Aquaman, Hawkman, Ant-Man - how would you run them?

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Aquaman, Hawkman, Ant-Man - how would you run them?

 

You know that issue of Generation X where Wolverine spars with that kid who could stretch his skin (his codename was Skin! How cool is that?). And Wolverine says that Mr. Almost-as-Versatile-as-Bouncing-Boy is super-powerful?

Since, I have come to know this thing called a Mary Sue. The various versions of the new Aquaman represent a bit of Mary Sueism. This new picture of Hawkman is Mary Sue x Skin to the eleventy-seventh power.

He`s a guy with an anti-gravity harness and a mace. He bonks the Gentleman Ghost on the head. You could do it on 150 points, and save the rest for his spaceship. The only reason he`s tough to model at all is this talks-to-birds thing.

 

And as for Aquaman being a brick, give it a rest. Everyone was a brick in the Golden Age, even people with no superpowers at all occasionally threw cars around, because the writers would borrow a Superman (or Submariner) plot for an Atom story.

Aquaman is a guy who breathes water and talks to fishes. You have to pretty much forget what it is like being 6 to think that that is not cool at its own level, and it is more than enough for a perfectly satisfactory action hero.* (Amphibian, in Vibora Bay, does this just fine, but if you want to amp the character up, an area effect telekinesis with variable special effects (only fishy stuff) and advantages, plus a Power Skill roll would do it just fine. Hawkman just needs a more general version of Ravenspeaker`s raven-based clairvoyance.

 

*Just not a JLAer. Both Hawkman and Aquaman would get a charter membership in any superteam actually interested in fighting crime because of their awesome surveillance powers. Except the JLA, because Superman probably had Super-Listening-to- Birds, and the Martian Manhunter had Martian-Listening-to-Birds, and Flash could eavesdrop on every conversation on Earth and never even be seen leaving his chair --except when he forgot to mention it when the time came to figure a plan for beating Amazo.

(Hint: Superman flys up and hits hard enough to move a planet. Green Arrow can shoot a boxing-glove arrow, or whatever.)

[RexMundi]

Re: Aquaman, Hawkman, Ant-Man - how would you run them?

 

Aquaman was a brick, in Every incarnation. Hawkman, was the scariest guy in Comics a long time and the current incarnations are actually WEAKER, yet still retain that level of cool (Skin actually was an interesting character btw), that is seldom approached by anyone else around them. If Aquaman, or Hawkman, were a Mary Sue, they wouls show up, Outclass EVERYONE around them, save the day, and rub their collective noses in it. In DC, that's basically reserved for one of the Big Three. It's because they aren't, the Mary Sue's of their respective books, and appearances, is what makes them cool to begin with.

 

~Rex

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: Aquaman, Hawkman, Ant-Man - how would you run them?

 

I probably wouldn't, just 'cause animal sidekicks aren't a superhero trope I'm fond of. If I were forced, I'd probably go with the 'special effects of the power are using animals to do stuff' rather than a Summon, just for simplicity's sake (and not having to find stats for 87 different kinds of animals).

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Aquaman, Hawkman, Ant-Man - how would you run them?

 

Aquaman was a brick' date=' in Every incarnation. Hawkman, was the scariest guy in Comics a long time...[/quote']

 

Rex: you believe wrong things.

[RexMundi]

Re: Aquaman, Hawkman, Ant-Man - how would you run them?

 

I don't just believe it, I got the books. Long live the B-Squad, for their detractors are many yet the B-Squad perseveres.

 

~Rex

[assault]

Re: Aquaman, Hawkman, Ant-Man - how would you run them?

 

He`s a guy with an anti-gravity harness and a mace. He bonks the Gentleman Ghost on the head. You could do it on 150 points' date=' and save the rest for his spaceship. The only reason he`s tough to model at all is this talks-to-birds thing.[/quote']

 

Actually, Silver Age Hawkman had a bunch of other stuff as well. He could speak all languages on Earth, could survive in space, had a bunch of Thanagarian high tech gear on his ship, and could cram any skill he wanted to on very short order. And that's without taking tactical advantage of absorbing all knowledge on Earth - with was actually done in an early Silver Age story. "Where is person X" counts as "knowledge"!

 

In a game, you could say that his player was clever - he defined his character to be insanely powerful, and then voluntarily limited him so as to not annoy the GM.

 

*Just not a JLAer. Both Hawkman and Aquaman would get a charter membership in any superteam actually interested in fighting crime because of their awesome surveillance powers. Except the JLA, because

 

When the JLA were formed they were the only superhero team, and you became a charter member by being a superhero when it formed. Sure, they voted on admitting Green Arrow, the Atom and, yes, Hawkman - but not because they were flooded with candidates!

 

There was none of this World's Greatest Superheroes. They were the World's Only Superheroes. Or pretty close to it, anyway.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Aquaman, Hawkman, Ant-Man - how would you run them?

 

I don't just believe it, I got the books. Long live the B-Squad, for their detractors are many yet the B-Squad perseveres.

 

~Rex

 

There's lame B-squad, and there's cool B-squad. We all know what side of the divide Aquaman and Hawkman fall on. Revisionists notwithstanding.

[Twilight]

Re: Aquaman, Hawkman, Ant-Man - how would you run them?

 

There's lame B-squad' date=' and there's cool B-squad. We all know what side of the divide Aquaman and Hawkman fall on. Revisionists notwithstanding.

 

Revisionists used here to mean "writers who actually understand the characters and make an effort to write them well, rather then dismissing them due to an instance of bad characterisation" apparently.

 

Or am I meant to suddenly dislike the characters because you do not understand what Mary Sue means?

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Aquaman, Hawkman, Ant-Man - how would you run them?

 

There's a great deal to redeem in Hawkman. (Aquaman, less so, because he is so much in Namor's shadow.)

Now, he's still a B-List character, because as conceived, he can't fly into combat, swinging cars and knocking down buildings, and, after all, comics are a visual medium.

That said, the Silver Age Hawkman had a spaceship, a planet, and a well-established corporate motif of victory-through--education. It can be hard to make pictures of saving the day with an adroit combination of dubious scientific fact and flying, and in some ways the Golden Age character gives you moer to work with. He had more than enough superpower for the era (he could fly! How cool is that?) And the reincarnation thing points to magic, and hand-to-hand weapons like the mace work just fine in a quasi-magical context. a +5 Desert Eagle might work just fine against evil mummies, but who has ever heard of one of those?

Reconciling these two visions of the Hawkman is hard. Why, exactly, would a Thanagarian Science Policeman fight evil with a mace? But it's far from impossible. And in some ways, the very difficulty is a virtue, in that a great deal of story material is generated precisely by the need to dovetail the two accounts of what Hawkman is. By all accounts, writers have done just that.

 

What I object to is the idea that we get these heroes back to respectability by making them "badass," and since the badassedness is simply not there to be discerned in the character concepts as written, that we put it in by having other characters comment on them, or, worse, get beaten up by them. I am aware that there is a context for Aquaman beating up Superman. It still smacks of authorial projection, which is, to me, the key element of Mary Sueism. The notion that Hawkman should be one of the JLA's frontline combatants, respected for his toughness next to the Batman? Remember all those jokes about Lobo, Cable, Wolverine, the Bat-God? They didn't come out of nowhere.

If people want respect, they have to earn it. The writers cannot just tell us that Hawkman and Aquaman are cool and tough. They have to find a way to show it that does not seem contrived. And to the extent that they are relying on the tropes of "bad-assedness," they are going to the wrong wells with Hawkman and Aquaman, to my mind.

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: Aquaman, Hawkman, Ant-Man - how would you run them?

 

This thread is getting too cerebral for me.

[dmjalund]

Re: Aquaman, Hawkman, Ant-Man - how would you run them?

 

British beat cops main weapon is a collapsible truncheon

[Twilight]

Re: Aquaman, Hawkman, Ant-Man - how would you run them?

 

There's a great deal to redeem in Hawkman. (Aquaman, less so, because he is so much in Namor's shadow.)

Now, he's still a B-List character, because as conceived, he can't fly into combat, swinging cars and knocking down buildings, and, after all, comics are a visual medium.

That said, the Silver Age Hawkman had a spaceship, a planet, and a well-established corporate motif of victory-through--education. It can be hard to make pictures of saving the day with an adroit combination of dubious scientific fact and flying, and in some ways the Golden Age character gives you moer to work with. He had more than enough superpower for the era (he could fly! How cool is that?) And the reincarnation thing points to magic, and hand-to-hand weapons like the mace work just fine in a quasi-magical context. a +5 Desert Eagle might work just fine against evil mummies, but who has ever heard of one of those?

Reconciling these two visions of the Hawkman is hard. Why, exactly, would a Thanagarian Science Policeman fight evil with a mace? But it's far from impossible. And in some ways, the very difficulty is a virtue, in that a great deal of story material is generated precisely by the need to dovetail the two accounts of what Hawkman is. By all accounts, writers have done just that.

 

What I object to is the idea that we get these heroes back to respectability by making them "badass," and since the badassedness is simply not there to be discerned in the character concepts as written, that we put it in by having other characters comment on them, or, worse, get beaten up by them. I am aware that there is a context for Aquaman beating up Superman. It still smacks of authorial projection, which is, to me, the key element of Mary Sueism. The notion that Hawkman should be one of the JLA's frontline combatants, respected for his toughness next to the Batman? Remember all those jokes about Lobo, Cable, Wolverine, the Bat-God? They didn't come out of nowhere.

If people want respect, they have to earn it. The writers cannot just tell us that Hawkman and Aquaman are cool and tough. They have to find a way to show it that does not seem contrived. And to the extent that they are relying on the tropes of "bad-assedness," they are going to the wrong wells with Hawkman and Aquaman, to my mind.

 

So what, the countless times that Hawkman and Aquaman have shown to be badass in various comicbooks doesn't count because you personally don't like the characters?

 

I mean really the fact that these characters haven't fallen to comicbook limbo after around 60 odd years ought to indicate that people do still think they're tough and cool, otherwise people wouldn't still be buying comics featuring them. All those characters whose comics never got past the first issue or were removed from a book due to intense fan hatred? They are the true lame characters because they were never able to support a book on their own.

 

Of course your argument that the writers cannot tell us something is so in a medium that is primarily written is so ludicrous that it makes me facepalm. I'm not even going to go into the bit about fictional characters needing to earn my respect.

[assault]

Re: Aquaman, Hawkman, Ant-Man - how would you run them?

 

Some other stuff Silver Age Hawkman had: he could use his anti-gravity stuff to lift things (limited super-strength), and he could use his wings to generate wind gusts that could do various things.

 

He didn't just fly around and hit things with a mace.

[assault]

Re: Aquaman, Hawkman, Ant-Man - how would you run them?

 

This thread is getting too cerebral for me.

 

I'm more worried about it breaking out into nerdrage and flaming.

[Twilight]

Re: Aquaman, Hawkman, Ant-Man - how would you run them?

 

I'm more worried about it breaking out into nerdrage and flaming.

 

I am perfectly willing to go back to the original purpose of the thread. In fact, I implore people to set this thread back on it's original track.

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: Aquaman, Hawkman, Ant-Man - how would you run them?

 

i'm more worried about it breaking out into nerdrage and flaming.

 

[aquaman]Nerdrageous![/aquaman]

 

Sorry, couldn't resist.

[csyphrett]

Re: Aquaman, Hawkman, Ant-Man - how would you run them?

 

Hawkman could also use his wings as shields to block attacks.

CES

[Clonus]

Re: Aquaman, Hawkman, Ant-Man - how would you run them?

 

Hawkman could also use his wings as shields to block attacks.

CES

 

Your bullets can not harm me! My wings are like shield of steel!

 

It helps that his wings weren't real. Although frankly I prefered the Animated Series Thanagarians who just stuck with the basics had maces that could (and did) punch out Cthulu.