Tag Archives: superheroes

5 B-list Marvel characters that deserve their own movies

Marvel made a lot of news yesterday in announcing its lineup of blockbuster superhero movies for something like the next twenty-five years. All of comic book fandom let out what can only be described as a collective groan of climax as names like Captain Marvel and the Infinity Gauntlet were tweeted and posted seemingly devoid of any context at all. It was like that famous daytime TV scene where Opera gave everyone in the crowd a car, but instead of a studio full of soccer moms, it was a bunch of fictional men and women in spandex and leather, and instead of cars, it was, “You’re getting a movie! And you’re getting a movie! Everyone’s getting a movie!”

But not everybody. And that’s the reason why I’m just not on board. Because none of my favorite Marvel superheroes made the cut. Dr. Strange? Sorry, I don’t care about Dr. Strange. Civil War? Civil War was one of the biggest comic book cash grabs since The Secret Wars of the 1980s, and almost made me renounce Marvel Comics for good. The Inhumans? Man, I just momentarily fell asleep thinking about how boring the Inhumans are. Come on, even Ant-Man is getting a movie. Ant-Man! No, if I had it my way, the Marvel cinematic universe would look a lot different. Here are five Marvel characters that deserve their own feature films. (And if you’re about to point out the bullshit legalities of why the Fantastic Four can’t star in the same movies as the Incredible Hulk, just save it. I have no time for any of that movie studio nonsense.)

Speedball

Speedball was one of the coolest Marvel characters that you’ve probably never heard of. He’s a dorky teenager who gets caught up in some heavy-tech science experiment and, as a result, gains some pretty unique abilities. Whenever he gets pushed around, that is, whenever his body experiences anything more than a slight physical trauma, like falling down the stairs, or getting punched in the face, his superpowers kick in. His scrawny adolescent body turns into that of a strong adult man, complete with built in costume. Seriously, how awesome is that? Unlike, say, Spider-Man, who always has to worry about people accidentally catching a look at the webbed red-and-blues underneath his shirt, Speedball’s costume materializes out of nowhere. And that’s not all, his regular short, blonde haircut turns into a wild mane of golden locks, and his voice takes on an otherworldly echo.

And I haven’t even gotten to his powers yet. He bounces around. Speedball can bounce off of anything. The greater the speed behind his movement, the greater the bounce. And while he’s in his bouncy form, he can’t get hurt. So you’ll often see him curled up into a ball, bouncing around, knocking bad guys out like a pinball with his unlimited bouncing powers. How cool is that? I always thought Speedball was the pinnacle of cool. And his secret identity is named Robbie, just like my name used to be Robbie when I was a little kid. I can remember being in second grade and getting lost in Speedball comics. It was like reading an awesome comic book adventure about myself. Speedball is super cool, and he deserves his own multi-million dollar movie franchise. (By the way, I don’t like being called Robbie anymore, so do me a favor and never call me Robbie.)

Alpha Flight

America has the Avengers, but Canada has Alpha Flight. That’s right, a team of Canadian superheroes. And the series doesn’t rest on goofy stereotypes or silly misrepresentations, no, you won’t find any hockey-themed superpowers, or villains charged with threatening the nation’s reserves of maple syrup and Lebatt Blue. This is a group of national superheroes, who probably each deserve their own movies individually. There’s Major Mapleleaf. He’s like a superhero version of a mounted police officer, only, in a unique twist, he doesn’t have any superpowers. He’s just a regular guy, with a regular sense of patriotic duty, and a super-powered horse named Thunder.

The best of all is Puck, a really short dude from Saskatchewan with a hipster moustache and black unitard adorned with a giant P on the chest. Kind of like Speedball, Puck bounces around a lot also. Only he’s shorter, and he looks like a puck … wait, I’m just making the hockey connection now. OK, I take back what I said earlier, about the no hockey stuff. Whatever, Puck is awesome. Alpha Flight is awesome. And on a side note, one of the team’s support characters was a Canadian government agent named Gunther. Just like my last name! I hope you don’t think I’ll just fall behind anything that validates my name in print. But come on, isn’t that pretty cool?

Stilt Man

Stilt Man is a bad guy, but wouldn’t it be refreshing to have a Marvel movie set from a villain’s perspective? I think that Stilt Man would be the perfect choice for a darker take on the Marvel Universe. Stilt Man is a genius inventor who built himself a bulletproof mechanical suit. Sounds like Iron Man, right? Wrong. He’s nothing like Iron Man. Stilt Man can’t fly. And he doesn’t do the whole laser-beams-out-of-the-hands thing either. Stilt Man’s unique robotic abilities rest on his telescopic legs.

It’s totally original, because where most other boring heroes and villains fly or jump or teleport, Stilt Man has these robot legs that get really, really long. And so he’s just this regular super-genius, but one terrorizing the city atop a giant pair of mechanical stilts. The heroes have such a hard time catching up with him. After he robs a jewelry store or hits up a bank, he activates his stilts, and suddenly he’s gliding through the night sky, his giant legs giving him the powers of even gianter steps. He’s like a power-walker on speed. His look is visually stunning. And in subsequent appearances, he even has a girlfriend, Lady Stilt-Man. Seriously, this movie seems like a no-brainer.

Iceman

I’ve been saying this for as long as I’ve been able to make over-the-top arguments about comic book characters: Ice Man is the most powerful person in the history of superheroes. And I know that he’s been featured in the X-Men movies, but Iceman needs his own film completely apart from everyone else. For real, Wolverine got a bunch of his own boring movies. And if you ask me, in choosing any character to give a standalone franchise, Wolverine was a mistake. It should have been Iceman.

There isn’t anything that Iceman can’t do. He could freeze you in your tracks. Talk about cool, he’ll fight crime while saying apropos catchphrases like, “Why don’t you chill out,” or, “Freeze!” Iceman always wins because, in the end, everything’s got to cool off. The molten core of our planet has eventually got to run out of juice. Our sun is set to one day fizzle up and die off. The very nature of the universe is that of a giant cool-down, entropy, everything getting further apart and closer to absolute zero. That is, everything except for Iceman. He’ll be the only one left. And for that, he deserves at least one standalone film, if not a whole trilogy.

Aunt May

Does anybody else ever feel bad that comic book movies are mainly geared toward young guys? Sure, there’s a lot being done by the industry to appeal to a broader audience, but there’s no denying that the world of superheroes is mostly a huge boys club. You try to reach out to women, you try to get past the typical prime market of men aged nineteen to thirty-five, and that’s commendable. But what about old people? What efforts are being made to incorporate senior citizens into the broader Marvel cinematic universe?

The obvious answer is to have a movie all about Spider-Man’s elderly Aunt May. We’ll watch her make pancakes in the morning, and go to the bank to run errands in the afternoon. I’m saying it wrong. The point’s not going to be a movie about old people doing only old people things. Aunt May hasn’t exactly lived a boring life. No, at one point she was romantically involved with one of Spider-Man’s arch-foes, Doctor Octopus. Are you telling me that kind of tension wouldn’t translate spectacularly to the big screen? One time Aunt May died. Only, it turned out that it wasn’t Aunt May, it was a clone. That could be part of the movie. Another time she was gunned down, but Spider-Man chose to make a deal with the devil in order to bring her back to life. Actually, that was a pretty dumb story, maybe we’ll keep that part out of the movie. But while an Aunt May movie might not immediately strike you as a potential blockbuster, it absolutely could be, as long as it’s marketed correctly. Because isn’t this country majority old people? Cranky old men in pleated pants have been running the show for as long as I’ve been around. And as the baby-boomers settle into retirement, America’s only going to get greyer. We need senior citizen Aunt May based Marvel movies, if only to subsidize the growing costs of the ever-expanding regular Marvel movies. If we could get people over sixty-five to watch even one Marvel movie a year, that’s big business. And then DC could follow suit and make a movie all about Batman’s butler, Alfred.

I’m just saying, the Marvel universe is so much more than just the Avengers. While the future of comic book movies might appear comprehensive, we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of superhero source material. Marvel, you should call me up. You should call me up and say, “Rob, get your ass to Hollywood and start cranking out scripts. You’re a genius! Let’s get to work. And believe us, we’re going to pay you, big time. Yes sir, you’re going to be a very rich and famous man, Mr. Gunther.” And I’ll totally say yes. Seriously, I can start tomorrow.

Wolverine vs. Iceman

Iceman just finished his morning workout in the Danger Room. He walked into the communal bathrooms to take a shower when he spotted Wolverine going through all of his stuff. The deodorant was out, the cap off.

“What the hell man?” Iceman threw his hands in the air.

“What the hell to you too, bub,” Wolverine shot back. Not only was he not surprised to see Iceman, he hadn’t even looked up, or stopped rummaging through Iceman’s stuff.

“Come on, Wolverine, I asked you to stop doing this.”

“Doin’ what?”

“Don’t pull that amnesiac shit on me. Seriously, why are doing this to me? Why do keep breaking the lock off of my locker and going through my stuff?”

“Heh. I don’t know whatchyer thinkin’ puttin’ a lock on that locker. You know I’ve got these claws, eh? Cut right through anythin’.”

“Yeah, OK, that’s fine man, I know you can cut through anything. It was more like a symbolic lock, like please don’t go into my locker, like could you please stop rummaging through my stuff and using my deodorant? What’s the deal with the deodorant?”

“I just thought it smelled nice is all. I have a really heightened sense o’ smell. You know it’s one of my powers …”

“OK, great, that’s one of your powers, terrific. How many powers do you have anyway? You’ve got claws and healing and strength and smelling powers, what do they have to do with anything? What kind of powers are Wolverine powers? Just a bunch of dumb stupid junk powers that don’t have anything to do with each other?”

“Heh. Better ‘n just ice powers, snowflake.”

“Yeah, well you know what? At least I’ve got a consistent thing. It’s easy, it’s Iceman. I’m the guy with the ice powers. It’s not like you see me with a little bit of super speed, and maybe some extra abilities where my hair comes up to a stupid point at the sides, and I’d have some crazy name that makes no sense at all, like ‘Oh, hey everybody, from now on, I want my superhero name to be Octane,’ or some bullshit. What the hell do you have anything to do with a wolverine? You ever a see a real wolverine? Come on dude, you’re such a joke. Why don’t you just go back to Japan or something? Seriously, everybody hates you around here.”

“The professor don’t hate me.”

“Yes he does. He absolutely hates you.”

“No he doesn’t.”

“I’m telling you, for real, listen to me here, the Professor can’t stand you. Whenever you leave the room he’s always making fun of your dumb accent and your stupid haircut.”

“I don’t have a dumb accent.”

“I doon’t have a doomb aah-xent.”

Snikt! Wolverine drew his claws.

“Oh wow, I’m scared now. Oh man, Wolverine popped his knives out. I guess I shouldn’t have made fun of his dumb accent. Oh jeez, man, Wolverine, I’m really sorry. Can we just forget about this maybe? I’m just, wow, I’m really, really scared. I don’t know if … just … holy …”

“It’s OK, bub.”

Snikt! Wolverine put his claws away.

“Are you for real? You don’t have any sense of sarcasm at all?”

“I said apology accepted.”

“You fucking moron, I wasn’t apologizing.”

“Oh yeah? Well why’d ya say sorry then, eh?”
“Because I was … I can’t even. That’s how sarcasm works. Because I’m not scared of you. I have powers too, you know.”

“Heh. Yeah, you’ve got snow powers.”

“Are you serious? Are you for real right now? Just because I don’t walk around smoking a dumb cigar and riding a motorcycle doesn’t mean I’m any less powerful than you. Especially you.”

“That cigar ain’t a power. That’s just a cigar.”

“Yeah, idiot, I know it’s a cigar. I can’t even have a conversation with you.”

“Yeah, because you’d lose at a conversation just like you’d lose at a fight.”

“I wouldn’t lose at a fight. Do you have any idea what I’m capable of? I could freeze you right in your tracks.”

“Heh, I can handle the cold. I’m from upstate.”

“Yeah, whatever, I could freeze the blood in your veins. I could bury you underneath a goddamn iceberg. You know what entropy is? Huh? Of course you don’t. But it’s fucking cold. For real. That’s where this is heading, everything, the universe, all of our atoms, it’s all heading to the cold, the big freeze, and you know who’s the only one around here ready for an ice age?”

“Yeah. Wolverine.”

“No, not fucking Wolverine. It’s me. Iceman.”

“OK, well, I disagree, bub.”

“Fuck you, Wolverine. Just go fuck yourself. Fucking asshole. And stop using my fucking deodorant. Seriously, one more time and I’m going to Cyclops.”

“Heh. Cyclops.”

Iceman storms out. Then he comes back in to scoop up his duffel bag, his things strewn around his open locker.

“Wolverine, come on, please, please, just knock it off. Keep the deodorant. Come on man, just … enough, I live here too, you know.”

“Heh. Sure thing snowman.”

Movie Review: Kick-Ass 2

Life isn’t a comic book. That’s the story behind Kick-Ass 2, the sequel to a movie based on a comic book about people who dress up as superheroes, but not like in comic books, because this takes place in real life, with real people, who get in costumes and fight crime. It’s a not-a-comic comic book movie.

I’m making fun, but it’s a novel premise. What if you or I decided to create a superhero alter ego and took to the streets to fight the good fight? The first Kick-Ass, and the comic book that it was based off of, answered that question in the character of Dave Lizewski, a high school nerd who dons a scuba suit and calls himself Kick-Ass.

Kick-Ass gets his ass kicked, but a cell phone video of his existence goes viral and spawns a whole trend of regular people playing dress up. Unfortunately, Nicholas Cage and his preteen daughter actually are superheroes, waging a very real battle against New York’s criminal underworld. Kick-Ass gets involved, Nicholas Cage dies, and that’s where we left off at the end of the first film.

Kick-Ass 2 is basically more of the same, but because the concept is still somewhat original, the movie is entertaining. We have the preteen daughter, Hit Girl, struggling to fit in as a high school freshman. McLovin is back as the would-be heir to his deceased dad’s criminal empire. He’s looking to show the world he’s not a joke while at the same time exacting revenge on our protagonist. And then there’s Kick-Ass, trying to take his heroics to the next level, getting in shape, learning how to fight, and finding some like-minded partners to form a real-world Justice League.

So while the plot of Kick-Ass 2 isn’t really that different from the first, the team dynamic introduces an expanded group of characters. Jim Carrey plays an ex-mafia turned Captain America wannabe, Captain Stars and Stripes, or Colonel Stars and Stripes, something like that. His performance was good enough to make me forget that it was Jim Carrey under the mask. That is, until he made a wacky Jim Carrey face, and then I was like, yup, classic Jim Carrey, always making crazy faces.

Speaking of out of the woodwork, John Leguizamo has a role as McLovin’s bodyguard. That’s all there’s to say about that, really. The whole time he was on screen I just kept thinking to myself, man, that’s John Leguizamo. He looks old. Much older than he did when he played Luigi in Super Mario Brothers. And I don’t want to knock him, like I’m glad he’s doing movies and stuff, but he didn’t add anything to the film or the story. They could have probably gotten away with a few carefully placed John Leguizamo posters on the wall.

Oh yeah, and it’s a pretty violent movie, very graphic. I kept trying to justify the violence by telling myself, well, the real world is a violent place. This is probably a pretty good depiction of what would happen if a guy in a costume got beat up on the streets by four robbers. But it was just too much sometimes, running lawnmowers used as projectile weapons, multiple close-ups of broken arms and necks. Crack!

In trying to be real, or in trying to imagine how this story could take place in real life, the movie went beyond anything I’ve seen in this world. Like a barbecue propane tank being ignited and thrown through the windshield of a cop car. I’m sure that it could happen, but it doesn’t really strike me as anything I’d label realistic.

It’s like, in trying to point out or make fun of the ridiculousness of comic books, Kick-Ass 2 winds up shoving our faces in it. And then after the message has been rammed down our throats, the principle characters wind up just as guilty as everything they claim to rebuke. For example, one of the super-group members is gay. He doesn’t wear a mask because it reminds him of the closet. Similarly, Hit Girl early in the film chastised some street punks for throwing around the homophobic f-bomb. That sounds pretty progressive, right? Cut to somewhere toward the end, she’s fighting a group of thugs at high-speed traffic, calling them “cocksuckers” before casually throwing them out of a moving vehicle. What’s the message, that some slurs are more acceptable than others? Or that only the good guys are allowed to throw around epithets?

Like I said, it’s an entertaining movie, sure, but I’m not sure it was really a good movie. I wasn’t bored, but it would be hard to get lost in a daydream in a movie stuffed with so much visual, violent stimuli. I remember liking the comics when I read Mark Millar’s series years ago, but I don’t know, something about that story was easy to read and something about this film made it difficult for me not to look away. It’s a comic book made through a real life filter, thrown back through the comic book filter, and then adapted for a movie. I guess it’s not that far from what you’d expect.

These comic books don’t make any sense

I’m always thinking about comic books, about superheroes, and I know it’s really nerdy to ask questions, to point out inconsistencies, but sometimes I’m just like, I can’t take it any more, I need to bring this stuff up, I can’t enjoy the stories because these glaring problems are just stuck right in the center of my mind.

Like Spider-Man, right? Just try gettin past the fact that if he wanted to do some serious good, he could’ve sold his webbing device to a huge company, he could have made billions on his inventions. With those profits, he could have financed like a professional crime fighting operation. Think about what Batman did with his billions. He bought all sorts of ridiculous stuff. But Spider-Man’s always thinking small, just using his webbing to get from point A to point B, living in poverty, barely scraping out a living.

OK forget about that, just accept the fact that he’s this scientific genius that can’t figure out how to make any money. What about his wall-crawling powers? How are those supposed to work? Like, in the Spider-Man movies, it’s these little microscopic spider claw things that come out of his skin, which I don’t buy, because if I did buy it, what happens when he puts on his costume? Those micro-claws are supposed to be able to get through the material and then cling onto whatever it is he’s crawling up? Sorry, I can’t believe it. It doesn’t make any sense.

Let’s go back to Batman for a second. Don’t think he’s getting off just because I was commenting before on how wisely he spends his money, buying all of his bat-equipment, his bat-planes, and bat-mobiles, and bat-cycles, and bat-copters. My problem is, OK, sometimes the police are after him, like think about the second Batman movie. Right? And they’re like, “Who is Batman? Why can’t we figure this out?”

And I’m just like, are you serious? Get a police helicopter or a police plane or something, or call up the army and have them put one of those drones in the sky, right? And just point a bunch of cameras or satellites down at the earth, and the next time Batman takes his giant car or plane or experimental waterskis out for a spin, just follow it wherever it goes. It’s not that hard. We live in a really sophisticated world. The police could watch the bat-mobile driving away to some hole by the road. OK, now go check that road out. Now call for backup. There you go, that’s the bat-cave. It can’t be that hard.

Like it’s the same with the X-Men. Where the hell are you going to get some giant invisible supersonic airplane? And the air traffic controllers, what, they don’t see any blips on their equipment when they’re directing traffic? Cyclops, like what kind of flight training does this guy have? How come he’s never crashing into any other planes? And again, the military doesn’t notice these jets everywhere? You’d think they’d see it immediately and get on it, find out where it is, who owns it. Is it the Russians? The Chinese? Terrorists? No, it’s the fucking X-Men, but still.

And while I’m on the X-Men, come on, so Cyclops can blast laser beams from his eyes but what, his eyelids don’t get blown off? And Wolverine, whatever, you’ve got metal bones, you don’t age, fine. But what’s with that haircut? What kind of a person wakes up in the morning, sees that both sides of his hair stick straight up in these weird spikes, and thinks to himself, huh, OK, that’s a pretty good look. What, and then he designed his costume to make sure that those spikes stayed in place? What kind of a statement is he trying to make? I don’t understand.

I don’t get why the Green Lantern’s powers don’t work against the color yellow. Isn’t the color green just a mix of the colors blue and yellow? So how can green even work at all then if it’s really just half yellow? And what about orange? That’s half yellow also. What about when he has to pee, that’s yellow, does it hurt coming out? Does it take away from his powers? The sun’s yellow. How is he able to walk around outside during the daytime without getting hurt?

How is the Flash able to breathe when he’s running so fast? How are his shoes not wearing out every time he runs a couple of laps around the world? How is Mr. Fantastic’s costume able to stretch exactly like Mr. Fantastic stretches? What is it painted on? How come Ice Man isn’t soaking wet every time he de-ices? What, does it go from ice to air? How does it do that without going to liquid first?

And what about Superman? He never makes a mistake? He never gets bored, or lazy? What’s the super-equivalent of throwing a gum wrapper on the ground because nobody’s looking and you just really don’t feel like holding that wrapper anymore, looking for a garbage can, never finding any garbage cans? You don’t think he ever makes a mistake like that? Like, OK, I just saved this rocket from crash landing out of orbit, but I don’t feel like figuring out what I’m supposed to do with all of this debris. Do I have to bring it to the government? Are they going to ask me to just hold on a second while they figure out which branch of the military has to take care of this? Or is it more like, jeez, I’m tired, I just caught this rocket, and I’m really hungry, and I don’t feel like dealing with this anymore, so nobody’s looking, I’ll just toss it in the ocean. Come on, somebody make a story like that, give me something to relate to. Everything’s just so unbelievable.

Stop telling me not to use my super strength

I always felt really bad for superheroes, the majority of them hiding away in their stupid civilian clothing, constantly pretending to be something they’re not, always in fear of having their secret discovered by some idiot who would then call up the closest reporter, giving away that secret for no better reason than because nobody in the comics has anything better to do.

What’s it have to be like to be Superman, only allowed to use his super abilities when he’s dressed up that ridiculous outfit? Of course nobody really considers it from his point of view, because he’s so easily able to put on a pair of glasses and pretend like he’s just a regular guy. But while his powers might seem uncanny to us earthlings, to him it’s just his nature. To him it must be a struggle to keep it all hidden away.

Imagine the earth was about to blow up, but your parents are these geniuses who, despite the fact that nobody listened to their warnings about the impending destruction, built a prototype rocket capable of sending you as infant to a habitable planet far away inhabited by a race of aliens that appeared almost identical to human beings.

But unlike human beings, these aliens can barely walk. They can’t run. They can’t lift anything heavy at all. In fact, they can’t really do anything. They barely have enough strength and intelligence just to go about surviving and procreating. And all of the sudden a spaceship crashes and guess who’s inside? It’s you.

And some aliens take you in and raise you, but you’re a little human baby, so you’re screaming and crying and running around and throwing stuff everywhere. And these aliens are completely shocked. They have no idea how to deal with your unimaginable powers. Even your screaming is impossible for them to comprehend, let alone deal with, because their inferior bodies can’t even produce audible sounds louder than a whisper.

So you’re whole life you have your adoptive parents telling you to pretend like you’re just like everybody else. No running. No talking loud. No lifting stuff up. That’s what it must have been like for Superman growing up in Kansas. It had to have been awful. His mom sends him to the store to go get some groceries. “But don’t you use any of that super speed! Walk slow! Really slow!” And now put yourself back on that alien planet from before, and your adoptive mom tells you to walk across the room to go get the remote, but she tells you to do it really deliberately, and make it look like it’s not a struggle to pick it up when you get there.

What’s that got to be like, to modulate your strength and your speed? It’s one thing to fake walking slow, but it’s another thing to fake it to the point to where it looks authentic. We always see Superman either walking like a regular person or running as fast as the Flash. Wouldn’t it look a little suspicious if Clark Kent started walking or running but only fifteen percent faster than a normal human would? How does he control it, make it look authentic?

Back on the alien planet. You pick up the remote, you have to actually act, to literally stage a performance of you straining to lift it up after you’ve already made a whole scene of pretending to walk over to get it really slowly. That must be exhausting. They never touch on it the comics, but the majority of Superman’s brain activity must have been engaged and spent constantly trying to make a convincing show, hoping not to raise anybody’s suspicions.

If that were me, if I were that baby in that rocket ship on that alien world that I made up to illustrate my point, I’d be so pissed off, constantly bitter. Why am I living my life pretending to be something that I’m not? Why can’t I just jump across the room and pick up the remote like it’s no big deal? And I eventually would. There’s no way I’d be able to keep a lid on my powers for too long.

Sooner or later I’d be in a bad enough mood where I’d just be like, you know what? I don’t care anymore. Hey everybody I can run fast. I can fly. I can lift up giant pieces of machinery and I have X-Ray vision and laser-eyes and freeze-breath and I have super hearing and I can read really fast and you can’t shoot me with a gun, I mean you can, but it would be a waste of a bullet because I’m bulletproof.

And that’s just Superman. I’m sure life on regular Earth must be equally frustrating for all superheroes, like Spider-Man and Iceman and She-Hulk and even more obscure superheroes like Deathlock or Speedball or even Aquaman’s teen sidekick Aqualad. I find it completely unbelievable that there would be even one person with the character to keep an identity secret for an entire lifetime, let alone a whole cast of costumed caped crusaders. These universes full of super beings should realistically just be a whole bunch of villains, people who were told to shut up and slow down their whole lives, that conformity is the only answer, that you have to suppress your super natures. And eventually they’d grow more and more bitter and vile until one day they’d snap and give a big collective middle finger to regular society and its bland conventions of normality and the status quo.

But, yeah, I don’t think that would sell a whole lot of comics, not to mention TV shows or movies or actions figures. Still, it’s something to think about. Just try walking super slowly from one side of the room to the other and tell me its not something interesting to think about.