LaZodiac's Super Turbo Championship Edition Random Banter Thread #242

[LaZodiac]

I don't think that was necessarily the reasoning for the change in powers.

I was simply pointing out that his new powers made more sense to be Cocaine related than his old ones.

also, this happened after one of DCs boneheaded "some cosmic asshat ****ed with causality so now all those old stories never happened" thing.

...I ****ing hate that. If you wanna do a reboot, fine, just... Give the setting a proper ending and start from scratch, don't have a storyline that invalidates decades of publishing history

This, beyond almost everything else, is the greatest sin of Marvel and DC, and why I usually recommend manga over the main two western comic giants. You can get good indie series that know how to End (Sandman, Lucifer) but like... you have to limit yourself to specific runs when it comes to Marvel and DC, and it suuuucks.

Fun connecting fact: William Marston, who styled himself as "the father of the polygraph", also created Wonder Woman (though I don't think it was directly for DC?).

Good lord the lie detector tool is just a dom tool aint it.

[Rater202]

Marvel doesn't do arbitrary continuity resets. They, have been one continuous world for the last 80 plus years.

It's specifically DC that pisses away decades of history by having an angsty AU superman or a glowing blue jackass **** with the fundamental fabric of reality.

Edit: Also Sandman and Lucifer are DC.

[Peelee]

Marvel doesn't do arbitrary continuity resets. They, have been one continuous world for the last 80 plus years.

"This is a differenf universe Peter Parker" isn't really fundamentally different.

[Jasdoif]

Good lord the lie detector tool is just a dom tool aint it.

Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth?

I mean...from what I understand his polygraph theory started from his wife telling him that she felt her blood pressure rise when she was mad or excited; and Wonder Woman was "greatly influenced" by both his wife and their polyamorous life partner....So I'm honestly not sure if it would be surprising or not.

[Rater202]

"This is a differenf universe Peter Parker" isn't really fundamentally different.

Yeah, but those are all what-ifs and side stories, not replacements for the main timeline.

[Peelee]

Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth?

I mean...from what I understand his polygraph theory started from his wife telling him that she felt her blood pressure rise when she was mad or excited; and Wonder Woman was "greatly influenced" by both his wife and their polyamorous life partner....So I'm honestly not sure if it would be surprising or not.

Wonder Woman's weakness is being tied up - she loses her powers when she is bound (i cant remember if she specificallt has to be bound by a man). She spends a lot of her early comics tied up.

Its really weird, is what I'm saying here.

Yeah, but those are all what-ifs and side stories, not replacements for the main timeline.

Dude, every character in the main timeline should be dead of old age by now.

Imean, not every, but you get rhe point. Ongoing comic series like Batman ir Ironman ir name whatever you want is going to go theiigh decades while staying the same age. Call it what you want, a nee storyline or a universe reboot or a differenr universe. Those are all set dressing, the effecr is the same.

[LaZodiac]

Marvel doesn't do arbitrary continuity resets. They, have been one continuous world for the last 80 plus years.

It's specifically DC that pisses away decades of history by having an angsty AU superman or a glowing blue jackass **** with the fundamental fabric of reality.

Edit: Also Sandman and Lucifer are DC.

Arguable, things like One More Day exist, and there's a lot of playing fast and loose with the canon. Tony Stark is how old, again, and what war did he get caught up in to become Iron Man?

While Sandman has some nominal DC stuff strewn throughout, I don't recall Lucifer having basically any, and they're both basically sectioned off in their own meta-existences.

Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth?

I mean...from what I understand his polygraph theory started from his wife telling him that she felt her blood pressure rise when she was mad or excited; and Wonder Woman was "greatly influenced" by both his wife and their polyamorous life partner....So I'm honestly not sure if it would be surprising or not.

I was going to refute this but as I was writing it it was like "actually naw the lie detector does kinda carry the same vibe as this" so yeah no this is correct. It's a tool that lets you ask questions and "know" when they are lying, allowing for Punishment and the like.

[Jasdoif]

Wonder Woman's weakness is being tied up - she loses her powers when she is bound (i cant remember if she specificallt has to be bound by a man). She spends a lot of her early comics tied up.

Its really weird, is what I'm saying here.

I was going to refute this but as I was writing it it was like "actually naw the lie detector does kinda carry the same vibe as this" so yeah no this is correct. It's a tool that lets you ask questions and "know" when they are lying, allowing for Punishment and the like.

So from what I can tell trying to reconcile conflicting accounts...he wanted Wonder Woman tied up frequently because he felt it important to show her freeing herself, subverting the "damsel in distress" thing...and because he was into bondage and hoped to lessen its stigma through public portrayal.

Sounds like he was an unusual character himself....

[LaZodiac]

So from what I can tell trying to reconcile conflicting accounts...he wanted Wonder Woman tied up frequently because he felt it important to show her freeing herself, subverting the "damsel in distress" thing...and because he was into bondage and hoped to lessen its stigma through public portrayal.

Sounds like he was an unusual character himself....

My man saw Superman as the male power fantasy he is and went "I will make a female power fantasy that also coincidentally makes my kink cooler" and accidentally created the best DC hero oops.

[Keltest]

My man saw Superman as the male power fantasy he is and went "I will make a female power fantasy that also coincidentally makes my kink cooler" and accidentally created the best DC hero oops.

Accidentally?

[Peelee]

My man saw Superman as the male power fantasy he is and went "I will make a female power fantasy that also coincidentally makes my kink cooler" and accidentally created the best DC hero oops.

He also created Booster Gold?

[Jasdoif]

My man saw Superman as the male power fantasy he is and went "I will make a female power fantasy that also coincidentally makes my kink cooler" and accidentally created the best DC hero oops.

And this is why I love random connecting facts: life is positively fortified with seeming coincidences, and we'll all better off when "this is unusual" and "this is bad" aren't synonymous in our minds....Says the quarter-nymph/quarter-elf/half-human who's been polymorphed into an ambulatory banana; unusual things can certainly be bad, but don't let it be a default state!

[LaZodiac]

Accidentally?

Well he certaintly didn't INTEND to create one of the best characters he just did.

He also created Booster Gold?

Har har very funny

And this is why I love random connecting facts: life is positively fortified with seeming coincidences, and we'll all better off when "this is unusual" and "this is bad" aren't synonymous in our minds....Says the quarter-nymph/quarter-elf/half-human who's been polymorphed into an ambulatory banana; unusual things can certainly be bad, but don't let it be a default state!

Agreed! It's why I enjoy Rater's rambling about comic stuff; while it's not fully my wheelhouse, and often deranged, it's very interesting (and imagining him say it with a straight face like it's all very matter-of-fact is amusing).

[ShadowShinobi]

Page 50. About time to start thinking up a title for the next thread.

[DataNinja]

Page 50. About time to start thinking up a title for the next thread.

I mean, like it says in the first post, it's just whoever wants to make it. Just there's a 20 thread wait limit for the same person, so a lot of us (20, in fact!) have our hands tied.

[Rater202]

Dude, every character in the main timeline should be dead of old age by now.

Ignoring the fact that like half of the major characters have some form of regeneration, extended longevity, or means of rejuvenation that's not a continuity reset. We're talking about a completely unrelated issue.

Like, some minor detail getting retconned isn't the same as "This glowing Blue ******* literally erased decades of history and altered the fundamental fabric of reality because he thinks that Superman isn't realistic and needs to be a dispassionate sociopath to be relatable.

Like, I don't think I can explain the difference between "changing a reference to myspace to a reverence to Twitter when the conversation is called back to a decade later" and "literally having a cosmically powerful character piss all over the stories that came before." If you don't get how those are two completely different issues then I don't think I can explain it.

Incidentally, "nobody's aging" is an acknowledged phenomenon in-universe in Marvel. People have noticed, people have commented on it, people have cracked jokes about it, and we've met the Cosmic Beings responsible and they've said the reason why.

And Specific Examples? The Iron Man we have now isn't even the Iron Man we started with. OG Tony Stark was revealed to have been a brainwashed Sleeper agent for Kang, died, got replaced by a teenaged Tony from another universe, then that TOny along with all of the other main-stream heroes who weren't Spider-Man or the X-Men died to Onslaught and when Franklin Richards brought them back to life a year later he accidentally combined both Tonys to make a third, new Tony... then after Civil War II he was rendered brain dead. His body was put into a machine that rebuilt his body one cell at a time and restored his mind from backup.

(It doesn't count for rejuvenation, but he also had to erase his memories and reset from backup after the first Civil War)

[Anonymouswizard]

This, beyond almost everything else, is the greatest sin of Marvel and DC, and why I usually recommend manga over the main two western comic giants. You can get good indie series that know how to End (Sandman, Lucifer) but like... you have to limit yourself to specific runs when it comes to Marvel and DC, and it suuuucks.

For legitimately indie stuff I recommend Kieron Gillian's work for image and the like. He's even willing to play naked men for titillation, which is something even the Fifty Shades sequels couldn't manage. Thank god for some creators being LGBT+*!

Also, I now want to see a comic where Wonder Woman is engaging in bondage. Like, she's not at the disaster, there's a one panel shot of her tied up somewhere, then she appears five pages later explaining that she was on a date.

* Now if I could only stop lusting after Abigail Thorn long enough to pay attention to her videos...

[Fyraltari]

Depends on the story, I'm pretty sure he's shooting morphine in The Hounds of the Baskervilles, for instance.

Ah, ninja'd by the dragon. I blame work.

Couldn't choose a joke, pick the one you like best:

Spoiler: A

Show

Please, it's Sherlock Holmes. He's done every drug ever, and every combination of drugs ever while charting the effects on a graph to scientifically identify the best high he can get.

Spoiler: B

Show

Please, it's Sherlock Holmes. He'd sooner contract a morphine addiction to counteract the symptoms of his cocaine addition than go to rehab.

[Anonymouswizard]

Couldn't choose a joke, pick the one you like best:

Spoiler: A

Show

Please, it's Sherlock Holmes. He's done every drug ever, and every combination of drugs ever while charting the effects on a graph to scientifically identify the best high he can get.

Not according to A Study in Scarlet

Shetlock Holmes's/Herlock Sholmes's (depending on lawyer friendliness) cocaine addiction clearly comes from the time he taught himself to identify drugs by smell.

[Peelee]

Page 50. About time to start thinking up a title for the next thread.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

[snjpped for length]

Yes, youve correctly identified the specific fluff. None of that changes the "functionally no different" part of what i said. Which, i didn't think needed saying earlier but apparently must be said, is the entire point of what i said.

As am analogy, take The Simpsons. There are ~750 episodes. If each episode isna single day (many probably most, are multi-day), that's two years of events. Maggie is still an infant, Bart and Lisa are still 10 and 8 respectively. You simply cannot cram that many stories into a frozen time frame and expect it to canonically make logicla sense. It doesnt. Does it matter if The Great Gazoo came over and said, "i have erased a few episodes from the timeline"? No! It doesn't make any diffrrence at all.

[Rater202]

Peelee... Spider-Man being in his 20s in the 2020s does mean that the stuff that happened when he was in his 20s in the 1990s didn't happen.

Doctor Manhattan destroying and rewriting the DC Universe because he can't relate to Superman very much does mean that those stories he erased never happened.

That's the difference.

Marvel doesn't disrespect their fans by telling them "those decades of stories you love don't count." DC has done it multiple times.

Edit: Okay, I think we're having two different conversations. You latched on the the wrong part of what I was complaining about.

And regardless; The Simpsons is a bad example because the Simpsons was never big on continuity in the first place.

[Peelee]

You call it disrespecting the fans. I don't. It only matters if you want it to matter. Normally, that means i don't care and you do you, but apparently this gets you riled up, and let me just be straight-uo blunt about it: have you ever considered not letting it affect you? Cause youd probably be happier that way.

And regardless; The Simpsons is a bad example because the Simpsons was never big on continuity in the first place.

My friend, I have bad news for you about continuity in any long-running series (especially decades upon decades running).

[Anonymouswizard]

The New 52 stuff was the best damn thing DC did. I have no clue if they gave the old continuity a proper sendoff, if they didn't then that's incredibly bad form, but to the average buyer a continuity reset (hard or soft) every couple of decades is almost certainly better.

The way Marvel does it is worse, because they they've got multiple impenetrable Spider-bloke continuities.

Yes, I was annoyed at the Time War when NuWho started for essential soft rebooting the entire series. These days I get the logic behind it, especially as the new classic continuity stuff can be very hard to get into with 5+ decades of lore. Of course, the TV series is helped along by the fact it runs as far away from continuity as possible...

[Peelee]

The New 52 stuff was the best damn thing DC did.

If you leave "thing" open-ended like that then you gotta know I'm gonna come at you with the Batman Arkham series.

[Anonymouswizard]

If you leave "thing" open-ended like that then you gotta know I'm gonna come at you with the Batman Arkham series.

I'll counter with 'have you seen the PC ports'

[LaZodiac]

Peelee... Spider-Man being in his 20s in the 2020s does mean that the stuff that happened when he was in his 20s in the 1990s didn't happen.

I understand what you're getting at, but I really want to just, narrow in on this point right here, quoted above. While it's not the same sin as DC's constantly mashing the reset button, it's certainly comparable. Differences in kind, and all that.

That's all I'm saying anyway. I agree with what you're saying! They are different! The result feels functionally the same, but they are different.

[Rater202]

[QUOTE=Peelee;25720540]When Barbara Gordon, the original Batgirl, was crippled by The Joker, she remained a strong character, picked herself up, overcame the trauma, and continued to fight crime as Oracle, the Batfamily's mission control and, honestly, probably did more good than she ever did as Batgirl.

This was praised by fans as a great progression of her character and, furthermore, showing a wheelchair user as being an active team member and a major contributor is a good representation.

Of note, Barbara actively refused a cybernetic implant that would have restored her ability to walk because that implant wasn't available to the public and she felt that using her connections to get things that other people did not have access to would be wrong.

In the New 52 continuity, she started as Oracle with the notes that stuff roughly akin to Killing Joke and her tie as batgirl still happened... And then she gets the implant and goes back to being Batgirl.

How is that not disrespectful to the fans? It is literally taking a popular character, regressing them in character, making them compromise their morals, and taking away positive representation of the disabled.

friend, I have bad news for you about continuity in any long-running series (especially decades upon decades running).

There's a difference between people making mistakes due to long backlogs or having to change things because it doesn't make sense in hindsight and a show that has lax continuity by design.

[Peelee]

Of note, Barbara actively refused a cybernetic implant that would have restored her ability to walk because that implant wasn't available to the public and she felt that using her connections to get things that other people did not have access to would be wrong.

Oh, how noble. The vigilante who is not an agent of the state but assaults and kidnaps people, and who gets all of her assets and funding through connections to a billionaire vigilante, doesnt want to use those connections to get one more asset. How is that not disrespectful to the fans? She has all this characterization about her specifically using her connections to get things other people do not have access to, and then have her throw all that away!

ETA: hey, 51 pages. Time to set up shop in a new location.

[Rynjin]

Not according to A Study in Scarlet

Shetlock Holmes's/Herlock Sholmes's (depending on lawyer friendliness) cocaine addiction clearly comes from the time he taught himself to identify drugs by smell.

Most of Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain, so no need to worry about lawyers here.

The adventures of his DAUGHTER on the other hand...

The New 52 stuff was the best damn thing DC did. I have no clue if they gave the old continuity a proper sendoff, if they didn't then that's incredibly bad form, but to the average buyer a continuity reset (hard or soft) every couple of decades is almost certainly better.

Yeah, the continuity reboot was so much better to the average buyer that they...continued not to buy DC comics. Oops.

Comics are a niche industry. If you're gonna actively alienate your existing customer base you better be sure that you can grab a new one with the same move.

Clearly, the New 52 did not manage that feat.

[Anonymouswizard]

Most of Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain, so no need to worry about lawyers here.

The adventures of his DAUGHTER on the other hand...

I think it depends on if your story features Arsene Lupin or not.

Yeah, the continuity reboot was so much better to the average buyer that they...continued not to buy DC comics. Oops.

Comics are a niche industry. If you're gonna actively alienate your existing customer base you better be sure that you can grab a new one with the same move.

Clearly, the New 52 did not manage that feat.

The New 52 was a good thing.

Adding all the lore back in literally three secondfs after it happened? There's your issue,