Sperg about comic books here

[Kup]

@MirrorNoir : "The comic version of The Boys is worse than the TV show. Butcher is the most reviled and unlikable comic characters of the last twenty years and he never gets his comeuppence and gets everything he want in the end."

Didn't he end up losing control of the team and then die of a broken neck at the end, and then it turned out his vendetta was again the wrong guy because it was someone else that had raped his wife?

Sounds like the opposite of coming out ahead.

Butcher was duped, like Homelander he was tricked. Noir violated Becky and let his spawn kill her on the table, putting Butcher on the warpath against the perceived rapist Homelander.

The ensuing chaos would guarantee Noir getting the kill order and would finally fulfill his purpose.

Butcher was a puppet, the ultimate deconstruction of the Punisher archetype and action heroes in general. Thinking down the barrel of a gun all the time, for every situation puts you in a position where someone smarter than you can manipulate who’s in your sights because the “violent vigilante man” doesn’t think. It’s kill, kill, kill all the time.

Butcher was always a Punisher deconstruction masked as a power fantasy.

Then, when the killing is done, Butcher goes overboard, because it’s always escalation with him. He kills his team and enactes a Luthor-esque scheme to kill every superhuman, it ends with the last person who cares about him performing a mercy-kill.

The Boys is a lot of filler, but moments like that make it all worthwhile.

 

[MirrorNoir]

@MirrorNoir : "The comic version of The Boys is worse than the TV show. Butcher is the most reviled and unlikable comic characters of the last twenty years and he never gets his comeuppence and gets everything he want in the end."

Didn't he end up losing control of the team and then die of a broken neck at the end, and then it turned out his vendetta was again the wrong guy because it was someone else that had raped his wife?

Sounds like the opposite of coming out ahead.

He still kills the rapist (after real rapist kills Homelander) and then murders the team because he can/they have super powers and as such are fair game, and when he breaks his neck, he bullies and manipulates Hughie to mercy kill him so he can escape prison and life as a quadriplegic and continue to haunt/torment Hughie in death in the sequel mini-series.

The ideal fate for Butcher would have been to live as a cripple and at the mercy of people he couldn't abuse or belittle or manipulate as he spends the rest of his crippled life in prison.

 

[Registration]

Man I loved Ultimates, sure the “heroes are shitheads” is overdone now but I really like how Ultimates did it, the twists (at the start) were clever.

Cap actually acting like a man from his time period was kino and his conflict with modern culture/survivor’s guilt made him very interesting and really sad to read, like the saddest Cap has ever been. He is alone, in a wholly unique and unrelatable way.

Tony acts like a man who has been a privileged hedonist for the entirety of his adult life, who got a brutal reality check with an inoperable brain tumour. He’s a deviant for sure, but he’s determined to do some measure of good before he goes.

Thor is a hippie, self-help guru who claims to be a god, and is treated like an absolute lunatic by his teammates. The irony is that he is the nicest man in the team and neatly balances the political trinity set up with Cap and Tony.

Black Widow being an actual villain was also a clever twist, cause you the reader are so accustomed to her being the “redeemed Bond girl” that you don’t notice her latching onto the clinically depressed rich dude because “muh alternate universe.”

Then she goes and murders Jarvis, the Bartons and reveals that she was the mole for the Liberators.

For me Ultimates was just silly, even more when around the same time, a much better comic was being published alongside with it: Squadron Supreme.

If only they could continue where they left off ignoring everything else that other did after the OG team left....

 

[CAPTAIN HAPPY]

I really lovered Superman: Red Son, I thought it was one of the best comics I ever read, though I haven't read all that many lol
Still, when the movie adaption came out, I couldn't break myself to watch it more than the first 20ish minutes. The movie did absolutely no justice to the book and why it was awesome.

 

[DaBigBopper]

Man I loved Ultimates, sure the “heroes are shitheads” is overdone now but I really like how Ultimates did it, the twists (at the start) were clever.

Cap actually acting like a man from his time period was kino and his conflict with modern culture/survivor’s guilt made him very interesting and really sad to read, like the saddest Cap has ever been. He is alone, in a wholly unique and unrelatable way.

Tony acts like a man who has been a privileged hedonist for the entirety of his adult life, who got a brutal reality check with an inoperable brain tumour. He’s a deviant for sure, but he’s determined to do some measure of good before he goes.

Thor is a hippie, self-help guru who claims to be a god, and is treated like an absolute lunatic by his teammates. The irony is that he is the nicest man in the team and neatly balances the political trinity set up with Cap and Tony.

Black Widow being an actual villain was also a clever twist, cause you the reader are so accustomed to her being the “redeemed Bond girl” that you don’t notice her latching onto the clinically depressed rich dude because “muh alternate universe.”

Then she goes and murders Jarvis, the Bartons and reveals that she was the mole for the Liberators.

>Hank was just abusive rather than being manipulated into a rich girl who wants power/ money.
He was the most boring in the Ultimates, Janet getting eaten was lame too. Ultron was lame in Ultimates when he's the most human enemy despite being a robot, he's a dark reflection of Hank who knows intimate details about all the Avengers and he's either doing all of it out of hate for mankind or to try to make his father look good.

Someone at Marvel hates him, but he literally got manipulated into a marriage during a psychotic breakdown brought upon by a chemical leak. Janet looks like his dead wife (which has never been expanded upon beyond she got kidnapped by the Soviets and Hank woke up with amnesia after trying to rescue her) and Hank was always thrown off by the age gap. I just want Hank to be the less autistic Reed who will actually kill someone if he's pressed.

 

[MirrorNoir]

>Hank was just abusive rather than being manipulated into a rich girl who wants power/ money.
He was the most boring in the Ultimates, Janet getting eaten was lame too. Ultron was lame in Ultimates when he's the most human enemy despite being a robot, he's a dark reflection of Hank who knows intimate details about all the Avengers and he's either doing all of it out of hate for mankind or to try to make his father look good.

Someone at Marvel hates him, but he literally got manipulated into a marriage during a psychotic breakdown brought upon by a chemical leak. Janet looks like his dead wife (which has never been expanded upon beyond she got kidnapped by the Soviets and Hank woke up with amnesia after trying to rescue her) and Hank was always thrown off by the age gap. I just want Hank to be the less autistic Reed who will actually kill someone if he's pressed.

Actually, and this came from Brian Michael Bendis of all people (and semi-presented by other writers like Englehart and Dan Slott, before he was made to throw Hank under the bus in Iron Man) but one of the defining features of Hank Pym is that he's a legit pure hearted soul, to the point that when the Skrulls replaced him leading up to Secret Invasion, EVERY Hank replacement but the last one all betrayed the Skrulls and had to be killed before they could warn the heroes of Earth about the infiltration scheme due to Hank's soul/memories being so pure and good that it overridden the Skrulls willpower and inherent evil. And the only reason the last one didn't turn on the Skrulls was that they ordered the Skrull to behave "out of character" (IE fuck Tigra instead of Jan) under the guise that it would keep the good part of Hank from hijacking another host body.

 

[Water-T]

Someone at Marvel hates him, but he literally got manipulated into a marriage during a psychotic breakdown brought upon by a chemical leak. Janet looks like his dead wife (which has never been expanded upon beyond she got kidnapped by the Soviets and Hank woke up with amnesia after trying to rescue her) and Hank was always thrown off by the age gap. I just want Hank to be the less autistic Reed who will actually kill someone if he's pressed.

In the 80s West Coast Avengers series, Hank found out where she was being kept, and she was experimented on, turning her into a giant brained freak that couldn't move. It was later discovered that Maria was pregnant when she was kidnapped, and the Russians raised their daughter Nadia under the Red Room program. She later got access to Pym particles, escaped, and took up the mantle of Wasp.

Nadia means "hope" in Slavic, and she legally changed her last name to Van Dyne in honor of her surrogate mother Janet, making her the 616's version of Hope from the MCU in a roundabout way.

She also inherited Hank's bipolar disorder, so if any robots with Oedipus Complexes pop up, we know who to blame.

 

[Registration]

what happened with Hank after he fused with ultron in Remenders era, I dropped it not long after that (I really liked Uncanny Avengers, even with all the muties)

 

[Kup]

For me Ultimates was just silly, even more when around the same time, a much better comic was being published alongside with it: Squadron Supreme.

If only they could continue where they left off ignoring everything else that other did after the OG team left....

Eh, I’ll always have a soft spot for the Ultimates, from the kids movies to my poor mother buying me a bunch of issues and not knowing what was in them.

Plus I stand by that “The Ultimates” is a cooler name than “The Avengers.”

 

[The handsome tard]

"Whatever Happened to The Man of Tomorrow" is still one of the most touching send offs to an iconic established hero to me.

Felt like an actual ending to Superman's adventures, bittersweet but still very hopeful at the end.

As a Superman fan, its difficult not to get choked up at the final panels.

 

[Registration]

Started reading this series based on the DCAU (I am the only madman who I know who read the fifth issues of Superman Adventures of DCAU), quite fun so far, Templeton really rocks with the art, but this line of dialogue, "9/11 level" makes me think that it actually happened in the DCAU somehow.

I was also surprised to see Jason in it, Jason is my favorite, so it is always cool to see him in anything. Lets hope this book surprises me positively just like the Wonder Woman 77' and Batman 66' crossover

 

[Kup]

One of my all-time favourite Marvel moments

Dark Reign was a trip, Gargan was such a good Venom.

 

[DaBigBopper]

Actually, and this came from Brian Michael Bendis of all people (and semi-presented by other writers like Englehart and Dan Slott, before he was made to throw Hank under the bus in Iron Man) but one of the defining features of Hank Pym is that he's a legit pure hearted soul, to the point that when the Skrulls replaced him leading up to Secret Invasion, EVERY Hank replacement but the last one all betrayed the Skrulls and had to be killed before they could warn the heroes of Earth about the infiltration scheme due to Hank's soul/memories being so pure and good that it overridden the Skrulls willpower and inherent evil. And the only reason the last one didn't turn on the Skrulls was that they ordered the Skrull to behave "out of character" (IE fuck Tigra instead of Jan) under the guise that it would keep the good part of Hank from hijacking another host body.

Hank really has never gotten his own series focusing on who the fuck he is. He's a founding Avenger, but the Maria Pym stuff has always been Soviets fucking with him. No expanded on how he got amnesia in Soviet Hungary. Nor does anyone bring up how his father-in-law and wife were killed by the Soviets or how his daughter has been gaslit by Janet into believing that Hank savagely beat her due to Bipolar and not Janet emotionally playing with an unstable man until he blew up.

If I remember right during Secret Wars they had to kill and clone his imposter twice because she kept forming bonds with humans and the Hank part of her screamed to get them to safety. Hank's kid with Tigra is Batman Beyond levels of cuckery. Somehow it is genetically is his and Tigra is kind of into Hank. All I want is for Hank to sitting in his lab in giant form with Tigra on his lap in a swivel chair.

In the 80s West Coast Avengers series, Hank found out where she was being kept, and she was experimented on, turning her into a giant brained freak that couldn't move. It was later discovered that Maria was pregnant when she was kidnapped, and the Russians raised their daughter Nadia under the Red Room program. She later got access to Pym particles, escaped, and took up the mantle of Wasp.

Nadia means "hope" in Slavic, and she legally changed her last name to Van Dyne in honor of her surrogate mother Janet, making her the 616's version of Hope from the MCU in a roundabout way.

She also inherited Hank's bipolar disorder, so if any robots with Oedipus Complexes pop up, we know who to blame.

That turned out to be an AIM agent who needed his help to do some bullshit and turn fully into a MODOK. Nadia had a terrible series by a soy faced cuck who shills for dykes and made it full of POC crippled lesbians in STEM, rather than Nadia being the Russian equivalent of X-23 with bipolar disorder who wants to live her American Girl Doll fantasy with her daddy who dotes on her.

 

[Water-T]

If I remember right during Secret Wars they had to kill and clone his imposter twice because she kept forming bonds with humans and the Hank part of her screamed to get them to safety. Hank's kid with Tigra is Batman Beyond levels of cuckery. Somehow it is genetically is his and Tigra is kind of into Hank. All I want is for Hank to sitting in his lab in giant form with Tigra on his lap in a swivel chair.

The baby is TECHNICALLY his, because the process the Skrulls used to infiltrate Earth made them exact copies down to the genetic level. So when Skrull Pym shot his load in Greer's cootchie, it was like if the real Pym busted a nut in her too.

I'll bet Hank shrinks down and literally parties in Tigra's pussy, just like what he and Janet did to each other during Geoff Johns' Avengers run.

 

[DaBigBopper]

The baby is TECHNICALLY his, because the process the Skrulls used to infiltrate Earth made them exact copies down to the genetic level. So when Skrull Pym shot his load in Greer's cootchie, it was like if the real Pym busted a nut in her too.

I'll bet Hank shrinks down and literally parties in Tigra's pussy, just like what he and Janet did to each other during Geoff Johns' Avengers run.

Yeah, it's like Batman Beyond in reverse. Hank somehow cucked his infiltrator into literally giving her life for Earth multiple times and giving him a son. Pretty sure the size play was from the Ultimates, too.

 

[MirrorNoir]

In the 80s West Coast Avengers series, Hank found out where she was being kept, and she was experimented on, turning her into a giant brained freak that couldn't move. It was later discovered that Maria was pregnant when she was kidnapped, and the Russians raised their daughter Nadia under the Red Room program. She later got access to Pym particles, escaped, and took up the mantle of Wasp.

Nadia means "hope" in Slavic, and she legally changed her last name to Van Dyne in honor of her surrogate mother Janet, making her the 616's version of Hope from the MCU in a roundabout way.

She also inherited Hank's bipolar disorder, so if any robots with Oedipus Complexes pop up, we know who to blame.

In Englehart's last full arc on WCA, he had Maria be found but turned into a MODOK type creature which he and the WCA rescued. Hank quit the team to reunite with his wife Maria and try and cure her/restore her humanity.

Hank wasn't going to show up again for a while, but Englehart got fired and replaced with John Byrne and one of the things Byrne wanted to do was restore Hank/Jan as a couple. In Solo Avengers, which was a Hawkeye solo book with a running backup featuring random B/C-List Avengers with no book of their own, there was a three part arc where a bunch of terrorists are doing a bunch of bad shit, that they trace back to the lab where Hank and Maria are at.

The story climaxes with the reveal that Maria has gone full evil after being turned into a monster and adopted the name "SODOM" and tries to kill Hank and Hawkeye and proclaims that she no longer is the woman that Hank knew after being turned into a monster.

Sadly, because Marvel editorial secretly despises WCA and only have been reprinting it because most of the Movie Avengers are in it in terms of needing trade material to churn out for cash-in trades, the story has never been reprinted and explicitly omitted from every single WCA trade, hardcover, omnibus along with other critical issues of Solo Avenger and it's later rebrand Avengers Spotlight. It was also never followed up on in the pages of West Coast Avengers as far as Hank never mentioning that his first wife was a super villain and out there doing bad shit.

Apparently Marvel DID catch the fact that they now had a villain named "SODOM" and fans pretty much caught on to the implications of the name, so when she reappeared after the Solo Avengers arc, in Quasar, she was now "MODAM" and pretty muck looking like a gender flipped MODOK (who at the time was deader than disco).

Mark Gruenwald used her in Captain America for a bunch of stories but the issue of who the fuck she was was never addressed until an arc in Iron Man. The writer (Lem Kaminski IIRC) retconned MODAM as really being a russian spy who was a former lover of X-Men villain Omega Red; though he implied that also might not be the whole truth by revealing that MODAM was a longtime AIM honeypot spy and that "AIM routinely falsified personal records to keep their spies from being fully compromised if they are ever confiscated by authorities".

MODAM ultimately was killed in Gruenwald's prenultimate Captain Amercia story where she was destroyed in an energy blast on an island that was trying to create a new cosmic cube for AIM; forcing them to do something that was never fully explained in any way that made sense, to basically transform a random AIM agent into the original MODOK reborn so he could shut down the experiment after it went horribly wrong.

what happened with Hank after he fused with ultron in Remenders era, I dropped it not long after that (I really liked Uncanny Avengers, even with all the muties)

You are going to cry.

Hank didn't appear again until an Uncanny Avengers arc where he comes back to rejoin the Avengers, only to turn out that A. Hank died in the merger and it was Ultron alone controlling their merged body and B. Using his creators name, Ultron (or Pymtron as he was now called) had massacred entire planets to try and turn the galaxy against the Avengers.

In the end, the Avengers had to imprison him into a sun but he escaped and ended up on Earth right before Hydra Cap quarantined it during Secret Empire. In that debacle's only redeeming subplot, Spencer IGNORED the Uncanny Avengers storyline and portrayed Hank as in control over gesalt form and gave us a wonderful issue where Hydra Cap and Iron Man/Scott Lang are forced to have dinner with Hank and force him to decide which side he should hand over a cosmic cube shard to that both sides want and spends the entire issue shitting on Iron Man AND Hydra Cap in a story that makes you think Nick Spencer realized he had fucked up HARD going for SJW in the SamCap book/Hydra Cap plot twist and was trying to win the crowd back. In the end, Hydra Cap and Tony end up pissing off Pym so badly dealing with his correct criticisms of them that Scott Lang has to beg Pym to give HIM the cosmic cube shard by appealing to Hank's sense of goodness and wanting to do the right thing,.

This would be the high point for Pymtron, as it goes downhill from here:

Apparently Brevoort wasn't happy that Spencer made Pym viable again so in the god-awful Infinity/Infinity Warps storyline, Pymtron gets involved in a quest for the Infinity Gems and Hank Pym gets sucked into the Soul Gem. Placed in a weird dream world where he's been separated from Ultron and reunited with his Avengers teammates, Hank's soul is eaten by a demon and explicitly stated that he's dead and can never be brought back as any soul eaten by the creature is irreversibly destroyed.

Pymtron then appears in Dan Slott's Iron Man in a story which is an affront to Slott's early work rehabbing Hank in Mighty Avengers/Avengers Academy. Pym is kidnapping people and merging them with robots, including combining Vision/Wonder Man into one body and Jocasta with a random woman to make her human too. Basically Tony, Jocasta, Wasp, Vision, Wonder Man, Jarvis, Thor ALL spend the entire arc shitting on Pymtron, telling him how they NEVER EVER REALLY LIKED HIM, ALWAYS THOUGHT HE WAS EVIL, AND WISHED HE WAS DEAD FOREVER. Pymtron was defeated and just for added shits and giggles, Slott once again shits on any hope of Pym being restored by telling Pymtron that Hank is dead and returning to a human form would be death for him AND Tony, Thor and Vision quipping about putting Ultron into an adamantium cylinder and throwing it in a black hole so he can NEVER EVER EVER come back again and generally laughing and celebrating their victory.

And for added extra spite; Tigra's kid with Hank has not been seen since even though Tigra herself has been making cameos since then.

(also of note, the size change sex shit still has been censored/the pages cut from all versions of reprints of the Geoff Johns run, because Brevoort is THAT fucking pissy over the backlash regarding it).

One of my all-time favourite Marvel moments
View attachment 3105621
Dark Reign was a trip, Gargan was such a good Venom.

Disagree. Gargan as Venom was a crappy move and he was nothing but an edgelord version of Venom with all of Carnage's worse elements grafted onto him.

Worse, he was kept as Venom way too fucking long in part because editorial at the time was kissing Mark Millar's ass (as Millar made Scorpion Venom) combined with editorial at the time deciding that the "problem with Venom" was Eddie Brock and kept trying to find new people to Venom until the late 10s sales collapse when Marvel went full woke, forced them to break glass and make Eddie Venom again to bring in lapsed reader money to keep them afloat.

 

[Registration]

@MirrorNoir

Holy shit, just reading this made me happy that I mostly dropped capeshit, even more when I was reading every release day, this is terrible. Even more when slott is shitting on pym, when Mighty Avengers was quite alright and Academy was great (Mostly because of Gage).


It is almost like they are trying to push away in the same way they tried to do with muties when forcing the inhumans, But Pym doesn't have the same strenght and there are multiple ant-men like Scott and O'Grady, but holy shit, this is too much.

I feel sorry for whoever pays for this shit.

 

[Kup]

Respectfully disagree @MirrorNoir about Venom, Gargan let Venom get his teeth back and become the monster once more. The anti-hero bit is cute and all, but the drug addiction metaphor/monstrosity is what Venom truly is and Gargan exemplified that perfectly.

Like any junkie he had highs, shown best in the Sinister Spider-Man mini and he had lows, like when he ate Swarm.

Brock resisted what Venom truly is and escaped before he lost himself to it, Gargan gave in completely. It showed that the difference between Venom and Carnage wasn’t the suit, it was the man wearing it

I don’t even disagree with them separating Brock and Venom, it was originally intended that Venom not have a long-term host and instead be something more along the lines of Captain Universe, where anyone could become Venom.

Eddie finding redemption and choosing to live his last days making amends was good, Anti-Venom was the perfect “end” for Brock. Him and Venom should’ve never reunited, the creature should’ve continued to have new, unique hosts.

Making the thing sentient was also retarded, that’s more on the dumb movie though.

Mac was the hero we needed him to be, killing whores, eating squirrels, stealing money and shitting on desks like it was going out of style.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

The whole 'drug addiction' metaphor for symbiotes came like a good... decade or more after its original introduction. Originally it was just a weird suit, then a weird (and very jealous) pet-esque creature that bonded with people, then a metaphor for drugs, and now it tends to swing back and forth between the latter two. The Venom symbiote being evil even goes against its established background from the Planet of the Symbiotes story arc in the '90s wherein Peter finds out that the reason why the Venom symbiote was imprisoned during Secret Wars is because it was an outcast from its species for being too nice. With the all that Knull shit, though, I'm sure they've retconned the hell outta Planet of the Symbiotes by now.

Outside of the first two or so Venom stories the only time I've ever really liked Venom was during Agent Venom.

 

[jspit2.0]

The whole 'drug addiction' metaphor for symbiotes came like a good... decade or more after its original introduction. Originally it was just a weird suit, then a weird (and very jealous) pet-esque creature that bonded with people, then a metaphor for drugs, and now it tends to swing back and forth between the latter two. The Venom symbiote being evil even goes against its established background from the Planet of the Symbiotes story arc in the '90s wherein Peter finds out that the reason why the Venom symbiote was imprisoned during Secret Wars is because it was an outcast from its species for being too nice. With the all that Knull shit, though, I'm sure they've retconned the hell outta Planet of the Symbiotes by now.

Outside of the first two or so Venom stories the only time I've ever really liked Venom was during Agent Venom.

It's got tons of potential, but they misused the fuck out of it. Also irritating that McFarlane takes so much credit when he drew it a grand total of four times?