One character gave the english speaking world an exclamation; the other gave nerds continuity porn

Captain Marvel- Quasar/Marvel Man

The other day, while looking around for info on the second character named above, I happened upon a message board posting where some nerd was talking about how much he liked Quasar, a “cosmic” hero that kicked around without much notice until he starred in what I gather was a highly wonky series penned by Mark Gruenwald and which ran from the late ‘80s to the mid ‘90s (this was the time I was not reading funnee books) .

In the Image era to which the series yielded, said the poster, every character grimaces while he blows villains heads off. Whereas Quasar is a noble young man who tries to do the right thing. To which another poster, evincing the cheap scorn some nerds on the internet indulge in so as to create a geek pecking order, sneered “every character, no matter how lame, is someone’s favorite.”

Apparently, Gruenwald saw Quasar as an “everyman” character who would explore the cosmic byways of the MU in a different, more wide-eyed manner than, say, the Silver Surfer. I liked Gruenwald’s Captain America and enjoy superhero wonkiness, so I’d like to check the series out one day.

So of course, a character known only to earnest goofballs will be paired with a hero who frequently outsold the Superman books in the 1940s and early ‘50s; provoked a lawsuit from DC Comics against the character’s publisher Fawcett Publications over a reasonable similarity to Superman; ceased publication and saw its copyright languish so that other publishers could use the name; gave Gomer Pyle his favorite exclamation; and was finally purchased by DC and fully integrated into its fictional diaspora. Most importantly, Captain Marvel is probably better known than any DC character save Superman, Batman, Robin and Wonder Woman.

The fanciful mythos common to the Big Red Cheeses probably doesn’t work past the 1940s: talking tigers and worms are best left in the past. But Captain Marvel worked well for about 25 years as a wish-fulfillment of many kids who read comic books before (and to a lesser extent after) the Stan and Jack revolution. Now he’s taken the wizard Shazam’s place as a mystical vizier, or somesuch other dumb shit.

Commonalities:
It’s the sense that both are essentially decent young fellows charged with great powers by ancient beings.

Differences:
Ostensibly, Quasar’s abilities to create energy constructs with his quantum bands, not to mention his relative youth and his cosmic bailiwick, would line up with Kyle Rayner. And Roy Thomas linked Rick Jones to Mar-Vell as an explicit nod to his namesake.

Alternate histories:

CM: Billy Batson is a rookie operative at a government agency who acquires an artifact once used by a that grants him immense strength, stamina and control of mystical thunderbolts. After a few years as the novice hero Captain Marvel, he travels into space and discovers that the artifact is a remnant of a offshoot civilization of “New Gods,” and that he has been chosen by the alien wizard Shazam to succeed the deceased Hawkman as a guardian of the “rock of eternity.” While he joins the Justice League for a short time, Captain Marvel spends most of his time opposing menaces throughout the cosmos; he apparently has been revived in a quasi-spectral state after he was thought to have been killed by an extraterrestrial antagonist.

QU: Teenager Wendell Vaughn encounters Eon, an omniscient creature who grants him various “quantum” abilities, which he henceforth accesses by transforming into adult form. Using the name Marvel Man and then Quasar, Vaughn is one of the few superhumans who can credibly challenge the Mighty Thor. During stints with the Avengers and the Liberty Legion, many colleagues, unaware that he’s truly an adolescent, note his naive demeanor. After a cosmic conflagration, Quasar has taken the place of the slain Eon as a universal guardian granted with “cosmic awareness.”

How they woulda done super heroes in the days of the old testament

Spectre - Vision (Aarkus)

In which the spirit of vengeance and the right hand of the Abrahamic God in the DCU is paired with…an obscure Kirby/ Simon creation from 1940 that has only seen print a handful of times in the past 60 years. Some believe that two creators modeled the first Vision on the Spectre anyway.

Or should the Spectre be paired with the Living Tribunal, or some other omnipotent cosmic spirit?

Commonalities:
Both are otherworldly, ethereal creatures that deal swift justice to evildoers.

Differences:
Well, the Spectre has been more or less the DCU’s Yahweh for almost seventy years, whereas the Vision is utterly obscure (and from another dimension).

Alternate histories:

SP: A being from another dimension is transported to Earth in the 1940s, and briefly combats to Nazis and criminals. The Spectre encounters the likes of Batman and Aquaman during wartime before returning to his former plane of existence.

AAR: An immensely powerful, nigh-omnipotent spirit known as Aarkus inhabits the body of a mortal during World War II, and works alongside the Liberty Legion. Afterwards Aarkus acts as the most powerful being to associate with the super-heroes of Earth.

Mongoose blood? Heavy water, sure, but mongoose blood?

Flash (Jay Garrick) - Whizzer (Bob Frank)

Here be the second post that finds Golden Age characters with similar abilities paired with one another, which hopefully compensates for a lack of same in pairings of silver-, bronze- and beyond- characters…

So here we have the very first speedster, the template for every character conceived similarly since. Including the second cited here, whose origin is universally mocked as the most poorly-aged provenance of the Golden Age: he gained his super-speed due to a transfusion of mongoose blood.

Commonalities:
The original speedsters of their respective diasporas.

Differences:
None to speak of, other than one is a key character in the history of superhero fiction, and the other is regarded fondly for the reason cited above.

Alternate histories:

FL: A young man named Jay Garrick is gravely injured in 1940; he receives a blood transfusion that activates a meta-human gene which grants him the ability to move and react at superhuman speeds. Taking the codename the Flash, Frank combats crime and the Third Reich throughout the 1940s and joins the Justice Society. He marries another extra-normal operative, but their union is doomed when the two are exposed to radiation. Years after the woman dies, the Flash reappears and briefly works with the Justice League before he dies himself.

WH: A young college student named Bob Frank inhales experimental “heavy water” fumes, which activate a mutant gene granting him the ability to move and react at superhuman speeds. He takes the codename the Whizzer and combats criminals and the Third Reich and co-founds the Liberty Legion. The Whizzer retires for several decades, but in recent years has returned alongside other Legionnaires: due to his retarded aging, he is active mentoring novice superhuman operatives.

Winged Warriors of WWII

Hawkman (Golden age) - Red Raven

With some upcoming golden age-oriented pairings, we will see characters that have similar M.O.’s assigned to one another —unlike, notably, previous posts where the fast guys or winged guys are paired with characters with dissimilar abilities…

Such as this one, which finds the original conception of Hawkman, one of DC’s key wartime characters and the perpetual chairman of the Justice Society, paired with an obscure character that was published once in 1940 when Marvel was called Timely, and was revived in the 1960s and 1970s by Roy Thomas.

Commonalities:
Both are the winged warriors of World War II!

Differences:
The golden age Hawkman has been a mainstay of the DU for decades as the premiere member of the Justice Society. Whereas Red Raven was ret-conned to have been a member of the Liberty Legion, and was used as an antagonist in the 1960s and ‘70s for the Angel and Sub-Mariner. I read somewhere that RR had not died and became leader of the “bird-people” —which were also ret-conned to be a separatist sect of Inhumans— but references differ as to whether his survival has stuck.

Alternate histories:

HM: An european child is the only survivor of a catastrophe that claims his parents, and is raised by a reclusive cult in Northern Africa that preserves the customs of ancient Egyptian culture. Upon adulthood, he chooses to return to the wider world in order to combat the Axis Powers; using mystical and archaic equipment, he takes the name Hawkman. He eventually joins the Justice Society and opposes threats to America’s home front. Hawkman returns to the cult, whose population enters suspended animation; the cult has been revived, and Hawkman sporadically interacts with other superhumans.

RR: A young man discovers that he is both the descendent and a reincarnated king of a tribe of “bird-people.” He excavates equipment that enables him to operate as Red Raven; he initially opposes criminals and the Third Reich, and soon joins the Liberty Legion as its chairman. The Legion disbands in the 1950s, but reforms in recent years, often working with the Avengers. Red Raven’s aging has been retarded, and he currently serves as a mentor to younger superhumans in the Liberty Legion.

Hocus! And, Indeed, Pocus!

Dr. Fate- Dr. Strange

But of course!

I’ll limit my comments here just to note that the powers that were/be at DC found it necessary to replace the original Fate, Kent Nelson, with a variety of successors. This is part of a tendency at the company to have older characters cede their names and roles to younger, hipper iterations that, y’know, the kids can relate to. Never mind that magicians can easily avoid such things as aging…

Commonalities:
The two are the sorcerers supreme of their respective diaspora — magic being a discipline that has more or less been shown to do anything that creators need to do at a particular time. And Nelson was shown to have, likes Strange, medical training at least once, which is the only time that I'm aware of him having much going on besides practicing magic…

Differences:
Only that the “Fate” persona was often synonymous with his master Nabu and thus was separate from that of Nelson, whereas Strange comes by his portentous bearing on his own.

Alternate histories:

DF: An arrogant physician named Kent Nelson sees his medical abilities deteriorate, and resolves to seek out the ancient wizard Nabu in his abode in the Mesopotamian region Ur. Nelson intends to have the sorcerer cure his ills, but eventually recognizes his arrogance and consents to become Nabu’s disciple. He emerges fully trained as Dr. Fate, the most powerful mage on Earth, and returns to the west, where he opposes supernatural menaces and soon encounters a woman named Inza, who becomes his disciple and lover. Fate is the premiere mystical consultant to the superhuman community; he works closely with the Martian Manhunter, Aquaman and another individual to be named later.

DS: A young Stephen Strange accompanies his father into a tomb in the Himalayas, where the two encounter the legendary wizard the Ancient One; Strange’s father dies, and Stephen is raised and trained in the mystic arts by his new mentor. By the dawning of World War II, Dr. Strange’s training as the most powerful sorcerer on Earth is complete, and he returns to the West, where he combats supernatural menaces and opposes the Axis Powers alongside the Liberty Legion. He marries his longtime companion Clea and retreats from view until recent years when he serves with a re-formed Liberty Legion and with the Avengers. Strange dies, but the spirit of the Ancient One chooses others to take his place.

One feminist with a sword, another with a cleavage window

Power Girl- Valkyrie

When I started to pay attention to super hero culture again a few years ago, I was very amused to see that, in the past decade, Power Girl has been established to be…ahem…the super heroine with the biggest rack in the DC universe.

Look around message boards frequented by the kind of miscreant who could possibly understand what I’m talking about here long enough, and you will find drooling references to the character.

This perplexes me, as I’ve never been turned on by, or have crushed on, distaff fictional creations of this sort. But adherents of “creator’s intent” should approve of DC’s prevailing policy on Power Girl’s pontoons, since legendary artist/co-creator Wally Wood apparently resolved to draw her breasts bigger and bigger until his editor noticed and told him to stop.

Otherwise, PG was created to be an Earth II answer to Supergirl. But Crisis Numero Uno did away with parallel Earth conceit, and then Power Girl was said to have been an ancestor of the obscure Atlantean wizard Arion…or some shit! Under this origin, she could have been paired with She Hulk or Warbird. But, come Crisis II, PG was again said to have come from Krypton of Earth II’s universe and as such is the only survivor of that universe…or some shit!

So she’ll go with an Asgardian character…one who was initially cooked up by Roy Thomas to clumsily acknowledge second wave feminism in the pages of the Avengers, and afterwards was convolutedly shown to be a female iteration of the Mighty Thor. My gawd, you try and untangle all the history of the Valkyrie!

Commonalities:
Respectively, these two are female versions of Superman and Thor, and both often spouted feminist boilerplate at the time of their creation.

Differences:
I’m not sure, but I think Power Girl has been shown to be essentially a modern woman; hardly a mythological maiden charged with escorting fallen warriors to their eternal reward in Valhalla.

Alternate histories:

PG: A kryptonian warrior named Kara Zor-L is put into suspended animation: her consciousness comes to reside in the body of an earth-woman named Karen Starr. The two aspects are fused, and under the code name Power Girl, she serves in a organization with the Martian Manhunter, Aquaman and others. Although the “Kara Zor-L” aspect eventually perishes, the earthling Starr has survived and retains some kryptonian abilities.

VA: A parallel universe iteration of Asgard is destroyed by Ragnarok: like her cousin, the Mighty Thor native to this universe, Brunhilde is transported to Earth, where she emerges as an adult with all the abilities of an Asgardian: she takes the human identity of Barbara Norris. As the Valkyrie, she serves with the Liberty Legion until all universes are melded in to one. While under the impression that her heritage is entirely different, Valkyrie joins the Avengers and a new Liberty Legion; she has recently realized her true nature.

Pretty birds

Black Canary- Mockingbird

Like these broads quite a bit, and was disappointed that the second named was done away with: I wager this’d have something to do with the “women in refrigerators” perplex mentioned a few posts ago.

Commonalities:
Super tough blonde bombshells with smart mouths both, betrothed to premiere archers.

Differences:
Mockingbird has no eardrum-shattering “canary cry,” and ain’t the daughter of a wartime heroine known by the same name.

Alternate histories:

BC: Dinah Lance is a vastly resourceful and formidable government agent who takes on the guise of Black Canary; she meets and quickly marries Green Arrow. The two lead a West Coast expansion version of the Justice League. When she lets an antagonist fall to his death, Black Canary becomes estranged from Green Arrow, but the two are eventually reconciled. She perishes while defending her husband.

MB: Barbara “Bobbi” Morse is the daughter of a extranormal operative active during WWII. She follows her mother’s footsteps as Mockingbird, and soon joins the Avengers, where she meets Hawkeye. She begins a relationship with the archer, which is interrupted by his seeming death. While Mockingbird later joins the Liberty Legion and Heroes for Hire, she has recently become the chairwoman of the reconstituted Avengers. Mockingbird has recently married the resurrected Hawkeye.

Can't go wrong with feral mammals

Wildcat- Wolverine

The second character cited above is Marvel Comics’ most significant breakout character since the 1960s, and emblemizes the prominence of the X-Men. A quasi-antihero who’d just as soon kill his opponents appeared to be what comic book fans wanted in the 1980s (the Punisher was soon to follow), and Wolverine has since been a cornerstone of Marvel’s line.

Consequently, the character has been overexposed since the early ‘80s, and the endless convolutions that have swamped his backstory and his doings in the past 25 years have neatly paralleled the problematic continuity of the X-Men franchise.

For a while, I thought that Arsenal or Cyborg (both actual Titans, after all) would be good matches for Wolverine. But a while ago, it occurred to me that Wildcat, DC’s own Joe Louis, is pretty much what the doc ordered. Obviously, he’s never been a Titan, but cheating on team lineups as such is what we do here! In any case, ol’ Ted has been a big player in the DC diaspora for the past decade or so, which suits me fine.

Commonalities:
Both have been shown to be virtually immortal (Logan’s healing factor prevents him from aging; Grant was imbued mystically with “nine lives”) and both are as implacable a combatant as anyone knows of in either universe. Both also have been shown to have heightened senses commensurate to certain animals.

Differences:
Logan is prone to beserker rages, and only occasionally exhibits the avuncular qualities that define Grant, who does not possess a skeleton and retractable claws laced with a fictional metal. Wolverine is also one of Marvel’s best-known properties, whereas only devotees of super hero fiction are aware of Wildcat.

Alternate histories:

WC: A mysterious, violence-prone man named Ted Grant is born in the late 19th century. His preternatural ability to recover from deadly adversity (his “nine lives”) ensures that he remains vital long past a normal human lifespan; he travels the world for many years as a soldier and mercenary. He becomes amnesiac and feral after World War II: Grant eventually is dragooned into the service of a government agency, for which he adopts the codename Wildcat. He rebels against the agency and is recruited into the Titans, where he befriends Changeling, is attracted to Donna Troy and bristles under Nightwing’s leadership. While Wildcat remains with the Titans to this day, he has lately joined the non-government sanctioned Justice League. Wildcat is recognized as one of the most deadly combatants on Earth.

WO: During WWII, a champion boxer known only as Logan is inspired to take the codename Wolverine in order to combat the Axis powers and various superhuman menaces. He joins the Liberty Legion during the war. His mutant "healing factor" sees that his aging is arrested, and for years afterwards, he’s recognized as one of the most formidable hand to hand combatants on Earth, and thus trains many newcomers to the super-hero community. While most of his wartime comrades grow enfeebled and perish, Wolverine currently mentors younger operatives in the revived Liberty Legion. He has also encountered various children who he has sired in absentia.

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.

Two sidekicks and a mutant…all dutiful dudes

Nightwing - Cyclops

Robin- Bucky

Yet another entry in KomikKounterparts’ Big Cheating Cavalcade!

I justify one DC character being paired with two Marvel one by positing that the Dick Grayson character is hugely important, and in two ways: A.) He is known by non- comic book readers as Batman’s little friend; B.) He is known by nerds as Batman’s ex-sidekick, the leader of the Teen Titans and DC's key “legacy” character.

So here we split him into two…

The Titans leader/solo guy prevailing iteration is paired with the key player in the X-Men mythos, the straight-shooter/responsible guy who has been de-emphasized for decades in favor of Wolverine (Summer’s character was killed off for no particular reason in the third X-film).

So the sidekick version is paired with Captain America’s accomplice. For forty-five years, the death of Bucky was virtually the only death that stuck in Marvel continuity: he’s now said to have been a —ahem— Russian spy since the end of the war and now has taken on the identity of Captain America. This second pairing also allows me to reference Earth II continuity from the ‘70s…see below…

Commonalities:
Bucky, a creation of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, was obviously modeled after Jerry Robinson and -ahem- Bob Kane's Robin, so them two line right up. As for Cyclops, Grayson was written as a similarly driven, principled leader guy once Titans writer Marv Wolfman, likely mindful of interpersonal dynamics that had worked in X-Men, got his hands on him.

Differences:
Only that Cyclops shoots them optic rays, and Nightwing doesn’t. Otherwise, both are supremely resourceful and tremendously skilled combatants.

Alternate histories:

NW: Orphan Richard Grayson is taken in by scientist Niles Caulder as the first student in a school for young crimefighters and meta-humans. Once fellow students Donna Troy, Roy Harper and two others to be named later join, Grayson begins to lead the Teen Titans against a number of menaces. Shortly after Grayson and Troy become lovers, the original lineup of the Titans leave the school; Grayson then leads a new team. Some time later, it appears that Troy, in her guise as the Dark Angel, dies, and a dejected Grayson leaves the Titans. But the true Troy reappears, and she and Grayson are reunited. Nightwing has remained with the Titans ever since.

CY: Orphaned young mutant Scott Summers becomes the apprentice of Captain America, and gravitates towards four other mutant sidekicks, including Jean Grey and Warren Worthington. The five name themselves the X-Men and then combat various menaces for a few years, disband and then reform with four younger mutants. Cyclops becomes distant from Captain America and eventually presides over the X-men during a number of tragedies. He works on his own and with the Avengers and the Defenders for a short time before finally reforming the X-Men.

RO: During World War II, Bruce “Batman” Wayne takes on an young apprentice, Dick Grayson, who is assigned the code name Robin. He serves alongside Batman, Aquaman and other operatives until the waning days of the war, when he is assumed to have been killed in action. It has recently been revealed that he has been an operative for a foreign government since WWII: he has recently assumed the “Batman” identity after Wayne’s assassination.

BU: In a parallel universe containing “Counter-Earth,” a Captain America native to said diaspora began his career shortly before wartime and adopted James Buchanan Barnes as his partner. As this Captain America retires and transitions to a military career in his identity as Steve Rogers, “Bucky” continues as a costumed operative and eventually joins the Liberty Legion, Counter-Earth’s premiere super-hero organization.