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Most Under-utilized Marvel Character


OSJ

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I nominate the Blazing Skull. Great backstory, covers the time between WWII and present day with no potential conflicts. Character is portrayed as borderline batshit insane with an interesting back-up power to his super strength (which hasn't been clearly defined), we know he's super-strong, but like Spiderman, we aren't sure just how strong that is. The back-up power of being impervious to flame is certainly a useful one and rather unique. So why isn't more done with the character? I don't know, definitely one of the Golden Age heroes that a good deal more could be done with. He's certainly got a lot more potential than someone like the Challenger or the Thunderer (for those unfamiliar with the latter, his gimmick was a portable microphone which was useful in startling the evil-doers; so uh, yeah... He pretty much terrified criminals by yelling at them...) But I digress... Whether brought back only to be written out or "retired" (the Angel), mis-used (the Destroyer), re-imagined (the Jim Hammond version of the Human Torch), most of the Timely Comics characters have been dealt with fairly effectively, even those with ridiculously limited potential (Mister E, the Phantom Reporter, the Witness, etc.), but the Blazing Skull has been brought into modern continuity only to be seemingly forgotten by the current crop of writers. Thoughts?

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14 hours ago, OSJ said:

Most Under-utilized Marvel Character?

 

14 hours ago, OSJ said:

Jim Hammond, the Human Torch

seriously. the first Marvel hero. gets his name ripped off for a cocky upstart. disappears for decades at a time. brought back once every few years for a short-lived "Invaders" book then disappears again. He's bounced around relegated to rarely-seen background character. He ran Namor's organization way back when. He's been the Vision, but not really. At one point he was an agent of SHIELD. not that it really ever got mentioned again. How is he not AT LEAST in the big crossover events? He doesn't even have to play a major role. I think Marvel should be doing a hell of a better job with their WW2 heroes in general, but the man who killed Hitler especially.

back-up pick: Ben Reilly. no further explanation needed.

good call on the Blazing Skull, though. I would love to see more from him. His storyline in whichever Invaders reboot was the highlight of that run.

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I could keep with the theme and throw out the Destroyer or Miss America or the golden age Angel or even the Rawhide Kid, but I'm going to go with Songbird. She had a great arc from being Screaming Mimi to a truly heroic, Avengers level character, and just has been barely been used in the last ten years. Plus they need to close the Avengers Forever loop at some point.

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3 hours ago, Matt D said:

I could keep with the theme and throw out the Destroyer or Miss America or the golden age Angel or even the Rawhide Kid, but I'm going to go with Songbird. She had a great arc from being Screaming Mimi to a truly heroic, Avengers level character, and just has been barely been used in the last ten years. Plus they need to close the Avengers Forever loop at some point.

Good call! Songbird's evolution from Screaming Mimi is one of the better face turns in comics. I don't particularly like what they did with the Destroyer, but at least they did provide a logical arc to the character. I missed the issue, but I'm given to understand that there was a Captain America issue that dwelt on the Angel in retirement. Granted, the character's name was usurped by Warren Worthington, but for such a prolific character you would think he'd have merited a bigger send-off. I could be wrong, but in terms of GA appearances I think that after the big three, (Torch, Namor, & Cap) you have the Angel, Vision, & the Destroyer as your next tier. Obviously, only the Vision was really pushed in the modern era. In fact, it would be fair to say that the modern incarnation of the Vision was by far more significant a character than his GA counterpart who was a popular back-up strip. Popular, yes; but still a back-up feature which meant 6-8 page stories, heavy on the action and light on the plotting or character development. 

It's rather amusing that the era that wound up being called "the Golden Age" was, for the most part, utter shit. Simple-minded plotting, ghastly crude artwork  for the most part. For all the accolades tossed around Simon & Kirby, the reality is that 1940s Jack Kirby doesn't even begin to come close to 1960s Jack Kirby. After all, the man had twenty years to hone his craft and he certainly spent his time well growing as an artist. There are only a few cases where we get to see an artist's growth over a period of twenty-thirty years. I think you could have a pretty good career study of Joe Kubert, Gil Kane, and perhaps Carmine Infantino, though in all three cases you would be looking at a ten-twenty year career as opposed to the twenty-thirty year career that we got to observe with Kirby. Certainly we need to look at Steve Ditko and John Romita as major influences, though it is really somewhat shocking to see how short Ditko's actual career was... Nor was Romita's career much longer in comparison...

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I haven't seen Marvel do anything with the Sleepwalker, Jocasta, or the Miracle Man in ages, but I also haven't read a comic series on the regular in ages.

I was going to also say Machine Man / Mister Machine until my brother reminded me that he had a brief run in Marvel Zombies.

 

Edited by J.T.
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3 hours ago, J.T. said:

I haven't seen Marvel do anything with the Sleepwalker, Jocasta, or the Miracle Man in ages, but I also haven't read a comic series on the regular in ages.

I was going to also say Machine Man / Mister Machine until my brother reminded me that he had a brief run in Marvel Zombies.

 

I'll have to admit that the whole Jocasta concept left me flat, as did Sleepwalker for that matter.

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8 hours ago, J.T. said:

I haven't seen Marvel do anything with the Sleepwalker, Jocasta, or the Miracle Man in ages, but I also haven't read a comic series on the regular in ages.

I was going to also say Machine Man / Mister Machine until my brother reminded me that he had a brief run in Marvel Zombies.

 

I believe these two had decent size parts in a recent Iron man run.

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On 3/29/2021 at 2:15 AM, OSJ said:

I'll have to admit that the whole Jocasta concept left me flat, as did Sleepwalker for that matter.

I did not find anything about the Sleepwalker to be terribly bad but if we're being really honest, early concept fembot Jocasta was little more than fan service, IMO.

I still feel badly for the character as she was pretty much created and left out there.  Retrospectively, it makes no sense why Ultron would create a female AI and give her a robotic body just so that she could serve as his mate.  Sexuality is a human trait.

It's because of this that the MCU version of Ultron has grown on me despite the lackluster Avengers sequel he was supposed to carry.

MCU Ultron's primary frame exerts control over his auxiliaries via a secured wireless network rather than uploading an independent AI into each and every secondary frame.  All of the androids that fight against the Avengers are Ultron.

I feel that this is more in line with HAL 9000, Colossus, Agent Smith, Wintermute, and other rogue AI villains whose software consciousness has the potential to transcend their hardware.  One AI need not be limited to the containment of a single mechanical host or even a starship and this has led to an evolution how we readers have traditionally viewed androids, robots, and "thinking computers."

 

Edited by J.T.
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I've been trying to think of a better answer than Songbird. and... still drawing a blank.  She's probably the best answer for modern characters, imo.  I thought she'd be a linchpin of Avengers stories for years to come (Busiek probably did too).

 

Edited by Eoae
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15 hours ago, J.T. said:

I still feel badly for the character as she was pretty much created and left out there.  Retrospectively, it makes no sense why Ultron would create a female AI and give her a robotic body just so that she could serve as his mate.  Sexuality is a human trait.

Yeah, but Ultron has always kind of imitated humanity while professing to hate them, hasn't he?

15 hours ago, J.T. said:

MCU Ultron's primary frame exerts control over his auxiliaries via a secured wireless network rather than uploading an independent AI into each and every secondary frame.  All of the androids that fight against the Avengers are Ultron.

I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, doing that in Ultron's first appearance means you lose out on potentially doing a great moment from Busiek and Perez's Avengers run, when it's revealed that this time Ultron has built himself hundreds of bodies simultaneously. That reveal, coming after decades of stories where one Ultron was a massive threat, was a total shit-your-pants moment.

On the other hand - people now are a lot more savvy about computers and networks then they were in the 60s when Ultron was created. Enough so that most viewers would find it obvious that an AI should be able to distribute itself across multiple bodies, and consequently trying to use that as a surprise later in the character's development would probably come across as silly.

So they probably had to pull that trigger in the first movie. They still should have done more to establish the Ultron droids as individually formidable before the climactic battle, though.

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On 3/28/2021 at 10:26 PM, J.T. said:

I haven't seen Marvel do anything with the Sleepwalker, Jocasta, or the Miracle Man in ages, but I also haven't read a comic series on the regular in ages.

I was going to also say Machine Man / Mister Machine until my brother reminded me that he had a brief run in Marvel Zombies.

 

Sleepwalker had a limited series during the Infinity War crossover a few years ago but I imagine he's a bit of a tough sell since he's kind of an obscure character with a complicated backstory. 

I was always a big Speedball fan and I was always disappointed that they never really did a whole lot with the character after his time in Thunderbolts as Penance. They left him as potentially Hulk-level powerful in Thunderbolts and ultimately just worked him back to the old status quo in a bunch of failing New Warriors restarts.

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