State Your Opinion on A Character

[The Question]

He has the same costume as the big red cheese. I don't understand. Also, Elvis was inspired by him, not vice versa.

What's to understand? He's Captain Marvel's side kick and he wears a blue version of his costume. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

Anyway, I like Captain Marvel Junior. His snarkiness and anger is a good foil to Billy's perpetual optimism and never say die attitude.

My only problem with him is the same problem I have with the Marvel familiy as a whole: They're the chosen champions of an ancient wizard imbued with the power of the gods and yet they enever seem to actually do anything.

 

[SuperFerret]

He's supposed to be a sympathetic character since his actual persona is mobile-challenged, given the miraculous powers of the Wizard.

Problem is, the Marvel family a crowded bunch with no real...Legacy. All the members of the Marvels were all around at around the same time and that makes it hard to take them seriously.

How does that make it hard to take them seriously?

 

[sandwraith]

How does that make it hard to take them seriously?

Because they are not a team of unique individuals with complimenting abilities like the Fantastic Four, the early X-Men or any other family-type super teams.

They have the same superpower with just different degrees of strength and that makes them boring if they are being marketed as a "team". And if we were to call them "Legacy" characters, that's rather misleading in itself. They aren't.

The Flash is a Legacy character, so is Green Lantern. Maybe the best example of what a legacy character is, it's probably Starman.

I just think its a pretty dated concept to create the same character as :a female version, a younger version, a pet version.

 

[Mystirious]

You must like Mary Marvel though sandwraith

She's super adorable

 

[sandwraith]

You must like Mary Marvel though sandwraith

She's super adorable

Agreed, but with the Marvels, we even have a super-powered "Uncle Marvel". They should have just stopped with Mary Batson. Everything else was just...the corniness that came with the era I guess.

 

[Franklin Richards]

Wasn't Uncle Marvel just a pretender? Or was that just the cartoon I watched?

 

[trustyside-kick]

You must like Mary Marvel though sandwraith

She's super adorable

Until they did that ******** Black Mary Marvel crap. Then I hated her with a passion ever since.

 

[SuperFerret]

Corniness and celebrating that sort of stuff is what makes the Marvels great.

What is your opinion on the Superfamily by the way? Superman, Superboy, Supergirl, Power Girl, Krypto, etc. etc. etc.

 

[sandwraith]

Wasn't Uncle Marvel just a pretender? Or was that just the cartoon I watched?

An obsessed fan? Dunno. He seemed popular enough to warrant an appearance of an evil version in Justice League: Crisis on 2 Earths. And if Dwayne McDuffie felt he was important enough that means (to me) that he must have been important to the Shazam! mythos.

 

[sandwraith]

Corniness and celebrating that sort of stuff is what makes the Marvels great.

What is your opinion on the Superfamily by the way? Superman, Superboy, Supergirl, Power Girl, Krypto, etc. etc. etc.

The same. Even with Batman but I guess with Batman they got a wee bit more creative with the names and personalities.

Does SUperboy count though? Remember back in those days Superboy was just a younger Superman.

Power Girl is a bit of a gray area. Krypto and even Supergirl's supercat is a throwback to that era.


Maybe because I don't have that extensive a history in the Golden Age stuff, I'd think that Superman started this fad so its sort of ok to see it in the Superman mythos but seeing it in the Marvels feels like a cheap rip-off even if technically they created the concept first. Still, at least DC makes an effort to reintroduce these characters in ways that makes them able to co-exist in the same continuity (i.e. post-Death of Superman) but I don't see them doing the same with the Marvels which is why it seems dated.

 

[Hound55]

Besides which the Super family don't really get marketed, shipped and operate as a family team unit so much.

They tend to go out and be their own individuls, whilst the Marvels operate far more as The Marvels.

The Super family look up to Supes, but they still try and go out to find their own path.

 

[The Question]

Because they are not a team of unique individuals with complimenting abilities like the Fantastic Four, the early X-Men or any other family-type super teams.

They have the same superpower with just different degrees of strength and that makes them boring if they are being marketed as a "team". And if we were to call them "Legacy" characters, that's rather misleading in itself. They aren't.

The Flash is a Legacy character, so is Green Lantern. Maybe the best example of what a legacy character is, it's probably Starman.

I just think its a pretty dated concept to create the same character as :a female version, a younger version, a pet version.

Since when has diversity in powers been necessary for a group of characters to be taken seriously? Powers are just window dressing. That's the same kind of logic that led DC to retcon Oliver Queen having superhuman eyesight and reflexes in the 90s, because they thought he needed powers to be cool. It's not what he can do that makes Ollie interesting, it's who he is.

And the same applies to the Marvel family. They're all fairly distinctly different people who have an established group dynamic. Billy, with or without his powers, is an eternal optimist with ridiculous willpower who's prone to trusting people and giving people second chances far past the point where anyone would think they deserve it, making heroic sacrifices at the drop of a hat, and holding people to somewhat unrrealistic moral standards. Junior is snarky, cynical, has anger problems, and can be very vengeful towards enemies who've wronged him and the rest of the Marvels in the past, especially the man who crippled him and killed his grandfather. He's a pretty solid foil to Billy in every way. Mary is both thr most innocent and the most pragmatic of the trio, usually the one to try the hardest to behave like a normal kid as opposed to some kind of martyr and the most likely to call Junior out on his angry crusades and call Billy out on his unrealistic messiah complex. She's also the one who's most likely to be disturbed by the bad things they encounter.

They're distinct individuals. The fact that they can all do the same stuff is largely irrelevent.

Agreed, but with the Marvels, we even have a super-powered "Uncle Marvel". They should have just stopped with Mary Batson. Everything else was just...the corniness that came with the era I guess.

Uncle Marvel doesn't have powers. He's just Billy and Mary's uncle. He's worn a costume and helped them out in the past and he's occasionally used super science when he was able to get his hands on it, but he's just a dude

 

[Mystirious]

Until they did that ******** Black Mary Marvel crap. Then I hated her with a passion ever since.

Countdown never happened. It never happened

That outfit she had in Final Crisis was fairly fab though. I want it

 

[The Question]

Countdown never happened. It never happened

Effectively, it didn't.

 

[trustyside-kick]

The costume she had during that phase was the biggest problem. Especially with the pink hair in pig tails.

 

[Mystirious]

Corniness and celebrating that sort of stuff is what makes the Marvels great.

 

[Mystirious]

The costume she had during that phase was the biggest problem. Especially with the pink hair in pig tails.

It didn't suit Mary Marvel at all

But on a brand new character it would have been hawt and

 

[The Question]

I just want to clarifiy that, at this point in canon (well, prior to the reboot, no idea what's going on there), the only members of the Marvel family that are canon are the main three, Uncle Marvel (who as I mentioned is just a dude who helps them out by being resourceful and clever more than anything else) and Mr. Tasky Tawnee (a talking tiger in a tweed suit who eats people. He's awesome). Sounds diverse enough to me.

 

[twylight]

Never read much of the Marvel's other than the stint Billy had with the JSA and the Stargirl/Captain Marvel romance. (I'm such a female reader, I love that stuff sprinkled in with the headbashing)

I always sort of liked the concept of the family, but I'm not into the magical side of DC enough to really go out of my way to read them. They don't seem that proactive anyway, unless DC has a special event going on in which they could be utilized. Do they have a specific title? Because I'd read that if the characterization was good.

 

[The Question]

Never read much of the Marvel's other than the stint Billy had with the JSA and the Stargirl/Captain Marvel romance. (I'm such a female reader, I love that stuff sprinkled in with the headbashing)

I really liked that pairing. Courtney is such a post-90s comic book teen with her snarkiness and pop culture references, Billy's such a 30s comic book teen with his boring hobbies and wide eyed outlook on life, they play off of each other really well.

 

[Cain]

DC has no idea whatsoever what to do with the Marvel family. Here's hoping that Morrison fixes this with Multiversity.

 

[twylight]

I really liked that pairing. Courtney is such a post-90s comic book teen with her snarkiness and pop culture references, Billy's such a 30s comic book teen with his boring hobbies and wide eyed outlook on life, they play off of each other really well.

Me too, and the added 'issues' and how they handled it made it really interesting. Everyone has relationships issues and it was cool to see superheroes have superhero issues other than 'OH, alter ego is a secret.' I was sad when they pulled the plug on that one... and then super disturbed they use Atom Smasher as the next guy.

 

[Anubis]

Which is really creepy.

 

[twylight]

Totally. Even if he is a cute-ish angsty ginger.

 

[Mystirious]

Me too, and the added 'issues' and how they handled it made it really interesting. Everyone has relationships issues and it was cool to see superheroes have superhero issues other than 'OH, alter ego is a secret.' I was sad when they pulled the plug on that one... and then super disturbed they use Atom Smasher as the next guy.

I really wish they had kept Billy and Courtney together in the JSA series. They made a nice couple. I was really enjoying their subplot

Which is really creepy.

Yep isn't he in his late twenties or early thirties

Courtney is only 15/16

That's not good