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Post by paulpogue on Feb 20, 2010 16:58:51 GMT -8
Rob Liefeld -- of all fucking people -- had a pitch in very similar to this for an X-Men project just before the Image blowup. I remember thinking it was one of the best damned ideas I had heard for a comic in a long time: "Basically, I want to take a hard look at Professor X and exactly what he was thinking when he formed the X-Men. What kind of guy takes a bunch of teenagers, some of them barely 13, drills them through the equivalent of boot camp, gets them to buy into his ideology, and then sends them into the front lines of a war that he knows damn well could kill them? And not only that, but sending them as soldiers by proxy in HIS war against an enemy that HE has been fighting for decades but these kids have never heard of. Seriously, what kind of person DOES that?"
I know, I know, Liefeld would have made a mess of it, but I have to say, I had NEVER heard that line of thinking pitched in Marvel, and to this day, even after all the various forms of moral ambiguity projected on the Professor, "child soldier recruiter" has never been one of them.
And you're absolutely right that it's a major trope of the genre, but also one that deserves some deconstruction. Every time some police commissioner replaces Gordon and takes a major anti-Batman stance, there's a bit where Robin swings by and the new commish notes to their flunky, "Make sure to add child endangerment to the charges." Miller did it first in DKR, but it's happened three or four times since then in a way that's meant to make clear to we the readers that this person is the Heavy and is also a Dick. But seriously, who the HELL thinks this is an okay thing? Becoming a 13-year-old Bat-sidekick means that the BEST case scenario is that you're going to become utterly traumatized by watching Two-Face melt someone horribly in acid and you have to spend the rest of your life knowing you couldn't stop him, and the worst case scenario is that it's YOU in the acid.
Comic tropes often fall completely apart upon examination -- look what happened when Marvel started thinking about "Hey, what about all these guys with powers walking around with no regulation?" -- but the kid sidekick/teen team/child soldiers thing is an incredible piece of potential.
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Post by Mario Di Giacomo on Feb 20, 2010 19:06:46 GMT -8
...the kid sidekick/teen team/child soldiers thing is an incredible piece of potential. By the sheerest coincidence, I was reading Daniel Way's Umbrella Academy today.... |
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Post by Anders on Feb 20, 2010 23:23:44 GMT -8
Nice catch! Yeah, Umbrella Academy is this a bit sideways.
And what about all those teenaged (or younger) manga mecha drivers etc?
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Post by jessebaker on Feb 21, 2010 1:05:42 GMT -8
Regarding the age issue for the original X-Men, the whole "child soldier' thing is a non-issue, especially when you factor in the sliding scale of time.
Beast was college age, as was Angel. Cyclops was probably around the age of 15-16 years old when he was first recruited and was legal age by the time UXM #1 came out, given the plot point that by the time he's been up and around an X-Man, younger brother Alex has graduated college.
That leaves Jean Grey and Iceman, with Jean at least around the age of 16-17 given that her parents soon took her out of Xavier and enrolled her into college.
As such, Cyclops is the closest thing you got towards the notion of Xavier and training child soldiers. Maybe Jean Grey when you factor in the whole "faking Xavier's death" and Claremont reconning Jean receiving training as a kid from Xavier though later writers retcon. Also not to mention Tessa, which was even more hardcore given the few glimpses we got of Xavier training her to be his mole/sleeper agent within the Hellfire Club.
That said, the idea of Xavier doing the child soldier training thing doesn't work for me as a plotpoint. In part because it's such a cynical move to make Xavier grim and gritty and do we really need that? Especially given the fact that it seems to be the only real way in which people care to write Xavier these days: uncaring bastard. It reduces Xavier to being just another empty fake and makes him harder to relate to as a character of importance to the X-Men if he's a barely contains sociopath who treats his pupils as canon fodder.
That being said, I would love to see SOMEONE do a mini-series on the original Hellions and White Queen's training of them. For the most part, we've never quite seen how Emma fucked up the students so trainingwise that they would be unable to survive a Sentinel attack and that's a story that would be interesting to see.
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Post by Mario Di Giacomo on Feb 21, 2010 5:16:36 GMT -8
Nice catch! Yeah, Umbrella Academy is this a bit sideways. And what about all those teenaged (or younger) manga mecha drivers etc? has that sewn up. |
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Feb 21, 2010 6:25:33 GMT -8
Regarding the age issue for the original X-Men, the whole "child soldier' thing is a non-issue, especially when you factor in the sliding scale of time. Beast was college age, as was Angel. Cyclops was probably around the age of 15-16 years old when he was first recruited and was legal age by the time UXM #1 came out, given the plot point that by the time he's been up and around an X-Man, younger brother Alex has graduated college. That leaves Jean Grey and Iceman, with Jean at least around the age of 16-17 given that her parents soon took her out of Xavier and enrolled her into college. Uncanny X-Men Vol 1 #308 (Scott and Jean engagement issue) - Scott lists his age as 15. Already in full X-garb. Note that it has been established (~issue of 30 of X-Men Vol.1) that Scott was recruited after being chased by an anti-mutant mob (plus that whole thing with the living Diamond, which I might be willing to agree has been retconned out). Iceman was recruited under virtually identical circumstances, and is believed to be younger. I'll grant you Beast. Jean was recruited as Xavier's student at age 13 following the accident with her friend, as has been established on multiple occassions (I'll go with Uncanny X-Men Vol 1., issue 243), but was inducted into the X-Men in her uniform at Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1#1. Uncanny 308, and she's in her uniform at the time, so it must take place after Uncanny#1, estabilishes her age as 16. Thunderbolts Vol. 1#28, said by Angel "I've been doing this since I was 16 years old" - age established. If you can give counter-references and support your statements Jesse, I will hear them out. Otherwise, please keep in mind that there are several members of this forum who have at least equal comic knowledge to your own, and that the "Sliding Timescale" handwave is a Quesada-level arguementation technique (that is to say a poor one that has no truck with many of us). As such, Cyclops is the closest thing you got towards the notion of Xavier and training child soldiers. Maybe Jean Grey when you factor in the whole "faking Xavier's death" and Claremont reconning Jean receiving training as a kid from Xavier though later writers retcon. Also not to mention Tessa, which was even more hardcore given the few glimpses we got of Xavier training her to be his mole/sleeper agent within the Hellfire Club. I singled out Cyclops for exactly that reason. He was chosen after a traumatic incident under duress. Unlike any of the original X-Men, he had literally no one on Earth to turn to after nearly being killed by a mob. It's no different than a militia (dare I say a "terrorist organization"?) picking up some orphans in a war zone to recruit them after a violent attack. There's also Kitty Pryde, whom up until the "Kitty Pryde and Wolverine" series had seemingly no means of self-defense training and was nearly killed on at least two occassions (Magneto in UXM vol.1 #150 and the original Brood Arc), as well as Jubilee. There's also the New Mutants, and Generation X. And so on and so forth... That said, the idea of Xavier doing the child soldier training thing doesn't work for me as a plotpoint. In part because it's such a cynical move to make Xavier grim and gritty and do we really need that? Especially given the fact that it seems to be the only real way in which people care to write Xavier these days: uncaring bastard. It reduces Xavier to being just another empty fake and makes him harder to relate to as a character of importance to the X-Men if he's a barely contains sociopath who treats his pupils as canon fodder. I'm not stating it should be a plot point - but as a way of looking at something old in a fresh way - a necessary look to gain perspective. I'm not making the personal investment in the characters or the plot, but trying to look at the way it works, and what assumptions are made, and what that means as a way of figuring out a new and fresh look at things. I consider it a necessary look if the superhero genre is to survive. That being said, I would love to see SOMEONE do a mini-series on the original Hellions and White Queen's training of them. For the most part, we've never quite seen how Emma fucked up the students so trainingwise that they would be unable to survive a Sentinel attack and that's a story that would be interesting to see. At a guess? She trained them all to be Gordon Gecko backstabbers to such a degree that they didn't trust anyone else - group dynamics make a difference in a full scale combat situation. |
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Post by paulpogue on Feb 21, 2010 17:11:31 GMT -8
Also, the "sliding timescale" has absolutely no effect on what ages they were when they began their superheroic careers -- in fact, it's the handwave used to PRESERVE them. Peter Parker was always 15 when he was bitten by the spider, and about 12 years have passed since then, regardless of the fact nearly 50 years of real time have passed. So the original X-Men's ages have never changed -- and if they ever do change their age-of-recruitment, it's by outright retcon, not sliding timescale.
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Post by jkcarrier on Feb 21, 2010 17:21:41 GMT -8
Just another data point: In X-Men #1, Iceman is said to be sixteen, and he gripes about not being treated as an equal because he's "a couple years younger" than Scott, Warren, and Hank.
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Feb 22, 2010 7:08:15 GMT -8
Completely off topic - but if anyone knows what is going on with Blogger and can explain it in simple terms to me and whether or not I should do something about it, I could use the help.
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Feb 22, 2010 9:12:57 GMT -8
pacioccosmind.blogspot.com/2010/02/superpowers-violence-and-invincible.htmlI don't normally talk much about Invincible. It's a perfectly good comic at doing what it does and that's great, but it only rarely blips on my radar. The book does have a reputation however as having an extreme amount of blood and gore when depicting superpowered battles, leading to the idea that Kirkman's being puerile or sensationalistic about it. However, it is my belief that the Invincible creative team understands full well the intersection of superpowers and violence and offers a subversive take on them. First, let's consider the traditional Strong/Invulnerable superhero archtype. The question that is not often asked is "Wait, how do they know how to _____?" Particularly with invulnerability, that would require taking some rather extreme risks in what amounts to a personal test to destruction. Of yourself. In most superhero stories, the discovery of that power is via some accidental means - hit by a car or shot with bullets, etc. If that didn't happen, how would they know? Would they try running into traffic or shooting themselves? Lighting themselves on fire? Spending a night in a meat locker to see if they could resist the cold? You see where this is going. And the real bitch of invulnerability in a superhero universe is that it's a limited invulnerability; someone who is strong enough can hurt you, if they hit hard enough. On the flip side, how would our hero know how hard to hit someone as to not kill them? How would you practice that skillset except to have some rather brave test subjects (whom one would hope, have Wolverine-level regenerative capabilities, just in case)? This is subject to almost all superpowers - learning how to use them for non-lethal combat would likely be a process of trial and error that the audience is thankfully asked to ignore. And when these superhumans face other superhuman opponents, how do they know to dial it up a knotch to deal with superhumanly durability or invulnerability without leading to lethal results? Another interesting aspect of the level of violence in Invincible is the ramifications as depicted. Rarely if ever do you see the witty or hardass one-liners after an opponent is taken down the way you do with Wolverine and that ilk (The Viltrumites are the exception. They are also a race of ultraviolent sociopaths, so I think we can let that slide). More often, the characters who survive are badly beaten and require extensive recuperation. More interesting (and more rare for the realm of supercomics) are the psychological ramifications of having to deal with lost friends and family, and the hardening of the spirit that comes with the increasing level of violence. The current arc in has been indirectly implying that with all the violence Invincible has encountered, something like superhuman Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder would be an issue of some great concern for both him as well as those that could be hurt by him. So there you have it - yes, Invincible is gorey, and it is brutal, but in a way that helps to enlighten the issue of violence, superhuman and otherwise.
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Post by jensaltmann on Feb 22, 2010 9:22:10 GMT -8
That PTSD thing -- I've been toying with a similar idea, about a superhero who can't cope with the stresses of leading this kind of double life and who is headed towards a nervous breakdown.
I really want to do that with DC's character Airwave. His father was a superhero, Airwave. His uncle is a superhero, Green Lantern. After his father was murdered, his mother took over the Airwave identity for a while, then retired it to raise her son to become a superhero.
That can't have been good for the kid's mind.
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Feb 22, 2010 9:26:25 GMT -8
Yeah, you would think it would be more common among superheroes.
Now, granted, Christnos Gage just finished a series (Absolution) that had a super-cop become so sickened by all the horror he saw that he became a guy who killed serial killers (and soon-to-be killers), so it might be spillover from that, but it's still something that you would think the super genre should tackle at some point.
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Post by paulpogue on Feb 22, 2010 10:29:13 GMT -8
That PTSD thing -- I've been toying with a similar idea, about a superhero who can't cope with the stresses of leading this kind of double life and who is headed towards a nervous breakdown. I really want to do that with DC's character Airwave. His father was a superhero, Airwave. His uncle is a superhero, Green Lantern. After his father was murdered, his mother took over the Airwave identity for a while, then retired it to raise her son to become a superhero. That can't have been good for the kid's mind. Plus, y'know, the whole Green Lantern thing didn't actually work out all that well for his uncle for a fairly significant period of time. Given DC's fixation on legacy characters, I'm amazed that more hasn't been done with Airwave. Where's he even at these days? |
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Post by jensaltmann on Feb 22, 2010 10:53:44 GMT -8
According to Wikipedia, he was dissipated into radio waves during one of the recent crises. Doesn't mean he can't pull himself together.
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Post by Anders on Feb 22, 2010 12:46:56 GMT -8
Mark Waid's Irredeemable deals with something similar to the PTSD issue - a Superman analogue who goes mental after the ten minutes he spent in space not hearing everyone's calls for help meant the horrible, disfiguring deaths of most of a city due to something he entrusted a scientist with (plus hearing everyone's snide comments about him all the time).
Powers has also dealt with the physical and psychological effects of superhuman combat in various ways, though not as detailed with one individual as Invincible. It also has a more cynical outlook in general.
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