#i think the problem is just that. the state 616 was in right at that moment

[lollipencil]

Mini We

This is your daily reminder that Tsum Tsum are a canonical species to Earth-616 and are capable of mimicking a hero/villain's appearance and powers from simply looking at them. Also, Earth-199999 deserves to have some silly, as a treat.

Enjoy and be gentle.

---

Marc panted softly as he glanced about the dingy alleyway. The dealers, dumb as they were, ran right past his hiding place. A chuckle failed to echo around the dark grey walls as Marc calmed.

Usually Khonshu sent them after magical artifacts if they weren’t just finding crime to deal with. This night had been different. “You must retrieve that box,” Khonshu had startled Jake from his watch with both his sudden appearence and his almost frantic tone, “the contents could cause major harm in the wrong hands.” 

Out of all the things they were expecting, alien stuff was not it. “Isn’t this more of an Avengers’ thing?” Steven piped up once this became clear. “No! They would only exacerbate the problem! Deal with it! Now!” “Alright! Alright! Keep your bloody beak on,” Steven had summoned the suit before sliding in through a window.

One thing led to another and Marc was huddling in an alley at one in the morning, holding a very heavy, very noticeable box.

Five minutes after the men’s voices had faded away, Marc slowly stood up. “Is the contents passively harmful?” he asked to the air. “Why?” Jake sounded too suspicious for Marc’s liking. “Becuase I need to ditch the suit.” “And get shot at without it?!” Great, now Steven was adding his six cents.

“Look,” Marc hissed, trying to keep it down, “Those guys aren’t going to stop looking just because we got away. I’m currently lit up like a streetlight out here. This box,” he heaved it up, “is too heavy without the suit. Plus, a grown man dragging a very alien-looking box down the street? Will attract more than just the police. So, I am asking, can I hand the contents safely without the suit?” “Yes.”

“Perfect,” Marc didn’t even hesitate, setting the box down and flipping the latches. “Wait, wait, hold on-!” Jake stopped at what lay inside.

At first, the six things inside looked like plushies. So much in fact, that Marc and Jake cringed at the bubbling, inarticulate rage that emanated from Steven towards Khonshu. While bracing for Mt Steven’s eruption, Marc’s foot lightly kicked a can, making a soft dink as it rolled down the alley. And with a soft yawn, one of the creatures woke up.

“Tsum?” It sqweaked, blinking blearily up at them. Silently, Marc picked it up and held it up to his face. Smooth and round, it alongside its “siblings” were white with little stubby limbs. “They were trafficking these guys?” Marc said as the little guy blinked its tiny button eyes at him. It sniffed at an offered finger, before vibrating with delight as it rubbed down their back. “I don’t see how they could cause ‘major harm’,” Steven muttered moodily but calmed at the living contents.

Then the little guy changed. There was no visual indication, not even a sound. Between blinks, they went from blank white to a mini Moon Knight.

“How the fuck?!” Jake shouted as the mini Marc cheered and suddenly began to fly. Landing on Marc’s head, they cooed loud enough to wake the remaining “siblings”. “Tsum! Tsum Tsum,” Mini Marc announced. Another blink and the whole box was full of mini Moon Knights.

“I think I get it now,” Steven softly stated before Marc was swarmed.

---

Steven sighed with relief when the door closed behind him. The bundle in his arms wriggled until he set it down, letting the creatures out. The instant Steven had taken over, half of them had decided that his suit was more interesting and took his own appearance. Not even minding when he unsummoned the suit and smuggled them into his jacket.

Steven watched tiredly as they explored and played together. “Hey Jake,” he briefly summoned the suit again, “Come up here.” “Why?” “Well, it’s only fair.”

Silence filled their head before Jake hesitently stepped in front. Six sets of glowing eyes at once snapped to him. Six heads tilted. One Steven and one Marc become two Jakes.

Their little feet sounded like a tap-dance performence as they eagerly came closer, their softer-footed siblings not far behind. Delighted chirps and coos surrounded Jake as they toyed with his cape and cuddled his legs. 

Jake’s eyes felt warm. And Steven was suddenly right back in control. “Tsum?” one of the Mini Jakes asked. “It’s ok,” Steven reasured, patting his chest as if Jake was still there to feel it, “he just got overwhelmed.” He hummed softly down at them and suddenly yawned. Tiny echoes filled the room as the creatures yawned back. “Time for bed for everyone,” Steven said idly as he shuffled off to the bathroom.

When he shuffled out again and into bed, he was swarmed. All six of the little creatures threw themselves under the covers with him, huddling on his chest and humming softly. Steven hummed back, loosely wrapped his arms around them, and let himself drift off.

#my fics #moon knight (2022) #marc spector #khonshu #jake lockley #steven grant

[ntshastark]

X-Men: Evolution is nothing like the comics

But still a better adaptation than the MCU

So, this tweet kind of really annoyed me. It’s in portuguese, but it says:

Good thing X-Men Evolution came out at a time when there wasn't much access to the internet, if this cartoon had come out now in 2022, even though it's a VERY GOOD cartoon, it would be massacred by the internet for not being faithful to the comics

My problem with it is how it implies that comic stans will tear any adaptation down if it’s not “faithful” enough. I won’t deny some people are like this, but I’d actually say (most) comic fans are actually more likely to enjoy an adaptation that’s nothing like the source material than most people. Under the right circumstances.

(Disclaimer: Whenever I say ‘comic’, assume I mean Marvel/DC comics unless stated otherwise; and whenever I say ‘film’ or ‘TV series’, I’m including both live-action and animation)

First, I want to make it clear that I’ve loved few cartoons in my childhood as much as I’ve loved XMEvo. It was HUGE in Brazil, as popular as XMTAS is in the USA. It was literally my first superhero obsession, and it actually, still to this day, colour a lot of the things I feel about the X-Men.

Second, I want to defend the right to not like an adaptation for not being faithful. I’m a fan of The Princess Diaries (book series), so that’s a pain I know all too well. It sucks to see a character or story that you love be turned into something completely different, and it’s a thousand times worse when this twisted version becomes the most popular one.

But anyway. How to be a good adaptation without “being faithful”?

1. Being its own, separate thing

Comics are basically the most adaptable stories there are. Those who read them are familiar with the multiverse, likely have several different versions of the same characters that they like, and sometimes even prefer an elseworld than the main universe. If you make a film or a TV series based on a comic and, from the start, treats it as just another different universe, it’s unlikely that a lot of people won’t like it just because it’s different. Maybe they won’t like those specific changes, but just the fact that there are changes is completely understandable.

(XMEvo never tried to be like 616, or even Ults, it always made it clear that it was an AU)

2. Not claiming to adapt directly if you’re not going to

Another thing about comics is that they’re old as balls. By this point, literally everything’s happened at least once, probably twice, maybe three times but with a different name now. It’s not like a book or even a graphic novel or a mini, where there’s a linear story with beginning middle and end. So there’s a huge number of stories for adaptations to choose, or even just tap into. If the adaptation isn’t an origin story, or specifically say it’s going to be based on a certain arc, no one is even gonna be able to directly compare it to the source material.

(The name ‘X-Men: Evolution’ isn’t a callback to any specific arc - at least that I know of - and neither are any of the episode names - which tbh really surprised me. The series taps into some origin stories but none of them are really the main focus)

3. Not being the only adaptation

And, side effect of comics being old as balls, there’s adaptations to spare. Rarely a book will be adapted more than once, unless the first adaptation is a success and then the adaptation itself gets a remake. The only exceptions I can think of are Literature Classics (so even older) and Percy Jackson (exactly because the fans hated the first adaptation for not being faithful to the books). The fucking horrendous Princess Diaries adaptation is actually getting a damn sequel.

Basically, comic fans are used to adaptations. They inevitably reach a larger audience than the comics and influence their perspective on the characters, which is “dangerous”. But adaptations end, the next one happens, the general public’s perception is adjusted again. An adaptation that people know is an adaptation and treat as an adaptation is never going to annoy a fan of the source material the way an adaptation that’s treated as the main version, or, even worse, seen as an original work, will. And being less annoyed by it means you’re more likely to give it a chance, even with it being different from the original.

(XMEvo came out 3 years after XMTAS ended, lasted 3 years, and 4 years later Wolverine and the X-Men came out. It also premiered the same year as the first X-Men live-action film)

4. It’s ok if it’s not, the comics are still there

And the thing about comics is that they don’t die. Even if the adaptation is bad, the comics are still coming out and you can just focus on reading them and ignore the rest. Sometimes, however, elements from the adaptation are incorporated into the comics. You can only hope it’s done in a organic manner and doesn’t interfere much with the established characters and relationships you already love.

(XMEvo did have an effect in the comics, as it was the first appearance of Laura Kinney. Laura was introduced in the comics as a new character, after XMEvo was already finished)

And what does the MCU has to do with this?

Well, you see. The MCU does absolutely not a single one of those things.

2. It chooses specific arcs to adapt - or claim to.

The MCU isn’t adapting “vibes”. Each character besides Spider-Man has their origin story adapted. Event names show up in the actual titles. Sometimes comic panels are directly recreated on-screen. There’s no way it could pretend to not be directly using specific comic storylines as a base (and then not paying the people who made those comics).

A film based on a book is supposed to tell the same story of the book. Maybe some details change, but the story is the same. Comics usually have a lot more leeway, but if you choose to wave that, you should be prepared to have your film/TV series judged accordingly. Committing to adapt a specific comic arc is completely different than simply making a movie about a character or a team that has decades of stories to pick elements from.

3. It monopolises adaptation. 

Not only have other Marvel adaptations been based on the MCU instead of the comics for a long time now (ex.: ’Avengers Assemble’ replacing ‘Earth’s Mightiest Heroes’ in 2013), but recently every single Marvel animated project was cancelled (’Guardians of the Galaxy’, ‘Avengers: Black Panther’s Quest’, and the entire Marvel Rising line-up all ended in 2019. ‘Spider-Man’ ended in 2020), and projects set in the MCU were announced (’I Am Groot’ in 2020, ‘Spider-Man: Freshman Year’ and ‘Marvel Zombies’ in 2021).

[[For the sake of completion: ‘Hit-Monkey’ (2021) was cancelled and ‘M.O.D.O.K.’ (2021) is in limbo. The only non-MCU animated properties still going - besides Sony’s Spider-Verse - are ‘Baymax!’ (technically based on Marvel comics, but in practice just a Disney property), ‘Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur’ (has been in production since 2018 and keeps getting delayed) and ‘X-Men '97′, which is actually the first non-MCU project fully produced by Marvel Studios (it’s clearly being done to promote the introduction of the mutants in the MCU, but at least some good is coming out of it) (ETA: Marvel apparently can’t recast the Fox X-Men cast until 2025, so I guess the only way for them to do something not MCU-based is not being legally allowed to)]]

It’s not that bad when a comic adaptation doesn’t do your favourite character justice if another, hopefully better, one happens not too long after, or even simultaneously but in a different medium. But the MCU has been going for over 10 years and there’s no end in sight. A character you like is dead, written completely different, had some of their more meaningful relationships erased, or was whitewashed? Tough luck. Maybe in 50 years this shit will be finally over and they’ll get another shot.

And, yes, this deprives Marvel fans who don’t enjoy the MCU of content, but it also monopolises the public perception of characters. That version, inaccurate as it is, is all the general public is going to know.

4. It doesn’t leave the comics alone.

Taking over all the possible adaptations wasn’t enough. There has been countless changes to the comics so that they more closely resemble the MCU. Characters’ stories, personalities, relationships. Team rosters, teams’ existences. Events are constantly recycled so that they help promote films that are (supposedly) based on previous events. It’s all done extremely obviously and clearly under instructions from above. Nothing about it is organic, most of it barely even makes sense.

There’s nowhere left to run. Adaptations other than the films are now either based on it (if you’re lucky) or part of it. The comics are being moulded to its image, usually to their detriment. Everyone else in the world sees “Marvel” as a synonym to "MCU”. Your favourite character is now incredibly popular, but only as a whitewashed antisemitic version, and if their fans could spit on you via twitter for pointing that out they would.

1. It doesn’t stay on its lane.

The MCU straight up claimed for itself the reality number of the original comics universe (616), even when it already had a established reality number (199999). It is in no way satisfied with being an adaptation, it needs to have the center stage. The comics, the original universe, what started everything, is pushed aside in favour of it. And this was officiated when they gave it the main universe’s number. The MCU is the main universe, and comics are simply the script’s first draft.

So I think it’s fair that “the internet” “massacres” it “for not being faithful to the comics”. Your regular comic adaptation doesn’t really need to be, but we’re way past that. If the MCU is to be the main universe, then the bare minimum it should be is accurate to the main universe’s stories.

#i wrote this at 2am yesterday and i think i'm going insane #almost cried at some point bc - as someone in the comics industry - it's so deeply heartbreaking to see how little respect comics get #like great!! i've devoted my life to this thing!! and people see it as a stepping stone in the movie-making process!!! awesome!!!!! #anti mcu #anti mcu for ts #f: marvel #g: marvel animations #s: x-men evolution #g: marvel live-action #u: mcu #c: comics #t: talk post #mari rants

[sassygwaine]

I posted 9,333 times in 2022

That's 9,333 more posts than 2021!

616 posts created (7%)

8,717 posts reblogged (93%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@blackbeardskneebrace

@menaceanon

@eluciferate

@smartypunk

@cryingalonewithfrankenstein

I tagged 3,058 of my posts in 2022

#into the ether - 215 posts

#asks - 126 posts

#ask game - 91 posts

#a love that won’t sit still - 89 posts

#k tag - 84 posts

#anon - 82 posts

#ty!! <3 - 53 posts

#my writing - 39 posts

#ofmd fic - 35 posts

#a love that won't sit still - 30 posts

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

53 notes - Posted August 29, 2022

#4

really love the argument “izzy’s not racist on purpose, he’s just participating in a racist society” as points in his favor

because like

that’s just saying the same thing twice.

do you think racism requires intention to be racism? do you think somebody has to explicitly state “i want to harm ‘these people’ because i’m better than them and they deserve their low position” in order to be racist?

unconscious bias and social prejudice and wielding power over others are key aspects of racism, regardless of the source, regardless of intention.

it’s uncomfortable, even embarrassing, to reflect on why it hurts so bad for a character you like or relate to to be criticized for their racism or racist actions. maybe you feel like it reflects poorly on you for sympathizing with them. maybe it does.

we live in a racist society, so to a degree nearly everything we as white people do has the potential to be harmful to somebody, whether or not we intend it. that sucks and it makes you feel powerless and angry, and it’s very easy to give into cynicism after that — if everything i do is perceived as racist, why try at all?

because people see, people know, when you try.

the easiest first step is to stop defending characters’ racist actions just because you like them, or finding ways to explain it away as something it isn’t.

if there’s a core aspect of a character that you refuse to engage in to the point of putting down, insulting, and ignoring the harm to real human people…you probably don’t actually like that character, you like an OC you’ve made up in your head and will do whatever you can to keep that image up.

criticism of a piece of media (or aspect of) is not inherently criticism of the people who like the media (or aspect). however, your reaction to that criticism says a lot more about you than it does about the people critiquing.

57 notes - Posted December 6, 2022

#3

still burning, still bright when the night comes on ao3

Nothing will stop him worrying, not about much, but especially not about his daughter, and that. It’s not a bad thing but it certainly is his problem. There was a time maybe when the fear would overwhelm and he’d go on to do something stupid and isolating that nobody actually wants him to do, and make a right mess of things, but now.

Well, he holds his husband’s hand and thinks about what sort of bath bomb cocktail Ed is going to put together for them when they get home.

Rating: E

Chapter Word Count: 11k

chapter one | chapter two | chapter three | chapter four | chapter five | chapter six | chapter seven | chapter eight | chapter nine | chapter ten

start at the beginning: this tired world could change

61 notes - Posted December 2, 2022

#2

ed took one look at stede and put his hair up in a half pony for plausible deniability

149 notes - Posted November 19, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

what i find most attractive in people are signs of life

crows feet and laugh lines and bushy eyebrows and grown out haircuts

scars and tattoos and chipped nail polish and floppy ear lobes and still-open piercings that you just don’t wear anymore

scuffed shoes and clothes you’ve had since high school and that green stain on your fingers and neck from cheap jewelry

proof of life!!! so breathtaking!!!

humans!!!

you were somebody, and you are somebody, and you will continue to be!!

1,142 notes - Posted November 26, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii #good summary i think #Spotify

[thebibliomancer]

Earth X #4

Hi Storm, Iron Maiden, a spider guy, and kitty.

The thing about Earth X is that the X might as well stand for Xtremely messed up unless the book states otherwise.

The world is probably doomed because something about vibranium. Humanity went through a mass empowering event also maybe because vibranium. The Avengers are dead, the Fantastic Four is no more, Reed is Doom, Captain America is wearing a flag toga. A mind control squid hivemind is plaguing New York. A mind control kid called the Skull is gathering an army in California. Uatu the Watcher was blinded and kidnapped Aaron Stack Machine Man to be his seeing eye robot and is a dehumanizing dick to him.

A lot is going on. But we are getting answers. Possibly the wrong answers. I trust Uatu less and less.

In the last issue, the Inhumans came to Reed in Latveria for help finding the lost Inhuman Prince. But they get sidetracked with Reed’s problems.

Like mutating all of humanity with vibranium, maybe.

(By the way, a part of the puzzle gets casually solved by the Skull. Reed’s beacon tower blew up because the woman who would become Iron Maiden fell into an open vat of liquid vibranium. An OSHA violation has forever changed humanity.)

But when Reed mentions vibranium, the Inhumans tell him they saw a planet out in space that had been exploded from the inside out. And that they believe vibranium was related.

So Reed calls T’Challa.

T’Challa is a kitty now. And married to Storm.

(Tally another one for something the 616 would copy from Earth X)

Reed asks T’Challa if they can stop or slow down the vibranium’s generative rate. Because I guess in this Marvel universe, the vibranium meteor wasn’t very big but it somehow makes more vibranium over time.

T’Challa dismisses Reed’s concerns. If there was a danger from vibranium, the spirits would tell him.

He doesn’t tell Reed but he also has a lot on his plate right now with a whole bunch of animals that have been mutated. There’s a zebra centaur. Just chilling in his throne room.

Earth X is so weird.

Since Reed can’t fix the mass empowering and T’Challa won’t help him with the vibranium, Reed decides to fix what he can and suggests he could find and modify Cerebro to find Inhumans instead of mutants.

Over in California, the Skull knows Captain America is in the crowd.

And he is simply the most perfect all-powerful brat. He’s got no ethos, no ideology, except that he should have all the things he wants.

He references pop culture several times but when Steve calls him another Hitler, the Skull blankly asks “Who?”

The worst person to have this much power but with everyone in the world getting mutated, it was inevitable someone like this would happen.

Captain America gets fed up with his shit and tries to deck him but the Spider-Man-looking guy from the cover throws a web which makes Steve hallucinate that he’s strangling Bucky.

And the Skull takes over Wyatt and forces him to punch Steve. While the guy is pleading with Steve to just leave because he can’t stop himself.

Possibly the creepiest kind of mind control. Completely aware, unable to resist.

To add literal insult to injury, the Skull calls Steve “Craptain.”

What really hurts is he didn’t even bother to think of a better burn.

The Skull decides that if Steve is going to blah blah blah about freedom so much, he’ll let Steve have his freedom. His freedom to watch as the Skull takes everyone else in the world while Steve can’t do shit to stop him.

The crowd begs Steve to save them even as they pelt him with rocks under the Skull’s control.

What makes this more horrifying is that in the back of book appendix, Uatu and Aaron discuss how those that were mutated in the mass empowering event don’t seem to age and no new children are being born.

The Skull has been an overpowered brat for who knows how many years and he will likely never be able to mature.

Even scarier, Uatu claims that the Celestial’s reason for planting the seeds of this mass empowering event at the dawn of humanity (even planting the idea for the vibranium beacon tower in Reed’s dreams) is a form of propagation. Aaron interprets that to mean that humanity will super evolve into Celestials.

This forever child as a space god is scary.

Back in New York, the Hulk saves a Red Harpy looking woman (who is probably not Betty, so unsure whether this tallies another point or not) from Hydra and geez.

Earth X Hulk is weird even by the standards of Earth X.

I’ve read the prequel where it happened and I’m still not sure why Bruce mutated into a green gorilla and a child version of himself.

Why? Why the fuck did this happen?

The mass empowering event wasn’t even supposed to affect people who already had superpowers. Is this just a Hulk thing?

Oh, also, Clea is Sorcerer Supreme.

That is definitely something the 616 would copy later. Add another tally.

Each issue we add more characters into the mix and unravel more and more of the mystery of what the hell happened and what the hell is going to happen?

If the world is going to end, does Captain America’s conflict against the Skull even matter?

Uatu thinks not. He also sounds like a Dril tweet, saying there’s no difference between the two.

I do not like Earth X Uatu.

#earth x #liveblog #hulk #Clea #captain america #mr fantastic #Storm #black panther #Inhumans

[ask-spiderpool]

Hey mod, how is the reading so far

We managed to get through four issues before I threw up! 

(...wish I was joking about that...) 

#mod speaks #i'll dump my thoughts in the tags as per ushe #peter parker is dead again! #i can't believe they justified it with the whole. trust thing #it's been 4 issues! #also the trust overriding spidersense thing has never been confirmed in the comics before like. ever #do not call me out on this im a dumb fanfic writer #who can write whatever dumb gay thing i want! #these guys are Professionals! #i admit that's a nitpick though because the fundamental issue i have with sm/dp #is just that. wade and peter both just aren't likeable characters #like. i don't like either of them. #neither of them are right?? #i've been rereading kelly's deadpool run from the 90s and it. isn't a problem #i think the problem is just that. the state 616 was in right at that moment #basically every character in 616 at that time was just. unlikeable. #it was the wrong time to put out a spider-man/deadpool series because #neither of them were acting like spider-man or deadpool #the ceo peter parker story is just. not representative of peter parker at all. #it's a fine what if storyline to explore briefly but it's such a waste for that peter parker to be . #the peter parker they use in the spider-man deadpool series. #like. might as well not be peter parker . it could be . chokes . an iron man deadpool series #same with wade i just never jived with the mercs for money thing and. #if wade had been his previous loner self i feel like just . the dynamic here would've been so much nicer #so! not blaming kelly anymore for this even though yes. the writing is cringe #the foundations were rocky from the get-go because 616 is a shitshow #rant over! ...for now...

[traincat]

I’ve been trying to piece together a few things from your Twitter and Tumblr posts alike and still can’t make heads or tales of things, so would you mind helping out a FF & spideytorch noob? 1) what is currently happening with Johnny in the comics? (I’ve fallen head over heels for this guy, largely all your doing) 2) when’s the last time he and Peter have interacted, canon wise? (And do you think upcoming interactions are likely?) 3) your thoughts on if they’ll have him come out in the near future? (has that ‘biggest change to the fantastic four’ teaser come to pass yet?) Love all your content, thank you!

I'd say no problem but then I started thinking about this current run again and got a headache. But yes, I can do that to save you from reading it, because it is very largely not good.

So I don't think it's unfair to just flat out say the current Fantastic Four run is not very good, largely due to writer Dan Slott's efforts. Slott was previously on Amazing Spider-Man for 10 years, to mixed opinions, but a large portion of Spider-Man fandom, myself included, blames him near singlehandedly for the decline in quality of Spider-Man books over those ten years. I will say, in the interest of fairness, that Slott as a writer has an incredible fondness for the Spider-Man/Human Torch relationship, and that a lot of the recent teamups and interactions between them have been written or co-written by him. So it's all not all negative here. But in general, I personally find Slott's more recent comics (the last seven-ish years especially) to be badly plotted out, messily characterized disasters that feature characters written with all the emotion of a cardboard cutout. That's me putting it nicely.

To explain this fully, you have to understand the position Fantastic Four comics were in from the years 2015 through 2018, both in the fictional 616 universe and in the real publishing world. Following the 2015 Secret Wars event (great if you want some Johnny angst in the background of your plot), the Fantastic Four were disbanded -- Reed, Sue, and their many biological and found family children were presumed dead but in reality were remaking the multiverse, unable, for a reason that was never clearly defined, to reach home. Ben and Johnny were left on Earth. They had an unspecified falling out, likely due to Reed and Sue's absence, and went their separate ways -- Ben joined the Guardians of the Galaxy and went to space. Johnny was featured on both Inhumans and Avengers books. What's notable about this period is that it's the first time since 1961 that there was no Fantastic Four book being published by Marvel. Now the real world reason behind this is both complicated and extremely petty: Marvel really wanted the Fantastic Four film rights. Marvel denied this explanation at the time, stating that the reason was sales motivated, but it was a thoroughly flimsy excuse and Jonathan Hickman, writer of 2015's Secret Wars and overseer of the current X-Men plot, gave an interview saying the decision was film rights motivated. This decision kept the Fantastic Four books off the shelves for three years, up until the Disney-Fox merger, which secured the X-Men and Fantastic Four rights for Disney's Marvel Studios. Marvel then announced that the Fantastic Four book would be returning. So that's a little bit of background as to the precarious place the Fantastic Four currently occupy in the Marvel universe -- it's worth noting that this year is their 60th anniversary, and Marvel has done very little for it. Compare this to the X-Men, whose film rights Marvel also obtained during the Disney-Fox merger, and whose books are currently dominating the publishing lineup. The Fantastic Four definitely occupy an unpopular position, one Marvel themselves is at least partially responsible for forcing them into.

But to move back into the actual content of the book -- the readjustment period Slott wrote reintroducing the Fantastic Four into the Marvel universe can be described as clumsy, at best. It's never fully explained why Reed, Sue, and the kids couldn't return to Earth, something that was explored in Chip Zdarsky's 2017 Marvel Two-in-One, which featured Ben, Johnny, and Doom on a multiversal roadtrip to try and find their family and which I on the whole recommend, despite it having an awkward ending due to being cut short by Slott's announced Fantastic Four main title.

(Marvel Two-in-One 2017 #4)

Instead, the Fantastic Four return to a Marvel universe a little different than how they left it, with the Baxter Building -- formerly the offices of Parker Industries, the company Doc Ock started in Peter's body during Superior Spider-Man that Peter inherited after his defeat and then lost spectacularly when he trashed his own company to fight nazis (good for him) -- occupied by a different fantastic foursome in a plot that goes nowhere and does nothing. This is somewhat emblematic of the early days of Slott's run -- he introduces ideas that fail to go anywhere, including Johnny's rekindled relationship with his other best friend and former college roommate, Wyatt Wingfoot, who he was seen being very cuddly with in the early issues.

(FF 2018 #1) A small group of Fantastic Four fans have argued for a while that if Marvel was to have Johnny come out, a relationship with Wyatt would feel very natural -- they're already close, with Wyatt being an important Fantastic Four supporting character since the '60s. I have some further analysis here on the conspiracy theory that Johnny and Wyatt were supposed to be in relationship at the beginning of this run but that that plot was, for whatever reason, nixed. I don't know that I entirely believe this theory, for the record -- but I do think the pieces line up remarkably well.

Anyway, that didn't/hasn't yet happened, obviously. Slott instead for the most part put Johnny on the back burner for the beginning of his run, up until the Spyre arc, which I have reason to believe is the main story he pitched that he credits with securing him the Fantastic Four title. The Spyre arc suggests that the Fantastic Four's failed space exploration during which they got their powers wasn't just to beat the commies to the moon, as Lee and Kirby envisioned (simpler days), but to reach a specific planet outside of our galaxy. When the team sets out to conquer this mission, they arrive at the planet, but are quickly captured. The planet, they find out, operates like a soulmate AU -- everyone has a fated person that they are matched to via a gold armband. Reed and Sue are soulmates (and Ben is confined to an underground subterranean with the other monsters, because this is a Fantastic Four comic) while it's discovered! Shocker! That Johnny is actually the soulmate of the one the planet's inhabitants, a winged woman named Sky, with the suggestion that this is both why Johnny's previous relationships have never worked and why he loves space exploration -- he was just trying to get to his Soulmate TM.

(FF 2018 #15) "What's going on here? Where are my clothes?" As you can see, this didn't start off super great, with Johnny being separated from his family, stripped naked, and put in Sky's bed with a soulmate armband slapped on him. Did I mention they're only removable if your soulmate takes it off for you? And that Sky has consistently refused despite Johnny asking her to? Yeah. It's bad. (I think it's important to note Johnny's long history as a victim of assault plays into this narrative, whether or not Slott is personally holding that in mind while writing, which I don't believe he is. cw in the linked post for discussions of sexual assault.) There's an additional issue here in that Slott has a history of problematic writing regarding women of color, featuring characters he's created to act as love interests being oversexualized, infantilized, villainized, or some mix of all three, with two examples of this phenomena being Cindy Moon and Lian Tang, both of whom he introduced in quick succession in Amazing Spider-Man. Slott certainly didn't have to write Sky as manipulative or controlling towards Johnny, but that's what he chose to do, and that factors into the bigger picture of unfortunate themes in his writing.

Sky returns to Earth with the Fantastic Four despite Johnny appearing unenthused about the idea and initially generally reluctant to interact with her. Apparently they went on a few dates after this and kind of made up. I don't know because I stopped reading for about ten issues in there but I feel confident I missed very little. It's hard to talk about the Sky plot without referencing Johnny's previous interactions with a character named Lyja, a Skrull whose relationship to Johnny I have a long breakdown of here. It's doubly hard, because Lyja actually showed back up in Fantastic Four during this plot. Lyja's modus operandi has remained consistent throughout almost all of her appearances, which I guess makes sense, because she literally has no storylines that do not involve her being obsessed with Johnny, and this recent story isn't any different: Lyja shows up, Lyja disguises herself as another woman in Johnny's life to get close to Johnny, Lyja gets caught and claims it was all fine because she did it for love. This time she disguised herself as Sky.

(FF 2018 #32) Not gonna lie, kind of proud of him for this one. That's one of my problems with Slott -- very occasionally, he busts out good moments, only to undermine them with the rest of his narrative.

In the same issue, Alicia Masters, the first woman Lyja impersonated in order to get close to Johnny, uses her supervillain stepfather's radioactive clay to control Lyja's mind and send her back to space, and I do think she utilized girl power when she did this. Johnny, left reeling after Lyja's latest attempts to trick him into a relationship, ends this issue by sleeping with Victorious, Dr. Doom's right hand woman.

I know she pegged him. I know it. This scene was a little controversial in Johnny fandom, because a lot of people viewed it as Johnny cheating on Sky and thought that that action was out of character for Johnny. I'm personally of a little different opinion, which is that regardless of whether or not you view Johnny and Sky in a committed enough relationship that Johnny's tryst would count as infidelity when all Johnny and Sky are bound by are magic plot soulmate bracelets, I think Lyja's involvement changes things significantly when it comes to Johnny's characterization. All of Johnny's "playboy" periods, if we can call them that, coincide directly with Lyja having been in and then left his life again, which I think makes a certain amount of sense -- it's Johnny trying to wrest control back after a situation where he had none. None of this is explicitly canon, I have to note, but sometimes in comics you have to do the work yourself. So I think this is a case of something being accidentally extremely in character that Slott accidentally stumbled into because he had these love triangles in mind, not because he put a lot of thought into it.

Speaking of love triangles! Johnny sleeping with Victorious gets more complicated when Dr. Doom announces his intent to marry Victorious -- not because he has any romantic interest in her (this engagement caused a lot of uproar in Fantastic Four because Victorious had been previously referred to as being like Doom's adopted daughter) but in order to install her as Latverian regent in his absence. I'm not going to lie, I love a political wedding. Victorious, for some reason, thinks Doom will be deeply upset that she slept with some closeted blond twink and the member of the Fantastic Four he views least as an enemy and more as an annoyance. Johnny, who Sky is currently not talking to because she "felt" him sleeping with Victorious through their magic plot soulmate bracelets, also feels nervous about Doom finding out about this, which I guess is slightly more valid. Anyway, for some completely ridiculous reason, Victorious decides the best time to tell Doom about this little indiscretion is when they're standing at the altar, which coincidentally the Fantastic Four are also standing at, because Doom asked Reed to be his best man in a not at all homoerotic little setup involving midnight swordfighting and Reed slipping Doom's emerald ring onto his own finger. Sorry to sidetrack into DoomReed territory here but it's just like. It's just a lot.

(FF 2018 #33) Also, Ben walked the bride down the aisle. :,) Look at his gigantic hand.

Anyway then Doom decides he's going to kill everyone in a completely reasonable and not at all overblown reaction to Johnny and Zora having what was most likely both disappointing for Zora and weepy for Johnny sex. And that brings us up to where Fantastic Four comics left us yesterday -- in answer to your "big change" question, that's most likely coming up in the next issue, so it hasn't come to pass yet.

Having gotten all that out of the way -- the last time Johnny and Peter interacted canon-wise was in the recent Empyre Fallout Fantastic Four, at the end of the Empyre event:

It was cute! Slott does right good interactions between them. This is possibly the Stockholm Syndrome talking. I don't know if more interactions are likely imminent -- the Empyre event was fairly recent. On the other hand, Slott does like writing interactions between them. So I'd give it about a 50/50 shot. I was skimming the letter page in the latest issue and someone wrote in asking if Peter was likely to appear in the pages of Fantastic Four again any time soon, so there is definitely a demand.

As for Johnny coming out -- I don't know. It's not a call I feel comfortable making at this moment, which I guess means I wouldn't bet money on it. I'd like to say yes, especially because I think Slott set up, whether that was his intention or more likely not, several good places in his run where Johnny could have come out. The beginning, when he's implied to be living with Wyatt again and where he and Wyatt are paralleled against Ben and Alicia. Ben's bachelor party, where Johnny laments not finding the right person -- specifically person and not woman -- and where Ben tells him to "be brave, Johnny Storm." And the soulmate planet plot, where I think could have had a very different and much better ending if Johnny had told Sky that she couldn't be his romantic soulmate, because he knows he wants to be with a man. But those are just places that I think would have made good opportunities for a coming out story. Instead, Johnny's been involved (dubiously) with three different women over the space of the last 10 issues, which is more heterosexuality at one time than he's been confronted with in the last 60 years. So my thoughts are still that it's going to happen eventually, but quite possibly not anytime soon.

Hope that helps! And that my incredibly long answer about what's currently going on with Johnny in comics sheds some light on things!

#johnny storm #traincat talks comics #*replies #long post/ #wednesday spoilers

[ofhulks]

( pedro pascal. 50. he/him. cisman. ) are you a HERO? something tells me that bubbling beakers accompanied the sound of gentle flames, walls filled with pinned papers and the distant sound of an old movie make you who you are, BRUCE BANNER. with the powers of GAMMA RADIATION PHYSIOLOGY, you’re sure to have a pragmatic, stubborn personality — and you definitely belong to SHIELD. were you listening to TROUBLE by CAGE THE ELEPHANT on your way to the subway? it suits you. we can’t wait to see what you do next! || @reshieldedintro 

character name: dr. robert bruce banner / the hulk age: 50  faceclaim: pedro pascal voiceclaim: mark ruffalo  skill set: genius intellect, gamma radiation physiology that allows him to transform into THE HULK - capable of great strength, superhuman leaping and durability. Though the hulk has a mind of his own, unwilling to listen to the commands of Banner. In fact, the hulk hates banner. And Banner hates Banner too also hates the hulk. If he just got some therapy maybe he would be okay ://// but he just likes to puzzle everything out with logic and reason and solve his own problems affiliations: avengers, shield, the united states army family: Brian Banner (father; deceased), Rebecca Banner (mother; deceased), Jennifer Walters (cousin), Betty Ross (ex-wife) zodiac: TBD wiki link: https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Bruce_Banner_(Earth-616) or https://www.marvel.com/characters/hulk-bruce-banner/in-comics & https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Hulk note: this Bruce is comic inspired (616 with his backstory predominantly from Hulk: Grey). Some of his more recent character history is taken from the mcu ( minus the merging with hulk, because I think that potential would be fun to explore for his arc later! ) ; subject to change! 

was your character “blipped” out? if so, what did they return to and how is it affecting them? if not, who important to them was blipped out, and what has it felt like after those five years have passed? 

No. Bruce stayed behind while his friends vanished, at first running away and then eventually rejoining what was left of the avengers to see what could be done about reversing the snap. He merged with the hulk briefly (he’s not sure how it worked, but it was a desperate time) to usher a snap of his own (and permanently scarring and damaging his arm), before hulk seized control and shut Banner out until the end of the battle, when Banner woke, the world was as it once was....featuring some fresh casualties he doesn’t know how to deal with.  

where are they living? are they living with anyone?

At the SHIELD compound, finding it to be the best spot to continue his research into a cure. He does his part to help, but doesn’t think he’s much help as long as Hulk exists. Perhaps selfishly, he’s far more focused on that than anything else. 

why is your character affiliated with who they’re affiliated with?

Convenience, mostly. SHIELD is the sensible choice for Banner right now with the Avengers scattered (ideally he’d like to be all alone somewhere with his research, but SHIELD has resources and he needs them). There is SOME fondness for these people he knows, but Bruce gets a little too trapped in his thoughts than to realize this as a main factor to his stay. 

who are their major friends, allies, and foes?

For Banner, his friends are Rick Jones, the avengers and his cousin. Who also happen to be his allies. His biggest foe is the hulk, which really is just himself, not that he’s aware of this. 

Hulk dislikes most people, unless they are explicitly nice to him, and especially hates Banner. He also isn’t a fan of doors that are too small for him to fit through #MakeThingsMoreHulkAccessible 

whose hands do they believe the country should be in?

Bruce has bigger problems to worry about than politics. He’s not a fan of the current leadership, and having worked for the military, he can say he’s solidly against them too. Bruce would call himself a pacifist, and ultimately say the best person for the job should be the one doing it. Hulk would say himself.

what’s their current mental state at? their physical state?

Mentally, Bruce is a mess. His unchecked self-loathing has him struggling to accept the Hulk. And his avoidance of his past blocks him out from even trying to. Without realizing it, he’s running away from himself over and over again. Physically, Bruce’s arm is pretty messed up. It’s fine in Hulk form, if not a little weaker, but in human form he’s finding it hard to move around or grip things with his hand. Mentally for the Hulk, he feels very lonely :( would love some friends

#reshielded:intro #/ subject to a lot of change because idk about this #but please love me again x2

[sineala]

I thought a lot about how often Tony calls Steve "cap" and how it complicates things. After all, to be frank, few of us can entrust our feelings to a person who does not even call us by name!...So it turns out that Steve and Tony are so closed emotionally, at the same time Steve easily trusts other people, such as Sam. This is such a bitter situation that stevetony got into in canon. I don't think Tony sees this as a problem, but it is. I would like to read fic with discovered that)

I'm a little torn about how to respond to this, anon. I think it would certainly be interesting to have a darker/angstier fic that put forth a premise that Steve doesn't trust Tony -- I mean, I wrote Sucker Punch, and "Steve doesn't trust Tony" was essentially the premise of that one -- but I would regard it as an extreme AU of canon, because I feel like in 616 canon, Steve trusts Tony very much, and it's mutual, and that furthermore Steve likes what Tony calls him.

I don't think Tony's use of "Cap" is in any way distancing -- it's a nickname, and nicknames are signs of affection, and (in this case, since it's a rank) probably respect as well. Tony is what you might call an inveterate nicknamer. If you think about the core crew of friends he's had in his solo book over the years -- Happy, Pepper, Rhodey -- those are literally all nicknames. And "Rhodey" is even a nickname of a last name. Are you going to say that that is distancing? That Tony and Rhodey don't care about each other? That they haven't literally told each other that they loved each other, on panel? Of course they care about each other.

Even outside of the main Iron Man cast, Tony still nicknames his friends. Back when Carol went by Warbird, Tony liked to call her "bird." (I can't find the panels now, but I know they're at the end of Busiek's IM run.) Lately he likes to call her spaceface. This is what Tony does with people he likes. He gives them nicknames.

I also think that the way Steve trusts Tony is different than the way he trusts Sam, and that he very possibly trusts Tony more than he trusts Sam. I'm not saying this because I'm a Steve/Tony shipper; I’m saying this because I honestly think they have a different dynamic. I mean, sure, Steve and Sam are great partners and they work fabulously together (and, hey, if you want to ship them, I absolutely see why you would) -- I just feel like, when we see a focus on Steve and Sam's relationship, it's a Big Deal when they fight, and Steve is often reluctant to go to Sam with his problems, or tell Sam what he thinks about the state of their relationship. They’re great friends, but that's not the kind of relationship they have.

For example, here in Cap #144 we see Steve lurking outside Sam's window like a creepy creeper, worried about whether Sam is going to leave him for a woman (yes, I know), instead of talking to him about his damn feelings like a normal person:

But when it's Steve and Tony, Steve is not at all hesitant to tell Tony how he feels about him. We already know that he doesn't hesitate to tell Tony when he thinks Tony is wrong, because that is pretty much how all their fights start -- Armor Wars, Galactic Storm, Civil War, the existence of the Illuminati, the incursions. Even in that Empyre Aftermath panel I just posted, we can see Steve very gently shutting Tony down when Tony tries to joke about Registration.

But he tells Tony the good stuff, too. He always makes it clear to Tony that he thinks the world of him, that he's happy to be working with him, and so on. A really good example of this is Avengers #144:

Steve's happy to be with the Avengers! He's missed them! He's missed Tony! And he's especially missed Tony calling him Winghead! This does not strike me as a man who feels at all offended by Tony's nicknames for him. He likes them! He misses them!

And we know that Tony does in fact call Steve by his first name as well. Tony is in fact a participant in that grand superhero tradition of switching from code names to first names in the middle of combat, when he's really worried about Steve, as we see in Avengers X-Sanction #2:

And Steve does it right back, as we can see in Avengers v4 #20:

(We also see here that Steve calls himself Cap. It’s clearly not a name that bothers him.)

Steve in fact still does the switching-to-first-name thing, as recently as this year's "Dark Ages" FCBD issue:

When intimacy is called for, they definitely know how to use each other's names. Avengers #221 is the classic example here, where Steve explicitly makes a point of telling Tony it’s okay to use his first name and Tony instantly goes with that:

So, yeah, I'd have to disagree with you here and say that Tony's nicknames are a sign of affection and that both Tony and Steve do trust each other in canon, although I am happy to entertain fic where this is not the case. I think it would make for a fun AU... but you’d really have to do a lot of work to convince me that that’s how it is in canon.

#Anonymous #replies

[paragonrobits]

I’m starting to read the 2016 run of Champions (mostly because i saw ‘Kamala Khan is the leader and Amadeus Cho, Hulk persona in tow, is there too’ and I just went for it) and now I’m thinking HARD about something set during the current run of Immortal Hulk, where the Champions team is hanging out again and trying to figure out what’s going on with Doctor Banner and his agents of SMASH

and part of it is that I’m still hung up on Kamala having a deep respect for Bruce Banner and the Hulk from the Marvel’s Avengers game, even though in the 616 continuity I don’t think they have ever even spoken, but she DID get a front row seat to his murder and it really badly affected her for a while, and his particular message and stated motivations are the kind of thing that would really appeal to Kamala and her team so it would at least be something they’d think about

so it would be like what went on with Incoming, when they asked Amadeus what Bruce was even thinking, and I had some ideas for Kamala privately stressing out for when she saw Bruce’s death, and all the stories about a terrifying monster and a reckless mad scientist doesn’t quite stack up to what she saw: a mentally ill man panicking and begging for people who said they were his friends to listen to him for once, crying out against the blatant unfairness of them always thinking the worst of him, or that they only seemed to care when he was causing problems and never when he was blatantly in a really bad mental situation...

she saw Doctor Banner die.

She supposes she can’t really blame him for coming back, angry. I think one good route is to make this a moment when she really started to doubt her heroes, because they saw Bruce as a problem (as Kamala sees it) and not someone who needed help to, or a hero in his own right.

Cho, for his part, is forced to admit that he doesn’t know what’s going on with THIS Hulk. He knew the Green Scar best, and he’s been gone for a long time; he doesn’t know why. He gives them his own theory that maybe Bruce is just lashing out and trying to put a pretty face on it, or that his frustrations with a world that won’t change has boiled over, but confirms he’s not a villain. Nothing that calls itself a Hulk, he believes, can be just a plain villain.

(This excludes the Maestro, but he’s accidentally correct; the Maestro doesn’t call himself a Hulk.)

One possible route to go with this is diverging from canon with having them just go to talk to Bruce, prior to the arrival of Xemnu during the Roxxon arc, when the Teen Brigade showed up as a leftist movement latching onto the Hulk as an inspiration. In this case, this team might even be the Teen Brigade, and even regard Rick Jones as the first kid hero like them. (Them reading from Rick Jones’ autobiography would be appropriate, and I really wanna see some angst with them reacting to Bruce’s horrible, tragic past; given Kamala’s own happy family life, and how integral it is to her ideals of heroism, I think it would hit her especially hard.)

Cho warns them: getting close to Doctor Banner means immersing yourself in the horror of what it means to be a Hulk. He’s the nicest and most well-adjusted Hulk. He used to think Bruce’s cousin Jennifer was that, too, but... lately, she’s started to break down.

In the end, all Hulks are monsters. Metaphors brought to life. He worries that this is why Doctor Banner is getting flakey.

#marvel #miss marvel #kamala khan #hulk #immortal hulk #if miles' memories of the ultimate verse hold true #he's going to have some... interesting viewpoints about Hulk

[kurtty-drabbles]

"So, yeah, anyway. Where was I?" "You'd just killed your brother with a teacup." "Right. So, he comes back to life-" (Canon!verse)

N/A: special guest: BLUE KITTY, why? BC yes.

@djinmer4

@dannybagpipesarecalling

@tieflingteeth

@kurttyfamily

There´s nothing more quintessential than the X-men team up with interdimensional versions of themselves to catch some bad guys. When Selene, the Dark Queen hops into the universe 616, she wasn´t counting with the X-men of that timeline team up with a hero of her own timeline.

The plan couldn´t have been easier to follow even if she tried. She has a magical artifact and will use the second version of the said artifact to cause chaos and destruction- a pretty greedy for her part, but not the most convoluted plan the X-men had to endure- right now, time seems to be the essence.

The X-men of this alternative timeline send their best agent to solve the case. Kitty Pryde, nothing extraordinary can be noted about this version- if you compare with a version of Wolverine who has 4 arms, this Kitty is pretty normal- except by the fact her skin is blue.

"Hello, guys!" she greets them with a big smile, barring on childlike and naivety and 616! Kitty is not too impressed. " My name is Katherine Mary Pryde, nice to meet you," there´s a childlike aura about her, too innocent and really, 616! Kitty can´t help by looking her up and down.

Does this Blue Kitty got her position by her own merits or did someone let her in?

(What cynical thought to have about yourself)

Jean Grey, Scott Summers, Ororo Monroe, Rogue, Kurt, and Kitty have to deal with Selene, the Dark Queen -she doesn´t have a legal surname- and the legal implications as she is being aided by Selene of their timeline.

"That...will be a problem?" Blue Kitty asked still with that cute smile on her front. Too innocent and 616! Kitty is not too keen on seeing such a smile on a carbon copy of her face- minus the blue- too innocent.

Jean is the one to explain the situation. "Our Selene is a political ally to Genosha and Magneto public stated she is not to be bothered by the Avengers or ...us," Jean tsk loudly. "Even Wanda defends that vampire and all because she restores her children, her devotion and gratitude allow Selene to have a free pass" Jean is a bit bitter, to say the least.

Blue Kitty titled her head a little. "I see, in my universe, Jean Grey, used the power of Pheonix to save my family, Wakanda, and revive Scott Summers," Kitty shows her ten fingers. "she resurrect 10 people and even so, she was not above the cosmical laws, Death didn´t mind she resurrect 10 people but it was a question regards courtesy"

They all look at her with wide eyes and Rogue breaks the silence.

"Zaorva?"

Blue Kitty blinks several times and as if finally getting the question, shakes her head, and adds. "Not her, I´m just pointing out that your Selene may not be so above the laws as you may think....well, Zaorva isn´t but she breaks them anyway" she shrugs as if is not a big deal.

Kitty narrows her eyes at her. Too suspicious of her own doppelganger.

"The Selene of my timeline is a woman who says she has nothing to lose, but, refuses to dirty her hands, if she is taking shelter in Genosha...we can either try to take her out or incapacity the impact of her magic" Blue Kitty smartly suggested.

Kurt and the others are pondering this suggestion. They can´t take Selene out of Genosha-not only for political reasons but for reasons as Wanda would kick their asses- therefore, the only solution is to invalidate the two powerful magical items.

Ororo is the one asking a question. "You said this item is powerful, how powerful is it?"

"It can destroy a city, but not a state, however, such destruction may cause IT to take a look and ...no one wants that," Blue Kitty responds looking at Jean as if she wants to say something else.

"I know what you´ll say next, and no, me and the Pheonix hate IT," Jean explains mildly.

Scott now interjects. "You say it can destroy one city, does Selene has a target?"

"I would say Italy....maybe a city of Italy, but, I´m not sure...Selene of my time has a love/hate relationship with her country, however, as she is being helped by, huh, other Selene...maybe it will be a city your Selene

hates?" Blue Kitty suggested and allow the others to digest the information.

They are discussing now events Blue Kitty has no idea.

She smiles even though no one offers insight into what they are truly talking about. 616! Kitty is gazing at her like a Hawk, making Blue Kitty smiling even more.

"What if we use the magic book? We have one and we never use it, plus, Yana has mentioned something about magic artifacts and how to null their powers," Kurt suggested as if this is the most logical option.

Blue Kitty thinks it is but the others disagree.

"Are you kidding meh?" Rogue asked baffled. "Remember last time you touched that damn book? you got crazy and possessed by an evil spirit and tried to throw himself on fire," Rogue shakes her head, "plus I had to kill you with a teacup!" Rogue vehemently vets this idea for this reason alone.

Blue Kitty blinks several times. "Huh, what? What do you mean you killed him with a teacup?"

Rogue waves her hand dismissing the thought. "He resurrects right through it,"

Kurt pipes in. "When I died, God allowed me to come back and he said I´ll gain an upgrade on my power set, that means...I have a regeneration power"

Blue Kitty still blinks at that. Her Pheonix never gave such power to anyone.

Bonus:

The mission is completed. Selene is defeated and no city was destroyed. Blue Kitty completed her mission and now she can return home safely. Kitty Pryde is still gazing at her like a Hawk.

"I know what you´re going to say, you´re not very subtle!" Blue Kitty mutters as Selene is being chained and is traveling a portal to face justice in her original dimension.

"I don´t act like you, you think I acted silly...I´m too girly, but, I captured Selene and completed my mission, if my presence here bothers you, then remember this, I´m not Kitty Pryde, I´m another Kitty Pryde...same soul, different recipient," Blue Kitty replied warmly.

Kitty softens her expression. "Sorry, I didn´t know how to react towards you..."

"That´s ok, I had no fucking clue how to react towards you too" Blue Kitty replied matter-of-factly.

Kitty Pryde is left pondering about that.

#kurtty implied #kitty is being jugdmental here #blue kitty can kick your ass and be girly #kurt wagner #fuck canon #rogue has seen some shit man #kitty pryde #blue kitty

[wiener-soldiers]

operation omega - AV-616 (ii)

summary: years after the avengers dismantle HYDRA, the group remerges more dangerous than ever. their modus operandi? infiltrating foreign governments, stealing and reproducing their weapons, and selling them to terrorist groups. when the us government approaches the avengers for help on a secret operation with a secret asset, they are reluctant to agree. it isn’t until their quinjet almost gets shot down in the middle of nowhere when the understand that omega means business.

pairing: bucky barnes x SEAL!reader

words: 2.2k

warnings: light swearing, mentions of violence

a/n: these chapters will get longer i promise

taglist: add yourself here!

OPERATION OMEGA MASTERLIST

Somehow, despite all the resource’s the Earth’s mightiest heroes had, they were all still crammed on the smallest Quinjet they had.

They had strict orders from Secretary Ross to pack lightly and take the smallest Quinjet they had. Despite saying that they may be at this location for several months, Ross said that everything they needed would be provided for them.

By who? He didn’t say.

There actually wasn’t much anyone knew about the secretive mission they were going on, aside from the debriefing packet full of intel Secretary Ross sent to them, coordinates to an unknown location and the fact that it was secret.

In all honesty, he had no problem with the mission being so secret. Tony and Steve seemed to trust Ross enough to understand that this mission was legitimate and important, but they still pressed for more answers every chance they got. Eventually Ross hissed something along the lines of, “It’s too fucking important for me to tell you over the phone,” which shut the both of them up really well.

Bucky was too used to just following orders, despite not grasping the whole picture—first in the army, then with HYDRA. Besides him and maybe Sam, he could tell that everyone else was a little on edge with the secrecy of it all.

“We should be there in fifteen minutes,” Clint calls from the cockpit.

“Wherever ‘there’ is,” Sam says quietly, causing a small fit of tired giggles to erupt in the cabin.

Bucky was hunched over, eyes trained on the strip of clear floor in the middle of the Quinjet. The Quinjet had no windows, so the clear strip in the floor was a good indicator of location. Wanda sat to his left and Banner to his right. He hadn’t really said much the whole flight, focusing on listening to Tony quietly discuss his concerns with Steve and figuring. And, of course, figuring out where the fuck they were going.

Wanda nudges his foot slightly, and Bucky immediately thinks, What?

Wanda then slides the toe of her foot towards the clear strip in the middle of the fuselage. Bucky knows that she’s asking; Did you figure out where we’re going?

No, Bucky thinks and Wanda sighs dejectedly beside him in response.

Wanda points to the clear strip with her toe once again, then taps on his knee twice. One tap, yes; two taps, no was one of their unspoken rules. Bucky once again knows she’s asking, Do you know where we aren’t going?

Bucky furrows his brow slightly and thinks, Not that close to a coast, probably still on this continent but I’m not sure which country. Temperate or boreal forests in the mountains, so we’re not that far south. But that’s all I got.

Wanda nods. A few beats later, she points to clear floor one final time before nodding in the direction of the cockpit, Does Clint know where we’re going? He has coordinates.

Bucky shakes his head and Wanda slumps in her seat, the back of her head hitting the fuselage wall behind her. The coordinates Ross was given were encrypted; Bucky thinks to her. He gave us an algorithm to decode it once autopilot was engaged, so no one know where we’re going except for the stupid computer.

Wanda’s silence is enough acknowledgement for him. They sit in more silence before Bucky thinks to her, Any more questions?

He can feel her roll her eyes amusedly and taps his knee twice, No.

Are you okay? Bucky asks once more.

One slightly aggressive tap to the knee, Yes, asshole.

“Okay, I’m just gonna say it,” Bruce says from beside Bucky. “Does anyone else find this extremely fishy? Ross—who we don’t work for, by the way—gives us intel about HYDRA and tells us we have a secret mission with a secret asset at a secret location and we’re all supposed to believe it? And how the hell is the public not gonna question why the Avengers basically disappeared for several months?”

“Don’t worry about PR, we have staged press releases lined up just in case something like this happens,” Natasha says from across from him. Bucky raises his eyebrow at her, and she shrugs in response.

“It’s clear what the mission is,” Steve answers from his spot in the cockpit. He is leaning against the co-pilot’s seat where Tony is sitting, reading the intel Ross gave them, “He wants us to take down HYDRA.”

“But how Steve? And why go through all this trouble?” Banner counters.

Before Steve can answer, a male voice cuts through the radio, forcing everyone to be quiet. Tony reaches forward and flips a switch, making it so the radio plays through the PA system.

“I’m sorry, say again?” Clint says as everyone stares at him with wide eyes.

“AV-616, you are in restricted airspace. State your purpose of flight now as defiance to do so will force me to ground your plane,” the stern male voice repeats itself.

Clint looks around the Quinjet with wide eyes before hesitantly saying, “I apologize. We were given coordinates and a flight path that requires us to fly through this location. Over.”

The line goes quiet for a little while and Steve hisses, “Barton, what the hell is going on?”

“If you get us shot down, I’ll kill you myself,” Sam grumbles, anxiously taping his foot.

“I did nothing but plug in the coordinates and that stupid algorithm Ross gave us. The flight plan is his shit, not mine,” Clint barks back.

“AV-616, do you copy?” A new voice cuts in. It’s a woman’s voice this time, Bucky notes and everyone glances at each other in surprise.

Clint clears his throat, “This is AV-616, I copy.”

“AV-616, that price on my head, was that dead or alive?” the woman asks, and the cabin goes silent.

Sam speaks first, “What the fuck is she talking about?”

Steve immediately goes into Captain mode, “Barton, figure out the fastest route out of here in case something goes wrong. We have the smaller Quinjet, use mountains as cover in case we try to get shot down. Stark, track all incoming projectiles, either in here or with your suit. Sam and Nat, prep any artillery. If something comes, I want you on guns—”

“Steve! This could be a code,” Natasha interrupts. “We’re at a secret location, maybe she just needs confirmation that we are supposed to be here.”

“AV-616, do you copy?” the woman asks.

“She’s right,” Banner says. He stands up and makes his way to the cockpit. “Tony, is there anything in the brief about a code?”

“Shit, let me double check—”

“Don’t remember. See if he starts shooting,” Bucky cuts in.

“Dude, what?” Sam asks him, eyeing him incredulously.

Bucky rolls his eyes, “It’s from a movie, dumbass.” He stands up and makes his way to the cockpit, motioning to Clint to turn on the radio to let him speak.

“This is AV-616, say again?” Bucky says.

The radio crackles from the other side of the line, “The price on my head, was that dead or alive?”

“Don’t remember. See if he starts shooting. Over,” Bucky says. He feels the entire cabin take a breath.

After what feels like a lifetime, the other end of the radio cackles once again, “AV-616, you’re clear to land. See you soon, over.”

The Earth’s mightiest heroes sigh in relief as Clint navigates towards the open field the coordinates led them to. Bucky catches Steve’s gaze and he offers the blond a slight smirk, “It’s from Inception. I’m surprised you didn’t recognize it, with it being on your list and all.”

Steve rolls his eyes, “Just get your stuff, jerk.”

The clearing, as it turns outs, wasn’t actually a clearing. As Clint got closer and closer to the ground, the suspecting grass shifts and slides to the side, revealing an underground hangar filled with three jets and other vehicles. As soon as the Quinjet hits the bottom and the cargo door opens, mechanical creaking is heard above, and the large steel doors slide shut.

Bucky wonders what feat of engineering was needed in order to pull that off.

At the bottom of the cargo door is a man in an all-black uniform. Something about him absolutely screams military to Bucky, but he can’t put his finger on it. It’s most likely his posture and the fact that standing so close to some of the most famous people in the world doesn’t phase him.

“Your late,” was the first thing he said, directed at Steve mostly. He notices striking similarities between the two; both with piercing blue eyes and blond hair. Steve stands a little taller, but the man’s gaze is way tenser than Steve’s natural one.

“Sorry, had a little trouble landing,” Steve retorts before sticking his hand out to shake.

“I’m Steve Rogers.”

The man grasps his hand, “Lieutenant Jackson Daniels. Call me Jack. It’s an honour, sir.”

Bucky was right about him being in the military.

He hears Tony snorts behind him, being the last one to leave the plane, “Jack Daniels? Like the whiskey?”

Jack smirks, “Whiskey was my call sign on SEAL Team Six. Feel free to call me that if you like, Mr. Stark.”

Sam lets out a low whistle and the rest of team let out quiet laughs as Jack shuts Tony up. Bucky can’t help but notice how Wanda stares at Jack’s face as he talks to Steve. He smirks and thinks, Didn’t know blonds were your type, Maximoff.

Suddenly, Bucky trips over seemingly nothing. He looks up and catches the magical red glow fade away from Wanda’s fingers. Bitch, he thinks to her. She smirks in response.

“If you’d all follow me, the rest of the team is waiting in the command room,” Jack calls out to the mass of people around him.

He leads them out of the hanger and towards an elevator. The elevator is huge and faster than what he’s used to. He catches Steve’s eye and offers him a slight smile.

“Doing okay, Cap? Little freaked out by your look-alike?” he asks, nodding towards Jack who is answering every question Tony throws at him either with a “No,” “That’s classified,” or “You’ll see.”

His best friend lets out a small laugh, “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

“Something this secretive?”

“Something that feels so…army. I dunno, it feels comforting. Familiar, I guess.”

Bucky offers him another smile, “I know what you mean.”

The elevator screeches to a halt and the thick steel doors slide open, revealing a network of dark hallways, grey walls, and concrete floors. Jack steps out first and gestures them to follow him, “You’ll all have your own rooms, but we should probably brief first.”

“Where are we?” Bruce asks, stepping out of the elevator hesitantly after him.

“I’m afraid telling you the exact location is classified. Hell, I don’t even really know,” Jack answers.

“Are you going to show us the asset?” Tony asks, following him out of the elevator as well.

“Asset?” Jack asks.

“Ross said we have a special mission with the asset.”

Jack smirks, “We’re the asset.”

“Who’s we?”

Tony’s question was answered not a second later. Jack lead them into a dark room being illuminated by desk lamps and screens covering literally every surface. There are five desks all in a line, with three monitors each. Bucky even noticed the tabletop was a screen, as each of the four desk occupants worked away in their desks. He assumed the unoccupied desk belonged to Jack.

“Captain, they’re here,” Jack shouted. No one sitting at their desks turned around and Bucky’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion, until he followed Jack’s line of vision upwards. Behind the five desks was an elevated loft at the back of the room where one final desk sat. It was bigger than the others and had the best view of the collection of files, photos and videos projected on the wall across from it.

At the desk sat a woman, presumably Jack’s captain. Her eyes were trained to the screen in front of her until Jack called her name once again. Her eyes shifted toward his, then scanned the rest of the Avengers who had slowly filed in.

The woman then stands up. Sporting the same black cargo pants and boots as Jack as well as a grey tank top and dog tags, Bucky got the feeling that everyone on this team was ex-military, too.

The woman smirks at Jack slightly, “Omega, we got visitors. Look alive.”

The rest of the Avengers immediately recognize her voice as the voice from the radio. The watch as the walks down the stairs so she can speak to them. She stands beside Jack, facing the rest of the Avengers with a lazy smirk, “Sorry about landing. This base is secret, so we don’t want any unsolicited guests.”

Natasha counters, “Do you threaten to shoot everyone who flies by this place?”

“Only the people who don’t know the confirmation code. Or the people who don’t join this frequency when they’re a mile away. Which, by the way, you guys did neither,” the woman says nonchalantly, amused glare directed at Steve.

“We never got a—”

“It’s the first page of the briefing. That Inception quote was a last resort, which was also found in the briefing by the way. If none of you fuckers watched Inception, I would definitely shoot you down,” she cut Steve off.

“…That’s on me,” Tony sighed, “I skipped the first few pages because looking at all those protocols made me bored.”

“And with that, I’ll finally introduce myself. My name’s Captain Y/N Y/L/N. This is Omega.”

THREE: NAKED

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes x reader #buck barnes fic #sebastian stan imagine #bucky barns fanfiction #sebastian stan #sebastian stan x reader #sebastian stan fic #sebastian stan fanfiction #operation omega

[hellyeahheroes]

Marvel Teen Romance: Solo Boys Edition

Romance in today’s superhero comics sucks. 

There are two categories of love interests when it comes to teen boys in romance in today’s Marvel.

First category is shared with the women: two characters on the same team. This is easy and standard for superhero teen on teams and is not covered in this post.

Second is for exclusively characters with solo books: one dimensional love interests who only serve to fill in a role.

Very few of the romance in male character’s books work today because the romantic partner is not defined. They are placeholder roles. Their depth is written with the same amount of enthusiasm as a person filling out an application in the cases of characters that aren’t in team books only which is completely different for males in teen books.

This is partly because most of the characters with solo books do not have a lot of time to give the supporting cast depth so love interests often turn into one note characters that could best be defined as “This is so and so’s girlfriend.” 

This is extremely prevalent in Marvel teen boys solos and you want to know how you can spot how this is happening? When you the character does not have a last name or their name is not mentioned upon introduction of said character.

Yes, this happens a lot for the teen solo male characters to which I personally had to dig just to find out who these girls were. And yes, they are all in mlw romances canonically. There is no canonically openly gay male character with his own solo book.

It is frustrating because there is no excuse. You are Marvel. You literally created Peter Parker and Mary Jane. Luke Cage and Jessica Jones. Reed Richards and Sue Storm. You have an entire goddamn cinematic universe with well-defined romantic subplots but somehow when it comes to solo characters, fuck actually giving romantic love interests depth. Peter Parker probably has the largest love history in Marvel but almost all of them have a fucking last name. For fuck’s sake, even his supporting characters have better defined romances almost all of the characters on this list.

Warning: the reason I put a “?” for a lot of these characters’ sexual orientation is because I am not going to assume. They have to earn any confirmation of being straight from me by doing three things: when the idea of romance is brought up they always think girlfriend, actively deny being interested in the same sex, or call themselves straight. Only one character has done that on the boys side.

Miles Morales aka Spider-man

Orientation: Heterosexual

Love Interests: Barbara Rodriguez(current), Starling, Lana Baumgartner, Rachel Leigh, Katie Bishop, Tomoe the Technogolem, Spider-Gwen, Olivia

Miles Morales is the exception to the flaws of today’s teen male heroes for Marvel because of all of his love interests are actual characters in which he has unique relationships with. None of them are one note characters and they are diverse in ethnicity, race, and background. They range from his best friend’s having crushes on him(Lana), bad girls who want to tempt him into turning bad(Katie Bishop, Rachel Leigh), super powered girlfriends(Spider-Gwen, Starling), and fully fleshed out girlfriend who does not know that he is Spider-man or knows but has not told(Barbara Rodriguez).

Most importantly, they have a relationship with Miles through either his being Spider-man and just him or both.

Just like his predecessor, Miles’ love life starts and begins around his identity as Spider-man. And that is intentional because as much as Peter is probably one half of the most prolific comic book romance in history, he is fucking terrible at giving advice. Peter Parker stupidly told Miles not to tell his loved ones that he is Spider-man because villains target them all of the time. Mind you, this was 616 Peter Parker who told him this, not Ultimate Peter Parker because Mary Jane was the first person he told about his being Spider-man. Miles does not know that Peter has a guilt complex the size of the Australian Outback so he stupidly follows his advice until he meets one Katie Bishop.

How or when Katie and he hooked up is unknown, but we can say that it happened during Miles’ brief retirement from Spider-man. When Miles eventually resumed the mantle, he felt bad about lying to his girlfriend so he tells her.

Oh...this didn’t work as well as he thought. Gee I wonder what the problem is?

One problem: Katie Bishop is part of Hydra.

And this is why you should ask political affiliations should be major criteria in partner searching: one minute you are dating and watching movies, seems to really hate Inglourious Basterds for some reason. Then after making out awhile and becoming serious, they slowly reveal things about themselves. All of sudden, you realized that you have been dating a Nazi.

So after that disaster ended via “New Universe, who dis”, Miles is actually terrified about telling any love interest about his dual identity and fervently clings onto Peter Parker’s terrible advice that further complicates his relationships going forward because he misinterpreted the situation with his relationship with Katie. He should have learned that keeping secrets from each other is bad all-around because Katie never told Miles that she was a card carrying Hydra member because that would turn him off from her(I mean he is black for fuck’s sake). Miles, while having no reason to share his past with her while they were dating because he was no longer Spider-man, should have not completely abandoned his superhero sense, Neither of them trusted the other enough so the relationship was doomed from the jump.

 This is where Barbara Rodriguez, Lana Baumgartner, and partially Spider-Gwen comes in.

Spider-man (2016) is an awkward jumping point because Bendis no longer had the Ultimate Universe as the backdrop for Miles. If I could advise anyone who was interested in Miles Morales comics, I would tell them to skip most of 2016 run because Bendis was over the place. He introduced a lot of bad ideas like Miles moving away from the Spider-man identity, the Venom web strings thing replacing web shooters, Miles becoming a secret agent, and etc. Just a lot of dumb shit. But one thing that Bendis did establish was that Miles is a hormonal teenaged heterosexual boy who has girls on the brain all of the time.

It is a over arching subplot of both Ganke and Miles trying to get girlfriends. Ganke keeps shopping Miles out to girls and Miles kind of indulges him. Until Miles goes to Earth-65.

Gwen Stacy knows Miles is Spider-man, but she is from another dimension and while they share the same mantle, Gwen’s attraction to Miles is dubious because every dimension she has been in up to the point that she met Miles, a Gwen Stacy is either dead, miserable, or evil. The one alternate reality that she has seen where she is happy is that she is married to Miles Morales with children. All of this on top of the fact that Gwen is being blackmailed by her worst nemesis as well as her father being in prison equates to Gwen is stressed and is desperate for any sort of comfort. She does not have any feelings towards Miles that go beyond platonic and it helps that of all the Spider-people, Miles is one of the few that don’t resemble Peter. 

And you shouldn’t trust Miles’ feelings because he is a horny teenaged boy who spent the majority of Bendis’ last run pining after every girl who just so happens to smile at him. No really, Miles had crushes on Kamala, teenaged Jean Grey, Cassie Lang, some girl that broke up with him before they started dating, and Spider-Gwen. He was just happy to kiss a girl but not really because she is from another dimension. And right after that, he gets into a thing with Lana and Tomoe the Technogolem so really, it is not really a thing, but the movie felt compelled to make it so in spite of spitting in the face of every goddamn Spider-man theme ever created.

Lana Baumgartner aka Bombshell, however, at least is in the dimension Miles currently resides in and also is one of the two who has been in both the Ultimate and 616 universe when Miles made his switch. Now I am not sure how much is still canon with Bombshell making the switch over to 616, but her relationship with Miles is a lot like Peter’s and Black Cat’s in that she used to be bad, but now she is good and Miles is like her best friend. Regardless, aside from Ganke, Lana is one of the few people who Miles can confide in and Lana, in spite of going to Midtown, relates to Miles on multiple levels.

It wasn’t until Miles left to avenge her getting beaten up by Hammerhead that Lana started actively pursuing Miles or stating that she kind of always had a crush on him which is not at all reciprocated because he correctly deduces that Lana is dealing with Florence Nightingale effect. Of course, he may have underestimated her feelings for her because from that point on, Lana keeps texting him and he keeps ignoring her.

And finally Barbara Rodriguez. 

Barbara, unbeknownst to both Miles and her, is from the Ultimate Universe as well. Apparently when Miles made the switch, Molecule Man wanted to thank Miles and not revived all of his dead family members, he also made sure would be loved ones like Barbara were around. It is kind of like an alternate dimensional fated lovers thing and since Barbara is the last thing Bendis created before he went to DC, she is Miles’ Mary Jane Watson. Saladin Almed took over writing duties for Miles and under his pen, the relationship between Miles and Barbara has been the focus of his run.

Barbara does not have any superpowers and what we know is that she is an aspiring rapper/singer who at least half of her family is undocumented immigrants or not American. She is a hip-hop head, has a bit of a mischievous streak(she convinces Miles to skip school to go to a Hip-Hop museum exhibit), and loves to banter.

And she also knows that Miles is Spider-man but because of very stupid advise from one Peter Parker, Miles keeps lying to her. This puts a strain on the relationship which is worsened because Barbara feels indebted to Miles because him being Spider-man saved her. She just wishes that Miles told her instead of lying about it.

While Miles and Barbara are dealing with this melodrama, Miles meets another girl: Tiana Toomes aka Starling.

She is the granddaughter of Adrian Toomes aka the Vulture aka one of Peter Parker’s worst enemies. Miles meets her in the middle of Tiana’s One Woman Quest for Vengeance against Tombstone and they fundamentally disagree on how to deal with Tombstone.

After all Tombstone is dealt with, Miles and Tiana kind of connect except the obstacle of his need to preserve his secret identity gets in the way.

Miles fails to realize that his secret identity is there to protect not just him and his loved ones, but ensure that he has a normal social life. There is nothing to be gained in keeping a secret from friends about who you are especially if it puts them in danger. Yes, Miles is right in not telling Tiana, who is related to a guy who would gladly attack Miles to get back at Peter Parker in someway, and I am a bit annoyed that he even considered revealing himself to Tiana who he has every reason to not trust on that level, but not Barbara who he promised to share with once he felt comfortable. It is not out of safety that he doesn’t tell Barbara which is exactly the case when dealing with Tiana. He doesn’t tell Barbara because he believes he is keeping her safe and...he isn’t. It just shows that you don’t trust her.

Miles is the only male teen hero that Marvel has who has starred in a solo comic book and has an in-depth romantic history as well as in-depth and detailed love interests. He is the only one in a period of 20 years. That is sad.

Sam Alexander aka Nova

Gender: Male

Orientation: ?

Love Interests: Carrie, Jinin, Lina

And now we are shifting from character whose history is in-depth to another whose can’t be asked to give his romantic interests a fucking last name. The writers of Nova have no excuse. Nova unlike the majority of characters here has had at least 50 issues which is 40 issues too many to have a character who was present in the very first issue to not yet have a fucking last name.

Carrie appears in the first issue of Sam’s Nova where Sam is moping about his dad being picked on because his father is the school janitor. Carrie has very little depth, but there was enough depth that would amount to an introduction.Carrie is friends or at least hangs out in the same skater clique as Sam’s bully, Karl. Karl loves to rag on Sam’s dad working as the school’s janitor and honestly, Carrie kind of likes Sam, but she is friends with the asshole as well so it had potential of being interesting.

You’d think that after this introduction that she would be more prominent, but nope. Carrie’s appearances became more sporadic in Sam’s Nova in which Sam shows that he is as emotionally dense as the sunken Titanic. The series shifted away from Sam’s school life to focus on Sam’s quest to find his father and his mother and sister. Sam doesn’t see Carrie a lot so you as a reader can’t be blamed if you don’t know that she exists.

Carrie doesn’t appear until another 4 issues later(4 months) where she is hanging out with Karl and the skater clique in which she prevents Karl from spontaneously egging Sam’s home out of boredom. And of course, Nova appears.

In which, she immediately recognizes that Nova is Sam because girls who like boys are apparently more perceptive or at least Sam’s mask is nowhere near as concealing as he thinks with the whole mouth being visible.

Next issues she confronts Sam about it and of course like an idiot, he lies because apparently it is superhero 101 to lie to your girlfriends about who you are when it is really fucking obvious.

The lie is unnecessary because Sam’s villains or would be villains could easily track down Sam due to him being a Nova. They go beyond taking his loved ones hostage. It is honestly beneath them to do so and the closest that a character has done so in Nova was Kaldera and she didn’t need to know what Sam looked like or his name. Nova’s secret identity or need of one is useless.

Carrie confronts Sam again about the Nova issue and when Sam tries to pull a Spider-man, she completely chews him out for it.

From this point on, Carrie’s appearances were sporadic and carried a somewhat hostile tone with her getting sick of Sam’s shit and also the bulk of Sam’s adventures being away from school. Carrie becomes the babysitter for Sam’s sister when his mom is busy being a single mother and Sam is out in Space doing space shit. And again, not a whole lot of depth here. And then suddenly for no apparent reason and actual use of story telling...Sam and Carrie start randomly dating.

After this, she barely appears and then she is dropped off the face of the Earth. Now I would cover Jinin and Lina, but it is a waste of time. Both characters are one note and have fewer appearances than Carrie.  Point is that Sam’s romance history is indicative of an overall problem with male teen heroes in the modern age. They don’t bother with making the romantic interest as an actual character. Their role is to essentially warm the bed and house while the hero is away.

Amadeus Cho aka Brawn

Gender: Male

Orientation: ?

Love Interests:Delphyne Gorgon, Lady Hellbender, Enchantress(Hulk brained consented without Amadeus being conscious...so rape?), Vision, Luna Snow

It took nearly 20 years to develop a love interest for Amadeus. 20 goddamn years. It wasn’t even developed. It just randomly happened.

Eventhough I was rooting for Cindy Moon/Luna Snow, I’m just glad that it happened.

Victor Alvarez aka Power Man

Gender: Male

Orientation: ?

Love Interests: Ava Ayala, Iowa Bryant

Victor is criminally underused. He should be tied to both Iron Fist and Luke Cage, but he kind of went the way of the teen hero in the 2010s: shipped off to any team that needs a token black guy. Before he went down that role, he was being mentored by Danny Rand for awhile. Anyone who knows Victor knows that him being mentored by a snooty rich white guy goes as well as Jason Voorhees and pre-marital teenaged coitus.

Victor goes to school, apartently he is a budding thespian and actor, and he can’t even focus because his head is in the clouds.

Dayyuuuuuuum. I mean she talks like she stepped out of the 20s, but I understand the awe. Iowa is probably the most peculiar of the love interests here because she has this flapper-esque dialogue that is just out of place. So out of place that Victor suspects her of being tied to the resident old timey bad guy that both he and Iron Fist are searching for.

Long story short: Nothing happens to this item. She is remarkable because at least she has a last name.

Next is probably a more popular character: Ava Ayala aka White Tiger. Victor joins the Mighty Avengers and his initial thoughts of the honorable and dutiful Ava Ayala...

Awww, he gets the mush mouth when he gets flustered around pretty girls. Ava Ayala and Victor’s chemistry starts slow as Ava is a bit of a tortured soul as she constantly wants to live up to her brother’s example.What with Gideon Mace killing her brother and Arcade torturing and killing some of her old teammates: she just wasn’t in the headspace of looking for relationships. When Gideon gets loose, Ava decides to let the Tiger out and the team had to stop her from mauling her brother’s killer. 

Ouch...

White Tiger eventually gets put down by the team. Victor, being the dogged nice guy that he is tries to find a way to relinquish the hold the Tiger God has on his crush. Luckily, Ava puts the God-Spirit in check, herself. After this, the two continue to support each other and form somewhat of a bond. For Victor, it was romantic and for Ava, it was mostly out of camaraderie.  But after a cosmic near world ending experience that involved all of the Avengers merging their minds together thus sharing each other’s souls to one another, they finally become official.

That is one way to undercut development and get straight to the point. I mean there is not a pick up line the world that equates to soul melding and fighting off the bad guy.

Anyway, they stayed an item for awhile. There really isn’t a lot of content.

Mighty Avengers ends, but they both get enlisted into the AIM Avengers. During this transition, they broke up because Ava is all work and no play. She is married to the idea of being a superhero so much that she doesn’t value her own health. Victor broke up with her.

They don’t get bac together btw. After AIM Avengers, Victor joins the Champions while Ava joins up with Captain America. He does try to make a pass at Ironheart, but that gets shut down quick.

Rayshaun Lucas aka Patriot

Gender: Male

Orientation: ?

Love Interests: Brianna

I am not going to waste my time or yours.

This is Brianna. He asks her out on a date, but then she gets promptly turned into a mindless vampire and that shit is a bigger turn off than cis straight men. 

He joins the Champions and hits on the Red Locust, but she is kind of too gay Ms. Marvel to care.

Robbie Reyes aka Ghost Rider

Gender: Male

Orientation: ?

Love Interests: Lisa

Not going to waste your time and mine, again. 

Lisa literally just shows up. No introduction. She just happens.

And this is from the first series. In the next series, written by the same writer, she just disappears. So nothing of note happens and you wonder why fangirls ship him with Amadeus.

So this all of them. No, I won’t do Alpha because...no. Anyways, the girl solo’s are next(we are talking Ms. Marvel and Kate Bishop) so it should be more fun and gay. And then we will get to the big team teen love fest bonanza which is super gay and super fun.

#Miles Morales #Spider-man #spider-man: into the spider-verse #Into the Spider-verse #Nova #Sam Alexander #Amadeus Cho #Brawn #Totally Awesome Hulk #Victor Alvarez #Power Man #Rayshaun Lucas #Patriot #Ghost Rider #Robbie Reyes #Spider-Gwen #Katie Bishop #Barbara Rodriguez #Starling #Tiana Toomes #long post #lana baumgartner #bombshell

[shellheadtm-a]

i’m stealing the idea of a topical mcu/616 differences list from @suprnovas because while i know i’ve done them before, they’re scattered and scattered brain and picking through it by topic is a good idea.  and this is more, obviously, for people who may not realize that 616 tony stark is an entirely different character from mcu tony, in terms of personality and the way his life has played out, and that’s important to me to point that out.

arc reactor / rt node - mcu tony had an arc reactor, a miniaturized nuclear battery, in his chest after afghanistan to keep the shrapnel out of his heart.  no such creature exists in 616 - instead, tony wore the chestplate of the original iron man armors (which were much different than the first iterations of the mcu armors) under his clothes and it required charging every so often to function as a fancy pacemaker.  there was a big to-do about tony getting the shrapnel out, using an experimental tissue transplant surgery ages and ages before anything glowy ever sat in his chest.  later he had the rt node, which while visually similar to the arc reactor served an entirely different purpose.  the rt node was also a nuclear battery/electromagnet combo, and served to power the iron man at the time (the bleeding edge), but it also served as tony’s brain in a lot of ways.  tony had both wiped his own mind and been beaten so badly by norman osborn he had severe brain damage.  the rt was the fine line between tony in a persistent vegetative state and tony upright and walking and talking.  while not a part of his physiology any longer, he had it for several years, considering until his complete body reboot it was the only thing working as the automatic functions of brain and removing it would literally kill him.

alcoholism - tony’s alcoholism is background in the mcu, and quietly just whisked away (and while a lot of that has to do with disney...).  however, in 616, tony’s alcoholism isn’t a once-mentioned deal and everyone goes on their merry way.  tony didn’t just “handle” it, he took that plunge from grace and hit rock bottom face first.  he spent some time broke.  homeless.  missing.  it’s a prominent feature of his character, once he gets himself in aa and sober, and it’s tested multiple times.  his sobriety is used as a bargaining chip.  people try and have exploited it for their own gain (notably obadiah stane and justine hammer, the original justin hammer’s daughter).  aa plays a big part in tony’s story, he does meetings, the steps, sponsors other people (notably carol danvers).  it’s not a quiet, hidden thing, it’s very public and very honest, and something tony is very frank about being a daily struggle.

obadiah stane - mcu obadiah was a father-figure to tony.  in 616, this isn’t even remotely close to the case, and instead he was absolutely villainous from the start, in the sense that he tried (and succeeded) to legally both maneuver tony’s company right out from under him and lay claim to everything tony had ever called his own.  he manipulated tony’s need for love and problems with alcohol to secure that.  he kidnapped literally everyone he could get his hands on that meant something to tony, from pepper to the baby of a friend he helped deliver.  and after he took himself off the playing field he still had a minefield laid for tony, in the form of tony’s entire fortune (sure tony inherited the company from howard, but every penny stane took tony earned himself) behind a wall of failsafes to keep tony out if certain conditions weren’t met.  tony ultimately succeeded, but it wasn’t a one and done deal, it was a massive climb up a mountain from the very bottom.  later, obadiah’s son, zeke stane, also came after tony.

pepper potts - you know how the mcu story goes, tony gets the girl, they get married, have a kid.  yeah, 616 didn’t happen that way.  616  didn’t happen that way so much that tony and pepper have literally never been in a relationship.  they pined after each other for years, sure, and pepper is literally one of the people tony cares about most in the world and always will, but they’re not in love.  pepper ended up marrying happy and while they had their issues ultimately they were still together at the time of happy’s death.  tony and pepper have slept together ultimately a grand total of one time, and that’s been that.  tony acknowledges that his role in pepper’s life is more overly protective best friend, not partner material.  pepper is super, super important to tony, but she’s not and probably never will be his endgame.  they aren’t like that.

extremis - in mcu, extremis is a mess.  a literal, whole-ass mess.  with a fake mandarin in the deal.  so here’s how it works in 616:  tony was the one (1) extremis enhancile that didn’t completely lose his marbles, and even then it can’t be said it didn’t cause some issues, as anyone who’s ever read the civil war storyline and his duration as director of shield will know.  tony’s version of extremis rewired his body from the inside out, literally.  he had a level of technopathy, a healing factor, he could literally tap into anything electronic he wanted to, connect to satellites, whatever.  it also made him cold, distant, and more than a little less human, with less control over his already prodigious temper.  it wasn’t a fun time.  it essentially turned his brain into a computer’s harddrive, and he used it exactly that way, to the point he was backing himself up in the chance it was ever needed (spoiler: he did).  pepper didn’t get extremis.  in 616 you literally have to have a special genetic marker, or it will kill you.  gruesomely.  and, put another, easy to parse way:  extremis basically made tony a technopathic steve rogers, a super soldier.

secret identity - the mcu has tony blowing off the idea of iron man as a bodyguard as ridiculous.  616 tony posed as his own bodyguard for years.  he kept that secret so close to his vest only a handful of people knew for years and most of the avengers weren’t on that list.  actually, the one who did know was thor, not anyone else you might think.  or...that knew because tony told them so.  lots of people caught a glimpse of it, or suspected.  he’s revealed and then covered up his identity numerous times, finally coming out officially and staying out as iron man during the fight over superhero registration.  while the whole world knows now that tony stark and iron man are one in the same, for the majority of tony’s time as the armored avenger, that simply wasn’t the case.

chitauri - chitauri were an mcu/ultimates thing strictly up until secret empire (which we don’t talk about in this house), when they were introduced into 616.  that battle of new york?  in the mcu?  yeah that’s kinda...normal, for 616.  it happens often enough that the world ending or aliens trying to invade or...look, 616 is entirely more perilous of a universe.  the battle of new york is actually a conglomeration of several elements from several different 616 and ultimates battles, including the nukes.  tony doesn’t have a fear in space because of things like that, he’s actually spent lots and lots of time in space, and notably with the guardians of the galaxy (of which he was one for a hot minute).

the avengers - mcu follows the ultimates storyline for the avengers, in that they’re formed by shield.  in 616, that’s not so much the case.  the avengers formed on their own, with an entirely different line up for the team, coming together as a group to fight loki and deciding that, overall, there’s something to be said about working together.  originally it was janet van dye and hank pym (who are tony’s generation - hope van dyne does not exist in 616, instead we have nadia van dyne, who is hank’s daughter that jan has claimed as her own), thor, bruce banner, and tony.  steve is not an actual founding member, he was grandfathered in and has all the perks because it’s captain america and you just don’t leave captain america in the cold.  shield had diddly fuck all to do with them, and has worked with them in the past, sure, but it’s always been a very uneasy alliance.  to the point that shield has tried to take over tony’s company at points.  the avengers are a free-wheeling operation, funded largely through donations, the maria stark foundation, and tony’s own personal fortune.  they’re peace-keepers, classified as a non-profit, and operate by their own by-laws and regulations, which if you’re really interested, you can find here.  the only thing i’ve personally added to that is section five, and even that has some basis in canon itself.

ultron - ultron was created by hank pym (giant man, ant-man, wasp, yellowjacket, goliath), not tony.  for very different reasons.  and he’s been a thorn in the side of the world since his inception, having caused the destruction of the world more than once that’s had to be fixed.  the living creature that is time in the 616 universe is so punched full of holes from having to do shit like this it looks like swiss cheese, let’s be honest here.  vision did ultimately come from ultron, yes, but his personality is based off of that of simon williams, a superhero in 616 known as wonder man.

avengers mansion / tower / compound - the avengers used to operate out of tony’s childhood home, which he opened up to that cause, 890 fifth avenue.  when that was destroyed, they moved to stark tower.  that’s been destroyed about a hundred times at this point.  currently the main team is operating out of the body of a dead celestial in the north pole.  616 tony stark would never lower himself to buying property in upstate new york unless it’s a cabin in the adirondacks, he’d buy (and has bought) property in new jersey first, and the avengers compound, such as it is, does not exist.

civil war - there is no such thing as the sokovia accords in 616.  instead, 616 had what’s called the superhuman registration act (shra for short) which required all superhumans to register their identities with the us government.  it was strictly us-based, for the record, and happened after nitro, a villain in 616 who can basically blow himself up like a bomb at will, did so in the town of stamford after being caught out by a group of superheroes known as the new warrirors for a reality tv show.  it was the final nail in the coffin for a lot of people about superheroes (which are a part of daily life in 616) and people were scared and wanted something done.  tony was pro-registration.  steve was anti-registration, and was especially hostile after maria hill opened fire on him.  they scrapped, and scrapped hard, in multiple public battles, until steve turned himself in when he realized not only was he literally about to murder a basically defenseless tony in the middle of a street (and what do you do when your best friend’s under you and tells you to “finish it” through his broken faceplate?) and that they, both sides, were just fighting to fight, instead of fighting for something.  on the way to his arraignment, steve is assassinated.  tony literally falls apart and loses his shit utterly and completely.  there’s a lot of awful things that happen that can’t be contained to a blurb.  and it all leads to the point where tony erases his brain and norman osborn lays siege to asgard, which is near the town of broxton, oklahoma.  it’s a mess, both more contained, and bigger, because the stakes are bigger and the number of players are bigger, and there’s a skrull invasion taking place behind the whole damn thing.  there are also approximately a million conspiracy theories, some people wondered if tony had something to do with steve’s death (he didn’t, it was red skull), and it’s since shaped the entirety of what it’s like to be a superhero in the world of 616 since, even if shra has been repealed.

captain america - is this really a tony blog without a special mention for steve rogers?  the mcu, once again, defers to the ultimates storyline (which is not 616) for steve, with shield handling the thawing and reintroducing steve into the world.  in 616, the avengers find him looking for the hulk and realize he’s still alive, and end up offering him a place with them, which obviously he ends up agreeing to.  there’s a lot of differences even with steve himself which i’m not going to get entirely into but he and bucky didn’t grow up together, bucky had fuck all to do with civil war for the most part, and tony and steve are literally attached at the hip.  tony literally has a captain america collection.  the cap collection is a thing, everyone knows about it, it’s not a secret, because captain america was tony’s hero before tony ever became a superhero.  there’s none of this tension right off the bat, steve ends up friends with tony and iron man before he knows they’re the same person.  they fight so hard because they love each other so hard.  they’re close, fullstop.  tony and steve have been leading teams together since almost the very beginning, and that’s that.  also steve and tony are literally almost the same age when steve is thawed from the ice; tony becomes iron man much earlier in 616.

bucky barnes - and while we’re at it:  bucky is a super soldier in the mcu, and there’s that whole mess with civil war and tony trying to kill him.  in 616 it’s the opposite:  bucky tries to kill tony.  tony talks him down and shows him the letter that was given to him from steve after steve’s death and offers bucky the shield.  bucky agrees.  bucky has intimate knowledge of the iron man’s inner workings and how to shut it (and effectively tony) off.  completely.  tony doesn’t remember any of this.   bucky is not a super soldier in 616, he’s literally just a dude with a metal arm and a plucky attitude who has a very unique skillset and was frozen for long periods of time.  he and tony have also been on a team together with bucky as captain america, and they’re friends outside of that.  tony does the arm maintenance that bucky can’t do, knows where bucky lives, knows bucky’s cat.  there’s none of this resentment there, they’re comfortable with each other.

physicality - this is a big one.  it’s what makes him and mcu tony at a glance glaringly different, because he’s so much taller and differently framed.  he’s huge and imposing in the suit, standing level with thor and at least half a head taller than steve.  outside of it he’s still unfairly tall, but built lanky.  he doesn’t build muscle mass the way other superheroes do, and tends to shed weight with a vengeance when he’s overly stressed.  and while disney princess eyes are a thing they both share, tony’s got that bonus striking combination of blue eyes and dark hair.  he’s also about a decade  younger than mcu tony, and looks a bit younger than that bc of everything he’s done to his body to enhance it (which is mostly all moot at this point, for the record).

personality - this is really the main thing with this.  the tony you see in the mcu is not 616 tony.  at all.  616 tony is actually a fairly serious character; he’s only occasionally flighty about his company, and when he is there’s usually some iron man/avengers motivation behind it.  he works.  he works hard.  and he’s known as a good man to work for, has good company morale, and takes a very micromanaging interest in everything his company does.  he also occasionally hides out in his workshop for weeks on end and has to be dragged out to see sunlight again.  he makes his jokes, he has some levity, but he’s more prone to rambling complete with flailing arms and technobabble with some philosophical footnotes than he is making nothing but solid pop culture references.  he has interests outside of the iron man, outside of engineering, and whole those are his passion, he’s a student of history and philosophy and art, and when he has time he plops down in front of dog cops just like the rest of the 616 universe.  he has unique vocal tics that are separate and distinct from mcu tony, that, while they both self edit, 616 tony is more obvious with it, stutters over words, gets stuck.  and then has a hard time unsticking himself.  he’s more sensitive; he’s less likely to give you an insulting nickname and reach instead for terms of endearment, and literally no one is safe.  he calls steve rogers beloved, for crying out loud, and steve doesn’t bat an eyelash at it.  he’s soft, and easily bruised, but he’s also steel spined and hot tempered.  when he’s angry, you’ll know it.  he’s also very kind, and very generous, and hates himself utterly and completely.  anyone who spends any amount of time around him realizes very quickly that the plastic i’m king of the world act is a facade.  tony will work himself down to the bone to make up for sins, real and imagined.  he overreaches in making decisions for other people.  and all around is probably a less appealing character in some ways - his flaws are very obvious and very human - but is in a lot of ways entirely more layered because there’s so much at work between his different masks and what’s underneath them all.  he’s the first to offer himself up as a sacrifice if it’s needed, and reaches for the worst case scenario first.  he’ll push people away because he thinks that will somehow save them, from himself and those he’s crossed.  he’s complicated, and his complications are not always easy or appealing or fixable.  there’s a truly ugly side to it that doesn’t get glossed over, and he’s willing to go so much darker if he considers it the right thing to do.

overall, there’s only some surface stuff between 616 and the mcu.  there’s a guy named tony stark who does duty as a superhero named iron man, but how they both got to the present day is completely different, and their lives and experiences are also completely different.  diving into 616 will be like...well.  culture shock.  and i’m gonna say it (even if i know the intake of breath on the 616 side is gonna be dramatic):  for people wanting to find a characterization more closely related to the mcu?  let me point you toward the ultimates runs. it’s kinda gross, but i have a soft spot for it and also it’s more narrowly related, you’ll see things that feel entirely more familiar, before jumping off into the crazy ass world that is 616, where things like steve rogers becoming a werewolf is just...tuesday.  the mcu takes elements from both, sure, but you’re gonna see a hell of a lot more ultimates influence, and that’s a fact.

#constant //: ( about ) #long post #long post for ts #// boy i know i missed a lot but #// i'm working off memory here #// and this is already entirely too long #// but here you go #// a friendly handy dandy guide to the differences that are #// the most obvious and the most important

[traincat]

if you dont mind i would love to hear your thoughts on how and why peter seems to be more fulfilled by lower paying jobs (i.e photography, teaching) rather than by high paying jobs in STEM

(Sorry for the wait, anon! I did get this first ask, as you can see, it’s just that sometimes I tend to hoard asks that I want to give long in-depth answers to and then they get buried.)

So I think to best answer this the first thing we have to do is look at Peter’s 616 employment history -- what jobs he’s had when and for approximately how long. So here we have a more or less definitive list -- I may have skipped over a few minor jobs that aren’t important in the long run of the character history, but for the most part this is accurate. For the sake of brevity I am not going to count things he’s done as Spider-Man that have earned him money, like a brief bodyguard stint or his occasional time with the Avengers, because this is really more about his identity as Peter Parker and how his civilian employment plays into his life as Spider-Man than about his life as Spider-Man.

Works for the Daily Bugle on and off, through a variety of positions from part time to salaried, from the age of 15 onwards. Primarily a photographer. How good of a photographer Peter actually is varies from writer to writer, but he remains unmatched in his ability to get certain shots ranging from ones of Spider-Man (duh) to particularly high risk environments (different duh). He also briefly worked for rival newspaper the Daily Globe, the Bugle’s main competitor. His position as a full time newspaper photographer is his most well known (and most consistent) job.

A TA in grad school at Empire State University. At this point in time he labeled himself as having “the wrong temperament” for teaching -- and I would personally say I think his stints teaching college are much less engaging than high school.

Published author. His book, Webs, a collection of his Spider-Man photography, was a major bestseller that sent him on a book tour around the country. I hesitated sticking this on here because it’s very tied into his work with the Bugle -- and he was still working for the Bugle when the book was published -- but I figured it was worth including for the novelty of the fact that Peter’s technically a best selling author/artist.

Peter worked as a scientist at Galannan Alternative Research for Immunization Development (GARID) in Portland after his clone Ben Reilly took over the identity of Spider-Man. Although often overlooked in discussions of Peter’s job history, I think his stint at GARID is important in part because it illustrates how much of Peter’s time being Spider-Man took up and how a job with flexible hours was necessary for that balancing act. When he was working at GARID, Peter wasn’t Spider-Man, so it wasn’t difficult for him to keep a position at a laboratory. 

I mean granted the GARID job didn’t last long and there was sort of a whole big mutated monster case going on with it but you know. Anyway he pretty quickly moved back to New York and started working for the Bugle again.

Peter’s next major job at a lab comes in another period where he’s supposed to have quit being Spider-Man. (Which he did, very temporarily, and then he very much didn’t. Anyway, you’re seeing the pattern here.) He briefly worked at Tricorp, a private brain trust. This is a really short-lived position, even as Peter’s science gigs go, because -- Spider-Man.

At this point things get dicey employment-wise as Peter heads into a weird period of canon where Mary Jane was presumed dead. She wasn’t! But everyone thought she was. It was weird. When MJ came back (and promptly left for LA, not that I blame her), Peter exited this period of limbo by becoming a science teacher at his old school, Midtown High. This is the main career, beside news photography, that I think he really shines in.

Civil War/One More Day/Brand New Day hit and completely tank the direction of Spider-Man history. Peter’s marriage is erased by the devil and also he’s not a high school teacher anymore, for some reason, even though nobody remembers he’s Spider-Man anymore which is the reason he initially lost the Midtown High job. Make it make sense. Anyway, in Marvel’s desperate scramble to take Spider-Man back to the unmarried basics, as if they even got new readers that way, Peter returned to photography. When Dexter Bennett bought the Bugle out from under JJJ while JJJ was sick, Peter began working for the newly minted “DB” as a tabloid photographer. It wasn’t great.

He also briefly at some point in here worked at a comic book store for like five minutes. Mostly he complained about people who read comic books and made jokes about how he doesn’t get along with the X-Men. 

Under Slott’s run, Peter began working at Horizon Labs. Slott had a pretty major problem with Peter’s genius not being “recognized enough” and constantly had him inventing new things, showing off, etc. 

Horizon Lab became Parker Industries under Otto Octavius when he bodyjacked Peter during Superior Spider-Man and made himself CEO. When Peter got his body back, he was still CEO. It was bad but Peter did tank the company on purpose so that Otto and also nazis couldn’t get their hands on it, which was sort of fun. 

Peter went back to work for the Bugle, but as their science editor, because Slott was still in charge and there was some weird commentary about photography not being an adult job. Which I think is pretty weird in a medium that’s very dependent on visual art. But okay.

Then Peter got fired because he was busted for plagiarism of Otto Octavius’ work... that Otto did himself... while he was in Peter’s body... and Peter couldn’t reveal this because then he’d have to explain... and maybe I hate comics. 

In MC2 he becomes a forensic scientist! I really like this for him actually. I think it combines his interests and experiences in a very thoughtful way. But I do want to note it’s after a Spider-Man career ending injury, so again there’s not a real conflict there between his work as Spider-Man and a career.

Peter I think is an especially interesting case in how his character ties into his employment history because one of the first things he does in his story is figure out how to make money, and he does this because the Parkers don’t have any. If Ben and May were comfortable -- even comfortable enough that their teenaged nephew was unaware of financial pressures -- Spider-Man’s story would be completely different. But Peter immediately feels he pressure to use his new powers to earn money, at first with brute strength. And what he says he’s going to do with his earnings is that he’s going to take care of Ben and May:

(Amazing Fantasy #15) So the concept of Peter as someone who is very aware of financial pressure and who is pretty explicitly linking money to support is present from the absolute beginning. But at the same time, there’s a kind of selfishness presented in him here -- he’s only going to take care of Ben and May. They’re the only ones he cares about here, because as he’s stated they’re the only ones who have ever “been kind” to him. Peter at the beginning of his story is very rooted in his anger and his bitterness, and it takes him losing Uncle Ben -- because it wasn’t Peter’s “job” to stop the burglar -- to get him to the point where he starts to be able to see beyond that.

Ben’s death also heightens the Parker’s financial pressures -- Ben is the primary earner in the household. (Aunt May in the original context of the early 1960s was most likely a homemaker, and as an older woman especially she wouldn’t be expected to have a job. But even moving the timescale up to a point where she would be expected as a woman to hold down a job, it’s important to note that early in Spider-Man canon Aunt May is depicted as being in very poor physical health.) While it’s not clear in the initial Spider-Man stories what Ben did, it’s clear that with his death whatever income the Parkers had coming in abruptly stops:

(ASM #1) This sets in concrete one of the central conflicts Peter and May have -- both of them lie to protect the other. Peter feigns being an ordinary boy in order to protect May from the stress of his secret life as Spider-Man, worried that she wouldn’t be strong enough to handle the danger he regularly puts himself in. But this is a learned behavior, and here we see that he most likely learned it from May: she doesn’t want him to worry about the very deep financial troubles they’re obviously in, so she pawns her jewelry, and she stresses to him the importance of his education. Again I have to note that there are some pretty significant social differences between the 1960s and today in regards to this story -- Betty Brant, for example, notes that she had to drop out of school and become a secretary because of her own family’s financial problems, something she’s ashamed of. So early Spider-Man is very rooted in money, class, education, and how those things intersect. I think it should be noted that the only early Spider-Man characters who are financially well-off are Liz, Gwen, and Harry. (We don’t know anything about Flash’s financial situation in early Spider-Man comics but retroactively we know his family situation is not well-off.) In high school, Liz’s father is a bigshot who owns a dining club, but later on the Allans experience financial hardship with Liz quite literally being on the streets when Peter reunites with her when he’s in college. Harry’s father is a rich businessman, but from the beginning he’s depicted as emotionally negligent, caring more about money than spending time with his son:

(ASM #40) “After all... I had a business to care of! Money was the most important thing of all! I had to get rich! I needed wealth... for that was the key to power!” So right away you have this link between wealth, corruption, and negligence. Norman’s pursuit of wealth is his given reason for his neglect of Harry. Later on we’d learn that Norman’s father was also abusive and that that abuse formed Norman’s ideas about power and wealth. (Spider-Man! It’s about cycles of abuse!) There’s a very contrast between Norman’s attitudes here and the Parkers loving (but poor) household. Gwen is the only exception here -- she and her father are depicted as comfortable, most likely edging into wealthy, although on nowhere the level the Osborns have been elevated to. But compared to Peter, Flash, and Mary Jane especially -- all from poor households, with MJ and Flash’s fathers both being abusive -- Gwen’s home situation is the picture of stability, both in terms of economic status and in terms of her loving and very present father.

My goal in outlining all of this isn’t to say that Spider-Man’s message is definitively “money is bad” because I don’t think it is. I think as a series Spider-Man is very aware of the comfort that money can provide. But I think there is a frequent message about excess in Spider-Man -- excess power, excess wealth. As Norman says above, in his eyes, money is the key to power. With great power, comes great responsibility. In Norman hoarding and abusing his wealth, he abuses his power. If he provides for Harry, it is solely through money -- there is no love or devotion in Norman’s money-focused world. And I think that’s important when you look at where Peter starts in his story, before Uncle Ben’s death. He’s going to use his powers to make a lot of money and he’s going to provide for Ben and May but he’s not going to care about the world outside of that. I think one of the interesting things about Peter -- and this is where Slott’s run especially fails the character -- is that he’s not interesting in getting rich. He’d like to be comfortable, for sure -- he’d like to have enough money to not have worry about it, to not have the need to hustle impede what he can do as Spider-Man, to be able to take care of his family. (And there’s some machismo stuff linked in here for him too -- in the early days of their marriage the fact that Mary Jane earns much more than him is something he struggles with.) But he doesn’t care about being rich. He doesn’t care about the money; he cares about the support that the money would bring. 

That feels like a simple statement but I think it’s actually a really big distinction, especially when you’re analyzing a character. And I think it’s because Peter understands that value that it makes him so empathetic to others who have financial struggles. One of my favorite short self-contained Spider-Man stories is called Windfall, from Marvel Fanfare #42, where a mixup with a check embroils Peter in the personal affairs of a bank teller, a young single mother who is fired from her job ultimately because she refused the advances of her boss. Peter gets her her job back -- through blackmailing the boss for his other sexual affairs, which some people might think is immoral of him, but I think really speaks to Peter’s understanding of how the greater world works, and what he’s prepared to do to get bigger justice. But more importantly he uses his own money to pay the young woman’s rent, and he does it in a way where she never even knows it’s him. Because he understands her situation, the way someone who had grown up comfortable never could. And that understanding I think puts him a place where it’s more important for him to both keep that understanding and maintain that ability to act relatively freely, in the way that bigger, more prestigious positions in scientific fields might restrict him. There’s a reason he keeps getting fired from these scientific positions and it’s not that he can’t get them, because we can see from his employment history very clearly that he can. It’s because the freedom to act as Spider-Man and what he can do as Spider-Man is ultimately more important to him.

And while high school teacher is my number one favorite profession Peter has ever had, I think that his position as a newspaper photographer is also very important to the character’s history, in part because the Bugle is such a big part of his life and the connections he’s made but also because the Daily Bugle itself is important. I think it’s interesting to note that two of the biggest superheroes of all time from both of the big companies -- Spider-Man from Marvel and Superman from DC -- have had long running journalism jobs, Peter as a photographer and Clark as a reporter. I don’t think I really have to go into a whole thing about how good journalists are so important and why it matters that we have these incredibly famous mythic figures that are positioned in the roll of journalists specifically. But I do think it is important to Peter that he’s put in that position as someone who cares about uncovering the truth. So ultimately I think what I mean when I say Peter is more fulfilled by his jobs as a photojournalist and as a high school teacher than by his comparatively more high paying stints working as a scientist in a lab is that Peter gets the most fulfillment out of careers where he can actively see, day by day, that what he’s doing is helping people, and that it’s a very direct line from him to the people he’s helping. His efforts can’t be twisted, they can’t be used for other purposes the way they can within a larger organization. He has a line of control in what he can do to help other people. It’s like how Spider-Man functions best as a street level hero: what he does best is saving and helping individual people, on a case by case basis. And you can turn around and demonstrate that in his civilian life best in jobs where he gets to directly interact with people. And ultimately to Peter making that difference is more important than a better salary.

(Marvel Knights Spider-Man #9)

#peter parker #marvel comics #traincat talks comics #long post/

[hellzyeahwebwieldingreviews]

Untold Tales of Spider-Man 08: The Liar – by Ann Nocenti

I enjoyed this story a lot but objectively it’s very mixed.

Peter Parker watches off and on as a spider spends the day making a web. Later he watches as she waits patiently for a moth to be trapped, feeding on it. "How could I have anything in common with her?" Peter thinks. He both admires and shudders at the spider's "round-the-clock surveillance." And the web itself: "Her beautifully constructed home is also a death trap...The spider's elegantly poised web is a lie." Peter jumps up and destroys the web, then feels guilt about it, knowing the spider will just create another. "She can't help it. Lie or die."As Peter starts to leave, he receives a visit from Aunt May. She tells him that Empire State University contacted her because he missed several days of classes. She also asks if he washed something red at her house. Peter was gone for three days, confronting the Red Skull in Algiers and he washed his mask at May's place but he lies to her, telling her the school made a mistake and that the red came from a nosebleed.

At ESU, Ms. O'Grady, Peter's advisor, tells him that she talked to Aunt May about his absences and that May didn't seem to know about that. Peter tells her that May's memory isn't what it used to be. Ms. O'Grady tells him she's sorry to hear that. Peter thinks, "A big one. The two this morning to Aunt May were little enough, but this lie is a big one." Ann elaborates, "The little fibs are like annoying black moths, fluttering at the edges of his consciousness; shadows that flit about and dog his heels, they haunt him when he least expects it. The big ones are like rocks tied to his feet, that he has to drag with him wherever he goes."

Through the course of the day, Peter promises May he'll join her at 4PM to help with groceries and makes a date with Mary Jane over a fudge sundae at 6PM. Now he tells Gwen he'll join her for a 5PM revival showing of her favorite film, "Casablanca." "How," asks Ann, "will he pull this off?"

Not long after lying to his history prof to explain being late for the class, Peter is at the market with May. It is a warm day but he sees a man in the parking lot in a wool cap. Lying to Aunt May about needing to make a phone call, he leaves her in the market and changes to Spider-Man. He re-enters the market just as the thief pulls a gun and tries to rob the place. Spidey easily takes care of him. The store manager gratefully offers him "a cart of food, on the house." Spidey takes a look at May and says, "Hey, I just ate. But it looks like this poor woman got the worst fright. Maybe you could take care of her?" Which makes him look like an altruist when he's actually just helping out his relative. Back home, Aunt May tells the story to Peter for the third time. Peter notes that the story never changes. She tells it straight, never embellishing. She is grateful to Spider-Man but notes that his manners are terrible. "I just wanted to thank him properly. But he just turned his back on me!" When Peter tells her he has to meet Gwen at the movies, she comments that she thought he was meeting Mary Jane. "Oh yeah. Did I say Gwen? I meant Mary Jane," says Pete as the lies mount up.

At Casablanca, Pete enjoys sitting next to Gwen. "She's like a warm bed you don't want to get out of in the morning," he thinks. But he still needs to meet Mary Jane. So, telling Gwen he has to go to the bathroom, he slips away. He joins MJ for ice cream during which she almost lets her "party mask" slip when she refers to her repressive father. Peter notices a large bird in the sky and realizes it is the Vulture. Coming up with yet another ridiculous lie ("I promised this guy, I'd help him move his birds...he's got a pet shop, and he's got a big delivery of birds.") Peter promises MJ he'll be back in 20 minutes. MJ doesn't seem to mind. In fact, Peter thinks that she is acting as if she expected this. But he doesn't think about it long. He has to change into his Spidey duds and tackle the Vulture. 

Unfortunately, the Vulture has recruited four partners and provided them with wings. The five Vultures beat him up, carry him into the air and drop him over the river, too far away from any buildings on which Spidey can web-swing. As he falls, he realizes his identity will be revealed after his death. "They'll all know what a liar I was. A lowlife fibster with a devil's tongue. A mendacious arachnid. A lousy deceitful cock-and-bull jerk. A two-faced stinker." Then he passes out.

While unconscious, he dreams about his Mom and Dad, telling him conflicting stories about their impending trip; the trip that leads to their deaths. "I was three years old when I noticed the first little lies," he thinks, "By the time I was six, nothing quite added up...All those lies. I guess they thought they were protecting me. Benevolent lying. I know all about it."He awakens seventeen feet above the water. There is a tug boat right below him and he webs the smokestack, saving himself, ending up in the river, then climbing up onto the tug. The tug's captain, Gallager, tells him he saw him falling and swung around to help. As they sail back to port, Spidey notices how capable Gallager is and he envies his straightforward life. "What do you think of liars?" Spidey asks him. Gallager replies that it depends on what kind of lying, adding that he lies all day. "Every time I give an order," he says, "it's to save the ship but risk the man. ..They trust me and I send them to risk death with every command...Well then, a few lies along the way aren't really lies, are they? Not if you bring all your men home alive." Spidey thinks about this as Gallager docks his tug.

He gets back to MJ who asks him if he had a nice swim. "What swim?" he asks, then he notices that his bookbag, containing his costume, has created a puddle on the ground. MJ, playing along, kicks at the puddle and says, "Rained while you were gone."From there, Pete returns to the movies, tells Gwen he couldn't find their seats in the dark and watched the rest of the movie from the back. "What a perfect ending," Gwen says. "Yeah," Peter replies, "I love happy endings." "Gwen looks at him queerly, then smiles. They walk on silently for a while. Soon, it begins to rain."

Let me say up top, this is the best Spider-Man story of Ann Nocenti’s career.

This is owed to the prose, dialogue and over all narrative being fairly straightforward and not told as through you’d skipped a beat. Everyone sounds like a normal person ( for a super hero story) and there are no weird lines making you ask ‘who talks like this?’

I should also point out the subject matter of this story is something Nocenti has explored in her other Spider work as well as her famous Daredevil run, chiefly through her most enduring creation, Typhoid Mary.

The theme of the story, as the title implies, is lying. Lying is practically systemic in super hero stories as characters maintain their secret identities.

It’s an interesting idea to expand upon that idea and examine the psychological ramifications of lying upon the individual and the impact it might have on their interpersonal relationships. For example could lying about your identity cause you to become a habitual liar about other things? Could this seep into that age old human story of the unfaithful lover?

That’s what Nocenti explored in her Daredevil run when she had Matt Murdock (ironically, or appropriately depending upon your POV, a lawyer and Catholic) cheat on Karen page with Typhoid’s alter ego; she was in fact lying to him at the same time and having an affair with the Kingpin at the same time.

In her ‘Return to Mad Dog Ward’ storyline in the 1990s Peter lied to MJ and Aunt May in such a way that MJ mistakenly believed he was cheating on him and considered running off with someone else.

In an even earlier story she did, a back-up from Web of Spider-Man Annual #2, she had Peter endure a nightmare where he was haunted by the fact he lied all the time.

Personally I think her focus upon the subject, especially in regards to cheating, raises some uncomfortable questions about her personal life, but I’m not interested in that right now.

The problem with all those stories and this one as far as Spidey is concerned is that she…goes way too far.

The fact is lying can and does take a toll on Spidey but it doesn’t open him up to lying as second nature about anything. He lies to protect his identity and anything else he lies about is just what any of us might lie about in the course of our lives. He hasn’t got ‘a problem’. And the idea it’s rooted in his parents being spies is pretty ridiculous and a massive reach.

I think what’s most problematic about this story in regards to the theme is that Peter would absolutely NEVER knowingly cheat on a woman. He’s just not that kind of person and yet here he is on 2 dates with MJ and Gwen at once like it’s a sitcom or Superman IV: the Quest for Peace.

In terms of Spider-Man’s personality and characterization this is just more evidence that Nocenti simply never grasped the character. Which is a shame given how she has written more Spider-Man stories than any female author ever; though Houser might’ve overtaken her by this point.

Her idea that Peter’s ‘problem with lying’ stems from his parents is also kind of contradicted by various stories that establish Peter was just too young to even remember his parents. This in particular includes ASM Annual #5 which she references in this story. I’m not going to hold that against this story too much because honestly no one keeps Peter’s parents consistent.*

Other continuity hiccups include when the annual happens in relation to Peter meeting Captain Stacy and MJ’s job as a go-go dancer.

However, this book has by now long established that these stories are not meant to fit into 616 canon but more a generalized idea of Spidey’s canon. If you try putting this story into strict continuity Peter was firmly interested in Gwen over MJ and the Betty/Veronica choice he had had been resolved for a good while.

This story though is meant more to touch upon the Betty/Veronica aspect of the Romita era and admittedly 2 dates at once seems like a typical Archie story. If you accept this as just a general AU version of Peter and don’t try to compare him to his canon characterization this is a perfectly legitimate idea. By  extension the psychological complexity of this story works if you treat take this story in isolation or in isolation of the anthology as a whole.

Nocenti DOES to her credit explore the theme very well, the scenes with his parents and their lies resonates very well and speaks honestly to childhood hurts.

The hints that MJ knows Peter’s identity and her own family history are done very well. They are subtle, romantic and in fact so good I WISH there was a story that played with the idea. Although it does contradict later stories because Peter clearly suspects MJ is aware of his secret but ignores it.

It’s ironic actually that those scenes ultimately make this more an MJ story than a Gwen/MJ story in spite of that being the point of the narrative.  Nocenti just charcaterizees her very well and even does Gwen a service. She is very much the early days Romita Gwen and there is a wonderful passage comparing the two and likening MJ to the sun and Gwen to the moon. I never thought of that kind of dichotomy but (before she became a water works) it’s a brilliant observation of the two women. She also does a great job of capturing the flirtatious nature of Silver Age MJ.

However, where this story falters (evene when taken unto itself) is in Noenti likening spider webs to ‘lies’ and the scenes on the boat.

For the former she is just over reaching. ‘What a tangled web we weave when we first choose to lie and deceive’. It’s a famous phrase but it isn’t actually saying a spiders web is akin to a lie. It’s saying the ACT of lying is like the ACT of spinning a tangled web. An insect isn’t metaphorically ‘caught in a lie’ when it’s ensnared in a spider’s web.  Yet that’s what Nocenti goes for at the start of the story.

And the stuff on the boat is just…I don’t know what it means. The lies Peter engages in in are simply not comparable to the lies the boat captain engages in. Even if you lean hard on the idea of Peter lying about his identity for the greater good, what has that got to do with lying to MJ and Gwen?

Regardless, I think this story is mostly well told for what it is and I very much enjoyed it in spite of the mischaracterization.

*Personally though I defer to Stan’s stories that state he was too young to remember them.

#Ann Nocenti #Gwen Stacy #mjwatsonedit #mary jane watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker #MJ Watson #Spider-Man #Peter Parker #Untold Tales Of Spider-Man #vulture #the vulture #adrian toomes #Richard Parker #Mary parker

[aelaer]

☕ Stephen's backstory, comics vs MCU. Just how much would you like them to be alike? Would you be interested in Stephen having a new background? Or would you prefer the Donna timeline to be there? What about Victor, too? 👀

As you know, we really don’t have a lot of information on MCU Stephen’s backstory other than that Donna’s death was filmed at some point, we just haven’t seen anything of it. I can tell you what similarities I do and don’t want, at least:

Stephen’s dad:

Name: His name is Eugene, but I am fine with them updating the name for something more common to babies born in the 50s (as opposed to the 1900s) to fit with the timeline being moved up in the MCU.

Personality: This is a quote taken from the Expanded History of Stephen Strange on the 616 Marvel Wiki that sums up Eugene’s personality:

“However the wonderment of childhood was quickly quashed by Stephen's father Eugene, who was a no nonsense businessman who often chastised his children for pursuing activities that he considered a waste of time, such as birthday celebrations. One day Stephen tried to show off the ribbon he won in a spelling bee, and was punished by his father. Seeking Eugene's approval, Stephen decided to become just like his father, dismissing anything other than the pursuit of money as a trivial waste of time.”

I 100% do not want this. I find the trope of “distant from dad because he was emotionally/physically abusive” a really tired one; there are thousands of ways for families to fall apart, and abuse doesn’t need to be a part of any of them. No one necessarily needs to be fully in the right, and no one needs to be fully in the wrong. And frankly put, that’s how a lot of real relationship problems actually work.

Frankly put I think it would be a million times more interesting if they weren’t exactly close due to differences in interests and personalities, but that he let Stephen be a kid, and when he got accepted to some of the most prestigious colleges he was stoked. I definitely don’t see him as a backwater hillbilly who wants Stephen to be a farmer rather than a rich doctor-- and that’s a trope I really dislike as well, as it suggests that people from poorer, less educated families living out in the middle of nowhere don’t want to see their children wildly succeed and live their own lives. It’s a real disservice and ugly stereotype of people living in the rural parts of the United States.

I would be much, much more interested in seeing their relationship deteriorate from amicable to non-existent due to the tragedy of Donna’s death. Eugene loses himself in functional alcoholism and Stephen to his studies.

Stephen’s mom:

Name: Beverly is another name that sounds good in the 1900s and a bit outdated for the 50s, though not nearly as much as Eugene. Again, I’m fine with the same name or an updated name.

Personality: There’s very little said about her from what the Wiki says. All I could find is:

“Stephen lost himself in his work and a few years later he was called back home when he heard news that his mother was on her death bed. Her final words to Stephen were to look after his brother Victor.”

So a lot leaves it up to the imagination. In my headcanon, she’s the one that wants Stephen to go to college at one of the more local universities so he can drive back to visit on the weekends, or at least they could drive out to the city once a month. She’s the one that needs a little persuasion about how awesome his scholarships to those fancy universities out east are, but she accepts it and the first year of Stephen’s undergrad works out really well.

Then Donna dies, and nothing is ever the same again. I expanded upon her (and Eugene’s) personalities and my own headcanons of them during Whumptober in the prompt “Scars”, so you can see how I see it all playing out with her and her eventual death there if you want.

Donna:

She has to remain Donna, no renaming for her. Donna’s not too old fashioned either so it can work fine for a 1980′s baby. Basically I’d like her story to remain more or less as it is: Stephen’s back in Nebraska after his first year of college (at 19) and she’s 17 and they just have a jolly good time with a bunch of friends out at a lake, and then she dies in a freak accident.

And the family completely falls apart from there.

Victor:

He’s the one that I’m not sure about at all. I didn’t even include him in my fanfic because he seemed like a third (or fifth) wheel in this particular family dynamic. I realllllyyyy dislike the comic book canon for him, too.

So I’d be fine with him being completely left out of the MCU. However, if he were to make an appearance, I’d be okay with the following:

Older, not younger, than Stephen. Canonically he’s 8 or 9 years younger than Stephen, making him 10 or 11 at the time of Donna’s death. Even if Stephen is grieving, I find it very difficult imagining the MCU Stephen abandoning his kid brother completely to college. I am the eldest in my family and I have a 14 year gap between my youngest sibling; such a thing as one of our middle siblings dying would make me more fiercely protective and want to get closer to my youngest sibling. And while comic!Stephen threw himself into “money money money” due to his dad, in my headcanon Eugene isn’t a completely emotionless prick, so that early influence wouldn’t be present. The breaking of the family occurs due to Donna’s tragedy. A kid sibling being present doesn’t as easily fit the equation with MCU Stephen’s personality. I might be projecting my own fierce love for the baby of the family, but MCU Stephen just isn’t THAT big of a prick. Arrogant for sure, and self-centered and self-important before the accident, yeah. But kid siblings are kid siblings, and that’s another thing altogether.

Much older than Stephen. But I wouldn’t want him to be too close to Stephen either in order for the sundering to be complete. There’d need to be a significant age gap and Victor’s personality would need to be the one that has him pulling away early on, leaving him as a sibling you’d only see once a year, maybe. This would be Victor’s own choice. More importantly, it wouldn’t give Stephen another close sibling connection and the ability to better cut himself away from his parents.

No getting hit by a car and dying immediately after an argument about their dead dad. I mean honestly, talk about insanity. I know things like that might happen in RL, but in this fictional scenario, it feels so over the top to the point of incredulous hilarity. That’s not exactly a mood you want to inspire in an audience.

No getting revived by botched magic and turning into a vampire instead. Who the fuck thought that was a good story idea? I hate this plot. And it’d be horrid for MCU Stephen, who heard “Death gives life meaning” from the Ancient One just before she passed away to go through something like this. Not to mention he’s experienced coming back from death too many times to count, so he’d know just how not-necessarily-great that was, especially as some half-dead creature. Ugh.

No double superhero life. None. Nada. Zip. Probably an accountant or something. Has a wife and two kids. Average life.

He’s just an estranged elder sibling he saw every once in a while as a teenager, lost contact with after their dad’s death, and talked with maybe twice afterwards (including the days after the accident, which would be... interesting).

And that’s my headcanon ramble for today.

#mdcbd #aelaer's stephen headcanon #stephen strange #doctor strange #mcu #ask #answered #meta #long post