’s would constitute being attractive when you are borderline in a cult, infatuate with a 80 year old politician who bankrupted casinos, been accused by 23 women and adjudicated for sexual assault, shameless grifter, hateful, cruel, racist, bully f*ck. It’s just, sorry to say it, weird.

I have a heart and care for people, I build houses for a living. I believe in equality and the rights for EVERYONE, I can rebuild an engine. I think women are people (who knew!?) and should be in control of their own destiny, I am pro 2nd amendment and love to go shooting.

I’ve been in bar brawls, climbed mountains, go hunting, chop wood, ride atv’s, snowboard, go 4wheelin, camping, have a big beard, drink beer, and I think everyone is entitled to dignity, despite their sexual preference, race, religion, gender, what their hair looks like, whatever. Why? Because it’s basic human respect.

The last 2 times America actually won a war it was Democratic (BIG D 😉) administrations. The only 2 presidential administrations to not add to the deficit in the last, nearly 60 years, were both big D Democratic administrations. Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act, all the racist Dixiecrats jumped ship and became Republican. Democrats nominated and elected the first African American president. We have TWICE nominated a woman at the top of the ticket.

While Republicans are whining about having to wear a mask LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE DID, Democrats passed legislation to address the problem of unemployment, of vaccinations, of shipping logistics, while they were at it passed a HUGE infrastructure package, invested billions in green energy (our future) and ensured national security by manufacturing the technology materials needed to be the best in the world. Simultaneously creating a ton of well paying, respectable middle class jobs.

The right is too busy talking about Jewish space lasers, and checking out Hunter Biden’s junk, and keeping weed illegal, and worrying about bathrooms and sh*t.

How is that manly at all?! Acting like a bunch of whiny immature kids! They even whine when they win!! It’s stupid! It’s a waste of time, money and energy. Just grow up and do the job you’re elected to do!

So yea… I would say the right isn’t the vision of manhood they pretend they are. It’s overgrown children, spoiled to the core, acting out because they want it their way 😤

What shows manliness is doing your job, and doing it to the best of your ability. Being a kindhearted person and willing to help someone in need. Being true to yourself, and in turn others. Being knowledgeable yet willing to learn. Being brave, but admitting when you’re scared.

[dcdreamblog]

Can you tell us more about the Keane Act you mentioned before?

If I couldn't they would have every right to snatch my degree out of my hands and give it to someone who paid attention.

The Keene (sorry for my misspelling earlier) Act or the "Act for the Protection of Lawfulness and Order in National Security" was introduced by senator Joseph David Keene of Oklahoma in the aftermath of the HUAC (House UnAmerican Activities Committee) case against the Justice Society of America in April of 1951.

(A famous photograph of the JSA entering the House of Representatives on the first day of the trial) "The HUAC Trial" as it's known for simplicity in my live of work was called by Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy to assess the "security risk" posed by the Justice Society in the aftermath of multiple clashes between the JSA and law enforcement over unjust police actions against labor unions and civil rights groups. The trial subpoenaed Hawkman, The Flash, Green Lantern, The Atom, Dr. Midnite and the Black Canary in connection to a group called Eliminations Inc, in reality an arm of a fascist militia from the year 2666 AD. One of their agents, when captured testified that the JSA were in fact Marxist saboteurs attempting to undermine American law enforcement in the lead up to a Soviet backed revolution in the United States. While his testimony wasn't fully believed, he had been arrested in the midst of trying to launch an armed satellite into American airspace he did kick up enough dirt to justify an inquiry. Senator McCarthy, inflamed as he was by his position of power and HUAC riding on a similar power high brought proceedings to a screeching halt by questioning the loyalty of the JSA. Claiming the lack of knowledge about the JSA's identities made their loyalty suspect the team was fatefully ordered to unmask for the committee and go through a lengthy process of clearing themselves of any "communist sympathies". The JSA knew that working directly with the government would see them turned into a tool of state action, turned against labor organizations and civil rights protests rather than being able to act independently against crime, supervillains or the nationalist groups that actually took up most of their time post war (Senator Keene, shock of all shocks, would turn out to have been part of a white supremacist organization called Cyclops who had run afoul of the JSA multiple times). And so, rather than submit to the court order they vanished. In a flash of light and puff of smoke provided by Dr. Midnite's blackout bombs the JSA vanished into annals of history. While the team never officially disbanded on its own terms, it was disbanded within the text of the Keene Act which contained 6 major sections.

Section 1: The organization known as the Justice Society of America is hereby disbanded, its security clearances revoked and its individual members declared fugitives from justice

Section 2: All masked crime fighters on the membership rolls of wartime organizations like the All Star Squadron are compelled to present themselves to the HUAC for clearing and registration with the federal government

Section 3: Masked vigilantism is hereby declared a federal crime with a sentence minimum of 10 years in prison

Section 4: The assistance, harboring or supported of masked vigilantes is declared a federal crime with a minimum sentence of a year in prison and a fine of 10,000 dollars

Section 5: State and municipal authorities are compelled to arrest costumed vigilantes on sight and transfer them to federal custody for trial unless otherwise cleared and registered by federal mandate

Section 6: Funds and equipment as needed will be requisitioned in order to discover, arrest and imprison all costumed vigilantes, accomplices and corrupt authorities who subvert sections 1-5.

In layman's terms, the act declared the JSA an illegal organization, made its membership federally wanted men, demanded those heroes who were not members of the JSA present themselves to HUAC under the same threat, criminalized superheroism AND empowered police, military and FBI assets in attempting to uncover and control those superheroes who did not comply. Which was all of them. Not a SINGLE member of the All Star Squadron or ANY of its constituent organizations appeared before HUAC, no information was brought forth that lead to the arrest of any of its members, allies or accomplices and the Keene Act was never able to be invoked in a court of law as an arrestable offense. Simply because the superhero community vanished into the ether and as it had been during the war, government intelligence was unable to make ANY inroads into the community's secrets. Known associates of the JSA members were held for questioning but none provided the FBI with a crumb. The Act was on the books for decades until the appearance of Superman and the rest of the founding generation of the Justice League. Very soon after the Keene Act was almost entirely defanged by the addition of the Ingersoll Amendment which to this day provides concrete legal precedent for superheroism in the United States.

The Keene Act is remembered as one of HUAC's more prominent miscarriages of justice, and one of the large black spots on the legacy of McCarthy and Keene. Within a year of its passage, crime would spike by between 15-40% in nearly all of America's major cities (though none moreso than Gotham where the Falcone War would rage for nearly 3 years spiking violent crime by 74%, leaving hundreds dead and the city in the grip of powerful organized crime until almost the modern day). The American establishment was intimidated by the JSA as an independent organization who cared more for justice than for the rule of law and was beginning to strain against the post War conservative atmosphere now that the Nazi threat no longer took up their attention. Papers, journals, entire NOVELS have been written to simply ask the question of where we might be if the Keene Act was never passed. If the JSA had been able to smoothly pass its mantle directly to the next generation, where it was around for the Civil Rights Movement and the Stonewall Riots, where cities were never left with a power vacuum crime surged to fill. We will never know what that world would have been like. But we can always wonder.

[supercalifragipopculturevomit]

"WHO SHOULD BE THE NEXT BOND VILLAIN?"

It would be the conventional pick to turn towards an actual European for the Bond 26 baddie, not least a German — but Daniel Brühl's blockbuster star is very much on the rise, starring as the villainous Baron Zemo in Captain America: Civil War and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. (He's the guy who manufactured said in-fighting between Iron Man and Captain America.) Rumours and speculation abound that he'll lead the titular anti-hero supervillain squad in Thunderbolts, coming in 2024, around the same time we'd expect the next Bond to appear… so maybe, just maybe, it'll be the year of the Brühl.

🖊 Jack King for British GQ (July 2022)

[elbiotipo]

Thinking about superheroes as a Usamerican thing.

You see, the thing about the United States during the 20th century is that it didn't experience major unrest. I know what you're going to say, and yes, there was PLENTY of unrest. But overall, the structure of the state was never compromised. There was never a coup, there was never a civil war, there was never a foreign invasion. War? It did happen, but in distant shores. You could live (and indeed, many did live) a comfortable life for decades without any kind of major political struggle reaching you. Many classic superhero stories have them showing up somewhere before or during WWII, just when the US was reaching the zenith of its global power.

And that's why a superhero in the United States has it easy. Just fight crime, and the ocassional supervillain, or alien invaders. Truth, Justice, and the (Us)american way. After all, you are convinced that you are fighting for democracy and liberty, who wouldn't want to do that? Okay, but what about civil rights and such? Oh, no need to get into politics, just do a speech about how kindness is the way, without getting into specifics. Most famous people do (many famous people did). It's easy. The government of the US will change parties, things will change, but at the end, you have decades of prosperity ahead, without really needing to pick a side, just punch bad guys.

What if Superman had landed in Santa Rosa, Territorio Nacional de La Pampa, Argentina instead? Say, somewhere in the 30s. During the Década Infame, coming of age during Perón's rise to power. What would an Argentine Superman do? Would he support Perón against the "Revolución Libertadora" coup? What would he do when the military's Gloster Meteors fly over Plaza de Mayo and bomb civilians? What would have he done as the military couped civilian governments and repressed protests? What would have he had done as the country split over ideological lines? When the dictators kidnapped and dissapeared people from the street and stole their children? When the struggle between popular movements and the interests of the oligarchs was very, very open? Would just a bland statement would suffice?

What if, instead, he had landed in Jinan, Shandong, China, again, somewhere during the 30s. As the Japanese were invading. This isn't like the US, where they could participate in World War II from far away. The enemies are at the gates. And after that, there is a civil war between communists and nationalists. There are sides to pick. There are big changes to come, there is a new China, there is a revolution, there is a Cold War, there is an industrialization that will change the lives of millions, there is struggle, against enemies abroad, and revolutions inside.

For that matter, China has the largest population in the world during this era. Others like India aren't that far behind. As it often happens with superhero settings, soon other superheroes and villains will appear and do the whole justice league thing. Now, why are they all in the US? Even assuming the US is the core of superpowers, with all the aliens landing and mad science going on... don't you think that there would be more of them in the Third World, just out of sheer demographics. Isn't the USSR, Japan, and other countries doing also its mad science experiments? Who are their superheroes?

And what side do all those "super-people" take? Because it can't just be Truth, Justice and the American way. They don't even call themselves American... unless they were, indeed, born in Latin America. Why does Capitán América has to carry the US flag, anyways?

Where am I going with this? Don't know, just something to think. It's kinda strange that none of these super-people have REALLY to take a side beyond a vague 'good vs. evil' right? I bet at least some of them has some kind of political opinion. And the means to enact it on the world.

[samasmith23]

While Comic Drake’s video about Ms. Marvel from a few months ago did a decent job at criticizing the various way Marvel has mistreated the character of Kamala Khan in recent years (especially that gross publicity stunt of randomly killing her off in Amazing Spider-Man as a shock-death), there were a lot of arguments from his video that I personally disagreed with. The biggest of which was Drake’s criticism that Kamala lacked any memorable villains or a compelling rogues gallery, only citing the Inventor from the opening arc of G. Willow Wilson’s run. I feel that this interpretation is deeply unfair since not only does it overlook & dismiss several other antagonists throughout Kamala’s stories (such as Kamran, Chuck Worthy, Lockdown, and Doc.X) whom I feel are effectively utilized to discuss revenant social issues (elements that Drake iroincially praised the aforementioned Inventor for due to the latter’s exploitation of generational despair among millennials and gen z), but also because the Mecca arc in particular features what is in my opinion one of the most personal & relevant villains in recent Marvel Comics’ history: Discord (aka, Josh Richardson).

While Josh was initially a former acquaintance of Kamala’s and the ex-boyfriend of Zoe Zimmer before the latter broke up with him and came out as a lesbian, Josh felt increasingly alienated and ostracized among his peers despite his status as an upper class white boy. Consequently, following Josh’s wrongful arrest in the Civil War II tie-in’s by Lockdown (aka, Becky St. Jude), the latter was able to radicalize Josh into becoming a fascist supervillain under the employ of HYDRA, promising to provide him a sense of purpose & control that he mistakenly believed he lacked.

The reason why Josh’s evolution into the villainous Discord remains so memorable to me ever since the Mecca arc was first published back in 2017 is because the character feels disturbingly genuine and relevant due to his story heavily mirroring the radicalization of young cis-straight white men by far-right politicians and hate groups in the real world today. In essence, Discord’s arc as a villain is not only increasingly relevant in relation to ongoing social issues, but his status as a former friend to Kamala’s adds an additional level of personal drama that make for a more compelling narrative & conflict. A conflict that not only gradually built-up towards throughout previous arcs of Wilson’s run as Josh became increasingly socially isolated & emotionally distant from Kamala’s circle of friends, but one which ultimately culminates in one of my personal favorite scenes from the entirety of Ms. Marvel. During the climax of the Mecca arc when a weakened Ms. Marvel is cornered by Discord and the latter’s true identity as Josh is revealed, Kamala unmasks as well.

In doing so, Kamala not only communicates the humanity & suffering of marginalized individuals like herself whom Josh is hurting through HYDRA’s discriminatory policies, but also communicates her strong moral resolve that she’ll continue to oppose Josh’s fascistic beliefs & actions no matter what, refusing to give him a free pass simply because they used to be friends.

So overall, I must respectfully disagree with Comic Drake’s assertion that Kamala “lacks any memorable villains.” Especially since not only does Josh Richardson’s radicalization into the fascist supervillain Discord provide some of the most thematically rich and topical moments in all of G. Willow Wilson’s initial run on Ms. Marvel, but the Mecca arc in which Discord serves as the primary antagonist of remains one of the most well-written & compelling comic book storylines that I’ve read in recent memory!

[tzigone]

How would you have the characters *change* over time?

When working with a story where the characters age over a decade or three, it becomes important to think how the characters change over time. Especially younger characters who haven't reached adulthood yet. But even the adults. Especially since I'm starting in 1940, and the time period in question has so much change. And change that we're far enough away from now to see in hindsight - when it happens gradually, people don't always realize it as it happens.

Some of these are moral or political issues where it might be tempting for every hero to have the "right" (whatever author believes is best) opinion from the start. And some might well do so. But all of them on every issue? Unions, communism, civil rights, interstates, redlining, gender roles, juvenile delinquency, divorce, the Korean War, beatniks, protests, Vietnam, etc. And there's something to be said for heroes who get exposed to new information and change their minds or who change as the world changes. Now, not everyone has to think about big issues everyday - most are busy living their lives and fighting supervillains. But Billy's job as a journalist does demand that he do so, IMO, and I think Alan's connection to intelligence work and spycraft means he should think about espionage and external political aspects.

Then there are the societal changes that have less moral weight to them - some that are frivolous and some that seem so, but have actual import. What are opinions on whether television rots the brain, rock and roll, on the casualization of fashion for men (in the immediate post-war era), suburbanization, change in dating culture, earlier marriage ages, shift to more white collar word throughout the 1950s? I'm not really sure most would really think about any of those, but some might. Maybe they aren't putting moral weight to to men wearing sweaters instead of suits - but how many follow that trend v. keeping the old ways. Who listens to big band v doo wop v mainstream pop...especially as the last of the old really fades from popularity in the 60s? How do they feel about their daughters wearing miniskirts (I guess Mary really can't complain) and their sons growing beards and wearing their hair long in college? Or changed sexual mores(for women, anyway)? By the 70s, of course, everyone's settled into the new aesthetic, even if they don't al prefer it.

[roguestorm]

I made this post a long time ago (don’t remember if it was this blog or an earlier iteration) about Reed Richards and how the fact that I hate Reed Richards really has less to do with Reed Richards and more to do with me.

I can say “Reed is a terrible husband” or “Reed locked people up without trial during Civil War” and I can pull panels to prove my point but like ultimately. Reed being a terrible husband is one interpretation of a range of events that happen over several decades and several writers, and it’s ridiculous to act like “he’s a terrible husband” is somehow fact.

And while “Reed locked people up without trial during Civil War” is fact, almost every big two comic book character has done unforgivable things at the hand of some writer or another and which ones you extend grace to or acknowledge the real-world circumstances of is going to depend a lot on your own biases. I’m biased against Reed because he reminds me of an authority figure/archetype I don’t like, so I’m gonna hold it against him. But if you tell me that Emma Frost was literally a supervillain who manipulated people’s minds, imprisoned them, and had some fucked up racist stories, I’m going to start explaining the real-world circumstances and why you can’t judge the character based off of it, etc. Because I like Emma.

I don’t really think there’s a cure for this or a way around it, and I don’t think that there always needs to be. Me hating Reed Richards doesn’t actually hurt anyone, as long as I’m not in the inboxes of Fantastic Four fans being mean. I think the only thing we can do as fans is remember that we all have our biases and acknowledge that they’re gonna color the way we interact with certain characters.

Sometimes, biases are rooted in larger types of bias, like ableism or misogyny or racism. I used Reed as an example because I think that it illustrates that not all biases are based in larger issues; I’m definitely not being secretly misogynistic in hating the guy. So I think there are more or less harmless ones; some guys you just don’t like. But sometimes you will have a bias that’s motivated by larger structural forces and in that case, you might want to start thinking about how you could overcome or correct that bias.

[stevetonyweekly]

SteveTony Weekly - Christmas Reading List

Happy Christmas Eve, friends! I know it’s a time that can be stressful and I personally love to have a bunch of fic to read when I need an escape. So here’s what’s on my reading list this year. Enjoy!! 

tis the damn season by Areiton 

It’s a hot sweaty summer day, and Tony is naked next to you, when you realize you can never keep this. 

If the Fates Allow by BladeoftheNebula

“I saw him, Rhodey,” Tony blurted out miserably. “I saw him.”

“Oh wow, how was it?”

“Awful,” Tony moaned. “He has a beard now. A lush lumberjack beard, and muscles for days.”

Rhodey made a sympathetic noise. “Yeah man, I saw it last time I was home. It is pretty luscious.”

Tony Stark left Iron Valley, determined never to return - but it seemed fate had other ideas.

When his father passes away and leaves him the family toy factory, Tony must go home and face up to his responsibilities and the man who broke his heart.

take me home for christmas by parkrstark 

"He's gonna have to meet my dad. And--and, I can't be his boyfriend. He has to come as a friend." God forbid Howard knew he was bisexual.

"But he's okay with that. He said that was fine."

Tony scoffed. "Doesn't mean he should be. He's not my dirty secret. I don't want to hide him."

Or, the one where Tony and Steve meet each other's parents for the first time. Sarah and Joseph support them unconditionally, but Howard...he's a different story.

A Doggone Catastrophe by janonny

According to all the stereotypes, feathers and fur will fly when several different shifters have to work and live together. But the truth was that the animal instincts were easy to navigate. For Steve and Tony, dealing with their very human feelings was the hard part.

-

People liked to stereotype dogs and cats as hating each other’s scents, but Steve had never found any truth in that. Cats smelled like cats. Except for Tony. Tony smelled sweet, like the heat of a kitchen that had baking bread, like every delicious spice that warmed the tongue. His scent was best when mixed in with coffee, with oil and metal, when tinged with happiness.

America Isn't Chicken by Dr_Amuly 

After a Civil War, death, rebirth, a takeover by Osborn, brain deletion, and the fall of Asgard, Steve and Tony might just be starting to get back on solid ground with one another. Things aren't perfect, not yet, but they can be in the same room as each other without resorting to violence, and they've even managed to share a smile or two.

Seems like the perfect time, then, for Tony to try and fuck it all up with a stupid game of gay chicken.

Meanwhile, as if he didn't have enough to worry about, Tony realizes some kind of supervillainous trouble is brewing when increasingly advanced armors start popping up all over Manhattan, looking strangely reminiscent of his tech. On the other side of the world, Steve gets news that Zola is on the move in Russia, with some sort of nefarious plan at work.

Which will ruin them first? Will it be this unknown armored villain who is after Tony's tech? Or will it be Zola unleashing his mysterious plan on the world? Or will Steve and Tony prove to be their own worst enemies, destroying the tentative truce they managed to forge with their own stubbornness?

santa, won't you bring me the one i really need by quiddd 

Although Tony typically makes it a point to avoid anything that could be reasonably classified as Pepper-approved self-betterment, he will be making an exception this year in the form of a list of New Year’s Resolutions. —Well, not so much a list, exactly, it’s more like one very loud, very obvious, very critical proposition. He’s gonna write it down, put it on his calendar, say it to Jesus, and do whatever the fuck normal people do to make these things happen. In fact, even though they’re only halfway through December, it’s already emblazoned in his mind in big, flashing neon letters: STOP SLEEPING WITH EX-HUSBAND.

This is possibly an inappropriate thought to have while said ex-husband is pushing him up against his apartment door and trying to get his hand down Tony’s pants, but Tony has admittedly never excelled at being appropriate.

Frosty the Snowman by Captain_Panda

What's the meaning of Christmas? What is it, really?

Could it be the toys on Christmas day?

Or the friends we made along the way?

Are its joys discovered in a pile of snow?

Or those things that cannot be tied with a bow?

If it's not at the bottom of a glass of eggnog:

Then the meaning of Christmas must reside in a dog.

(AKA: The Christmas story where Steve Rogers adopts a dog, makes some new friends, and discovers that being a Scrooge is impossible with Tony Stark around.)

Ship to Shore by msermesth 

The Avengers beat Thanos. Everyone is safe.

(If you don’t count those five days they thought Natasha was dead.)

All that’s left is to return the stones, a feat that Tony is sure will end his new friends-with-benefits relationship with Steve.

someday by Areiton

Someday.

When Howard is gone.

When Steve doesn’t have the future of baseball hanging like a specter over him.

When the future they’ve dreamt of is the life they’re living.

“What if someday never comes? What if you don’t want it, then?”

Steve’s thumb traces over his lower lip, and presses his mouth shut. Silences his questions so gently it makes tears sting in his eyes.

[artbyblastweave]

So, something I heard pointed out: Both Marvel and DC, ESPECIALLY the latter love the idea of "legacy heroes". Superheroic identities that are passed on from one person to another, like the many different Robins, Flashes, Spider-Men, ETC. But I think there's a notable lack of superVILLAIN legacies. Am I just looking in the wrong places or is that a real trend and, if so, why, do you think?

Legacy Villains are definitely a thing, albeit to a lesser degree than Legacy Heroes.. At DC there have been at least three Clayfaces and two Captain Boomerangs. At Marvel there have been at least two Beetles, two Electros, at least one would-be successor to Doctor Octopus in the form of Lady Octopus, a slew of goblins (hob or otherwise) Bullseye and Lady Bullseye, three Razor Fists, multiple Titanium men. Actually, according to TvTropes almost every Spider-Man villain you'd recognize has gotten an understudy at least once. This isn't exhaustive by any means but I'm not transcribing everyone I dug up on the TVtropes page for Legacy Character when I can just link the fucking thing. So it's pretty common, but it doesn't hit the same in the popular consciousness- you didn't have it as part of your internal map of the dynamic- because these villains don't headline. At least, they don't do this with the ones who headline. There isn't some critical mass of people who are superfans enough of Max Dillon or Mac Gargan for it to be parade-worthy when they swap them out for some new guy. When they killed Captain America during Civil War, that got in the news. The real life, dead-tree newspaper ran articles about that, because apparently nobody told them how death works in comic books. But do you think any newspaper ran an article when they killed Hobgoblin? I don't even know if they actually killed Hobgoblin or not, I'm just assuming that they must have killed at least one because TvTropes lists about. five or six hobgoblins

[mrwatermelaun]

Spider-Man I - Peter "Pete" Parker (AMAZING! Marvel AU)

Supersuit from Insomniac's Spider-Man 2 (modded); character art from Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 3 #2 (Marco Checchetto & Matthew Wilson)

"All these years I thought it was power that brought responsibility. It's not. I was wrong. It's responsibility that brings power. It's knowing what needs to be done that brings strength. And courage."

Created By - Stan Lee & Steve Ditko

First Appearance - Amazing Fantasy #15 (Aug. 1962)

Origin - Human mutated by radioactive spider bite (became active as Spider-Man in 2001)

Aliases - Pete, Tiger, The Amazing Spider-Man, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Spidey, Wallcrawler, Web-Head, Webslinger

Identity - Public (used to be secret, was revealed by himself to the world in 2012 during the Superhero Civil War)

Status - TECHNICALLY retired, but he doesn't let that stop him

Bio

Peter Parker used to be your average shy teenager. Born to S.H.I.E.L.D agents Richard and Mary Parker, Peter was taken in by Uncle Ben (his dad's brother) and Aunt May after his parents died in a plane crash when he was 8 years old. Growing up bullied in school but immensely loved at home, Peter developed a disillusioned attitude towards most of the world beyond his family and his best friend Mary Jane Watson.

As a huge science lover, Peter's life changed when he attended a local science exhibition about radiology and genetics hosted by Oscorp Industries. During the experiment, a genetically modified spider got irradiated accidentally and bit Peter, granting him incredible powers. After some time getting used to his new abilities, Peter decided to become a masked performer/wrestler under the name "Spider-Man" to help support his family, gaining media popularity while keeping his identity secret.

However, one day while preparing for a show Peter witnesses a burglar backstage stealing from the establishment. Deciding it was not his problem, Peter did nothing and let the burglar run right past him and escape while he performed and did his Spider-Man show for the night. A decision that would haunt Peter for the rest of his life. The rest of the night is a blur.

Coming home late to police cars around his house.

Seeing his uncle's dead body.

Leaping and running through the roofs.

Punching over and over and over and over.

By the time Peter got ahold of himself, the killer was beaten almost to death. It was at that moment Peter realized the twisted irony fate had thrown upon him: his uncle Ben's killer was the same burglar he could have stopped, but he chose to do nothing. In Peter's mind, he might as well have pulled the trigger himself. After leaving the burglar tied up for the police, he vowed to use his powers to help people as penance for his failure and to never again refuse to help whenever he could: with great power, there must also come great responsibility.

After more than two decades of swinging around New York and punching supervillains with the best of 'em, Peter Parker has settled into a type of life he never thought he could have: stable (mostly). Running a research foundation with his best friend and teaching has done as much for Peter's desire to help the world as being Spider-Man, and he has found a new responsibility in his wife and children. Currently, he's officially retired from the superhero game, leaving the Spider-Man mantle to his protegee and successor Miles Morales. This of course doesn't stop him from helping the citizens of New York EVERY TIME he has the opportunity, as he literally cannot stop himself from doing so.

A compassionate, extremely heroic and courageous man (and SUPER funny, don't forget the funny part), Peter is seen as a pillar of the superhero community and a mentor to a new generation of heroes (including his own daughter). He was one of the first superheroes of the 21st century, and has fought with and/or against almost every superhero you can think of at least once.

Despite a rough start to their relationship, mostly due to Peter's abrasive personality during his early days as Spider-Man, Peter has found a second family in the Fantastic Five with Johnny Storm as his closest friend in the superhero community alongside Matthew Murdock (the Human Torch and Daredevil respectively).

Personal Information

Full Name: Peter "Pete" Benjamin Parker (Fitzpatrick)

Living Status: Alive

Place of Birth: Queens, New York City, New York

Place of Residence: Queens, New York City, New York

Education: High school (Midtown High), bachelor degree in Biophysics and PhD in Chemical Engineering (Empire State University)

Occupation: CEO of the Emily-May Research Foundation, university professor at Empire State University, guest science teacher at Avenger's Academy and the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning

Languages: English, American Sign Language, Italian, Mandarin, Spanish, Symkarian

Gender: Cis

Sexuality: Straight

Physical Characteristics

Gender: Male

Age: 39 (born October 14th, 1986)

Height: 5'10'' (1.78m)

Weight: 174.16 lbs (79 kg)

Eyes: Hazel

Hair: Brown

Skin: Fair

Ethnicity: American/Caucasian on his father's side, English on his mother's side

Race: Human mutate

Other: Spider bite scar (right hand), bionic right leg (below the knee)

Family

Parents

Richard Parker: biological father, deceased

Mary Parker: biological mother, deceased

Maybelle "May" Parker: aunt and adopted mother, deceased

Benjamin "Ben" Parker: uncle and adopted father, deceased

Siblings

Benjamin "Ben" Reilly: clone of Peter and adopted brother, upbeat and exuberant, deceased

Kaine Parker: clone of Peter and adopted brother, cynical and grumpy

Teresa "Tess "Parker: female clone of Peter and adopted sister, very witty, very trans and very lesbian

Significant Others

Betty Brant: ex-girlfriend, dated briefly and still friends

Gwendolyne "Gwen" Stacy: ex-girlfriend, first serious relationship, super deceased

Felicia Hardy: ex-girlfriend (and reformed villain Black Cat), dated for a decent while, one of Peter's closest friends

Mary Jane "MJ" Watson-Parker: wife, love of his life and soulmate

Children

Unborn daughter: sadly died from complications during childbirth

Anna-May "Mayday" Parker: daughter, takes after Peter, also has spider powers

Richard "Benjy" Parker: son, takes after MJ, already as smart as his dad, hard of hearing

Other Relatives

Norman "Normie" Lyman: the son of Peter's best friend Norman Lyman (formerly Osborn) and Peter's godson

Reilly Tyne: the son of Ben Reilly and Peter's nephew, currently under the care of Kaine Parker

Sandwich: the family dog!

Affiliations

Close hero allies: Pretty much the entire superhero community respects him a lot. While a good amount find Peter annoying, its well known that Spider-Man goes above and beyond every time he puts on the suit and will ALWAYS have your back in a fight. More specifically: Agent Anti-Venom, Black Cat, Daredevil, Scarlet Spider, Silk, Silver Sable, Spider-Man III (Miles Morales) and the Fantastic Five are his closest allies.

Super teams: Avengers (reserve member, used to be full member), Fantastic Five (honorary member, a privilege granted to a very select few)

Powers and Abilities

Enhanced strength, dexterity and agility (can regularly lift around 25 tons, more with exertion)

Spider sense enhances his agility, speed and reaction time; also warns him of danger (although not the direction of it)

Can cling to any surface and climb/run up walls

Incredibly smart and a scientist/inventor, built his web-shooters at 15 and has improved his super suit a lot over the years (spider-tracers, spider arms, web wings)

Pretty good photographer

Really good at jokes. Like, REALLY good

OOU Commentary

MY BEAUTIFUL BOY! Spidey holds a very special place in my nerdy heart and will always be my favorite superhero. He's also the whole reason I started this project, since being a Spider-Man fan during the last 2 decades has got to be one of the most depressive experiences in comics history. There was a lot of stuff that could be fixed/improved for Spidey and I won't go over every single one here, but the biggest one was definitely keeping his marriage to MJ. I HATE One More Day as much as any other fan of the webslinger. While the whole Mephisto confrontation still happened... it just went about very differently and ended with Peter verbally flipping off Mr. Devil Himself.

Even though Peter is usually seen today as this relatable struggling teenage hero with money issues who can't balance his life, he was only that for a very short period of his publication history. Hell, he graduated high school in issue #28 of Amazing Spider-Man (in 1963!). He is relatable yes, but in the sense that his narrative was guided so much by change. If you read his comics before One More Day, you can literally follow his journey from a high school kid with anger issues who feels like retiring as Spider-Man every 3 issues to a married man and an implacable hero that has gone through SO MUCH and yet came out stronger for it. Even while being a superhero, he deals with the hardships of life and change just like we do. That, to me, is Spider-Man at it's best.

To that end, Peter is a husband and a father as well as a scientist. With time and plenty of therapy, he realized he can do as much good if not more for the world as Peter Parker than he does as Spider-Man. With Miles as his successor he has fully immersed himself into making the world a better place through the Emily-May Foundation, and he has also been training his daughter in the use of her powers and super heroics with the help of Daredevil (she's not allowed to be a full-on superhero until she's 18 however, not that it stops her from doing so discreetly).

Updates

4/22/2025 - Finally landed on the outcome of the Superhero Civil War for this AU, updated information accordingly.

5/20/2025 - Finalized the lineup of the Fantastic Four, now the Fantastic Five, updated group name accordingly.

[tobiasdrake]

Daredevil: Born Again 01x06 - Excessive Force

And now for this week's other episode, which actually pertains to the stuff that's been going on this season. And... it's pretty bad. After episodes two through four featured a well-paced and interesting exploration of the show's central ideas and concepts, the introduction of a supervillain into the mix mainly just serves to speedrun the story into its third act.

This episode is one of the worst-written pieces of media out of any of the Disney Plus streaming shows.

Much like the bank robbery of last episode, Muse isn't really a character so much as he is a throw-in event to facilitate the events of the story. In this case, to rush it along down the rails it needs to go on. He's been painting murals throughout the city in human blood from over sixty victims, which Matt and Fisk both learn about in this episode.

Fisk finds out from his sanitation guys when they try to clean the murals, and he has a secret meeting where he tells everyone to keep this hush-hush.

Fisk swears Gallo to secrecy while he comes up with a plan to counter the serial killer. We'll get into his plan a bit later but for right now, what's important is that Fisk is telling Gallo to tell no one about it.

So then Gallo tells all the cops and then the cops start calling all their buddies to chat about the serial killer case they're working.

Matt's police informant Cherry then hears about it because all the cops are chatting up a storm. He drops by Matt's office to let him know about the serial killer that's out there murdering up a storm. Why does he tell Matt this?

He brings the serial killer to Matt's attention... so he can tell Matt to not be Daredevil about it.

Um.

Matt hasn't been Daredevil in over a year. What the fuck am I watching? Cherry has top-secret police lore of the highest confidentiality and he promptly shares it with Matt so he can ask Matt to not get involved in this thing Matt didn't know about until Cherry brought it up.

Jesus Christ.

But that's okay because I guess Gallo told Muse about the secret meeting too. He suddenly changes behavior patterns and leaves the bodies of his victims front-and-center for his next piece.

HE IS!?!?

Why would he do that? He's never done that before, and Fisk explicitly said not to make a big public spectacle out of it. The cops are supposed to be waiting for Fisk on this. Why is Muse suddenly revealing himself when he has no rightful way of knowing he's even being chased?

He's famous enough that these two girls walk up to him on the street like "Oh shit, you're that graffiti artist Muse!"

He may only be known by the tag he leaves on his art or whatever. But he's obviously not trying to be caught, or else he'd have been leaving bodies at his works this whole time. Why change up his pattern of behavior now, right after a secret meeting he had no way of hearing about?

Is he secretly Gallo or something?

Meanwhile, Fisk has to go to a fundraiser where he has tense arguments with rich people, including one familiar face.

We get an early glimpse of this episode's guest-star in a BB Report bit that kicks off the episode.

There's a vigilante out there who's some kinda swordsman.

Yep, it's that swordsman.

Last episode, we had Kamala's dad. This episode, it's Kate Bishop's. Jack Duquesne is here to tell Fisk that his anti-vigilante policy is bad and he should reconsider.

And as they have this conversation, I realize that we're six episodes into the show and absolutely nothing has come of the anti-vigilante thing.

The show up to this point doesn't have any superheroes to populate Fisk's war against superheroes. Daredevil's retired and White Tiger was out-of-costume during his altercation with the police. We keep hearing about Fisk's crusade against vigilantes but that plot point just... hasn't existed outside of rhetoric.

If the entire Civil War was just Ross getting into fisticuffs with Sharon Carter, it would still be more of a super-spectacle than Kingpin's war against the vigilantes has been thus far.

BUT

That's where Muse comes in. In response to Muse's serial killings, Kingpin assembles all of the crooked cops in Gotham for his anti-vigilante task force!

...which he formed...

...to combat a serial killer.

Muse. Is. Not. A vigilante? That's not. What that word means.

The point of the task force is that they're a bunch of bad cops who are above the law and answer only to Fisk.

Explicitly bad cops. They point this out in the dumbest scene of the episode.

Gallo flips through Fisk's selection of officers and literally says, with words from his mouth, "This is every bad apple in the barrel." In the history of copaganda, this may be the stupidest line that has ever been written.

Not only does this scene firmly establish that there is a delineation between the Bad Cops and the Good Cops, but also that the Bad Cops are all clearly identifiable and known to be Bad Cops by both mayor and commissioner.

Fisk has recruited every corrupt cop in the NYPD. Every single one. Every cop on his task force is crooked, and any cop not selected for his task force is not crooked. If we could just throw his task force off a cliff or something, then the NYPD would be clean and police misconduct would be over.

Hey, uh. Hey, Gallo? I have a question for you. If the problem with policing is just that there's some iindividual Bad Apples, and you know who each and every Bad Apple is?

Why are they still cops!?

We're supposed to think this guy is a Good Cop who's only here under duress because Fisk twisted his arm into going along with his cruel machinations. But apparently he's memorized which of his officers to go to if he needs someone shaken down or quietly disappeared.

In any case, Fisk forms his anti-vigilante task force to go after a serial killer for some reason. He's giving all the Bad Apples special powers and privileges beyond those already granted to police.

I love that they have Gallo scoff at the idea that the Bad Apple Strike Force will get to work overtime.

This is so fucking weird. Wouldn't it have made more sense to have formed the Anti-Vigilante Task Force right after Fisk took office, had them ongoing as a plot point throughout the story, and then used Muse as an excuse for Fisk to start expanding their scope?

This is so stupid. But we aren't done yet. Remember Angela?

Hector was investigating Muse before he died, which means it probably wasn't the Punisher Cops who killed him after all. Unless Muse is a Punisher Cop, which doesn't seem unlikely given that one of his street murals has a Punisher skull with the word "TRIGGERED" written across it.

As a plot point, I do like the idea of a special police task force formed to investigate crimes that they themselves are committing. They're clearly going for a CRASH Unit vibe; The same thing that The Shield was based on. But I still think the way this episode abruptly goes "ANTI-VIGILANTE TASK FORCE TO HUNT THIS NOT-VIGILANTE" is dumb.

In any case, Angela goes to Matt and asks her to... do something. It's not super clear what she expects Hector's attorney-at-law to do about mysterious serial murders and she storms out rather than clarifying that point.

And then Muse gets her.

Where did she go after leaving? How did Muse get her? Who knows. He just. The episode's almost over so he has her now.

Is she faking being unconscious so she can surprise him? Did she hunt him down to turn the tables on him? Does she have her dad's mystical amulet that will let her do something? No, no, nothing interesting like that. He just. He has her. She's his next victim. I guess he found her in the street and brought her down.

Fortunately, Matt gets a call from her mom in his apartment and finally puts on his Daredevil gear.

..and then uses his psychic powers to teleport straight to Muse's secret base.

How did he find this place? Fuck you, that's how. Maybe he followed the smell of acrylics. The show does not care to explain how he's able to beeline it from his apartment right down into Muse's hidden studio and save the day.

Holy shit, the writing for the show took an absolute nosedive with this episode. You can feel the author's hands roughly shoving pieces into the places they need to be in for the third act with little regard to making them make sense within the narrative. There's been questionable choices before but episodes five and six are the first time the show's ever felt like a zero effort hackjob. Like they just threw a pile of tropes into a script and called it a day.