Mr. Miracle-Starfox
The first character cited is key to Jack Kirby’s Fourth World. The second was conceived by writer/artist Jim Starlin as a part of his supporting cast for his mucho cosmic run on Captain Marvel: it was only later that the folks of Titan were judiciously decided to be a subset of the Eternals. I don’t know what Starlin has made of his Titanians being folded into Kirby’s rejiggered-for-Marvel New God/Eternals mythos, but since he’s fooled with Fourth World concepts for DC, I suspect he wouldn’t mind.
I’m much more familiar with the Starfox character, via ‘80s Avengers stories that showed him to be a super-hedonist, than I am with Mr. Miracle. But I don’t see big problems here…
Commonalities:
Both oppose nigh-unto-omnipotent opponents, and have a more keen interest in the affairs of humans than their most of their kin.
Differences:
Again, Starfox, Thanos and other Titianians were ret-conned into being Eternals. And Mr. Miracle is an escape artist nonpareil, as opposed to a guy that can subtly suggest that women open their legs for him. I know which ability I would prefer…
Alternate histories:
MM: Scott Free is raised by his father Himon alongside his brother, Uxas, in an outpost in Earth’s solar system populated by their fellow “New Gods.” While his brother becomes obsessed with an "anti-life equation" and becomes Darkseid, Free is a —wait for it— free spirit: he’s moved to take existence with greater purpose when his brother threatens the universe. He allies with Hawkman and the Justice League to oppose Darkseid, and eventually joins that organization, using the codename Mr. Miracle. He has since traveled the universe and sporadically returns to active heroic service.
SF: Eros is the son of Zuras, the leader of the Eternals, a godlike race that resides in the extradimensional realm of Olympia. As an infant, Eros is traded to Thanos, the leader of the Deviants of Lemuria, in order to broker a truce between the two races that has been waged for centuries. Growing up amongst Deviants, he and fellow Eternal Thena are influenced by Alars to rebel against Thanos: the two escape to Earth, where their efforts to defeat Thanos nullify the truce mentioned above. Using the codemname Starfox, he marries Thena, joins the Avengers and commutes between Olympia and Earth. Both have apparently been killed in a massacre of all Eternals.
Showing posts with label Captain Mar-Vell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Captain Mar-Vell. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Thursday, May 1, 2008
The Avengers, 1961-1978
Founding members
Thor
Captain America
Thundra
Mr. Fantastic
Iron Man
Sub-Mariner
Silver Surfer
Recruits
Hawkeye
Ant-Man/Yellowjacket
Captain Mar-Vell
Mockingbird
Beast
Vision
Ms. Marvel (Una, Mar-Vell’s wife and partner)
Scarlet Witch
Thor
Captain America
Thundra
Mr. Fantastic
Iron Man
Sub-Mariner
Silver Surfer
Recruits
Hawkeye
Ant-Man/Yellowjacket
Captain Mar-Vell
Mockingbird
Beast
Vision
Ms. Marvel (Una, Mar-Vell’s wife and partner)
Scarlet Witch
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Support tough gals in comic books! Don't tolerate the "women in refrigerators" syndrome!
Hawkgirl - Ms. Marvel/Warbird
Don’t have much to say about the current iteration of Hawkgirl, other than her prominence in current DC comics seems to originate from the popularity of the Thanagarian iteration of the character on Bruce Timm’s Justice League cartoon, of which I cannot say enough good things…
But Ms. Marvel? Here was a female character that didn’t just strike a pose and point in order to engage foes. She decks bad guys, just like red-blooded Marvel dudes did! As I’ve said before, Marvel never had a female bruiser front and center, like Wonder Woman, up to that point. And so, despite the fact that she was written with rather a lot of Chris Claremont’s sympathetic feminist boilerplate, Carol Danvers had an important function.
But it may not be putting too fine a point on it to speculate that many comic book writers have problems with strong women. Before she became a key comic book writer, Gail Simone identified a syndrome in super hero fiction, which she dubbed “women in refrigerators.”
Taking its name from a plot point in a ‘90s Green Lantern story, in which Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend is murdered and stuffed into a refrigerator, Simone cataloged the indignities suffered by female characters in super hero fiction. Many many characters before Sue Dibny’s brutal killing by an insane Jean Loring were disposed with or forever compromised via editorial diktats that, most likely, were concocted and approved by men who probably were ignored or laughed at by chicks in high school. Oh, the horrors the fairer sex visits upon adolescent males who can tell you the issue in which the Vulture picked his nose!
Ms. Marvel got the “women in refrigerators” treatment but good. She was immaculately impregnated by a Kang-style dude, and then was hypnotized into living with him in some mystical dimension. She escapes and, after losing her powers to X-Man-to-be Rogue, gives the Avengers holy hell for abandoning her (well done, Mr Claremont). After a period that found her with cosmic powers as Binary, Kurt Busiek made her into a drunk in his Avengers run, but saw to it that she joined AA and becomes a lucid heroine again.
To Marvel’s credit, Carol Danvers is one of the key characters in their line, one with a mean roundhouse left. But she again bears the name “Ms. Marvel,” which is nowhere near as cool as Warbird (well done, Mr Busiek).
Commonalities:
Two broads known to throw a helluva punch, and known to have connections to expatriate extraterrestrial heroes on Earth.
Differences:
Hawkgirl has them wings and archaic weaponry; Warbird is super-strong, flies and shoots force blasts out of her fingertips.
Alternate histories:
HG: Kendra Saunders is a young pilot in the U.S. Air Force when she encounters and then enters a romantic relationship with Katar Hol, the Thanagarian dissident known as Hawkman. She appropriates some of his abilities, which she uses under the codename of Hawkgirl. Saunders then joins the Justice League, although she is spirited away to mate with a extra-dimensional being. She escapes and then angrily rebukes the JLA for abandoning her; she then spends some time with the Teen Titans before spending time in outer space. She returns to Earth and rejoins the JLA. Hawkgirl currently leads the sanctioned iteration of the JLA, which includes her current swain Captain Atom.
WB: As a young woman, Carol Danvers attempts suicide, but is revived when the spirit of an ancestor enters her body. Via Kree technology, she is imbued with abilities native to that race, and takes the codename Warbird. She joins a later iteration of the wartime organization the Liberty Legion, and is courted by a charter member of that organization to be named later, who she resists. After encountering Kree antagonists on their homeworld, Warbird has joined the Avengers, which includes her current swain, the Angel.
Don’t have much to say about the current iteration of Hawkgirl, other than her prominence in current DC comics seems to originate from the popularity of the Thanagarian iteration of the character on Bruce Timm’s Justice League cartoon, of which I cannot say enough good things…
But Ms. Marvel? Here was a female character that didn’t just strike a pose and point in order to engage foes. She decks bad guys, just like red-blooded Marvel dudes did! As I’ve said before, Marvel never had a female bruiser front and center, like Wonder Woman, up to that point. And so, despite the fact that she was written with rather a lot of Chris Claremont’s sympathetic feminist boilerplate, Carol Danvers had an important function.
But it may not be putting too fine a point on it to speculate that many comic book writers have problems with strong women. Before she became a key comic book writer, Gail Simone identified a syndrome in super hero fiction, which she dubbed “women in refrigerators.”
Taking its name from a plot point in a ‘90s Green Lantern story, in which Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend is murdered and stuffed into a refrigerator, Simone cataloged the indignities suffered by female characters in super hero fiction. Many many characters before Sue Dibny’s brutal killing by an insane Jean Loring were disposed with or forever compromised via editorial diktats that, most likely, were concocted and approved by men who probably were ignored or laughed at by chicks in high school. Oh, the horrors the fairer sex visits upon adolescent males who can tell you the issue in which the Vulture picked his nose!
Ms. Marvel got the “women in refrigerators” treatment but good. She was immaculately impregnated by a Kang-style dude, and then was hypnotized into living with him in some mystical dimension. She escapes and, after losing her powers to X-Man-to-be Rogue, gives the Avengers holy hell for abandoning her (well done, Mr Claremont). After a period that found her with cosmic powers as Binary, Kurt Busiek made her into a drunk in his Avengers run, but saw to it that she joined AA and becomes a lucid heroine again.
To Marvel’s credit, Carol Danvers is one of the key characters in their line, one with a mean roundhouse left. But she again bears the name “Ms. Marvel,” which is nowhere near as cool as Warbird (well done, Mr Busiek).
Commonalities:
Two broads known to throw a helluva punch, and known to have connections to expatriate extraterrestrial heroes on Earth.
Differences:
Hawkgirl has them wings and archaic weaponry; Warbird is super-strong, flies and shoots force blasts out of her fingertips.
Alternate histories:
HG: Kendra Saunders is a young pilot in the U.S. Air Force when she encounters and then enters a romantic relationship with Katar Hol, the Thanagarian dissident known as Hawkman. She appropriates some of his abilities, which she uses under the codename of Hawkgirl. Saunders then joins the Justice League, although she is spirited away to mate with a extra-dimensional being. She escapes and then angrily rebukes the JLA for abandoning her; she then spends some time with the Teen Titans before spending time in outer space. She returns to Earth and rejoins the JLA. Hawkgirl currently leads the sanctioned iteration of the JLA, which includes her current swain Captain Atom.
WB: As a young woman, Carol Danvers attempts suicide, but is revived when the spirit of an ancestor enters her body. Via Kree technology, she is imbued with abilities native to that race, and takes the codename Warbird. She joins a later iteration of the wartime organization the Liberty Legion, and is courted by a charter member of that organization to be named later, who she resists. After encountering Kree antagonists on their homeworld, Warbird has joined the Avengers, which includes her current swain, the Angel.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
The Avenger's Second String
Now we can say who the first three recruits to the Avengers would be…
Hawkeye
Ant-Man / Yellowjacket
Captain Mar-Vell
This iteration would later result in Yellowjacket becoming close to the Captain, a law and order-type soldier who would often be antagonized by the newly politicized Hawkeye…
Hawkeye
Ant-Man / Yellowjacket
Captain Mar-Vell
This iteration would later result in Yellowjacket becoming close to the Captain, a law and order-type soldier who would often be antagonized by the newly politicized Hawkeye…
Friday, January 25, 2008
A pair of hardbitten alien soldiers enamored of Earth
Hawkman - Captain Mar-Vell
Quite fond of this one here— I always liked the way both of these characters looked…
I refer here to the Hawkman rejigged by Gardner Fox and Joe Kubert in 1961: a police officer from the planet Thanagar operating on Earth. Like the Silver Age re-introductions of the Flash, Green Lantern and the Atom, the Katar Hol iteration was introduced to the DC diaspora with a science fiction bent (as opposed to the Golden Age version, who has his own equivalent —to be named later).
Post-Crisis, Hawkman possibly suffered the most convolutions of any significant DC character. Pre-Crisis, Thanagar was said to have been one of many peaceful, technocratic societies so beloved of Silver Age DC, but it turned warlike in the late ‘70s, prompting Katar to turn against his race. In 1989, a mini-series called Hawkworld posited that Thanagar had been run by militaristic society for centuries, but the PTB at DC decided that this would take place in the present, thereby making Hol’s first “canonical” appearance contemporaneous and thus mooting all prior continuity. The Hawkman that had served in the JLA was now the Golden Age iteration.
Seems easy enough to say that, after Superboy’s multiverse-shuffling tantrum, that Katar Hol came to Earth from Thanagar, saw the error of his race’s ways, got the “Hawkman” mantle handed over to him by Carter Hall, and away we go: no harm no foul. Instead, the Hawkman franchise is incredibly convoluted. So you’ll forgive me if I go with my eminently sensible solution.
As for Mar-Vell…perhaps understandably, in 1967 Stan Lee wanted to lay claim to the copyright “Captain Marvel,” one that hadn’t been used by DC for the Big Red Cheese since the company won ownership of the character from its lawsuit against Fawcett (don’t ask about the short-lived 1966 version published by MF Enterprises). So Marvel’s version was a dissident Kree soldier on Earth.
No one seemed to know what to do with him at first: Roy Thomas rendered him akin to the "Big Red Cheese" by having him trade places with perennial hanger-on Rick Jones (one would languish in a nether-dimension while the other was on Earth). Finally, Jim Starlin made him a “Cosmic Protector,” with accompanying “cosmic awareness”—this is the version beloved by fandom. In 1982, Starlin had Mar-Vell die of cancer…25 years later, he’s plucked out of the timestream, just before cancer advances so that he can assist in the “Civil War” to no meaningful effect. He also was ret-conned into fathering Genis Vell and Kree/Skrull hybrid the Hulking—ahh, editorial mandates!
Note that the "Big Red Cheese" is the essentially the same person as Billy Batson and is otherwise not an extraterrestrial, so any match-up with Mar-Vell doesn’t work.
Commonalities:
Both are soldiers hailing from militaristic societies who come to Earth, renounce their race’s domineering ways, and champion their adopted world. Both take terran secret identities— HM: Carter Hall, CM: Walter Lawson.
Differences:
Well, Hol has them wings, is fond of archaic weaponry and otherwise boasts enhanced strength common to Thanagarians. He also had a partner/wife Shayera. Whereas Vell’s abilities shifted over time: he began as a Kree soldier and gained the powers mentioned above. His fellow Kree soldier, Una, never had a superhero guise, but as you will see below, I’m going to cheat.
Alternate histories:
CM: Mar Vell, a soldier from the expansionist interstellar society the Kree is stationed on Earth with his wife/colleague Una. The two renounce their homeworld and battle evil doers as Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel (see who Carol Danvers is paired with at a later date) and join the Avengers.
HM: Katar Hol, a soldier from the expansionist interstellar society from Thanagar is stationed on Earth with his colleague/lover Shayera. The two renounce their homeworld, although Shayera is killed by another Thanagarian captain, leaving Hol to battle evil doers as Hawkman on Earth and in the cosmos (he finds time to co-exist with Snapper Carr and father some children as well). He often works with the Justice League, but eventually succumbs to cancer—that is, until an editorial mandate concocts a cheap ploy to resurrect him.
Quite fond of this one here— I always liked the way both of these characters looked…
I refer here to the Hawkman rejigged by Gardner Fox and Joe Kubert in 1961: a police officer from the planet Thanagar operating on Earth. Like the Silver Age re-introductions of the Flash, Green Lantern and the Atom, the Katar Hol iteration was introduced to the DC diaspora with a science fiction bent (as opposed to the Golden Age version, who has his own equivalent —to be named later).
Post-Crisis, Hawkman possibly suffered the most convolutions of any significant DC character. Pre-Crisis, Thanagar was said to have been one of many peaceful, technocratic societies so beloved of Silver Age DC, but it turned warlike in the late ‘70s, prompting Katar to turn against his race. In 1989, a mini-series called Hawkworld posited that Thanagar had been run by militaristic society for centuries, but the PTB at DC decided that this would take place in the present, thereby making Hol’s first “canonical” appearance contemporaneous and thus mooting all prior continuity. The Hawkman that had served in the JLA was now the Golden Age iteration.
Seems easy enough to say that, after Superboy’s multiverse-shuffling tantrum, that Katar Hol came to Earth from Thanagar, saw the error of his race’s ways, got the “Hawkman” mantle handed over to him by Carter Hall, and away we go: no harm no foul. Instead, the Hawkman franchise is incredibly convoluted. So you’ll forgive me if I go with my eminently sensible solution.
As for Mar-Vell…perhaps understandably, in 1967 Stan Lee wanted to lay claim to the copyright “Captain Marvel,” one that hadn’t been used by DC for the Big Red Cheese since the company won ownership of the character from its lawsuit against Fawcett (don’t ask about the short-lived 1966 version published by MF Enterprises). So Marvel’s version was a dissident Kree soldier on Earth.
No one seemed to know what to do with him at first: Roy Thomas rendered him akin to the "Big Red Cheese" by having him trade places with perennial hanger-on Rick Jones (one would languish in a nether-dimension while the other was on Earth). Finally, Jim Starlin made him a “Cosmic Protector,” with accompanying “cosmic awareness”—this is the version beloved by fandom. In 1982, Starlin had Mar-Vell die of cancer…25 years later, he’s plucked out of the timestream, just before cancer advances so that he can assist in the “Civil War” to no meaningful effect. He also was ret-conned into fathering Genis Vell and Kree/Skrull hybrid the Hulking—ahh, editorial mandates!
Note that the "Big Red Cheese" is the essentially the same person as Billy Batson and is otherwise not an extraterrestrial, so any match-up with Mar-Vell doesn’t work.
Commonalities:
Both are soldiers hailing from militaristic societies who come to Earth, renounce their race’s domineering ways, and champion their adopted world. Both take terran secret identities— HM: Carter Hall, CM: Walter Lawson.
Differences:
Well, Hol has them wings, is fond of archaic weaponry and otherwise boasts enhanced strength common to Thanagarians. He also had a partner/wife Shayera. Whereas Vell’s abilities shifted over time: he began as a Kree soldier and gained the powers mentioned above. His fellow Kree soldier, Una, never had a superhero guise, but as you will see below, I’m going to cheat.
Alternate histories:
CM: Mar Vell, a soldier from the expansionist interstellar society the Kree is stationed on Earth with his wife/colleague Una. The two renounce their homeworld and battle evil doers as Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel (see who Carol Danvers is paired with at a later date) and join the Avengers.
HM: Katar Hol, a soldier from the expansionist interstellar society from Thanagar is stationed on Earth with his colleague/lover Shayera. The two renounce their homeworld, although Shayera is killed by another Thanagarian captain, leaving Hol to battle evil doers as Hawkman on Earth and in the cosmos (he finds time to co-exist with Snapper Carr and father some children as well). He often works with the Justice League, but eventually succumbs to cancer—that is, until an editorial mandate concocts a cheap ploy to resurrect him.
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