When a dad walks into a comic bookshop with his middle school daughter, when a college age woman wants to check out what’s available or when a long time female reader wants to see what this new Batgirl run is all about, having this art on the cover would not do it justice. The targeted young female audience, interested in the fun, young, single Babs in the trendy city vibe of the new run, don’t need, and more honestly, don’t want a callback to her violent alternate story arc past. Those that want a trip to the darker Babs stories, can seek out the Killing Joke or Birds of Prey, but having such an abrupt bait-and-switch is not warranted. Nor does it fit any of the objectives that the DC or the new creative team having been trying to accomplish with Barbara’s current title.
Batgirl gets back up. Like Rubens’ Sabines, like Proserpina, she fights back. She inspires others to do the same. This cover? She’s not fighting. She’s not resisting. The Joker drapes himself over her like a blanket of fear, and she allows it. The cover removes her power, and leaves only her tears, her terror. There is all the hearkening back to her watershed moment, with none of the action or resistance of our similarly-structured classics. When I look at this image, I don’t only see Babs powerless. I see myself. Powerless.
I decided to have a little fun this morning running Google searches of the Magnus family, mainly Polaris. Then, I saved them. Not the entire search results, only what Google suggestions for autocompletes and terms near enough to be relevant. A lot of times, you can run the search, hit enter, then click on it again (sometimes backspacing and re-adding letters) to get an entirely different list of suggestions.
It gave me some interesting material. This is part 1 because I have a lot to show off. This also is not exhaustive, you’ll want to do your own for ones I skip.
Here we go!
Right off the bat, we have interest in Lorna in films, and Lorna in Uncanny X-Men, which could mean either the Days of Future Past mobile phone game or her time as a core member of the team in the early 00s.
Then we try clicking back on the search bar, and it gets interesting.
This time, she’s most known for X-Factor, but now her sister is a big element, even more than Havok, the character Marvel had her always following for about 3 decades. Once again, Days of Future Past is up there.
Next, an image search!
For suggestions, we have the usual suspects like costume, X-Factor and Wolverine and the X-Men. Days of Future Past is also slightly expected due to the little girl hinted at being Lorna in deleted scenes. But what’s really interesting are the X-Men Evolution and Movie ones. She was never in X-Men Evolution, so clearly a LOT of people think she should have been. The movie one probably just means any X-Men movie, but it’s interesting to see there are a lot of mock-ups to the effect of her not just being in it, but being a major figure.
Let’s try Polaris Marvel.
It gives us… domino? And silver samurai? The hell? But we also see that Scarlet Witch is on here, as is Magneto, but Wanda’s higher than him.
To the image results!
These results are a bit more expected. We can see there’s a huge cosplay interest in Lorna. It’s fascinating her Lego playable is on here since it’s only an unlockable with the same power set as Magneto. BUT, it was also the very first game to make her playable, and the only two games before it to include her had her as nameless background decor.
The really notable thing here is Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver on the end. Lorna’s spent way more time with Havok over her long character history, and more time with Magneto than Wanda, but it’s her brother and sister that get on the image search, not her father and ex-boyfriend. It really shows there’s a hell of a lot more interest in the Magnus kids interacting with each other on Lorna’s part.
golden-horses-like-pears said: It’s infuriating. Why are they serving us some Frankenstein Jean Grey-Wanda Maximoff mash up and telling us it’s 100% Grade A Scarlet Witch? I think they should pay us reparations.
yeah and don’t forget they basically turned Pietro into the Flash too just a white dude who gets his powers as a result of a science experiment.
I don’t know what the “Frankenstein Jean Grey-Wanda Maximoff mash up” is about. If this is that random new blue woman that’s suddenly Wanda’s sister, it’s because Brevoort is trying to tear down interest in the sister relationship between Wanda and Lorna. It’s the same reason he tried, and failed, to co-opt the Lorna and Wanda color scheme to push a pairing of Wanda and Enchantress with this little picture:
Brevoort’s ploy there didn’t work. Most people mistook Enchantress for Polaris. Lorna fans like myself were obviously annoyed (as Brevoort expected and probably loved to incite) that Marvel pulled that while deliberately leaving Polaris out of an event she had a huge stake in, while Enchantress fans were annoyed by Marvel trying to make Enchantress look like she’s only good for looking like Polaris.
Brevoort had to come up with a different plan, so the blue woman is it.
Personally, I’ll admit I’m a tiny bit annoyed, but then I remember that this only means that worst case scenario, when Brevoort’s gone and people that actually love and respect these characters is in charge, the new blue woman, Wanda and Lorna will ALL be sisters (or near-sisters in the case of Lorna and the blue woman).
this was about how Marvel Studios described Wanda’s powers
that she has Telekinesis and she can get into people’s minds like wtf since when has she been Jean Grey?
I don’t care for Luminosa she can join Vulcan and Kiwi Black in the useless siblings as plot devices corner.
Wanda and Lorna already have a blue sister and her name is Pietro
Ah, thanks for explaining! See, I know next to nothing about the content of future Marvel films because I basically said “fuck off” to all future Marvel films the second they retconned Wanda and Pietro out of being Magneto’s kids.
I’m planning to swear off Star Wars too if Marvel pushes things that far. They’re doing this for their parent company, so if the parent company is pulling the strings, then everything owned by the parent company is fair to swear off.
Anyway, yeah, the film version of Scarlet Witch sounds stupid and not like Scarlet Witch at all. With this information, I can see the MCU version of the characters potentially bringing the MCU down even sooner than I anticipated.
And I agree, blue sister Pietro all the way. 😛 There are other factors as to why Luminosa is not going to be the winning chess piece Brevoort wants her to be, but I’m keeping those close to the chest. As I’ve said before, I don’t dole out advice that can help people that do things suggesting they don’t deserve it. 🙂 It’s true for GamerGate, and it’s true for Brevoort.
Now most of them are annoying wank-stains who get all upset when Jason Momoa says “Fuck Marvel” yet cheer RDJ on when he says the equivalent to DC Comics. And they also have an annoying habit of acting all “PC master race” when comparing Marvel to DC, acting like Marvel is this giant infallible god that rules the Comic Book verse and all other companies are tiny little peons to it that can’t compare.
I mean i hate it when DC comics can’t make a movie because they don’t have the rights to all of their characters- OH WAIT THEY DO!
The rivalry has been around for decades, but the Avengers brought in an influx of Marvelites who can’t accept Marvel isn’t the be all end all of superheroes.
Also as bad as DC is at times at least they don’t wank over their movies like their movie fanbase are the only ones they care about.
Whenever DC fucks up it’s because they fucked up, Marvel seems to fuck up with ulterior motives of shooting themselves in the foot to snub Fox.
I’m certain the Marvel thrill will start to die out when the Avengers films about the Infinity Gauntlet come out. The planned film slate is excessive, the tropes and characters of the cinematic universe are increasingly familiar, the cinematic universe competition will be fiercer, and the idea of a Marvel film as a two-parter is probably going to annoy the hell out of a lot of people.
People only handle the multi-part shit for book adaptations because there’s an actual end point and the films about those are self-contained, not spinning off into thousands of different mini-films like a giant cinematic clusterfuck.
Like does Marvel not know why Cinematic Universes haven’t existed before? because people age and have to stop acting and life goes on outside of their jobs unlike pictures which can go on forever like they cannot keep the MCU going on for long.
They’re planning too many films most of them being sequels and only two of them actually representing minorities in a sea of white male lead films and it will bite them in the ass
It’s among the many consequences of actions fueled by ego and greed. Christopher Nolan limited his version of Batman to three films because he knew creative vision wanes and people get accustomed to things with more exposure.
There’s also the added problem that contrary to how Marvel really wants people to view their films, you actually do need to see all or most of them to properly understand everything going on. Otherwise, one movie you have Iron Man triumphant and cocky at the end, then the next you have him freaked out and traumatized over something you don’t know much about because you didn’t see the first Avengers movie.
Too many gears spinning at once is a disaster waiting to happen. Marvel’s model is going to break down, and when it does, they’re screwed. Because they’ll be dependent on the support of hardcore fans, many of whom they’ve alienated by destroying the Fantastic Four and X-Men comics for petty reasons.
salarta 