|
Post by dlw66 on Aug 24, 2006 19:23:44 GMT -5
Man, kind of boring on this part of the board. Five days without a post??
If we can't get anything new out of the Avengers, try this question: who made the best fill-in as an FF member -- Crystal, Medusa, Power Man (Sweet Christmas! with a huge chain belt -- not that stocking-cap-wearing-dude Bendis is ramming down my throat these days...), the Ben exoskeleton, She-Hulk, or Sharon Ventura (yeah, right)?
I will say Crystal, although I don't think Stan and Jack took her any more seriously than as Johnny's love interest. Had they respected her power and used her accordingly, she would have been at least as powerful as Sue, and perhaps moreso.
I still can't believe she married Quicksilver over the Torch...
|
|
Ultron
Reservist Avenger
"Die, Humans!"
Posts: 196
|
Post by Ultron on Aug 24, 2006 21:25:31 GMT -5
Medusa was more interestin - to me. Crystal was a great Sue substitute though, in mannerisms, and archetype. Btw, you missed Tundra, or She-Hulk Good times.
|
|
|
Post by asgardian on Aug 24, 2006 22:23:41 GMT -5
What about Robbie the Robot who replaced the Torch on the old Saturday morning cartoon (CBS?)
|
|
|
Post by Doctor Bong on Aug 24, 2006 23:23:52 GMT -5
Isn't Robbie still around as Franklin companion...? I think, in terms of the dynamics of the team, probably the best fit was She-Hulk... however, like dlw66, my favorite was Crystal; I agrre with him as well regarding his assesment that Crystal's powers were never explored seriously... the same could be said about her stint with the Avengers, when once more she was a romantic plot device, mainly...
|
|
|
Post by Engage on Aug 24, 2006 23:34:19 GMT -5
Ah... our dear friend HERBIE. The stupid little robot that I refuse to hate as much as I probably should. What did that stand for again? Humanoid Experimental Robotic B-Type Integrated Electronics? Good times.
Anyway, I always liked Medusa. Her powers seem to be a good fit with the FF, as they're limited but still useful. I like her character as well, sort of cold is a warm, caring way.
Crystal seemed to be able to do whatever would save the team with some poorly defined elemental power. That always bugged me, although I don't have any real problems with the character.
|
|
rui
Force Works-er
Posts: 15
|
Post by rui on Aug 25, 2006 7:34:26 GMT -5
Well, I was always a fan of the John Byrne stint in the FF, so I have to say She-Hulk. Wasn't also Ant-Man (Scott Lang) on the team for a while?
|
|
|
Post by dlw66 on Aug 25, 2006 7:47:38 GMT -5
I wasn't sure if Thundra was officially a replacement. And yes, Scott Lang was in there for a time, too.
|
|
|
Post by The Night Phantom on Aug 25, 2006 17:45:57 GMT -5
I will say Crystal, although I don't think Stan and Jack took her any more seriously than as Johnny's love interest. Had they respected her power and used her accordingly, she would have been at least as powerful as Sue, and perhaps moreso. She was as powerful as Sue...1960s Sue. I came on board FF when Shulkie was a member, and she remains my favorite replacement member to date. Of all the replacements, she was probably the best fit in personality and power, and Byrne wrote her as an interesting, multifaceted character. Probably my least favorite replacement was Medusa. I don’t dislike the character and wouldn’t necessarily oppose her rejoining the ranks, but I feel that during her FF stint she was written with almost zero personality and was pretty much zero in the story department too. She was merely a replacement, in the worst sense of the word. I wasn't sure if Thundra was officially a replacement. No, she never joined. This is the replacement roster (checked against OHOTMU: FF 2005): - Crystal
- Medusa
- Power Man
- She-Hulk
- Ms. Marvel (Sharon Ventura, a.k.a. She-Thing)
- Ant-Man (Scott Lang)
- Namorita
She-Hulk was already an Avenger when she joined the FF; half of the remaining FF replacements became Avengers after their FF stints. In addition, three of the four founding FFers have also gone on to become Avengers. Over 63% of FFers have been Avengers! No real point behind these observations; I just find them interesting. ;D
|
|
|
Post by dlw66 on Aug 25, 2006 23:25:53 GMT -5
I did not know Nita had been in the FF. I did read several books in the Lang period, must have stopped too soon.
FF is a great ongoing story due to the family nature of the team.
Is Medusa's power really that much different (fundamentally) than Reed's?
No one wanted to touch my sentimentality about Crystal and Quicksilver? It does give an Avengers tie-in to this thread...
|
|
|
Post by Engage on Aug 26, 2006 0:51:10 GMT -5
Is Medusa's power really that much different (fundamentally) than Reed's?
Not really, but I think that Medusa does a lot more heavy lifting compared to Reed. She's a little more direct.
No one wanted to touch my sentimentality about Crystal and Quicksilver? It does give an Avengers tie-in to this thread...
I never really got the Crystal/Torch relationship. It always felt like we had to be told how much they were in love, as opposed to anything actually happening.
Also, just wanting to throw another point out there. Do substitutes for the FF work better when there are multiples of them? Say, Torch and Ben with Crystal and Ms. Marvel as compared to Reed, Ben, Torch and Medusa?
|
|
|
Post by dlw66 on Aug 26, 2006 9:57:01 GMT -5
As someone posted earlier elsewhere, the FF really needs to maintain three core members because it is first and foremost about a family. Cutting it in half seems to do damage to the premise of the book.
Point well taken about Johnny and Crystal's relationship. Stan really went overboard in the late 60's/early70's trying to show Reed's concern for Sue's safety, and Johnny was equally over-the-top about Crys' safety. Nevermind that either woman is, IMO, significantly more powerful than her male suitor.
Quicksilver is a decent enough character, but has been portrayed as too surly through the years. Crystal never seemed to soften him; in fact, his paranoia over everyone seemingly disliking their relationship only made him more testy.
|
|
|
Post by The Night Phantom on Aug 26, 2006 10:11:30 GMT -5
I did not know Nita had been in the FF. I did read several books in the Lang period, must have stopped too soon. I tend to discount her membership myself, even though I read the issues when they came out. They were vol. 3 #42–44. Reed, Sue, and Ben were missing in the Negative Zone, and Johnny recruited Nita, Jen, and Scott as a new Fantastic Four to rescue them. Since Reed, Sue, and Ben weren’t actually off the roster, and since I’m not sure the team’s bylaws even permit Johnny to recruit replacements, I question the legitimacy of Nita’s membership. No one wanted to touch my sentimentality about Crystal and Quicksilver? It does give an Avengers tie-in to this thread...I never really got the Crystal/Torch relationship. It always felt like we had to be told how much they were in love, as opposed to anything actually happening. I didn’t address this earlier because, like Engage, I don’t share the sentiment. This may partly be because my reading of the original issues featuring the Crystal–Torch romance has been spotty. Also, by the time I started reading about these characters, Crystal and Pietro had been married quite a while and already had a daughter. In any case, I’ve never felt that Johnny and Crys formed a classic pairing. Their relationship may have run no deeper than any other run-of-the-mill teenage puppy love. (And it was discarded in favor of Florence Nightingale syndrome.) I think this is hard to judge on past examples. I believe there have been only two rosters in which the FF included more than one substitute. One was the aforementioned Torch–She-Hulk–Ant-Man–Namorita team, which was very short-lived (its only mission being to eliminate the need for the substitutes!). The other was the Torch–Thing–Crystal–Ms. Marvel team, which had a longer and more varied run, but I don’t like to use it as a model either. Steve Englehart was writing the series at that time; and although I like Englehart in general and liked some of his FF ideas, I think his FF run misfired a little too much. His swapout of two team members isn’t necessarily responsible, and so I don’t wish to condemn the concept on the basis of that run. (Part of the problem could be the choice of specific substitute members: in my opinion, neither Crystal nor Shary had a strongly defined personality.) Ideally, any membership change should speak to the family theme of the team. Some replacement members have managed to integrate well into the FF family (Crystal in her original stint, She-Hulk), but it would also be legitimate to examine the family theme contrastively with a “dysfunctional” membership (as when Power Man’s membership created a rift).
|
|
|
Post by bobc on Aug 27, 2006 21:03:37 GMT -5
Okay I'll bite. I thought Medusa, Crystal and She Hulk were all great replacements. I agree that Medusa's powers were too close to Reeds, and also agree she could certainly do more "heavy lifting." In fact a letter to the FF page once argued that if a human hair strand is stronger than steel, then Medusa should have been able to lift and throw a small car. Of course that never happened--as was always the case in the early 70's, Medusa was depowered and didn't really do much when she was on the team. All that being said, her history with the FF made her an ideal choice, if you could put aside the fact she tried to kill them all in the 60's! But why nit-pick?
Crystal was frustrating and I agree that her powers were very poorly portrayed or defined. With the exception of the time she beat the crap out of The Wizard (the whole issue was more or less a show-case for her powers since she was brand new to the team), Crystal never did much. This was a huge shame because she was/is mega powerful if you think about it. She has Storm's ability plus lots of others!! She could generate earth quakes, control fire, summon hurricane force winds strong enough to carry four people gently to the ground after a plane crash, she could summon lightning, all kinds of things. And yet she's never really been portrayed as powerful, whereas Storm has always been seen as powerful.
She-Hulk is a great character! One of the interesting things about her, other than her great sarcastic personality and tomboy attitude, is the fact that it's never been ascertained how strong she really is. Normally she is in the Thing's range, but what about when she gets angry? Is it possible that she could concievably get up to the real Hulk's level under certain conditions?
|
|
|
Post by Doctor Bong on Aug 27, 2006 21:17:13 GMT -5
I always thought it would be interesting if something happened to the male members of the FF (one of those times when they get lost somewhere or something like that) and they would stay lost for a while, as the Invisible Woman recruits as replacements She-Hulk, Crystal & Lyja the Laserfist... that way they would be the FFF... the Fantastic Four Females... only it is argued that female characters don't sell in comics. And since right now we have 2 FF mags, "Fantastic Four" & "4", they wouldn't even have to keep the male FFers shelved, they could have one team appearing on each!
|
|
|
Post by bobc on Aug 27, 2006 21:45:46 GMT -5
Ua2--not sure if you ever saw the Liberators story from the sixties when the Wasp, Valkyrie, Wanda, Medusa and Black Widow teamed up together, but at the end of that issue the Wasp said they'd be back.
|
|
|
Post by The Night Phantom on Aug 27, 2006 21:52:29 GMT -5
I always thought it would be interesting if something happened to the male members of the FF (one of those times when they get lost somewhere or something like that) and they would stay lost for a while, as the Invisible Woman recruits as replacements She-Hulk, Crystal & Lyja the Laserfist... that way they would be the FFF... the Fantastic Four Females... only it is argued that female characters don't sell in comics. And since right now we have 2 FF mags, "Fantastic Four" & "4", they wouldn't even have to keep the male FFers shelved, they could have one team appearing on each! Actually, 4 has ended. Regarding an all-distaff FF, you might be interested in my first AA! post, in which I discussed the notion of an all-female Avengers team. Except for brief periods where the roster wasn’t full, the FF has always had at least one female member, sometimes two. Stan wanted the team to have a female member, and he settled on a total membership of four: one female and one male would be a couple, and one female and two males would be a triangle; so, for more varied dynamics, he wanted a quartet. I wonder if, had the team been created in a more liberated era, he would have made half the quartet female—say, the Storm sisters?
|
|
|
Post by dlw66 on Aug 28, 2006 12:34:26 GMT -5
bobc brings up The Liberators. What is the status of Valkyrie (yes, I know in that story Valkyrie was really the Enchantress in disguise) in the current Marvel Universe? I wonder why she was never in Avengers? There were many characters who crossed over between the Avengers and Defenders, but never her.
|
|
|
Post by sharkar on Aug 28, 2006 15:22:40 GMT -5
Crystal was frustrating and I agree that her powers were very poorly portrayed or defined. With the exception of the time she beat the crap out of The Wizard (the whole issue was more or less a show-case for her powers since she was brand new to the team), Crystal never did much. This was a huge shame because she was/is mega powerful if you think about it. She has Storm's ability plus lots of others!! She could generate earth quakes, control fire, summon hurricane force winds strong enough to carry four people gently to the ground after a plane crash, she could summon lightning, all kinds of things. And yet she's never really been portrayed as powerful, whereas Storm has always been seen as powerful. FF 81 (vs. the Wizard, Crystal joining the FF) came as a surprise because up until that issue her power displays were limited to creating whirlwinds (FF 45, 62, 66 and 68) and flames (45, 60). Then all of a sudden in 81 she could filter elemental energy, create shock waves, create lightning, etc. and in each succeeding issue her powers seemed to expand, to suit whatever was needed plot-wise. By FF 100 Crystal could pretty much do anything (she saved the day several times in 100). So her powers kept increasing but when she became a regular FF member, her personality became increasingly bland...she lost any signs of the sprite-like quality she showed back in her debut, issue 45. When I first read issue 81, I wondered why- - if she was so powerful - - she'd spent the preceding year or so "tending" to Sue during her pregnancy, instead of fighting alongside the guys (prior to issue 81). I guess it was a sign of the times, but couldn't Alicia have filled the role of Sue's nursemaid? Another thing that never made sense was --in issues 95 and 105, when Crystal went back to the Inhumans--why Jonnny just didn't visit her.
|
|
|
Post by The Night Phantom on Aug 28, 2006 16:49:26 GMT -5
What is the status of Valkyrie (yes, I know in that story Valkyrie was really the Enchantress in disguise) in the current Marvel Universe? Ooh, that’s a toughie. I think the short version goes something like this. The 2001 Defenders series established a Valkyrie who was a mortal (Samantha Parrington) with Brunnhilde’s attributes; meanwhile, Brunnhilde herself was running around Asgard. So, there were two Valkyries simultaneously. I believe Brunnhilde died in the Ragnarok event that claimed Thor and just about every other Asgardian. Sam was still with the Defenders when its successor series The Order folded. So far as I know, that team—also including Hellcat and Nighthawk—has not made an appearance since. Hellcat and Nighthawk have, individually (heck, Nighthawk’s joined a couple of other teams since), but I’m not aware of any subsequent Valkyrie-Parrington appearances. Theoretically she’s still around somewhere. While I don’t mind some crossing over, I like each team to have its own space, and I’m content for major Defenders members like Valkyrie and Strange to keep out of the Avengers. If I recall correctly, the Valkyrie was with the Defenders from #4 until the demise of the series (as New Defenders), which was also her demise (eventually revoked), and so she didn’t have a lot of time during her heyday to hang with the Avengers. (Not everybody can be Logan, natch.)
|
|