Since he’d started his new job three months ago, he’d packed his lunch every day. And every day someone took something out of it. Never the whole thing. Usually just the snacks he brought, though sometimes it was the meal. He’d seen those stories online about people taking revenge on their coworkers who did that. Laxatives? Hot sauce? That stuff was for amateurs.
He’d soon find out who was stealing his food when they dropped dead from the poison he put on the cookies that were now missing.
Comic Book Question 5
IF YOU COULD CREATE YOUR OWN AMALGAM UNIVERSE CHARACTER, WHO WOULD IT BE?
For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll explain. Back in the late 90s/early 2000s (I could look it up, but I’m feeling lazy at the moment), the Big 2 in the comic book industry, Marvel and DC, did a huge crossover event. During this event, the main Marvel universe and the main DC universe merged together, creating the Amalgam universe; a universe whose heroes and villains were a combination of one character from each of two original universes. For example, years ago, I mentioned in a post that the most badass character in comics came from the Amalgam universe: Dark Claw, a combination of Wolverine and Batman. Imagine Wolverine, with his adamantium skeleton, claws, and healing factor, but also having Batman’s intelligence, resources, and fighting skills. Most badass character in comics.
His nemesis, Hyena (a mixture of Joker and Sabretooth), was pretty badass too. Some of the others I remember are: Super Soldier (Superman + Captain America), Amazon (Wonder Woman + Storm), Speed Demon (Ghost Rider + Flash, a combination I never would have thought of), and Sparrow (Robin + Jubilee). There were many more, but those are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head.
As for my answer to the question, I put a lot of thought into it. I wanted to create a conflicted character, so I started thinking of two characters who were complete opposites. The first thing that came to mind was Superman and the Punisher, but Injustice Superman was basically that combination. Then, I went to Deadpool and Batman, the least serious comic book character and the most serious. But, finding a balance between the two would be tricky. It’s probably a little too tricky, so I moved on from that. That’s when I thought that maybe I should do two characters with opposite powers as opposed to opposite personalities. After pondering that one for a bit, I realized I was overthinking it, and I should just go with a combination I liked.
That’s when I came up with the Cajun Hood. I’m still not sold on the name, but I was trying to include both characters in it, and it’s the best I’ve come up with so far. The Cajun Hood is a combination of Gambit and the Red Hood. Both already wear body armor. When fighting up close, he’d use Gambit’s quarterstaff. When fighting from a distance, he’d use Red Hood’s guns, but he’d imbue his non-lethal rounds with Gambit’s mutant kinetic energy ability. He’d have Remy’s Cajun heritage and thief upbringing, but the Jason’s tragic backstory of being killed and brought back to life.
Personally, I think that would be an awesome character.
What about you? What would your Amalgam universe character be?
Comic Book Question 4
IF YOU COULD HAVE ONLY ONE OF SUPERMAN’S POWERS, WHICH ONE WOULD IT BE?
This one started a long discussion about how you couldn’t have some of Superman’s powers without at least one more. “You can’t have flight without the invulnerability. Your body wouldn’t be able to withstand the forces of flying without it.” That led to clarifying that whichever power you picked would work perfectly without having any of the other powers.
Then it came time to answer the question, and honestly, I don’t have just one answer for it. The answer would vary greatly depending on what time of my life I answered it. If you asked me right before I hurt my back, I’d have picked invulnerability. That would’ve come in handy at that time.
If you’d have asked me back when I was a hormone fueled teenager, the X-ray vision might have been too tempting to pass up.
If I’m answering for right now, I’d have to go with flight. Of course, I’d like it to work like it did for Christopher Reeve’s Superman and be able to take others with me. That way, me and my girls could just fly away whenever we felt like it.
What about you? Which one of Superman’s powers would you want to have?
Comic Book Question 3
Pick 2 characters from comic book companies other than DC or Marvel that you’d like to see fight each other.
This one was harder for me than it was for my coworkers that I talk to about this stuff. The majority of my comic reading is from the Big 2 and their reading is more eclectic. I’ve read some Valiant books over the past few years, but I haven’t seen anything new from them for a while. Still, I decided to start there.
It didn’t do any good. I couldn’t think of any that I thought would be a good fight against any of the other characters I had in mind. So, I ran through my list of previously borrowed titles on my Hoopla list. That led me to a fight that I would find pretty interesting, even if nobody else probably would.
Oliver Harrison (from Vanish) vs. Blue Wraith (from Dragon Age: Blue Wraith)
I don’t want to give too much away as far as the story of Vanish, in case any of you want to read it later, so I’ll just put up what Image has on their website: Oliver Harrison was a mythical hero who slayed the greatest threat to his realm before even hitting puberty. But that was then. As an adult, Oliver leads an average cookie-cutter suburban life-aside from the fact that he’s mentally unstable, massively paranoid, smokes like a chimney, and gets blackout drunk every night to hide from his horrific nightmares. Will the arrival of a superhero team called the Prestige prove the madness isn’t all in Oliver’s head?
Ok, so that doesn’t quite clarify why I think this fight would be interesting. It all comes down to how Oliver and the superhero team called The Prestige get their powers. While it appears that they are using superpowers, what they are actually using is magic. Their powers are magic.
That little tidbit becomes important because of who I chose to fight him: Blue Wraith.
Blue Wraith is someone that Dragon Age fans are familiar with, particularly if they played Dragon Age 2. He was one of Hawke’s companions, but he went by a different name in the game. Back then, he was known as Fenris.
Fenris is an elf who was once the slave of a powerful magister. The magic user tortured and experimented on him. One of those experiments left him covered in glowing blue tattoos, but also gave him the ability to phase his hand through people’s chests and rip out their hearts. His experiences with the magister left him hating pretty much anyone who can use magic. So, if he happened to come across a magic user by chance, particularly a mentally unstable one like Oliver Harrison, he’d shoot first and ask questions later.
Who would win this fight? I want to say Fenris, just because I like him better as a character. I can’t, though. By the end of Vanish, they made him too powerful. Fenris would put up a good fight, but Oliver Harrison would win this one.
Comic Book Question 2
I said in my last post that I was saving one of our off-the-wall questions for this week, and I will stick to my word. Here’s a question that had my supervisor shaking her head at us and muttering, “Nerds…”
Could Superman have survived the Death Star blast that destroyed Alderaan?
The back and forth on this debate went on most of the afternoon. I even brought in outside opinions. The most common thing that was brought up after hearing the question is that it would be almost impossible to hit Superman with the beam without him dodging it. To that, I had a simple explanation for why they would hit him. If the Death Star’s weapon was pointed at a planet full of innocent people, he would gladly throw himself in the line of fire.
Now that that’s out of the way, we can get back to the question at hand. Could Superman have survived an attack that obliterated a planet instantaneously? We all agreed that he could. The reason for the nerd comment was that after we agreed on the Death Star, we started asking about whether he could survive the more powerful blast from Starkiller Base, as seen in The Force Awakens.
Starkiller Base was powered by a sun. Since there are certain suns that make Superman stronger and others that take his powers away, which one would it be? Would the process of weaponizing the sun’s energy change it enough to make that not even matter?
The blast from Starkiller Base broke up into five separate beams, each capable of destroying a planet. Was he hit by one of the five beams, or was he hit by the concentrated beam before it split?
I went with Superman being able to survive the split beams, but not the concentrated one.
What do you think?
Comic Book Question 1
A couple of guys at work are into comic books, like I am, and one of the things we do to pass the time is ask each other questions about them. Sometimes it’s picking two characters and debating who would win in a fight between them. Sometimes it’s picking characters we’d like to form a superteam with. Other times, it’s random off-the-wall stuff. I think I’ll save that last category for next week and start with something a little more normal for this first question.
IF YOU COULD BE GIVEN COMPLETE CREATIVE CONTROL OF ANY MARVEL CHARACTER, WHICH ONE WOULD IT BE?
It would be very easy to answer this with my favorite Marvel character, Daredevil, but that’s not who I would choose. There are other characters that I’ve read a lot of over the years that would be easy to answer with: Wolverine (the original), Deadpool, and Gambit, to name a few. I wouldn’t choose them either.
The character I would pick is Chamber.
I know a lot of you out there probably aren’t familiar with him. Jonothan Starsmore is a mutant who first appeared in Generation X, later joined the X-Men, Weapon X, and the New Warriors at various times. He had his own miniseries at one point, as well.
When he was first introduced, and at other times throughout his publication history, it was hinted that Chamber would eventually become one of the most powerful mutants on the planet. Over the years, however, that never happened. In fact, he’s been used less and less as time has gone on. The last I saw of him, he did a storyline with the New Mutants around 4 or 5 years ago that lasted probably 6 issues.
If I was ever given the opportunity to do so, I would love to do a story where Chamber finally reaches his potential. A story where he becomes one of the heavy hitters in the X-Men universe.
Although, at this point, I’d just be happy if they started using him more.
I’m Still Here
As longtime readers of mine may know (if there are any of you left out there), I have an on again/off again relationship with this blog. Over the years, there’s been many times when I’ve taken breaks from posting. Sometimes, it’s only a week or two. Other times, like this last one, it’s many months.
The reason I took this latest break was that I felt like I needed to post on this blog. I know I didn’t need to, but I felt like I had to. Because I had that feeling that it was something I had to do, it turned something that should be done for recreation into work. Or a chore. Since I have more than enough of both of those things offline, I stepped away.
I stopped writing blogs. I stopped reading them. Well, regularly, at any rate. I still hopped on every once in a while to check things out, but there were usually weeks in between checks.
While talking to my writing partner Matticus, he told me of his plan to start posting once a week. I thought about it and figured I’d give it a shot. I’m going to steal his idea and post once a week, too. Hopefully, it’ll help get me back into a blogging state of mind. So, starting with this one, I will be putting up a new post every Friday. More than likely, they’ll just be about one of the questions that someone at work has asked about video games/comic books/movies/TV shows. I may change that up as I go along. Who knows?
I’m also going to try to get back into the habit of reading other people’s blogs, too, but that’s probably going to take longer for me to get to because I have a lot of things I’m already reading at the moment. If I don’t get to yours right away, I apologize in advance. If there’s a particular post of yours that you’d like me to read, leave me a link in the comments, and I’ll get to it as soon as I can.
Thank you to everyone who has stuck around despite my absence.
33 Grams of Blog 