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I've always thought that USAgent has been an underutilized character. A man with the same powers as Captain America who used to have anger issues and a drinking problem should make for better reading than the character often does.

I had some hope for him when the Marvel crossover Maximum Security was announced and it was revealed that USAgent would have a new role in the Marvel universe: a super-human marshall. This I thought would finally give him the chance to be used right. I could just see it in my mind's eye. USAgent acting like Tommy Lee Jones from the Fugitive, tough as nails and intense. This is the guy that they call in when the Rhino breaks out of the Vault and goes on a rampage in Detroit.

Instead they dropped that ball. The crossover was horrendous. USAgent came off as even more arrogant, which up until that moment I hadn't though possible.

I haven't been the biggest Superman fan. There's something about the character that seems stodgy to me, stifled. Unlike most people who might make such a complaint my argument isn't that the character of Superman is too altruistic or too outdated, my feeling is that the trappings around Superman are stale. After all, Captain America is another old character with strong morals but he doesn't get nearly the amount of flack as Superman does.

The problem is that when you have a character who is as powerful as Superman is, it is hard to get me concerned for his physical well-being. I know that there are few obstacles that he cannot overcome (including cheating death). We've seen him go toe-to-toe with so many supervillians that it is hard to imagine him losing a fight. The way to make me care about Superman is his supporting cast and the world around him.

Let's start with the supporting cast. What's amazing about Superman is that he's married (and unlike Spider-Man, they've kept him married). This relationship more than any other has the ability to humanize him. It provides us with a chance to see Superman having to deal with mundane things that are of no concern to a bachelor, which is just a hot bed for humorous situations. He also works in the strangest office environment known to man. Whereas most people go to work and sit in a cubicle or perhaps they work retail, this man teleports to the moon and watches news reports.

To compare Superman to Captain America once more, it's great to have morals but you need to see those morals put to the test. He has the ability to kill almost anyone, is he ever tempted? I know that Superman had vowed never to kill again but what if someone came after Lois or his parents? Also, if he has the power to overthrow a brutal dictator, would he? In a world of global terrorist cells and nations preparing for war, how does Superman deal with the fact that he is a one man army? And this is leaving out the bigger, yet simplier, question of how does Superman deal with the rise of antihero?

Now, Superman still has to have villains to fight. You don't get to be an icon like Superman without getting into tussles. Since he is so strong, though, why not position him up against people who are a better threat. For instance, as he is vulnerable to magic, why not have him fight a beast whose power is of a magical origin. Also why not have him face off against telepaths? And if he has to go one-on-one make sure it's with someone that can actually pose a threat to him physically and don't forgot that there are also ways to physically handicap him temporarily such as being sick, overworked, switching bodies, what have you. But it should always be remembered that the best Superman villain is Lex Luthor, a very intelligent human. That is what protagonist/antagonist relationships are based on, utilizing opposites.

Some might say that this is asking a lot and it is, to be quite honest. I probably wouldn't even have asked for it had I not already seen it done. In my opinion, Joe Kelly did the best run on Superman. He managed to fill the book with humor and emotional resonance. He also pitted Supes against the Elite, a great tongue-in-cheek poke at the Authortiy (who had just made a great tongue-in-cheek poke at the Avengers). It was during his tenure which they also infected Superman with a virus that made him more physically vulnerable, not to mention Lois making a backroom deal with Lex Luthor. I'm not saying that his run was the best but at least it shows that this crazy balancing act can be done.

What can you say about a character who spells his codename without an 'H'? Who was actually ditched by Artie and Leech, tiny grotesque mutant children with relatively useless powers? For those of you without a side interest in sad, forgotten characters, Taki Matsuya is a wheelchair-bound mutant with the ability to 'technoform': that is, to manipulate glass, plastic and metal into any form he can imagine, including complex machinery. He's turned his wheelchair into a helicopter, added jets to it, etc.

Which leads the first obvious question about this character, which I will illustrate from a (paraphrased) dialog between Jaybeans and his girlfriend, who has never heard of Taki.

Jaybeans: So this character, he's confined to a wheelchair, but his power is, he can manipulate glass, plastic, and metal, So he--

Girlfriend: Wait.

Jaybeans: What?

Girlfriend: Why doesn't he make legs?

Yes, friends, this question, which occurs to most people within 30 seconds after hearing the situation, has never occurred to Wiz Kid over the months and years he's had his powers. He is actually bitter about being in the wheelchair, forever scarred by this accident which also took his parents. But no, no cybernetic legs, no exoskeleton. So, if we're talking rehabilitation, the first step with the character would be to establish that he can make legs if he goddamn well feels like it. Well, no, the first step would actually be to retire the name 'wiz kid', leaving his days of being the middle school urinating champion to the dustbin of history. Then establishing that he can make himself walk. Well, no. the first step is to take this photo:

"Now that I've got these elbow pads and this safety helmet, mama says no-one's gonna hurt me ever again! Especially me!" (glances away) "I hurt myself sometimes. I fall over. (beat.) If only I could walk."

Destroy all extant copies and never have him in that outfit again. Sure, it'll mean a few scraped elbows and skinned knees, but dignity isn't free. I think, um, Proust said that. Then the next step, retire the name Wiz Kid, then establish he can walk.

Or is that too easy? After thinking about this fifty times longer than I should have (read: 30 minutes), I thought of another aspect to it. Taki was a mechanical genius before his powers manifested, in fact a lot of his self-image came from that mastery and the work he'd put into it. So, yeah, it's cool that he has these amazing powers and can create anything he imagines with little work... but it also takes little work, and no true understanding of the process. It kind of makes a mockery of his intelligence. Not only has he lost his legs, but in a sense, his vast intelligence has been amputated as well. It doesn't matter how smart he is now, anybody with that accident of genetics could invent this shit. When people compliment him on an invention, he feels like a fraud. Even if he forces himself through the process, can he be sure his power isn't working? Was it ever due to his own effort, or has his entire life been dictated by blind chance, both beneficial and detrimental? Maybe he refuses to leave the chair until he can be sure, until the solution he creates is his alone, and not due to any 'cheating' on behalf of his strange abilities.

Of course he knows he can leave the chair. Maybe he did it five minutes after figuring out what he could do. And yet he doesn't. He won't. Not until he can do it without any fucking help, from God or anything else. Otherwise, what good is he? What value does he have, as a human being?

Rogue is a southern woman. It's something that seems both inescapable but also overly ignored. When it comes to mangling her speech pattern, the writer's will go straight for the South, but when it comes to giving her subtle nuance, it is often ignored. So much of her character seems to come right out of her culture identity but are often ignored. For instance, due to her power she cannot be touched. This is a powerful representation of what southern women are taught. This is, after all, a part of the country that celebrates the book I Kissed Dating Goodbye.

Even her super strength (which she had up until recently) reminds me of the strength of Southern women. Of course, the strength that they are attributed is often emotional, not physical but that's why it's a metaphor. True to her southern roots, Rogue is in her own way a steel magnolia, delicate but strong.

The greater problem isn't that most writers don't understand her. The greater problem is Rogue is the poster child for the permanent second act. It seemed that she is always in love with Gambit, but they can't touch, but she loves him, but they can't touch. In a world with Leech and Forge's power-zapping gun and the Genosha collars, I just can't believe that this is still a problem. I'd rather have the two of the use a collar as means to be intimate but then she resents it. In a way it could become a metaphor for prophylactics, where it all too often becomes the women's responsibility. You could even have a "why don't you try wearing the collar, just once?" Anything other than this ultra-repetitative state she's in.

Magneto is a character that can never seem to remain consistent. He vasilates between two different outlooks: evil, tyranical would-be king and angry, misunderstood mutant liberator. Lately he's being portrayed more as the former ever since the Joseph ordeal when the head honchos at Marvel apparently wanted to "put teeth" back in Magneto. It's not that one of those portrayals is inheirently better than the other, the character is dynamic enough and more importantly his presence is commanding enough that he can go either way. The bigger issue is consistency.

By far, the more intriguing route to go is with him as the liberator, which in a way is quite a shame because it robs the X-Men of a great villian. Still, the feeling I always got was that Professor Xavier was the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Magneto's Malcom X. Like Malcolm X, all Magneto has known has been prejudice, hatred and fear. The greater point is that both Malcolm X and Dr. King had valid ponts, it was more a matter of your particular point of view of the world.

Magneto grew up in Nazi Germany where he lost his family and later in his life, his wife was taken from him; both events gave him plenty of good reason to be distrustful. Fool me twice, shame on you. Fool me three times, shame on me. At this point all he really wants to do is to seperate the mutant world from the humans, whether that be in Genosha or Asteroid M. Much as some of the militant civil rights groups of the 60's, he is willing to use the ends to justify his means.

But much as Malcolm X changed during his Hajj, Magneto had to have a revelation that in fighting racism, he had become a racist. His attempts to seperate were only excaserbating things. Chris Claremont played with this idea in Uncanny X-Men 200 where Magneto takes over the X-Men. If I may be allowed a quick aside, I always enjoyed Claremont's take on Magneto, it seemed like he got the character pretty well. Even the way that he returned Magneto to being a villian much later with the new X-Men book that he launched with Jim Lee was very believeable and didn't sacrifice any of the character.

Back on topic, the problem with Magneto's conversion is where do you go from there? Malcolm X was assassinated, some of his own followers and allies having felt betrayed by him. So unless the writer planned to kill Magneto off, the parallels would have to stop there. What's interesting is when Magneto joined the X-Men, the Brotherhood was left to their own devices and, unlike Magneto, not all of their motives were pure. Without him being there to guide them and keep an eye on things, then they'd run unabated, performing terrorist acts in his name. He'd find himself the poster child for a cause he no longer believed in. How does it feel when you see a church burned to the ground in your name? It'd be tragic, that no matter what good deed you did, only the bad would be remembered.

There are logical repercussions to the life that he'd chosen, the only thing is that the writers and editors would have to commit to portraying the character in a particular light.

I don't know who out there remembers Rage from the Marvel Universe. He was a pretty forgetable character and it's probably for the best. A former New Warrior and Avenger, Rage was a thirteen year old gifted with super strength. So what was his major flaw other than barely being a teenager on the Avengers? Well come on, he's a young black kid named Rage; he's not exactly the most creative character.

However, I also don't think it'd take too much to clean him up. Basically you have to look at the whole "Rage" persona as his awkward teenage phase. You start up a series with him at seventeen, he's come across a teacher at his high school that's really sparked his imagination. He's becoming educated. He plans on returning to superheroics but not as Rage and he's thinking of waiting until after college. He still encounters people who want him to be Rage, some from his own neighborhood. They're channeling their rage into him. However he's come into a sort of zen state about his role in the world, in society.

The New York Jets would come and offer him a job on their football team. They basically offer him a forged identity and say he can make a lot of money and bring a championship to New York. He says no, because it's not the life he wants and, besides, it's cheating. There are a lot of people in his neighborhood that don't understand it. They feel he's betraying them in a sense, that he is not feeling a responsibility to his race.

The point is that he's developed his own sense of identity. He no longer feels "black rage" not because he doesn't identify as being black but because he's found the way to be a boon to his community is to be intelligent, to actually contribute to society at large. He volunteers at the local rec center, he studies after school, he works a part-time job at a nursing home where he's befriended a couple of the residents.

The run would start with him getting a job offer from the Avengers who basically need his muscle and they're willing to pay to get it. Rage convinces Iron Man to use his money to pay for him to get into a first rate college (the college interview would be a funny scene, when he reveals that he was an Avenger while in middle school) as well as giving some money to his neighborhood's rec center.

The time has come to look at our favorite fuzzy blue German priest/superhero (and probably the only one): Nightcrawler. A great character, he's one of those that is a staple of the X-Men mythology since he's such a great representation of the "other." To anyone who doubts the power of Nightcrawler, need I remind you that he gets mentioned in a Weezer song?

So what makes Nightcrawler such a great character? He's very self-possessed and self-aware, he rarely doubts himself. This confidence in himself often leads him to act differently than his appearace might suggest. Despite his freakish (and devilish) appearance he is a man of great faith in God and rather than brood, he's actually a fun-loving thrill seeker. He is what we all wish that we had been in our teen years (well, in hindsight wish we'd been), he doesn't try to conform because he's got a greater perspective of the world and his role in it.

Most writers are fine dealing with Nightcrawler's belief in God, at least in theory. It's in the execution that most writers fall to the wayside. His faith warbles from being a priest to a recent crisis in faith. I think the best way to handle Kurt was actually perfected by Claremont over in Excalibur. Here's a guy who loves life; he loves to do acrobatics, romance ladies, and perform various feats of daring doo. He has a strong belief in God and has given himself over as a vessel for the Lord's doing, yet he still has a sense of self, a sense of desire. The problem with his becoming a priest is that he's a bit too much of a hedonist, he couldn't turn away from fighting the good fight and making dirty inneundo.

We tend to think of religious people as being overly moralistic, especially someone who's faith is as prominent as Nightcrawler's. So writer's tend to just ignore his faith, put it to the side and never mention it or they make it the central focus of his being. It is his motivating factor. After all, with every superhero or villian the reader must ask "why?" Why does this person put themselves in danger? What do they get out of it? Nightcrawler believes he's doing God's work, that's why. Every night he says his prayers and every Sunday he goes to Mass. But he is more than just a Catholic. He is a mutant. He is a man. He is Kurt Wagner.

There's a immensly funny moment in Peter Jackson's Dead Alive where a priest performs a bit of marital arts on some zombies before announcing, "I kick ass for the Lord!" It's a great gag but in a greater sense that should be the mantra for anyone writing a Nightcrawler story. He is active, he is passionate and he is religous. And it is that faith that allows him to be so sure of himself. Everyone else at Xavier's doubts themselves, their motives, their lives but not Nightcrawler. While he appears to have the roughest life due to his appearance, he is actually the happiest.

OK, it's my turn to do one of these, or Stephen will start stealing them from me. So, Psylocke. One of my favorite X-Men and one of the most mistreated. This is not very edited, so bear with me. Here's where we would start:

What if, one day, you're blue blood English, and on the next, you woke up and you were Chinese? This has never been dealt with, and it seems to me you can't get anywhere with Psylocke unless you address this. I mean, I'm black, and if I woke up Mexican tomorrow you can bet that would be some shit to deal with.

At the core of it, Psylocke is someone who is always looking to come into her own, to simply be the best of who she is. Fate has conspired to treat this modest ambition most cruelly, beginning with her birth: though older by mere minutes, her brother Brian aka Captain Britain, has always outshone her. He was more powerful, a more experienced and celebrated hero, a scientific genius whose being pervaded the known omniverse. She had purple hair, could read minds, and, uh, modeled. And I think she liked to ski. She became captain Britain temporarily, and got crippled by Slaymaster (can't believe I remembered his name. Slaymaster? That's disco death metal for you). She was also blinded, and I think her brother had to save her. Mojo gave her bionic eyes, and used her to broadcast her adventures with the x-men in his homeworld, where it was a ratings success.

So she moved on to greener pastures, with the x-men. But even there, with her amazing telepathic abilities, she was third behind Charles "I could teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony, with the unbridled powers of my MIND" Xavier, and Jean "I got the power of phoenix and perfect skin" Grey.

After entering the Siege Perilous, she came out the other end remodeled, the product of an ambiguous and unintentional alliance between otherworldly network demon Mojo and the evil ninja clan, The Hand. She came out Chinese, reprogrammed to serve the Mandarin, a Chinese crimelord, and with the ability to create a psychic knife, which was, as the writers never failed to tell us, 'the focused totality of her psionic powers'. That was kind of cool. She also again had eyes that were cameras into another dimension. But again, you don't recognize your face in the mirror; Chinese people keep coming up to you and speaking Chinese, you can't get a table in that exclusive restaurant the Braddocks have eaten at for centuries, and on top of it all you're not sure whether you're completely deprogrammed; you might still flip out and kill all your friends. Which puts a strain on those nights out drinkin'.

And her story only gets more convoluted from there. A quick recap: after rejoining the x-men, she gets put in a coma by sabretooth; she is given a magic potion, the Crimson Dawn, and half of Angel's soul to bring her back. From this she gets a red mark over her eye and the power to melt into shadows. This goes nowhere. She uses her mind as a prison for the shadow king, meaning she can never use her telepathy again. She gains telekinesis. Then she gets killed. Then, pretty recently, she comes back again, with just the telekinesis. you might have noticed I skipped the whole Kwannon/Revanche debacle. The only thing of interest there is what happens when a writer tries to punch outside his weight class.

The only constant in Psylocke's life is change; all she wants is to be herself and be recognized as a valued individual, but all she does is change. She longs for the mundane. Though the well-meaning hippies who ask her about Buddhism cling to the stereotype of the 'wise oriental' bother her, she is kind of zen due to her experiences. She never quite knows who she is, but she knows instinctively that the self is not a static thing, however much she might want it.

Her relationships, except for the romance with Angel, have been pretty hit or miss. A lot of flirtations but not much else, not surprising for someone who barely knows who she is, much less what she wants out of a relationship. Angel worked because they were both freaks, who changed too much, raised in a wealthy environment, and had similar adventuring backgrounds.

She should be cagey, edgy. Since she grew up with telepathy, now that she doesn't have it, she lacks the ability to read body language and nonverbal cues. It's like she's blind, deaf, and mute - cut off from everyone's innermost thoughts. Two ways this manifest: one as a source of awkward humor - she doesn't know when to leave a room, or when to shut up, or when to start talking. Second, she is able to project a crazy, larger-than-life adventuress vibe, because she's liable to just charge into a situation. And she has somebody else's soul in her, keeping her alive (bringing her back? She might believe so), a reminder of how fragile life is, and the sacrifices that bring about a second chance.

Apologies for the rambling.

Many people feel that the Hulk is Bruce Banner's id, that he is all of the repressed anger and rage that Banner doesn't allow himself to voice. This interpretation gained more momentum with the introduction of the Ultimate line's reimagining of the Hulk character, who indeed is all about his desires. This interpretation, however, sells the character short and is the reason that the Ultimate's Hulk is far more lacking in depth than the "regular" Marvel's Hulk.

The Hulk is actually a social construction given physical form. It is the idealization of manhood, not Banner's idealization but instead one created by society that he is expected to live up to. Whether it is his own father or his father-in-law, General 'Thunderbolt' Ross, calling him a pansy and trying to toughen him up, they are attempting to make him fit into a pre-exisiting mold. Banner is seen as weak, he is seen as useless by these men. The Hulk however is seen as strong, the military sees him as a potential weapon. To masculine society, the Hulk is useful, albeit dangerous.

Is society better served by the Hulk or by Banner? Obviously the Hulk is a loose cannon who has destroyed entire cities while Banner's intellect could be far more helpful to curing diseases and creating inventions. Yet when you look at our society, who is praised more? The smart or the strong? So Banner assumes the guise of the Hulk, much in the same way that many men put on a tougher exterior in an attempt to be taken seriously, to make it in the world and just as it is with those men, Banner is hurting himself and the world more than he is helping.

Banner is portrayed as a victim with no control over his transformation so the point could be made that he is nothing like the young men who assume a tougher guise. Upon closer inspection, do those men really have much of a choice? To not be labeled a pansy (or worse) and suffer the social (and sometimes physical) consequences don't they have to act in that manner?

The Hulk is not alone in this gender construction, however. He is joined by his cousin, Jennifer Walters also known as the She-Hulk. Jennifer Walters is a very intelligent, slightly frumpy lawyer who recieved some of her cousin's blood after a near-fatal accident. She too can transform into a gamma-powered super being. However, her transformation renders her into a slightly-bobbley brained (but by no means stupid), sexpot. While society says that a man is "meant" to be strong, silent and stupid so the Hulk is that, meanwhile a woman is supposed to be ditzy, pretty and built so the She-Hulk fulfills that. Again, we see that the gamma exposure doesn't merely turn people into super-powered machines of destruction but instead makes them into a social construct.

Tagged with: The Hulk

The Thing is an interesting character on so many levels. Despite his impressive physique and his immense strength, he is a sensitive soul who'd trade away his powers in a second if it would guarantee him a normal life again. He is the poster child for Marvel Comics because it was him more than any other character in the Fantastic Four (the modern Marvel's first book) that showed how they were different from DC; they focused less on the amazing powers of the superheroes and chose instead to focus on the human drama that was born out of their situation.

From a creative standpoint, the sad thing about the Thing is that he's fairly easy to do but a little bit harder to actually understand. The recipe to follow has been laid down by some of the great comic writers, so as long as you follow it you'll at least not embarrass yourself. Basically have him use a bit of self-depreciating humor, bicker with the Human Torch and say things that we assume that people from Brooklyn said in the fifties.

The true core of Ben Grimm is deeper than that. Many of our comic pantheon are a reflection of the readers and this case is no different: Grimm is the young teenager. Let's first take a look at the structure of the Fantastic Four, often called "Marvel's first family," and we will see how much they're structured like a family. Sue Storm and Reed Richards (aka the Invisible Woman and Mr. Fantastic) are obviously the parents of the group, despite the fact that they are actually married; they also are the most responsible members of the team. Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, is practically a child. He has no impulse control and always wants his way.

Ben Grimm on the other hand, woke up one day to find that his body had changed, that it had in a sense betrayed him. Yes he was more physically imposing but that he was also more awkward both physically and socially. Also, his physical appearance had changed for the worse. Ask any teenager who is starting to sprout the first few bits of facial hair (not when they look like cool stubble but are just in random uneven patches) and pimples and most of them would trade some of their height and broader shoulders to look a little more, well, normal. This is Ben Grimm.

What's interesting, and often untapped, is that the metaphor of the Thing is actually gender neutral. When his transformation first happened (and some since then), he took to wearing baggy, ill-fitting clothes in an attempt to hide his new body. Many young teenage girls go through a similar awkward growth where they find themselves repulsive and so decide to hide behind such clothes (of course, they go for sweatshirts that are too big rather than a trench coat and a fedora, but the desire is the same).

The story of the Thing was not a different person the day before he left for space and the day after he got back. Inside he knows the same things, likes the same jokes, and hates the same things yet society treats him differently. Some would say that this provides a nice racial paradigm and I think the casting of a black woman to play Alicia Masters in the Fantastic Four movie obviously means that there is some validity to that claim. Unlike with race, though, Ben Grimm was the once not superpowered whereas a black man has never been white. Also, as the Fantastic Four has become famous people have been willing to look past his rocky hide and not see him as a monster. But as with any teenager, the issue is that it doesn't matter how society really sees him, it matters more how he thinks society views him.

Tagged with: The Thing