Just to show how tastes differ, I’m absolutely reversed on this. I cringed at the Flea circus when they first showed up, and winced when they introduced themselves.
The Prankster, on the other hand, I thought was jolly good fun.
I am perhaps oversensitive to characters I percieve as being pastiches, parodies, or allegories of other characters. They have to work pretty damn hard to differentiate themselves from the original or justify their existance via sheer quality before I can accept them. The Prankster has always just struck me as a G-rated Joker. If you want to tell that story, then import the Joker from over in Gotham. As a counterexample, the Trickster, another comedy-based villain, avoids this fate by making his gimmick more “craftier than his enemies” and less “exploding whopee cushions”.
Say what you will about the Flea Circus, but at leats they aren’t blatantly superfluous to a better known villain.
Then you’d have a completely different story. And a much higher bodycount.
The Prankster’s an overgrown adolescent, getting off on these jumbo-sized practical jokes.
The Joker’s a sadistic murderer with a twisted sense of humour.
Their gimmicks both run towards jokes - although the Joker isn’t doing so much with that in any of his recent appearances, that I’ve seen - but Joker’s jokes are designed to kill, Prankster’s just to cause chaos, and give Prankster a juvenile laugh.
If Prankster grew up and stopped finding his pranks funny, he’d give up his carreer. When Joker stopped finding his jokes funny…he kept on killing, but aside from the occasional use of his Joker Gas, they’re not so gimmicky any more.
Prankster’s a lot more fun than Joker, and a lot less scary.
Other books I’ve gotten to so far:
Ultimate Extinction 4: Cap’s more in the mode he is from The Ultimates, only not as much fun…worst of both worlds, I’m afraid. Still…pretty good book, on the whole.
Superior Showcase 1: This was a lot of fun. My favourite had to be Butterfly, if for nothing else, because the closing line made me giggle madly.
Agreed. I confess I think it’s sort of neat that at there’s at least one supervillain who still fully embraces the time-honored Silver Age tradition of elaborate capers incorporating giant stage props. Sure, you could distract the authorities just as easily by bombing a chemical refinery or something, but it just wouldn’t have the panache of huge animated crosswalk signs, would it? If Ernie Kovacs had been a supervillain, he would have been the Prankster.
I loved his exchange with Ultimate Captain Marvel.
Marvel: Captain, do you have a thing about kicking people when they’re down?
CA: No, Captain, I’ve always felt that was the best time to kick them.
Thunderbolts #101
[spoiler]Now empowered with Moonstone’s, err, moonstones, Zemo has now become Cosmic Zemo and has created a ‘folding castle’, a composite facility located between dimensions. He has bought Melissa here to ‘mend fences’ with her (this takes place right after Abe asks her to rejoin the team in New TBolts #1). His idea of ‘fence mending’ seems to involve lots of sucking face. The moonstones enable him to glimpse possible futures. He has healed the burnt face he received back in Avengers/Thunderbolts, but prefers to stay masked because “everyone presumes a scarred Zemo is a vengeful Zemo.”
Erik meets with his brother Conrad and they either patch things up between them, or Conrad feeds him a masterful load of bull, depending on how you want to see it. Erik has serious self-esteem problems. Melissa comes to talk to him and tells him he’s going to have to work twice as hard to win back her trust after all the shit he pulled with Genis.
Nighthawk doesn’t like the thought of Zemo on the team. Melissa fires him. He throws a fit and flies through the window. Blizzard snarks at Melissa for firing him earlier, and she tells him to prove that she was wrong. Joystick tries to get Zemo to join her in the shower. Andreas (the new Swordsman) pours out all of his alcohol in an attempt to rehabilitate his life.
Radioactive Man deduces that something’s up between Melissa and Zemo and confronts her about it. He is very pissed off. She reveals that she is only getting close to Zemo in order to kill him![/spoiler]
- I’m 90 percent positive Zemo already knows about her plan. This is NOT a man you want to play with.
- Conrad’s story has holes the size of Buicks in it but Erik eats it up.
- Still no Speed Demon.
- Joystick’s theme song: Thunderbolt’s HO!
- The fill-in artist draws a very sexiful Zemo. Melissa shows some serious cleavage, too.
That was a good line, but it does point out what I mean…he’s very ‘I like to hit things’ in this issue. but aside from that lone, not as…over the top as Millar’s version.
Anyway…more:
Ultimate Spider-man 93: Well…WTF? Also…Wadey? O_o Guh.
Transformers Infiltration 4: I love this book so much. I’m still wishing someone would refer to Bumblebee in the third person, so we could know if he’s still a he, or if his holoform being a cute chick actually has a reason behind it. The cover with the G1 versions of Bumblebee, Ratchet, Blitzwing and Thundercracker (I think - I’ve never been able to keep the planes straight) amuses me.
Am I the only person not liking the Captian Atom book, with that silly “I’m a bomb!” plot device to keep him fighting the Wildstorm characters?
I’ve enjoyed Captain Atom so far. It’s not the best thing I ever read, but it holds my interest, and they seem to be having fun with it.