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Post by paulpogue on Dec 11, 2008 18:40:20 GMT -8
Norman Osborn's Little Friend is:
Red Hulk: 10 percent. I find it hard to believe that all these guys, including someone whose entire modus operandi is "Whenever someone becomes God, I try to take it from them", and the leader of a team that regularly pwns Juggernaut, would be intimidated by Red Hulk, but the writers have sure been trying to set Rulk up as a major threat.
The Sentry, probably in Void Drag: 80 percent. It makes sense; as irksomely plot-convenient as it is, the fact remains that the Sentry has an enormous amount of power that even Victor Von Doom would think twice before going up against. (He'd still do it, but he'd think twice.) We will assume that Bendis is politely forgetting that Emma Frost totally has his number, no matter which one is in control.
Anyone else, who will be vastly disappointing: 10 percent. I don't underestimate their ability to fuck it up. If it's, like, Pluto or somebody, it's a joke to think this crew would even be intimidated by him. If it's Thanos or Annihilus or someone that would legitimately intimidate this group, why the fuck are they playing sidekick to the Green Goblin? (Plus, once again, Doom would play along for three panels and then whip out the Cosmic Power Vacuum to steal their power anyway.)
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Post by Mario Di Giacomo on Dec 11, 2008 19:14:41 GMT -8
Clor has also been suggested.
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Post by paulpogue on Dec 11, 2008 19:18:03 GMT -8
Clor has also been suggested. Possible, but totally lame. Namor could probably take Clor single-handedly. Loki barely respects REAL Thor. Doom wouldn't even blink, just take him out in one panel and make some kind of crack about Inferior Richards Workmanship. Then again, we're talking about the same creators that let this particular visual of Namor get out the door, so maybe I give them too much credit. And it would explain why the Secret Friend is just standing there behind a door, totally silent, like a mannequin. |
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Post by jensaltmann on Dec 12, 2008 0:43:03 GMT -8
I know who Norman's Secret Friend is:
God.
Think it through. Who is on a power level that would make even DOOM and an Asgardian god hesitate to challenge it?
And when his greatest nemesis, Spider-Man, goes around making deals with the Devil, there is only one thing Supernorm can do to balance the odds: go to the Devil's counterpart and strike a bargain.
It makes perfect sense. If you apply Marvel logic, that is.
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Post by jensaltmann on Dec 12, 2008 0:44:38 GMT -8
Other than that, considering just who Norman has gathered there, none of them would be intimidated by ANYTHING. And as it has been said, half of them, if confronted with someone on a higher power level, would immediately start working out how to steal that power.
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Post by jensaltmann on Dec 12, 2008 0:47:34 GMT -8
We will assume that Bendis is politely forgetting that Emma Frost totally has his number, no matter which one is in control. I think you need to drop the adjective. Just remember that Bendis has been known to violate even that continuity which he himself has established. That said, maybe Norman has allied with the Scarlet Bitch? |
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Post by jessebaker on Dec 12, 2008 13:53:14 GMT -8
Nope, Dan Slott's called dibs on Wanda and if the solicits for the first couple of Slott-penned issues of Mighty Avengers are any indication, is looking to pull a GL Rebirth to absolve Wanda of culpability for Avengers Disassembled.
That said, another far-off suggestions: Romulus, the guy who "created" Wolverine. He could be Norman's ace in the hole.
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Post by K-Box on Dec 12, 2008 14:56:46 GMT -8
I give it a one-percent chance that it's Bendis himself who's standing behind the door. Think about it; his Purple Man arc on Alias basically ripped off Grant Morrison's Animal Man to fuck and gone, and more and more, Bendis's characterization and plotting is so inherently (and almost intentionally) self-contradictory that the only way it makes any sense is if Bendis is pushing his Writer's Fiat, not as a MEANS to an end, but as the END itself - that is to say, the only real reason he's doing it is to force his readers to submit to his will, for the sake of their submission itself. Thus, even in a fictional world that he's increasingly populated with Mary Sue deus ex machinas, the real-life person of Bendis himself is the biggest Mary Sue deus ex machina of all, and I suspect he might not be content until, like Darkseid brainwashing his minions to proclaim simply that "DARKSEID IS," every story written in the MU exists solely to tell the readers how awesome Bendis himself is. I mean, he's already reduced every single character in the MU to speaking like him, and over on scans_daily, somebody posted an image showing Alex Maleev's latest drawings of Namor side-by-side with photos of Bendis, proving that Maleev literally traced photos of Bendis to draw Namor, so I don't think it's absurd to say that Bendis' ultimate goal is to turn the MU into nothing more than a mirror of himself. |
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Post by paulpogue on Dec 18, 2008 20:35:16 GMT -8
Emma Frost joined the Evilinati specifically as a response to get back at Scott for his whole secret-team-of-killer-mutants thing, as predicted elsewhere: 100 percent as of Uncanny 505. Also pretty much sealing the idea that she's totally gaming Osborn.
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Post by jessebaker on Dec 19, 2008 1:17:50 GMT -8
Which reminds me further: Evil Illuminati is used to cosmicly reset the X-Men so Xavier's in charge again, Scott resumes the bitch position where he belongs (after fuck-up after fuck-up after fuck-up as sole leader of the X-Men), and Emma is either kicked out of the core X-Books/shuttled off to a satalite X-Book/just plain turned evil again? 51%
Emma's alliance reaks of desperation and ego and even if she's playing Norman, Scott will dump her ass as soon as he finds out (and hopefully gets told to go fuck himself by Emma, complete with dumping and his own 100% failure to replace Xavier shoved right in his face so hard that Scott breaks forth into tears when Emma forces him to realize what a horrible failure of a leader he is). Xavier comes back (bonus points if Storm arranges it as her token gesture of "fuck you"ness to Emma and Scott) and Emma goes away long enough for us to remember why we fell in love with he in the first place/Scott is put back into his place as a pathetic fuck-up he always has been/Xavier takes over as leader again.
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Post by paulpogue on Dec 19, 2008 20:54:29 GMT -8
New odds just based on random thoughts and finally reading Tom Brevoort's Q and A from October:
Brand New Day/One More Day is a "work," possibly the most elaborate such scheme in the history of comics: 25 percent. Still not the likeliest possibility, but still well within the realm of plausibility.
I'm not really sure why I'm starting to feel this way, but looking at the whole thing, looking at how it's all panned out, and looking at the absolute incompetence of the editorial staff's dealings with the public, I simply cannot accept that they actually BELIEVE the stuff they are saying. Hell, Brevoort, when talking about the deal with the devil, first denied Mephisto was the devil, and then asked "In this context, is Ghost Rider a hero?" (Uh, NO! Did Tom even READ the Johnny Blaze 1970s books? Ghost Rider was totally a villain who just happened to do good when really, really pushed by Blaze. Sometimes he got the right thing done, but the entire POINT of Ghost Rider is that Blaze was cursed by being possessed by a DEMON FROM HELL who would occasionally set his head on fire and then totally destroy shit. The Danny Ketch, quasi-heroic Spirit of Vengeance was another matter entirely. Plus, even IF you consider GR as a hero, there's not a single point in the story in which his deal with the devil is played off as a GOOD or SMART thing.)
Plus, Brevoort all but outright said they were going to be bringing back Kaine. KAINE? You're worried about this bogged-down continuity and screwed-up storylines and making Spidey seem old, and you're going to bring back KAINE? Don't get me wrong, I love Kaine to pieces, but seriously, people,
On top of that, they expect us to believe that Peter does a deal with the devil, fade to black, wakes up in a world where everything is different, and then they tell us with a straight face that all this stuff has nothing to do with the deal? Like hell. Just because there's an in-story reason for Harry to be alive -- and apparently for Spidey to have wiped the world's memory -- doesn't mean that it's still not Mephisto's fault.
And dammit, there are just too many back doors placed into this whole thing. Even if it's NOT a "work," I do not for one millisecond believe that there aren't at least three or four backup plans in place to get out of it. Heck, they even went well out of their way to both remind us of the existence of the Spider-Daughter AND to not COMPLETELY wipe her out of existence. They don't intend to bring her back -- much as I would prefer otherwise -- but they've sure got her, and Norman, and MJ's whispered secret, and Loki's debt to Spider-Man, and a whole lot else in the back pocket for the instant they need it.
Brevoort claimed this is a totally committed five-year plan, with the understanding that they might have bumps along the way. I seriously doubt that once those "bumps" include sales completely cratering that the five-year commitment will remain in place. As Kirk points out, not only is the book bleeding readers, it continues to HEMORRHAGE and shows no sign of stopping, not even after "New Ways to Die," which is by far the biggest bump they are ever going to get. Will this commitment survive to the 50,000-issue mark? 40,000? Less? There doesn't appear to be any bottom so far to the readership loss.
I don't know; maybe I'm too optimistic and just can't grasp that a bunch of writers who actively HATE the concept of heroism are running the show right now. I'm still stuck in the three-act storytelling mode, where it's always darkest before the dawn, and right now we're at the end of act two where the hero totally has his back against the wall, the Emperor is kicking Luke's ass, the Death Star is carving through the fleet, and the crew on Endor has just been captured ... and before long we get to the part where the heroes GET THEIR ACT TOGETHER and save the fucking day. Maybe I'm expecting too much by my hope that, deep down, Norman Osborn as the Marvel U's Lex Luthor will end the only way it ever can -- with Spider-Man giving him the ass-kicking of ten lifetimes and putting everything right.
No, I do not miss the irony of actually saying this about the writer who had LUKE CAGE deliver the coup de grace to Norman a few years back. Hope springs frakkin' eternal.
(Also recall: Every deal-with-the-devil story in the history of such stories ends in one of twp ways and ONLY one of these ways: The hero goes to hell, or the hero battles through the forces of hell and outwits the devil and wins the day while the devil heads back to hell with his tail between his legs. Spider-Man and Mephisto: WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?)
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Post by paulpogue on Dec 19, 2008 21:02:08 GMT -8
P.S.: We are told, time and again, that NOTHING changed except Peter and MJ never got married. Which means the baby thing happened. Let us, for the moment, put aside the question of Norman and Alison Mongraine and Baby-May-that-we-all-know-is-still-out-there-somewhere. Rather, let's consider the story element that we have been UNQUESTIONABLY TOLD still happened and is still remembered: Mary Jane got pregnant with Peter's baby. In a tragic moment in the midst of the clone saga, she lost the baby. Neither she nor Peter talk very much about her, but they both know it happened.
Given that context -- DAMN, Peter's cavalier attitude about Mr. Negative and his killing-any-blood-relative-of-Parker blackmail scheme sure seems even more callow, doesn't it? "Good thing I don't have any blood relatives that he can go after!", which was delivered in a happy-go-lucky Stan Lee style, is really more like "Good thing I don't have any blood relatives .. ANYMORE, I suppose" Ellisian glumness. Because he still remembers MJ miscarrying the baby, and Quesada and Brevoort have SPECIFICALLY SAID THIS.
Why do I do this to myself -- keeping searching for order in the last several years of stories that so clearly completely lack it?
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Post by jessebaker on Dec 19, 2008 21:14:30 GMT -8
Given that they pretty much unofficially wiped the entire Clone Saga fron canon, if Kaine DOES show up, he will be barely recognizable as the Kaine we all know. Ten will get you twenty he'll be a whiney, disfigured Peter Parker clone who thinks his powers are the result of Jackyl using him as a test subject to create Spidercide, his "super-powered" Peter Parker clone.
Which leads to the notion of them brining Kaine back just so he can try and steal Peter's life and face and die, while Peter cracks wise about not liking clones.
And as for the Mr. Negative storyline line, given that said issue was written by Dan Slott, you honestly don't think he wrote/conceived of that line as a doube-shot of "Fuck you" to the fans of Spider-Man who LIKED the Baby May plotline/Spider-Girl?
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Post by jessebaker on Dec 19, 2008 21:22:00 GMT -8
Also of note, having recently re-read Ellis's T-Bolts run these last couple of days:
Norman Osborn's secret weapon is Robbie Baldwin.
In Caged Angels, there is a MAJOR scene where Moonstone is doing a major league hard sell to Norman, convincing him that she can turn Robbie Baldwin, formerly Speedball and now Penance into a Hulk-level powered enforcer for Norman's various schemes. And in the last couple of issues of T-Bolts, Moonstone seems to be carrying out said scheme, as far as drugging Robbie and taking him to a maximum security mental institution, which given who's Moonstone's teacher is (Dr. Faustus, the dude Red Skull used to brainwash half of SHIELD and made Sharon Carter kill Cap), things don't look too well for Robbie.
Which in turn is why Doom is made to back down when Norman showed his ace in the hole, seeing as not only did Speedball FUCKING OWN Doom's ass in the Penance mini-series, but pretty much did so in Doom's own house. Much in the same way seeing Squirrel Girl makes Doom shit his pants, he probably now has a similar aversion to Penance.
(Loki of course wouldn't be afraid, but Loki generally seems to be going along with Norman's plan out of boredom if anything so Robbie is a non-factor. And Emma scanning Robbie and seeing that he's now a brainwashed human suicider for Norman might keep her and the Hood at bay.)
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Post by paulpogue on Dec 19, 2008 22:02:21 GMT -8
And as for the Mr. Negative storyline line, given that said issue was written by Dan Slott, you honestly don't think he wrote/conceived of that line as a doube-shot of "Fuck you" to the fans of Spider-Man who LIKED the Baby May plotline/Spider-Girl? Truth be told? I don't think it was thought through that far. It was a little aside that they probably congratulated themselves on being very clever with. Marvel BND Era: The crew that can't get it together enough to say "fuck you" competently. |
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