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

[icon_uk]

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

[baxter2814]

Errr...no not really. Most of them act like dicks, the general perception is irrational suspicion, and people or sections of the population who like them are usually exceptions to the rule. If anything, the above examples are the ones that are cherry-picked. Yes, there are some superheroes who don't get any flack, but civilians "in general" act like dicks towards the superhero community "in general". Of course the dickery is not universal, and fluctuates a lot depending on what the heroes have accomplished recently, but it's accepted in the MU, while it's considered extremist in the DCU.

[stolisomancer]

Yes, which is why Reed is able to support the Fantastic Four via licensing, merchandise, and cartoons; why Ben Grimm is a hero to the people of New York City and, as of Waid's run, a hip-hop icon; why Mayor Sadie Sinclair in San Francisco did everything short of human sacrifice to get a superhero team on her turf, and why the SFPD thinks nothing of calling in the X-Men as "consultants"; why Broxton, Oklahoma put together a canned-goods drive to help the people of Asgard after the siege; and why Tony Stark's Initiative program, which pledged to award powers to any individual who could prove worthy of them, had more applicants than it can count.

You're generalizing wildly in order to make a point about DC vs. Marvel, and you're flat-out, unequivocally wrong. Period.

[icon_uk]

That's a little harsh I think. The Fantastic Four's popularity in the midst of anti-mutant/anti-Spider-Man hysteria has been the cause of much fan debate for decades now, as it is a discontinuity that is pretty much glossed over (and even the FF's reputation suffered in Civil War when Johnny Storm was attacked by an enraged Mob).

The SHRA enforcement squads were called, without any apparent irony, "Cape-Killers", and confronted heroes as well as villains with equal force. The heroes WERE villains in their minds.

If there were a truly unified Marvel Universe then the samples that either side can pick in this discussion would marry up. As it stands, the writers emphasise whatever aspect best serves their narrative purposes, so no one is entirely right and no one is entirely wrong.

[baxter2814]

I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but I didn't say that at all. Of course the dichotomy between DC and Marvel is not that wide. The difference is perception. In Marvel, civilians don't think there's anything wrong with blaming superheroes, which often snowballs into assholery like this. In DC, the general public think superheroes are a good thing, and it takes great herodickery for them to lash out. I never said that Marvel civilians are always assholes — I said that the depth of their assholery is repugnant when it's on display in, as I said in my original comment "times like these".

Look at your example of the Fantastic Four — sure, the public likes them and supports them, but they also turn on them whenever something goes wrong. It's not a matter of "all Marvel civilians are assholes to superheroes, always", it's a matter of the fact that in the Marvel universe, it's okay to be an asshole to superheroes. It's like the difference between an era where racism isn't institutional, but common in society, versus an era where racism gets you instantly labeled a dick. Of course it's all about generalization.