Thursday, July 20, 2006
Not So Super
Been reading some comics again lately, and talking about the Superman mythos with some friends, and I've come to two conclusions about recent comic/comic movie fandom:
1). Wolverine sucks at fighting. No, he does. Sure, he's got the mutant healing ability, and the claws and the adamantium skeleton, et al. But he more than anyone on the X-Teams gets cut up and the shit kicked out of him. Kitty Pride? Never touched. Cyclops? Maybe a fat lip now and then. It seems like every writer wants to point out that Wolvie there can heal himself, so he gets hacked up. In every. Single. Fight. It's getting old, and they need to re-tool the character a bit. Instead of making this expert military black ops good ol' boy just a crappy brawler, why not make him addicted to pain? He knows he can heal from it, so why not have him push his limits. He wants to get cut. Show how truly brutal it is to have your muscle severed in two, or disembowelled. How about he loses an eye? All on purpose. You want edgy realism? Wolverine's your man.
2). I've had it with this "Superman visits his homeworld of Krypton" bullshit. Look, if the guy becomes human and powerless while being within spitting distance of a fist-sized crystal, why would he fly back to where there should be half a planet of the stuff? If we accept that being in the presence of Kryptonite makes him mortal, even if he brings a space suit and oxygen, he's dead. If he doesn't bring the space suit and oxygen, he dies the instant he gets within range of the planet, because, you know, humans in outerspace don't live more than what, 30 seconds or something? If he brings the space-suit, he can sit there and float uncontrollably in space and appreciate his red sun or whatever color sun Krypton orbits around, because he's now powerless to leave, and will suffocate to death when his oxygen runs out. I don't want to hear any arguments about him being some kind of "solar battery" and saving up energy from our sun for the trip, or whatever. A tiny crystal makes him human while within range of a yellow sun. Just entering Krypton's solar system, what with the Kryptonite asteroid belt that would surely exist there, would be a death sentence.
Got your own? Leave 'em in the comments.
