I can't believe I was right!
Bwahahahaha!
I SO nailed it. Kind of.
What am I talking about? Well I wouldn't want to give away a big spoilery thing so I won't say.
Nobody could be more surprised than me that I got it. Well, I guess some people could be. Especially those who thought "no way" when they saw what I had written before.
I am now going to be insufferably smug for the rest of the day.
**Spoiler Warning!** There are spoilers in the comments on this post. Do not read further if you don't want to know about what happened in some Infinite Crisis related comics this week.
I SO nailed it. Kind of.
What am I talking about? Well I wouldn't want to give away a big spoilery thing so I won't say.
Nobody could be more surprised than me that I got it. Well, I guess some people could be. Especially those who thought "no way" when they saw what I had written before.
I am now going to be insufferably smug for the rest of the day.
**Spoiler Warning!** There are spoilers in the comments on this post. Do not read further if you don't want to know about what happened in some Infinite Crisis related comics this week.
posted by Marionette at 10/13/2005 09:51:00 AM
14 Comments:
This is about Villains United, I take it?
I'll say this: retcon-by-nostalgia is a bad way to run a comics universe. It just guarantees that ten-to-twenty years from now, writers nostalgic for "smart Luthor" and "dark and gritty Batman" will wipe away all the retro-Silver Age stuff you've just done.
I so thought of you when I heard about this development Marionette. Good call.
Luthor was always supposed to be smart. He was building transdimensional portals out of household objects back in the fifties; it's only post-Crisis that he wised up and profited from his inventions so he could hire other people to do the dirty work. The only person who's ever written him as an idiot is Jephy.
And the stupid battlesuit dates from the mid-seventies. It's not silver age, it's bronze age.
I personally still have a major soft spot for the sympathetic Luthor from the Elliott Maggin novels and comics...particularly the idea that he might have been the next Einstein if Kal-El hadn't meddled with his karma. This dovetails with the Silver Age Luthor who once threw a fair fight with Superman so that Supes would be able to help the planet where Luthor was a hero. For me, that will always be the ur-Luthor, not the Kingpin.
I really liked the battlesuit when it was originally introduced in the pre-Crisis stories. Then again, that's largely because of the story that led up to it. (I hope no one is going to be angry that I'm spoiling a 20-year-old story.)
You see, Luthor had decided he'd gotten tired of fighting Superman and constantly being beaten. So he decided to forget about Superman, take off to that one planet where he was a hero (and it was called Lexor. Gotta love the Silver Age) where he had a wife and child and just relax. But he just can't stop thinking about Superman. So when Superman happens to show up to save the planet from a natural disaster and Luthor runs across some ancient alien technology of the sort that's conveniently lying around in a lot of the DCU, Luthor decides to protect Lexor from the obvious threat posed by his old enemy. So they fight and the upshot is that Luthor ends up accidentally destroying his own adopted home planet due to his desire for vengeance. Naturally, he blames Superman for this, and from now on will strive even harder to take revenge on him.
This was a great story and a heck of a lot more complex and meaty than most of the huge crop of modern stories dedicated to analyzing the relationship between the hero and their archenemy. (Practically every Green Goblin story from the past 10 years, I'm looking at you.) It was in Action Comics #544 (the 45th anniversary issue), written by Cary Bates and drawn by Curt Swan, which I bought as a back issue when I was 12 or so. It's one of my favorite Superman stories, as is the other one in that issue, written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by Gil Kane, where Brainiac upgrades himself and tries to kill God!
(Also, as far as Green Goblin stories, go, I'll make an exception for the JM DeMatteis and Sal Buscema stories about Harry Osborn, especially his death in #200.)
I am from Germany.
What the =/%$%&/m happened?
I never read that story, but Cary Bates really wrote some great stuff back in those days. Not only on Superman, but on the Flash and, later, Captain Atom. Very underappreciated both then and today, IMO.
"(Also, as far as Green Goblin stories, go, I'll make an exception for the JM DeMatteis and Sal Buscema stories about Harry Osborn, especially his death in #200.)"
Dang. I was gonna bring that up to throw your "overall banality of modern Goblin stories" notion, but you beat me to the punch.
- R.
I'll admit, I was pretty disappointed, if we're talking about Villains United.
It had been leading this way for so long, and it struck me as one of those "clever" plot twists where you're supposed to marvel at the cleverness, and it really ain't all that clever.
However, I had resigned myself to the fact beforehand, so I can't say it irked me much.
"And the stupid battlesuit dates from the mid-seventies. It's not silver age, it's bronze age."
Maybe. But the current redesign was a George Perez join, designed circa '83, givertake a year or two.
Rab - Good call on Elliot S's take on Luthor. Made a complex and effective villain out of the stereotypical mad scientist. (Although I guess we could trace the roots of this back to the first few Luthor-as-hero Lexxor stories.)
Oh yeah. Was "Villains United" worth buying? I like supervillain books in general, even Identity Disc which everyone else in the world hated, but I'm not horribly keen on recent work by the creative team.
And GIGANTIC MEGA CROSSOVERS give me the sniffles.
Note to Self: Invest in Kleenex.
Battlesuit Luthor.
Because the only decent action figures of Luthor are in battle suits.
I personally want DC Direct to take that idea to heart and come out with a action figure of Luthor in his original "battlesuit" AKA a 60 foot tall robot!
I decided that it had to be Luthor after issue 3 or 4, but my assumption at the time was that he formed the Six in order to weed out anybody in his grand conspiracy whom he decided was expendible.
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