Marvel Cinematic Universe, Phase Three and BEYOOOOONND

[Twilight]

2 hours ago, Spence said:

I remember reading about 5 issues of the original Power Pack way back.  But we deployed and by the time we returned and I read comics again, things had nosedived so badly I never really bought any comics again.  I don't really remember the year.  But it has been a while. 

It looked like the writer had a good handle on the characters in the first issue, but characterization took a nosedive after that.  As did the competence of the characters as well given that they were outsmarted by The Wizard, who was incapable of outwitting Jonny Storm. 

[Grailknight]

The Wizard is one of the characters that really bug my suspension of disbelief.

 

You've invented functional anti-gravity in devices that can stand up to water sand and fire blasts that are the size of coasters...  Why are you a supervillain? They would build another mint just to print your money. You'd have a bank account significant to G7 nations and if and only if, people give you grief your security army can't handle then you could go villain on them.

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Kinda like Vulture.  Dude you made a flying suit.  Anyone who wears it can fly.  Why aren't you just marketing this???

[Old Man]

6 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Kinda like Vulture.  Dude you made a flying suit.  Anyone who wears it can fly.  Why aren't you just marketing this???

 

MCU Vulture's suit runs on stolen Chitauri tech, and comics Vulture is a nutjob.  But yeah, comics are rife with inventions that ought to have changed the course of human history.

[Twilight]

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Kinda like Vulture.  Dude you made a flying suit.  Anyone who wears it can fly.  Why aren't you just marketing this???

Because the flying suit and Wizard's flight discs are fairly easily disabled.  In the case of the Vulture, a high school science nerd was able to disable it several times.

[Bazza]

Also, Peter Parker, marketing his web shooters. 

[Grailknight]

26 minutes ago, Twilight said:

Because the flying suit and Wizard's flight discs are fairly easily disabled.  In the case of the Vulture, a high school science nerd was able to disable it several times.

 

Those discs could past mil-spec. They've kept going through  hits from the Human Torch, the Thing, Sandman and Hydroman. Anything but a hypersonic collision would be under what they would be subjected to in everyday uses.

[Twilight]

10 hours ago, Grailknight said:

 

Those discs could past mil-spec. They've kept going through  hits from the Human Torch, the Thing, Sandman and Hydroman. Anything but a hypersonic collision would be under what they would be subjected to in everyday uses.

Have they though? He gets caught an awful lot for a guy with mil-spec flying discs and as his first appearances showed, he's not nearly as clever as he thinks he is.

[Lord Liaden]

Quite apart from the conventions of the comic-book genre, in which supervillains exist to give superheroes identifiable evil to personally fight; these kinds of people become supervillains because they don't want cash. They don't want simple luxury or social status. They want power. Not just institutional power, but personal power. They want to prove they're superior to the common ruck of humanity. They want the satisfaction, the glory, of personally crushing anyone who opposes them. They want the ego gratification of making their enemies, making the entire world, kneel at their feet.

 

This kind of motivation is not uncommon among real humanity. Do you think Alexander or Caesar would have been content just to amass a fortune through mercantilism, or theft? You can't expect someone to act like a profiteer or a criminal if he believes himself to be a conqueror.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Most super criminals at the low end are driven by greed, they rob and do stuff to get money.  Doc Ock is not trying to rule New York City, or even a few blocks of it.  The Riddler doesn't want a kingdom.  Which they obviously, in a sane and normal world, would get for their fantastic inventions but hey, its comic books and this is how things work.  Or, at least used to in comics.  Not sure all those assumptions even apply any more.

[Greywind]

26 minutes ago, Twilight said:

Have they though? He gets caught an awful lot for a guy with mil-spec flying discs and as his first appearances showed, he's not nearly as clever as he thinks he is.

 

He is brilliant in his field.

He is an idiot as a criminal.

[archer]

A lot of the Wizard's motivation over the years has been to steal all of Reed Richards' inventions because Richards is much more brilliant than the Wizard.

 

The Wizard came up with a brilliant idea and a nifty application for it. But even if he sold it for virtually unlimited wealth, it wouldn't get him Richards' inventions, the best of Stark tech, or give him enough resources to make a credible play for going after Doom's inventions.

 

Richards is by far the softest target out of that group. After the Wizard is caught by the FF, Reed is going to forget about him: out of sight, out of mind.

 

In contrast, if the Wizard went after Stark, Iron Man would treat him harshly then Stark's lawyers would go out of their way to make sure the state prosecuted the Wizard to the fullest extent of the law. And Doom would likely kill him out of hand if he was caught there.

 

I always got the impression that if the Wizard ever took over the Baxter Buildings scientific wonders, that he'd indulge himself in the labs, get some inspiration from what he finds, then use those wonders to go after some more difficult target. 

 

Personally, I think the Wizard started far too high on the food chain. He'd have been better off to go after the Tinkerer, the Fixer, the Porcupine, etc. until he finished all of the c-list villains and either defeated them or taken them into his organization. Then go after some b-list villains, heroes, and organizations....

[Old Man]

The motivations for supervillains are almost as widely varied as their costumes.  Even the ones who steal money often do so only as a means to an end.  And there are plenty of supervillains who are not rationally motivated.

[Twilight]

8 minutes ago, archer said:

A lot of the Wizard's motivation over the years has been to steal all of Reed Richards' inventions because Richards is much more brilliant than the Wizard.

 

The Wizard came up with a brilliant idea and a nifty application for it. But even if he sold it for virtually unlimited wealth, it wouldn't get him Richards' inventions, the best of Stark tech, or give him enough resources to make a credible play for going after Doom's inventions.

 

Richards is by far the softest target out of that group. After the Wizard is caught by the FF, Reed is going to forget about him: out of sight, out of mind.

 

In contrast, if the Wizard went after Stark, Iron Man would treat him harshly then Stark's lawyers would go out of their way to make sure the state prosecuted the Wizard to the fullest extent of the law. And Doom would likely kill him out of hand if he was caught there.

 

I always got the impression that if the Wizard ever took over the Baxter Buildings scientific wonders, that he'd indulge himself in the labs, get some inspiration from what he finds, then use those wonders to go after some more difficult target. 

 

Personally, I think the Wizard started far too high on the food chain. He'd have been better off to go after the Tinkerer, the Fixer, the Porcupine, etc. until he finished all of the c-list villains and either defeated them or taken them into his organization. Then go after some b-list villains, heroes, and organizations....

The Tinkerer and the Fixer are both far more accomplished then the Wizard and when it comes to tech, they're FAR more brilliant to boot.  The Wizard is a one trick pony, Tinkerer's a guy who's the go to tech support for nearly every street level villain in Marvel, has built androids that can give Spider-Man a good fight and built an android replica of Bullseye that was almost as deadly as the real thing.  Fixer is Baron Zemo's first choice when it comes to tech villains and has been a legitimate threat both as Zemo's ally and on his own.  By himself the Wizard can't even outwit Jonny Storm.  Tinkerer or Fixer would murder Wizard.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

I always got the impression that if the Wizard ever took over the Baxter Buildings scientific wonders, that he'd indulge himself in the labs, get some inspiration from what he finds, then use those wonders to go after some more difficult target. 

 

There was a great Byrne FF issue where one of those guys broke into the Baxter Building and was defeated by the building security while the Fantastic Four wasn't even present.  They were off in the Negative Zone or something.

[death tribble]

It sounds like that some supervillains should get a consultant and then they could market and get money from their inventions.

But then I am reminded what Alfred said about the Joker in The Dark Knight

some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn

[archer]

12 minutes ago, Twilight said:

The Tinkerer and the Fixer are both far more accomplished then the Wizard and when it comes to tech, they're FAR more brilliant to boot.  The Wizard is a one trick pony, Tinkerer's a guy who's the go to tech support for nearly every street level villain in Marvel, has built androids that can give Spider-Man a good fight and built an android replica of Bullseye that was almost as deadly as the real thing.  Fixer is Baron Zemo's first choice when it comes to tech villains and has been a legitimate threat both as Zemo's ally and on his own.  By himself the Wizard can't even outwit Jonny Storm.  Tinkerer or Fixer would murder Wizard.

 

That's why the Wizard tends to bring along three teammates with him.

[Twilight]

Just now, archer said:

 

That's why the Wizard tends to bring along three teammates with him.

None of whom are dumb enough to risk annoying Zemo by taking out his number one tech guy or pissing off large numbers of supervillains by trying to rob the Tinkerer.  Also those three teammates haven't actually worked with Wizard in years.

[archer]

2 minutes ago, Twilight said:

None of whom are dumb enough to risk annoying Zemo by taking out his number one tech guy or pissing off large numbers of supervillains by trying to rob the Tinkerer.  Also those three teammates haven't actually worked with Wizard in years.

 

The comment you were responding to was

 

"Personally, I think the Wizard started far too high on the food chain. He'd have been better off to go after the Tinkerer, the Fixer...."

 

At the start, he had three teammates. As he continued, he had a rotating cast of three teammates.

[dmjalund]

"I don't want to cure cancer! I want to turn people into dinosaurs!"

[Twilight]

4 minutes ago, archer said:

 

The comment you were responding to was

 

"Personally, I think the Wizard started far too high on the food chain. He'd have been better off to go after the Tinkerer, the Fixer...."

 

At the start, he had three teammates. As he continued, he had a rotating cast of three teammates.

Most of those guys were one offs, hired for a particular mission.  What your forgetting is that Tinkerer can hire goons too and since there are a great many of them who rely on him to repair their gear he's gonna have quite a few more allies.  It's a fight Wizard's not gonna win.

[archer]

11 minutes ago, Twilight said:

Most of those guys were one offs, hired for a particular mission.  What your forgetting is that Tinkerer can hire goons too and since there are a great many of them who rely on him to repair their gear he's gonna have quite a few more allies.  It's a fight Wizard's not gonna win.

 

What you're forgetting is that the Wizard wouldn't have had to play fair and give the Tinkerer advance warning that he needed to hire supervillain bodyguards. Hell, the Wizard could have played it off that they were prospective customers until they jumped him. It's not like the Tinkerer could have stayed in business and have remained hidden from supervillains.

 

And toward the beginnings of their respective careers, the Tinkerer hadn't built up a large number of villains who might feel they needed to protect him.

 

The Frightful Four came close a couple of times to taking out the Fantastic Four. Don't try to tell me that they couldn't have taken out the Tinkerer when he was alone and not expecting it.

 

Besides, the Wizard could have just hired the Tinkerer or have hypnotized him rather than just having him beaten to a pulp.

 

He'd be a lot more valuable as an ally churning out new inventions than having just the contents of whatever happened to be laying around his lab on one particular day.

 

 

[Bazza]

 

[Twilight]

2 minutes ago, archer said:

 

What you're forgetting is that the Wizard wouldn't have had to play fair and give the Tinkerer advance warning that he needed to hire supervillain bodyguards. Hell, the Wizard could have played it off that they were prospective customers until they jumped him. It's not like the Tinkerer could have stayed in business and have remained hidden from supervillains.

 

And toward the beginnings of their respective careers, the Tinkerer hadn't built up a large number of villains who might feel they needed to protect him.

 

The Frightful Four came close a couple of times to taking out the Fantastic Four. Don't try to tell me that they couldn't have taken out the Tinkerer when he was alone and not expecting it.

 

Besides, the Wizard could have just hired the Tinkerer or have hypnotized him rather than just having him beaten to a pulp.

 

He'd be a lot more valuable as an ally churning out new inventions than having just the contents of whatever happened to be laying around his lab on one particular day.

 

 

He's a one trick pony, the flying discs are all he's got.  The Tinkerer's build hundreds of gadgets for dozens of villains, he's built androids that were indistinguishable from humans years before SHIELD was doing it, his prowess as an inventor FAR outstrips that of the Wizard by several orders of magnitude.  He's way more valuable as an ally then the Wizard.  

 

As for the rest of your arguments: at the beginning of his career nobody knew what the Tinkerer looked like aside from his clients and Spider-Man and at first Spidey thought the Tinkerer was an alien for crying out loud.  Spidey's hardly going to be giving the Frightful Four any information, assuming they even knew Spidey had the information they wanted and Tinkerer's clients are hardly going to give him up and again that's assuming Wizard even knew who Tinkerer's clients even were.  How're they gonna find him.

The Wizard does not have hypnotic powers and he's not gonna magically develop them just so you can win this argument.  He's a villain who failed to outwit the Human Torch and once got launched into space with his own tech and had to be rescued, how's he gonna outwit The Tinkerer, a villain who's actually clever?

[Jhamin]

On 3/3/2021 at 12:14 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

DC seems to swing between idiot extremes.  They had a disaster of a universe with 87 alternate dimensional versions of characters nobody could keep track of and the continuity was nonexistent.  So they did Crisis (which was excellent and a good idea) to fix it, but didn't like the fix, started bringing back the alternate universes, did another reboot, and another, and another, and another...

 

The Summer Big Event is the problem here.  Both major companies are fixated on this concept of the Big Yearly Event to bring in more sales, and that drives most of the really bad decisions made.

I lament that the fandom didn't embrace Hypertime as it was originally pitched. (Editorially, not in-universe)

Basically Wade and Morrison had noticed that every fan had their idea of who a character *really* was and what things had and had not happened to their version of Batman or Superman or whoever. 
For Batman:
In tone is Batman more Batman: Animated Series or Batman: Brave and the Bold?  Or how about Dark Knight?  or Silver Age?  Or Golden Age?
Had KnightFall happened?
Was BatMite a thing?
Which version of Joker had they fought?
Was their Mr. Freeze more like Arnold or BTAS Freeze or the one from the silver age?
Does Damien Wayne exist?
Is he married to Catwoman?
Etc etc

Their solution was to just accept that continuity ended up being multiple choice.  Basically, once an event happens and the fans like it will always sort of be out there, but people shouldn't be bound by it for all time.  Pick your version of a character, they are *all* valid and you could tell stories that did or did not acknowledge various parts of the Mythos.  The DC universe would continue onward as it was going & events would continue to happen and you wouldn't worry about a 6 issue run from 10 years ago unless people thought it was awesome and should be remembered.  You could just quietly ignore stuff without reboots or cosmic resets, and if a new version of Batman from a Movie ended up capturing the popular imagination, then comic Batman could just start drifting toward that version without needing an in-universe reason for it. (Harly can just start wearing her video game outfit and it's fine)

When folks time-traveled, they went to the version of the past you wanted to tell a story about.  If a character traveled from the past to now, you didn't have to figure out exactly which issue they came from, it was just a version of the character that had the experiences you needed for your story, and generally fit what people "knew" about that character.

 

Honestly, it was kind of like the Spiderverse before the Spiderverse. 

Fans *HATED* this.  Most of the other writers *HATED* this.  It lasted a few years and then everyone sort of agreed to forget it ever happened (which is Ironic, as that was what Hypertime was meant to do anyway)