So I just finished re-reading Batman: War on Crime - It's one of the best Batman comics I've read, by the way. If you haven't read it I highly recommend you do, even if you're not a Batman fan. You can read find it and other great stories by Paul Dini and Alex Ross in The World's Greatest Super-Heroes.
Anyway, like I said, it's one of the best Batman stories out there. It had a pretty simple premise, but it made a clear distinction between the persona of Bruce Wayne and Batman, and made his humanity the driving force behind the story.
From Batman: War on Crime
Now, that's not to say that more recent Batman comics haven't show-cased his humanity, but I feel like writers recently seem to be focusing a little too much on him just running from rooftop to rooftop, being stoic, badass Batman, laying the smack-down on the criminal underworld.
But he understands that crime does to people, and that many of the villains in his rogues gallery - even though they've done horrible, inexcusable things - are really decent people who are legitimately insane and aren't fully responsible for their actions. And as much I do love seeing Bats kick butt and take names, his humanity should constantly be front and center, reminding us exactly why he's chosen to do what he does, and I just wish that where a bigger focus.
Before you read any further you should know that his blog was made under the impression that Magneto's age had never been reversed. If you continue reading you'll probably just be wasting your time.
I'm not a big blogging person but I decided to go ahead and share my thoughts on this.
So we all know that some characters in comics seem to age very slowly - and most, not at all. For the majority of characters it's pretty easy to just update their origin. There are also a few others - like Wolverine, for instance - that explain this problem away with retarded aging.
But what about those characters like Magneto who's back stories are tied into significant historical events? Those who have no healing factors and can't exactly survive being frozen in the Atlantic for 70 years.
I've probably guessed by now, but the event I'm referring to is the Holocaust. Now, I may be giving it too much credit, but the Holocaust is - in my opinion - the most important part of Mag's history. Granted, there are quite a few Holocaust survivors still alive today, but what about 30 or 40 years from now? How do you work around this when the character(s) in question can't exactly be "updated" without loosing a major part of their history?
One of the most obvious answers would be the ever-reliable X-Men fallback, time travel. Maybe the X-men go back in time and bring a younger, more impulsive Magneto to the present, but in the process the original Max dies.
Or maybe Mags dies after some Earth shattering X-Men event and Marvel, hopefully, gives him a long hiatus. Making his return that much greater. Perhaps when a mutant with the ability to enter different dimensions brings him back from whichever afterlife he goes to.
But I'm starting to get a bit long-winded here, so I'll get to my point: Magneto is one of the most iconic X-men characters ever; having a great power-set, rich history, interesting origin, and just being an awesome great character overall. Marvel is probably going to have to cross this bridge before too much longer, and I can only hope that the House of Ideas - who's ideas will, most likely, be better than the ones above - can do justice to such an enduring, influential mutant as Magneto.
What are your thoughts on this? Is this even a problem? If you think it is, what are some of your ideas for getting around it? Be sure to share them!
I know I'm a little late to the party, but just yesterday I upgraded from the old playstation 2 to the newer playstation 3 along with a great bundle deal with a few games - including Arkham Asylum and Arkham City.
Anyway, stayed up till about 3:00 pm playing Arkham Asylum. Time flies when you're having fun, right? I got to the Scarecrow level before I finally peeled myself away from the screen and got some sleep. Anyway, it's really fun. It's one of the best console games, and I've played quite a few. On the off chance that somebody reads this and hasn't played Arkham Asylum, I cannot recommend it enough. Awesome game.
So today I got my first ever Image comic/trade from Amazon - Five Ghosts: The Haunting of Fabian Gray. The concept sounded very interesting to me and the reviews I read where pretty positive in general. If I like it enough I'll keep getting the series from my LCS.
Hello, fellow Rogues fans! A few Viners, including myself, have chosen to dedicate an entire month to Flash's greatest enemies, the Rogues. But we need your help, as there's still Rogues that need representing. Don't worry, joining the group is easy. All you need to do is choose a Flash villain to represent and for an entire month change your avatar to to a pic of the member you chose.
So, a few days ago I got a PM from a user ( @rincewind86 ) on this site asking me to give him some feedback on his motion comics.
He does this as a hobby, but his work is still really good. I also admire his dedication, because it can take months to put even one of these comics to motion. The thing is, he can't seem to get his work noticed, which is unfortunate considering how much effort goes into them. So I thought I'd help him out a bit and make this blog.
If you would head over to his Youtube channel, and help get his work out there by sharing a few of his videos I would appreciate, and I'm sure he would as well.
So I started really getting into comics after the Marvel NOW! reboot (or whatever you want to call it), and I had thought of spreading my wings a little and start getting Batman. At first I was discouraged because every title was already on issue 16, and I felt like I'd have no idea what was going on, and I'd just be lost and eventually drop it. So I decided to just stick to what i was comfortable with sense I had always been more of a Marvel guy anyway... But as i started getting more, and more Marvel comics i started to become more, and more bold. First I started getting different Marvel NOW! titles, and that satisfied me for a few months. But soon that wasn't enough. I wanted to start branching out even more! I really wanted to dive head first into this whole comicbook thing. So.... Today I decided to do something radical, something I'd never done sense i started buying comics. Get a New 52 title! A friend of mine recommended Aquaman, and sense I've always liked the more obscure characters I decided to pick up Aquaman #18.
It was great! There where a few things I didn't understand, and a few characters that I had now idea who they where, but all-in-all I really liked it. The art was great, the writing even more so. And I'm proud to say: I am defiantly adding this to my pull-list! It got me really exited start buying more DC stuff! which brings me to the real point of this blog post. I was wondering if anyone else that reads DC comics would be able to give me some suggestions on some more great New 52 titles who's story arcs might be coming to a close soon that I could jump right into and start getting on my next comic shop raid!
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