Tom, reading the final volume of Superior Foes and I have to ask, when an editor approves something like them making Mach VII into a total joke, do you guys think thats a good thing for the character? or just it'd be good within the book? because as a fan of the character, its a massive minus to my enjoyment of the series...
Anonymous
Well, the thing is, not every creator and not every editor feels fondly about every character. Having helped to turn the Beetle into MACH-1 in the first place, I have some legitimate fondness for him, and so I don’t especially want to see him treated as a joke. But I’m also aware that these characters are all very flexible, they can survive an awful lot. And also, that a great deal of what we do is fundamentally ridiculous. So, yeah, after awhile it starts to become difficult to take, say, M.O.D.O.K. seriously as a threat, since he’s been made out to be a punch line for so long. But then, it only takes a single story in which he’s characterized as legitimately creepy and formidable to reverse that opinion. You can be too precious with things and suck all of the life out of them.
I took a lot of pains with this, actually, because I’m really fond of Abner as a character. His Beetle was, for whatever reason, my favorite Spider-Man baddie as a kid. I always wanted to do a Foes book with HIM in the lead, actually, but his transformation into Mach-I was not something even conceivable to backtrack on, so instead I put him in the probation officer role.
But I definitely don’t think we did anything to him that permanently damages the character. All it would take is one good story with him played seriously to swing that pendulum back. The best example of this I can think of is Blue Beetle, who was a comedy character for years, then Geoff Johns, in one issue (the Infinite Crisis prelude), completely changed that.
These characters are pretty elastic. And I think you could definitely make MODOK scary again, btw!
Notes
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robdeb said: While it came from the Distinguished Competition ‘Identity Crisis’ showed how you can reinvent characters very quickly. The move on Catman from 'Green Arrow’ into a real menace was fantastic in one issue.
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