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The Revenant Marvel Comics Discussion Thread

Just finished reading Ghost Rider vs Galactus which was released today, and it's not well-received among Ghost Rider fans, that I'll say.

The art and dialogue were amazing... and that's it. Ghost Rider and Galactus had an epic fight scene, only it lasts 2 pages, then Galactus just ignores the effects of the penance stare, gets bored, and leaves. This is how they adapt one of the most famous showdowns in Marvel cartoons.

You wanna know what's crazier? All of you are aware of the endless debate over if it's consistent for the Penance Stare to fail against people who don't regret anything. There have been just as many one-off feats and anti-feats for either stance. Well in this comic, Watcher himself confirms that it failed on Galactus because he has no regrets, and he goes into this whole monologue about how Galactus can't help it since it's his cosmic role, just to build extra emphasis. Ghost Rider himself calls it BS, and directly complains about how the Penance Stare failed on Thanos and Punisher in the past for that reason, but Watcher doesn't care and eventually just gets rid of Johnny. At this point, as much as it sounds like Plot-Induced Stupidity, it seems like this is really how Marvel intends for the Penance Stare to work. This whole issue is a major upset for Ghost Rider fans.
Honestly? I guess it makes sense. I mean as far as I'm aware based off what limited knowledge I have: a lot of stories portray Galactus as essentially being the embodiment of the balance of life and death, where he devours plants not out of intentional malice but out of cosmic necessity to ensure that life and death don't outweigh the other. So with that logic, it does make sense that Ghost Rider's Penance Stare wouldn't work on something that's conceptually neutral.

That being said, I do think that this is another example of how Marvel can't agree on what the Penance Stare can't affect. Because you've got stories where those who don't feel remorse are immune, but then there's stories where that doesn't matter and the Penance Stare still works.
 
Also, against my better judgement, I read through "Imperial" issue #1, since She-Hulk is in it.

Some brief impressions:

It seems heavily hinted that the Brood and possibly the Badoon are the true main antagonists of the story, not the Wakandans, who are setting up the other empires against each other in order to clean the slate for their own dystopian destructive cosmic takeover, unless that was blatant misdirection from Hickman.

I am obviously not fond of Hickman's standard "War with millions or billions of civilian victims is inevitable realpolitik and an exciting spectacle to watch! Go rationalised tribalism!" premise, including that Hulk and even Amadeus Cho are going along with it.

She-Hulk seems to be set up as a future warrior empress of Sakaar in order to have her live up to her potential as the physically strongest woman in the Marvel Universe, but likely at the expense of her sheer decency, virtue, kindness, and moral integrity that set her apart from the rest of her mostly thoroughly corrupt and dystopian setting, in order to defile her into a much more standardised amoral and ultraviolent thrill-killing Marvel Comics anti-"hero", rather than going down the path I would have much preferred by having her follow the precedent set by Jarella during the Chaos War by empowering herself through positive and constructive emotions from The One Above All rather than negative and destructive emotions from The One Below All, so that may be yet another nail in the coffin of Marvel Comics having any authentic moral validity of existence anymore. 🤨
 
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Just finished reading Ghost Rider vs Galactus which was released today, and it's not well-received among Ghost Rider fans, that I'll say.

The art and dialogue were amazing... and that's it. Ghost Rider and Galactus had an epic fight scene, only it lasts 2 pages, then Galactus just ignores the effects of the penance stare, gets bored, and leaves. This is how they adapt one of the most famous showdowns in Marvel cartoons.

You wanna know what's crazier? All of you are aware of the endless debate over if it's consistent for the Penance Stare to fail against people who don't regret anything. There have been just as many one-off feats and anti-feats for either stance. Well in this comic, Watcher himself confirms that it failed on Galactus because he has no regrets, and he goes into this whole monologue about how Galactus can't help it since it's his cosmic role, just to build extra emphasis. Ghost Rider himself calls it BS, and directly complains about how the Penance Stare failed on Thanos and Punisher in the past for that reason, but Watcher doesn't care and eventually just gets rid of Johnny. At this point, as much as it sounds like Plot-Induced Stupidity, it seems like this is really how Marvel intends for the Penance Stare to work. This whole issue is a major upset for Ghost Rider fans.
Oh brother
 
Just finished reading Ghost Rider vs Galactus which was released today, and it's not well-received among Ghost Rider fans, that I'll say.

The art and dialogue were amazing... and that's it. Ghost Rider and Galactus had an epic fight scene, only it lasts 2 pages, then Galactus just ignores the effects of the penance stare, gets bored, and leaves. This is how they adapt one of the most famous showdowns in Marvel cartoons.

You wanna know what's crazier? All of you are aware of the endless debate over if it's consistent for the Penance Stare to fail against people who don't regret anything. There have been just as many one-off feats and anti-feats for either stance. Well in this comic, Watcher himself confirms that it failed on Galactus because he has no regrets, and he goes into this whole monologue about how Galactus can't help it since it's his cosmic role, just to build extra emphasis. Ghost Rider himself calls it BS, and directly complains about how the Penance Stare failed on Thanos and Punisher in the past for that reason, but Watcher doesn't care and eventually just gets rid of Johnny. At this point, as much as it sounds like Plot-Induced Stupidity, it seems like this is really how Marvel intends for the Penance Stare to work. This whole issue is a major upset for Ghost Rider fans.
And I also think that "The Watcher"/Straczynski used Marvel's/John Byrne's traditional absolutely morally abhorent and awfully "conveniently" artificially constructed complete bullshit "logic" for Galactus in order to rationalise and justify supremacist social Darwinism taken to systematic serial-genocide degrees.

Straczynski also went overboard with attempting to whitewash the Hulk in a previous part of this series, while conveniently ignoring all of the horrible things he has done over the years, including starting out as a blatant allegory for Oppenheimer developing more powerful nuclear weapons that will almost inevitably eventually be used against millions of innocent civilians and that greatly help with keeping tyrants in power across this world. 🤨
Not like this even matters anyway since the comic is shown to be non canon right off of the bat. The very first page after the typical character intro page says that the story is taking place in the 70s, something that isn't canon to 616 since in universe it's supposed to be whatever the current real life year is.

I agree on galactus no selling the penance stare but hate the bullshit about it needing people regret for it to work.
Galactus should no sell the stare because he doesn't have a typical soul for the stare to even work on. Despite how ****** the stare has been over the years, one of its consistent requirements from the beginning was that it requires the target to have a soul for it to work.
 
Just a note that Doctor Strange once successfully used the Images of Ikonn against Galactus, and they seem to work similarly to the penance stare. 🙏
 
At the very least: I think most, or all, of us can agree that the fact Ghost Rider vs Galactus only lasted a few pages is genuinely BS and disappointing.

Like fans have been arguing for years, if not decades, if Ghost Rider can defeat the dreaded devourer of worlds, let alone if his dreaded Penance Stare can put him down, yet the fight and question only last for only a few panels? It's just ridiculous, and makes me wonder if there was any creativity involved or not.
 
Very impressive. Now I get why Marvel profiles appear once in a blue moon: making a page the length of an essay is an achievement in itself.
Especially when you have to go through hundreds of issues, find the sentences and statements that are actually useful by filtering through countless pages, and determine what is and isn't valid for vs wiki usage.
 
Well, I still think that Oblivion has always been an extremely bad and destructive idea, but an ancient Mesopotamian storm god killing him and being second in power only to the One-Above-All, and being set up to either be defeated by Ororo Munroe or losing his power to her doesn't make much sense. 🙏
 
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The entire point of the current Storm comic book seems to be to scream over and over that she is "the bestest best that ever bestest", with almost no actual interesting coherent narrative that I have discovered yet. It is annoying, forced, doesn't make any logical sense, and seems borderline desperate. It feels like a massive fan of Lionel Suggs is writing the comic book in question. 🙏
 
The entire point of the current Storm comic book seems to be to scream over and over that she is the bestest best that ever bestest, with almost no actual interesting coherent narrative that I have discovered yet. It is annoying, forced, and seems borderline desperate. It feels like a massive fan of Lionel Suggs is writing the comic book in question. 🙏
Man from all I've hearing about the recent Storm comics, they sure are turning her into into Top 5 characters in powerscaling. How would they go back? How would the other writers nerf her?
 
Man from all I've hearing about the recent Storm comics, they sure are turning her into into Top 5 characters in powerscaling. How would they go back? How would the other writers nerf her?
Well, it definitely doesn't make any logical sense. She controls regular planetary weather effects, and that's it.

At least Thor has the excuse that the weather manipulation is one of the least powerful of his abilities. 🙏
 
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Man from all I've hearing about the recent Storm comics, they sure are turning her into into Top 5 characters in powerscaling. How would they go back? How would the other writers nerf her?
Yes, the exciting adventures of The-Woman-Above-All. Watch her overwrite all of reality and everybody within it to her liking by lifting the tiniest particle in her eyelashes in every single story, without any challenges, costs, setbacks, or restrictions whatsoever over and over and over. That ought to be interesting and exciting in the long run...

However, to be fair, I had a much bigger problem with Thanos being handled this way than with Storm. At least Storm isn't actual evil marketed as an ideal to strive towards. She is just boring and arrogant. 🙏
 
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What's worse is that he's represented as a creature that lives inside Oblivion, basically void of nothingness instead of being the very personification of it.

I think i'm done with Marvel. There is no coherence or consistency at all.
I realised that Marvel Comics has mostly turned into a dadaistically incoherent and morally abhorrrent destructive pointless sadistic ultraviolence for the sake of pointless sadistic ultraviolence memetic cancer long ago, but it is a big shame, as it does contain some genuinely likeable and compelling characters when left alone by thoroughly corruptive influences/writers.

I don't think that Marvel's editorial department truly appreciate the sheer enormous effort for systematic positive constructive reform that Al Ewing did to conceptually largely redeem the setting as a whole, as they let far more poisonous, destructive, or incompetent writers casually tear much of it down quickly afterwards.

Anyway, I think that it is a good idea to remove Oblivion, as he used to turn the setting if possibly even more morally and existentially nihilistic and dystopian, but not just for the sake of unreasonably wanking a character who doesn't make any sense at those power levels. 🙏
 
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I apologise if I turned too harsh in my evaluations above. I have gradually built up quite a lot of frustration over certain types of storytelling that I think are destructive for those subjected to it.

Going by my limited impressions the Storm writer seems to be a nice person. So I definitely do not have anything against her personally. 🙏
 
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