Wanted!

[Trencher]

Re: Wanted!

 

Plausiblity is very subjective. I find bullets killing people to be more plausible than less.

I would hope so. But thing is, if Killer can shoot them why have not anybody done so before? Why did superheroes and villains develop in a world where guns work? Sure Killer is really good and can kill a lot, but a couple of guys with Uzis could do the same. It’s a joke.

As for your take on genres I wholeheartedly disagree. Thats where the crux of our argument is coming from.

Actually no, I mentioned genre as back ground for the problem. No problem though. I agree that genre conventions or anything else does not need to be explained in stories. (If the stories are good that is)

But on the same hand there has to be allowed to say that this is just dumb.

As is the story (because of its lack of genre conventions, actual action and overall overuse of clichés) is just plain crud.

It's all building up without delivering.

I compare it with the Blade 3 movie.

[psm]

Re: Wanted!

 

But thing is' date=' if Killer can shoot them why have not anybody done so before? Why did superheroes and villains develop in a world where guns work? Sure Killer is really good and can kill a lot, but a couple of guys with Uzis could do the same. [/quote']

 

Because there would be no story. Thats why I'm having such a tough time with your logic. You can accept that superheroes/supervillians are okay. Yet you have problem accepting that they're not bulletproof. I don't understand why you can't just accept both those ideas? Honestly, if you can accept that Lois didn't know Clark Kent was Superman for 50 yrs this should be easy.

[Trencher]

Re: Wanted!

 

Because there would be no story. Thats why I'm having such a tough time with your logic. You can accept that superheroes/supervillians are okay. Yet you have problem accepting that they're not bulletproof. I don't understand why you can't just accept both those ideas?

It must be either or. Either guns work and there are no costumes or guns don't work and there are.

Honestly, if you can accept that Lois didn't know Clark Kent was Superman for 50 yrs this should be easy.

That is a charming left over from the time Superman was the only superhero. Nobody would belive that he would walk around normals and try to have a normal life.

[psm]

Re: Wanted!

 

It must be either or. Either guns work and there are no costumes or guns don't work and there are.

 

Well, we've have hit the end of our conversation. I don't see why it has to be an either or situation especially with the silliness and lack of logic inherent in super hero genre. And no I'm not asking for an explanation either. I think it would be best to just admit that we won't see eye to eye on this. Until next time Trencher have a good one.

[Powerhouse]

Re: Wanted!

 

Sometimes the bad guys have to win that is the only way to make things interesting. If we could walk in into every movie or open every book knowing that the heroes would win then that would be boring.

 

I would respectfully disagree. I remember that someone complained to the author RA Salvatore since in his books, good always wins over evil. He replied that it wasn't a cliche but a philosophy.

 

That's my philosophy: good wins over evil. It may not be today, and it may come at great cost, but it *will* happen. Those are the stories that I want to read and watch.

 

I agree that the story was morally bankrupt but not because the heroes loses but because it’s so whiny and holier than thou. It is like listing to a kid who discovered that if he rips of the wings of flies when no ones is watching he is going to get away with it and that makes him think he is the smartest in the world.

 

I will agree with that. He thinks he's so great but it's only because he has this privleged status. He didn't really earn it but inherit it. It's like scions of

rich families who think they are so much better when in reality they are just lucky.

 

Call it cliched but I wanted an ending where the killer realized the path he had taken and to repent, set about freeing the super heroes and restoring the world to a better place. He didn't and that sinks the whole story for me.

 

Oh man! That would have made the story even worse! atleast now he stayed in character.

There is no way he would ever be able to repent.

 

Redemption should always be a possibility. It's seldom easy but it is possible. Indeed, some of the most powerful stories are those who walked in evil, drenched to their elbow, yet turn to a light and now they must redeem themselves even though it seems as if the pitch can never leave their souls. Killer has a soul that is capable of compassion: it had to be "cleansed" of that weakness to become the new killer but he can relearn it again and try to rejoin the human race. He can be forgiven.

 

Consider the Kingpin: he was an evil man who could have possibly been redeemed by the love of his wife. He even managed to knock out the people who had kidnapped her and was joyous in that he has done it without killing anyone (at that point of the story anyway) yet she seemed to have died before his eyes and he became the kingpin of old.

 

Consider Magneto: under Claremont, he became the mentor of the Xmen for a time and tried to live Xavier's dream. He walked that path for a time and perhaps could have forever except for editorial control that decided that they needed Magneto as the bad guy.

 

Even Dr Doom can do the right thing as when he risked his life to protect his people. Did he become a saint? Sadly no, but there was a spark of nobility and good even in his dark soul.

[NoahBody]

Re: Wanted!

 

I read 'Wanted' recently as well, and I liked it, then got to the last to pages and loved it. But then my favorite scene in any Hitchcock movie was the part in 'Rear Window' when Jimmy Stewart's girlfriend says "look at us, we're all heartbroken because nobody was killed," so YMMV.

 

Anyway, my take on The Killer's powers were that not only was he supernaturally accurate, but that he could Suppress or Dispel his target's defenses. Except for Sh*thead, who obviously had some Power Defense paid for by his Susceptibility to household cleaners. If you ever read Stormwatch, there is a character named Rose Tatoo who is the spirit of murder - The Killer is her, but with a Y chromosome. And dialogue.

[Crackerjacker]

Re: Wanted!

 

Wesley's ability to kill is almost supernatural and seems to be a genetic superpower inherited from his father. His father may have been a normal assassin at first who acheived greatness, but what he passed on to his son is very much a superpower.

 

I thought they made it perfectly clear, especially in their raid to the more four color dimension, that everyone was freaked out by his abilit to just blow holes in men of steel. He's a highclass superhuman, very powerful. Don't judge his abilities with guns as something anyone could do.

[Big Willy]

Re: Wanted!

 

Now that the heat has died down in this dispute, I think at least we can all agree on one thing: it's a promising setting for a campaign.

 

Run it "dark", in the style of the original, and you can have a bloody, morally-repugnant game of ruthless power struggles and mafia politicking - the Godfather with superpowers.

 

Run it in a more conventionally heroic mode, and you can have a Star Wars / Robin Hood style struggle against the forces of corrupt authority, with a Magey subtext about freeing people's minds, in a world that can eventually be redeemed but has enough bad **** in it to keep the PCs occupied for years...

[RDU Neil]

Re: Wanted!

 

Currently in an on & off again Necessary Evil campaign... I'd be interested in seeing how a "Wanted" campaign came out. (For my money, Millar is a total sh*theel with a massive chip on his shoulder and couldn't really write his way out of a wet paperbag... but that is neither here nor there.) The "cooperation vs. backstabbing" bit is what I'm interested in.

 

In Necessary Evil you play villains in a world where 95% of the supers were killed in a well executed alien invasion. The aliens have taken over, exterminating supers... you are part of a resistance cell. What I see is that the attitudes of not-so-nice people don't make for good team work. Apathy, cruelty, insanity, zero-compulsion control, viciousness, etc. All of this with the ego that comes from being superpowered. It is really cool role playing, but it is hard... even when there are good reasons... to keep the team from each other's throats... let alone simply staying together.

 

Then... when some characters start to cooperate and accomplish something... it no longer feels like villains. It is a very difficult thing to play and have work. We'll see where Necessary Evil goes...but I would be interested in hearing about anyone trying Wanted or such.

[casualplayer]

Re: Wanted!

 

This series started out promising, even with Millar writing it, and turned into a wankfest. The ending should get Millar a beating. The set-up, with the original Killer, was detailed in ways that only actual occurances should be drawn in comics. If we can't have some way of telling whether we are witnessing a "real" event or just being fed some bullcrap, then we might as well start watching daytime soaps instead of reading comics. I picked up #1-4, #4 with a feeling of dread, and read the last two in the store, #6 justifying my unease.

 

I have no problem with Killer Jr. being able to put holes in supers; that's an easy power build. What I have to wonder about is why the villains didn't just nuke him from orbit, or at least out of firing range. Hit him with a Denny's or an armored truck from the stratosphere! It was established that "by any means necessary" was ingrained into these scum; why risk the crosshairs? They had worlds to play with, dimensions even, who would miss the city the Killer happened to be in when the hammer dropped? Dumb, cruel, misogynist writing-the Millarverse.

[Trencher]

Re: Wanted!

 

I got to admit that I never thought in the lines of the killer having the power to dispel other supers armour.

The reason was because he just shot ordinary people the same way, so it looked similar.

 

As for it being a campaign idea, the problem I can see is how do you challenge characters who already control the world?

[Big Willy]

Re: Wanted!

 

Of all the criticisms that can be levelled at this series - some of them valid, at least from certain points of view - this is by far the weakest:

The set-up' date=' with the original Killer, was detailed in ways that only actual occurances should be drawn in comics. If we can't have some way of telling whether we are witnessing a "real" event or just being fed some bullcrap, then we might as well start watching daytime soaps instead of reading comics. [/quote']

Come OFF IT! Are you really so afraid of the unexpected that you need to be told, straight off the bat: "Don't worry, readers! The Killer ain't really dead! And wait'll you see what happens when he and Wesley meet in our fabulous fifth issue!"

[Big Willy]

Re: Wanted!

 

As for it being a campaign idea, the problem I can see is how do you challenge characters who already control the world?

 

Me, I'd start small: forget about the top table villains to begin with. Way, way down the food chain you've got all sorts of lesser types and mooks cleaning up after them - bribing, coercing and mindwiping compliance from the media, the government, the cops etc. It's a dirty world, but so's the Question's Hub City or the Gotham of Batman Begins.

 

Set up the PCs as cogs that don't quite fit the machine: the single honest cop, reporter, lawyer, whatever... Perhaps a legacy character or two... The conspiracy theorist, the old inventor who still has a few toys in the basement he's kept locked since his son got killed...

 

It's not going to look like JLU straight out of the gate, but there's potential there.

[casualplayer]

Re: Wanted!

 

Of all the criticisms that can be levelled at this series - some of them valid, at least from certain points of view - this is by far the weakest:

 

Come OFF IT! Are you really so afraid of the unexpected that you need to be told, straight off the bat: "Don't worry, readers! The Killer ain't really dead! And wait'll you see what happens when he and Wesley meet in our fabulous fifth issue!"

 

If you're ok with "make-it-never-was" resolutions to the story, any story, then have at. They aren't hard to find. Every library in the country has a children's section.

 

If the original Killer's death had been reported by Fox or the Professor, if it was hearsay and not a witnessed event, then no problem. Standard literary tactic, but this was a cheat. A beautifully illustrated cheat, but a cheat. Not worth my coin and far too common in Millar's writing.

 

If I walk up to you and say "Your dad is dead" and then later I say "No, he isn't," should you be grateful or angry? I chose angry, you chose grateful.

[Trencher]

Re: Wanted!

 

Set up the PCs as cogs that don't quite fit the machine: the single honest cop, reporter, lawyer,

 

Okay I understand now, thought you wanted to play it out with the Pc's as the main characters in the comic. All evil and stuff

[Big Willy]

Re: Wanted!

 

That's okay, I misunderstood your question as well. Thought you were asking from the PCs' perspective, and were being a little defeatist. No harm done.

 

As I intimated, though, if you and your players were fans of Goodfellas, the Sopranos and Bendis' Daredevil, and your roleplaying tastes and talents ran to that sort of bickering and intrigue, you could play the villains - after all, people play Vampire, which is a similar sort of setting in many ways. Even then, though, there's probably more mileage in a game set further down the pecking order than among the Council of Five and their immediate hangers-on.

[Big Willy]

Re: Wanted!

 

If you're ok with "make-it-never-was" resolutions to the story, any story, then have at. They aren't hard to find. Every library in the country has a children's section.

 

If the original Killer's death had been reported by Fox or the Professor, if it was hearsay and not a witnessed event, then no problem. Standard literary tactic, but this was a cheat. A beautifully illustrated cheat, but a cheat. Not worth my coin and far too common in Millar's writing.

 

If I walk up to you and say "Your dad is dead" and then later I say "No, he isn't," should you be grateful or angry? I chose angry, you chose grateful.

 

But it was hearsay. You get a few pages of action, and then there's two villains at the funeral and one's saying "That's the way I heard it, anyhow" (or words to that effect).

[Trencher]

Re: Wanted!

 

As I intimated, though, if you and your players were fans of Goodfellas, the Sopranos and Bendis' Daredevil, and your roleplaying tastes and talents ran to that sort of bickering and intrigue, you could play the villains -

Problem would be getting a GM for it. The world looks like the "problem players" dream come true.

 

It reminds me of a superherogame run by the knight of the dinnertable group.

"Are you sure you want to kill all the people in the police station Bob?"

 

"Hell yeah! They did not make a path! I waste them with my Colt45!"

[Big Willy]

Re: Wanted!

 

Too true. I am remembering THAT VERY PANEL from Wanted itself...