The Redemption of Miriam Sharp? Fear Itself - The Homefront #2

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I found these uninked, unlettered pages from "Fear Itself - The Homefront" over at Mike Mayhew's CAF page and thought it'd be interesting to share them. Besides I LOVE seeing pencil art.

A new team of villains, who look like some sort of revamp of the Force of Nature, or at least some form of elemental loons (I don't recognise them, but that might be Whirlwind leading them, and one of them might be the Living Laser) arrive in Sanford and start laying waste to anyone who gets in their way. It's a rather blatant murder-fest, and given their powers, no one dies easy...

Robbie Baldwin, being the upstanding guy he is, switches to Speedball in front of Miriam Sharp and goes out to confront them. Given their powers include fire, ice, lightning bolts, lasers (Is that Living Laser?) and superspeed spinning, he does well against them, up to a point, but when they all attack at once...



Oh that's nice, some good Samaritans come to assist the exhausted hero who just saved their asses...

Oh wait, of course they're not, these guys are MU civilians, and so decide to take revenge on Speedball for the criminal act of Nitro... but I'd rather not go down that rant-laden path again on a Friday evening...

After some minor beating the crap out of him whilst he's down (I'm guessing he used up his power reserves fighting the bad guys) they decide to move on to the next step, a bit of lynching....

Now given Speedball's powers, ways to kill him aren't easy to come by, since most forms of assault require kinetic energy and his powers tend to trigger if enough energy to harm him comes into contact with him. Clearly though, these guys have been pondering how best to murder him should the chance arise, which is a deeply bloody disturbing thought.



Speaking personally, deliberate asphyxiation would be one of the most horrible ways to go I can imagine.... Looks like Robbie agrees.



Mr Generic Angry Faces 1 2 and 3 are enjoying themselves a little too much, and then....



Now I'm not a fan of the character for the most part, but damn if that ain't a badass way to make an entrance.

I'm hoping this is her coming to realise that Speedball is NOT the embodiment of all evil that she's been presuming him to be all along, and that trying to save strangers from being murdered is actually kind of a noble and admirable thing, especially since, in her own way, that's just what she's doing here herself!

Comments

[starwolf_oakley]

That's exactly how I equate this absolutely idiotic blame-game the MU civilians play with super heroes.

It's like Marvel took J. Jonah Jameson's hatred of Spider-Man and Bolivar Trask's creation of the Sentinels and decided to make it Standard Operating Procedure for the entire MU General Public.

Now, a distrust/dislike/blind hatred of Superheroes *can* work. People can envy superpowered people and how they are so irritating moral, or people can worry superheroes might subjugate those they protect.

[baxter2814]

Actually, the "irritatingly moral" idea feels like it would be an excellent explanation for a lot of canon civilian behavior. It's actually something pretty damn disturbing however, as it implies that people can't stand to be around other people who are actually decent and upstanding and selfless because it makes them feel bad about themselves. So instead of looking up to them as role models, they lash out at and demonize and try to tear them down. It's only one step below how Lex Luthor is with Superman, or Doctor Doom with Reed Richards.

It's also very similar to how real-life people who want their superheroes to be amoral assholes because it's "realistic", even though the genre is "superhero" not "superasshole" or even "superperson" (Relatable flaws =/= total jerkwad). Which I really find pretty uncomfortable too. I could understand it in the Silver Age, where all heroes were portrayed as Always Right no matter what, but now it just reeks of jealousy and resentment.

[arilou_skiff]

Or you can have them be portrayed both as amoral jerkasses and always right. Worst of both worlds!

[baxter2814]

This is exactly why I fume every time stupid DC writers wank about how awesome the Silver Age was. Have they actually read the Silver Age? So much fridge logic heroic fail there.