Odd Really

Whilst I do have my moments, I long wondered why almost no Christian seriously distrusts X-Men even if you’ve read the comics they all seem to be written to have a hatred for Christianity in mind. No seriously, almost all the Christian characters there are villains and the one good Protestant character (Rahne Sinclair) got killed off real badly. Adding insult to injury’s that the other practising Christian character looks like the Devil.

Though that might be part of the point, it’s as if X-Men writers don’t seem to have a high opinion of Christianity so much so that they have the bollocks to imagine a church getting destroyed. (What makes X-Men even worse than Teen Titans is that the former often had the bollocks to depict Satanic characters like Magik as heroes whereas in the latter one heroine strives to avoid her father’s bad influence and said father’s meant to be a villain.)

If she does succumb to his influence, it goes real badly for her and her colleagues. Not that Teen Titans is any better other than at least getting one thing right when it comes to temptation and consequences for bad actions. X-Men seems really, really bad in this regard especially with the apparently low opinion of Christians and Christianity in general. Yet it’s surprising why so few Christians bothered to criticise it even if it has a more blatant hatred for Christianity than Pokemon and Ben 10 ever did.

Rao help if the X-Men brand gets cancelled for good, the fact that X-Men writers seem to spite Chrisitanity a lot would be the franchise’s own undoing.

Undoing the Mary Sue

I suspect what makes Kitty Pryde a Mary Sue’s not because she lacks flaws but because writers are hesitant of making her go the logical direction had she been intended as a reader surrogate. But that necessitates allowing Kitty to become her own character and even replace Psylocke in all her entirety. Psylocke wasn’t introduced as an Asian to start with and only became so with the body swapping, along with the ninja skills.

Kitty got brainwashed against her will in becoming a ninja. But her replacing Psylocke for good would’ve been a much more organic or logical direction. I even think Age of Apocaylpse had her become an clawed assassin, maybe way too precise as cats do go through narrow spaces and have retractile claws. (Kitty was supposed to become a catwoman and did become one before.)

I think in order to have Kitty replace Psylocke for good, she should be the mutant version of Catwoman. In the sense of being feline-themed and stealthy, she was on her way really. But that necessitates actually having to go all the way with the cat/panther comparisons right down to the retractile claws. Basically AOA Kitty again but canonical.

Rather than Psylocke becoming a ninja through bodyswapping, Kitty would’ve become a ninja fulltime and perhaps developing a secondary mutation of sorts to become more feline/panther in appearance. Rather than Feral, we’d get werecat Kitty Pryde doing whatever Psylocke does but with the focused totality of her phasing powers and panther nature.

This would’ve been a much less Mary Sue Kitty but one where that necessitates her having to go past fan idealisation and become X-Men’s answer to Catwoman.

Lives of their own

I still think when it comes to let’s say necessitating Kitty Pryde to be an anti-heroine for good or Barry Allen being Dante Alighieri had they been fanboy/fangirl inserts this would be the times when they become their own characters. Albeit going further away from their fannish origins in a way fans won’t immediately recognise. Even if that does make them seem less Mary Sueish.

I actually think in Kitty’s case, the real issue lies with not letting her go where she’d logically become. I even have a feeling that Kitty Pryde should’ve become the character Psylocke ended up as in that the former didn’t start out as a psychic ninja at all whilst the former had training even if it both happened against their will (Kitty through brainwashing, Betsy through body exchange).

Kitty Pryde becoming what Psylocke ended up as would’ve done way more favours and the best way to keep her badass whilst not making her Mary Sue. It would be the least Mary Sue she’s been ever since she was an assassin in Age of Apocalypse. But that necessitates having to do away the more ridiculous aspects and stick to where she’d naturally go and become.

(I still think it would’ve been better for Kitty Pryde to be a deadly ninja given Psylocke reverted to her old white self, as if the latter wasn’t meant to be that character for long whilst the former easily could.)

I would actually be fine if Kitty Pryde became an assassin full-time. Then again that necessitates following the more logical, organic path than what we’re usually shown. As for Barry Allen standing in for Dante Alighieri or Red Riding Hood should Caitlin Snow become a werewolf, the real issue isn’t that he lacks a personality in general. But rather he lacks a personality beyond being a fanboy surrogate.

Should Caitlin ever become a werewolf, that necesitates Barry to be Red Riding Hood. Oddly enough that would be much more relatable to a lot of people because they’ve heard of Red Riding Hood first. It’s basically when a child leaves home to greet their grandparent or relative but it doesn’t go as expected. Either they survive at will by conning their captor, survive by being rescued by others or die anyways.

(Barry would most likely escape from her in advance.)

Likewise if Barry Allen were Dante Alighieri and Caitlin Snow as a werewolf, it would be too easy especially for those familiar with both the writer and his work Divine Comedy. Perhaps a properly contemporary version of it complete with Pied Piper, Heatwave, Captain Cold, Weather Wizard and even Zatanna in hell. But that would mean Barry Allen would’ve outgrown the fanboy surrogate role either way.

Rather than being an idealised fanboy surrogate, he’s either a properly adult version of the Red Riding Hood (because he’s one himself) or a truly modernised Dante Alighieri in a way Dante Sparda and the like aren’t. On one hand, that does make Barry Allen into a proper update of a familiar folkloric or literary character. On the other hand, that would involve a much bigger change to the mythos.

Perhaps even drastically changing Barry’s personality in the sense of being no longer a glorified fanboy. The odd fact that both works predate the Flash should indicate that the Flash’s own trajectory lies not in Greek antiquity, but in medieval folklore and spirituality (weirdly enough, the Divine Comedy’s right up there with the been to hell testimonies and had Dante lived today, he’d be a Pentecostal).

A bigger change than say retconning his backstory as he actually becomes a proper update to either genre (as in different media). Maybe way too well but still.

Kind of makes sense really

I suspect when it comes to possibly redundant characters, either you change one of them or you replace them altogether. I recall a thread on CBR.com where somebody suggested that one Marvel character (Rachel Summers) should’ve been the only Summers and Grey child, thus entirely replacing her brother Cable. When you think about it, that makes her a lot less redundant.

If she was the only Summers-Grey child then it makes sense that this gives much less competition and much more room to focus on developing her. It’s as if whoever suggested this was well-aware of her portrayal in canon. That’s also being practical when it comes to minimising possible redundancy. Similar things can be and has been said about Supergirl.

It’s like with Superboy where whenever he shows up at all, it complicates things further that should he grow up he’s going to be Superman. At least with Supergirl, this wouldn’t happen much and over at Mighty God King, she would’ve been ideal to replace him entirely in his stint with the Legion of Super-Heroes. I think that happened before, especially with the threeboot.

(In hindsight, that would’ve been even better than ageing Jon Kent up only to marginalise him eventually.)

Though I think the real problem with both Supergirl and Superboy’s that they often risk marginalisation in one way or another. Not that they suck or whatever but that either one of them could make each other redundant whether if writers like it or not. I also think that’s the real problem with bringing Wally West back.

If you have Barry Allen back as the Flash and yet you have Bart Allen as the young speedster, that leaves Wally West with practically little else to do and stand out. So he either gets racebent or kept white but made evil. The most realistic/practical solution if one were to keep all three’s to have them actually age with Barry in Jay’s role.

By then, Bart Allen would be an adult man and Wally West a retired middle-aged man though to make either one of them even less redundant you’d change Bart’s powers a lot and give him something else to do like become a detective. (That’s oddly logical since Barry himself’s a forensic scientist.) Though again that involves hard decisions.

So sometimes the most useful solution’s not always the most likable one.

Kind of meta

Considering that there’s this one Marvel character named Moira MacTaggart who’s revealed to resurrect her every now and then with memories intact, it’s actually rather meta in the context of superhero stories where characters die and come back in some fashion or not. Though she was technically dead throughout the latter half, she was more or less alive in other stories (other continuities if you will).

A character who resurrect themselves every now and then seems really meta of Marvel writers to allow that. So I can’t be that upset about it since it’s actually not uncommon for superhero writers to make characters return to life in some fashion or another, they might fake it. They might be resurrected through supernatural means and the like. This isn’t a stretch really. So there’s that.

Unfavourable Routes

I sometimes think some characters tend to be Mary Sue’s because said authors are afraid of making them go the logical/consequential way but that involves taking their actions and portrayals into consideration. Most often or not, the logical conclusion’s only there in apocryphal stories. Keep in mind that Kitty Pryde often loses her temper a lot, lashing out at another person, showing a perpetual grudge and even killing somebody.

Add to her being made into a ninja and trained by Wolverine she could easily be an anti-heroine assassin which’s what she was in Age of Apocalypse. That portrayal’s the most realistic she’s ever been but in the sense of taking her canonical tendencies into consideration. Even if she isn’t a villainness, it’s not that she should be highly incompetent but that she wouldn’t and shouldn’t have any issue breaking the law and being amoral when necessary.

It doesn’t make sense for Psylocke to become a ninja in hindsight as she wasn’t meant to be one, let alone for long whereas Kitty should easily pull that one off. But that also involves realising the more realistic/logical conclusion. This is why I consider the AOA Kitty to be the least Mary Sue she’s ever been because it’s actually the more sensible route for her to go to. Especially if that involves having her to necessarily go and fight dirty.

Realistically and parsimoniously speaking, if you’ve got a character who’s trained as a ninja against her will, loses her temper real badly, has no issue killing somebody and has a nasty grudge then Kitty’s this one character who’d easily do cheap shots. If she can ruthlessly hack into computer systems, logically she wouldn’t have any issue fighting dirty a lot anyways (she did canonically to some extent).

But the assassin route’s actually the most realistic she’s ever been. In the sense of going where she’d naturally go to.

She wasn’t supposed to be this way

I actually long suspected that X-Men, for all its multiculturalism, handled characters like Psylocke real badly. I mean the fact that she not only yearned to be white again but also got it back suggests that she wasn’t meant to remain a Japanese ninja for long. The longer she stayed in that body and considering her prior history as a white Englishwoman, the more ridiculous it got much moreso how stereotypical it had been (the ninja thing).

When I think about it, whilst turning the magnetic-powered Cosmic Boy Asian’s arguably not any better either but if/when there aren’t that many non-stereotypical Asians around let alone an actual athlete who’s not a martial artist (Rokk played Magnoball) this might even be a nice break. (If I’m not mistaken, Danny Phantom had an Asian jock and a black nerd.) Not to mention it’s actually Kitty Pryde who got trained by a ninja and should become the character Psylocke ended up as.

(She technically did to some extent in Age of Apocalypse but then again it’s considered apocryphal but because taking her to where she’d logically go’s too damning for some people even if makes much more sense.)

I actually still think it’s much more realistic for Kitty Pryde to commit to becoming a ninja full time than Psylocke did. But that would mean realising that Kitty Pryde’s true potential lies elsewhere whereas Psylocke wasn’t meant to be an Asian ninja to begin with. Not that we should racebend Kitty but that Kitty should’ve been the cutthroat ninja Psylocke ended up as. The fact that Psylocke’s transformation was undone proves my point right.

She’s got to work

I still think should Stephanie continue caring for her child, chances are she’s going to get a job to support herself and her family which would mean she’s going to make Tim help her look after them. If some people do become attached to their children, as with some mothers (based on a documentary I watched) then losing the child by having them adopted by somebody else would be just as bad. I also think some essayist had a good point about the portrayal of motherhood (and child-rearing).

Not only does it interfere with idealised sex fantasies (not just with the pregnancy part but also where said female character may end up nagging at her male counterpart for not helping*) but also where it’s sometimes treated with suspicion or at least any degree of it. Madelyne Pryor, who begat Cable, turned out to be working for Mister Sinister and became evil. Stephanie Brown got impregnated by another man and was something of a troublemaker.

Cassandra Cain and Damian Wayne have villainnesses for mothers and both Cable and Rachel ended up being raised by somebody else. (The latter being Jean and Scott’s children though Jean did raise the former and Scott cared for the latter.) I don’t think it simply affects children but also nieces, nephews and even grandchildren.

Supergirl is Superman’s cousin but for an extended period of time her own relation to him got changed significantly and even in the older stories despite meeting Superman she ended up being raised by people other than him (in Superman’s defence he was practically orphaned upon arrival). Bart Allen came from the far-flung future and his own relatives were sent to live there or something.

Not only that he also got raised by somebody else, killed off, then reappeared with his relation to Barry changed and then reverted back. Sometimes superheroes’ children are never to be seen away, whether if they’re ignored or killed off (in Punisher’s case). I mean we could’ve gotten stories where Tigra not only hunts pests for a living but also takes her child to hunting and fishing trips.

Some mothers do the same to their own children and some women in general do hunt. Same with Stephanie Brown getting a job to support herself and her family, it’s not even unprecedented in superhero comics since Peter Parker did similarly and Supergirl also worked as a waitress (earlier still as an actress).

It’s not that motherhood and parenting are entirely devalued in superhero comics but that it’s hard coming up with superheroines who’re also dedicated biological mothers and aunts. Chances are such examples are few to begin with where you only have Jean Grey, Susan Richards and Helen Parr. There are good stepmothers like Rita Farr.

But having a superheroine remain a dedicated biological mother/aunt’s even rarer, hence why it proves somebody’s point right in linking superhero mothering with anything a little fishy (illegitimate impregnations, sometimes stemming from rape and the like). And why we never get to see Steph as a dedicated working mother.

Or Black Canary being Tim’s loyal but somtimes overprotective biological aunt.

*See also Iris West and partly why some people can’t stand her despite her importance in the Flash stories.

I remember her more as a child

There’s this thread that sparked my posts on my epiphany that people tend to stick to whatever they either know best or care more about. It’s specifically about Batgirl and Barbara Gordon but the same can be said of anything and everything else. If most people don’t have access to comics and cartoons where Barbara Gordon appears as somebody other than Batgirl, let alone bother to gain access to those then they’ll remember her more as Batgirl.

There’s far more television appearances of her as Batgirl than as Oracle, not helped by the fact that the Birds of Prey programme kind of flopped and disappeared from public consciousness. You might say it’s bad anyways but that’s still partly proving my point that if not too many people watched it, chances are they don’t know that Barbara Gordon can be somebody other than Batgirl. That’s really all that they know.

To be honest, I actually remember her more as Batgirl than as Oracle even if I did read comics where somebody else showed up as Batgirl. Barbara Gordon as Batgirl through programmes like The Batman is where people base their point of references on that. It doesn’t help that the 60s Batman programme has far more staying power and is more famous than say Birds of Prey will ever be.

If that programme’s more popular than Birds of Prey comics ever were by the virtue of being more accessible, that’s only reinforcing Babs as Batgirl which is something DC’s banking on. Conversely speaking, the most well-known superhero in a wheelchair in the public would be Professor Xavier if because more people have access to the X-Men movies than they do with the Birds of Prey programme.

Same with anything and everything else.

The dilemma with super-relatives

I suspect that there’s a weird trend in superhero comics where whenever a superhero gets a biological younger relative at all it seems writers don’t know what to do with them. It’s like by the time they show up, they often almost always end up being raised by somebody else. Supergirl is Superman’s younger cousin but she got raised by the Danvers at least in the older stories and eventually Lana Lang.

Cable may be biologically to both Magdalyne Pryor and Jean Grey and was raised by those two and his sister Rachel but also ended up with the Askani or something. Rachel herself got raised by Ahab (in his own twisted way) and Cable’s doppelganger X-Man got raised by Mister Sinister and then spent time on his own.

(Somewhere online, I read there that Jean Grey’s an objectively bad mother.) Bart Allen is Barry’s grandson and whilst mentored by Wally West, he eventually hung out with the more distantly related Max Mercury. At other times whenever superheroes do get biological younger relatives, often their own children they’re eventually never to be seen again.

Stephanie Brown had a child but they got adopted and practically written off as to never be seen again. Same with Tigra and Rahne Sinclair’s children. (I actually think we could’ve gotten stories where Tigra takes her son on hunting and fishing trips.) This may not always be the case for some characters as there are others who do bother looking after them.

Most notably Mrs Incredible and Invisible Woman. Probably one of the Ant-Men and Wally West too. Another trend’s to render a biological younger relative nearly unrecognisable. This has happened to Supergirl in the 1990s and it’s only now they reverted her to being Superman’s biological relative again. Cable went from being an innocent child to a cyborg old man.

Rachel Summers has been made into an old lady (though that didn’t last long). Illyana Rasputin has gone demonic. Not to mention ageing them up real fast, this has happened to Cable, Rachel and Illyana and possibly Supergirl to a lesser extent. (In that she aged more gradually than they did but still seemingly faster if because Superman never seemed to age at all.) Superman also has a son and he also got aged up.

Bart Allen’s also stated to age fast. That still proves my point that superhero writers seem to have difficulty writing superheroes as having families, let alone get them to actually be involved in their younger relatives’ lives more often (or at least substantially so). Admittedly Disney and JJBA aren’t always any better but at least they actually do bother looking after them even if they sometimes screw up.

Though that would be that superhero writers do tend to prefer unrelated youngsters to biological relatives as the former are easier to self-insert as whilst with biological relatives there’s often the dilemma of trying to deal with them at all.