Christian: Let’s assume DC’s movie efforts and Justice League series continues to hit snag after snag (likely), and by some cosmic twisting of events it all gets dropped in your lap. You’re given the mandate to reboot their efforts marvel style, but with one catch. Their needs to be a villain behind all of the plots in the various movies, but not one of the biggies everyone knows (no Lex Luthor or Brainiac for you). You’re mandated to take some low-level DC villain, and realistically ramp him up to being a threat for the big team. Who is your guy in that scenario?
I already cast my vote for Starro last week. If I need a second choice: Per Degaton. (Who, incidentally, was someone I always wanted to go up against the Legion of Super-Heroes, but never mind that.) Degaton easily translates to movies because he’s just a normal dude who happens to be a time-traveling tyrant, which gives you a lot of license to do awesome stuff and gives him an excuse to be anywhere doing anything, because of causality requiring him to be there at that point.
Also, the costume redesign he got in Johns’ JSA is really cool and would translate to real-life costuming very well.
Andrew Miller: If you could make one improvement to transit in Toronto, what would it be?
A downtown relief subway line in the east. The greatest operational stress point for the TTC is its heavy use along the Yonge line – another north-south line intersecting with the Sheppard line, Bloor/Danforth line and terminating at, say, Union would vastly expand TTC subwya coverage with only a few new stations and make the Yonge line far more rideable.
After that, in order: light rail transit along Finch, extending the Sheppard line to Downsview, light rail along Eglinton.
Pantsless Pete: Captain Marvel was a better character and comic than Superman and if not for his destruction via lawsuit his dominant market postion would have meant we ended with better comics today: Discuss.
I like Captain Marvel (not “Shazam,” – Jeebus, DC, what the hell is wrong with you). But a better character than Superman? The dude is a G-rated Superman clone, no ifs ands or buts about it; yes, he makes the child’s power fantasy more explicit, I suppose, and certainly Superman does not have a talking tiger buddy (memo to DC: have Superman be friends with a talking animal of some kind. Or, alternately, Rex the Wonder Dog), but this is all icing on the cake rather than the actual cake, and Superman is the real deal. Really, this isn’t even a contest.
Rbx5: Which, if any, of the upcoming post-AvX Marvel books/creative teams are you anticipating?
I honestly don’t even bother with previews any more, really. I don’t have the energy, so everything comes as a large surprise unless it is too gigantic to avoid the hype (like AvX) or somebody mentions it to me in email or sends me a link to a ComicsAlliance article (like Hawkeye – which was fine, but Abhay Khosla nailed it when he pointed out the giant stylistic debt owed to Batman: Year One on that comic).
Really, it makes comics a little more enjoyable: everything is a pleasant surprise, because these days I expect things to be mediocre rather than good.
PaulW: Hogan’s Heroes but played straight.
The BBC already did this thirty-five years ago with Colditz. It’s certainly aged a fair amount, but it’s not bad.
Jack Pumpkinhead: How do you feel about Final Fantasy games? Ever played any, favorite game, etc?
I played FF Tactics, and then 7 through, and half of 8, and then I more or less quit. I’m mostly a PC gamer, and the Final Fantasy games are console games, and once I stopped consoling (which was about the time my original Playstation started gathering dust) Final Fantasy and I walked our separate paths, especially after fans of the series started getting weird about whatsername in 7. FFT is still one of my favorite games of all time, though, and I’d love to see/know about a decent PC port/homage of that game.
Also, there were not enough hats in it. Good games have hats.
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memo to DC: have Superman be friends with a talking animal of some kind. Or, alternately, Rex the Wonder Dog
Ahem. Superman is friends with Krypto the Super Dog. Who is, I’m afraid to say, at least slightly “more awesome” than Rex the Wonder Dog.[*]
[*] “More awesome” measurements taken by the very scientific method of asking my five year old to rate the super-pets on their awesomeness. Krypto is more awesome than Rex the Wonder Dog, but Krypto loses to Ace the Bat Hound who is the “most awesome” because he’s friends with Batman. Yet somehow Bat Cow is slightly less awesome than Krypto. The Space Canine Patrol Agents all end up with honorable mentions.
DC’s doing plenty of fun stuff for kids these days, just not in the actual comics. Anyone who has kids should check out the Super Pets books because they are awesome.
Ah, Per Degaton. I have more fondness for him than I should, purely due to All-Star Squadron.
I may have to use him in my Legion 4K game I’m running..
Regarding Final Fantasy Tactics, there’s an iOS port available for the iPhone and iPad (which are separate apps, if I understand correctly). I believe it’s the “War of the Lions” version Squeenix made for the PSP, but that makes it essentially the same game with a few added bits and a better translation.
RE: post AvX Marvel – Mark Waid’s Hulk sounds like something pretty awesome.
Hadn’t thought about it, but yeah, Hawkeye does have a fair bit stylistically in common with Batman: Year One. Which is fine by me because I love that story, it’s one of Frank Miller’s finest from his “pre-crazy” period.
Captain Marvel is cool, it’s a pity that his name is going to be even harder to use now since Marvel finally “promoted” Carol Danvers so Billy is unlikely to be able to use it again. That said I don’t understand why they couldn’t have just gone with Captain Thunder for his new name, it makes sense in universe (since Billy is transformed by lightning he would always seem to appear in a thunderclap) and it has a history, both from Flashpoint and I think a old alt-universe version. It certainly sounds much better than Shazam as a superhero name. I’d still like to know what you think would have happened to the Marvel Family had they not been sunk by a lawsuit back in the day.
Since Final Fantasy’s been brought up, I’d like to plug FF6 as the best of the bunch. Yes, graphically it’s pretty dated, but it’s the closest thing to a truly ensemble cast that you can find a JRPG.
Re: the Justice League reboot with a Big Bad who can’t be the regular Big Bads (Luthor, Darkseid, Joker)? Leaving out Starro who’s pretty much Puppet Masters, this could leave the likes of Vandal Savage – who’s become a major bad guy in the animated stories, so people will recognize him – or the Ultra-Humanite (pre-albino ape) if you want to get an obscure but deadly arch-nemesis (and have the storyarc between the origin movies for Flash, Wonder Woman and Black Canary (?) be about how the Ultra-Humanite is trying to find a suitable host for his brain).
I’d be tempted to go with the mads: T. O. Morrow and Amos Fortune, and have everything that happens in the pre-JL movies part of a chess-match between the two of them.
Pantsless Pete: Captain Marvel was a better character and comic than Superman and if not for his destruction via lawsuit his dominant market postion would have meant we ended with better comics today: Discuss.
Does Pantsless Pete actually believe this or is he just trying to come up with a really forced conversation starter? This is like saying Kite-Man would have been a top-tier Batman villain if he wasn’t stuck with all the things that made him lame.
Captain Marvel is a legal minefield, which is exactly why he takes a backseat in the comics pantheon. He’s too similar to Superman to exist independently of DC, and his name references DC’s biggest competitor, so they can’t even use his name on the cover of the book. Meanwhile, Marvel can publish their own version of Captain Marvel, which completely dilutes the brand.
It’d be like if ABC made a primetime cartoon that looks way too much like “The Simpsons” and they named it “Johnny CBS” It doesn’t matter how good the show might be, it’s very identity makes it impractical to promote.
Nothing against Captain Marvel, but he was doomed to obscurity from day one. Siegel and Schuster created Superman as a badass alternative to Tarzan. Beck and Parker just recolored Superman and gave him like fifty sidekicks. Sure, he outsold Superman, but so did X-Force for a while, and I don’t see anyone demanding their return to prominence.
Weird thing of DC’s captain Marvel was that as a kid, I thought he was called “Shazam!” not Capt. Marvel. And honestly, I liked it that way. But hey a 6-9 year old thinks differently in the 70’s.
I have long thought that “Per” was short for “Perseus.” Which would explain why Degaton hates everyone.
MGK- Given your response to question 1… Superman needs to hang out more with Comet the Superhorse?
After reading through a chunk of it recently, in all seriousness yes. Early Captain Marvel was a vastly better comic than Superman was. It was better drawn and written. It was clever and funny and innovative. It even actually dodged the middleman in terms of the audience identification character, allowing for a supporting cast that was an actual supporting cast.
But what I actually find interesting is that it actually was the comic we’ve idealised Silver Age Superman as being in terms of big, cool vibrant ideas.
So for the most part, yeah.
I can’t fault Pete for enjoying a comic which features a tiny electric chair.
Mike, Cap was hardly “doomed to obscurity.” Fawcett didn’t lose the lawsuit after all, they simply decided that with super-hero comics going into the downswing, it wasn’t worth it to keep fighting. And if he’d kept going, Marvel could hardly have put out its own Captain Marvel.
That being said, I doubt he’d have kept going on into the Silver Age, but that’s because most characters didn’t keep going, not because of any inherent flaw.
Good games have hats? Sounds like somebody needs to be playing Team Fortress: Hat Simulator 2000. Shoot mans! Wear hats! Shoot mans in hats while also, yourself, wearing hats!
Golden Age Captain Marvel is vastly superior to Superman, both in concept an execution. The Captain is not and never was a Superman clone. That’s like saying George Clooney and Tom Waits are exactly the same because they’ve both acted in movies. Captain Marvel’s orgin is based in magic, not science; his alter ego is a kid, not a man; his arch-nemesis, while being a bald mad scientist, is not Luthor-like at all (and a case could be made that his REAL arch-nemesis is actually a near-sighted talking worm with a radio around his neck and that is BALLER.)
Whatever. DC won the lawsuit (or at least made Fawcett give up, rather than waste resources fighting it) and so DC “wins” again. But it seems that everytime DC “wins”, the fans (and the industry) lose.
I’m honestly surprised that anyone could give a shit about DC anymore. Not just for their consistent history of either double-dealing and chicanery, or their frankly bizarre editorial decisions or their naked pursuit of short-term gain. It’s the sheer incompetance that galls me. “Hey, let’s make a shitty Green Lantern movie!” “Hey! Let’s make a shitty Superman movie!” “Hey! Let’s make a series of shitty Batman movies, in which he’s James Bond in a leather dress! And he doesn’t so much fight crime as whine about whether or not he wants to be Batman!” “Hey! Let’s make an incredibly shitty Jonah Hex movie!” “Let’s get Shaquille O’Neal to play a superhero!” I could do this all day.
I contend that DC’s editorial policies led directly to the Aurora shootings. They have glorified a homicidal maniac, making him “cool” and “interesting”, so much so that they encouraged a mentally disturbed man to imitate him. They put plugs for DC products into obituaries of industry legends. They don’t care about you, the fan, AT ALL. They’re more cynical and manipulative of the fan-base than the Maple Leafs (if thhat’s even possible).
Fuck DC. If I were an ambulance chasing lawyer, I’d start a class-action suit and sue them out of existence. It would serve them right, after all they’ve done.
Transit – Fuck the east end. The west is the best. Also, an Eglinton line HAS to be underground. From Yonge to … oh, let’s say Keele, the density is such that it won’t even be near Eglinton if it’s above ground.
There’s something damned cool about Per Degaton, isn’t there? Is it the jodphurs? The sorta-tragic “eternally doomed to forget his near-triumphs” story lines? I dunno.
Back in the old DCU, I had a buncha fanfics about a young Per Deg tangling with a group of Hypertime Monitors (Booster Gold, Harbinger, Chunk, Duela “Wild Card” Dent (armed with an H-Dial), and the Speedy of Earth-2). As I recall, it would eventually be revealed that Per Degaton was actually the creator of the infamous Monarch armor.
Okay, so I’m a continuity dweeb. Sue me.
Mike
So is Per Degaton the leader of the Empire of D?
I don’t think it’s realistic to say that Captain Marvel wasn’t a rip-off of Superman. He’s a rip-off in the way that a lot of superheroes were back in the day, he did had a good deal of original elements though that I think warrant more respect than just being labelled a Superman rip-off. If you want a rip-off of something look at what eventually happened to characters like Sandman and the Crimson Avenger as they were redesigned to be more like Batman. Anyway, I don’t think it takes away from the character, he is in fact quite awesome, I wish he got more respect. And Mister Mind is totally awesome.
Is Evil Midnight Lurker right? Because Per Degaton would totally make sense as the leader of the Empire of D.
You know, I have no idea why I was asking “Hogans Heroes but played straight.” Maybe I was referring to someone else’s suggestions on a thread? Can I get a referral to the thread source?
Makes me wonder what might have become of Captain Marvel if he had continued his adventures into the silver age and beyond, developing the way Superman and Batman developed.
Sure, he would have turned into the thug he currently seems to be, but he’d probably have got over that in the ’90’s, only to be reimagined by Grant Morrison into something glorious.
He was indeed.
@Marionette: Alan Moore did something much along those lines with the British Captain Marvel knock-off character MArvelman (who wound up being renamed Miracleman because Marvel comics Were Not Amused). They’re difficult to find because the rights to the characters got tangled up in a number of different lawsuits for years, but they’re worth tracking down, if you can get them.
The Key is an interesting Justice League villain, and I’d like to see how he translates to live action. Of course the idea of a bad guy isolating the League in their own custom-built fantasy worlds might make more sense in the sequel. Assuming, of course…
@MGK: Thanks for the confirmation! I figured there were only two people in the DCU who go around under flags with just a D on them, and if it wasn’t Darkseid… 🙂
@Prodigal
Miraclman was awesome, I had to torrent it because I was never going to get my hands on it otherwise, but it’s really more of a deconstruction than a continuation of Captain Marvel’s story.
Justice League movie with mid-tier villains? Go ahead and adapt Morrison’s Tomorrow Woman storyline.
Professor Ivo and T.O. Morrow (after embezzling or “creating” large sums of money through judicious bank hacking), pay a bunch of B to C-grade villains to steal various power sources/materials/etc. The various members of the League foil most of the efforts, but the easily-defeated villains turn out to be show-off patsies (Neutron, Heatwave, Giganta, White Knight, guys who can’t help but to be noticed.) The real thieves, as in the Shadow Thief, Catwoman, Mirror Master, Doctor Light, etc/ (people who can literally get in and out of places before anyone notices), were working behind the scenes to procure the specific devices needed to create A.M.A.Z.O. The League fights A.M.A.Z.O., but it takes the sudden appearance of a new superhero to win the day (as A.M.A.Z.O. is doing it’s usual schtick of copying the League’s powers). The new hero? Tomorrow Woman, created from the technologies collected after the first set of villains were captured (and with the first set of thefts foiled, A-level villains such as Prometheus, Hank Henshaw, Black Manta, Riddler, etc., were able to all but walk into those places and obtain their targets with not even a peep…)