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

[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.

[icon_uk]

I never said she couldn't talk. And look, even in the examples you post, she's not talking whilst dealing with civilians; she speaks to Steph (a close friend), Barbara (a close friend) and.. what appears to be V from V for Vendetta. She's certainly not as verbal as your average Robin or other Batgirls have been.

[runespoor]

You said "lack of talking".

I posted these because they were already in my "Cass is the MOPIEST" debunking file and I really don't have the time to go hunting for more examples. They exist, though: Cass telling people they made a bad choice, but they can change (I think that was drawn by Noto, as well, in the Batgirl Secret Files & Origins?), for instance.

[icon_uk]

"Lack" doesn't mean "complete absence"

[mrstatham]

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

[icon_uk]

She's not only quiet when she's being quiet and menacing though, she's quiet when she's pulling people out of burning buildings, rescuing kittens and being hugged by grateful citizens. To the public who have met her, she appears to not show ANY emotion, regardless of circumstances.

And people probably would call Bruce mopey if he weren't 6'43 and built like a brick outhouse. His ability to sulk... sorry, I mean "ponder meaningfully", is practically a byword.

[mrstatham]

Quiet is quiet. Again, it's been pointed out that Cass *does* speak. I haven't read the old trades in a while, but she definitely speaks intermittently, even before the brain-rearranging wamma-jamma. That's quiet. That's NOT mopey, which correlates more to a 'woe is me', terrible emo kind of character. Cass isn't mopey. So it just comes across as an attempt to big up Babs' role as Batgirl, which is unnecessary.

[icon_uk]

She speaks rarely, often in monosyllables, and can go through entire situations where the average person would have more adrenaline flooding through them an Olympic sprint meet combined, without apparently showing any emotion whatsoever. Especially when surrounded by probably gabbling civilians, I can see her being perceived as mopey quite easily. She seems to take no pleasure or joy in saving lives (and if she does who could easily tell through that mask)

Please note, I'm not saying that she IS, I'm saying that's how she would be perceived by the public like they guy who calls her that.

[mrstatham]

Again, I can see what you're saying. But 'silent' doesn't equal 'mopey', to me. It's like saying that Schwarzenneger's monosyllabic Terminator in T2 is mopey because his expression barely changes and he says very little in the first half an hour. If they had said it's not that 'grim' one or just the 'quiet' one, that'd fit her better; Grim suggests more about her appearance. Quiet suggests more about her attitude.

But again, it's still an incredibly poor characters summation from Simone, and one that makes me question exactly why people think her getting ahold of Cass or Steph would be a good thing.

[jlbarnett]

I wouldn't be surprised if many think that. Or at least something like morose.

[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.