Bought/Thought for 9/6/07; SPOILERS INSIDE!!

[Tropico]

Where was his precious math at the gamma bomb test site? t:

 

[TheCorpulent1]

He probably stood at the exact angle he needed to not to die or get cancer.

 

[gildea]

Not directly, but I think he said something like he found the idea that the Hulk hadn't killed people in his rampages ludicrous.

He and millar (as I understand it) are both in the "it's silly to not have the hulk kill accidently" camp. But as slott himself has pointed out bendis left enough wiggle room by never explicitly stating this (the bendis bashing going on in this thread always seems to ignore slott supporting this move by bendis, but I guess irrational bashin is par for the course with bendis).

Though I agree it's silly to say the hulk hasn't killed anyone (and really the thor analogy is way off for many many reasons) but in regards to it's sillyness I can only say SO WHAT?

I'm firmly in the camp (that dread suggested earlier) that believes you simply cannot have a heroic protagonist (particularly one as iconic as The Incredible Hulk) causing accidental deaths. It is a leap of faith that needs to be maintained to protect the character.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

What's wrong with the Thor analogy? They've both had fights in populated cities and brought buildings down; if it's silly for the Hulk not to have killed people that way, why isn't it silly for other heroes not to have done so? Hell, Thor actually had a whole comic run where an accidental death during one of his battles was a major plot point.

 

[BrianWilly]

I'm of the camp that thinks if you want to depict an uncontrollable monster as actually being uncontrollable, it's not the great big retcon-slash-character-destroying-enema that people have portrayed it as.

I have to agree with Tropico; this whole running numbers thing (which I did read), while interesting, is ultimately a very Hal move. I could always buy the fact that very few people got hurt as a result of superhero scuffles because superheroes are, well, superheroes and would constantly, constantly be trying to prevent casualties in a fight. It would be at least as large a priority as "beat the villain," for most. How many times have we seen Spider-Man or any of the X-Men or Avengers say, "We have to take the fight elsewhere, there are too many people here," or "Protect the nuns, I'm going to end this!" in the middle of a shindig? They are all logical and conscientious enough that even if there are casualties, it almost certainly is due to the villains' actions and not anything they themselves would be reprehensible for. That's part of being a hero. And this attitude has to be there all the time, not just whenever the hero bothers to think about it.

Except that the whole point of the Hulk is that he isn't "smart" most of the time. He's not particularly logical and doesn't nearly have the state of mind to be making reasoned, strategic maneuvers twenty-four-seven to avoid casualties in his rampages. He has more power in one pinky than most heroes have in their entire repertoire, which means that he out of all people needs to have the most restraint and conscientiousness regarding his actions. Except that he didn't. That was his whole point, that he didn't have restraint and conscientiousness. He's not Thor. He may have Thor's power, but he shouldn't have his wisdom. Thor is the model of restraint even at the worst of times. He's not even the Juggernaut or something, who keeps full control of his mental facilities in all circumstances. Isn't the point of the Hulk that he doesn't have full control?

Except that, now, we're being told that he does. Every move, every step, every blow, was apparently made with absurd mathematical precision in a way that other heroes could only wet dream about. It just automagically takes aaalll reprehensibility out of Hulk's shoulders in ways that not even Superman or any other hero are allowed. It's Parallax. Sure, it makes comic book sense, but it's Parallax: a disgraced character gets full pardon for past deeds due to roundabout retcon.

What's wrong with the Thor analogy? They've both had fights in populated cities and brought buildings down; if it's silly for the Hulk not to have killed people that way, why isn't it silly for other heroes not to have done so? Hell, Thor actually had a whole comic run where an accidental death during one of his battles was a major plot point.

You have to take in consideration who actually brought the building down. If the hero was trying to prevent a villain from doing damage and merely didn't succeed, there's only so far you can take blame for that. It's something that Civil War didn't consider, but of course there are many things that Civil War didn't consider.

And even then, yeah that's right, even Thor has had accidental deaths occur before. Doesn't that just show how much more feasible it is for the Hulk to have caused injuries and fatalities? Hulk is not Thor. Hulk doesn't even have a fraction of Thor's intelligence and restraint. Or, at least, he shouldn't.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Well, the accidental death was specifically written into Thor's comics. There have been no direct references to the Hulk's rampages causing major death tolls before Vegas. It's not the fact that the Hulk killed some people in a rampage that bugs me; it's the fact that Bendis then plays it off like it's the norm because he thinks it's silly for it not to be. Slott and now Pak just showed that it wasn't the norm.

 

[PhotoJones]

I don't have an iPod, either. They're lame.

Says the guy who wants a 40GB iPod Touch.

Pags' beards are almost as good as his and the rest of his art is top-notch, so it's certainly not a detriment to the story or anything.

I'd call you out on stealing my line, but the fact that you recognize a good beard when you see one is redemption enough.

Bought:

The 99 (free issue)

What's The 99?

 

[RockSP]

What's The 99?

A new book from "Teshkeel Comics". Created by Naif Al-Mutawa and co-written by Fabian Nicieza. Art by John McCrea.

It was free so I said what the heck. From the intro:

"99 gems of power lie scattered across the earth. These 'Noor Stones' are storehouses for the great city of Baghdad and it's illustrious civilization, now lost to time and history. Legend tells of how those gems once empowered a select few with superhuman abilities."

Basically the team is starting to form in this issue. Looks like they'll be traveling the world picking up members and no doubt fighting some evil 'Noor Stone' wielders along the way.

 

[PhotoJones]

Huh. I've never heard of it. The creative team's a good one, though. How was it?

 

[fifthfiend]

Sure, it makes comic book sense, but it's Parallax: a disgraced character gets full pardon for past deeds due to roundabout retcon.

?

Unless I missed something, the character never committed any past deeds for which he'd need to be pardoned, except for in one offhand line that if we actually take it as credible represents an even more roundabout retcon.

 

[RockSP]

Huh. I've never heard of it. The creative team's a good one, though. How was it?

I thought it was pretty good--and the price couldn't be beat. Unlike a lot of fanboys I'm not averse to new characters or books outside of the big two.
The creator is obviously of middle eastern descent and many of the characters in the book are as well...something you don't usually see (at least not as protagonists). The members so far:

Dr. Ramzi Razem: Prof. X-ish type but with no powers.( so far)

Dana Ibrahim aka Noora: Light abilities, able to see the "darkness" in peoples souls. The book is divided into two stories and the first one is about Razem recruiting her.

Nawaf Al-Bilali aka Jabbar: the superstrong one. He doesn't really do much in this issue.

John Wheeler: wheelchair bound dude from St. Louis. His powers seem sort of Penance-ish but he doesn't have to hurt himself to use them. They recruit him in the second story.

The official first issue comes out October 17th, according to the back cover. I will probably pick it up...

 

[fifthfiend]

"99 gems of power lie scattered across the earth. These 'Noor Stones' are storehouses for the great city of Baghdad and it's illustrious civilization, now lost to time and history. Legend tells of how those gems once empowered a select few with superhuman abilities."

That sounds pretty neat, I'll have to remember to look for it next time I'm at the shop.

 

[Darthphere]

(the bendis bashing going on in this thread always seems to ignore slott supporting this move by bendis, but I guess irrational bashin is par for the course with bendis).

Um link or proof of that? I find it odd that Slott would go on for literally pages in defense of Hulk, and proving he hasn't caused deaths to then simply be "But ultimately, I agree with the move" Logic escapes me.

 

[Dread]

But he would see it as helping this poor woman who has been victimized by the actions of her selfish nephew. It wouldn't be about helping Peter, it would be about helping Aunt May. Either way, after the issue of FNSM (which will never be referenced) I'd be willing to bet JJJ would do something and be an ******* about it.

You have a point. I hadn't read FNSM either.

I did "flip through" INCREDIBLE HULK #110, and by that I mean "scimmed". So I do sort of know what everyone is talking about in terms of "the explaination".

I...had a hard time swallowing it, honestly. I definately don't want Hulk to be retroactively made into a mass murderer who has killed people in rampages, because then you are completely unable to root for him, unless you are a sociopath without any sense of morality (or one who believes no one really has any morals), like Mark Millar's theme in ULTIMATES. But I would rather suspend belief than easily accept the explaination that Rampaging Hulk does "subconcious bull**** math equations in his head to prevent innocents from dying". Especially since while Hulk hasn't murdered civilians on-panel before, other heroes HAVE gotten into battles with him to prevent damages or injuries during rampages.

Really, was suspending belief with the Hulk so bad? Must everything either be grim, violent, and ugly or else have some implausibly fantastic explanation? This all began because Bendis, and likely Millar and some of the editors, back in the early 2000's, when Ultimate was hot ****, believed that the best way to improve 616 was to strip-mine the talent and ideas from Ultimate and force them into 616. And part of that was Millar's sadistical, mass murdering, cannibal Hulk who then can turn around and be a hero. But Ultimate is a new universe, so it works there. The problem is that Bendis & Millar have never adjusted as well to 616 because that requires sharing characters, ideas, and concepts with other people in the past, present, and future, and they are both too egotistical, selfish, and arrogant to accept that. Which wouldn't be a problem if the editorial board didn't decide to either throw out what has worked for 40 years to cave into "the new fad", or allow both to confuse the **** out of readers. But they do. Trust me, in a decade, "grim and gritty" will be the "spiked shoulderpads" of the 2000's.

A Hulk who kills people is not a character who can be rooted for, period. A Hulk who has left innocents dead is someone who should be destroyed, and it is a Hulk that proves every word Thunderbolt Ross has ever said about him right. But that doesn't mean that in order to accept that Hulk hasn't outright killed anyone, that I can swallow that 24/7, regardless of whether Hulk is the Professor or Savage or Joe Fixit, he always does math in his head and subconciously holds back. I could seen some incarnations of Hulk doing that. Not all. And not all the time.

But I guess fans like me are dwindling, fans who read a Hulk story and didn't obsess about why a hundred fatalities didn't result from Hulk tearing up a street to throw at Absorbing Man. Fans who could accept a rampage without needing to see or hear about bodies laying in heaps somewhere. When the hell did comics become so god damned self-defeating? And when the hell is it going to stop!? Attacking the genre expectations and then feeling the need to remove them, mock them, or ridiculously explain them rarely add anything of value.

It reminds me of a more extended version of the fan who can accept that Banner gains a ton of mass from nowhere, turns green and whatnot, yet complains about why the pants always stay intact. Do we need some baloney explaination for that? Or can we prioritize?

So, Cho's theory in #110, I wasn't 100% gung-ho for it, but I'd rather that then Bendis having Hulk eat people in Vegas and other writer's attempts to retroactively insert fatalities into Hulk's stories, especially when a few treated a single supposed death as a big deal.

I also am in the thought that if a villain and a hero are fighting, any damages and deaths that occur should usually be blamed on the villain for committing a crime or being a wanted felon in the first place (Nitro could have always surrendered, plead guilty, worked on good behavior; running from the law is always a choice). But the concept of punishing heroes for every mistake but collectively saying, "baddies will be baddies" at every atrocity I guess creates drama and keeps stuff "grim".

 

[Upset Spideyfan]

Dread, I know you're stressed out, so this one's for you buddy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXgdSOxaCGI&mode=related&search=

 

[Dread]

Dread, I know you're stressed out, so this one's for you buddy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXgdSOxaCGI&mode=related&search=

That...is some freaky ****.

Funny, but, I'd be disturbed if someone started doing that near me.

 

[Colossal Spoons]

Cho's Gammaworld idea this week was pretty cool

 

[gildea]

What's wrong with the Thor analogy? They've both had fights in populated cities and brought buildings down; if it's silly for the Hulk not to have killed people that way, why isn't it silly for other heroes not to have done so? Hell, Thor actually had a whole comic run where an accidental death during one of his battles was a major plot point.

Thors schtick isn't that he is a rage powered rampaging monster. It's a simple as that.

It's the difference between giving an angry child a hand gun and a trained police officer.

Really, was suspending belief with the Hulk so bad? Must everything either be grim, violent, and ugly or else have some implausibly fantastic explanation? This all began because Bendis, and likely Millar and some of the editors, back in the early 2000's, when Ultimate was hot ****, believed that the best way to improve 616 was to strip-mine the talent and ideas from Ultimate and force them into 616. And part of that was Millar's sadistical, mass murdering, cannibal Hulk who then can turn around and be a hero. But Ultimate is a new universe, so it works there.

With dread 100% here.

The problem is that Bendis & Millar have never adjusted as well to 616 because that requires sharing characters, ideas, and concepts with other people in the past, present, and future, and they are both too egotistical, selfish, and arrogant to accept that

Up until this part anyway where it goes wildly off the rails and starts making stupid assumptions and insulting people he has never met (and factually incorrect as well).

 

[Kirk Langstrom]

That's mostly why I have no problems with it. If the NW can be blames for Stamford and there were fatalities and injuries in CW, I don't see what the problem is. Marvel is taking a new direction in this regard, Mighty Avengers had them mentioning how many injuries their fight was causing, didn't it?

I have no problem with the dumb luck people have in comics so almost no one gets injured or killed. I have a problem with Banner running numbers in his head to cause miraculous effects so that it's not dumb luck. They also sold it REALLY hard this issue by showing Hulk attacking Amadeus and the kid coming out unscathed. Even when he buried the kid the rubble fell in such a manner that the he was protected.

Once again we're falling into the perfect mathematical world like the one Reed uses to predict stuff in CW when we all know that there are random factors that you can't take into consideration. Apparently, these factors don't affect Reed nor Bruce.

I'm sorry, I just can't believe that the Hulk can take into consideration every innocent being in his rampaging area. He has no super senses and no way to tell if there are people inside a structure or not. It's just bad. Bad and wrong. Badong, if you will. Dumb luck? Cool! It explains it for everyone. Teh awesum equashionz of Bruce Hulkmighty? No.

Incorrect. He DOES have super senses. He is able to perceive beings on the Astral Plane, such as Dr. Strange. You're telling me he can do that, but not sense life forms in a building?

 

[Kirk Langstrom]

Where was his precious math at the gamma bomb test site? t:

No one was killed there, were they?

 

[Kirk Langstrom]

I'm of the camp that thinks if you want to depict an uncontrollable monster as actually being uncontrollable, it's not the great big retcon-slash-character-destroying-enema that people have portrayed it as.

I have to agree with Tropico; this whole running numbers thing (which I did read), while interesting, is ultimately a very Hal move. I could always buy the fact that very few people got hurt as a result of superhero scuffles because superheroes are, well, superheroes and would constantly, constantly be trying to prevent casualties in a fight. It would be at least as large a priority as "beat the villain," for most. How many times have we seen Spider-Man or any of the X-Men or Avengers say, "We have to take the fight elsewhere, there are too many people here," or "Protect the nuns, I'm going to end this!" in the middle of a shindig? They are all logical and conscientious enough that even if there are casualties, it almost certainly is due to the villains' actions and not anything they themselves would be reprehensible for. That's part of being a hero. And this attitude has to be there all the time, not just whenever the hero bothers to think about it.

Except that the whole point of the Hulk is that he isn't "smart" most of the time. He's not particularly logical and doesn't nearly have the state of mind to be making reasoned, strategic maneuvers twenty-four-seven to avoid casualties in his rampages. He has more power in one pinky than most heroes have in their entire repertoire, which means that he out of all people needs to have the most restraint and conscientiousness regarding his actions. Except that he didn't. That was his whole point, that he didn't have restraint and conscientiousness. He's not Thor. He may have Thor's power, but he shouldn't have his wisdom. Thor is the model of restraint even at the worst of times. He's not even the Juggernaut or something, who keeps full control of his mental facilities in all circumstances. Isn't the point of the Hulk that he doesn't have full control?

Except that, now, we're being told that he does. Every move, every step, every blow, was apparently made with absurd mathematical precision in a way that other heroes could only wet dream about. It just automagically takes aaalll reprehensibility out of Hulk's shoulders in ways that not even Superman or any other hero are allowed. It's Parallax. Sure, it makes comic book sense, but it's Parallax: a disgraced character gets full pardon for past deeds due to roundabout retcon.

You have to take in consideration who actually brought the building down. If the hero was trying to prevent a villain from doing damage and merely didn't succeed, there's only so far you can take blame for that. It's something that Civil War didn't consider, but of course there are many things that Civil War didn't consider.

And even then, yeah that's right, even Thor has had accidental deaths occur before. Doesn't that just show how much more feasible it is for the Hulk to have caused injuries and fatalities? Hulk is not Thor. Hulk doesn't even have a fraction of Thor's intelligence and restraint. Or, at least, he shouldn't.

And Thor apparently doesnt have Banner's mathematical ability or perception..

 

[iloveclones]

Dread, I know you're stressed out, so this one's for you buddy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXgdSOxaCGI&mode=related&search=

More proof that the internet is the harbinger of the End of Society

 

[Tropico]

Incorrect. He DOES have super senses. He is able to perceive beings on the Astral Plane, such as Dr. Strange. You're telling me he can do that, but not sense life forms in a building?

That particular ability you're mentioning doesn't give him faux enhanced senses. I'm not telling you that. The comics and his entry in the guide do. You must have acquired Reed's power from the stretching you're doing with that statement. Look, I've seen your other posts in this and other threads; I get it, you dislike the idea of Hulk killing and you're defending all his actions against people you consider Hulk "detractors".

This is the thing, I don't mind if he never killed innocent people accidentally through whatever dumb luck power the people and heroes in the MU have. I'm fine with that, it's a catch all for everyone. What I have a problem with is the calculation gimmick. It's a slap in the face of the multiple persona thing and it's ludicrous to believe that his math is that flawless. Nobody bought it with Reed but it's ok if Banner does it because it's not CW?

Incredible Hulk #110 was a get out of jail for free card for the Hulk. All the deaths he was responsible for in one way or another were excused. Even his intentional ones! "It was self defense". "You killed where there was war. Teh Cap America capped some nazi ass so it's ok if you do it too. LOLZ!!!!!1!!11one". They-pulled-a-Hal. And then they shoved the "math ability" down our throats a bunch of times in the issue to overkill the idea that "Hulk never hurts people intentionally". If he DOES kill someone here? No problem, Hulk already said they're in a war zone. Or they'll say that there were mitigating circumstances due to extreme grief and rage.

Like I said before, the status quo has been changing since a bit before CW. They gave the Hulk casualties in Vegas, it was the straw that broke the camel's back and the reason they sent him away. They take that away and then what do the Illuminati become? Vindictive SOB's? What are we supposed to believe that supermath Reed and futurist Tony can have a wrench thrown into their calculations and Hulk ends up in Sakaar while Banner does teh flawless calculus for years and years? Right. If they decided to start the casualties with Hulk, continued them with Stamford and were consistent in CW and after, then it's up to us to accept the new status quo or step into denial like many people are doing.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Says the guy who wants a 40GB iPod Touch.

Yeah. An iPod Touch. I fail to see your point there.

 

[Colossal Spoons]

Of course you can't see his point, you have to iTouch it