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 kronk wrote:

 Kojiro wrote:

Perhaps the worst part of all this is the fact they are replacements, not additions, in many cases.

Do you really think Tony Stark won't come back as or won't always be Iron Man?

Whether he does or not, if you're a fan of Tony Stark as Iron Man for a while, you're going to be SoL. Just as if you were a fan of Steve Rogers, Thor or Banner.

But seriously, there's a real chance this could stick. Not just because of diversity agendas, but because comic book heroes are now mainstream. The MCU is where the real money is and it's no secret the cast is getting a) more expensive b) tired of the work and c) just older. RDJ is 55. By the time the Infinity Wars wrap-up hell be pushing sixty. Likewise both Evans and Hemworth are getting fed up with maintaining literally super human physiques. And they've got years to go. It actually makes a lot of sense for Marvel to start phasing out the older charters as it's inevitable they'll lose the actors in time.

Look at where Tony finds this girl. At MIT. Last we saw him he was talent scouting (Spidey) and funding MIT projects. The door for her to be discovered and have the resources to impress Stark has already been done.

For many RDJ will always be IM. But I doubt it remains true on the big screen.

Honestly, I'm more upset at the gak they pulled with Captain America being a Hydra member. Anything they do after that won't surprise me.

Still waiting to see if anyone feels this will LITERALLY RUIN LIVES and undoes history or something like the Cap America thing. Or maybe people realized, you know, comics.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
They should change the name of this character to "Mary Sue". It sounds like a teenager's fanfiction. I like the fact that they want to add more diversity to comics, but please do it with well-written characters. Not with something that sounds like the very definition of mary sue. Also, we desperately need more superheroes that are Russian. Why do Russians always need to be villains? I feel discriminated against.

Natasha Romanov, Piotr Nikoliavic Rasputin and Illyana Rasputin aren't Russian enough?
Black widow, Colossus and his sister Magik, for anyone who is unfamiliar.

No. Those are overused stereotypes that don't even get played by real Russians in movies. It is like a white guy in blackface playing an overly stereotypical black character
Black Widow is an especially bad example. Apparently Russians can only be good guys if they betray their own people...

I don't need to see any Russian superheroes in American comics and movies, but it'd be really nice if they'd stop casting Russians in such a stereotpyical and negative light. Russians are already plenty good at making themselves look bad, we really don't need popular culture reinforcing and worsening that. Not to mention it is annoying as hell when people only think of Russians as being walking stereotypes.

Comic books are full of stereotypes and tropes. At least Marvel created the Soviet Super Soldiers and the Winter Guard.


http://marvel.com/universe/Soviet_Super-Soldiers


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_Guard

And there was the People's Protectorate too.



Granted it was just churning over what was essentially the Russian version of the Avengers but that's comic books. Different super teams from different places but all with similar numbers of members who fit into the same archtypes/stereotypes. Every single super team that Marvel and Image were publishing back in the 1990s all had the same characters, just different versions.

 jmurph wrote:
Still waiting to see if anyone feels this will LITERALLY RUIN LIVES and undoes history or something like the Cap America thing. Or maybe people realized, you know, comics.

So, people altering things you love is okay? Please tell us what movies you enjoy and then how you'd feel about long time characters being altered.

OMG! I have that comic...two actually....not sure why.

 jreilly89 wrote:

 jmurph wrote:
Still waiting to see if anyone feels this will LITERALLY RUIN LIVES and undoes history or something like the Cap America thing. Or maybe people realized, you know, comics.

So, people altering things you love is okay? Please tell us what movies you enjoy and then how you'd feel about long time characters being altered.

Chris Claremont wrote great stories for Xmen back in the day. Now, very little of what he wrote is still applicable to the current Marvel universe. That's just comics, they have great story arcs, then they retcon them or ignore them or reboot them. The only instances where stories don't get retconned or rebooted are when a title stops being published at the conclusion of a given plotline.

I don't really care about the ethnicity/gender swap so much as the age. At the moment I just am not sure how to feel about them making a teen constantly being shot at and physically assaulted.

The whole thing of her being the superest bestest thing evar and even more Tony Stark than Tony Stark in practically every way is silly but also somewhat status quo for Marvel.

It definitely feel a little forced, especially that it's happened to basically EVERY. SINGLE. CHARACTER. A few, cool. All of them? Almost smacks of insincerity.

My biggest gripe is why does she have to be 15? Besides turning her into a Mary-Sue, what does it add to the character or the story? She's reverse engineering a robotic armoured suit for crying out loud. She doesn't need to be prepubescent for that to be impressive!

Indeed. Plus, how's she going to fit that MASSIVE 'fro in that helmet? Bad hair days ahoy .

They should stop trying to be so PC and just stick to the formulas that work. Or ya know, invent some new characters instead of re-hashing the old ones over and over and over.

 angelofvengeance wrote:
Indeed. Plus, how's she going to fit that MASSIVE 'fro in that helmet? Bad hair days ahoy .

They should stop trying to be so PC and just stick to the formulas that work. Or ya know, invent some new characters instead of re-hashing the old ones over and over and over.

Preettty much.

It saddens me that they go the easy route instead of trying to take a chance and allow a character to stand on its own two feet. It's like how they ditched Toxin's origins entirely and just threw him onto Eddie Brock (who lost his anti-venom stuff for some reason), even though it was interesting to see the dynamic between a symbiote and ordinary joe cop Pat Mulligan having relatively equal say in their relationship vs. the insanity/instability both Carnage and Venom have with their respective symbiotes.

 jmurph wrote:
Still waiting to see if anyone feels this will LITERALLY RUIN LIVES and undoes history or something like the Cap America thing. Or maybe people realized, you know, comics.

Great cartoon on BoingBoing about that.

http://boingboing.net/2016/06/01/tom-the-dancing-bug-super-fun-22.html

Changing a hero to a villain, by warping reality no less, isn't the same as a character getting a replacement but I understand the general point.

It has been revealed that Red Skull is screwing with Steve Rogers. Again. Steve is not ACTUALLY Hydra, and the Steve Rogers we all knew and loved is still legit. He's just currently been warped. He'll be back to the good side soon enough.

personally ever since Stan Lee left Marvel(retired) the company has gone down hill in the comics department, it seems like anyone with a wild haired idea can get it published there.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 jmurph wrote:
Still waiting to see if anyone feels this will LITERALLY RUIN LIVES and undoes history or something like the Cap America thing. Or maybe people realized, you know, comics.

Great cartoon on BoingBoing about that.

http://boingboing.net/2016/06/01/tom-the-dancing-bug-super-fun-22.html

Wow, witty. Again, changing established characters is cool? So this is totally okay?

https://www.amazon.com/YOLO-Juliet-OMG-Shakespeare-William/dp/0553535390


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
It has been revealed that Red Skull is screwing with Steve Rogers. Again. Steve is not ACTUALLY Hydra, and the Steve Rogers we all knew and loved is still legit. He's just currently been warped. He'll be back to the good side soon enough.

Yeah, through magic wish bullgak. Seriously one of the stupidest comic plotlines I've ever seen. Give me squirrel girl over this.

Worse than a magical ring created by immortal blue aliens that doesn't work against the color yellow? Or wood (Golden Age version)?

 kronk wrote:
Worse than a magical ring created by immortal blue aliens that doesn't work against the color yellow? Or wood (Golden Age version)?

Yes. I'm totally okay with stupid bullgak, but don't try to feed it to me 30 years after an established character. That'd be like taking Frodo and saying "Oh yeah, by the way, he could throw fireballs this whole time. He was actually a hobbit sorceror!"

That would have made destroying the ring a bit easier, though.

 Manchu wrote:
When the New 52 rolled out, there were complaints about Barbara Gordon finally being allowed out of her wheelchair. The complainers felt that this was tantamount to getting rid of a handicapable character. You'd be hard pressed to find an "article" floating around about that "controversy" written lately.

For me the problem with how DC handled Barbara Gordon isn't that they had her recover from her injuries, it's that (1) they undid everything she achieved while injured and (2) the new stories they wrote were idiotic schlock. Barbara Gordon as Oracle commanded her own superhero team; when she regained the use of her legs, she should still have been that woman. If she returned to fieldwork, it should have been as a seasoned leader.

 kronk wrote:
That would have made destroying the ring a bit easier, though.

Not really, unless Frodo's fireballs somehow were hotter than the fires of Ancalagon the Black...

 jreilly89 wrote:


Wow, witty. Again, changing established characters is cool? So this is totally okay?

https://www.amazon.com/YOLO-Juliet-OMG-Shakespeare-William/dp/0553535390

Yes, totally. The only difference is that Romeo and Juliet is in the public domain so anybody can make their own version/remix while Iron Man is in copyright hell so only a selected few can make money of it (the rest of us can try the fan fiction approach if we really wanted to). This Henry Jenkins quote describes my attitude towards this type of work (from here):

“Fan fiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of by the folk.”

The same goes for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I think it also led to an increase in sales of the original because it made people curious.

The new doesn't destroy the old. It's still there and stuff from it can be used and reimagined all the time. If I remember correctly stagnation was one of the reasons for the comic book crash of the 90s as stories got reissued, rereleased, and rehashed because they started targeting collectors. Art/creativity/fiction is not a limited recourse that evaporates if you create more or combine bits to create something new. A remix or change just gives you more options to chose from and to explore. Here's a longer video on the topic of remixes, our culture, and how these two topics interact (if somebody is interested): Everything is a Remix

The Time article/interview mentioned that he was inspired by a real woman to write that story and being a 15 year old genius at MIT, reverse engineering one of Tony's old suits, and ending up on his radar doesn't sound that outlandish (for a superhero comic). It seems he has a lot on his plate and she will end up helping him out, somehow. You could take most superheroes, just list a few positive attributes, and leave out the rest of the character to make them look like a Mary Sue (we know like one sentence about her).

Read the comic when it's released and if you like it keep reading, and if you don't like it just wait for anther storyline, reboot, or parallel universe, (like one would with in any other case).

 Grimskul wrote:
Eh. While diversity is not a bad thing, I don't like how they trumpet it every time in such a forced fashion of effectively telling naysayers "if you don't like it you're racist" or at the very least you're almost immediately dismissed for having no good basis for disliking them. If you want a character to stand on its own, it has to be more than just "I'm more Iron-Man than Iron Man, plus I'm a minority". Most of the strongest characters in fiction has less to do with their ethnicity/race and more to do with their personality or abilities, like Sherlock's wit and intellect or Frodo's bravery.The way the article seems to describe her also puts her into some kind of Mary-Sue light from how she's supposedly on par or above Tony. If you're going to pass the torch, make them work for it more IMO.

Eh, Iron Man is actually not a bad hero to use to pass on the mantle if you want to do it. Falcon as Cap for a while was okay too, not my cup of tea, but actually logical in a way that resurrecting Bucky wasn't.

Thor, however, was just plain stupid. The whole 'this isn't Thor girl, it's Thor' was idiotic. Thor is his name, not a code name or title. It'd be like the next president coming in and saying 'I'm Barrack Obama because I'm now president'. Having a woman run around in his place wasn't so bad, it was the 'in your face this is Thor even though it cannot be because Thor is his name and he is still around'.

 Maniac_nmt wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:
Eh. While diversity is not a bad thing, I don't like how they trumpet it every time in such a forced fashion of effectively telling naysayers "if you don't like it you're racist" or at the very least you're almost immediately dismissed for having no good basis for disliking them. If you want a character to stand on its own, it has to be more than just "I'm more Iron-Man than Iron Man, plus I'm a minority". Most of the strongest characters in fiction has less to do with their ethnicity/race and more to do with their personality or abilities, like Sherlock's wit and intellect or Frodo's bravery.The way the article seems to describe her also puts her into some kind of Mary-Sue light from how she's supposedly on par or above Tony. If you're going to pass the torch, make them work for it more IMO.

Eh, Iron Man is actually not a bad hero to use to pass on the mantle if you want to do it. Falcon as Cap for a while was okay too, not my cup of tea, but actually logical in a way that resurrecting Bucky wasn't.

Thor, however, was just plain stupid. The whole 'this isn't Thor girl, it's Thor' was idiotic. Thor is his name, not a code name or title. It'd be like the next president coming in and saying 'I'm Barrack Obama because I'm now president'. Having a woman run around in his place wasn't so bad, it was the 'in your face this is Thor even though it cannot be because Thor is his name and he is still around'.

You were so close with your argument, and then you completely missed that President is both a title for the current office holder and also a title for former office holders. It can also be a name.

If Bill President becomes President, then he will be President President. President is his current title, and it's also his name. Now, we wouldn't argue that now there can never be another President because this one President's name is President. Instead, just like we have now, we have President Obama, President Bush, President Clinton, and President Bush. Only one of them has the Power of President and the Office of President. Yet all of them still have the name President.

And that's all that really happened in the comic. Hell, it's such an easy concept that it was even the main concept of the first movie. Guy Thor made daddy mad and no longer got to be God Thor. Eventually Guy Thor became worthy again and got the title of God Thor back. Name =/= Title =/= Office.

 AlexHolker wrote:
If she returned to fieldwork, it should have been as a seasoned leader.

Disagree. As Oracle, I felt Babs became so "overpowered" (writers doing their best to portray super-handicapablity) as to transcend relatability. I think Gail Simone understood that she had put Babs on this ultimately boring arc (not that she invented it of course) and so, when DC let the poor woman get out of the chair - something that would never be withheld from Bruce Wayne or Dick Grayson, by the way - Simone tried to correct this and show the character actually struggling, as opposed to the cynical, hyper competent "no wheelchair will slow me" (but actually glorified secretary/dispatcher) caricature she had become. Trouble was, the well was already poisoned. Simone took a lot a flak from former fans who now screamed TRAITOR at her on forums and twitter and who knows where else. The solution was to go even lighter and that has been going well. While I don't buy comics anymore, I still keep an eye on my favorite characters (Dick and Babs) - and it's nice that the Batgirl is once again free to have adventures, rather than having to bear the yoke of being DC's token wheelchair hero, whether she's stuck in it or not.

 d-usa wrote:

 Maniac_nmt wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:
Eh. While diversity is not a bad thing, I don't like how they trumpet it every time in such a forced fashion of effectively telling naysayers "if you don't like it you're racist" or at the very least you're almost immediately dismissed for having no good basis for disliking them. If you want a character to stand on its own, it has to be more than just "I'm more Iron-Man than Iron Man, plus I'm a minority". Most of the strongest characters in fiction has less to do with their ethnicity/race and more to do with their personality or abilities, like Sherlock's wit and intellect or Frodo's bravery.The way the article seems to describe her also puts her into some kind of Mary-Sue light from how she's supposedly on par or above Tony. If you're going to pass the torch, make them work for it more IMO.

Eh, Iron Man is actually not a bad hero to use to pass on the mantle if you want to do it. Falcon as Cap for a while was okay too, not my cup of tea, but actually logical in a way that resurrecting Bucky wasn't.

Thor, however, was just plain stupid. The whole 'this isn't Thor girl, it's Thor' was idiotic. Thor is his name, not a code name or title. It'd be like the next president coming in and saying 'I'm Barrack Obama because I'm now president'. Having a woman run around in his place wasn't so bad, it was the 'in your face this is Thor even though it cannot be because Thor is his name and he is still around'.

You were so close with your argument, and then you completely missed that President is both a title for the current office holder and also a title for former office holders. It can also be a name.

If Bill President becomes President, then he will be President President. President is his current title, and it's also his name. Now, we wouldn't argue that now there can never be another President because this one President's name is President. Instead, just like we have now, we have President Obama, President Bush, President Clinton, and President Bush. Only one of them has the Power of President and the Office of President. Yet all of them still have the name President.

And that's all that really happened in the comic. Hell, it's such an easy concept that it was even the main concept of the first movie. Guy Thor made daddy mad and no longer got to be God Thor. Eventually Guy Thor became worthy again and got the title of God Thor back. Name =/= Title =/= Office.

Thor was still Thor, even without the hammer. The power of Thor is up for grabs, and the title of 'god of thunder and lightning' is up for grabs, but Thor isn't his title, it's his name like John or Sue or Steve Rogers or Tony Stark. He's lost the hammer or not held it many times, he's still Thor, the one Thor, and only Thor. When he was a kid he was still Thor, he wasn't 'The god one day known as Thor'. You can pass on the mantle, but the name is just silly.

Want to put a female 'Thor' in, okay. It's already been done and done better in What If and Earth X, but call them something else. Eric Masterson Thor was similarly a dumb idea, not in having another worthy, but calling him Thor was.

Beta Ray Bill didn't become Thor after all, he's still Beta Ray Bill (and a damn cool character despite his goofy looks), even when he held Mjolnir or its duplicate in Stormbreaker. Steve Rogers didn't become Thor when he wielded the hammer, Superman didn't become Thor when he wielded the hammer, yadda yadda yadda.

Again, Thor didn't become Odin in any of the stories he had the power (or even greater power), he was still called Thor. Because Odin is Odin's name, like Joe Montana's name is Joe Montana. King of the Asgardians would be his title like Quarterback would be Joe's.

"Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor", not the name Thor....calling Jane Foster 'Thor' is just bad writing. President is a title, like King or god of thunder, Ronald Reagan is not.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
They should change the name of this character to "Mary Sue". It sounds like a teenager's fanfiction.

I honestly think that sums up the bulk of super hero comic books, which shouldn't be surprising since the overwhelming majority of comic book writers now were fans of the characters as kids. On the other hand though I'm kind of torn cause one of the things I hate most about comics is how averse they are from stepping outside established formula. Most of these new characters will probably step down in a few years and the oldies will return. Miles Morales was only saved from the Secret Wars because of his popularity with readers, and he's still be sidelined (and the plot line of it all was really bizarre too). Still. I never imagined I'd see a black girl take over as Iron Man, or a woman as Thor. Even if Marvel throws them all on a bus someday in the future it's all a lot ballsier than anything they've done in years.

 d-usa wrote:
And that's all that really happened in the comic. Hell, it's such an easy concept that it was even the main concept of the first movie. Guy Thor made daddy mad and no longer got to be God Thor. Eventually Guy Thor became worthy again and got the title of God Thor back. Name =/= Title =/= Office.

The basic line of reasoning with this nonsense is that whoever wields Mjolnir is Thor. Which begs the questions- what was Thor's name when he was a child? When he wielded Jarnbjorn (his axe, prior to receiving Mjolnir)? What would his name be if Mjolnir was destroyed? What would his name be if he handed Mjolnir down to his child? What would his child's name be?

The current writer forgot that when he was a teen he proved worthy and was wielding Mjolnir, as explored in past Thor series (Thor:Son of Asgard). Jarnbjorn is a retcon, a mediocre one that gets looked over due to some of the other good stuff in the early issues of that series.

 Maniac_nmt wrote:
"Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor", not the name Thor....calling Jane Foster 'Thor' is just bad writing. President is a title, like King or god of thunder, Ronald Reagan is not.

I see what you mean, but I think along with the power of Thor comes the title of Thor, even if your name is not Thor Odinson. I will say that I see your point - I think I've seen other people in other threads feel around for it, but I think you described your concerns most precisely. If they re-titled it as Jane Foster: THOR I'd be good with it, though I still feel that with the powers come the title.

Which segues back to Iron Man, where the role is even more clearly transferable: after all, other people have been Iron Man, some even for quite extended periods like Rhodey. I stopped reading long ago, but wasn't Pepper Potts also Iron Man before she became whatever she is now?

 Kojiro wrote:


But seriously, there's a real chance this could stick. Not just because of diversity agendas, but because comic book heroes are now mainstream. The MCU is where the real money is and it's no secret the cast is getting a) more expensive b) tired of the work and c) just older. RDJ is 55. By the time the Infinity Wars wrap-up hell be pushing sixty. Likewise both Evans and Hemworth are getting fed up with maintaining literally super human physiques. And they've got years to go. It actually makes a lot of sense for Marvel to start phasing out the older charters as it's inevitable they'll lose the actors in time.

Really good points. At this point I imagine they make more money from the movies than they do from the comics; the comics should probably start being more malleable to fit with the movies than vice versa.

On the other hand, I think they might regret killing the golden goose when the inevitable comic book movie crash happens...