This look familiar...

[turtlefu]

So I was reading Gail Simone's Atom run for the first time, and a specific page reminded me of an incident in a recent Flashpoint miniseries.

Look familiar?

WARNING !!! GORE!! DO NOT CLICK IF BLOOD AND OTHER VIOLENT IMAGERY OFFENDS YOU!!

(From All-New Atom #5, by Gail Simone and Eddy Barrows)


(From Flashpoint: Legion of Doom #1, by Adam Glass and Rodyney Buchemi)


So, the question is: which one of these is acceptable? Are they both wrong? Why is one better than the other? Gail Simone's work is usually praised, especially her dark, violent Secret Six. Flashpoint: Legion of Doom was universally panned.

Thoughts?

Comments

[long_silence]

Well Dwarfstar is a supervillain we expect that kind of gory crap from him.

[darkknightjrk]

I think the Atom one is more effective/acceptable for a few reasons:

1. The Atom page doesn't show nearly as much. You have one panel of the guy holding his throat and then you have your bad guy (I'm pretty sure that isn't Ryan doing that) with some blood splatters. It actually gives you the illusion that it might actually be worse--so it succeeds at being less offensive and actually scarier at the same time.

2. Gail has a history of being able to do more than just gore. Now, that might not be fair to Mister Glass, but it's not like the that was the ONLY thing that was criticized about with his Legion of Doom mini.

3. Atom has a better logic to it. While the Atoms have had in the past the ability to hit people with their regular weight, they've always been portrayed as having the same weight as other small things. Plastic Man, however, while probably lighter due to his form, is kind-of harder to buy that he could slip into someone's stomach without the person noticing or dying immediately from it.

[starwolf_oakley]

Something like this was done in X-FACTOR, after Peter David's original run. Madrox was attacked by a particularly brutal villain, so Madrox stuck on fist in the villain's mouth, slammed the other fist on the ground, and the new duplicate exploded the villain from the inside out.

[an_idol_mind]

It seems that there is a niche for "super small or compressed superhero explodes from inside somebody."

I think my personal favorite is when the Punisher stole some Pym technology and did this trick to a bunch of gangsters. I think he had the best one-liner.

[proteus_lives]

That is a pretty cool way to off someone.

[kd_the_movie]

This actually , originally I believe, is a tactic that 3boot Brainiac 5 and Micro Lass (shinking violet in other continuities) used against a homicidal geomorph named Elysion. Brainy hurled a rock covered in dust at Elyision that he inhaled and Micro Lass burst out of his shoulder.

It was a badass scene.

[thehefner]

How's "neither" for an answer? Because I dislike seeing both in my superhero comics. There are certainly exceptions, but this is the sort of thing which I care less and less to see in stories. It's worthy of Mark Millar, and generally speaking, it's not for me. I don't even like it in Gail's work that much either.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Eh, personally, Gail does it better and uses it less. So her gore doesn't lose it's impact, and usually compliments the story.

Gail knows that less is more, and it shows.

[thormonger]

I haven't read the Atom series, but I did read the LOD mini, and the latter did seem to have a lot of gore-for-the-sake-of-gore that made it my least favorite of the Flashpoint tie-ins. If I had to base on the context of the two panels here, though, Dwarfstar's an established villain, whereas Plastic Man is supposed to be a hero. Granted, Flashpoint was all about making everyone anti-heroes at best, and more like monsters, but it was still jarring to see a character who's normally comic relief being so brutally violent.

[bluestar86]

Neither? Maybe it's just me being weird, but I don't want to read comics about grown men exploding out of the heads and faces of other grown men. This isn't Greek myth, but it was weird then, it's weird now.