State Your Opinion on A Character - Part 1

[Mystirious]

Yep he's a pretty great sinister villain. He's pretty much totally iredeemable and evil but he's still interesting to read

Don't know much about Black Manta, but I love his look. It's such a sci-fi 1960's look. It's awesome!

He's very retro

I've got his toy and he looks even better as an action figure with his impossibly shaped scuba helmet and his laser eyes

He's got a great design

 

[Mystirious]

I think he could actually SEE Aquaman while they were taffying him.

Aquaman just didn't hear him.

I'd hate his ass too.

Taffying pirates are the worst kind of pirates

 

[BLACKVULCAN]

Black manta $%^&* rocks! Come on! his name begins with black! That's hella cool( and no it ain't cause he's brother). That dude looks bad as hell in that getup, I love how. i didnt know he was black only to find out when he took his mask.that he was! I was in awe and appalled at the same time. Cause he did some nasty ass stuff killing Aquamans son! Plus that dude is like Magneto in the( who knows what series it was) book.he wanted to make a undersea city just for blacks! A Eco-terrorist racist! Come on! That dude has a nasty agenda and he freakin rocks! I was so pissed when the called him "devil fish" on the justice league cartoon.Just call him what he is.. bad ass!

 

[Mystirious]

Black Manta was pretty great in Justice League though and in Young Justice

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Black Manta wasn't in Justice League for legal reasons or something. That was Devil Ray.

 

[Mystirious]

I figured that Devil Ray was just Black Manta with a neat new name

Like how the Crime Syndicate were the Justice Lords

 

[The Question]

I figured that Devil Ray was just Black Manta with a neat new name

Like how the Crime Syndicate were the Justice Lords

But unlike Manta and Devil Ray, the Syndicate and the Lords are nothing alike.

 

[trustyside-kick]

I like Black Manta, but it bugs me that people always pin him as Aquaman's greatest foe--don't get me wrong what he did with Aquababy really takes the cake--but I feel that Ocean Master should be pushed to the number 1 spot for Aquavillains.

 

[Anubis]

I don't know. Killing a guys kid kinda trumps sibling rivalry.

Personally, I think Ocean Master needs a makeover. He should look more.......dark Atlantean Sorcerer like.

Maybe instead of a starfish on his face it's a tattoo of a starfish on his face that connects to creepy barnacles and tats all over his body that glow when he's throwing mystical marine bolts or something.

Also, I would like to request a Name change to the "State Your Opinion thread" or whatever you can come up with that sounds better.

 

[BLACKVULCAN]

Maybe instead of a starfish on his face it's a tattoo of a starfish on his face .

i agree... having " Patrick" on your face really doesnt scream . i am johnny bad ass!

Also, I would like to request a Name change to the "State Your Opinion thread" or whatever you can come up with that sounds better.

how about "what the *&^%$ do you think about...!"

Sentences laced with obscenities always gets your point across!

* see spongebob and Mermaid man and barnacle boy

 

[Anubis]

I like it, What chu think about this s**t? Thread.

 

[Mystirious]

I can dig it

Ocean Master has always seemed to me to need a really great story to be told about him. I can think of lots of fab Black Manta stories but not any really good Ocean Master ones

I'd like to see him team up with Clea and start a conflict between Atlantis and Venturia. She's got Poseidon's trident he could combine his magic with hers and summon wacky monster sea beasts

 

[The Question]

i agree... having " Patrick" on your face really doesnt scream . i am johnny bad ass!

It does if it's a Starro baby and you're an agent of the collective.

 

[Mystirious]

Indeed

They be sinister alien starfish

 

[Spider-Aziz]

The Batmobile

This car looks like a cartoon pig head with 3 nostrils

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I like Black Manta, but it bugs me that people always pin him as Aquaman's greatest foe--don't get me wrong what he did with Aquababy really takes the cake--but I feel that Ocean Master should be pushed to the number 1 spot for Aquavillains.

If actions determine who a hero's greatest enemy is, then Black Manta is without a doubt Arthur's greatest enemy. He killed Aquababy, but almost as important--and apparently forgotten by the majority of readers, it seems--is the fact that he pit Aquaman and Aqualad against each other just before that. He put Aquaman in a position where he had to choose his son or his partner and Aquaman left no doubt whatsoever that he chose his son, forever tainting his relationship with Garth... only to find that Arthur, Jr. was already dead by the time Arthur got to him anyway. Black Manta ruined Arthur's entire life in one monumentally f***ed up act. Ocean Master doesn't have anything that can even come close to competing with that.

 

[Anubis]

Well said.

And with that, we move on.

Spoiler

DIE FISH *****E!!

The Red Hood(Jason Todd)

 

[trustyside-kick]

If actions determine who a hero's greatest enemy is, then Black Manta is without a doubt Arthur's greatest enemy. He killed Aquababy, but almost as important--and apparently forgotten by the majority of readers, it seems--is the fact that he pit Aquaman and Aqualad against each other just before that. He put Aquaman in a position where he had to choose his son or his partner and Aquaman left no doubt whatsoever that he chose his son, forever tainting his relationship with Garth... only to find that Arthur, Jr. was already dead by the time Arthur got to him anyway. Black Manta ruined Arthur's entire life in one monumentally f***ed up act. Ocean Master doesn't have anything that can even come close to competing with that.

Well I know that. I just wish Ocean Master had done more. I can recall all the "bigger" Ocean Master stuff and I agree that they don't top that one thing Black Manta did...but I like Ocean Master more all around. There were opportunities in the past that I wish were utilized.

 

[trustyside-kick]

Under the Hood is one of my favorite Batman stories. Love Jason as the Red Hood. He only is written well when Winnick is writing him though. Lobdell wrote him pretty well in his first issue, but I don't give two ****s about the upcoming story. I just enjoyed the interaction with Roy.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Well I know that. I just wish Ocean Master had done more. I can recall all the "bigger" Ocean Master stuff and I agree that they don't top that one thing Black Manta did...but I like Ocean Master more all around. There were opportunities in the past that I wish were utilized.

Eh. Maybe I'm biased, but Ocean Master and Aquaman being nemeses also strikes me as a bit too close to Thor/Loki, too. Ocean Master's good for an occasional tussle (that time he magically switched roles with Arthur in Sub Diego was an especially good one), but I wouldn't want to see him usurp Black Manta's spot as Arthur's primary big bad.

Anyway, the Red Hood isn't as bad as I originally thought. He was stupid as s*** when he first came back from the dead whining about how he wanted revenge on Batman because Batman didn't save him, but Winick and Morrison both did good work getting him past that. First Winick pushed him past just revenge to an ideological split with Batman over lethal force. If Batman just went and killed the Joker one day, life would probably be better for everyone (except maybe Batman). Since then, Winick's been characterizing him as believing he can do Batman's job better than Batman with his more lethal methods. My personal favorite expression of that was Morrison's arc with him in Batman & Robin, where he attempts to beat DickBats in a war of brand recognition by presenting the Red Hood and Scarlet as edgier and more appealing than Batman and Robin to the average citizen--new heroes for a new age. Clever stuff.

But yeah, he really sucked for a while there.

 

[Kurosawa]

Missed the chance to comment on Manta, but he is a great villain.

As for Red hood, I do think making another character from that identity was a good idea. As for Jason Todd, I have no use for him except for the Pre-Crisis version who was just a Dick Grayson clone but was at least inoffensive. But his death-and that the fact that people voted to see a teenage boy brutally beaten to death with a crowbar-was disgusting and was the point when I understood that comics fandom had become largely infused with sick deviants.

 

[TruerToTheCore]

Missed the chance to comment on Manta, but he is a great villain.

As for Red hood, I do think making another character from that identity was a good idea. As for Jason Todd, I have no use for him except for the Pre-Crisis version who was just a Dick Grayson clone but was at least inoffensive. But his death-and that the fact that people voted to see a teenage boy brutally beaten to death with a crowbar-was disgusting and was the point when I understood that comics fandom had become largely infused with sick deviants.

Never liked that they retconned Jason Todd since he was heavily connected to the Killer Croc and Nocturna storyline, but I must admit that Max Allan Collin's idea of turning him into a lonely street punk (of course just an homage/rip off to Junior Tracy) actually made some sense, as Batman explained it in various comics.

Although Jason Todd is one of the characters where the common perception is usually wrong because most people haven't read his original stories, they have just read about him what other people said.

For example, the whole idea that post-crisis Jason Todd was obnoxious, unstable and violent and that his whole path to his death was a continuous development is just wrong. The Jason Todd written by Collins or Barr was definitely not like that, in some ways (especially Barr's version) he was even more playful than Dick Grayson ever was.

This didn't really start until Jim Starlin took over whose complete goal seemed to be to make the readers dislike so he could kill him off, with stuff like killing the diplomat's son. They even drew the flashback of Jason confronting his father's killer, Two-Face totally different from the original story so he would look more aggressive. And then after Jason was dead Jim Starlin let Batman describe him as "the best" and stuff like that, except that we never saw something in his stories that justify this. Apparently he liked Jason but hated the idea of Robin.

Funnily enough, rumor has it that Warner was pissed off that DC killed Robin and then Denny O'Neil & Co. made Starlin the scapegoat and fired him.

Never really cared much about the Red Hood persona.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Missed the chance to comment on Manta, but he is a great villain.

As for Red hood, I do think making another character from that identity was a good idea. As for Jason Todd, I have no use for him except for the Pre-Crisis version who was just a Dick Grayson clone but was at least inoffensive. But his death-and that the fact that people voted to see a teenage boy brutally beaten to death with a crowbar-was disgusting and was the point when I understood that comics fandom had become largely infused with sick deviants.

People voted to have a crappy character put out of their misery. You make it sound like comic readers in the '80s were a bunch of serial killers.

 

[TruerToTheCore]

People voted to have a crappy character put out of their misery. You make it sound like comic readers in the '80s were a bunch of serial killers.

- He wasn't a crappy character
- there are other ways to get rid of characters
- only the nerds could vote since the regular newsstand issues didn't feature the voting
- DITF is a very bad story and features the lamest Joker ever

 

[TheCorpulent1]

He was a pretty bad character. Even before he came back whining about life as the Red Hood, his angst meter was cranked up to 11.

Anyway, whether you're personally a Jason Todd fan or not, there's nothing wrong with voting for a fictional character to be killed off. I'm sure there are plenty you'd kill off if you could, and I know for damn sure there are plenty Kurosawa would kill off if he could. Like, all of the post-Crisis ones. There's no point in getting up on a high horse about killing off characters, whether by vote or in your own "if I had my way" fantasies.