A thread to talk about a character you love, that you know will never get the respect the deserve from readers or writers.
Abner is fricking cool, and I hate that Mach VII was written as a joke in Superior Foes, because that's all he's seen as now.
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You have it better.
I'm sorry anon, that is pretty rough.
Im so sorry anon
Damn Anon. I'm so sorry
Yo they made a comic after the movie
IT'S MORBIN TIME
Frick off and think about killing yourself.
The Spot looks slick and has one of the most terrifying powers in comic book history, but will never get over his dumbass name.
This guy has it worse though.
I kind of feel like a intelligent Spot is just too strong for most stories. It's the old instant death power problem, where a power that can kill instantly will never be allowed to be used on anything but fodder. Except with Spot, it's everything he does. That's why he's forever fated to be a dumbass.
Yeah, it’s a shame that disconnecting s spider-man villain from spider-man just ends with them being kinda shit
Thinking Morbius is "just a Spider-Man villain" is pretty casual though. He was spun off into his own solo material pretty quickly, and has appeared more in his own books, and other Marvel supernatural/horror titles over the years than in Spider-Man books. It's possible he was even created to have solo stories and they just used a popular book like Spider-Man to launch him.
Wish more peeps respected her
People do like Steph, it's just unfortunate that the people that like her don't include the writers and editors.
Toad
Good example. Every time it looks like he's going to progress from being pathetic, he gets pushed back down into being Magneto's b***h again.
Every time someone tries to revamp him and make him more of a threat, whether it's Liefeld in the early 90s, or some movie-influenced stories in the early 2000s, they always end up having him lose every fight easily like he always did, and Morrison putting him back into the role of Magneto's b***h seems like it just trapped him there forever.
Preach. Abner rules when he's written well. Namor respects how well he fights. Captain America called him one of the most honourable men he knows.
While his concept is simple a guy armed with a jetpack and a flamethrower would pose a real threat to any cop or crook.
I've always thought Firefly was one of the better Batman villains. I've always considered him a do-over of Killer Moth, where he feels like an actual threat.
He was also fun in The Batman.
Hot take: The Batman is my favourite design for him.
Him eating shit immediately when he started to fist fight batman was hillarious.
>Hot take: The Batman is my favourite design for him
I absolutely agree. I think it's why I started liking him in the first place.
While I think he looks cool in The Batman nothing will ever top his design in BTAS or his campkino look in TBATB
I like the rougher costume for the early years. The basic flamethrower and leather/cloth look is cool. I'd like stories set later to have him build up to the tech level he has in The Batman. He should always keep the wings, though. That's the one part of that design I don't like.
For a lower-tier Batman villain, Firefly got a great spotlight during Knightfall, showing up mid-way through the story with a minor upgrade to his costume (glider wings, not even a jetpack yet), but Batman was already so worn down by then that Firefly gave him a much harder time than usual.
It got better recently, but God, some people just can't get over the helmet.
I also find it funny how everybody got mini series or arcs when they were main villains in the movie, but Quentin got to be basically a henchman to Edgy Harry.
The Serpent Society. It's like all the writers look at them, see the snake theme and decide that they must be joke villains. They were a serious threat in their original appearances and as their earlier iteration as the Serpent Squad. Somewhere along the way though, they morphed into being pathetic.
They've got some seriously dangerous powers on their side, and never get to show them off. Pic related is Asp, she can kill with a touch. They have a speedster, they have a woman with mind control, they have a guy who spits acid, they have a pet snake that once choked out the Hulk. Despite all that, they exist to appear every so often, and get knocked out of panel.
Some of them can really punch above their weight, but the Serpent Society were created to be Captain America villains, designed to give street-level heroes a hard time through a combination of powers and teamwork.
But somehow they keep getting used as jobbers in other books, especially the X-Men books, who even had a stories where Hope or Rockslide and Anole get to beat them. I wonder if this is some pathetic inter-office rivalry within Marvel where X-Men writers think it's funny to treat one of the main Avengers' villains like losers.
Even modern Captain America and Avengers writers like Spencer and Aaron don't seem to understand the point of the Serpent Society, and Aaron had the whole team job to his version of Nighthawk. And it happened off-panel. Other books using them as jobbers has led to books they actually belong in treating them the same way.
The Hope story was absurd. They make a big deal of her copying Puff Adder's powers to fight them. Except, they've already got a Puff Adder, they know how he fights, and she can't copy Anaconda and Cottonmouth. She should've got her shit kicked in there. That was the story that made me give up on them as anything but jobbers. The spidey arc where Taskmaster and Black Ant apparently captured the entire team off panel, just clinched it.
I'm starting to think he was better off being a B-/C-tier Spider-Man villain than being an irrelevant superhero who hasn't mattered since the old Thunderbolts team got replaced in Civil War. And this costume is better than anything he ever wore afterwards, but he'll never get to be the Beetle again, because one of his replacements actually managed to stick.
The problem is that The Thunderbolts hasn't been good in ages, and half the time, he wasn't even on the team. Writers also seem determined not to touch any of the OG team outside of the occasional Thunderbolts book, that inevitably doesn't last very long. I'd love for him to turn up in a Spider-Man story where Janice gets Hardshell and those college kids together for a Beetle team up. Have Abner turn up, and tear them a new arsehole. It'd show him off as competent, and get him back into the spotlight.
I'd personally hate for him to return to being Beetle. His character development was great, and It'd ruin the original Thunderbolts run for me.
Isn't Hardshell still dead since that Graviton battle?
Anyway, I'm not sure that returning to his best identity and costume would harm him in any way, it wouldn't require him to backslide into being a villain, and none of his Mach- costumes or identities have been particularly inspiring, I can't even remember what number he's on now. You could even make it into him reclaiming his identity from people who've stolen it so he can redeem it.
The problem is that Ellis turned them into Marvel's Suicide Squad and completely eliminated what actually made the OG Thunderbolts work. To me, Thunderbolts isn't really about "supervillains pretending to be superheroes" but about the pull between being a hero and a villain and how that affects the characters and their desires on whether or not they want to find redemption. That's why Hawkeye was placed as the leader for so long. These guys are all playing at being hero but what do they really want out of it? Do they want to actually do good and turn their lives around? Is it all just a means to an end? And who CAN turn their lives around and who will fall off the wagon?
In a way, you can see it as almost being analogous to regular ex-criminals and the struggle with keeping on the straight and narrow. That's what makes the Thunderbolts interesting to me.
But Ellis decided that wasn't good enough for his brand of annoyingly "realistic" cynicism so he jettisoned all of it to turn them into basically government sanctioned buttholes who are kept in line not through a desire to reform but through threats and coercion. This type of shit is what has big normalgay appeal so that's what they stuck with almost exclusively ever since and the few times they move away from it, it's that it's clear they don't actually know what to make the book beyond another generic superhero team.
On the one hand, I get where you're coming from and the point you're making. On the other hand, a good villain probably shouldn't be redeemed or turned into a hero, they're more valuable as a villain. The utter irrelevance of the characters who got redemption arcs in Thunderbolts means we've lost more than we've gained.
That's the thing though, and what made Thunderbolts interesting, is not everyone wanted to be redeemed. Fixer was basically just all about doing whatever he wanted, later on you had characters like Speed Demon and Joystick who couldn't give less of a shit about being good guys or Skein who was literally only around because she wanted to frick Songbird and bounced after getting shot down. Then you had Zemo who reformed but never dropped his arrogant know-it-allism which led to his whole "I will conquer the world to save it because I'm the only one smart enough and ruthlessness enough to do do what needs to be done" thing.
Everyone was kind of there for their own reasons and most of them were such otherwise minor characters that it's a lot easier to write, say, Songbird or Atlas reforming than it would be for Red Skull.
To me Beetle was an interesting themed niche villain even if he was a B-tier villain. Mach is more of a mini Iron Man, and secondary guys in power armor is all too common. And in Marvel they are usually the mookiest of mooks on any team.
Mach was cooler when they kept the jet-fighter theme. The more it transitioned into conventional power armour, the less fun it was.
We'll never go back to the days when he was treated as an actual threat
dude discovered batman's secret identity on accident
I like him too, and what really bugs me is that he "died" in 2017 in a way he could easily be brought back but nobody has bothered to do so.
Songbird hasn't even done anything since then either. My best guess is that Marvel Comics was hearing the first inklings of a Thunderbolts film being talked about at Marvel Studios. They decide to start a new run and bring Abner and Melissa back into focus as preparation. They even had them get back together after far too long. They then found out that neither of those characters will be used in the future Thunderbolts film. Abner suddenly dies and Melissa is last scene searching for him. That leaves the door open for them both to make a quick return if needed, but gets them out of the way to synergise with the MCU.
Beetle/Mach is so much cooler than Iron Man it's not even funny
I think that comes down to his suit still seeming slightly plausible, Iron Man's suits might as well be magic these days. The difference in background helps. Tony Stark has endless resources at his disposal. Abner Jenkins was an aircraft technician. The most resources he's ever had was from the sales of his action figures. It makes his leaps in technology feel more earned.
it also helps that he's basically Batman/Killer Moth in an Iron Man suit aesthetically, add in the DIY element and he's like an even better working class hero(villain) than contemporaries like Vulture. They should give him the Blackwing mantle
>That time the Beetle was voiced by Starscream and beat up Tony Stark
Everything about Amazing Friends puts a smile on my face. The way everyone sticks their butt out to fire attacks. The shitty sound mixing. It's beautiful.
Hawkman has fantastic hidden lore and Hawkworld is one of my favorite comics of all time. And they black washed him.
Man so many, Hydro-Man, Magpie, Crazy Quilt, The Spot, Killer Moth(s), Black Spider, Stegron, Mime, Orb, Basilisk, prolly a bunch more i cant pop off the top of my head. Whats worse is I got story ideas for them all
Count Vertigo is what they created the word "underrated" for.
Clutch Batman and Green Arrow villain
Is the count really disliked tho? I mean he and Deadshot ended Suicide Squad perfectly
DC editorial thinks he's a joke which is why they ruined his costume
Another great concept is Doctor Polaris
Like two appearances, loved every page.
Deathcry though it's maybe based more on what I perceive as potential. I like her whole thing of having the appearance and demeanor of a tough warrior girl (like was common in the '90s) but it's all a mask to hide that she's in fact a very normal teenage girl who can have rebellious sass, is unsure of herself, has a room full of stuffed animals and such. The harsh exterior hiding a cute and girly interior... prime gape moe material, really. But most people see her as indicative of everything wrong with the Avengers in the '90s and the couple of uses she got later (during Annihilation and Dead Avengers) basically just took her initial appearances as her real personality and ran with it resulting in the character getting, literally and figuratively, completely buried.
If I was ever writing comics, I'd want to do a teen team and she'd be one of my first picks for it. I'd write her as a straightfaced weeaboo, mixing both facets of her personality into a kind of superhero chuuni.