scans_daily: King Aquababy is kind of an asshole

schmevil (

schmevil) wrote in

scans_daily,
@ 2011-03-16 02:11 pm UTC

Entry tags:

char: aquaman/orin/arthur curry

King Aquababy is kind of an asshole

Absolute power corrupts even babies absolutely.

Aquapeople: just horrible.

Love the funeral wreath in the title. Classy.

Fire trolls. Avatars of comics fans? Hmm.

Oh, and then there's this Aquaman redesign by Katie Cook

This was part of a Project Rooftop series

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	no subject mad 2011-03-16 06:46 pm UTC (link)
	FIRE TROLLS I think Aquaman should always be written from the perspective that first and foremost, he is a jerk. Secondly, he is a friend to and cares about marine life. The rest will follow. (Reply to this) (Thread) (Hide 25 comments) (Show 25 comments)

	no subject schmevil 2011-03-16 06:56 pm UTC (link)
	There's just something about aquapeople. A natural and overwhelming assholery. (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent) (Thread) (Hide 23 comments) (Show 23 comments)

	no subject mad 2011-03-16 07:11 pm UTC (link)
	But what works is that a lot of the time it's totally justified. Like, surface-dwellers are total jerks to the ocean. I'd be pissed too. (This is also my theory about Jason Todd.) (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent) (Thread) (Hide 22 comments) (Show 22 comments)

	no subject valtyr 2011-03-16 07:17 pm UTC (link)
	This is also my theory about Jason Todd. He's pissed off about pollution? (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent) (Thread) (Hide 4 comments) (Show 4 comments)

	no subject schmevil 2011-03-16 07:19 pm UTC (link)
	He's actually the (Anarcho-Syndicalist)Red(Green) Hood. (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent)

	no subject mad 2011-03-16 07:26 pm UTC (link)
	LOL, no, that the reason why it's easy to cheer for him when he does things outside the usual bat-rules, like killing people and being a jerk, is because when you think about what he's been through, you can sympathize with him and cheer him on, even if you don't agree with him. (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent) (Thread) (Hide 2 comments) (Show 2 comments)

	no subject valtyr 2011-03-16 07:30 pm UTC (link)
	LOL, true enough. Like Magneto, too - it's hard to get too judgey when you see where he's coming from. (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent) (Thread) (Hide 1 comment) (Show 1 comment)

	no subject mad 2011-03-16 07:40 pm UTC (link)
	Pretty much. (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent)

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schmevil
2011-03-16 07:17 pm UTC (link)

No, I totally agree. (My cannibal mermaid novel got shelved due to lack of time, but I'll get back to it. It's very influenced by Namor and Aquaman stories--carnivorous mermaids organize to address humanity's ecological selfishness. Shockingly enough, they do so through violence). I'm surprised there aren't more 'eco-terrorist' characters.

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	no subject valtyr 2011-03-16 07:24 pm UTC (link)
	I'm surprised there aren't more 'eco-terrorist' characters. I SO WISH they had done more of this with Ultimate Thor. I LOVED that aspect of him. (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent) (Thread) (Hide 9 comments) (Show 9 comments)

	no subject schmevil 2011-03-16 07:27 pm UTC (link)
	My brother has decided that Ult Thor is the One True Thor. He's a hard drinking warrior with a mix of traditional and progressive attitudes, and godly in the sense of his being focused on the actual bigger picture. (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent) (Thread) (Hide 8 comments) (Show 8 comments)

	no subject valtyr 2011-03-16 07:35 pm UTC (link)
	I cracked the hell up when Thor was all "Not helping unless you double the foreign aid budget, boo." In Ultimate Six he's with the team just to hang out, or something, because Cap keeps saying "Thor, will you - " and he's "No." He was so original a take on Thor, I loved it. :/ (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent) (Thread) (Hide 7 comments) (Show 7 comments)

	no subject stubbleupdate 2011-03-16 09:51 pm UTC (link)
	What should the reading list for Ultimate Thor be? I;ve only read Ultimate Thor and Ultimate Secret (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent) (Thread) (Hide 6 comments) (Show 6 comments)

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valtyr
2011-03-16 10:20 pm UTC (link)

Hm, well. His intro is in Ultimates, of course, where they establish his character and he has several cool moments. He has a major storyline in Ultimates 2 including a big set-piece battle. He's a bit part in Ultimate Six, but a fun one. He's in the ensemble in Ultimate War, and fights Ultimate Storm. I don't recall him being in Ultimate Origins, Ultimate Gah Lak Tus, Ultimate Human or Ultimate Hulk vs Wolverine at all. He's in Ultimate Power, Ultimates 3 and Ultimatum, but Loeb... wrote him oddly. Almost as if he hadn't read any Ultimates and just pasted in 616 Thor. In New Ultimates Loeb appears to have noticed the massive OOCness, and the plot of the series is basically Fixing It Through Epic Retcon And Exposition. It's a very odd story. He's not in Ultimate Avengers. In Ultimate Avengers vs New Ultimates, old-style Thor appears to be back, with no reference to the Loeb shenanigans.

He briefly appears in Ult X-Men at a party - just a panel or two - and in Ult Fantastic Four he comes to Johnny Storm's birthday party, again just a panel or two. I haven't read much of Ultimate Spider-Man, but in #150 he tells a story of when Spider-Man helped him out, and it's suggested he mentor Spider-Man a bit, which I'm really hoping to see. That's all I recall off the top of my head.

Is Ultimate Thor good? I'm tradewaiting right now, and Ultimate Thor+Jonathan Hickman is making me all hopeful.

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	no subject stubbleupdate 2011-03-16 10:27 pm UTC (link)
	He's in Ultimate Secret. He does the "You, military industrial complex girl, bring us beer" to Danvers. Ultimate Thor is alright. It stretches itself quite thin by having three different timelines going on. There's some very good bits in there though. (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent) (Thread) (Hide 1 comment) (Show 1 comment)

	no subject valtyr 2011-03-16 10:37 pm UTC (link)
	Oh, of course. He and Tony escort the Fantasti-car to the Triskelion, too. Another bit part, then. (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent)

	no subject stubbleupdate 2011-03-16 10:42 pm UTC (link)
	Oh, Christ, I forgot Millar's President Thor stuff. That's horrible, and not just because of Land's art. Is Ultimate War an X-men storyline? Amazon suggests that it might be. (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent) (Thread) (Hide 1 comment) (Show 1 comment)

	no subject valtyr 2011-03-16 10:50 pm UTC (link)
	Oh man, I think I blocked that out! That was weird. Ultimate War is an X-Men/Ultimates crossover, pretty sure it was a mini. In the same vein, Ultimate Six is a Spider-Man crossover mini. (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent)

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valtyr
2011-03-16 10:24 pm UTC (link)

Oh, and don't touch the Ultimate Captain America mini. The only reasons to read that are a) you hate Ult Cap and want to see him written as a complete asshole* and then brutally abused b) you want to see lovingly drawn depictions of Cap in chains on his knees.

*How bad? Well, it's 'longing for the depth and complexity Mark Millar brings to the character' bad. No, really. That bad.

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	no subject mad 2011-03-16 07:27 pm UTC (link)
	Awesome. Well, there's Poison Ivy, and in some depcitions, R'as al Ghul. (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent) (Thread) (Hide 5 comments) (Show 5 comments)

	no subject schmevil 2011-03-16 07:29 pm UTC (link)
	Except they're usually portrayed as being Wrong. Valtyr brought up Ult Thor, who's an interesting counterpoint. (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent) (Thread) (Hide 4 comments) (Show 4 comments)

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mad
2011-03-16 07:40 pm UTC (link)

True, and that seems to be a trend with a lot of supervillains, actually. Give them a sympathetic cause/background to flesh them out and make you interested, but they're Still Wrong.

It's really amazing how conservatively themed Batman mythos is when you think about it.

Though sometimes a thoughtful writer will include something like "and then Bruce Wayne donated blah blah to this cause that helps in a less destructive way blah blah", but that can also be kinda sketchy.

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schmevil
2011-03-16 07:44 pm UTC (link)

Batman is a ridiculously conservative character (not in outlook necessarily, but in his basic makeup) that it kind of needs to be. If you're going to pit these people against a super-genius billionaire, anything more than a sympathetic reading is out of the question. Like, you can't actually have the socialist villain be right and capitalist Batman wrong. He's... Good King Batman, The Boss Who Cares.

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	no subject stubbleupdate 2011-03-16 09:03 pm UTC (link)
	We were discussing in our staffroom how Batman would be at the head of The Big Society if he was a) real and b) British. He's a private citizen who volunteers his time so that the government don't need to spend more on public services. Plus, he's a bajillionaire who beats up poor people (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent)

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psychopathicus_rex
2011-03-17 04:54 am UTC (link)

I'm reminded of the Bruce Wayne/Ivy meet-up in 'Batman and Robin', where she hands him a list of demands to make his companies more eco-friendly. Bruce looks them over and says that, while they'd work, they'd also be extremely unsafe and endanger his workers' lives; she says 'so what?' and things progress from there. (I mean, not that anything from 'BaR' should be put forward as a good example, but it does do a fair job of fleshing out their respective positions. I'd like to have seen just what was on those papers, though.)

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	no subject psychopathicus_rex 2011-03-17 04:47 am UTC (link)
	I would replace 'jerk' with 'very grumpy and territorial', but otherwise, yeah. (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent)

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