OK, it’s been a while, and I don’t have Fenris’s powers, but Penance was the “real” Monet all along. Emplate (her brother Marius) trapped her in that body because she wouldn’t help him take over the world. (How? I don’t remember.) The M that we knew as Monet was really her 2 twin sisters Nicole and Claudette (one of whom was autistic.)
When they witnessed her turned into Penance, they used their latent mutant power to combine and take her place, but because she was their big sister who they idolized, they became their perfect perception of her, which is why M was always “perfect”.
Around half-way through the run, M split into the twins (an explosion maybe?) and later when the twins found out Penance was the real Monet, they switched places with her, freeing her from the Penance body. Eventually the twins were freed from the Penance body (don’t remember how) but Penance mysteriously lived on. It was never revealed who (if anyone) the new Penance was.
Like a lot of the middle issues of Gen X, the story was severely flawed, IMHO, but could have been great stuff if handled correctly.
Aha! Answered my own question about Clark Kent’s glasses! After years of wondering if I’d really read it, I found… SUPEY #330! And it’s just as contrived a “reason” as I’d thought:
>>… It seems his power of super-hypnotism is always at work “at low power”–even without his willing it. The super-hypnotism makes real his subconscious impulse to be seen as a weaker man. However, this is only so because of his glasses. The Kryptonian glass, recovered from his rocketship, must have some unknown property that boosts the low power super-hypnotic effect of his eyes.
This is why, sometimes, people don’t recognize him immediately from behind–thinking him bigger from the back, until he looks at them with his glasses.
When Superman broadcast his hypnotic block to all Metropolitans, commanding them to resist all hypnotism, that unknowingly included his own low-level hypnotic suggestion. So when Lana saw him in the WGBS wardrobe room, his glasses no longer had any effect.
Clark goes on to deduce that when he tried to hypnotize himself into having a block against the Spellbinder’s suggestions, it didn’t take because he had his glasses on when he tried hypnotizing himself in the mirror. The thing in the glasses that boosts his super-hypnotism for everyone else has the opposite effect on him. Thus he never sees himself as others see him.
Cameras must also reproduce this effect, and the trance must linger for a while. He’s lost his powers before without the hypnotic suggestion fading–but then he’s probably never been powerless long enough for the trance to fade completely.
“And here I thought my glasses were a dumb disguise! Far from it–without them, I wouldn’t even have a disguise at all!”
Ahem. Y’know, as much as I criticize all the retconners like Byrne, it’s nice having a less-than-omnipotent Superman who doesn’t have screwy powers like “super-hypnotic eyes”.
Tigole, Liefeld didn’t start out drawing like crap, go pick up Hawk and Dove from the eighties and look at the artwork in there. Well not stellar he seemed to have command of human anatomy, especially feet.
My theory on why he lasted so long is that he started, or exploited, the whole super-hero-with-big-ass-guns fad in comics. He gave all of the characters he drew nasty demeanors and howitzers, sales went up, and more people wanted to hire him. Then, before anyone caught on to him being a talentless hack, he helped start Image and after coming out of the gate well (sales wise), he had a not so successful career “creating” new characters who were in no way influenced by Marvel’s characters, and just violating copyright law in general. Toss in the whole “Heroes Reborn” deal and he got a bit of a second wind thus extending his reign of sub-mediocrity.
As for who damaged the comics industry, there’s plenty of blame to go around. If you want my opinion on why the current state of the comics industry is inherently flawed you can go here.
If you’re asking about why the industry was in such a sorry shape in the nineties, I’d say it started with Image and assorted other small(er) publishers that put out books heavy in violence and T&A, but short in story and creativity and sold oodles of them, and then Marvel and DC copied them thus making the majority of books on the market complete garbage (but shiny!). Toss in the “ultra-rare-limited-edition-holofoil-die-cut-black-and-white” crap and you’ve got a market of speculators buying tons of crap. One day a speculator actually read something he had bought, realized that in twenty years no one would want to read it and it would only be suitable for kindling, he spread the word, voila: market collapse.
It’s always been yellow sun/low gravity, except for the first few years when it was “Kryptonians were more highly evolved” (which I suspect got jettisoned when the Nazi ubermench idea became better known…I don’t have alot of Golden Age issue, so I don’t know for sure, though) and a brief period where Byrne decided to make Supid Fan Speculation[sup]tm[/sup] into cannon: Supe’s powers were all psychic (but he was psychic 'cause of the yellow sun…or something). That lasted maybe 15 minutes past the time Byrne left.
And regarding “making sense”, lemme clue you in on a secret that I’ve learned in the 30+ years I’ve been reading funnybooks:
NONE of it makes sense. None. Even the grim-n-gritty “realistic” stuff from the '80s. When writers say “realistic” they mean “depressing” or “bloody violent”. Let’s be honest: It’s all gibberish. The best you can hope for is consistant and enjoyable.
I dunno–I’m fond of the Golden Age theory that Krypton was just a larger planet, such that Superman was built for a heavier gravity. His leaping and super-strength were just his muscles having a greater relative strength. And they gave you those cute factoids about ants being able to lift 50 times their own weight.
Is Marvel planning on bringing Paradise X out in TP form? If so, any idea when this might happen? Also, any idea when the 2nd TP of the collected Alan Moore’s Supreme is due out?
Jim Kruger keeps saying that Paradise X will…um…eventually be collected, although apparently the current Marvel administration has been hostile to the Earth-X saga. (The final chapters, “A” and “X,” were axed by Quesada until the fans protested; they’re now being released in a single issue.)
Kruger has a discussion forum over on www.x-fan.com. He’s been (slowly) publishing the Appendicies to Paradise-X there.
A better explanation for people not recognizing Clark as Superman would be that he he uses the muscles in his face to distort his features slightly, this, combined with the glasses and a different hairstyle would be enough of a disguise. As for his body, nothing he does as Clark requires him to use his strength so as long as he takes care to keep his muscles in a more compact relaxed state he can wear slightly smaller clothing than he normally would making it seem like he has a thinner build than Superman. Also, people tend to associate Superman with his costume.
Yeah, but it’s just a matter of time before Clark slips up and wears his tighty-whities on the outside. Try hypnotizing that away. I think the best way to explain why nobody notices that Clark = Superman is to hypothesize that he eminates a field of stupidity (caused by the yellow sun) which prevents the people around him from making the obvious deduction. In their mentally feeble state, people start to say things like “Clark can’t be Superman. Clark is a mild-mannered reporter. Superman is not mild-mannered. Superman is not a reporter. Therefore, logically, Superman is not Clark Kent.”
Actually, that makes too much sense. Consider this: nobody actually looks at Superman’s face. When he’s in his crazy colorful suit, everybody is too busy staring at his crotch. Nobody has the slightest idea what he looks like. He could be Peter Jennings for all anyone knows.
With these kinds of ideas, it’s only a matter of time before I make it big in the comics industry. If anyone out there wants to hire me, I’m availible!
Anyone know when the JLA mini-series written by Keith Giffen and penciled by Kevin McGwire is coming out?
Also, is DC ever going to put out any of their Archive editions in TP form?
Alan Moore has been quoted as saying that he would never work for DC Comics again, after something “bad” happened, (I think it had to do with Watchmen. If it was something else, feel free to correct me. )
So, he’s never going to work for DC again.
Fine.
But isn’t America’s Best Comics a division/subdivision/imprint/line of DC Comics, much like Vertigo?
And if it is, isn’t Alan Moore pulling the old "Pay no attention to the man behind that curtain!!! trick?
I read a news blurb recently that said that Neil Gaiman was going to get the rights to Miracleman in exchange for his giving the rights to the characters that he created for Todd McFarlane’s Spawn to McFarlane. Is this true? I know that Gaiman won his lawsuit against Todd, but the question as to who owned the rights to MM was undecided, at least as I recall.
It wouldn’t surprise me. Moore enjoys telling obvious lies. These distract people from the great deceit he has engineered.
Alan Moore has no skull.
His head consists entierly of bloodshot eyes, a nose, a mouth, and lots and lots of hair. No skull. No brain. Moore is actually a being from the planet Snood. It is a cheery place of lush meadows and rolling hills. However, they have no tobbacco. Moore won an old space ship in a backroom poker game. It was in similar beer sodden dens he first heard rumors of Earth and this thing called smokes. After that, Snood was an empty place for him.
Other than Moore, the only evidence of his nonterrestrial origins are the remains of his ship. These have been remade into a first class still currently in the basement of Eddie Campbell.
Payton, ABC is not an imprint of DC like Vertigo. All books published in the Vertigo line are owned heart and soul by DC and are subject to DC editorial input. The ABC line is owned solely by Alan Moore with next to no editorial input (DC can refuse to publish anything offensive) as the deal between the two regards the physical publishing of the books and little else.
The history on ABC is that it was founded in a publishing deal with Jim Lee and WildStorm comics. A little later Lee sold WildStorm to DC, kinda undercutting Moore. However due to the contract signed between Moore and WildStorm, or perhaps a new deal cut with DC (I’m a little fuzzy on the specifics) Moore retained basically the same deal with DC that he had had with Wildstorm.
Moore retaining the same liberties allowed him to rationalize away the deal with DC as not actually working for them, because if you look at it he’s not: DC pretty much can’t tell him what to do, and Moore owns all the rights to the characters and can at any time (or suitable notice) split and take them with him if DC pisses him off.
)