Comic Pants Podcast #29
We’re back from our vacation, and chock full of topics and energy! For our first time back, Randy Lander, David Martindale (D3), Dan Grendell, and Nick Budd take a look at which characters at Marvel could use a new direction, need or deserve more attention, have been forgotten and shouldn’t have been, or may never have been gotten right. Dave Farabee has taken this chance to retire from podcasting, so wave him a fond farewell from these discussions. Got any thoughts you want to share about what we discuss? Did we miss someone? Are we way off? Let us know your ideas in the comments section. Special thanks to Arvind and any other readers I may have missed for recommending this topic.
As always, commentary is welcomed and encouraged. Let us know what you thought of the podcast, and if you have suggestions for future podcast topics, leave us a comment or write in to the show! Listeners who write in could win cool comics with each broadcast! Please drop us a line at comicpantsfeedback@gmail.com to give us some questions or comments for the next show.
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Cool. So is this a self-contained episode or the first of a 2-parter? Handy to know that in advance because I don’t listen to the ’split’ episodes until I have both parts to listen to in one hit.
30 Jun 2007 at 3:23 am
QuoteSandman reformed Better. Pallidin was an employee Silver Sable would use when she needed to operate outside of the Wild Pack structure. In her series, which was better than you guys gave credit to, she had him investigate a traitor that was operating within the business. He would join Sandman in the Intruders, a group of freaks and misfit superpowered operatives Sable formed.
Darkhawk had so much potential as a team member type character. That is where he was really untapped.
Tom Selleck as the Wizard.
%
30 Jun 2007 at 7:45 am
QuoteUnless we say otherwise in the write-up, expect them to be two-parters. That’s our new starndard format.
30 Jun 2007 at 12:26 pm
QuoteAs always, thanks for this.
I miss Farabee on the podcast. Maybe you can have ‘Legion-style tryouts’ or something for the podcast.
-RT
30 Jun 2007 at 12:54 pm
QuoteAs Dan says, 2-parter is now the default, so you can assume that it’s a 2-parter. However, I think our split was more defined on this one than usual, as we cover Marvel in the first one and DC in the second.
30 Jun 2007 at 1:11 pm
QuoteANother good podcast you guys. Thanks for the shout out as well(You also pronounced my name right). you brought up alot of good untapped potential characters. With that said Randy(I think it was you who said it) I totally agree on the colossus part…everyone else be damned. Another Character I think you guys might have missed is Black Panther I have never really like anything with him but I think he is really cool. Another character I think that has untapped potential is Professor X. He maybe the leader of the xmen…but I don’t think they ever do anything interesting with him. I mean isn’t he supposed to be one of the most powerful telepaths on earth…yet every time I see him I know he isn’t going to fix anything. YOu also brought silver surfer……I have read some of hist stuff but never really took a liking to it…even though I thought the character was cool. Anyways I recently bought his omnibus…and considering you guys said he has never really been used to his full potential does that mean I just wasted my money(its coming in the mail so I haven’t read it yet) or is it actually good. ANother thing you guys reccomended Battle Royale in a previous podcast…I went and bought the whole set and I gotta tell you its a great series. Not only one of the best I have read in a while but one of the best I have read ever. It is up their with Watchmen for me. So thanks for the reccomendation.
30 Jun 2007 at 2:27 pm
QuoteBAH!
In regards to Stryfe:
I agree his is pretty useless. But must you insult Cable?
Have you read Casey, Robinson, and Tischman’s runs? That stuff was amazing.
30 Jun 2007 at 4:16 pm
QuoteHey, guys — first podcast I’ve listened to here, but it won’t be the last. Pretty entertaining stuff. Definitely agree with you on Forge, the Corruptor (quite a few great villains with untapped potential came out of that first NOVA series), Darkhawk, Photon, and Bishop: all of them have been used not enough and/or badly. Also couldn’t agree more that Cable and Stryfe reek. I agree that the Hellfire Club is way under-used, but you guys missed the boat by putting focus on Shaw — *Selene* is where it’s at. I won’t get started, not in my first post here, or you’d never allow me to chime in again, but she’s one of my favorite Marvel villains ever. Never much cared for the Black Knight, and don’t get the appeal — I thought he was never more interesting than when I was a kid just discovering comics, and he was a statue in Dr. Strange’s pad that no one could return to life. Once they brought him back, he bored the hell out of me…
Paint Tom Selleck purple and let him play Killgrave? Danny Trejo gets to be a grizzled and super bad-assed Forge.
30 Jun 2007 at 4:53 pm
QuoteYou forgot to mention Solo. I feel like he could be used a bit better then a 2 bit Punisher. And he kicked ass in the Revenge of the Sinister Six storyline.
30 Jun 2007 at 5:16 pm
QuoteI’d like to see Tom Selleck playing Turner D. Century in the next Spider-man movie. The only Native American actor I can think of is Lou Diamond Phillips, so I guess I’d give him the Forge role by default.
As far as misused characters, I’d have to vote for Warlock. He was one of my favorite characters when I first started reading comics and then they eventually killed him off in such a crappy manner. To make matters worse, they tried brining him back in an unreadable solo series.
Hellstorm is another character that I think has rarely been used well. I liked Warren Ellis’ run on the Hellstorm book Marvel put out several years back, but that’s about it. Hellstorm could be a cool supernatural character if used properly.
30 Jun 2007 at 10:27 pm
QuoteYa hear that, people? I got me some backup… Colossus rules.
I actually think Panther was used to his full potential in the 50-some issues (maybe more) that Priest wrote the character for Marvel Knights. He took an already cool character and made him even cooler, gave him depth while staying true to his roots.
I don’t have the Omnibus, but I have the Essential volume of the comics it reprints, and actually, they’re pretty damn good. Stan Lee at his best, John Buscema at his… my favorite version of the Surfer would find him in space doing cosmic stuff, rather than being a space-born Easy Rider trapped on Earth, but I have to say, the stuff in that Omnibus, as I remember it, is really good.
01 Jul 2007 at 12:26 am
QuoteYou know, there was some good stuff in there, but I don’t think most of it had to do with Cable being a good character. Or even the writing, though I generally dig Casey’s stuff and did like some of what Robinson and Tischman did. But when you’ve got Ladronn doing a Kirby riff and Igor Kordey doing stuff about a mercenary traveling to warzones around the world… hell, you could have done those stories well even if the lead character was Stryfe.
You know, I dug Selene, but she was a little bit too much standard Claremont BSDM bad guy to click as a favorite. Still, whatever happened to her? Is she in character limbo, or did somebody kill her off in the blood-soaked, shocktastic ’90s?
My best advice if you want to give Black Knight a shot is to read his run during Roger Stern’s Avengers. If you don’t like him there, you’re not into the character, and that’s cool. But I’ve seen him written badly numerous times in numerous places, and what keeps me interested nonetheless is that I remember how cool he was in Avengers.
And put them in the same movie. Hells yeah.
Y’know, I have a certain fondness for Solo. He’s like the Punisher, but versus terrorists instead of organized crime. And given the supervillain = terrorist thing going on at Marvel these days, that would seem to be a call for him to come back. I mean, he had a cheesy costume and catchphrase (”While I live, terror dies”), but a teleporting anti-terrorist vigilante with guns, grenades, etc.? That’s a cool idea, with plenty of potential. Good call.
01 Jul 2007 at 12:40 am
Quote>>You know, I dug Selene, but she was a little bit too much standard Claremont BSDM bad guy to click as a favorite. Still, whatever happened to her? Is she in character limbo, or did somebody kill her off in the blood-soaked, shocktastic ’90s?
I haven’t kept up on the X-books as religiously as I once did, not since the early 90’s, but Wikipedia has it that she was last seen in NEW X-MEN, getting that Wither character in her thrall. Don’t know what that’s all about, but I always saw her as the type to be moving and shaking on much higher levels than that, dealing with people like Apocalypse and Magneto and Sinister.
>>My best advice if you want to give Black Knight a shot is to read his run during Roger Stern’s Avengers. If you don’t like him there, you’re not into the character, and that’s cool. But I’ve seen him written badly numerous times in numerous places, and what keeps me interested nonetheless is that I remember how cool he was in Avengers.
I’ve read some of the Stern run, and I don’t recall thinking the Knight was especially weak or anything there, but I just have a sort of accumulation of impressions over several other runs as well (Harras on AVENGERS, H4H by — I think? — Ostrander and Pascual Ferry, his Ultraforce period), and he always strikes me as extremely bland. Not lame — I don’t actively dislike him — but I just don’t think he’s very interesting. And that “Sword of Light, Shield of Night” riff *did* strike me as lame. That was just corny to me…but revisiting the Stern run isn’t a bad idea anyway, and I might have to think about that (especially since I find all current Avengers product to be totally unreadable, and I could use a fix…).
01 Jul 2007 at 10:35 am
QuoteWhile i agree with Randy that Colossus rocks, the bit in Nextwave where Cap tells Photon to make his dinner was the funniest part. Damn, I miss that book. Her origins sound pretty cool though.
I think a character that is being used really badly at the moment is Cyclops. The guy is supposed to be as good a leader as Cap and years of misuse have just turned him into a wuss. I was hoping Whedon would do something good with him but every time he came up with something decent (the scene early in AXM where Scott faces down Nick Fury is awesome) he never built on it. That makes me sad because my love for Cyke is probably up there with Randy’s love for Hawkeye
01 Jul 2007 at 12:06 pm
QuoteThe only way I could possibly agree more with the “Chameleon as Norman Osbourne” suggestion is if it were actually my idea and Marvel paid me a ton of money for it.
01 Jul 2007 at 1:49 pm
QuoteIf norman turns out to be a Chameleon (althrough he had a good death issue, written by Jenkins) or a Skrull, I will be the happiest fanboy of all time. I remember when they brought him back in Spider Man 75. I was 14 I think, and it was the first time I can remember wondering what the fuck the writers of a comic book were thinking. Shit, I would have rather seen Harry return, even though his death was amazing as well.
01 Jul 2007 at 5:15 pm
QuoteNFL Superpro. Enough said.
02 Jul 2007 at 9:40 am
QuoteI’m a big Hawkeye fan, too. My only excuse is that I discovered the character when I was a cub scout (and learning archery), and the idea of a guy with trick arrows who hung out with Captain America seemed cool.
I actually wished that Clint Barton had become the new Captain America and decided to be a giant thorn in Tony Stark’s side. I want an underground Avengers team whose mission is to undermine everything that Iron Prick and his sycophants are trying to do to the Marvel Universe.
02 Jul 2007 at 10:39 pm
QuoteLenin’s ghost, Pantsers! You make me go an eon without a podcast and then return with a big ol’ picture of Stryfe? I almost went out and beat up a hobo! Thankfully, there was an awesome podcast behind Stryfe’s helmet (which, at this point, would have been better than what actually was behind his helmet). Dave would back me up on that.
YOUR PICKS
Forge - While I think the “mutant Dr. Strange” slot belongs to someone else, I can see him as a Alfred/Harold type–staying at the mansion for the most part, offering tech assitance when called, building gadgets, maintaining the Blackbird, basic shamanic doctoring, and dryly quipping the team down to earth after missions. Sort of how he was in the early Blue/Gold period, just cooler.
Christos Gage - Marvel did give him CONQUEST: QUASAR, so that’s a reasonable vote of confidence. Maybe he’ll get ANNIHILATION 3. And he needs a better superhero name (”Chris Gage: Power Tan” or “Chris Gage: Hero for Maldahyde”).
Silver Samurai - He’s sort of an honorable Don Corleone with a sword. Protecting his large family is his only concern, and if criminal activity can help accomplish that, sign him up. But his code of honor makes him less of a Kingpin and more of an ’80s Magneto. I can totally see him building a West Coast empire to protect American Yashida interests (maybe filling the Pride’s vaccuum?).
Silver Sable - My exposure to her is from ’90s Spidey comics, so I don’t have much of a handle on her. So she’s basically Black Widow with Nick Fury’s resources and Cable’s paramilitarism, who goes after Nazis? How is it she hasn’t shown up in Captain America yet? She’s a one-woman Birds of Prey!
Silver Surfer - Man, I really need to get around to reading Englehart’s run. That issue with Frankie Raye sounds brilliant. And I do like the Annihilation change, but I’m afraid that without a series to explore his new status in, the nuance will be forgotten and he’ll become another Terrax.
Chameleon - I’m still with you on this, guys. A further idea: as the Skrull-searching gets underway, he’s afraid that someone will blow his Norman cover, so he turns the T-bolts into a dedicated Skrull-killing krew, during which he discovers some Skrull posing as the Chameleon.
Cloak and Dagger - Their DEA handler? Jessica Jones (as soon as the Skrull thing blows over). She gets conned into the job somehow and hates every minute of it, hates having to babysit these two teenagers on top of her own kid, hates not being her own boss with her own hours anymore, and hates having to be a good worker-bee. But she hates the drug trade even more, so she does the job. And the pay is not too bad. But not too great, either.
Sleepwalker - No potential? Are you guys insane? He’s just in the wrong universe! In my mind, he’s the narcoleptic star of Grant Morrison’s DOOM PATROL/SANDMAN COMEDY SPECTACULAR: DO ROBOTMEN DREAM OF ELECTRIC SLEEP?
Cable - I still think someone should send him into space. Let him be the Space Mutant or something, where his telepathic/telekinetic/telewhatever powers aren’t all that and future Earth technology is like a rotary phone.
Bishop - Claremont (who IIRC was the first to really treat him as a cop) exposed his potential, but Bishop’s backstory is keeping him from reaching it. Ideally, I’d kill Bishop and introduce an EXACT DUPLICATE character from the present day with a normal history, a cop who happens to be a mutant (and probably isn’t all too thrilled with the X-Men’s extra-legal activities).
03 Jul 2007 at 12:25 am
QuoteMY PICKS
Hellfire Club - The Inner Circle is all about being the ones left standing after the rubble of the human/mutant war (which was the point of the Hellions: to train mutants to serve them, not the war); they play both sides for no other reason than to consolidate power. But just because they band together for a shared reason, that doesn’t mean they share the same end goal. I see them more as a meeting of individuals than as any sort of “team,” as each would gladly betray the others if it could further his/her own ambition. Shaw’s the public figurehead and gladhander, the political influencer, the ruthless businessman who is slowly owning everything but never tips his private hand; Selene’s the shadow in the shadows, the one who knows what one shouldn’t know, the evil royal who is slowly vampiring power but never divulges how much (and being the oldest mutant will always be cool–she and Kulan Gath are all Marvel can legally use of the Hyborean Age). I’d ditch whatever lameass is White King right now (is it still Sunspot’s dad?) and replace him with someone of equal stature to Shaw and Selene. Might be a good fit for Arcade (revamped, of course) with his criminal connections, or Dark Beast with his mad scientistness. The White Queen? Emma. Not as a villain, though. I could totally buy her keeping her seat just to have the Club’s resources available to the X-Men, and the Club needing her telepathy and wealth. It would give the Inner Circle some juicy drama and the X-Men a reason to encounter them more often.
Acolytes and the Four Horsemen - I never bought the idea of Magneto having worshippers. But Apocalypse? Of course a group of mutants would worship a proto-Celestial who tells mutants they’re the Chosen Race! Never really understood why that wasn’t a no-brainer to Marvel, especially since Poccy has had worshippers in every other era of his existence. As for the Horsemen, I’d make them serious threats like they were in Age of Apocalypse, the kind of guys who individually would scare the X-Men but together could actually pull off the End of Days. Exodus as Famine, Holocaust as War, Sinister as Pestilence, and Stryfe as Death. Okay, that’s a bad ’90s acid flashback, but you get the idea. Treat Poccy as the mutant Galactus with some truly frightening Heralds.
Starjammers - 1) Whatever, Brubaker. I like the idea of giving Havok something cool to do, but not at Corsair’s expense. 2) Hell, yeah. ANNIHILATe them. Sure, their focus would still be with the Shi’ar, but have them romp around Hala or Throneworld for a while, rescuing Skrull princesses and stealing Ronan’s iPod. Treat them like the “street level” heroes of Cosmic Marvel. 3) Whedon. Mal, Zoe/Inara, Jayne, Kaylee, Simon, and River. Corsair, Hepzibah, Ch’od, Waldo, Sikorsky, and Raza. And Cr-eeee as Wash. He already wrote the Starjammers and called it FIREFLY.
Colossus and Magik - He’s Petey Pureheart, the gentle giant with an artist’s soul. She’s the Darkchild, the mutant sorceress with a demon’s soul. Together, they’re brother and sister, looking out for each other. Illyana is a great character herself, the innocent child who grows into the darkness of adolescence (what teenager isn’t?), a powder-keg of evil power that can blow any second and give Dr. Strange pause. But she also makes Peter a better character, as the big brother who is left raising her but has no idea how and is afraid he’s losing his “little snowflake.” There’s a dynamic there with loads of potential.
The Daily Bugle - Marvel has tried this a time or twenty, as recently as right now with FRONTLINE, and it never seems to work. It’s a great idea, though. JJJ, Robbie Robertson, Ben Urich, Peter Parker, and the staff of the Daily Bugle breaking news and investigating stories in the kinetic land that is Marvel’s New York. Kurt Busiek basically wrote a story about it with Alex Ross a few years ago. I think some people liked that. So it CAN work. Think about this–if you want to write about the normal joes in the DCU, you probably pick cops in Batman’s city and call it GOTHAM CENTRAL. At Marvel, you pick reporters. Now if only Marvel employed one of those GOTHAM CENTRAL guys…
Beta Ray Bill - Space Thor. Moving on…
The Warriors Three - Fandral the Dashing! Hogun the Grim! Volstagg the Voluminous! Three pals who like to get drunk, smash ne’er-do-wells, make with the maidens, do the derring, get drunk, and love every single frickin’ moment of being the Warriors Three. By Odin’s Shiny Beard, why don’t these guys at least have a miniseries by now?
03 Jul 2007 at 2:51 am
QuoteYou know, it’s a good thing to know that I’m not the only one who thinks Sleepwalker has got some major potential. I mean he’s got superhuman strength, levitation and cool eye beams that can distort objects to become whatever he wants them to be. That and he’s got plenty of flaws and limitations that, if used properly, could make him that much more interesting.
I completely agree with you though…Give him his own series, get Grant Morrison to write him and then allow him to jump universes and fight people like The Brotherhood of Dada.
Comic book gold.
03 Jul 2007 at 9:34 am
QuoteI think I love you.
03 Jul 2007 at 3:39 pm
QuoteTwo running jokes in one comment intro, plus a “Lenin’s Ghost!” exclamation? I think that makes you an honorary Pantser.
OK, this totally needs to happen. Samurai moving in to try and establish a West Coast empire, running up against the Runaways as they try to prevent him from filling their parents’ power vacuum? This would be awesome.
Don’t forget Emma Frost’s aristocratic snootiness. She’s got the whole package!
I like this idea, too. Jessica’s a slightly weird fit with the DEA, but I do love the idea of this burned out ex-superhero babysitting a pair of burned out teenage heroes.
I agree. And they don’t even need to bring him back. Or tell us what happened once he got there, really.
I like a lot of your ideas for the Hellfire Club, but this one is my favorite.
I can’t believe it, but you’ve actually managed to pitch a version of Apocalypse I might find interesting. The “mutant Galactus with some truly frightening Heralds” is a much better logline than “Well, he’s really old and shapechanger-y, and he talks a lot about survival of the fittest, and Cable fights him in the future and stuff.”
Love the Starjammers/Firefly comparison too. Of course, like FIREFLY, I suspect a STARJAMMERS series in that vein would be great but not popular enough to survive as an ongoing.
Love this. Especially if you have it take place back in Russia, with Peter trying to give Illyana more of a normal upbringing, or maybe even helping to establish a branch of Xavier’s School for Russian mutants. You could open up a whole new side of the Marvel Universe, deal with the themes and history of Russian literature and culture and have as your starting point a very interesting brother/sister dynamic.
Again, more than likely nobody would buy it, but I’d read such a series in a heartbeat.
Best Daily Bugle series I’ve read was Deadline, the 4-issue mini from Bill Rosemann. It wasn’t perfect, as it had to include something of a superhero plot to keep things going, but the newsroom moments, plus the character of Kat Ferrell, were interesting enough that I would have read dozens of those stories.
Sadly, as is becoming an obvious pattern in this response, what I’d read and what sells is almost diametrically opposed.
Word. Have Odin send them on a forced vacation from Asgard after Volstagg breaks the throne by sitting on it, and let the merriment commence.
Some really interesting thoughts there, Cove. Even if you are one of these crazy Sleepwalker lovers.
03 Jul 2007 at 6:15 pm
QuoteI don’t read much Marvel, so you’ll have to forgive me, but is it possible that the *idea* of Cable is cool but the execution has destroyed any potential the character had?
After your podcast, I went to Wikipedia, since I hadn’t really read any Cable stories since I swore off comics in the early 90s. Man, no wonder you guys hate Cable. But the idea of Scott and Jean’s son coming back from the future and being a badass telepath seems fairly sound. I guess, though, you can’t get around the fact that 15+ years of bad execution can kill a character.
I feel the same way about Venom. I have a base affection for the idea but, if I bothered to read his current backstory, I would probably lose that affection. I like the idea.
Oh, and just to preserve a shred of dignity, I do think Stryfe blows. And so does Carnage. Maybe each other.
03 Jul 2007 at 11:03 pm
QuoteI think that makes you an honorary Pantser.
Booyeah! Now if only I had some honorary underwear…
Thanks for reminding me of Rosemann’s DEADLINE, Randy (couldn’t remember either the name or the writer). That really could have gone somewhere. Then again, so could PULSE before SECRET WAR screwed it up. And now FRONTLINE comes along and probably ruins the concept altogether.
And I love the “Warriors Three on forced vacation” idea. One of my favorite images is of them walking down the streets of New York, Fandral winking at every pretty woman, Hogun scaring the bejeezus out of the Power kids, and Volstagg wearing an “I LOVE NY” shirt that is like 129 sizes too small, all like it was perfectly normal (ahh, Simonson…). These guys were born to be tourists…WARRIOR tourists!
04 Jul 2007 at 1:59 am
Quotenice ‘cast again guys! i am 100% with you guys on Silver Sable, needs to get written a lot more, character has great potential.
forge should be played by Michael Spears, massive native guy from Speilberg’s into the west tv show
tom selleck should play howard stark
04 Jul 2007 at 10:21 am
QuoteCable - Space Mutant
That is gold. Someone get Joe Q on the phone.
04 Jul 2007 at 11:18 am
QuoteMy pick would be Deadpool.. thats right, DEADPOOL…
08 Jul 2007 at 7:44 pm
Quote