More Public Opinions from Comicbook Universes

[espanolbot]

Inspired by this post I've decided to post some more comments from the general public in various comicboook universes to see how much of a difference there is between them.

I mean, we all know the standard Marvel reaction to any superhero or supersituation that they come across...


...and whether they are throwing hotdogs or some similar wet object of the same shape depends on who is writing. But how do other universes fare?

Just to note: these aren't the defining comments of each universe or series, just ones that I thought were interesting or funny.

First up, the Hellboy-BPRD Universe, specifically the Hell on Earth storyline, where after several Lovecraftian beasties have made large attacks on highly populated areas both in the US and abroad, the UN decides to fund the organisation as they're the aforemost authority when it comes to gigantic wiggly things that turn people into smaller wiggley things.


Heh heh heh, it's funny because the BPRD fought the Nazis (and collaborated with the Soviets when necessary)!

Over to Birds of Prey, when a man who was saved by a redheaded girl in a batgirl costume gives an account of the rescue to the police,



Hm, so both Babara and Misfit have epic boobs then apparently? Also, ew for that apparently being the only way the cop can think of to describe her and the other guy apparently thinking that it was accurate. Oh, and Misfit? Your time if coming in my next Cringeworthy Comics Moments entry!

A moment from Batgirl, where Steph (who, unlike Charlie can be happy and quippy without being thoroughly irritating) encounters a reaction she's never gotten from superheroing before, and also Nell, the now retconned Batgirl of the Future!



They did turn against her briefly in a future issue, but that pretty much seemed to be temporary thing, and I think that the GCPD even apologised to her over the misunderstanding.


And the final moment from the old DCU for now, from Bruce Wayne: Murderer, which shows that people in Gotham actually kind of liked Bruce Wayne, before the whole Occupy Gotham thing that happened recently anyways.

Oh, and the term Deezee is short for deserter, and was used to describe people who fled Gotham before No Man's Land and came back once the city was opened up again and jobs became avaliable. The first guy is being kind of unfair, because 1. Bruce lives outside of Gotham City most of the time, and 2. he campaigned in Congress to stop NML from happening, campaigned to end it and spent billions to rebuild the city after Lex Luthor effectively ended NML through sheer force of money. Either way he's coming off as a massive dick.


And finally, the Wildstorm perspective of superheroes, from Captain Atom: Armageddon, where Captain Atom gets teleported to the Wildstorm Universe after getting blown up in Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, and then proceeds to blow up the Wildstorm Universe in order to reboot it.

Comments

[mrstatham]

Ah.. More reasons to hate Misfit. It feels like I'm usually the sole voice of dissent when it comes to disliking Simone, but I still feel like Misfit was one of the most dunderheaded character choices of all time, frankly; They're a covert operative team of kickass women who frequently run afoul of villains like Deathstroke, Talia, and the Secret Society. One of their associates was tortured pretty brutally at the hands of the latter. And they thought it was a good idea to let a fifteen year old or whatever onto the team?

I also loathed how Simone bigged her up here by describing Cass as the 'mopey' one. How would anyone even KNOW Cass' personality? She kicks the shit out of stuff and leaves. That's it.

[espanolbot]

Gail Simone I have no problem with, it's just Misfit I positively LOATHE.

[mrstatham]

I think Misfit's just an awful character. And whilst I'm not going to rag on Gail unreasonably, putting Misfit on the team in the first place is just an awful, awful decision, given what the Birds are meant to be.

[stubbleupdate]

What's wrong with Misfit?

[espanolbot]

What's right with Misfit?

How can I put it tactfully...

I fully believe that she burnt her mother and sibling to death through her own incompetance, but claims that it was a random housefire just to get sympathy.

[big_daddy_d]

Wait. What?

[espanolbot]

She has a habit of accidentally hurting or killing people through either basic common sense or lack of people skills.

Such as her causing an entire city block in Metropolis to get exploded, causing Superman to evict the team from the city.

Or her starting a fight with Black Alice, a power meta who was on medication to control her violent moodswings and was making a determined effort to NOT be a supervillain, because she saw Barbara as HER mentor and any other teen superhumans hogging her time are obviously trying to steal Babs away from her. Charlie's shouting and physically pushing Alice around caused her to go on a relapse that kept going for the rest of the DCU, up through Secret Six and up to the reboot.

Or her deciding to kick Barbara in the face, out of her chair, on the basis that "superheroes fight, and then become friends!".

I get that she doesn't MEAN to leave a wake of destruction behind her, but she seemed to also lack the basic selfawareness required to stop too.

She said she couldn't save her family from a burning apartment building. Fine, they established she couldn't teleport living things without exploding, that I can except...

But all she does is stare up at her family burning to death from the street below. Look, if you can't save them, call the fire department, and grab a fire blanket, bucket of water, or a fire extinguisher or something, and fight for time until someone comes along who can actually DO thing bloody useful!

[stubbleupdate]

Based on the evidence of...

[perletwo]

All Misfit moments are Cringeworthy Moments, if you ask me. Not a big fan of Black Alice either, so putting the two of them head-to-head in a storyline was like someone with eleven fingers scratching a chalkboard.

[espanolbot]

Black Alice I can stand, it's Charlie's entitlement complex that bugs the heck out of me. Like the time her response to Black Alice, who was on medication to control her anger issues and was actually making a determined effort to be good, joining the team was to scream, sulk and physically start pushing Alice around until she snapped...

...Or her unpleasant behaviour to Steph when the two met...

...Her attempt to play the "superheroes fight and then become friends" cliche by kicking Barbara Gordon in the face and out of her wheelchair. Yes, Babs can take care of herself, but she doesn't have SUPERPOWERS.

...The time she caused a magic robot to explode, effectively killing an entire city block and getting Superman to boot the BoP out of Metropolis as a result...

I get that she was probably meant to be a parody of the insert Mary Sues in fan fiction... But even her tragic backstory didn't make me stop hating her.

I mean, tragic backstories can be good if done right, I just read the new Batman Beyond trade that had Inque's origin story in it, which showed that there was more to her than her being a female Clayface who drowns people with herself...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ksa_VPodygI

The new backstory made her actions less mercenary and made her more sympathetic. But Charlie's backstory just seems like she made it up to emotionally blackmail Babs into taking her in.

[icon_uk]

Black Alice will never work for me whilst her powers are random. She doesn't mimic other powers, she removes them from someone who might be needing them at that moment, to save lives, stay aloft if flying or even just stay alive. Every time she uses her powers she's risking a person's life, possibly more than one person.

[protogarrett]

I have issues with the whole teen thing sometimes as well. Or even younger. Take the early issues of Power Pack where they fought the Reavers. Cyborgs with guns vs. superpowered children, the youngest being 4!

WTF?

[espanolbot]

In Young Justice Robin has apparently been a superhero since he was nine... which I guess makes sense since he's the most experienced out of the group (even M'Gann, who is 16 in Martian years but 60-something in Earth ones).

Still kind of make the Light's "child soldiers" comment from the series opener oddly apt.

[icon_uk]

Katie was 5 when she got her powers, a very intelligent 5, but your point is well taken.

[q99]

Super Stupor on the subject

[jlbarnett]

all black costume, stitched up mouth, I believe she also perches on gargoyles although I don;t know if people would know that.,

As for whether Misfit belonged on the team. Dinah grew up surrounded by superheroes. Barbara started at fifteen or sixteen. 15 years old makes her nearly the same age as Dick when he led the Teen Titans, Tim, Steph.

It's a common superhero age, and Misfit has the bonus of powers. I mean hell, if Jason Todd has Misfit's powers he could have survived in the original story. He was semi- conscious, bounce outside and heal up then bounce back in and drag his mom out.

It's perfectly logical to have her on the team

[mrstatham]

It may be a common superhero age, but nearly every hero you list had a completely different temperament than Misfit. Even Jason Todd, for the most part, acted differently than Charlie, and Dick, Babs, Tim's and Steph's attitude to the work was all much better than how Charlie acted. She was a childish brat who basically stalked the Birds and then badgered them to be able to join, treated it like a game, lied about her past and was still welcomed in with open arms. Misfit was just obnoxious.

[runespoor]

Believe me, you are not the only one who greatly dislikes the vast majority of Gail Simone's writing.

Those pages about "the real Batgirl"? I don't care what Simone's intent was in writing them, it's a terrible riff on a terrible stand.

(My issues with the description of Cass' personality is how wrong it is. Seriously, open any issue of her series before Steph's death, and you'll be hard-pressed to find even one where she's not smiling/grinning/giggling. And I don't care if Simone wrote that to prove the character didn't know what he was talking about - it's still a terrible riff on a terrible and common stand at DC.)

[icon_uk]

But the chap doing the talking will never have seen Cass with her mask off. All they know is that she's the one who never talks, or expresses any visible emotion.

[runespoor]

But we can see Cass' smile through her mask.

[icon_uk]

We only know that because we know she smiles WITHOUT the ask and are aware of the reason she doesn't speak. To a member of the public the wrinkled leather mask is more or less completely unreadable and her lack of talking is just unsettling.

[runespoor]

She does speak. Very little, sure. But she does speak.

[mrstatham]

That still doesn't correlate to 'mopey'. Quiet and menacing, yes, but mopey? You might as well say Bruce is 'mopey'.

[jaybee3]

I'm reminded of the fact that when Bryan Miller was doing interviews early on pushing his Steph!Girl book he commented basically that Steph was a more open character and her costume reflected instead of Cass!Girl where she seemed emotionless and you can never tell how she was feeling behind the mask. Which is so wrong on so many levels and something anyone who had ever read either Damion Scott or Ale Garza's artwork (and how many expressions you could see Cass making with her mask on) on the Batgirl title would ever say.

I know Gail has expressed that she got Cass wrong the 1st time she appeared in BoP, Adam Beechan SAID he read some of the Puckett/Scott run but his work showed no evidence of it, Beechan's editors (Tomasi & Berganza) apparently told him his original reasons for Cass going EV-IL (before the Deathstroke retcon) made perfect sense for the character and Bryan Miller's reluctance to use her even when she was freed by Editorial (post-Red Robin) even in Steph's "future" where apparently she's pals with Supergirl and Miss Martian but her former BFF Cass is still non-existent - all that seems to show that no matter how much love Cass has received from her fanbase/readers, people working within the Bat-Offices themselves STILL seem very uncomfortable and unfamiliar with the character.

[jaybee3]

My biggest problem was the description of Cass as well. I don't think anyone - especially a civilian - would call her "mopey". Civilians would have barely enough to see her to gauge a personality - she does her thing and splits. Even most of the super-hero community didn't know her well or what to make of her. And one would think Cass as Batgirl would be popular with a certain segment of the Gotham university - I can just imagine video of her in-action would make the younger crowd be in awe (as Hit-Girl did in the Kick-Ass movie).

My main problem with Misfit is that she really wasn't a Gotham character (she has super-powers and is frequently used them) and really shouldn't have been a recurring character. Gail should have used/introduced her like she did Black Alice (another character who became ridiculously overpowered). One issue and she's out and can be used in other sections of the DCU - where she would fit in better.