COMPLETELY OFF-TOPIC TANGENT(s)
At long last, after weeks of superstition-induced silence, I can finally cry far and wide the off-topic tangent I’ve been waiting oh so long to talk about”¦
THE BOSTON RED SOX ARE THE 2004 WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS!!!
I’ve watched more or less every game since I graduated back in May and it was a fantastic experience to watch this team. I’ve always loved the underdogs, and good as these guys have been all season, they always projected that image that they are the underdogs; a more likeable team of characters you’re unlikely to find. I love Johnny Damon, Manny Ramirez is a likeable buffoon, David Ortiz is unstoppable, Mark Bellhorn & Derek Lowe came through in the clutch, despite what people say Curt Schilling is one tough hombre”¦Varitek, Millar, Cabrera”¦it goes on and on all the way to my childhood hero Ellis Burks, who came back just in time to get a ring.
But the best part of it all was getting to watch the whole thing with my Mom and especially my Dad. I’m in that somewhat awkward period many twenty somethings experience where you just got out of college but don’t have a real job yet so you need to live at home for a bit. My Mom was gone until just recently because she spends the summer and early fall living in a small house we bought in Rockport, MA working as a painter, so for most of the summer, it was just me and my Dad. Sure I was away visiting Megan or friends a lot, but there was still a lot of time with just my pop and me. This wasn’t really a problem, because my old man is one of the coolest guys I know and I’d rather hang out with him than just about anybody, but especially once school started (not for me, for everybody else) the days could get pretty monotonous”¦our mutual love of the Red Sox was a nice way to end each day. I really think watching the Red Sox this summer brought me a lot closer to my Dad, so what better ending than to watch them break the 86 year old curse and execute the greatest comeback in history against no less team than the Yankees on the way? My Dad went a little nuts, hanging every article from the Boston Globe and Herald on Sox victories up on our normally bare basement walls (seriously, my basement looks like the lair of a serial killer stalking the Red Sox), but it was so great to see him get his wish when they got that final out.
So despite the crappy announcing from Fox, it was a storybook ending for a storybook season.
Congratulations, idiots.
Of course we’ve also got an election, but I’ll comment next week and leave it to senior political correspondent Jordan Geary this week”¦
So with all the suspense leading up to this election, I gotta say that I am dreading tonight. Every single channel is going to have the same crap, namely newscasters saying, ‘It’s too close to call, ladies and gentlemen’ over and over and over. I wish that instead of 5 hours of ‘It’s too close to call’, they would simply play a loop of that video of Fidel Castro falling on his face. That thing is spectacular. Maybe even a loop of Ashley Simpson reacting to her lip synching mishap on SNL and walking offstage. That was spectacular. Milli Vanilli (the alive one of the two at least) is celebrating right now.
One thing I am NOT going to miss is all of those campaign spoof commercials. How many of those were there? No more Miller Lite for President ads, no more Bud making fun of Miller Lite Presidential ads, no more Candidate Zero Netzero ads, no more Candidate Fuse for Fuse Music Television…man, those were the worst.
Lot of stuff on tv tonight. Opening night of the NBA, election…but since I am a guest at my girlfriend’s, what will I be watching? Yep, you guessed it: Gilmore Girls.
(thanks, as always, to Micro Heroes for my cute li’l visual aids)
THE FALCON
Sam Wilson is the exact opposite of all the reasons I argued that Photon was a bland character, thus it should be no surprise that I like him a lot.
Photon is character with no particularly outstanding traits that gets touted because she’s an African American woman, yet being such was never a part of any of her stories (that I’ve read anyways). Like Photon, Falcon is black character who doesn’t act like a clichéd stereotype; unlike Photon, Falc’s being black was not simply glossed over, it was a major part of his first run as an Avenger. The only reason he was let on the team (at that time he could really just fly, not even carry a big mace or cool alien weapons like Hawkman) was so government liaison Henry Peter Gyrich could fulfill a racial quota (he also filled the mutant quota with Beast & Scarlet Witch and the synthezoid quota with Vision because Uncle Sam didn’t want to hear any guff from all those synthezoids who felt they were being misrepresented”¦I’ve been on the wrong end of many a synthezoid affirmative action lawsuit and let me tell you, it’s not pretty, it’s the reason we still employ Jesse Baker”¦). So here you’ve got Falcon, a great if not overwhelmingly powerful character, a guy who is intelligent and capable, but he’s only on the team because of the color of his skin. And boy did he know it, and not like it at all. To me it’s very interesting to have Falcon’s situation, where he clearly didn’t fit in as an Avenger (in every battle he was cannon fodder) and he knew it and he didn’t even want to be on the team; that’s a strong character. With Photon, she was a powerful character who did belong on the Avengers and her race never got brought up; that’s probably the way it should be, but it’s also boring. I liked and admired Sam Wilson for recognizing his shortcomings and refusing to let his race get him a freebie.
As the years have gone down, Falcon has not become an incredibly powerful character, but he’s gained an ability here and there (he can see through the eyes of birds and communicate with them now) and he’s become a much more proficient fighter and strategist training under Captain America. In his second real run as an Avenger (he was part of the ever rotating lineup in the early 300s, but we won’t count that), he was a valuable member of the team, contributing by keeping others in check with his strong moral compass and serving as a reliable recon man. Geoff Johns, like many Captain America writers of the past, wrote Falcon as a strong, smart and likeable guy who just happened to be black; he didn’t deny that, he just didn’t really think it was a big deal.
Black, white or whatever, Falcon is just a good character.
FIREBIRD
I’ve never read the original West Coast Avengers stories that introduced Bonita Jaurez as Firebird, but I did follow her pivotal role in Kurt Busiek’s climatic Avengers story, the Kang Dynasty. A woman of deep religious beliefs, Firebird spent the storyline trying to convince Thor that humanity was not something worth ignoring just because his lifespan was so much longer than theirs (he had become rattled after Captain America almost died and he realized he’d outlive all his mortal friends). She tried and tried and was kind about it, but Thor wouldn’t listen, so finally she just lost it and went off on him about what an arrogant prick he was being and how life was nothing without risks and loss and then flew off in a huff.
It was pretty cool.
Firebird’s powers are nothing special (dime a dozen pyrokinetic), but her duality as both a truly nice and sweet character as well as a fiercely convicted one makes her perfect for certain situations (namely talking sense into boneheaded longtime Avengers; she did the same with Hank Pym when he was all down on himself after his various failures).
I don’t think Firebird should ever be a regular Avenger just because she’s a great character and it would be too easy for a writer going for big shocks rather than a great story to butcher her by overdoing the devout Christian angle of her character. She’s only been used once or twice by writers that really had both a feel for her and a specific idea of what they hoped to gain by using her, and that’s how it should stay.
FIRESTAR
Firestar is that precious rarity in comic books: a strong female character who is not a bitch.
Initially, Firestar was just the token female character on “Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends,” an 80s cartoon also featuring Spider-Man and Iceman (basically they didn’t want just Spider-Man, because kids like lots of superheroes, and kids love the polar opposites of fire and ice”¦I guess). Introduced into the Marvel Universe proper in her own limited series and in the pages of Uncanny X-Men as sweet young girl from the suburbs who also happens to be a mutant and who gets conned into joining the Massachusetts Academy by the then-nefarious White Queen, Emma Frost, who used a combo of telepathic powers and deceptive charm to seem less Kristen Davis on Melrose Place and more Kristen Davis on Sex & The City. Eventually, Firestar saw through Frost’s lies and left the Academy; she seemed destined for limbo, but Fabian Nicieza plucked her up for the seminal 90s teenage team book, New Warriors.
When New Warriors started, Angelica was probably a little too sweet, too trusting (remember, the whole White Queen thing). She was the Betty to Namorita’s vivacious Veronica, the wholesome girl next door. A storybook romance with the equally apple pie Marvel Boy seemed to be the icing on the cake of an almost clichéd team dynamic”¦but anybody who read New Warriors knew that it was never about clichés.
Marvel Boy killed his abusive father in self-defense and suddenly nobody was innocent anymore. More on Marvel Boy/Justice in his entry, but the entire ordeal forced Firestar to grow up and realize she couldn’t continue to view the world exclusively through rose-colored glasses.
Firestar struggled with her anger and her tremendous power over the next several issues, but rather than becoming one of those dark, revenge-driven characters that was so en vogue during that time period, she let that anger focus that power, and become more driven than ever in fighting for the side of good, but doing it the right way, the essence of a hero. She suffered again when her father was shot and nearly killed by one of the Warriors’ enemies, but once more refused to be defeated; she instead demonstrated inner strength and resolve.
Firestar stood up to the ills of the world, but didn’t take measures that weren’t necessary (in a classic forgotten gem of a back up story in a New Warriors Annual, she tracks down a frat guy who raped her best friend but is unable to kill him, so she just shoots a microwave emission just shy of his “crown jewels”).
As an Avenger, Firestar continued to be a breath of fresh air. When Captain America was talking down to her and Justice, she had the guts to get in his face, but just because that move got her respect from the Star-Spangled Avenger (and anybody else watching) she didn’t look for other opportunities to take Cap down a notch. She pitched in and did her duty as an Avenger and came through with shining colors, often saving the day.
The only problem with Firesta’s Avengers tenure is that it was way too short and too revolved around Justice; the latter had a great but finite arc created for him by Kurt Busiek, but unfortunately, when that arc concluded, Firestar left the team with him, even though she was a perfect fit.
Since the Marvel Universe is not exactly known for its great female characters (and apparently we’re losing another one when Avengers Disassembled concludes today), I’d encourage future Avengers writers to, rather than bringing back She-Hulk or Wasp again, give Firestar a look, with or maybe preferably without Justice, next time a female Avenger is needed.
GILGAMESH
For all the fun poked at “The Forgotten One,” he could have been a half decent Avenger if used differently than he was.
Super strong legendary godlike warrior who descends from his pedestal above humanity to explore humanity and seek adventure”¦yes, it sounds exactly like Thor, but doesn’t it also sound exactly like Hercules? And haven’t both served respectable tenures with the team over the years?
The key, of course was that Thor and Hercules were never Avengers at the same time; Walt Simonson made the bonehead move of bringing in Gilgamesh when Thor was already an active Avenger, making both his powers and his personality completely redundant.
Gilgamesh reminds me a lot of pitcher Bronson Arroyo from the World champion Boston Red Sox. Arroyo was the third pitcher in a playoff rotation that had Curt Schilling and Pedro Martinez as numbers one and two; Arroyo was an afterthought when placed on the same level as two titans such as that at the same time. However, when they took Arroyo out of the starting rotation and let him stand on his own as a long reliever, he shined. Then he was tragically killed in an event known as “The Crossing.”
Ok, that analogy sucked”¦I just wanted to talk about the Red Sox again”¦but seriously, Gilgamesh would have been fine if they used him on a team without Thor or Hercules, he could have been the Tasmanian Devil of the Marvel Universe instead of the Steel (the first one, the robot who had a costume like the American flag, not the cool one with the armor).
HAWKEYE
Hoo boy”¦this one is gonna be tough.
Even though I said lots of nice stuff about Captain America last week, and I meant them, Clint Barton was my favorite Avenger. Period.
I said Cap was a normal person as a hero, but Hawkeye was a real person as an Avenger. Sure, anybody could try to be Captain America (provided somebody invented one of them pesky super soldier serums), but you’d probably break your back or your spirit trying to live up to his moral standards. Hawkeye on the other hand”¦Hawkeye was one of us.
For comic book fans who got into this as a way to escape reality, a way to escape a reality we often find bleak, those of us who love bright costumes and wild powers, those of us who wish we could buck authority, steal from the rich and give to the poor, save the girl and make everything right at the end with a quip: Hawkeye was our Avenger.
He wasn’t perfect; he made mistakes and he hated to admit that more than anybody, but in the end, however reluctantly, he would. He rushed into battle thinking with his heart, not his head, and often times he didn’t make the right decisions as a result, but not even Cap could stay mad at him long, because that heart was always in the right place. He judged people before he really got to know them sometimes, whether it was the robotic Vision for “stealing” the Scarlet Witch or the underpowered Falcon for taking his place on the Avengers to fill a racial quota, but Clint was never to proud to reach out his hand in friendship later on when his temper had cooled.
He was a man of passion, unlike so many of the characters we read about and think “if I did this for a living, I could never have that kind of discipline.” If there were a thousand to one shot, he’d take it; he wouldn’t wait for a better option to present itself, because it might be too late. He had rotten luck with women because he fell in love too easily; he’d wear his heart on his sleeve only to see it torn apart many times. He gave people the benefit of the doubt because for all his outer bluster, he believed in the inherent good of people (could anybody who didn’t go through the motions with both the Great Lakes Avengers and the Thunderbolts?).
And there was his wit; if the deck were stacked against the Avengers, if Kang and his army from the future had them backed up against the proverbial wall and Ravonna was coming from the other direction with a thousand more angry troops, Hawkeye would crack a joke; why not? What do you have to lose? Hawkeye loved his job; he went into every day with a smile no matter how much he lost (his wife, his brother, several teammates) because he believed there was nothing better than putting on a nutty costume and saving the world.
He was just like us.
I loved when Hawkeye got stranded on a Kree (or was it Skrull?) spaceship headed towards earth and had just lost his Goliath size changing powers and had no bow and arrow, so he improvised one by bending a pipe and grabbing a bunch of cables.
I loved when he returned from vacationing out in the old West with Two Gun Kid and found Henry Peter Gyrich in the Mansion and, not knowing he was the Avengers’ new government liaison, tied him up with a trick arrow.
I loved it when he got shoved out of the Avengers to make room for the Falcon and got himself a job as a security chief at some company by sneaking by their security systems, putting his feet up on their desk, defeating Deathbird single handedly and then planting a kiss on her as she was hauled off to jail.
I loved how no matter how many times he left the Avengers or got dropped from the team and said this was seriously the last straw”¦he always came back when they asked.
I loved watching him try to be a husband to Mockingbird; he was so in love with concept of falling in love that even though he was a fictional character you could see how much his face must have hurt from smiling at the concept of being a woman’s knight in shining armor permanently (of course they met and got married in the course of like a weekend; what other way would Hawkeye do it?).
I loved the story that drove him and Mockingbird apart, even if it was sad to read; as much as he loved Bobbi, Clint loved being a hero more, and heroes never kill”¦and once Bobbi did, it was all over for them.
I loved watching him grow over the years, learning from his mistakes, becoming a leader and realizing that was where he belonged.
I loved every time, no matter how many times they did it, whether it was against the Collector, the Grandmaster or even last year against Krona, how every other more powerful Avenger would go down, and there would be Hawkeye, with a freaking arrow, there to win the battle.
The first arc of the short lived Fabian Nicieza-written Hawkeye series last year was a perfect microcosm of the character: he hopped on his motorcycle, he found a damsel in distress, he smooth talked his way into her life, he put on his costume, and he out shot a thousand ninja archers in order to right a grievous wrong; that was just what Hawkeye did for fun.
So many writers and so many fans have said Hawkeye was their favorite Avenger and even character for these and many other reasons. We all could see ourselves in him. That desire to do right, to balance the scales, to be something beyond our meager human abilities; to laugh in the face of evil and danger and charm the hell out of everybody.
He was our Avenger, and we loved him.
Then he got blown up in one panel of a battle that apparently wasn’t even real.
And you wonder why so many people are annoyed with Avengers Disassembled.
Wow, talk about ending on an up note and closing on a downer”¦still, it was cool remembering all the reasons I love Hawkeye”¦I think I’ve got some back issues to re-read.
See y’all next week with more.
In the mean time, thanks for reading.
