Secret Origins: Aaron Stack!

[apexpredator]

Also a few more from the critically acclaimed (Okay, by me...) Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E by Warren Ellis.



And since context is still for the weak...




This is how the world ends. With awesomeness. Also, to top it all off? Warren Ellis replied to me when I was raving on Twitter earlier about it.

And I quote..."‏ @warrenellis@ApexPredatorKM No. #NEXTWAVE will fill your spirit with light. And a little pus. But mostly light."

And by Darkseid, there's nothing more right than that.

Comments

[salinea]

fuck yeah.

[owesome]

Nextwave: Agents of Hate is too, too fine a comic for this world.

[shadur]

One of the few good things to come out of Dark Reign was Aaron Stack retaining the personality Warren Ellis gave him in Nextwave.

[pallas_athena]

I love Nextwave so much.

[lilacsigil]

NEXTWAVE! Too good for us fleshy ones, should only be read by robots.

[dr_archeville]

I have never understood the appeal of this series, or the changes they did to the characters. Is there any way this can be explained, or is it just something you "get" (and if you don't get it right off, you never will)?

[jkcarrier]

Pretty much...either you're into Ellis' particular brand of snarky humor, or you're not. As for the changes, I'd say he took a bunch of mostly generic, forgettable characters and gave them some personality...NextWave was the first and last time Monica Rambeau has been remotely interesting.

[brooms]

didn't it also come out while really serious and not-fun stuff was happening in the whole MU (civil war)?

it could have been sort of a well-timed reprieve.

[dr_archeville]

It was that, and I will give Ellis credit for trying to inject more light-hearted fun into the MU. It just wasn't the type of light-hearted fun I, personally, enjoyed.

[dr_archeville]

Yeah, those are my problems -- I'm not a huge fan of snark (at least, not of snark in such large quantities), and I thought Machine Man and Monica Rambeau were both fine characters before this. The whole thing seemed like a pointless reboot catering to fans of snarky anti-heroes and Michael Bay-esque mindless, over-the-top explosive action.

[jkcarrier]

I wouldn't call it a reboot, just looking at the characters from a slightly skewed perspective. Even Kirby's Machine Man was pretty sardonic and alienated:




I don't think it's a huge leap from that to "Bite my valve, fleshy one."

[halloweenjack]

I fuckin' love that last scan, have ever since the comic came out, and it still kills me a little inside that Kirby's original run only lasted eight issues.

[mrstatham]

At the end of the day, Nextwave was a distinct deviation from the formula that Ellis developed with Stormwatch and the Authority, which was a mature, intelligent approach to superheroes, lethal force and the like. Nextwave merely simplified the superhero comic down to it's most basic, basic form; There's a vague semblance of a plot, but generally, it's about heroes hitting increasingly ridiculous stuff with little to no explanation and snappy quips. It's a total distillation of the superhero comic.

As for the changes to established characters - Ellis never wanted it in continuity anyway - it was meant to be a maxi-series bit of fun. Marvel insisted on taking the characterisations he came up with and inserting those back into the MU, despite Nextwave never being properly referenced.

[jkcarrier]

To me, the difference between The Authority and NextWave is like the difference between Watchmen and 1963. The former is the author going, "Superheroes as a concept are pretty fascist, and we should maybe examine that a little bit", and the latter is "Oh God, you thought I meant that all superheroes should be like that all the time? Hell no, how boring would that be?"

[mrstatham]

Absolutely. Absolutely. By the time Ellis did Nextwave, the more mature formula he'd developed had basically been perverted into the childish bullshit traditionally peddled by Miller - again, Nextwave was done in the midst of Civil War, which is perhaps the most pretentious attempt to mix real world politics, a mature tone, and superheroes, and the execution was garbage. So Ellis naturally had his fun exploring his concept with the Authority, but by the time he got to Nextwave, yeah, why not have some fun?

[icon_uk]

Have to demur on Moncia, she was interesting when she was a member of, and for a time leading, the Avengers. IMHO of course.

[viridian5]

I really liked her in the '80s Avengers. Heck, I really liked and miss the writing on The Avengers in the '80s.

[deleonjh]

So did you like Switchblade Honey? Because I didn't even understand which parts were supposed to be the jokes.

[jkcarrier]

Haven't read that one.

[icon_uk]

It's the sort of thing I quite like in small doses, provided it's not happening to characters whose original iterations I was fond of. (A reason I never warmed to the much lauded "Bwah-ha-ha!" Justice League, I LIKED the original take on Blue Beetle)

[brooms]

a few more from the critically acclaimed (Okay, by me...)

wait, was it not critically acclaimed? it was one of the first comic i ever read. i think it was the fourth, actually. it was quite a hit at the LJ version of scans_daily, so i picked it up.

at the time, i was only reading annihilation, ultimate fantastic four and daredevil.

[mrstatham]

No, I think it was quite well received once reviewers got the idea it wasn't and couldn't be taken seriously at all. But then, Nextwave is kind-of Marmite-y.

[md84]

I kind of wonder just what exactly Aaron's creator was smoking when he programmed him.

[jlroberson]

Sativa.

[icon_uk]

I find myself distracted trying to work out what the five letter obscenity is, most of the ones I can think of are four letters, or if they are five, don't fit gramamatically into the sentences as used.

[pyynk]

I like to think of it as a "Choose Your Own Adventure" style sentence. It's just that rather than an adventure, you get to pick your own profanity.

[icon_uk]

Oh, I have no problem with that part of it, it's that there are five characters in all the replacements, and my data processing type mind tends to want to replace them with five letter words, and more often than not, I can't think of one that fits, and my knowledge of obscenities is fairly good (Though I don't use many myself)

[pyynk]

I've got a couple though I admit they would cause the average Scrabble player to throw up their hands and ask if I was ACTUALLY going to play that garbage.

[leikomgwtfbbq]

Mad libs with cusswords!

I'd totally buy a book like that.

[halloweenjack]

It's an untranslatable Celestial dirty word that carbon-based lifeforms can't handle.

[auggie18]

Shite? I mean, that's what I thought. It's a localized spelling/pronunciation, but it was the only thing I think might fit.

[kenwyn89]

You know I was trying to think of where I'd seen a koala recently and realised it was on Have I Got News for You (Brit panel show)... where they were explaining the boy band One Direction had been with one when it, erm, relieved themselves on one of the boys. You really don't need me to tell you what I'm imagining with the head chomping right now.

[icon_uk]

Don't let the cuddly looks fool you, koala's really are unpleasant, vicious little buggers.

[majingojira]

They also have a FOUL odor about them.

[kenwyn89]

Which makes me laugh even more that they gave them to One Direction :P

[halloweenjack]

I'm not sure whether "Unravel that puzzle and I'll dance to your tune!" or "Lick my blinky diodes" is my favorite dialogue of the day. Fuck it, I'll take 'em both.

[jlroberson]

Sigh.