Comic Book Question 11

Oct25 by Revis Edgewater

If you could create one character to stick into any comic book world (it can be a hero, villain, or even just a supporting character), who would you create and which comic book world would you send them to?

I could go the cheap way and tell you all about the three mutant brothers I created for my X-Men fan fiction… again… but that’s three characters, not one. I thought about trying to come up with a new villain for Daredevil. He hasn’t had a good new villain in a while. Although Muse wasn’t too bad. I also thought about coming up with a new Nightwing villain, one not connected to any of the other Bat family or Titans, but then I remembered that’s what they’re trying to do with Heartless.

Ten or fifteen years ago, I had an idea for a new character in the Moon Knight mythos, but it’s eerily similar to Hunter’s Moon, who just debuted two or three years ago. I’m not sure how they did it, but I’m convinced that Marvel stole the idea from me and tweaked it just enough to be different. Also around ten to fifteen years ago, I had an idea for a DC character who would basically be a foul-mouthed Looney Toons character come to life, but the more I thought about it, the more it sounded like The Mask.

No, it’s time to come up with something new… think… think… think…

I got nothing. So, instead, I’m going to take the easy way out and just pick one of the brothers from my X-Men story. I’m not going to pick the most powerful of the three. In fact, you could make the argument that he’s the weakest. Still, I’d choose him over the other two because I think his mutant power would make his interactions with the X-Men more interesting.

His name is Antonio Rodriguez, an Army veteran, and his mutant power is that he’s immune to mutant powers.

That may not seem like much, but think about it. There’d be someone who couldn’t be influenced or have their mind read by Jean Grey, Emma Frost, or Professor X. Cyclops could hit him with his optic blast, and it wouldn’t affect at all. Colossus couldn’t use his super strength to lift him up or punch him across a room. It was a plot point in the story I wrote because one of the characters I used in it was Chamber, and the only way he can talk is through his mutant powers. Their inability to communicate caused problems.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think that’s interesting.

What about you? Do you have an original character you’d like to drop into a comic book world?

Comic Book Question 1

Jan12 by Revis Edgewater

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.

X of Swords

Feb25 by Revis Edgewater

My Marvel Unlimited reading is still going strong. I’ve noticed, however, that about half of the current titles I read are X-Men comics. The reason I noticed this is because, for at least the time being, I’ve stopped reading them.

The reason I’ve stopped reading them is because they’re doing a big crossover story that involves all of them called X of Swords. To put it mildly, I’m not a fan of this story. I’ve debated on whether or not to go into detail about what I don’t like about it, but I think I’ll just generalize on the off chance that I’ll spoil it for someone.

Basically, the whole story is the Marvel version of Mortal Kombat. The overall premise is that a certain number of mutants needs to defeat a certain number of bad guys in one-on-one sword fights otherwise the bad guys will destroy Earth. Sure, there’s other little side stories, but that is the main element.

Now, I might be able to deal with a plot that lame if it was a clear, concise story. It’s not. There’s too many characters spaced out between too many different titles. Even if you read them in order, it still seems jumbled and jumps around.

I hope this story ends soon. I’d like to go back to reading good X-Men material.

My First Fan Fiction

Apr16 by Revis Edgewater

The very first thing I ever wrote in story form was a novelized version of the first solo campaign I ever ran in D & D. At the time, I thought it was great. Reading it now, it’s horrible. It is easily the worst thing I’ve ever written. The dialogue is boring. The characters are basic and/or carbon copies of other characters that I had read before. For example, one character was a half-elf named Roderigo (named after a Seven Mary Three song) who was nothing more than a mixture of the characters Tanis Half-Elven and Raistlin Majere from the DragonLance novels.

After that, I started writing my Dead Set series. I wasn’t really worried about the writing on this one as I was originally intending it to be turned into a comic book. Therefore, none of my grammatical errors mattered because they wouldn’t exist in an image of the action my words were depicting. It was great. I just wrote whatever came to me. Then, when it became evident that they would never actually be turned into comic books, I stopped writing it.

That didn’t stop me from writing comic book stories, however.

I came up with some characters of my own and drew the books out in my horrible stick figure-ish style, where they were only viewed by my closest friends (Before you ask, none of them still exist, so don’t ask me to post them). There were a couple of others that I wrote out in the same style as Dead Set too. One was called Haunted Angel, which addressed what happened to Father Michaels after he left Dead Set (though he wasn’t the main character of the book).

Another one was the very first fan fiction I ever wrote. It was an X-Men story. Although, thinking back on it now, while it may have been a story that had the X-Men in it, it was mostly a way to introduce three original characters of my own.

The basic premise was that there was a standoff at an army base between the troops and mutants. Professor X uses Cerebro to determine that there are two mutants there and dispatches Cyclops, Storm, Gambit, Nightcrawler, Chamber, and Wolverine to diffuse the situation. When they get there, they find that the two mutants are brothers and that they’re joined by their other brother, who was a soldier at the base.

The soldier brother was discharged from the army after a blood test determined that he was also a mutant. He was trying to talk to his superior officers to ask for a new test, because he had never shown any mutant abilities, when things predictably got out of hand. His brothers, who were there to drive him home from the base, stepped in to defend him and it ended up in a standoff.

There was no big X-Men villain, like Magneto or Apocalypse, in the story. The main bad guy was an anti-mutant army officer who tried to kill them all instead of following his orders to de-escalate the situation.

As much as I would like to post this story for you all to read, I can’t. When I originally wrote the story, I started it in one notebook, but ended up finishing it in another when the original notebook (which also had other things I had written in it) became full. Over the course of the many, many moves I’ve been forced to endure since I wrote the story, I’ve lost the original notebook. All I can find is the notebook with the final two chapters in it.

And, I’d like to tell you all about the brothers from the story, but I might end up repurposing them for one of the dozen or so story ideas I have kicking around my head at the moment.

I guess you’ll just have to trust me when I tell you that I think you’d like it.

Versus: Season 2 Episode 3

May2 by Revis Edgewater

I think I finally have this poll thing worked out. If you look at my last Versus post, you’ll notice that the poll is actually closed. It turns out that you have to close them manually. What I thought was the length of time that the poll ran was actually the amount of time that could pass between the same person (IP address) being able to vote. I guess I need to pay more attention to what it says above the dropdown options instead of what’s inside of them.

Now that I’ve got this sorted, I’m going to be doing them for all future Versus posts. Matticus and I will be doing a rematch sometime to make up for the fiasco that was our first attempt (although we haven’t decided yet what the matchup will be). I’m also willing to go toe to toe with anyone else that wants to jump into the proverbial arena with me. If you’d like to challenge me in Versus, fill out the form below.

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

Also, I will be giving the results of the previous matchup in the new posts, if you don’t feel like going back to the old posts to look it up. In Episode 2, I asked who you all thought was the more annoying video game party member, Carth (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic), Sera (Dragon Age: Inquisition), or Louis (Left 4 Dead). The results are in and, despite the fact that I voted for Sera, the winner of this matchup was……. Carth! The people have spoken, Carth, and they said that you annoy the crap out of them.

This Episode’s Matchup:

MOST BADASS SUMMERS BROTHER: SCOTT (CYCLOPS) VS. ALEX (HAVOK) VS. GABRIEL (VULCAN)

I’m going to get lazy with this one. Instead of trying to describe them all to you, I’m just going to “borrow” what’s already written about them at ComicVine.

Scott: Cyclops possesses the mutant ability to project powerful beams of heatless force from his eyes, which act as extra-dimensional apertures to a source of pure energy. Cyclops constantly absorbs ambient sunlight into his body’s cells, metabolizing the energy in order to open the apertures. The maximum force of Cyclops’ blasts is unknown, but a commonly given description is that they can “punch holes through mountains”, and he has been shown rupturing steel plates and pulverizing solid rock. It has been stated that Cyclops uses only a fraction of his vast potential energy output. His more powerful optic blasts can demolish fully-armored tanks, severely damage Sentinels, and obliterate entire icebergs. Cyclops’ mutation has been altered after his prolonged exposure to the Phoenix Force, resulting in a much greater power output.

Alex: Havok is a extremely powerful mutant possessing the power to absorb ambient cosmic energy, process it and emanate it from his body as waves of energy that heat the air in the path, turning it into plasma in the form of a blast or discharge, with a tell-tale concentric circle pattern. These waves will emanate from his body in all directions unless he purposefully tries to channel them in a single direction, usually along the length of his arms. This results in control over an extremely powerful sort of destructive force. He is immune to the adverse effects of most forms of radiation and heat. In the past, he was not entirely able to control this ability, which made him a danger to those around him unless he wore a special containment suit equipped with special sensors for measuring and controlling his power output. Havok is immune to his own powers and to those of his brother Scott. He is resistant but not immune to Vulcan’s powers.

Gabriel: Vulcan is an omega level mutant. He can manipulate all forms of energy. Charles Xavier commented that he is the most powerful energy manipulator he has ever come across. His psionic powers even allow him to control the psionic powers of others as he was able to control Rachel Summers’ telepathy and prevent her from actually accessing her telekinesis or telepathy without his consent (though she later learned to prevent him from inhibiting her). He can also control more esoteric energies like Cyclops’ optic force blasts and Adam Warlock’s spells. Vulcan also appears able to absorb energies from almost any source. Vulcan has similar powers to that of his brothers, as they are each able to absorb certain kinds of energies and rechannel that energy from their bodies. Though his brothers, Cyclops and Havok, are known to be immune to each others powers, they are apparently not immune to Vulcan’s (he manages to hurt Cyclops with no apparent trouble). This may be due to Vulcan’s extremely high power level or his ability to control energies.

So, dear readers, which mutant Summers brother do you think is the most badass? Vote now!

What Do You Think?

May10 by Revis Edgewater

In addition to the Versus matchups we come up with at work (I’ll get to my next one soon….I hope), we also come up with hypothetical situations and go back and forth on our opinions on them. Like Versus, these situations involve movies/books/TV shows/comic book things that just happen to catch our attention. For example, we discussed which movie character, from a movie not set in a science fiction/comic book world, would be best suited to wear a Green Lantern ring. I personally think it would be Rocky. For sheer willpower, never-gonna-quit attitude, nobody can match the Italian Stallion.

The question I posed to them today had to do with the TV show Heroes. Continue reading →

I’m A Little Confused

Mar24 by Revis Edgewater

Instead of a new episode of Agents of SHIELD this past week, they showed a special called Marvel Studios: Assembling a Universe. In it, they chronicle all of the Avengers movies/shows, starting with Iron Man. They ended the show with previews of the upcoming movies: Captain America 2 (which releases in a couple of weeks) and the second Avengers (which I think releases next summer).

Now, when they talked about some of what happens in the new Cap, I understood it. It all made sense: both as a continuation of the Avengers storyline, plus as just a Captain America story. The part I’m confused about has to do with what they said to expect with The Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Continue reading →