Civil War 2: Slott vs. Bendis! Who's Side Are You On!?!
badth...@yahoo.com
kiss his ass! The Hulk has never killed anyone!
http://www.aintitcoolnews.com/display.cgi?id=24120
I'm with Slott (who flat out tells you that he can only do a two books
a month and won't try to push it). I can live without this post-modern
hipster "realism" that so many think they're bringing to comics with
rape, a resentful public and an oppressive governemnt because these are
things that happen "in the real world" and would happen "if we really
had super-heroes." Enough already. It's a comic book. This doesn't
mean it has to be stupid or illogical or not obey the rules of fiction,
but it is heavily dependant of suspensions of disbelief (like a pair of
glasses can hide the most famous man in the world, costumed vigilantism
would not only be tolerated but celebrated and innocent people don't
die when super people do battle). It's part of what I like to call
"the fun" and God freaking forbid I read a comic book and actually have
fun.
Who's with Dan Slott and his "Fun Avengers"!?!
Shawn H
: Who's with Dan Slott and his "Fun Avengers"!?!
Hands up and Amen!
Shawn H.
Sean Walsh
Me! OOH OHH!! ME!!! :p
--
Sean
Tony
--I'm in the middle. I like the "Fun Avengers", and may of the tropes
involved in suspending your disbelief. However, when it comes to a
rampaging monster, I tend to believe there have been casualties over
the years.
Tony (who's been reading Civil War and having fun, so the two aren't
mutually exclusive)
Robert Wiacek
<badth...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1155312593.8...@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
I'm for it, but I wouldn't get it. I prefer the grim and gritty, but variety
is always good.
Rob
bar...@shentel.net
Same here.
JLB
mimf
I'd definitely buy it. Slott is great.
Dan McEwen
news:1155312593.8...@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
> Dan "Captain America" Slott sez Brian Michael "Iron Man" Bendis can
> kiss his ass! The Hulk has never killed anyone!
>
> http://www.aintitcoolnews.com/display.cgi?id=24120
>
> I'm with Slott (who flat out tells you that he can only do a two books
> a month and won't try to push it).
Eh. Maybe Hulk never deliberately killed anyone, but I have a hard time
believing no one ever died in his many, many rampages. You can't trash
an entire town and have no one get hurt.
> Who's with Dan Slott and his "Fun Avengers"!?!
When were the Avengers ever fun? Okay, the WCA could be fun at times,
but the main Avengers never were.
--
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain
occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive." --Thomas Jefferson
"How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying
to defend from without?" --Dwight D. Eisenhower
jay
> Eh. Maybe Hulk never deliberately killed anyone, but
> I have a hard time believing no one ever died in his
> many, many rampages. You can't trash an entire
> town and have no one get hurt.
It's ridiculous in even one of his rampages. Add them
up over all these decades and you're talking downright
ludicrous. Further, contrary to the implication given by
Slott (who sounds, on this point, as though he's never
read an issue of the Hulk in his life), the rampaging Hulk
has *always* been a murder-intentioned monster--his
catch-phrase is "Hulk smash puny humans," and he's
both threatened to kill people and actively attempted to
kill people on a regular basis, to say nothing of showing
a complete disregard for their health and safety. Think,
for example, about how many cops and soldiers have
been on the receiving end of this, to say nothing of
practically every hero in the MU.
badth...@yahoo.com
As opposed to how many super-battles in the middle midtown Manhattan?
Maybe no of you have been here, but the population density pretty much
makes that impossible, but no one is hanging on to that. It's simply
part of the suspension of disbelief for this particular character. You
buy into the character, then that's part of the package. You might as
well complain that it's unbelievable that he's always wearing purple
pants and they never rip.
bar...@shentel.net
I'm familiar with "Hulk SMASH!!" and "Hulk hate puny Banner." and I
believe I've seen "Puny humans, leave Hulk alone!!!" But I'm not
familiar with declarations that he intended to intentionally injure
innocent people. I remember an issue of Thunderbolts, where a guy
who'd lived in a town Hulk wrecked punched Banner. He hulked out, then
he left. He didn't do anything to the guy who'd punched him.
The Hulk is a petulent child, throwing a temper tantrum, he screams and
he yells and he flails his fists and kicks. But in a temper tantrum
those things aren't intended to hurt, they just happen to connect.
Unfortunately Hulk's strength is a lot greater than a child's.
JLB
jay
>>> Eh. Maybe Hulk never deliberately killed anyone, but
>>> I have a hard time believing no one ever died in his
>>> many, many rampages. You can't trash an entire
>>> town and have no one get hurt.
>>
>> It's ridiculous in even one of his rampages. Add them
>> up over all these decades and you're talking downright
>> ludicrous. Further, contrary to the implication given by
>> Slott (who sounds, on this point, as though he's never
>> read an issue of the Hulk in his life), the rampaging Hulk
>> has *always* been a murder-intentioned monster--his
>> catch-phrase is "Hulk smash puny humans," and he's
>> both threatened to kill people and actively attempted to
>> kill people on a regular basis, to say nothing of showing
>> a complete disregard for their health and safety. Think,
>> for example, about how many cops and soldiers have
>> been on the receiving end of this, to say nothing of
>> practically every hero in the MU.
>
> As opposed to how many super-battles in the middle
> midtown Manhattan? Maybe no of you have been here,
> but the population density pretty much makes that
> impossible, but no one is hanging on to that. It's simply
> part of the suspension of disbelief for this particular
> character.
Setting aside all concerns for realism--because you're simply
lost on those, and have no argument--the Hulk is the living
personification of mindless rage. A living personification
of mindless rage that both threatens to kill and tries to kill
but that never kills anyone? Sounds, to me, like someone
doesn't have a very strong grasp of what makes a character
work. Sort of like arguing that the Hulk shouldn't kill people
because, unless the living personification of human rage can
commit horrendous violence with impunity, he isn't any "fun."
> You buy into the character, then that's part of the package.
No one ever bought into it. The Hulk could trash entire city
blocks and there would be a panel where some firefighter
would run up and say "thank heavens we got everyone
out!" Those were always embarassingly stupid,
groan-inducing moments, and it was never reasonable to
expect readers to buy it.
> You might as well complain that it's unbelievable that
> he's always wearing purple pants and they never rip.
Hulk's pants are of no consequence. The fact that
they're always purple makes no case for us accepting
the fact that he can suddenly jump to the moon.
Dan McEwen
news:1155341012....@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
> As opposed to how many super-battles in the middle midtown Manhattan?
This is sort of the reason why people are having trouble buying into the
outrage in Civil War when this stuff has been happening for decades.
Dan McEwen
news:1155344127.2...@74g2000cwt.googlegroups.com:
> I'm familiar with "Hulk SMASH!!" and "Hulk hate puny Banner." and I
> believe I've seen "Puny humans, leave Hulk alone!!!" But I'm not
> familiar with declarations that he intended to intentionally injure
> innocent people. I remember an issue of Thunderbolts, where a guy
> who'd lived in a town Hulk wrecked punched Banner. He hulked out,
> then he left. He didn't do anything to the guy who'd punched him.
>
> The Hulk is a petulent child, throwing a temper tantrum, he screams
> and he yells and he flails his fists and kicks. But in a temper
> tantrum those things aren't intended to hurt, they just happen to
> connect. Unfortunately Hulk's strength is a lot greater than a
> child's.
I agree, which is why I never mentioned him trying to hurt anyone like
others did. If he did those things, it wasn't while I was reading Hulk
comics. Except...maybe Joe Fixit did that sort of thing. He was a mean
SOB. Given his job, he most likely did make such threats.
jay
Utterly uncharacteristic for the Hulk, to the point of being
pretty bizarre, actually. A few weeks ago, in a different
discussion, a fellow had asked for an example of a Hulk
tirade inside a city, and I dug out "When A City Dies,"
from HULK #237. The Hulk had, in the previous issue,
been battling Machine Man, and their fight had managed
to destroy a large residential neighborhood. The book
has the usual ridiculous dialogue caveats about
everyone miraculously getting out in time--they just lost
everything they owned. In the course of the book,
though, the Hulk flattens several warehouses, part of a
mall (where he threatens to kill a security guard trying to
protect bystanders), and, ultimately, he brings down an
80-story skyscraper in the middle of downtown "Central
City." It's ludicrous to suggest that an 80-story building
and a large portion of a downtown urban area could, in
midday, be successfully evacuated in about two minutes,
but the book suggests this is the case, without ever
saying so. The Hulk did these things in the process of
trying to kill a man named Curtis Jackson. He destroyed
the building because Machine Man swooped in and
saved the fellow he was trying to kill--the Hulk flattened
the building in frustration. I mention the issue because
its fresh on my mind, but everything I've just described
is absolutely typical of the way the Hulk was written for
decades.
badth...@yahoo.com
As are we all because WE READING SUPERHERO COMIC BOOKS.
>--the Hulk is the living
> personification of mindless rage. A living personification
> of mindless rage that both threatens to kill and tries to kill
> but that never kills anyone? Sounds, to me, like someone
> doesn't have a very strong grasp of what makes a character
> work. Sort of like arguing that the Hulk shouldn't kill people
> because, unless the living personification of human rage can
> commit horrendous violence with impunity, he isn't any "fun."
>
The Hulk is only part of personality of Bruce Banner. Sounds to me
like someone doesn't have a very strong grasp of *that* character. The
Hulk doesn't kill because Bruce Banner cannot kill. This has been
stated over and over and over again.
> > You buy into the character, then that's part of the package.
>
> No one ever bought into it.
Yeah, that's why he's been running around so long. No one's buying
into it.
>The Hulk could trash entire city
> blocks and there would be a panel where some firefighter
> would run up and say "thank heavens we got everyone
> out!" Those were always embarassingly stupid,
> groan-inducing moments, and it was never reasonable to
> expect readers to buy it.
>
You mean like "the abandoned building scheduled for demolition" in The
Fantastic Four, The Avengers, Iron Man, Spider-Man, etc where all super
battles in Manhattan took place?
> > You might as well complain that it's unbelievable that
> > he's always wearing purple pants and they never rip.
>
> Hulk's pants are of no consequence. The fact that
> they're always purple makes no case for us accepting
> the fact that he can suddenly jump to the moon.
It's the same utter violation of even the most basic sensibilities of
realism.
badth...@yahoo.com
I remember that. But I also remember when Firelord herald of Galactus
and posessor of the power cosmic chased Spider-man around Manhattan
firing fire-bolts at him and never killing a single person. I also
remember Nitro blowing up inside of buildings in Manhattan, to also
wind up fighting Spider-Man and no one ever dying. Like super-powers
and secret ids, no civilian casulties are simply part of the disbelief
of comics and picking that while letting the others slide is simply
ridiculous. It's been made clear from day one: no matter what happens,
The Hulk never kills anyone. If you can't buy that, this is not the
book or character for you. You might as well complain as Dan Slott
points out, no human no matter how well trained can do what Daredevil
does. Or that Clint Eastwood and Bruce Willis never miss while bad
guys always do. You either accept it or you go somewhere else (the
Ulitmate universe where the Hulk not only racks up a body-count, he
freaking eats people), becuase this is all they're selling here.
dans...@gmail.com
jay wrote:
> It's ridiculous in even one of his rampages. Add them
> up over all these decades and you're talking downright
> ludicrous. Further, contrary to the implication given by
> Slott (who sounds, on this point, as though he's never
> read an issue of the Hulk in his life), the rampaging Hulk
> has *always* been a murder-intentioned monster--his
> catch-phrase is "Hulk smash puny humans," and he's
> both threatened to kill people and actively attempted to
> kill people on a regular basis, to say nothing of showing
> a complete disregard for their health and safety. Think,
> for example, about how many cops and soldiers have
> been on the receiving end of this, to say nothing of
> practically every hero in the MU.
Has the Hulk killed? Yes. He has.
If you read the interview that spurred on this thread, my stance is a
very specific 12 word statement:
"The Hulk has never been responsible for the loss of innocent life."
And, to clarify, I mean the present day mainstream Hulk (not a Hulk
from an alternate reality: Ultimates, a What If?, a possible alternate
future, or any other "make believe" story).
By "responsible" I mean that he was acting under his own control (as
opposed to hypnosis, mind-control, etc.).
And, the term "innocent life" does not rule out that Hulk hasn't killed
a "bad guy."
There's a LOT of wiggle room in that statement for the Hulk to have
killed someone.
Using those criteria, I am NOT ignoring continuity. In fact, I would
say from my point of view, those who claim that the Hulk HAS taken
innocent life are RE-WRITING continuity and adding in things that
weren't there before.
Can anyone point to a scene in ANY of the 500+ issues of the mainstream
Hulk comics, the 100+ issues where he appeared in the Defenders, or ANY
of his other mainstream appearances, where it HAS been stated that he's
taken an innocent life?
If he had, don't you think the news would have reported it in the
Marvel U.? Or at least a funeral of one of these innocent victims
would have been shown? A mass funeral/memorial for a town that the
Hulk wiped out WOULD have been a pretty important story point-- don't
you think?
Until someone can provide the NAME to one, single Hulk victim-- an
innocent life that he was responsible for taking-- I'm going to stick
by those 12 words.
Keep in mind, we're not talking about "what makes sense" or your gut
feelings. We're talking about the integrity of the character. For
example, the SAME kind of gut feeling that tells us the Hulk SHOULD
kill a ton of people when he knocks down a building ALSO tells us that
the Human Torch SHOULD have burned a lot of people to death-- AND
caused numerous randowm fires with his sparks as he's flown around
town. But he HASN'T, because NO ONE wants to read the adventures of
Johnny Storm, the man-burning/firestarting/accidental arsonist. How
many falling icicles kill people? How many giant ice-slides has Iceman
left criss-crossed through all of Manhattan? But guess what? He
hasn't killed anybody either. Why?...
Because we're talking about the supsension of disbelief. That comic
book adventures take place in a world with crazy super powers, where a
pair of glasses can protect a secret identity, and where, yes, people
get out of the building in time. Does this go contrary to what your
gut says about REALITY? Yes. But there's something that's more
important than the reality of that world-- and that's the INTEGRITY of
the characters.
If Hulk has town after town's worth of innocent blood on his hands,
Bruce Banner is an IRREDEEMABLE character. It's that simple.
And it is CHARACTERS that we want to read about. First and foremost,
that is what rings true to us-- the characters. And, push comes to
shove, the veracity of those characters comes before the veracity of
their world.
And jay, you can talk all the smack you want-- about who's read (or not
read) Hulk comics... But I'll make you a deal. Meet me at a con, and
we can have some people throw us Hulk trivia questions, and I'll bet
you $20 I can kick your butt. ;)
Martin Phipps
> jay wrote:
> > It's ridiculous in even one of his rampages. Add them
> > up over all these decades and you're talking downright
> > ludicrous. Further, contrary to the implication given by
> > Slott (who sounds, on this point, as though he's never
> > read an issue of the Hulk in his life), the rampaging Hulk
> > has *always* been a murder-intentioned monster--his
> > catch-phrase is "Hulk smash puny humans," and he's
> > both threatened to kill people and actively attempted to
> > kill people on a regular basis, to say nothing of showing
> > a complete disregard for their health and safety. Think,
> > for example, about how many cops and soldiers have
> > been on the receiving end of this, to say nothing of
> > practically every hero in the MU.
>
> Has the Hulk killed? Yes. He has.
>
> If you read the interview that spurred on this thread, my stance is a
> very specific 12 word statement:
>
> "The Hulk has never been responsible for the loss of innocent life."
People got killed during the brief Byrne run when Banner and the Hulk
were sparated into two people. Presumably Banner was always the Hulk's
conscience.
Martin
dans...@gmail.com
> were sparated into two people. Presumably Banner was always the Hulk's
> conscience.
>
> Martin
Martin,
Tyrannus and/or others were mind-controlling the Hulk when he killed
people during the Byrne run.
My original 12 word statement still holds.
Lilith
>>--the Hulk is the living
>> personification of mindless rage. A living personification
>> of mindless rage that both threatens to kill and tries to kill
>> but that never kills anyone? Sounds, to me, like someone
>> doesn't have a very strong grasp of what makes a character
>> work. Sort of like arguing that the Hulk shouldn't kill people
>> because, unless the living personification of human rage can
>> commit horrendous violence with impunity, he isn't any "fun."
>>
>The Hulk is only part of personality of Bruce Banner. Sounds to me
>like someone doesn't have a very strong grasp of *that* character. The
>Hulk doesn't kill because Bruce Banner cannot kill. This has been
>stated over and over and over again.
But Bruce would destroy entire towns? :-)
--
Lilith
Tony
--Dan, I think Martin is talking of John Byrne's *original* run on the
Hulk, ca. V1 #313-325(?). That's the period where we saw Banner and
the Hulk separated, as well as Bruce and Betty get married (IIRC, it
also gave us Rick Jones as "a" Hulk). It also gave us one of the best
drawn (and brutal) Avengers vs. Hulk battles ever (who can't love
Namor, Iron Man, Hercules, and Wonder Man taking on the Hulk and barely
holding their own?)
Tony
jay
People of your own POV routinely wave around that sort
of comment as though it expresses anything of meaning
beyond your own contempt for the form. It doesn't. All
you say, when you throw out something like that, is
that you believe comics are inherently ridiculous,
that it's unreasonable to expect anything more than a
brainless cartoon from a story that appears in a comic
book, and that anyone who thinks comic stories are
capable of being anything more than that is somehow
deranged, clueless, or otherwise defective. You want
these books to continue to function solely within
narrowly defined Silver-Age-era parameters (regardless
of whether or not anyone actually wants to read that)
and never try to move beyond it; never experiment,
never try to expand their horizons, never strive for
anything different, anything more thoughtful, or
anything better. You don't even want the concepts that
are already on the table to ever be reexamined (which
is what this exchange is really all about). They have
to be encased in amber, and heaven forbid we should
ever break them out and start "deconstructing" them
to find out what makes them work, and what about them
really makes us react to them the way we do.
That attitude grates on me like nothing anyone ever
says here. I am diametrically opposed to it on every
level, and usually fall short of the words I feel
would be adequate to express the strength of that
opposition. At the same time, I always worry, when
I'm raging against it, that I'll be misinterpreted
as someone with contempt for the older books, and
the older ways that produced them. That isn't the
case, and it's never been the case. They're the
books I grew up with, the ones that made me a fan.
I love them. I love the often-even-less-sophisticated
comics that were created decades before I was even
born. I'm a comic fan, in the truest and broadest
sense of the word. I'd probably be content to write
comics for the rest of my life. Like anyone, I have
my favorites--my favorite eras, my favorite material,
my favorite approaches to that material--but I'd
never want those favorites to be adopted as rigid
parameters outside of which I didn't want the books
to tread. That's how to turn a living, thriving form
into a relic. I'll not be a part of it.
>> --the Hulk is the living personification of
>> mindless rage. A living personification of
>> mindless rage that both threatens to kill and
>> tries to kill but that never kills anyone? Sounds,
>> to me, like someone doesn't have a very strong
>> grasp of what makes a character work. Sort of like
>> arguing that the Hulk shouldn't kill people
>> because, unless the living personification of
>> human rage can commit horrendous violence with
>> impunity, he isn't any "fun."
>
> The Hulk is only part of personality of Bruce Banner.
> Sounds to me like someone doesn't have a very strong
> grasp of *that* character. The Hulk doesn't kill
> because Bruce Banner cannot kill. This has been
> stated over and over and over again.
"But Bruce would destroy entire towns?"
That rhetorical, offered by Lilith this afternoon,
puts your comments in perspective as well as anything I
could have written. The books do, indeed, contain
assertions that the Hulk won't kill because Banner won't
kill, but the idea is directly contradicted by practically
everything Banner does as the rampaging Hulk. Banner
wouldn't have the Hulk do ANY of the things the Hulk does.
He's not in control of the Hulk. The Hulk is a nearly
brainless engine of destruction, driven by rage and
hatred, totally contemptuous of people, and with virtually
limitless power. His mind is like that of an angry child.
He has no moral sense or concept of personal
responsibility. He causes incredible amounts of
destruction without any regard for the people who could be
hurt by his actions. He always makes it a point, in fact,
to express his utter disregard for humans. More than that,
though, he routinely threatens people and actually tries
to kill them, as in the story I mentioned elsewhere in the
thread. You can't possibly have read this version of the
Hulk for any period of time without having seen all of
this more times than could be easily counted, and all of
it directly contradicts the occasional assertions from the
book which you correctly outline above.
It's an irreconcilible contradiction. To accept both is
to engage in doublethink.
If doublethink isn't to your taste, you have to choose one
or the other. The character's decades of deeds and words
easily outweigh, by their sheer volume, the assertion which
contradicts them, but setting that aside for a moment, which
one is more consistent with the mechanics of the character?
To answer that, you have to crack open that amber and get
at the heart of what makes the Hulk work.
The Hulk is a great character, "great" in the strongest sense
of the word--an endlessly fascinating construct of themes
upon themes.
In one sense, the most obvious one, he's the personification
of human rage. A living explosion of anger. It's what
unleashes him. It's what fuels him. The backstory introduced
by Bill Mantlo and, later, Peter David made this even more
personal, by making the source of the Hulk's anger the rage,
fear, frustration he felt as a consequence of childhood
trauma. The Hulk is the Mr. Hyde to Banner's Jekyll
(Stevenson being another acknowledged source for the
character). The dark, ugly side of Banner made flesh.
The Hulk is also, like Godzilla, the threat of nuclear
weapons made flesh. The danger of ultimate destruction to a
world that refuses to get along. The nuclear threat no
longer casts the shadow it did in the Cold War years of the
Hulk's creation, but the more basic theme of Hulk as the
pesonification of the potential danger in allowing
technology to outrun our ability to cope with it remains,
and was reinforced by the Mantlo origin story, which added
genetic manipulation by Bruce's father as a source of the
Hulk.
This can be seen as a variation on another basic Hulk theme,
the Hulk as the danger of "tampering with the work of God,"
which comes from Frankenstein (a source of the Hulk
acknowledged by both of his creators). Cracking the atom or
messing with the genome.
The Hulk is also a traditional literary study in human
contrasts Banner is a wimpy, bookish intellectual, a big
brain, while the Hulk, his opposite in every way, is a
dim-witted, raging brute with no self-discipline or sense
of responsibility.
All of these are the themes and metaphors that form the core
of the character, the power from which the myth draws its
strength, the thing which makes him appealing to us, even
when we don't even realize that's they're the things to which
we're reacting. The Hulk's many chroniclers over the years
have sometimes introduced elements that ran afoul of these
things, and some of the creators have even produced some
really good work, but they always come back to the basics,
in the end, because that's what makes the Hulk work.
The notion that the Hulk won't kill because Banner won't kill
runs afoul of this. Considering it in respect to *any* of the
basic Hulk themes, it doesn't make one lick of sense. It, in
fact, negates most of them, which is why, as I said before,
the assertion is contradicted by everything we see the Hulk
do.
In the end, the only reason it has so often been stressed that
the Hulk won't kill is wholly metatextual--conceding it means
there are consequences to it, and that is seen as problematic.
Dan Slott argued that maintaining the "integrity" of the
character is "more important than maintaining the reality of
that world." In this, he's defining "integrity" in a very
debatable way, but, more importantly, in reducing it to a
matter of "realistic" vs. "unrealistic", he's missing a much
more important point, that the position he's advancing
contradicts the basic conception of the Hulk on every level.
Does this matter? If we're to keep the Hulk in amber and
don't mind continuing to live with the doublethink, it
probably wouldn't. It's hypocritical to appeal to the power
of the myth while contradicting it, but we've lived with that
hypocrisy for a lot of years now (DC has done the same thing
to the Batman for nearly 70 years). I see no problem in,
instead, allowing the Hulk to roam free, and see where events
take him.
>>> You buy into the character, then that's part of the
>>> package.
>>
>> No one ever bought into it.
>
> Yeah, that's why he's been running around so long.
> No one's buying into it.
I've been into the Hulk since before I could read the books
myself, and, even as a small child, recognized the
ridiculousness of the scenes in question. My comic-reading
friends, as I got older, all agreed with me. It was the
kind of thing about which you made jokes, and mentally
edited out of the book.
badth...@yahoo.com
Not at all. It simply means you have accepted certain parameters of
disbelief. To stop midstream and pick out one ridiculous moment as
*too much* (Hulk not killing anyone during his rampages) while letting
equally ridiculous and similar actions slide (casualty-free Avenger,
Fantastic Four, X-Men battles in the heart of crowded cities) is quite
frankly, petty in its abritrary nature and ridiculous in its own right.
As I said in a previous post---which you have chosen to ignore because
it woud deny your self-righteous comic-defender-of-it-as-art anger---is
that accepting some of the inherent silliness of superhero comics
doesn't give you a license to to be stupid about, but to insist on too
much realism is stupid, because it only serves to pull back the curtain
on all of it.
>You want
> these books to continue to function solely within
> narrowly defined Silver-Age-era parameters (regardless
> of whether or not anyone actually wants to read that)
> and never try to move beyond it; never experiment,
> never try to expand their horizons, never strive for
> anything different, anything more thoughtful, or
> anything better. You don't even want the concepts that
> are already on the table to ever be reexamined (which
> is what this exchange is really all about). They have
> to be encased in amber, and heaven forbid we should
> ever break them out and start "deconstructing" them
> to find out what makes them work, and what about them
> really makes us react to them the way we do.
>
Thank you for telling me how I feel. I was lost without your guidence.
> That attitude grates on me like nothing anyone ever
> says here.
Good. You deserve to suffer for an assertation that exists only in
your own mind an not present in anything I've said.
>I am diametrically opposed to it on every
> level, and usually fall short of the words I feel
> would be adequate to express the strength of that
> opposition. At the same time, I always worry, when
> I'm raging against it, that I'll be misinterpreted
> as someone with contempt for the older books, and
> the older ways that produced them. That isn't the
> case, and it's never been the case. They're the
> books I grew up with, the ones that made me a fan.
> I love them. I love the often-even-less-sophisticated
> comics that were created decades before I was even
> born. I'm a comic fan, in the truest and broadest
> sense of the word. I'd probably be content to write
> comics for the rest of my life. Like anyone, I have
> my favorites--my favorite eras, my favorite material,
> my favorite approaches to that material--but I'd
> never want those favorites to be adopted as rigid
> parameters outside of which I didn't want the books
> to tread. That's how to turn a living, thriving form
> into a relic. I'll not be a part of it.
>
No you just choose to be the sad cliche of the humorless fanboy who
wants deconstruction without a) knowing what that word means and b) not
realizing that many of the conventions that allow to enjoy comics to
begin with would be destroyed by it. Supehero Comics are silly. Get
over it. Don't read the ones that are too silly for you and enjoy the
ones that aren't, but it's not your place to insist that that a silly
one, stop its silliness so you can enjoy it.
Much like insisting that The Hulk kills but a million other superhero
battles have not. Humorless Fanboy, it's suphero comic book where you
actually can have it both ways.
> If doublethink isn't to your taste, you have to choose one
> or the other. The character's decades of deeds and words
> easily outweigh, by their sheer volume, the assertion which
> contradicts them, but setting that aside for a moment, which
> one is more consistent with the mechanics of the character?
> To answer that, you have to crack open that amber and get
> at the heart of what makes the Hulk work.
>
> The Hulk is a great character, "great" in the strongest sense
> of the word--an endlessly fascinating construct of themes
> upon themes.
>
Snip! That it exists once is already too much. Anybody wants to read
that can go back to his original post. It's the kind of thing that
should only be said amongst stoned comics fans in a dorm and not beyond
your freshman year.
>
> >>> You buy into the character, then that's part of the
> >>> package.
> >>
> >> No one ever bought into it.
> >
> > Yeah, that's why he's been running around so long.
> > No one's buying into it.
>
> I've been into the Hulk since before I could read the books
> myself, and, even as a small child, recognized the
> ridiculousness of the scenes in question. My comic-reading
> friends, as I got older, all agreed with me. It was the
> kind of thing about which you made jokes, and mentally
> edited out of the book.
Like no one recognizing Clak Kent it's a joke you make, but have to
accept as part of the book. Humorless fanboy, you can "create your own
version in your mind" all you want, but the book you're reading doesn't
agree with you.
bar...@shentel.net
It's not contempt if that's what you believe the form should be. You
don't criticize hamburger for not being steak, beer for not being wine,
a TV show for not being a movie.
You want
> these books to continue to function solely within
> narrowly defined Silver-Age-era parameters (regardless
> of whether or not anyone actually wants to read that)
> and never try to move beyond it; never experiment,
> never try to expand their horizons, never strive for
> anything different, anything more thoughtful, or
> anything better. You don't even want the concepts that
> are already on the table to ever be reexamined (which
> is what this exchange is really all about). They have
> to be encased in amber, and heaven forbid we should
> ever break them out and start "deconstructing" them
> to find out what makes them work, and what about them
> really makes us react to them the way we do.
Fairly true for. At the same time, I don't object to there being books
that do all the things that you list above. I simply don't read them.
People like you seem to object to these things on principle, though.
When you demand all books adhere to these rules, you're taking
something away from me, while on my side, I'm not taking anything from
you.
>
> That attitude grates on me like nothing anyone ever
> says here. I am diametrically opposed to it on every
> level, and usually fall short of the words I feel
> would be adequate to express the strength of that
> opposition. At the same time, I always worry, when
> I'm raging against it, that I'll be misinterpreted
> as someone with contempt for the older books, and
> the older ways that produced them. That isn't the
> case, and it's never been the case. They're the
> books I grew up with, the ones that made me a fan.
> I love them. I love the often-even-less-sophisticated
> comics that were created decades before I was even
> born. I'm a comic fan, in the truest and broadest
> sense of the word.
Not true. You don't seem to be a fan of modern comics done in the
older style.
That's it. But his mind is really Banner's angry child.
> He has no moral sense or concept of personal
> responsibility. He causes incredible amounts of
> destruction without any regard for the people who could be
> hurt by his actions. He always makes it a point, in fact,
> to express his utter disregard for humans. More than that,
> though, he routinely threatens people and actually tries
> to kill them, as in the story I mentioned elsewhere in the
> thread. You can't possibly have read this version of the
> Hulk for any period of time without having seen all of
> this more times than could be easily counted, and all of
> it directly contradicts the occasional assertions from the
> book which you correctly outline above.
If Hulk did all the things you said why isn't he constantly in cities
killing people? Because if he hates humans so much their simple
existence would make him angry. An always angry Hulk never stops,
never becomes Banner again. Instead of rampaging through sprawling
metropolises, he ends up in the desert and small towns often. Because
he just wants to be left alone.
>
> It's an irreconcilible contradiction. To accept both is
> to engage in doublethink.
>
> If doublethink isn't to your taste, you have to choose one
> or the other. The character's decades of deeds and words
> easily outweigh, by their sheer volume, the assertion which
> contradicts them, but setting that aside for a moment, which
> one is more consistent with the mechanics of the character?
> To answer that, you have to crack open that amber and get
> at the heart of what makes the Hulk work.
>
> The Hulk is a great character, "great" in the strongest sense
> of the word--an endlessly fascinating construct of themes
> upon themes.
>
> In one sense, the most obvious one, he's the personification
> of human rage. A living explosion of anger. It's what
> unleashes him. It's what fuels him. The backstory introduced
> by Bill Mantlo and, later, Peter David made this even more
> personal, by making the source of the Hulk's anger the rage,
> fear, frustration he felt as a consequence of childhood
> trauma. The Hulk is the Mr. Hyde to Banner's Jekyll
> (Stevenson being another acknowledged source for the
> character). The dark, ugly side of Banner made flesh.
And as a result of childhood trauma his mind is limited to childhood,
namely the childhood of Bruce Banner. I don't think he wanted to get
back as his father for hitting him, he just wanted to be left alone.
>
> The Hulk is also, like Godzilla, the threat of nuclear
> weapons made flesh. The danger of ultimate destruction to a
> world that refuses to get along. The nuclear threat no
> longer casts the shadow it did in the Cold War years of the
> Hulk's creation, but the more basic theme of Hulk as the
> pesonification of the potential danger in allowing
> technology to outrun our ability to cope with it remains,
> and was reinforced by the Mantlo origin story, which added
> genetic manipulation by Bruce's father as a source of the
> Hulk.
>
> This can be seen as a variation on another basic Hulk theme,
> the Hulk as the danger of "tampering with the work of God,"
> which comes from Frankenstein (a source of the Hulk
> acknowledged by both of his creators). Cracking the atom or
> messing with the genome.
>
> The Hulk is also a traditional literary study in human
> contrasts Banner is a wimpy, bookish intellectual, a big
> brain, while the Hulk, his opposite in every way, is a
> dim-witted, raging brute with no self-discipline or sense
> of responsibility.
Doens't the Hulk like animals? THe way a child likes to have pets?
>
> All of these are the themes and metaphors that form the core
> of the character, the power from which the myth draws its
> strength, the thing which makes him appealing to us, even
> when we don't even realize that's they're the things to which
> we're reacting. The Hulk's many chroniclers over the years
> have sometimes introduced elements that ran afoul of these
> things, and some of the creators have even produced some
> really good work, but they always come back to the basics,
> in the end, because that's what makes the Hulk work.
>
> The notion that the Hulk won't kill because Banner won't kill
> runs afoul of this. Considering it in respect to *any* of the
> basic Hulk themes, it doesn't make one lick of sense. It, in
> fact, negates most of them, which is why, as I said before,
> the assertion is contradicted by everything we see the Hulk
> do.
No it doesn't. It's not that Banner is actively stopping Hulk from
killing, it's just as a person Bruce does have the option of killing.
He can pick up a weapon and do it to someone easily. But it's not part
of him. It's not the way his brain works, so it's not part of the way
the Hulk's brain works. But it would take a lot more effort for Banner
to engage in an orgy of destruction, destroying towns etc, so there's
no conscious thought on the subject, no intact defense mechanism.
>
> In the end, the only reason it has so often been stressed that
> the Hulk won't kill is wholly metatextual--conceding it means
> there are consequences to it, and that is seen as problematic.
> Dan Slott argued that maintaining the "integrity" of the
> character is "more important than maintaining the reality of
> that world." In this, he's defining "integrity" in a very
> debatable way, but, more importantly, in reducing it to a
> matter of "realistic" vs. "unrealistic", he's missing a much
> more important point, that the position he's advancing
> contradicts the basic conception of the Hulk on every level.
Really, somehow I doubt Stan Lee thought of massive killing sprees when
he created the Hulk. He created the conception, so therefore the basic
conception of the Hulk is, people don't die and he doesn't try to kill
them.
And Slott meant integrity as structural integrity. Remove this conceit
and the Hulk can't exist. He collapses in on himself, under the weigh
of his deeds.
>
> Does this matter? If we're to keep the Hulk in amber and
> don't mind continuing to live with the doublethink, it
> probably wouldn't. It's hypocritical to appeal to the power
> of the myth while contradicting it, but we've lived with that
> hypocrisy for a lot of years now (DC has done the same thing
> to the Batman for nearly 70 years). I see no problem in,
> instead, allowing the Hulk to roam free, and see where events
> take him.
But I'm not engaging in double think, I have no problem believing the
way the MU functions that people survive these sorts of things. Hell,
considering the kind of stuff that people not only survive but gain
from in the MU I have no problem believing that every MU human is
somewhat superhuman compared to a real world human, and what kills us
wouldn't quite be enough to do them in.
In fact, if the Hulk is what you say he is, I have a massive problem
allowing the Hulk to roam free. Someone should slip up behind Banner
and blow his brains out.
JLB
Dan McEwen
news:1155407388.9...@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
This is the one that ended with Doctor Strange exiling the Hulk to
another dimension, correct? I guess the Illuminati forgot this had been
done before, but for better reasons.
jay
If that's ALL you believe such a potentially vibrant form
should be, it is, by definition, contempt. It's a total
lack of faith in the form's ability to be anything more,
an acceptance of it as a permanently inferior form, and
an insistence that it remain one--those who hold to such a
view react to any attempt at doing anything different with
derision and outright hostility.
> You don't criticize hamburger for not being steak, beer
> for not being wine, a TV show for not being a movie.
A hamburger, once it's a burger, can't be a steak, nor a
TV show a movie. But before they get to that stage, they're
blank film and a cow--they can become either. The attitude
against which I'm reacting is the one that insists that
film MUST become a TV show instead of a movie, and that
cow MUST become a hamburger, instead of a steak.
>> You want these books to continue to function solely
>> within narrowly defined Silver-Age-era parameters
>> (regardless of whether or not anyone actually wants to
>> read that) and never try to move beyond it; never
>> experiment, never try to expand their horizons, never
>> strive for anything different, anything more thoughtful,
>> or anything better. You don't even want the concepts
>> that are already on the table to ever be reexamined
>> (which is what this exchange is really all about). They
>> have to be encased in amber, and heaven forbid we
>> should ever break them out and start "deconstructing"
>> them to find out what makes them work, and what about
>> them really makes us react to them the way we do.
>
> Fairly true for. At the same time, I don't object to
> there being books that do all the things that you list
> above. I simply don't read them.
That's the best way to handle it.
> People like you seem to object to these things on
> principle, though. When you demand all books adhere to
> these rules, you're taking something away from me, while
> on my side, I'm not taking anything from you.
I'm not demanding that all books adhere to "rules," nor, for
that matter, have I offered any "rules." I have, in fact, been
arguing for getting rid of narrow, stifling rules that make
no sense, and for opening things up a bit for further
development, experiment, expansion. As I see it, people who so
rigidly insist on adherence to those rules are preventing the
characters from growing, which strangles the life out them.
The market adjusts to prevent this from happening because,
after a certain point, people won't just keep buying the same
old song-and-dance over and over again. I have no power to
take anything away from you--only the market can do that. I
think people like "badthingus" would be happy to impose their
rules across the board, without regard for the market, and
let the whole industry go right down the toilet, doing things
their way until the day the bank foreclosed. I think that's
crazy.
>> That attitude grates on me like nothing anyone ever
>> says here. I am diametrically opposed to it on every
>> level, and usually fall short of the words I feel
>> would be adequate to express the strength of that
>> opposition. At the same time, I always worry, when
>> I'm raging against it, that I'll be misinterpreted
>> as someone with contempt for the older books, and
>> the older ways that produced them. That isn't the
>> case, and it's never been the case. They're the
>> books I grew up with, the ones that made me a fan.
>> I love them. I love the often-even-less-sophisticated
>> comics that were created decades before I was even
>> born. I'm a comic fan, in the truest and broadest
>> sense of the word.
>
> Not true. You don't seem to be a fan of modern comics
> done in the older style.
Like what? There aren't a whole lot of modern books done
in the older style, however you define those things. I'm
enjoying Roy Thomas' ANTHEM, which, I suppose, would
qualify. Dan Slott just wrapped a really good, fun THING
series that was done in the same style as the old Marvel
Two-In-One series. I think there were only five people who
read it, but I was one of them (I even campaigned to save
it from cancellation). What modern comics do you consider
to be "done in the older style"?
Whoever the angry child, these are his attributes, as
displayed in the books:
>> He has no moral sense or concept of personal
>> responsibility. He causes incredible amounts of
>> destruction without any regard for the people who could be
>> hurt by his actions. He always makes it a point, in fact,
>> to express his utter disregard for humans. More than that,
>> though, he routinely threatens people and actually tries
>> to kill them, as in the story I mentioned elsewhere in the
>> thread. You can't possibly have read this version of the
>> Hulk for any period of time without having seen all of
>> this more times than could be easily counted, and all of
>> it directly contradicts the occasional assertions from the
>> book which you correctly outline above.
>
> If Hulk did all the things you said why isn't he constantly
> in cities killing people? Because if he hates humans so
> much their simple existence would make him angry. An always
> angry Hulk never stops, never becomes Banner again. Instead
> of rampaging through sprawling metropolises, he ends up in
> the desert and small towns often. Because he just wants to
> be left alone.
Absolutely, and he doesn't, as he sees it, go looking for
trouble, but what's at issue here is how much concern he has
for the health and safety of humans. The assertion on the
table is that he has a great deal of it. Both his deeds and
his actions demonstrate that he has little-to-none.
He doesn't turn into the Hulk to run away--he turns into the
Hulk to lash out.
>> The Hulk is also, like Godzilla, the threat of nuclear
>> weapons made flesh. The danger of ultimate destruction to a
>> world that refuses to get along. The nuclear threat no
>> longer casts the shadow it did in the Cold War years of the
>> Hulk's creation, but the more basic theme of Hulk as the
>> pesonification of the potential danger in allowing
>> technology to outrun our ability to cope with it remains,
>> and was reinforced by the Mantlo origin story, which added
>> genetic manipulation by Bruce's father as a source of the
>> Hulk.
>>
>> This can be seen as a variation on another basic Hulk theme,
>> the Hulk as the danger of "tampering with the work of God,"
>> which comes from Frankenstein (a source of the Hulk
>> acknowledged by both of his creators). Cracking the atom or
>> messing with the genome.
>>
>> The Hulk is also a traditional literary study in human
>> contrasts Banner is a wimpy, bookish intellectual, a big
>> brain, while the Hulk, his opposite in every way, is a
>> dim-witted, raging brute with no self-discipline or sense
>> of responsibility.
>
> Doens't the Hulk like animals? THe way a child likes to
> have pets?
Sometimes. I've always considered it to be a rather silly
characteristic. It's one of those deviations from the concept
I was writing about before. I've always thought that the Hulk,
when he becomes calm, should revert back to Banner, whereas
some of Hulk's writers have eschewed any sort of guidelines
and just had him sort of arbitrarily change back from time to
time. There was an early issue of the Defenders where he was
actually belly-laughing. It struck me as hysterically funny
when I saw it, but it really isn't the Hulk at all.
>> All of these are the themes and metaphors that form the core
>> of the character, the power from which the myth draws its
>> strength, the thing which makes him appealing to us, even
>> when we don't even realize that's they're the things to which
>> we're reacting. The Hulk's many chroniclers over the years
>> have sometimes introduced elements that ran afoul of these
>> things, and some of the creators have even produced some
>> really good work, but they always come back to the basics,
>> in the end, because that's what makes the Hulk work.
>>
>> The notion that the Hulk won't kill because Banner won't kill
>> runs afoul of this. Considering it in respect to *any* of the
>> basic Hulk themes, it doesn't make one lick of sense. It, in
>> fact, negates most of them, which is why, as I said before,
>> the assertion is contradicted by everything we see the Hulk
>> do.
>
> No it doesn't. It's not that Banner is actively stopping
> Hulk from killing, it's just as a person Bruce does have the
> option of killing. He can pick up a weapon and do it to
> someone easily. But it's not part of him. It's not the way
> his brain works, so it's not part of the way the Hulk's brain
> works. But it would take a lot more effort for Banner to
> engage in an orgy of destruction, destroying towns etc, so
> there's no conscious thought on the subject, no intact defense
> mechanism.
The Banner equivalent to those actions would just be things like
getting mad at people, fighting with them, kicking in the window
of his car when he's pissed off. Humans are taught, from the time
they're old enough to learn, to control themselves; to learn to
get along with others, and not act on every stray anger-impulse.
We have a lifetime of training in these things. A child has no
qualms about killing someone or something, because they have
little-to-no concept of what it means to do so. Learning about
that is part of the training. The Hulk is the child, though, not
the adult with all the training.
>> In the end, the only reason it has so often been stressed that
>> the Hulk won't kill is wholly metatextual--conceding it means
>> there are consequences to it, and that is seen as problematic.
>> Dan Slott argued that maintaining the "integrity" of the
>> character is "more important than maintaining the reality of
>> that world." In this, he's defining "integrity" in a very
>> debatable way, but, more importantly, in reducing it to a
>> matter of "realistic" vs. "unrealistic", he's missing a much
>> more important point, that the position he's advancing
>> contradicts the basic conception of the Hulk on every level.
>
> Really, somehow I doubt Stan Lee thought of massive killing
> sprees when he created the Hulk. He created the conception,
> so therefore the basic conception of the Hulk is, people don't
> die and he doesn't try to kill them.
Stan and Jack's original conception of the Hulk did, in fact,
involve a dangerous, murderous monster who had "wipe out all
mankind" as a stated goal, and who spent his early issues
repeatedly trying to kill Rick Jones, so you're wrong about
that.
> And Slott meant integrity as structural integrity. Remove
> this conceit and the Hulk can't exist. He collapses in on
> himself, under the weigh of his deeds.
Allow that conceit, and the Hulk collapses in on himself in
even more spectacular fashion. If there's never any danger of
the Hulk killing anyone, then he isn't any sort of threat, he
isn't any sort of personification of uncontrolled rage, he
isn't any sort of warning about the danger of technology
advancing beyond our ability to control it, he isn't any
warning against "tampering with the work of God," he isn't
Hyde to Banner's Jekyll, he isn't a study in human
contrasts--all of the themes that make up the Hulk concept
collapse, and he's reduced to just a really strong,
1,000 pound version of the fellow who sprays graffiti on a
wall. The World's Biggest Vandal. Every hero in the Marvel
Universe has fought the Hulk a dozen times each, and there
was no reason for any of it.
jay
> Snip! That it exists once is already too much. Anybody
> wants to read that can go back to his original post.
I hereby accept your surrender.
Nathan P. Mahney
"jay" <jrid...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:iodtd21ua8j1b17cj...@4ax.com...
Preach it brother-man! This sorta stuff gets my dander up as well.
There's even a bit where he plans to zap the entire Earth into oblivion with
a flying saucer stolen from the Toad Men. Early Hulk was hardcore, though
he was probably in the cunning 'Mr. Fixit' persona rather than the more well
known savage persona at that point, despite the green skin.
It's kind of hard to use that really early stuff as an example when talking
about character behavior, though. Most of the Marvel characters took a good
year or two before they solidified into the guys we know and love. The Hulk
was the most erratic of them all - first he was grey, then he was green, he
turned into the Hulk at night, he turned into the Hulk when angry, he was a
cunning badass, he was controlled by Rick Jones, he had Banner's brain...
It was a mess, pretty much until he wasn't starring in his own book.
As for the debate at hand, I'm mostly with Dan Slott here, despite the
demands of realism. The Hulk doesn't work as a Marvel superhero if he's
killed people on a regular basis. Perhaps he shouldn't be a hero at all,
but that's the way Marvel have played him. There are other killers, I'm
aware - the Punisher, who's not a hero, and not mainstream, and generally
pursued by superheroes. There's Wolverine, who I don't believe works as a
mainstream Marvel hero. He was fine when the X-Men were off on the fringes,
but having Wolverine the killer at the centre of the MU sits wrongly with
me. I'm not saying heroes can never kill - far from it. It ought to be a
rare occurence in the MU, though, as far as their mainstream heroes go (i.e.
Avengers, FF).
Which brings us to the Hulk. The Hulk's rampages aren't rare occurences,
they're pretty much his standard state of existence. If he's killed people
on these rampages, then he's probably killed quite a few people. The
Avengers and others should be after the guy to lock him up for good. But
no, he's been treated pretty much as a good guy up until his recent exile
into space.
Does it dilute the thematic power of the Hulk? Depends on how you interpret
him thematically. Perhaps he signifies, not the dangers of technology, or
the bomb, or man's rage, but rather man's ability to overcome these things,
for some small spark to hold them back or fix them no matter how far wrong
things have gone - a message of hope, not of despair, and that as much as
the Hulk wants to lash out and kill people Banner is in there holding him
back. For now...
- Nathan P. Mahney -
Tony
Dan McEwen wrote:
> "Tony" <Tony...@aol.com> wrote in
> news:1155407388.9...@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
>
> >
> > dans...@gmail.com wrote:
> >> > People got killed during the brief Byrne run when Banner and the
> >> > Hulk were sparated into two people. Presumably Banner was always
> >> > the Hulk's conscience.
> >> >
> >> > Martin
> >>
> >> Martin,
> >> Tyrannus and/or others were mind-controlling the Hulk when he killed
> >> people during the Byrne run.
> >> My original 12 word statement still holds.
> >
> > --Dan, I think Martin is talking of John Byrne's *original* run on the
> > Hulk, ca. V1 #313-325(?). That's the period where we saw Banner and
> > the Hulk separated, as well as Bruce and Betty get married (IIRC, it
> > also gave us Rick Jones as "a" Hulk). It also gave us one of the best
> > drawn (and brutal) Avengers vs. Hulk battles ever (who can't love
> > Namor, Iron Man, Hercules, and Wonder Man taking on the Hulk and
> > barely holding their own?)
>
> This is the one that ended with Doctor Strange exiling the Hulk to
> another dimension, correct? I guess the Illuminati forgot this had been
> done before, but for better reasons.
--actually, no :)
The issue you're thinking of is Incredible Hulk #300, where he does
battle the Avengers and Dr. Strange exiles him. When he returns, it's
at the beginning of the first John Byrne run, and subsequent issues see
Bruce and the Hulk separated, as well as the battle with the Avengers I
was referring to.
Tony
bar...@shentel.net
Contempt suggests some form of disdain for the medium. The only thing
I feel that towards is the people who insist all comics should be "art"
basicallly.
Well, it depends on how strictly you define it. For example the all
ages books are done in a mostly silver age style. But something like
the Hulk used the conceit that Hulk's ramapges had never killed people,
until the current author decided that wasn't true and suddenly changed
it. The Thunderbolts fooled the public and nearly took over the world,
and for some reason weren't made the primary targets of all the
superhero teams for a while, just standard law inforcement.
There are plenty of books that require a ridiculous core premise to
survive.
>
> >> He has no moral sense or concept of personal
> >> responsibility. He causes incredible amounts of
> >> destruction without any regard for the people who could be
> >> hurt by his actions. He always makes it a point, in fact,
> >> to express his utter disregard for humans. More than that,
> >> though, he routinely threatens people and actually tries
> >> to kill them, as in the story I mentioned elsewhere in the
> >> thread. You can't possibly have read this version of the
> >> Hulk for any period of time without having seen all of
> >> this more times than could be easily counted, and all of
> >> it directly contradicts the occasional assertions from the
> >> book which you correctly outline above.
> >
> > If Hulk did all the things you said why isn't he constantly
> > in cities killing people? Because if he hates humans so
> > much their simple existence would make him angry. An always
> > angry Hulk never stops, never becomes Banner again. Instead
> > of rampaging through sprawling metropolises, he ends up in
> > the desert and small towns often. Because he just wants to
> > be left alone.
>
> Absolutely, and he doesn't, as he sees it, go looking for
> trouble, but what's at issue here is how much concern he has
> for the health and safety of humans. The assertion on the
> table is that he has a great deal of it. Both his deeds and
> his actions demonstrate that he has little-to-none.
WHo said that? I never did. I'm claiming the Hulk doesn't kill
because he doesn't think of it, because he share's Banner's brain.
>
> >> In one sense, the most obvious one, he's the personification
> >> of human rage. A living explosion of anger. It's what
> >> unleashes him. It's what fuels him. The backstory introduced
> >> by Bill Mantlo and, later, Peter David made this even more
> >> personal, by making the source of the Hulk's anger the rage,
> >> fear, frustration he felt as a consequence of childhood
> >> trauma. The Hulk is the Mr. Hyde to Banner's Jekyll
> >> (Stevenson being another acknowledged source for the
> >> character). The dark, ugly side of Banner made flesh.
> >
> > And as a result of childhood trauma his mind is limited to
> > childhood, namely the childhood of Bruce Banner. I don't
> > think he wanted to get back as his father for hitting him,
> > he just wanted to be left alone.
>
> He doesn't turn into the Hulk to run away--he turns into the
> Hulk to lash out.
Yet after lashing out for a few minutes, or until whatever supervillain
is bothering him runs away or gets knocked out, he leaves.
>
> >> This can be seen as a variation on another basic Hulk theme,
> >> the Hulk as the danger of "tampering with the work of God,"
> >> which comes from Frankenstein (a source of the Hulk
> >> acknowledged by both of his creators). Cracking the atom or
> >> messing with the genome.
> >>
> >> The Hulk is also a traditional literary study in human
> >> contrasts Banner is a wimpy, bookish intellectual, a big
> >> brain, while the Hulk, his opposite in every way, is a
> >> dim-witted, raging brute with no self-discipline or sense
> >> of responsibility.
> >
> > Doens't the Hulk like animals? THe way a child likes to
> > have pets?
>
> Sometimes. I've always considered it to be a rather silly
> characteristic. It's one of those deviations from the concept
> I was writing about before. I've always thought that the Hulk,
> when he becomes calm, should revert back to Banner, whereas
> some of Hulk's writers have eschewed any sort of guidelines
> and just had him sort of arbitrarily change back from time to
> time. There was an early issue of the Defenders where he was
> actually belly-laughing. It struck me as hysterically funny
> when I saw it, but it really isn't the Hulk at all.
A child's capable of positive emotions to. I'm sure there's all sorts
of explanations for keeping him Hulk. Such as while on the surface
he's calm he could easily be just one second from going back into "Hulk
Smash" mode.
>
> > No it doesn't. It's not that Banner is actively stopping
> > Hulk from killing, it's just as a person Bruce does have the
> > option of killing. He can pick up a weapon and do it to
> > someone easily. But it's not part of him. It's not the way
> > his brain works, so it's not part of the way the Hulk's brain
> > works. But it would take a lot more effort for Banner to
> > engage in an orgy of destruction, destroying towns etc, so
> > there's no conscious thought on the subject, no intact defense
> > mechanism.
>
> The Banner equivalent to those actions would just be things like
> getting mad at people, fighting with them, kicking in the window
> of his car when he's pissed off.
I feel like it would be a lot more severe than that/
>
>
> > And Slott meant integrity as structural integrity. Remove
> > this conceit and the Hulk can't exist. He collapses in on
> > himself, under the weigh of his deeds.
>
> Allow that conceit, and the Hulk collapses in on himself in
> even more spectacular fashion. If there's never any danger of
> the Hulk killing anyone, then he isn't any sort of threat, he
> isn't any sort of personification of uncontrolled rage, he
> isn't any sort of warning about the danger of technology
> advancing beyond our ability to control it, he isn't any
> warning against "tampering with the work of God," he isn't
> Hyde to Banner's Jekyll, he isn't a study in human
> contrasts--all of the themes that make up the Hulk concept
> collapse, and he's reduced to just a really strong,
> 1,000 pound version of the fellow who sprays graffiti on a
> wall. The World's Biggest Vandal. Every hero in the Marvel
> Universe has fought the Hulk a dozen times each, and there
> was no reason for any of it.
There's always the chance of the first. While we may know it would
never really happen, the characters who "live" in the comic books would
always have to worry that someday people would die during one of the
Hulk's rampages. I just don't think they should retroactively decide
it's happened a lot.
JLB
Nathan P. Mahney
<bar...@shentel.net> wrote in message
news:1155474340....@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
I'm with jay on this side of the debate - comics can aspire to art, and some
reach levels of artistic greatness. Of course, some aspire to be good old
fun, and that's just as worthy a goal. The great super-hero characters when
written at their best can achieve both, and that for me is ideal comics.
(Some might say that all comics are art, and on some level I'd agree with
them, but it depends on how you define art, which is not a discussion I feel
like getting into...)
bar...@shentel.net
I'm of the opinion that "good old fun" is ten times as worthy a goal as
art.
JLB
Daibhid Ceanaideach
rec.arts.comics.marvel.universe. The speaker: "Nathan P.
Mahney" <nma...@hotmail.com>
> <bar...@shentel.net> wrote in message
> news:1155474340....@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>> Contempt suggests some form of disdain for the medium.
>> The only thing I feel that towards is the people who
>> insist all comics should be "art" basicallly.
>
> I'm with jay on this side of the debate - comics can aspire
> to art, and some reach levels of artistic greatness. Of
> course, some aspire to be good old fun, and that's just as
> worthy a goal. The great super-hero characters when
> written at their best can achieve both, and that for me is
> ideal comics.
The impression I get is that Barnett's thinking of people
whose attitude is that any comic written by someone who isn't
trying to be Neil Gaiman is a waste of paper (IMO, most comic
writers who try to be Neil Gaiman fail horribly). Which isn't
jay's attitude, and I don't think he was saying it was.
--
Dave
Official Absentee of EU Skiffeysoc
http://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/societies/sesoc
"The need to compile lists is a personality disorder,
as is the need to assert the superiority of some things
over other things."
-Jeremy Hardy
Graves
spoken like a true man of culture and discernment....
Graves
Daibhid Ceanaideach wrote:
> The time: 13 Aug 2006. The place:
> rec.arts.comics.marvel.universe. The speaker: "Nathan P.
> Mahney" <nma...@hotmail.com>
>
> > <bar...@shentel.net> wrote in message
> > news:1155474340....@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>
> >> Contempt suggests some form of disdain for the medium.
> >> The only thing I feel that towards is the people who
> >> insist all comics should be "art" basicallly.
> >
> > I'm with jay on this side of the debate - comics can aspire
> > to art, and some reach levels of artistic greatness. Of
> > course, some aspire to be good old fun, and that's just as
> > worthy a goal. The great super-hero characters when
> > written at their best can achieve both, and that for me is
> > ideal comics.
>
> The impression I get is that Barnett's thinking of people
> whose attitude is that any comic written by someone who isn't
> trying to be Neil Gaiman is a waste of paper (IMO, most comic
> writers who try to be Neil Gaiman fail horribly). Which isn't
> jay's attitude, and I don't think he was saying it was.
>
> --
anti-intellectual, and pathetically facile attitude (which he usually
does), especially if it means being a contrarian (which he always is).
not all of us who agree with Jay (i do) are Neil Gaiman fans anyway;
the pretentious hepcats you allude to are obnoxious, but Barnett's
representation of the other end of the spectrum of narrow-mindedness
is no less rankling.
bar...@shentel.net
Actually I'm agreeing 100% with the original poster of this article. I
just happen to feel that intellectualism often creates arguements that
are not necessary by refusing to accept things as they are shown. For
all the talk of representing something there was another poster in this
thread who suggested other things the Hulk could be meant to show, and
all of them seem plausible.
JLB
Nathan P. Mahney
<bar...@shentel.net> wrote in message
news:1155482164.5...@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
In terms of what I actually enjoy reading most of the time, good old fun
tops the list more often than not. Sometimes I want more than that, and
sometimes I want more than that to feature superheroes.
As far as mainstream superheroes go, I think they should be mostly all ages,
and mostly aiming to be entertainment, pure and simple. This goes
especially for the core titles - stories dealing with stuff that's not all
ages shouldn't be in Amazing Spider-Man, for instance. Put it in a
miniseries, put it in a one shot, put it in a graphic novel if you must.
Side projects are fine for more adult material.
(Have I gone off on a tangent?)
jay
Yeah, that's definitely ther personality that was later
retconned into Mr. Fixit.
> It's kind of hard to use that really early stuff as an
> example when talking about character behavior, though.
> Most of the Marvel characters took a good year or two
> before they solidified into the guys we know and love.
Yes. I only brought it up at all because the other fellow
raised the question.
> The Hulk was the most erratic of them all - first he was
> grey, then he was green, he turned into the Hulk at night,
> he turned into the Hulk when angry, he was a cunning
> badass, he was controlled by Rick Jones, he had Banner's
> brain... It was a mess, pretty much until he wasn't
> starring in his own book.
I think those first six issues are some of the best comics
to come out of early Marvel for that very reason. It's not
that they're a mess; it's that they're such a *glorious*
mess. If you'd been reading HULK when those were originally
running, you'd have absolutely no clue what was coming next
(the early FANTASTIC FOUR was the same way). When he
switched over to TALES TO ASTONISH, it seemed as though
everyone involved lost interest. It didn't become
consistently good again until the last 12 or 13 issues of
TALES, but when it finally got good, it stayed that way for
a loooong time.
> As for the debate at hand, I'm mostly with Dan Slott here,
> despite the demands of realism. The Hulk doesn't work as
> a Marvel superhero if he's killed people on a regular
> basis. Perhaps he shouldn't be a hero at all, but that's
> the way Marvel have played him.
The savage Hulk isn't a superhero at all--he's just a
monster. When Slott and others take such a hard line on the
Hulk not being a killer, they are, at least in part,
defending the notion of an heroic Hulk. The trouble with
that is that there's not one thing heroic about the savage
Hulk. He's a gargantuan terrorist. When you see him
destroying homes, bashing down buildings, tearing up
streets, tossing around cars, those are homes and cars that
belong to people, buildings where people work, and streets
on which people live. In the story I referenced elsewhere
in this thead, he's just destroyed a large suburban
neighborhood--complete destruction, everyone there losing
everything they had. He goes wild in a city, then bashes to
rubble an 80-story skyscraper, right in the middle of
downtown--no need to tell you the obvious real-world
parallel, there. The Hulk has repelled innumerable menaces,
over the years, but he's done so purely by coincidence,
usually just because they got in his way, or because he was
tricked into doing so. The defenders of Hulk The Hero are
defending something that just doesn't exist.
> There are other killers, I'm aware - the Punisher, who's
> not a hero, and not mainstream, and generally pursued by
> superheroes. There's Wolverine, who I don't believe
> works as a mainstream Marvel hero. He was fine when the
> X-Men were off on the fringes, but having Wolverine the
> killer at the centre of the MU sits wrongly with me. I'm
> not saying heroes can never kill - far from it. It ought
> to be a rare occurence in the MU, though, as far as their
> mainstream heroes go (i.e. Avengers, FF).
The "no killing" thing was written into superhero ethos via
editorial mandate, many decades ago when the books were
aimed at children, and there was a concern about censorship
troubles if things got too out-of-hand. I've always rejected
it as some sort of overarching general rule, and thought such
matters belonged, properly speaking, in the hands of the
creators, considering each individual character. Spider-Man,
under normal circumstances, just wouldn't have it in him to
kill anyone. Captain America, on the other hand, is a soldier,
and, during the war, he would have killed scores of people. I
can't imagine him unnecessarily taking a life, but I don't
think he'd have any problem with it, if it came down to that.
> Which brings us to the Hulk. The Hulk's rampages aren't
> rare occurences, they're pretty much his standard state of
> existence. If he's killed people on these rampages, then
> he's probably killed quite a few people. The Avengers and
> others should be after the guy to lock him up for good. But
> no, he's been treated pretty much as a good guy up until his
> recent exile into space.
That's not correct--he's fought the Avengers and every other
character in the MU a dozen times each. It is true that Marvel
has employed a very schizophrenic approach to the Hulk. It's
that contradiction about which I was writing earlier. To make
everything fit, you have to choose one side or the other. In
this case, those decades of battles with the heroes were
completely pointless, if the Hulk is no threat.
(Choosing either side does pose all kinds of continuity
headaches, though.)
> Does it dilute the thematic power of the Hulk? Depends on
> how you interpret him thematically. Perhaps he signifies,
> not the dangers of technology, or the bomb, or man's rage,
> but rather man's ability to overcome these things, for some
> small spark to hold them back or fix them no matter how far
> wrong things have gone - a message of hope, not of despair,
> and that as much as the Hulk wants to lash out and kill
> people Banner is in there holding him back. For now...
You have the makings of a Hulk story, there, but it isn't one
that has ever been written.
bar...@shentel.net
jay wrote:
> On Sun, 13 Aug 2006 18:54:25 +1000, "Nathan P. Mahney"
> <nma...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think those first six issues are some of the best comics
> to come out of early Marvel for that very reason. It's not
> that they're a mess; it's that they're such a *glorious*
> mess. If you'd been reading HULK when those were originally
> running, you'd have absolutely no clue what was coming next
> (the early FANTASTIC FOUR was the same way). When he
> switched over to TALES TO ASTONISH, it seemed as though
> everyone involved lost interest. It didn't become
> consistently good again until the last 12 or 13 issues of
> TALES, but when it finally got good, it stayed that way for
> a loooong time.
I prefer straight forward, concise, with a clear suggestions that the
writer knows whqat he's doing.
>
>
> The "no killing" thing was written into superhero ethos via
> editorial mandate, many decades ago when the books were
> aimed at children, and there was a concern about censorship
> troubles if things got too out-of-hand. I've always rejected
> it as some sort of overarching general rule, and thought such
> matters belonged, properly speaking, in the hands of the
> creators, considering each individual character. Spider-Man,
> under normal circumstances, just wouldn't have it in him to
> kill anyone. Captain America, on the other hand, is a soldier,
> and, during the war, he would have killed scores of people. I
> can't imagine him unnecessarily taking a life, but I don't
> think he'd have any problem with it, if it came down to that.
Cap may have killed, but I also see him setting records for numbers of
POWs taken.
>
> That's not correct--he's fought the Avengers and every other
> character in the MU a dozen times each. It is true that Marvel
> has employed a very schizophrenic approach to the Hulk. It's
> that contradiction about which I was writing earlier. To make
> everything fit, you have to choose one side or the other. In
> this case, those decades of battles with the heroes were
> completely pointless, if the Hulk is no threat.
He's a potential threat, just not one that has ever been or should ever
be realized. As for those battles, there's plenty of superhero fights
in comics.
>
> (Choosing either side does pose all kinds of continuity
> headaches, though.)
>
> > Does it dilute the thematic power of the Hulk? Depends on
> > how you interpret him thematically. Perhaps he signifies,
> > not the dangers of technology, or the bomb, or man's rage,
> > but rather man's ability to overcome these things, for some
> > small spark to hold them back or fix them no matter how far
> > wrong things have gone - a message of hope, not of despair,
> > and that as much as the Hulk wants to lash out and kill
> > people Banner is in there holding him back. For now...
>
> You have the makings of a Hulk story, there, but it isn't one
> that has ever been written.
And that's just it. For every person who claims they know what he
represents, there's another who can make different claims. It's an
arguement that comes from searching for meaning in something when you
don't have to, that can never be ended so when it comes down to it, why
start it?
JLB
jay
Insisting that it be a permanently inferior form IS disdain.
> The only thing I feel that towards is the people who insist
> all comics should be "art" basicallly.
As opposed to what? There seems to be, for whatever reason,
this bizarre notion afloat that "art" is some sort of somber,
humorless thing. This would certainly shock Shakespeare or
Aristophanes or even Richard Pryor.
If you're talking about the Marvel Age (now Marvel Adventure)
books, those are just badly-done, direct remakes of the old
stories. They don't even bother to reimagine them--they just
tell exactly the same story. Those aren't "modern comics done
in the old style"--they're just copycats of the older comics.
I prefer the original versions (the only innovation I noticed,
back when I went through some of the MA FANTASTIC FOUR
books, is a lot of very ugly manga-inspired artwork--I prefer Kirby).
> The Thunderbolts fooled the public and nearly took over the
> world, and for some reason weren't made the primary
> targets of all the superhero teams for a while, just
> standard law inforcement.
>
> There are plenty of books that require a ridiculous core
> premise to survive.
I don't know anything about THUNDERBOLTS, but, as I
understand it, they're the old Masters of Evil, remade into
heroes. If that's the case, it would take a LOT more work to
get the reader to believe that than the idea that the Hulk
has killed people (which just seems so obvious as to be
virtually self-evident).
That was the matter under discussion in this part of the tread.
>>>> In one sense, the most obvious one, he's the personification
>>>> of human rage. A living explosion of anger. It's what
>>>> unleashes him. It's what fuels him. The backstory introduced
>>>> by Bill Mantlo and, later, Peter David made this even more
>>>> personal, by making the source of the Hulk's anger the rage,
>>>> fear, frustration he felt as a consequence of childhood
>>>> trauma. The Hulk is the Mr. Hyde to Banner's Jekyll
>>>> (Stevenson being another acknowledged source for the
>>>> character). The dark, ugly side of Banner made flesh.
>>>
>>> And as a result of childhood trauma his mind is limited to
>>> childhood, namely the childhood of Bruce Banner. I don't
>>> think he wanted to get back as his father for hitting him,
>>> he just wanted to be left alone.
>>
>> He doesn't turn into the Hulk to run away--he turns into the
>> Hulk to lash out.
>
> Yet after lashing out for a few minutes, or until whatever
> supervillain is bothering him runs away or gets knocked out,
> he leaves.
Of course, but that's not the point.
>>>> This can be seen as a variation on another basic Hulk theme,
>>>> the Hulk as the danger of "tampering with the work of God,"
>>>> which comes from Frankenstein (a source of the Hulk
>>>> acknowledged by both of his creators). Cracking the atom or
>>>> messing with the genome.
>>>>
>>>> The Hulk is also a traditional literary study in human
>>>> contrasts Banner is a wimpy, bookish intellectual, a big
>>>> brain, while the Hulk, his opposite in every way, is a
>>>> dim-witted, raging brute with no self-discipline or sense
>>>> of responsibility.
>>>
>>> Doens't the Hulk like animals? THe way a child likes to
>>> have pets?
>>
>> Sometimes. I've always considered it to be a rather silly
>> characteristic. It's one of those deviations from the concept
>> I was writing about before. I've always thought that the Hulk,
>> when he becomes calm, should revert back to Banner, whereas
>> some of Hulk's writers have eschewed any sort of guidelines
>> and just had him sort of arbitrarily change back from time to
>> time. There was an early issue of the Defenders where he was
>> actually belly-laughing. It struck me as hysterically funny
>> when I saw it, but it really isn't the Hulk at all.
>
> A child's capable of positive emotions to.
The Hulk is an expression of rage, though. It's the thing from
which he draws his strength. A laughing Hulk should be Banner,
not the Hulk.
> I'm sure there's all sorts of explanations for keeping him
> Hulk. Such as while on the surface he's calm he could easily
> be just one second from going back into "Hulk Smash" mode.
Not when he's laughing or dancing through a field of daisies,
enjoying the sunshine (another Defenders moment). Some writers
have even shown him sleeping as the Hulk! There were no
explanations for this--it was just the writers eschewing any
sort of rational guidelines. His transformations back to
Banner in those stories was entirely arbitrary.
>>> No it doesn't. It's not that Banner is actively stopping
>>> Hulk from killing, it's just as a person Bruce does have the
>>> option of killing. He can pick up a weapon and do it to
>>> someone easily. But it's not part of him. It's not the way
>>> his brain works, so it's not part of the way the Hulk's brain
>>> works. But it would take a lot more effort for Banner to
>>> engage in an orgy of destruction, destroying towns etc, so
>>> there's no conscious thought on the subject, no intact defense
>>> mechanism.
>>
>> The Banner equivalent to those actions would just be things like
>> getting mad at people, fighting with them, kicking in the window
>> of his car when he's pissed off.
>
> I feel like it would be a lot more severe than that/
No. The Banner equivalent is all of the things we're taught to
control from the time we're children.
>>> And Slott meant integrity as structural integrity. Remove
>>> this conceit and the Hulk can't exist. He collapses in on
>>> himself, under the weigh of his deeds.
>>
>> Allow that conceit, and the Hulk collapses in on himself in
>> even more spectacular fashion. If there's never any danger of
>> the Hulk killing anyone, then he isn't any sort of threat, he
>> isn't any sort of personification of uncontrolled rage, he
>> isn't any sort of warning about the danger of technology
>> advancing beyond our ability to control it, he isn't any
>> warning against "tampering with the work of God," he isn't
>> Hyde to Banner's Jekyll, he isn't a study in human
>> contrasts--all of the themes that make up the Hulk concept
>> collapse, and he's reduced to just a really strong,
>> 1,000 pound version of the fellow who sprays graffiti on a
>> wall. The World's Biggest Vandal. Every hero in the Marvel
>> Universe has fought the Hulk a dozen times each, and there
>> was no reason for any of it.
>
> There's always the chance of the first. While we may know it
> would never really happen, the characters who "live" in the
> comic books would always have to worry that someday people
> would die during one of the Hulk's rampages.
That kind of imposition robs the stories of any meaning. If no
one is ever in any danger, what in hell are these characters
doing putting on these outfits and beating on one another?
jay
>> I think those first six issues are some of the best comics
>> to come out of early Marvel for that very reason. It's not
>> that they're a mess; it's that they're such a *glorious*
>> mess. If you'd been reading HULK when those were originally
>> running, you'd have absolutely no clue what was coming next
>> (the early FANTASTIC FOUR was the same way). When he
>> switched over to TALES TO ASTONISH, it seemed as though
>> everyone involved lost interest. It didn't become
>> consistently good again until the last 12 or 13 issues of
>> TALES, but when it finally got good, it stayed that way for
>> a loooong time.
>
> I prefer straight forward, concise, with a clear suggestions
> that the writer knows whqat he's doing.
Ah, so YOU'RE the one who doesn't like comics "done in the old
style"! :)
>> The "no killing" thing was written into superhero ethos via
>> editorial mandate, many decades ago when the books were
>> aimed at children, and there was a concern about censorship
>> troubles if things got too out-of-hand. I've always rejected
>> it as some sort of overarching general rule, and thought such
>> matters belonged, properly speaking, in the hands of the
>> creators, considering each individual character. Spider-Man,
>> under normal circumstances, just wouldn't have it in him to
>> kill anyone. Captain America, on the other hand, is a soldier,
>> and, during the war, he would have killed scores of people. I
>> can't imagine him unnecessarily taking a life, but I don't
>> think he'd have any problem with it, if it came down to that.
>
> Cap may have killed, but I also see him setting records for
> numbers of POWs taken.
LOL! I suppose I can live with that!
>> That's not correct--he's fought the Avengers and every other
>> character in the MU a dozen times each. It is true that Marvel
>> has employed a very schizophrenic approach to the Hulk. It's
>> that contradiction about which I was writing earlier. To make
>> everything fit, you have to choose one side or the other. In
>> this case, those decades of battles with the heroes were
>> completely pointless, if the Hulk is no threat.
>
> He's a potential threat, just not one that has ever been or
> should ever be realized. As for those battles, there's plenty
> of superhero fights in comics.
The premise of the Hulk fights is to stop a terrorist threat to
the public. If there is no threat, the battles are over nothing.
>> (Choosing either side does pose all kinds of continuity
>> headaches, though.)
>>
>>> Does it dilute the thematic power of the Hulk? Depends on
>>> how you interpret him thematically. Perhaps he signifies,
>>> not the dangers of technology, or the bomb, or man's rage,
>>> but rather man's ability to overcome these things, for some
>>> small spark to hold them back or fix them no matter how far
>>> wrong things have gone - a message of hope, not of despair,
>>> and that as much as the Hulk wants to lash out and kill
>>> people Banner is in there holding him back. For now...
>>
>> You have the makings of a Hulk story, there, but it isn't one
>> that has ever been written.
>
> And that's just it. For every person who claims they know
> what he represents, there's another who can make different
> claims.
You're missing the point, which is that what you've outlined is
NOT a theme that has ever really been present to any noticeable
degree in the Hulk. Those themes I outlined earlier weren't
pulled out of a hat, like the one you suggested--they're the
ones that have always been there.
> It's an arguement that comes from searching for meaning in
> something when you don't have to, that can never be ended so
> when it comes down to it, why start it?
You're sounding rather anti-intellectual, now. If the material
didn't have any meaning, you wouldn't be responding to it at
all. What I've been advancing in these exchanges is the idea of
ferreting out that meaning--those reasons you respond to the
material--and going back to basics.
jay
wrote:
>>>> Contempt suggests some form of disdain for the medium.
>>>> The only thing I feel that towards is the people who insist
>>>> all comics should be "art" basicallly.
>>>
>>> I'm with jay on this side of the debate - comics can aspire
>>> to art, and some reach levels of artistic greatness. Of
>>> course, some aspire to be good old fun, and that's just as
>>> worthy a goal. The great super-hero characters when
>>> written at their best can achieve both, and that for me is
>>> ideal comics.
>>
>> I'm of the opinion that "good old fun" is ten times as worthy
>> a goal as art.
>
> spoken like a true man of culture and discernment....
Reading it sort of took my breath away!
bar...@shentel.net
jay wrote:
> On 13 Aug 2006 06:05:40 -0700, bar...@shentel.net wrote:
>
> > Contempt suggests some form of disdain for the medium.
>
> Insisting that it be a permanently inferior form IS disdain.
I don't feel what I'm asking for is inferior.
>
> > The only thing I feel that towards is the people who insist
> > all comics should be "art" basicallly.
>
> As opposed to what? There seems to be, for whatever reason,
> this bizarre notion afloat that "art" is some sort of somber,
> humorless thing. This would certainly shock Shakespeare or
> Aristophanes or even Richard Pryor.
I disagree that anything that comes from a person's imagination is
"art." Written works are literature. Singing, intrumentals, that's
music. I find people who lump it all together as "art" to be pompous.
Shakespeare isn't an artist, he's a writer, Pryor is a comedian.
It's impossible for Marvel Adventure Avengers to just retell old
stories, they lack the proper cast. There's been three issues of that
book so far, with Ultron designed by the governement(I missed that
one), the leader mutating sea life in an attempt to capture the Hulk
and make him part of a gamma trio, consisting of the two of them and
the Abomination, and Baron Zemo kidnapping Cap from a movie premiere
based on one of his WW2 adventures. It was Helmut Zemo, now the
original's grandson, and who Cap was aware of, but not aware he'd
become a supervillain. These don't sound like any Avengers books I'm
familiar with.
>
> > The Thunderbolts fooled the public and nearly took over the
> > world, and for some reason weren't made the primary
> > targets of all the superhero teams for a while, just
> > standard law inforcement.
> >
> > There are plenty of books that require a ridiculous core
> > premise to survive.
>
> I don't know anything about THUNDERBOLTS, but, as I
> understand it, they're the old Masters of Evil, remade into
> heroes. If that's the case, it would take a LOT more work to
> get the reader to believe that than the idea that the Hulk
> has killed people (which just seems so obvious as to be
> virtually self-evident).
Yet they seem to be fairly popular. They don't try to convince the
reader in my opinion. They just have them act as heroes, therefore
most seem willing to accept them as heroes.
I'm not saying he cares. For me there are people I love, people I
hate, and people I don't think about at all. Just about everyone falls
under that last category for Hulk. The only time he really thinks
about people is when someone is bothering him.
>
> >>>> In one sense, the most obvious one, he's the personification
> >>>> of human rage. A living explosion of anger. It's what
> >>>> unleashes him. It's what fuels him. The backstory introduced
> >>>> by Bill Mantlo and, later, Peter David made this even more
> >>>> personal, by making the source of the Hulk's anger the rage,
> >>>> fear, frustration he felt as a consequence of childhood
> >>>> trauma. The Hulk is the Mr. Hyde to Banner's Jekyll
> >>>> (Stevenson being another acknowledged source for the
> >>>> character). The dark, ugly side of Banner made flesh.
> >>>
> >>> And as a result of childhood trauma his mind is limited to
> >>> childhood, namely the childhood of Bruce Banner. I don't
> >>> think he wanted to get back as his father for hitting him,
> >>> he just wanted to be left alone.
> >>
> >> He doesn't turn into the Hulk to run away--he turns into the
> >> Hulk to lash out.
> >
> > Yet after lashing out for a few minutes, or until whatever
> > supervillain is bothering him runs away or gets knocked out,
> > he leaves.
>
> Of course, but that's not the point.
But it is. If the Hulk only existed so Banner could lash out, the only
thing he would do as the Hulk is lash out.
To the people within the comics universe the danger would seem real.
That's enough reason for me.
JLB
bar...@shentel.net
Well, in my opinion "good old fun" is hard to come by, while art, well
I can download some pics of statues, or famous paintings, or find
famous books(which I don't consider art but literature) pretty easily.
JLB
bar...@shentel.net
jay wrote:
> On 13 Aug 2006 10:43:49 -0700, bar...@shentel.net wrote:
>
> >> I think those first six issues are some of the best comics
> >> to come out of early Marvel for that very reason. It's not
> >> that they're a mess; it's that they're such a *glorious*
> >> mess. If you'd been reading HULK when those were originally
> >> running, you'd have absolutely no clue what was coming next
> >> (the early FANTASTIC FOUR was the same way). When he
> >> switched over to TALES TO ASTONISH, it seemed as though
> >> everyone involved lost interest. It didn't become
> >> consistently good again until the last 12 or 13 issues of
> >> TALES, but when it finally got good, it stayed that way for
> >> a loooong time.
> >
> > I prefer straight forward, concise, with a clear suggestions
> > that the writer knows whqat he's doing.
>
> Ah, so YOU'RE the one who doesn't like comics "done in the old
> style"! :)
Well if the comics of the "old style" don't meet that criteria then new
one's certainly don't. I've read some of Bendis and Millar's, just to
name two of the most famous of this style and and it's none of those
things.
I didn't pull those out, it was a different writer.
>
> > It's an arguement that comes from searching for meaning in
> > something when you don't have to, that can never be ended so
> > when it comes down to it, why start it?
>
> You're sounding rather anti-intellectual, now. If the material
> didn't have any meaning, you wouldn't be responding to it at
> all. What I've been advancing in these exchanges is the idea of
> ferreting out that meaning--those reasons you respond to the
> material--and going back to basics.
Are you saying respond, as in emotionally react, or respond as in
caring enough to respond to arguements based on the character. Because
in the latter case, sometimes I just feel as though I have to let
people know not everyone agrees with their concepts. As for the first,
I respond because something entertains me. Searching for meaning
actually limits the enjoyment, because I can argue myself in circles on
whether I was interpreting it correctly.
JLB
jay
>>>> I think those first six issues are some of the best comics
>>>> to come out of early Marvel for that very reason. It's not
>>>> that they're a mess; it's that they're such a *glorious*
>>>> mess. If you'd been reading HULK when those were originally
>>>> running, you'd have absolutely no clue what was coming next
>>>> (the early FANTASTIC FOUR was the same way). When he
>>>> switched over to TALES TO ASTONISH, it seemed as though
>>>> everyone involved lost interest. It didn't become
>>>> consistently good again until the last 12 or 13 issues of
>>>> TALES, but when it finally got good, it stayed that way for
>>>> a loooong time.
>>>
>>> I prefer straight forward, concise, with a clear suggestions
>>> that the writer knows whqat he's doing.
>>
>> Ah, so YOU'RE the one who doesn't like comics "done in the old
>> style"! :)
>
> Well if the comics of the "old style" don't meet that criteria
> then new one's certainly don't.
Meaning the new ones are done in the old style, and you don't
like either of them?
> I've read some of Bendis and Millar's, just to name two of the
> most famous of this style and and it's none of those things.
Mark Millar sets up seemingly disparate threads, lets them wander,
then brings them all together as directly relevant to the story at
the end--he does it as well as anyone who has ever worked in the
business. Something like RED SON takes the readers' breath away.
Perhaps you should read a little more.
>>>> (Choosing either side does pose all kinds of continuity
>>>> headaches, though.)
>>>>
>>>>> Does it dilute the thematic power of the Hulk? Depends on
>>>>> how you interpret him thematically. Perhaps he signifies,
>>>>> not the dangers of technology, or the bomb, or man's rage,
>>>>> but rather man's ability to overcome these things, for some
>>>>> small spark to hold them back or fix them no matter how far
>>>>> wrong things have gone - a message of hope, not of despair,
>>>>> and that as much as the Hulk wants to lash out and kill
>>>>> people Banner is in there holding him back. For now...
>>>>
>>>> You have the makings of a Hulk story, there, but it isn't
>>>> one that has ever been written.
>>>
>>> And that's just it. For every person who claims they know
>>> what he represents, there's another who can make different
>>> claims.
>>
>> You're missing the point, which is that what you've outlined
>> is NOT a theme that has ever really been present to any
>> noticeable degree in the Hulk. Those themes I outlined earlier
>> weren't pulled out of a hat, like the one you
>> suggested--they're the ones that have always been there.
>
> I didn't pull those out, it was a different writer.
You're the one who offered it here. In any event, it was pulled
out of a hat (or an orifice), and what I said about it stands.
>>> It's an arguement that comes from searching for meaning in
>>> something when you don't have to, that can never be ended so
>>> when it comes down to it, why start it?
>>
>> You're sounding rather anti-intellectual, now. If the material
>> didn't have any meaning, you wouldn't be responding to it at
>> all. What I've been advancing in these exchanges is the idea of
>> ferreting out that meaning--those reasons you respond to the
>> material--and going back to basics.
>
> Are you saying respond, as in emotionally react,
Yes.
> or respond as in caring enough to respond to arguements based
> on the character.
No.
> As for the first, I respond because something entertains me.
> Searching for meaning actually limits the enjoyment, because I
> can argue myself in circles on whether I was interpreting it
> correctly.
What you're saying is that you don't want to think about what
you read. If you don't think about it, though, you're incapable
of responding to it on ANY level. Someone whose brain is
deactivated is a Terri Schiavo--they sit in a bed, drool, and
are completely unaware of their surroundings (or they stand
outside the hospital and protest "killing" her, which appears
much more animated but shows just as little thought). A good
story requires engagement on the part of the reader. That
engagement doesn't limit your enjoyment--it forms the basis
of your enjoyment. A story that makes you think about many
different potential interpretations isn't doing some sort of
disservice--it's doing its job.
jay
>>> Contempt suggests some form of disdain for the medium.
>>
>> Insisting that it be a permanently inferior form IS
>> disdain.
>
> I don't feel what I'm asking for is inferior.
Your posts here have suggested you are disdainful of artistic
intention, or of any "intellectual" approach to the books,
prefer mere "fun" (which, robbed of intellectual content,
would be left at the level of laughing when someone farts),
and would rather not think about what you're reading. Karl
Rove's best spin-meisters couldn't twist that into anything
other than pimping an inferior form.
>>> The only thing I feel that towards is the people who insist
>>> all comics should be "art" basicallly.
>>
>> As opposed to what? There seems to be, for whatever reason,
>> this bizarre notion afloat that "art" is some sort of somber,
>> humorless thing. This would certainly shock Shakespeare or
>> Aristophanes or even Richard Pryor.
>
> I disagree that anything that comes from a person's imagination
> is "art." Written works are literature. Singing, intrumentals,
> that's music. I find people who lump it all together as "art"
> to be pompous. Shakespeare isn't an artist, he's a writer, Pryor
> is a comedian.
Now, I think we get to the heart of your problem: You don't
understand art or what it is.
The books from the line I've seen were FANTASTIC FOUR. It's been
some time ago, probably before they changed the name of the line.
What I saw were straightforward retellings of the original FF
issues, done in a lot of ugly, manga-inspired artwork. I was
under the impression that this was how the line was being
handled.
>>> The Thunderbolts fooled the public and nearly took over the
>>> world, and for some reason weren't made the primary
>>> targets of all the superhero teams for a while, just
>>> standard law inforcement.
>>>
>>> There are plenty of books that require a ridiculous core
>>> premise to survive.
>>
>> I don't know anything about THUNDERBOLTS, but, as I
>> understand it, they're the old Masters of Evil, remade into
>> heroes. If that's the case, it would take a LOT more work to
>> get the reader to believe that than the idea that the Hulk
>> has killed people (which just seems so obvious as to be
>> virtually self-evident).
>
> Yet they seem to be fairly popular. They don't try to
> convince the reader in my opinion. They just have them act
> as heroes, therefore most seem willing to accept them as
> heroes.
I can't comment, without having read it. It seems very
far-fetched and extremely unlikely to me (especially in the
case of Zemo).
>>>>>> In one sense, the most obvious one, he's the personification
>>>>>> of human rage. A living explosion of anger. It's what
>>>>>> unleashes him. It's what fuels him. The backstory introduced
>>>>>> by Bill Mantlo and, later, Peter David made this even more
>>>>>> personal, by making the source of the Hulk's anger the rage,
>>>>>> fear, frustration he felt as a consequence of childhood
>>>>>> trauma. The Hulk is the Mr. Hyde to Banner's Jekyll
>>>>>> (Stevenson being another acknowledged source for the
>>>>>> character). The dark, ugly side of Banner made flesh.
>>>>>
>>>>> And as a result of childhood trauma his mind is limited to
>>>>> childhood, namely the childhood of Bruce Banner. I don't
>>>>> think he wanted to get back as his father for hitting him,
>>>>> he just wanted to be left alone.
>>>>
>>>> He doesn't turn into the Hulk to run away--he turns into the
>>>> Hulk to lash out.
>>>
>>> Yet after lashing out for a few minutes, or until whatever
>>> supervillain is bothering him runs away or gets knocked out,
>>> he leaves.
>>
>> Of course, but that's not the point.
>
> But it is. If the Hulk only existed so Banner could lash out,
> the only thing he would do as the Hulk is lash out.
That's exactly how most of his chroniclers have handled the Hulk;
when he calms down, he reverts to Banner. The Hulk is a fight
reflex, not a flight one.
bar...@shentel.net
jay wrote:
> On 13 Aug 2006 11:47:15 -0700, bar...@shentel.net wrote:
>
> >>>> I think those first six issues are some of the best comics
> >>>> to come out of early Marvel for that very reason. It's not
> >>>> that they're a mess; it's that they're such a *glorious*
> >>>> mess. If you'd been reading HULK when those were originally
> >>>> running, you'd have absolutely no clue what was coming next
> >>>> (the early FANTASTIC FOUR was the same way). When he
> >>>> switched over to TALES TO ASTONISH, it seemed as though
> >>>> everyone involved lost interest. It didn't become
> >>>> consistently good again until the last 12 or 13 issues of
> >>>> TALES, but when it finally got good, it stayed that way for
> >>>> a loooong time.
> >>>
> >>> I prefer straight forward, concise, with a clear suggestions
> >>> that the writer knows whqat he's doing.
> >>
> >> Ah, so YOU'RE the one who doesn't like comics "done in the old
> >> style"! :)
> >
> > Well if the comics of the "old style" don't meet that criteria
> > then new one's certainly don't.
>
> Meaning the new ones are done in the old style, and you don't
> like either of them?
Well, I feel like the comcis I started reading were done that way,
though I did start in the 80's with liscensed properties like GIJoe and
the Transformers, rather than ordinary superhero comics.
>
> > I've read some of Bendis and Millar's, just to name two of the
> > most famous of this style and and it's none of those things.
>
> Mark Millar sets up seemingly disparate threads, lets them wander,
> then brings them all together as directly relevant to the story at
> the end--he does it as well as anyone who has ever worked in the
> business. Something like RED SON takes the readers' breath away.
> Perhaps you should read a little more.
He also can't keep track of continuity in a twelve issue miniseries. I
recall in the Ultimates the first mention of Hawkeye was as an Olympic
archer. Then when he's introduced he's black ops. I'm sorry I just
don't see the US government giving on of their top men time off to
train for the Olympics.
Plus of course I just found the characters he created to be very
unpleasent. Not the kind of people I'd want to know.
>
> >>>> (Choosing either side does pose all kinds of continuity
> >>>> headaches, though.)
> >>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> You have the makings of a Hulk story, there, but it isn't
> >>>> one that has ever been written.
> >>>
> >>> And that's just it. For every person who claims they know
> >>> what he represents, there's another who can make different
> >>> claims.
> >>
> >> You're missing the point, which is that what you've outlined
> >> is NOT a theme that has ever really been present to any
> >> noticeable degree in the Hulk. Those themes I outlined earlier
> >> weren't pulled out of a hat, like the one you
> >> suggested--they're the ones that have always been there.
> >
> > I didn't pull those out, it was a different writer.
>
> You're the one who offered it here. In any event, it was pulled
> out of a hat (or an orifice), and what I said about it stands.
"Does it dilute the thematic power of the Hulk? Depends on how you
interpret him thematically. Perhaps he signifies, not the dangers of
technology, or the bomb, or man's rage, but rather man's ability to
overcome these things, for some small spark to hold them back or fix
them no matter how far wrong things have gone - a message of hope, not
of despair, and that as much as the Hulk wants to lash out and kill
people Banner is in there holding him back. For now..."
Is that what's your're talking about? Because I was not the person to
offer it up in this thread.
It's not doing the job I want it to. I think the value of being
correct is very underrated these days. And I'm really only looking to
react on the basest levels. For me on those levels comics are very
appealing. Not so much on the higher levels. Because really as an
observer I usually see a lot of ways out of the problems they have,
that they never think of. You'd be surprised how often it involves
"Shoot the bastard in the head!" And once it gets to that point it's
just not fun anymore.
As a bit of a post script I'd like to point out people suggested the
Hulk was meant to suggest nuclear arms during the Cold War and genetic
engineering now(considering that didn't really exist back then I'd have
to say that was pulled out of someone's hat) But nukes didn't kill
anyone during the Cold War and genetic engineering hasn't killed anyone
yet. People still thought of and think of them as potnetial threats
So maybe Hulk doesn't have to kill anyone to theoretically be a threat.
JLB
bar...@shentel.net
jay wrote:
> On 13 Aug 2006 11:34:39 -0700, bar...@shentel.net wrote:
>
> >>> Contempt suggests some form of disdain for the medium.
> >>
> >> Insisting that it be a permanently inferior form IS
> >> disdain.
> >
> > I don't feel what I'm asking for is inferior.
>
> Your posts here have suggested you are disdainful of artistic
> intention, or of any "intellectual" approach to the books,
> prefer mere "fun" (which, robbed of intellectual content,
> would be left at the level of laughing when someone farts),
Bodily emissions aren't funny.
> >>>>>> In one sense, the most obvious one, he's the personification
> >>>>>> of human rage. A living explosion of anger. It's what
> >>>>>> unleashes him. It's what fuels him. The backstory introduced
> >>>>>> by Bill Mantlo and, later, Peter David made this even more
> >>>>>> personal, by making the source of the Hulk's anger the rage,
> >>>>>> fear, frustration he felt as a consequence of childhood
> >>>>>> trauma. The Hulk is the Mr. Hyde to Banner's Jekyll
> >>>>>> (Stevenson being another acknowledged source for the
> >>>>>> character). The dark, ugly side of Banner made flesh.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> And as a result of childhood trauma his mind is limited to
> >>>>> childhood, namely the childhood of Bruce Banner. I don't
> >>>>> think he wanted to get back as his father for hitting him,
> >>>>> he just wanted to be left alone.
> >>>>
> >>>> He doesn't turn into the Hulk to run away--he turns into the
> >>>> Hulk to lash out.
> >>>
> >>> Yet after lashing out for a few minutes, or until whatever
> >>> supervillain is bothering him runs away or gets knocked out,
> >>> he leaves.
> >>
> >> Of course, but that's not the point.
> >
> > But it is. If the Hulk only existed so Banner could lash out,
> > the only thing he would do as the Hulk is lash out.
>
> That's exactly how most of his chroniclers have handled the Hulk;
> when he calms down, he reverts to Banner. The Hulk is a fight
> reflex, not a flight one.
But plenty of writers have shown him bounding away from a town that
still has buildings and people in it, before reverting to Banner.
JLB
Fallen
>Dan "Captain America" Slott sez Brian Michael "Iron Man" Bendis can
>kiss his ass! The Hulk has never killed anyone!
>
>http://www.aintitcoolnews.com/display.cgi?id=24120
>
>I'm with Slott (who flat out tells you that he can only do a two books
>a month and won't try to push it). I can live without this post-modern
>hipster "realism" that so many think they're bringing to comics with
>rape, a resentful public and an oppressive governemnt because these are
>things that happen "in the real world" and would happen "if we really
>had super-heroes." Enough already. It's a comic book. This doesn't
>mean it has to be stupid or illogical or not obey the rules of fiction,
>but it is heavily dependant of suspensions of disbelief (like a pair of
>glasses can hide the most famous man in the world, costumed vigilantism
>would not only be tolerated but celebrated and innocent people don't
>die when super people do battle). It's part of what I like to call
>"the fun" and God freaking forbid I read a comic book and actually have
>fun.
>
>Who's with Dan Slott and his "Fun Avengers"!?!
>
I think the retcon concerning the Hulk is no more stupid than most of
the moronic retcons Bendis pulls out of his ass.
Fallen.
jay
>>> I've read some of Bendis and Millar's, just to name two
>>> of the most famous of this style and and it's none of
>>> those things.
>>
>> Mark Millar sets up seemingly disparate threads, lets them
>> wander, then brings them all together as directly relevant
>> to the story at the end--he does it as well as anyone who
>> has ever worked in the business. Something like RED SON
>> takes the readers' breath away. Perhaps you should read a
>> little more.
>
> He also can't keep track of continuity in a twelve issue
> miniseries. I recall in the Ultimates the first mention of
> Hawkeye was as an Olympic archer. Then when he's introduced
> he's black ops. I'm sorry I just don't see the US government
> giving on of their top men time off to train for the Olympics.
That wasn't a continuity glitch--he was originally mentioned as
a former, not current, Olympic archer.
> Plus of course I just found the characters he created to be
> very unpleasent. Not the kind of people I'd want to know.
I love his characters, warts and all. His reworking of the
Avengers in ULTIMATES was another awe-inspiring piece of work,
very much in the tradition of early Marvel.
>>>>>> You have the makings of a Hulk story, there, but it isn't
>>>>>> one that has ever been written.
>>>>>
>>>>> And that's just it. For every person who claims they know
>>>>> what he represents, there's another who can make different
>>>>> claims.
>>>>
>>>> You're missing the point, which is that what you've outlined
>>>> is NOT a theme that has ever really been present to any
>>>> noticeable degree in the Hulk. Those themes I outlined
>>>> earlier weren't pulled out of a hat, like the one you
>>>> suggested--they're the ones that have always been there.
>>>
>>> I didn't pull those out, it was a different writer.
>>
>> You're the one who offered it here. In any event, it was pulled
>> out of a hat (or an orifice), and what I said about it stands.
>
> "Does it dilute the thematic power of the Hulk? Depends on how
> you interpret him thematically. Perhaps he signifies, not the
> dangers of technology, or the bomb, or man's rage, but rather
> man's ability to overcome these things, for some small spark to
> hold them back or fix them no matter how far wrong things have
> gone - a message of hope, not of despair, and that as much as
> the Hulk wants to lash out and kill people Banner is in there
> holding him back. For now..."
>
> Is that what's your're talking about?
Yes.
> Because I was not the person to offer it up in this thread.
You're quite correct--that was a total brain-fart on my part
(and, like all bodily emissions, not funny at all!).
The larger point still stands, though.
>>> As for the first, I respond because something entertains
>>> me. Searching for meaning actually limits the enjoyment,
>>> because I can argue myself in circles on whether I was
>>> interpreting it correctly.
>>
>> What you're saying is that you don't want to think about
>> what you read. If you don't think about it, though, you're
>> incapable of responding to it on ANY level. Someone whose
>> brain is deactivated is a Terri Schiavo--they sit in a bed,
>> drool, and are completely unaware of their surroundings (or
>> they stand outside the hospital and protest "killing" her,
>> which appears much more animated but shows just as little
>> thought). A good story requires engagement on the part of
>> the reader. That engagement doesn't limit your enjoyment--it
>> forms the basis of your enjoyment. A story that makes you
>> think about many different potential interpretations isn't
>> doing some sort of disservice--it's doing its job.
>
> It's not doing the job I want it to.
It's doing the job of a good story. If you don't want a good
story, then there isn't much a good story is going to have to
offer you.
> I think the value of being correct is very underrated these
> days. And I'm really only looking to react on the basest
> levels.
Yes, I've noticed that.
> As a bit of a post script I'd like to point out people
> suggested the Hulk was meant to suggest nuclear arms during
> the Cold War and genetic engineering now(considering that
> didn't really exist back then I'd have to say that was
> pulled out of someone's hat)
It's been a part of the Hulk's origin for 20 years, now. The
Cold War was winding down when Mantlo introduced it, and it
sort of took the place of the threat of nuclear weapons, which
was much less of a concern then.
> But nukes didn't kill anyone during the Cold War and genetic
> engineering hasn't killed anyone yet. People still thought
> of and think of them as potnetial threats So maybe Hulk
> doesn't have to kill anyone to theoretically be a threat.
You're missing something, though: The Hulk is the embodiment of
the danger of those things--he is their threat made flesh and
unleashed upon the world. If he's no danger to people, then
he's no warning, either. No embodiment of their danger.
bar...@shentel.net
jay wrote:
> On 13 Aug 2006 13:21:53 -0700, bar...@shentel.net wrote:
>
> >>> I've read some of Bendis and Millar's, just to name two
> >>> of the most famous of this style and and it's none of
> >>> those things.
> >>
> >> Mark Millar sets up seemingly disparate threads, lets them
> >> wander, then brings them all together as directly relevant
> >> to the story at the end--he does it as well as anyone who
> >> has ever worked in the business. Something like RED SON
> >> takes the readers' breath away. Perhaps you should read a
> >> little more.
> >
> > He also can't keep track of continuity in a twelve issue
> > miniseries. I recall in the Ultimates the first mention of
> > Hawkeye was as an Olympic archer. Then when he's introduced
> > he's black ops. I'm sorry I just don't see the US government
> > giving on of their top men time off to train for the Olympics.
>
> That wasn't a continuity glitch--he was originally mentioned as
> a former, not current, Olympic archer.
And he was also mentioned as a looooong-time member of SHIELD. One of
it's founders I think, during the Cold War.
>
> > As a bit of a post script I'd like to point out people
> > suggested the Hulk was meant to suggest nuclear arms during
> > the Cold War and genetic engineering now(considering that
> > didn't really exist back then I'd have to say that was
> > pulled out of someone's hat)
>
> It's been a part of the Hulk's origin for 20 years, now. The
> Cold War was winding down when Mantlo introduced it, and it
> sort of took the place of the threat of nuclear weapons, which
> was much less of a concern then.
>
> > But nukes didn't kill anyone during the Cold War and genetic
> > engineering hasn't killed anyone yet. People still thought
> > of and think of them as potnetial threats So maybe Hulk
> > doesn't have to kill anyone to theoretically be a threat.
>
> You're missing something, though: The Hulk is the embodiment of
> the danger of those things--he is their threat made flesh and
> unleashed upon the world. If he's no danger to people, then
> he's no warning, either. No embodiment of their danger.
In the end though all the nukes of the Cold War were an empty threat.
It didn't make them any less terrifying.
JLB
Nathan P. Mahney
<bar...@shentel.net> wrote in message
news:1155482164.5...@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
In terms of what I actually enjoy reading most of the time, good old fun
tops the list more often than not. Sometimes I want more than that, and
sometimes I want more than that to feature superheroes.
As far as mainstream superheroes go, I think they should be mostly all ages,
and mostly aiming to be entertainment, pure and simple. This goes
especially for the core titles - stories dealing with stuff that's not all
ages shouldn't be in Amazing Spider-Man, for instance. Put it in a
miniseries, put it in a one shot, put it in a graphic novel if you must.
Side projects are fine for more adult material.
(Have I gone off on a tangent?)
- Nathan P. Mahney -
Nathan P. Mahney
"jay" <jrid...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ujjud2p9dog9eocd1...@4ax.com...
I'm not such a big fan of those first six Hulk issues - there's too little
of the Hulk stuff I've enjoyed in there.
The thing is (and this is going from my patchy Hulk collection) the Hulk
usually avoided cities and crowded places for the most part. He just wanted
to be off by himself in the desert, but no, the army just had to keep
tracking him down. Many of the Hulk's rampages were in self defense. Not
all, certainly, but the Hulk has been written erratically as we've noted.
There have been a number of instances of the Hulk saving lives on purpose.
I remember him saving a train from going off the rails in an issue in the
early 80s, for instance. I'm sure there are more. It would be interesting
to consider whether the Hulk has caused more destruction than he's
prevented.
> > There are other killers, I'm aware - the Punisher, who's
> > not a hero, and not mainstream, and generally pursued by
> > superheroes. There's Wolverine, who I don't believe
> > works as a mainstream Marvel hero. He was fine when the
> > X-Men were off on the fringes, but having Wolverine the
> > killer at the centre of the MU sits wrongly with me. I'm
> > not saying heroes can never kill - far from it. It ought
> > to be a rare occurence in the MU, though, as far as their
> > mainstream heroes go (i.e. Avengers, FF).
>
> The "no killing" thing was written into superhero ethos via
> editorial mandate, many decades ago when the books were
> aimed at children, and there was a concern about censorship
> troubles if things got too out-of-hand. I've always rejected
> it as some sort of overarching general rule, and thought such
> matters belonged, properly speaking, in the hands of the
> creators, considering each individual character. Spider-Man,
> under normal circumstances, just wouldn't have it in him to
> kill anyone. Captain America, on the other hand, is a soldier,
> and, during the war, he would have killed scores of people. I
> can't imagine him unnecessarily taking a life, but I don't
> think he'd have any problem with it, if it came down to that.
I don't either - I love that scene where he guns down the terrorist in the
early 80s, I think it was (Stern/Byrne run? We're out of my encyclopedic
knowledge range). You're right, it comes down to specific characters,
specific titles. I prefer to see killing treated as a significant event in
the MU, and for the most part it is (Punisher and Wolverine
notwithstanding).
> > Which brings us to the Hulk. The Hulk's rampages aren't
> > rare occurences, they're pretty much his standard state of
> > existence. If he's killed people on these rampages, then
> > he's probably killed quite a few people. The Avengers and
> > others should be after the guy to lock him up for good. But
> > no, he's been treated pretty much as a good guy up until his
> > recent exile into space.
>
> That's not correct--he's fought the Avengers and every other
> character in the MU a dozen times each.
I'm aware of that - which is why I said "pretty much". The heroes aren't
hunting him down on a regular basis. If he shows up to team with the
Defenders, they aren't trying to lock him up. For the most part they
realise that the Hulk has been a vital ally in the past, and leave him
alone.
> It is true that Marvel
> has employed a very schizophrenic approach to the Hulk. It's
> that contradiction about which I was writing earlier. To make
> everything fit, you have to choose one side or the other. In
> this case, those decades of battles with the heroes were
> completely pointless, if the Hulk is no threat.
I think the best option is for writers to just ignore the issue of whether
the Hulk has killed or not. Don't bring it up one way or the other, leave
it as a potential possibility, keep the Hulk as a possible menace and a
possible hero.
> (Choosing either side does pose all kinds of continuity
> headaches, though.)
Name something in the MU that doesn't!
> > Does it dilute the thematic power of the Hulk? Depends on
> > how you interpret him thematically. Perhaps he signifies,
> > not the dangers of technology, or the bomb, or man's rage,
> > but rather man's ability to overcome these things, for some
> > small spark to hold them back or fix them no matter how far
> > wrong things have gone - a message of hope, not of despair,
> > and that as much as the Hulk wants to lash out and kill
> > people Banner is in there holding him back. For now...
>
> You have the makings of a Hulk story, there, but it isn't one
> that has ever been written.
Well possibly, but it's not really the one I'd like to write! I think the
Hulk is a stronger concept when the themes you outlined in an earlier piece
are followed through to their conclusions - it's unfortunate that these
themes can't really work while leaving the Hulk as a heroic presence in the
MU. He'd work very well off in his own reality, without the need to be a
hero. A story where Banner is the hero and the Hulk is the villain - that's
what I was hoping the movie would explore. Ah well....
Graves
> jay wrote:
> > On 13 Aug 2006 06:05:40 -0700, bar...@shentel.net wrote:
> >
> > > Contempt suggests some form of disdain for the medium.
> >
> > Insisting that it be a permanently inferior form IS disdain.
>
> I don't feel what I'm asking for is inferior.
> >
> > > The only thing I feel that towards is the people who insist
> > > all comics should be "art" basicallly.
> >
> > As opposed to what? There seems to be, for whatever reason,
> > this bizarre notion afloat that "art" is some sort of somber,
> > humorless thing. This would certainly shock Shakespeare or
> > Aristophanes or even Richard Pryor.
>
> I disagree that anything that comes from a person's imagination is
> "art."
then... what is it exactly?
>Written works are literature.
you got that part right.
Singing, intrumentals, that's > music.
it can fall under that rubric, yes.
>I find people who lump it all together as "art" to be pompous.
who are these people? artists maybe, folks who've actually created
something instead of sitting here slamming those acts of creation as
not qualifying for yr cryptic & elusive definition of that hated 3
letter word? recognizing & lauding works of personal beauty and
expression are all 'pompous'?
and so, what art appreciation class did you glean this staggering
revelation from? have you ever felt the creative urge? somehow i doubt
it.
type a blog, a poem, a story... write, i dunno, a comic?
draw a purty picture?
pick up a guitar & strum and sing along just because it feels good, it
releases something (they call that catharsis, btw)?
those are all expressions of art. whether you deem them "good art" or
"bad art" is irrelevant to anyone save you. but you cannot, unless
you're mentally challenged, or severely under-educated, claim musical,
literary, visual, etc acts of self-expression are "not art".
see, i do all those things i listed above. and it feels good. the
creative urge was a shamanic function in ancient culures. it still is,
in many ways.
who are you to judge? can we see yr drawings, read yr poems & stories,
hear yr songs? if so, can we deem them to our liking, or find them
poorly crafted, failures in execution, in need of practice, out of
tune, off-key, offensive in their content....
... but they would all still be ART. sorry this causes you so much
distress.
> Shakespeare isn't an artist, he's a writer,
that hole's getting deeper and deeper.......
every heard of the 'liberal arts? society of arts & letters? i didn't
think so.
>Pryor is a comedian.
correct. his skills at writing, performing, and acting are *all* part
of his individual artistry.
you need help no one here can provide.
WAKE UP.
and, bad news.... comic books, whether you like it or not (obviously
not) are an ART FORM. get used to it. you should be happy about it, but
you act ashamed. "i don't want my beloved comix lumped in with ART..
perish forbid".
btw, i love Dan Slott's work. re: the Hulk, i'd refer everyone to the
Bruce Jones/ John Romita issues. Hulk accidenatlly killed Doc Samson's
son Ricky Meyers, was racked with guilt & went on the run. this hasn't
been mentioned the whole thread. later it turned out the kid was alive;
the news footage was doctored, but at least the possibilty of this
happening was put out there for the 1st time, well before CW.
in an out-of-continuity tale, the 2nd to deal with this, STARTLING
STORIES: BANNER deals with all of the ramifications of Hulk's action
that are being discussed on this board
i'd recommend BANNER & INCREDIBLE HULK HC Vols 1 & 2 for food for
thought on this topic.
Nathan P. Mahney
<bar...@shentel.net> wrote in message
news:1155491029....@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
Because it's interesting? Searching for meaning in stories of all kinds can
be fun, and it can be enlightening. There's never going to be correct
answer, but it can lead to all sorts of different explorations of characters
and themes that were never thought of before. Still on the Hulk, it's that
searching for meaning that probably gave us all of the psychological
elements that Peter David explored in his run (for good or ill)
- Nathan P. Mahney -.
Nathan P. Mahney
Currently, they're doing done-in-one traditional superhero yarns, and the
art is reasonably traditional as well. They're not bad, but the stories are
a touch too simplistic for my tastes - it's hard to get a meaty done-in-one
story with current art trends demanding lots of page space per panel.
bar...@shentel.net
Actually, it's people like you.
>
> and so, what art appreciation class did you glean this staggering
> revelation from? have you ever felt the creative urge? somehow i doubt
> it.
I got it from school, I suppose. I was in a music class, and that's
what we refered to it as. I got stuck in an art class, and it focused
on drawing and sculpting. Not singing or writing.
>
> type a blog, a poem, a story... write, i dunno, a comic?
>
> draw a purty picture?
I write fanfic.
>
> pick up a guitar & strum and sing along just because it feels good, it
> releases something (they call that catharsis, btw)?
>
> those are all expressions of art. whether you deem them "good art" or
> "bad art" is irrelevant to anyone save you. but you cannot, unless
> you're mentally challenged, or severely under-educated, claim musical,
> literary, visual, etc acts of self-expression are "not art".
>
> see, i do all those things i listed above. and it feels good. the
> creative urge was a shamanic function in ancient culures. it still is,
> in many ways.
>
> who are you to judge? can we see yr drawings, read yr poems & stories,
> hear yr songs? if so, can we deem them to our liking, or find them
> poorly crafted, failures in execution, in need of practice, out of
> tune, off-key, offensive in their content....
>
> ... but they would all still be ART. sorry this causes you so much
> distress.
Even I, the person who created them, would not refer to them as art.
I'd be annoyed if someone tried to declare it was. Because if it can't
be displayed in a museum, I don't consider it art. Such as you do with
painting and sculpture.
>
>
> btw, i love Dan Slott's work. re: the Hulk, i'd refer everyone to the
> Bruce Jones/ John Romita issues. Hulk accidenatlly killed Doc Samson's
> son Ricky Meyers, was racked with guilt & went on the run. this hasn't
> been mentioned the whole thread. later it turned out the kid was alive;
> the news footage was doctored, but at least the possibilty of this
> happening was put out there for the 1st time, well before CW.
That's fine. I've got no problem with the possibilty. I have no
problems if urban legends about the Hulk in the MU declare he wades
into the debris he calls, digs people out and then eats them. We could
have an issue where there's nothing but interviews of people and we see
the horror stories they relate about him to show us what the people of
the MU believe he does. I just don't want it to reflect the actual
canon state of the Hulk.
JLB
Lynley
>badth...@yahoo.com wrote in
>news:1155312593.8...@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
>
>> Dan "Captain America" Slott sez Brian Michael "Iron Man" Bendis can
>> kiss his ass! The Hulk has never killed anyone!
>>
>> http://www.aintitcoolnews.com/display.cgi?id=24120
>>
>> I'm with Slott (who flat out tells you that he can only do a two books
>> a month and won't try to push it).
>
>Eh. Maybe Hulk never deliberately killed anyone, but I have a hard time
>believing no one ever died in his many, many rampages. You can't trash
>an entire town and have no one get hurt.
>
>> Who's with Dan Slott and his "Fun Avengers"!?!
>
>When were the Avengers ever fun? Okay, the WCA could be fun at times,
>but the main Avengers never were.
THe GLA were ;O)
Anyway, I like Bendis' stuff, not that I've read much 616 Marvel work
he's done. I have enjoyed the first four or so POwers books he's
written.
Lynley
Tony
--JLB, I'm curious how you rationalize Graves' point about the literary
arts. I mean college campuses around the country (and abroad) do
consider the works of famous poets and writers to be artistic
literature. And yet you're not likely (AFAIK) to find such work in a
museum.
Tony
bar...@shentel.net
I can't control what a college calls it classes. I just don't consider
writing as art, I consider it literature.
JLB
jay
<nma...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> The Hulk was the most erratic of them all - first he was
>>> grey, then he was green, he turned into the Hulk at night,
>>> he turned into the Hulk when angry, he was a cunning
>>> badass, he was controlled by Rick Jones, he had Banner's
>>> brain... It was a mess, pretty much until he wasn't
>>> starring in his own book.
>>
>> I think those first six issues are some of the best comics
>> to come out of early Marvel for that very reason. It's not
>> that they're a mess; it's that they're such a *glorious*
>> mess. If you'd been reading HULK when those were originally
>> running, you'd have absolutely no clue what was coming next
>> (the early FANTASTIC FOUR was the same way). When he
>> switched over to TALES TO ASTONISH, it seemed as though
>> everyone involved lost interest. It didn't become
>> consistently good again until the last 12 or 13 issues of
>> TALES, but when it finally got good, it stayed that way for
>> a loooong time.
>
> I'm not such a big fan of those first six Hulk
> issues - there's too little of the Hulk stuff I've enjoyed
> in there.
Boy, it has a TON of the Hulk stuff I've enjoyed. More than
that, though, it's got a ton of the Silver Age Marvel stuff I
really love--that atmosphere of barely-contained insanity,
where it seems anything can happen at any moment, and often
does. Those issues feature some of the best work of Jack
Kirby's career--images and sequences that just never seem to
leave the mind. The transition between Banner screaming while
he's bathed in the gamma blast to him in the infirmary hours
later, with the same expression on his face, the Hulk seeming
to howl with pain as he pounds the wall of the underground
blast shelter in which Banner has sealed him, the Hulk
charging a howitzer crew with a torn-up section of railroad
track, being physically overwhelmed by an entire platoon of
soldiers and shrugging them off as though they were nothing.
I'm still shocked that the first encounter between the Hulk
and Betty Ross made it past the Comics Code. INCREDIBLY
intense and rich material--they never fail to refuel my
fascination with the character whenever I dig them out and
re-read them. Just writing about them here, in fact, has made
me want to read them again!
He's saved the entire world more times than could be easily
counted. There's no doubt he's saved more than he could ever
kill, and he's done it when Marvel's superheroes probably
wouldn't have been able to do it, but, in almost every case,
it's simply because the would-be world-menaces have gotten in
his way. It certainly wasn't because of some altruistic drive
to save the world.
As I said, I see it as a matter of individual characters. When
it becomes necessary for Cap to take out a terrorist, I tend to
see it as just a part of what he does, and not something
particularly worthy of any special focus. With Spider-Man, the
story would obviously be different.
>>> Which brings us to the Hulk. The Hulk's rampages aren't
>>> rare occurences, they're pretty much his standard state of
>>> existence. If he's killed people on these rampages, then
>>> he's probably killed quite a few people. The Avengers and
>>> others should be after the guy to lock him up for good. But
>>> no, he's been treated pretty much as a good guy up until his
>>> recent exile into space.
>>
>> That's not correct--he's fought the Avengers and every other
>> character in the MU a dozen times each.
>
> I'm aware of that - which is why I said "pretty much". The
> heroes aren't hunting him down on a regular basis. If he
> shows up to team with the Defenders, they aren't trying to
> lock him up. For the most part they realise that the Hulk
> has been a vital ally in the past, and leave him alone.
No, for the most part it's just bad writing. I wrote a long
piece about the early years of the Avengers last summer where
this came up. The Avengers are a team without a point; no
premise to hold them together or give them a mission. As a
consequence, their early "adventures" aren't really adventures
at all--they're just fights. Someone just shows up, usually
right out of nowhere, intent on "destroying the Avengers,"
there's a big fight or series of fights. The end. Whenever
Stan ran out of these, he'd have the Avengers decide the Hulk
was too dangerous to be running loose that month, and send
them out looking for him. The rest of the time, he was off the
radar screen, just as he was off the radar screen for the
other Marvel characters (except when THEY decided he was too
much of a menace to roam free and trie to take him down). The
Hulk was part of the Defenders, when they'd assemble, because
they'd need his muscle. In a lot of those issues, he seemed
as much a danger to his alleged teammates as he was to their
enemies.
(There was also a lot of odd Hulk writing in the Defenders.
I've mentioned some of it in various places in this thread.
Another example--my personal favorite--happened during either
the Gerber or Kraft run on the book: The Hulk began
experiencing an existential crisis. He's thinking thoughts
like "All day, every day, it's always the same. 'Hulk smash
puny humans' or 'Hulk smash this' or 'Hulk smash that' What's
the point of it all?" It's one of those moments of inspired
lunacy that made me howl when I first saw it.)
>>> Does it dilute the thematic power of the Hulk? Depends on
>>> how you interpret him thematically. Perhaps he signifies,
>>> not the dangers of technology, or the bomb, or man's rage,
>>> but rather man's ability to overcome these things, for some
>>> small spark to hold them back or fix them no matter how far
>>> wrong things have gone - a message of hope, not of despair,
>>> and that as much as the Hulk wants to lash out and kill
>>> people Banner is in there holding him back. For now...
>>
>> You have the makings of a Hulk story, there, but it isn't one
>> that has ever been written.
>
> Well possibly, but it's not really the one I'd like to write!
> I think the Hulk is a stronger concept when the themes you
> outlined in an earlier piece are followed through to their
> conclusions - it's unfortunate that these themes can't really
> work while leaving the Hulk as a heroic presence in the MU.
> He'd work very well off in his own reality, without the need
> to be a hero.
When he's Professor Hulk or when Banner had control of him, he
can be a superhero. When he's the savage Hulk, there's nothing
heroic about him.
Tony
jay wrote:
> (There was also a lot of odd Hulk writing in the Defenders.
> I've mentioned some of it in various places in this thread.
> Another example--my personal favorite--happened during either
> the Gerber or Kraft run on the book: The Hulk began
> experiencing an existential crisis. He's thinking thoughts
> like "All day, every day, it's always the same. 'Hulk smash
> puny humans' or 'Hulk smash this' or 'Hulk smash that' What's
> the point of it all?" It's one of those moments of inspired
> lunacy that made me howl when I first saw it.)
--you have *got* to be making that up, b/c if not, then I'm rolling of
the floor just reading your recollection of the issue. I'd love to know
what comic it was, b/c I'd go buy it just to read that silliness. Oh,
and that sounds like something Gerber would do. I haven't read much of
his work aside from the Howard the Duck mini a few years ago, but given
his approach to writing that, it seems more his bag.
> >>> Does it dilute the thematic power of the Hulk? Depends on
> >>> how you interpret him thematically. Perhaps he signifies,
> >>> not the dangers of technology, or the bomb, or man's rage,
> >>> but rather man's ability to overcome these things, for some
> >>> small spark to hold them back or fix them no matter how far
> >>> wrong things have gone - a message of hope, not of despair,
> >>> and that as much as the Hulk wants to lash out and kill
> >>> people Banner is in there holding him back. For now...
> >>
> >> You have the makings of a Hulk story, there, but it isn't one
> >> that has ever been written.
> >
> > Well possibly, but it's not really the one I'd like to write!
> > I think the Hulk is a stronger concept when the themes you
> > outlined in an earlier piece are followed through to their
> > conclusions - it's unfortunate that these themes can't really
> > work while leaving the Hulk as a heroic presence in the MU.
> > He'd work very well off in his own reality, without the need
> > to be a hero.
>
> When he's Professor Hulk or when Banner had control of him, he
> can be a superhero. When he's the savage Hulk, there's nothing
> heroic about him.
--ah, but what about when he's the Grey Hulk...?
Tony
jay
>> (There was also a lot of odd Hulk writing in the Defenders.
>> I've mentioned some of it in various places in this thread.
>> Another example--my personal favorite--happened during
>> either the Gerber or Kraft run on the book: The Hulk began
>> experiencing an existential crisis. He's thinking thoughts
>> like "All day, every day, it's always the same. 'Hulk smash
>> puny humans' or 'Hulk smash this' or 'Hulk smash that'
>> What's the point of it all?" It's one of those moments of
>> inspired lunacy that made me howl when I first saw it.)
>
> --you have *got* to be making that up, b/c if not, then I'm
> rolling of the floor just reading your recollection of the issue.
> I'd love to know what comic it was, b/c I'd go buy it just to
> read that silliness. Oh, and that sounds like something
> Gerber would do. I haven't read much of his work aside
> from the Howard the Duck mini a few years ago, but given
> his approach to writing that, it seems more his bag.
It sounds like Gerber, but the more I think about it, I'm
thinking it happened during Kraft's run--maybe the Scorpio
storyline. (I have the books, but they're sort of hard to get
to at the moment).
>>>>> Does it dilute the thematic power of the Hulk?
>>>>> Depends on how you interpret him thematically.
>>>>> Perhaps he signifies, not the dangers of technology,
>>>>> or the bomb, or man's rage, but rather man's ability to
>>>>> overcome these things, for some small spark to hold
>>>>> them back or fix them no matter how far wrong things
>>>>> have gone - a message of hope, not of despair, and
>>>>> that as much as the Hulk wants to lash out and kill
>>>>> people Banner is in there holding him back. For now...
>>>>
>>>> You have the makings of a Hulk story, there, but it isn't
>>>> one that has ever been written.
>>>
>>> Well possibly, but it's not really the one I'd like to write!
>>> I think the Hulk is a stronger concept when the themes you
>>> outlined in an earlier piece are followed through to their
>>> conclusions - it's unfortunate that these themes can't really
>>> work while leaving the Hulk as a heroic presence in the MU.
>>> He'd work very well off in his own reality, without the need
>>> to be a hero.
>>
>> When he's Professor Hulk or when Banner had control of
>> him, he can be a superhero. When he's the savage Hulk,
>> there's nothing heroic about him.
>
> --ah, but what about when he's the Grey Hulk...?
Ah, yes, Mr. Fixit, leg-breaker for the Vegas mob--definitely
a role-model for small children!
Nathan P. Mahney
Yes, I've always loved that sequence - in fact the whole first issue of Hulk
is really very good. I'm not so fond of the material when it goes off the
rails later, especially the stuff where the Hulk is being commanded by Rick
Jones (and flying?!?)
the Hulk seeming
> to howl with pain as he pounds the wall of the underground
> blast shelter in which Banner has sealed him, the Hulk
> charging a howitzer crew with a torn-up section of railroad
> track, being physically overwhelmed by an entire platoon of
> soldiers and shrugging them off as though they were nothing.
> I'm still shocked that the first encounter between the Hulk
> and Betty Ross made it past the Comics Code. INCREDIBLY
> intense and rich material--they never fail to refuel my
> fascination with the character whenever I dig them out and
> re-read them. Just writing about them here, in fact, has made
> me want to read them again!
Hey, you make me want to do the same!
Not in savage persona, no - at least not a conscious drive to do so. I
wouldn't discount any subconscious urges that Banner's personality might
provide.
Savage Hulk has saved lives, though, consciously and on purpose. Mistake,
bad writing, call it what you will, but it's there in the canon. I suppose
that stuff can be ignored if you want to do so, but I'm one of those guys
who has to make it all fit and make something approaching sense. It's a
personality disorder!
And yet he's been one of the MU's biggest hardliners on superheroes killing,
as little sense as that makes. I guess he's seen too much of it during the
war, if you want to rationalise that. As for Cap killing terrorists, I can
see him doing it without much fanfare if he had to, but the situation would
have to be extremely desperate for him to be unable to find another
solution - he's that damn good.
Has Spider-Man ever killed? I've never read such a story.
> >>> Which brings us to the Hulk. The Hulk's rampages aren't
> >>> rare occurences, they're pretty much his standard state of
> >>> existence. If he's killed people on these rampages, then
> >>> he's probably killed quite a few people. The Avengers and
> >>> others should be after the guy to lock him up for good. But
> >>> no, he's been treated pretty much as a good guy up until his
> >>> recent exile into space.
> >>
> >> That's not correct--he's fought the Avengers and every other
> >> character in the MU a dozen times each.
> >
> > I'm aware of that - which is why I said "pretty much". The
> > heroes aren't hunting him down on a regular basis. If he
> > shows up to team with the Defenders, they aren't trying to
> > lock him up. For the most part they realise that the Hulk
> > has been a vital ally in the past, and leave him alone.
>
> No, for the most part it's just bad writing.
Yes, but what's the alternative? The Hulk has his own book, so he can't be
portrayed as an outright villain. Having the heroes after him all the time
would get tedious.
> I wrote a long
> piece about the early years of the Avengers last summer where
> this came up. The Avengers are a team without a point; no
> premise to hold them together or give them a mission.
I disagreed about this at the time, though I'm not sure whether I posted.
The Avengers have a premise - they're superheroes. It's a flimsy premise,
sure, but it is a valid one. I did agree with the rest of your review, in
that the Avengers early stories had little in the way of plot. I'm sure I
read somewhere that Jack Kirby left the book because he thought it lacked
substance - anyone else remember that?
> As a
> consequence, their early "adventures" aren't really adventures
> at all--they're just fights.
Saved mostly by Jack Kirby unmatched ability to stage entertaining superhero
fight scenes!
Someone just shows up, usually
> right out of nowhere, intent on "destroying the Avengers,"
> there's a big fight or series of fights. The end. Whenever
> Stan ran out of these, he'd have the Avengers decide the Hulk
> was too dangerous to be running loose that month, and send
> them out looking for him. The rest of the time, he was off the
> radar screen, just as he was off the radar screen for the
> other Marvel characters (except when THEY decided he was too
> much of a menace to roam free and trie to take him down). The
> Hulk was part of the Defenders, when they'd assemble, because
> they'd need his muscle. In a lot of those issues, he seemed
> as much a danger to his alleged teammates as he was to their
> enemies.
Did they really need his muscle, though? They had Namor, they had the
Silver Surfer - I think they might have done OK without him!
> (There was also a lot of odd Hulk writing in the Defenders.
> I've mentioned some of it in various places in this thread.
> Another example--my personal favorite--happened during either
> the Gerber or Kraft run on the book: The Hulk began
> experiencing an existential crisis. He's thinking thoughts
> like "All day, every day, it's always the same. 'Hulk smash
> puny humans' or 'Hulk smash this' or 'Hulk smash that' What's
> the point of it all?" It's one of those moments of inspired
> lunacy that made me howl when I first saw it.)
Sounds awesome.
> >>> Does it dilute the thematic power of the Hulk? Depends on
> >>> how you interpret him thematically. Perhaps he signifies,
> >>> not the dangers of technology, or the bomb, or man's rage,
> >>> but rather man's ability to overcome these things, for some
> >>> small spark to hold them back or fix them no matter how far
> >>> wrong things have gone - a message of hope, not of despair,
> >>> and that as much as the Hulk wants to lash out and kill
> >>> people Banner is in there holding him back. For now...
> >>
> >> You have the makings of a Hulk story, there, but it isn't one
> >> that has ever been written.
> >
> > Well possibly, but it's not really the one I'd like to write!
> > I think the Hulk is a stronger concept when the themes you
> > outlined in an earlier piece are followed through to their
> > conclusions - it's unfortunate that these themes can't really
> > work while leaving the Hulk as a heroic presence in the MU.
> > He'd work very well off in his own reality, without the need
> > to be a hero.
>
> When he's Professor Hulk or when Banner had control of him, he
> can be a superhero. When he's the savage Hulk, there's nothing
> heroic about him.
I've always kind of wondered what the point of the Professor Hulk was. I've
liked what I've read of Peter David's work with this version of the
character, but it never resonated with me like Savage Hulk or the Grey Hulk.
jay
<nma...@hotmail.com> wrote:
He never flew. He just jumped, and that's something he's done
ever since. That has always been a mystery to me, though. The
artwork on the first 2 or 3 issues when he first begins jumping
is clearly intended to convey flight, but Stan's writing
consistently describes it as jumping. This happened right after
he'd been clobbered with cosmic rays in space and had fallen
under Rick's command. It would appear that either Jack intended
him to pick up the power of flight when in space and Stan chose
not to go this route, or the'd both decided he should pick up
the power, then Stan changed his mind after the art was done.
Whatever the case may be, the Hulk flying would have been
really stupid, and I'm glad they didn't do that. Anyone have
any further info on this? I doubt either Stan or Jack would
have remember the details of such a matter three weeks after it
happened.
(After two or three issues, the Hulk is clearly shown as jumping
in the artwork but, oddly enough, his posture when doing so--arms
outstretched as though he was flying--is kept the same for a few
more issues. For consistency, perhaps? In any case, the familiar
jumping poster first appears somewhere in Ditko's run, and stays
with the book permanently.)
>> the Hulk seeming to howl with pain as he pounds the wall of
>> the underground blast shelter in which Banner has sealed him,
>> the Hulk charging a howitzer crew with a torn-up section of
>> railroad track, being physically overwhelmed by an entire
>> platoon of soldiers and shrugging them off as though they
>> were nothing. I'm still shocked that the first encounter
>> between the Hulk and Betty Ross made it past the Comics Code.
>> INCREDIBLY intense and rich material--they never fail to
>> refuel my fascination with the character whenever I dig them
>> out and re-read them. Just writing about them here, in fact,
>> has made me want to read them again!
>
> Hey, you make me want to do the same!
I got them out and re-read them not long after I wrote that.
I'm afraid you're doomed to failure here, though. There's no way
to reconcile some of the things that have been written into the
Hulk over the years--you have to pick and choose. The trick is
to find what makes sense, and where the proponderance of
evidence really leads.
Yes, and that could have been a major subtext in Cap's stories
over the years, as well, but, unfortunately, writers have tended
to avoid it, as a rule, because it means conceding that Cap was,
in fact, a soldier, and would have slaughtered scores of people
during the war.
> As for Cap killing terrorists, I can see him doing it without
> much fanfare if he had to, but the situation would have to be
> extremely desperate for him to be unable to find another
> solution - he's that damn good.
And that reinforces the other point, as well: everyone knows he
wouldn't do it unless it was necessary, and, in most
circumstances, that relieves the story of the need to unduly
question it.
> Has Spider-Man ever killed? I've never read such a story.
No. Normally, Spider-Man just wouldn't have it in him to kill
someone. As I see it, he should have killed the Goblin after
Gwen Stacy's murder, but the writers chose a cop-out (an
unfortunately all-too-common one in comics). That's an extreme
circumstance, though.
>>>>> Which brings us to the Hulk. The Hulk's rampages aren't
>>>>> rare occurences, they're pretty much his standard state of
>>>>> existence. If he's killed people on these rampages, then
>>>>> he's probably killed quite a few people. The Avengers and
>>>>> others should be after the guy to lock him up for good. But
>>>>> no, he's been treated pretty much as a good guy up until
>>>>> his recent exile into space.
>>>>
>>>> That's not correct--he's fought the Avengers and every other
>>>> character in the MU a dozen times each.
>>>
>>> I'm aware of that - which is why I said "pretty much". The
>>> heroes aren't hunting him down on a regular basis. If he
>>> shows up to team with the Defenders, they aren't trying to
>>> lock him up. For the most part they realise that the Hulk
>>> has been a vital ally in the past, and leave him alone.
>>
>> No, for the most part it's just bad writing.
>
> Yes, but what's the alternative? The Hulk has his own book,
> so he can't be portrayed as an outright villain. Having the
> heroes after him all the time would get tedious.
I don't think what I've been talking about amounts to portraying
him "as an outright villain"--it's just portraying him as what
he is. He repels many menaces, but he is, himself, a menace.
>> I wrote a long piece about the early years of the Avengers
>> last summer where this came up. The Avengers are a team
>> without a point; no premise to hold them together or give
>> them a mission.
>
> I disagreed about this at the time, though I'm not sure
> whether I posted. The Avengers have a premise - they're
> superheroes. It's a flimsy premise, sure, but it is a valid
> one.
That's definitely NOT a premise. The Avengers "origin" story
isn't an origin story at all. An origin story for a team like
that would be devoted to explaining why such a team may be
necessary. With the Avengers, not only is that utterly absent
(they spend most of the first issue like a bunch of incompetent
goofballs, beating on one another, while Thor solves the real
problem), but their banding together as the Avengers (without
cause) actually proves to have quite a pernicious effect.
Here's my review on the subject, which goes into all of this
at greater length:
http://comcomment.tripod.com/eavengers123.html
> I did agree with the rest of your review, in that the Avengers
> early stories had little in the way of plot. I'm sure I read
> somewhere that Jack Kirby left the book because he thought it
> lacked substance - anyone else remember that?
Wouldn't surprise me. It would certainly be a correct analysis.
I don't remember ever having heard anything like that, though.
>> As a consequence, their early "adventures" aren't really
>> adventures at all--they're just fights.
>
> Saved mostly by Jack Kirby unmatched ability to stage
> entertaining superhero fight scenes!
No, nothing saved it. Nothing could! AVENGERS is easily some of
the worst material Marvel published in the Silver Age; exactly
the kind of material to which the worst critics of comics would
point as an example of the complete lack of merit of the books.
>> Someone just shows up, usually
>> right out of nowhere, intent on "destroying the Avengers,"
>> there's a big fight or series of fights. The end. Whenever
>> Stan ran out of these, he'd have the Avengers decide the Hulk
>> was too dangerous to be running loose that month, and send
>> them out looking for him. The rest of the time, he was off the
>> radar screen, just as he was off the radar screen for the
>> other Marvel characters (except when THEY decided he was too
>> much of a menace to roam free and trie to take him down). The
>> Hulk was part of the Defenders, when they'd assemble, because
>> they'd need his muscle. In a lot of those issues, he seemed
>> as much a danger to his alleged teammates as he was to their
>> enemies.
>
> Did they really need his muscle, though? They had Namor, they
> had the Silver Surfer - I think they might have done OK without
> him!
The Defenders weren't a regular team; they came together only
when there was some extreme circumstance that demanded that they
do so. When things get that bad, the more muscle you have, the
better. Later, when they became more of a team (to the detriment
of the book), the other big guns were mostly absent.
>> (There was also a lot of odd Hulk writing in the Defenders.
>> I've mentioned some of it in various places in this thread.
>> Another example--my personal favorite--happened during either
>> the Gerber or Kraft run on the book: The Hulk began
>> experiencing an existential crisis. He's thinking thoughts
>> like "All day, every day, it's always the same. 'Hulk smash
>> puny humans' or 'Hulk smash this' or 'Hulk smash that' What's
>> the point of it all?" It's one of those moments of inspired
>> lunacy that made me howl when I first saw it.)
>
> Sounds awesome.
I love the Defenders. It was the book AVENGERS always wished it
could be.
bar...@shentel.net
Nathan P. Mahney wrote:
> "jay" <jrid...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:2na1e25fba6mr076e...@4ax.com...
> > On Mon, 14 Aug 2006 17:26:13 +1000, "Nathan P. Mahney"
> > <nma...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> And yet he's been one of the MU's biggest hardliners on superheroes killing,
> as little sense as that makes. I guess he's seen too much of it during the
> war, if you want to rationalise that.
That's just it. He's seen war and he doesn't think superhero battles
are it.
>
> Has Spider-Man ever killed? I've never read such a story.
Never killed to my knowledge, but he has been ready to once or twice.
> > I wrote a long
> > piece about the early years of the Avengers last summer where
> > this came up. The Avengers are a team without a point; no
> > premise to hold them together or give them a mission.
>
> I disagreed about this at the time, though I'm not sure whether I posted.
> The Avengers have a premise - they're superheroes. It's a flimsy premise,
> sure, but it is a valid one. I did agree with the rest of your review, in
> that the Avengers early stories had little in the way of plot. I'm sure I
> read somewhere that Jack Kirby left the book because he thought it lacked
> substance - anyone else remember that?
It has a premise. "Sometime our enemies team up. Let's do it first so
we don't have to go looking for help when we need it."
JLB
bar...@shentel.net
Was he childlike at this point? Cause I can see someone with the mind
of a child who has the ability to jump miles act like he was flying.
JLB
jay
>>> I wrote a long piece about the early years of the
>>> Avengers last summer where this came up. The
>>> Avengers are a team without a point; no premise to
>>> hold them together or give them a mission.
>>
>> I disagreed about this at the time, though I'm not sure
>> whether I posted. The Avengers have a premise - they're
>> superheroes. It's a flimsy premise, sure, but it is a valid
>> one. I did agree with the rest of your review, in that the
>> Avengers early stories had little in the way of plot. I'm
>> sure I read somewhere that Jack Kirby left the book
>> because he thought it lacked substance - anyone else
>> remember that?
>
> It has a premise. "Sometime our enemies team up. Let's
> do it first so we don't have to go looking for help when we
> need it."
...except their enemies weren't teaming up until THEY
teamed up. They created a superhuman arms race that
inspired public menaces to become even bigger public
menaces in reaction:
http://comcomment.tripod.com/eavengers123.html
jay
He was under Rick's mental command--no free will of his
own. But the awkward posture continued for a while after
he was no longer under Rick's command.
KJH
> bar...@shentel.net wrote in
> news:1155344127.2...@74g2000cwt.googlegroups.com:
> > I'm familiar with "Hulk SMASH!!" and "Hulk hate puny Banner." and I
> > believe I've seen "Puny humans, leave Hulk alone!!!" But I'm not
> > familiar with declarations that he intended to intentionally injure
> > innocent people. I remember an issue of Thunderbolts, where a guy
> > who'd lived in a town Hulk wrecked punched Banner. He hulked out,
> > then he left. He didn't do anything to the guy who'd punched him.
> >
> > The Hulk is a petulent child, throwing a temper tantrum, he screams
> > and he yells and he flails his fists and kicks. But in a temper
> > tantrum those things aren't intended to hurt, they just happen to
> > connect. Unfortunately Hulk's strength is a lot greater than a
> > child's.
> I agree, which is why I never mentioned him trying to hurt anyone like
> others did. If he did those things, it wasn't while I was reading Hulk
> comics. Except...maybe Joe Fixit did that sort of thing. He was a mean
> SOB. Given his job, he most likely did make such threats.
Speaking of petulant children with super-strength reminds me of the
'Superbaby' in Rick Veitch's Maximortal series. One of the nastier things
I've ever read.
We can presume that the Hulk has at least some socialization, so it's not
a good parallel.
Steven R. Stahl
badth...@yahoo.com wrote:
> Dan "Captain America" Slott sez Brian Michael "Iron Man" Bendis can
> kiss his ass! The Hulk has never killed anyone!
>
The question of whether the Hulk had ever killed anyone was addressed
directly, not long ago, by Kurt Busiek:
"And until the late Seventies, when Marvel went corporate, they
didn't
worry about it. It was never explicitly stated that the Hulk killed
anyone, in deference to the Comics Code, but never explicitly stated
that he hadn't, either, and readers could assume there was a body
count.
"It wasn't until they started imposing codes of conduct on all their
"heroes" that we started hearing that the Hulk had miraculously never
killed anyone, that the people Wolverine carved up were all just badly
wounded and got cyborg parts, that Captain America had never killed
even during World War II (this last bit never flew. . ."
SRS
Steven R. Stahl
badth...@yahoo.com wrote:
> jay wrote:
> > On 11 Aug 2006 21:17:39 GMT, Dan McEwen <ferr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Eh. Maybe Hulk never deliberately killed anyone, but
> > > I have a hard time believing no one ever died in his
> > > many, many rampages. You can't trash an entire
> > > town and have no one get hurt.
> >
> > up over all these decades and you're talking downright
> > ludicrous. Further, contrary to the implication given by
> > Slott (who sounds, on this point, as though he's never
> > read an issue of the Hulk in his life), the rampaging Hulk
> > has *always* been a murder-intentioned monster--his
> > both threatened to kill people and actively attempted to
> > kill people on a regular basis, to say nothing of showing
> > a complete disregard for their health and safety. Think,
> > for example, about how many cops and soldiers have
> > been on the receiving end of this, to say nothing of
> > practically every hero in the MU.
>
> As opposed to how many super-battles in the middle midtown Manhattan?
> Maybe no of you have been here, but the population density pretty much
> makes that impossible, but no one is hanging on to that. It's simply
> buy into the character, then that's part of the package. You might as
> well complain that it's unbelievable that he's always wearing purple
> pants and they never rip.
An assessment of the Hulk depends on the intent of the writer handling
a particular version of the Hulk. The "classic" Hulk, big, green,
and stupid, who blundered his way into defeating supervillains because
"the madder Hulk gets, the stronger Hulk gets," was as much a comic
book superhero as the Thing or Captain America, just less intelligent.
It's as easy to believe that no one died during his rampages as it is
to believe in the outcomes of the stories, which had Hulk winning
because of his strength, and only because of his strength.
I haven't had much experience with other versions of the Hulk (I did
buy Shooter's infamous "Banner nearly gets raped" story in the
HULK magazine, IIRC,and other issues occasionally), but if the
intelligent Hulk wanted to kill any particular person, and that person
appeared to die, then it's reasonable to think that he died. The
writer defined what the character did, not an editor, or editors,
"n" number of years later.
The classic Hulk can be treated as repeated episodes of (artificially
prolonged) depersonalization
(http://www.minddisorders.com/Del-Fi/Depersonalization.html ;
http://www.citybeat.com/2000-06-15/scitech.shtml ), but other versions
would be harder to summarize. If Banner had returned to normal right
after the immediate threat had ended, of course, the Hulk never would
have existed as a character, but the prolongation of the
depersonalization makes psychological studies less valid.
SRS
Nathan P. Mahney
"Steven R. Stahl" <syns...@eudoramail.com> wrote in message
news:1155932551.5...@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
OK, that sounds intriguing. What's the deal with this story?
- Nathan P. Mahney -
NERDBLOG - http://nathanpmahney.livejournal.com
Now Playing - Comic reviews, and a rant on super-hero paradigms
Steven R. Stahl
Nathan P. Mahney wrote:
[snip]
>
> > I haven't had much experience with other versions of the Hulk (I did
> > buy Shooter's infamous "Banner nearly gets raped" story in the
> > HULK magazine, IIRC,and other issues occasionally),
>
> OK, that sounds intriguing. What's the deal with this story?
>
> - Nathan P. Mahney -
>
> NERDBLOG - http://nathanpmahney.livejournal.com
> Now Playing - Comic reviews, and a rant on super-hero paradigms
Here's a useful description on a Web site
(http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2006/03/25/friday-in-the-shooter-gallery/
) and a couple of newsgroup threads:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.comics.misc/browse_frm/thread/1e45afb1009a26cc/9613cd7af0132e4c?lnk=st&q=shooter+hulk+banner+rape+ymca&rnum=2&hl=en#9613cd7af0132e4c
and
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.comics/browse_frm/thread/daae2bf3cf0b0747/8fe0edd0406bb9a6?lnk=st&q=shooter+hulk+banner+rape+ymca&rnum=4&hl=en#8fe0edd0406bb9a6
SRS
Nathan P. Mahney
OK, thanks! I'd never heard anything about that before.
- Nathan P. Mahney -
NERDBLOG - http://nathanpmahney.livejournal.com
Now Playing: Comic Reviews - 52, Civil War: X-Men, and more