Olantern

"Do you have Prince Albert in a can? No? Of course not! I, Lord Nemesis, have him! And I shall not release him until you bow before me, pitiful insects ... uh, why did I make this call, again?"

Yeah, I have not cared much for his writing, though I will say he's improved a lot over the years, and his plots have been all right throughout, though I've never much cared for the "Hellboy wanders around confusing islands" stuff. In fact, he's to the point now where I think his writing is sometimes up to the level of the art and often up to the level of the plotting (not quite the same as "the writing," though they're related). Yet it's always clear that the writing is secondary to the art.

I can't believe I only just thought of this after all these years, but wouldn't going to the real bank be a lot more interesting if it were like this? Maybe they'd give out a free toaster to whoever waved his arms in the most ridiculous fashion.

Broadsword would also enable you to use the Valkyrie sword, which not only would look pretty good with that costume but also resembles a cavalry sabre. I think there are also some swords available for katana that would work for that look.

Continuing with the idea of the cavalry moving around the battlefield fast, I probably would go with superspeed as a travel power, and I might consider powers that make him move and act faster, such as Quickness or Lightning Reflexes, which would suggest either SR or electric armor as defensive choices.

1. No, not alone. Even for someone like me, who pays attention to the stories and usually likes them, they aren't the sole or even primary reason for subscribing. It's a combination of gameplay, visuals, and story.

2. The lore is sometimes contradictory and often messy, but I have rarely found it to be poorly written. I applaud the question for breaking these ideas up. I read a lot of complaints about the backstory that scream, "These writers suck!" when they actually mean, "This new thing contradicts the old stuff!" (Some also scream, "These writers suck!" when they really mean, "I don't like [time travel/alternate universe/giant dinosaur/alien invasion/what-have-you] stories." There have been more and more such people in the superhero/comics world ever since comics began tearing themselves apart in the '80's. Personally, I don't think every superhero story needs to have the overwrought personalities of Watchmen or the emotional hooks of The Incredibles or reflect manga rather than western comics or whatever, but I'm starting to think I'm in the minority.)

3. Speaking of personal taste, I'm not a fan of the Praetorian storyline. Its guiding theme seems to be, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem!" I'm just not comfortable with that notion, especially in a fairly lighthearted setting of superheroic adventure. Further, while I understand Praetoria and Incarnates had to be tied together because they were being sold together, it's a pretty rough marriage. That said, I think the writing team has done a good job of presenting it and making the most of the material they were given to work with.

4. This question is akin to, "Would you have a issue of just bug fixes?" Like that question, it overlooks that the writing is an ongoing process integrated with other aspects of design. For what it's worth, I don't think any of the issues with the backstory are serious enough to warrant something this radical, or even to warrant in-game changes, for the most part. There are inconsistencies and rough patches, but I don't think they're as game-breaking as most people who comment on the story here like to argue.

I would, however, suggest that the way the story bible is maintained from here on out change. Despite repeated player arguments to the contrary, there is a story bible. Former chief writer Manticore has quoted from it extensively, and CoH comics writer Troy Hickman has described its appearance. However, having seen the quotation made by Manticore (it was about the Minions of Igneous and explained why they are called that), I see a significant issue with it, one that explains most of the inconsistencies and other issues I've seen lately: it isn't being maintained consistently.

The story bible itself, or an outline the writing team comes up with in a meeting, is just a preliminary document. The actual in-game story that gets delivered may differ from it. When that happens, the story bible needs to be updated to reflect what actually went into the game. This is not a novel. There is not a single person who can resolve all story conflicts and provide final answers on all questions. If a statement on the story gets made in-game, it needs to go into the central document. The other side of all this is that the writing team needs to review the material before writing, rather than just going ahead with the ideas that came out of the meeting with the art and mission design teams. It's pretty much that simple.

Finally, all the player screaming over lore should realize something. No one paid to deal with this stuff as a work for hire will ever have the investment in it that a fan does.

I was hoping that the next Star Trek movie would be Admiral Kirk in the West Federation.

In an unrelated matter, does anyone know if they ever made any more of those Hornblower movies with whathisname, who later appeared as a very strange Mr. Fantastic, after the ones based on Hornblower and the Hotspur?

That is a really good point, and one I hadn't thought of. While I'm pretty sure that wasn't what the art team had in mind, I can fit that into the superhero world. Instead of a "scary, mysterious cult," they are now "weird guys from beyond." I will pretend they are wearing the Funky Collar of Dormammu, the Pants of Pantoom, and the Chest Detail of Ch'Hooognthn, and I will probably like them a lot better. (My dad is a big fan of Dr. Strange, so I'm familiar with this stuff...)

It just occurred to me for the first time that this would mean that the only way to get the Isolator badge from now on would be to hit that one Contaminated in Recluse's Victory a hundred times.

Unless (1) the Contaminated show up in the reworked Ouroboros introduction, (2) you can flash back to the "old" Ouroboros introduction, (3) the mechanics of Isolator change, or (4) they come up with something else.

This (the tails, not the caste society) make me like the idea of a new Thundercats cartoon a lot better. One thing that always drove me crazy was the way the heroes all looked like humans with funny hair and makeup rather than cats, and tails would be a big part of that.

(The villain designs from the original show, on the other hand, always impressed me.)

Personally, I don't think it makes a hero a bad guy if he doesn't fix everything, all the time. Yet you're right that there's a disconnect if a character who's supposed to be driven entirely by selflessness ever chooses not to help anyone.

That aside, Rosa is exactly right; this is a point where you have to suspend your disbelief. Either that, or you have to decide you can't accept the premise and read (or watch) something else. Given how thoroughly that movie got trashed around here, I think you're probably not alone in that regard.

For a good treatment of this issue in a comic, see the first Astro City story, "In Dreams," collected in Life in the Big City. Honestly, though, although I haven't read it myself, I think you'd enjoy Mark Waid's Irredeemable much more. The premise, if you're unaware of it, is that Waid's Superman equivalent becomes a villain, I believe for more or less the reasons you mentioned.

I hear about "Kirby dots" and now "Kirby tech" a fair amount. I know comics fairly well, so I know who Kirby was, but I've never really understood what people mean by these terms. Is "Kirby tech" just "circles connected by angled lines," or is there more to it?

Regardless, more costume parts of whatever kind are always good, so I support this suggestion.

edit: I see this thread has now become about redesigning Valkyrie. Well, better that than the social implications of Swan's outfit.

I read it just recently.

It's a fairly typical fantasy series of the last twenty years or so, featuring the usual elements such stories have had: human-scale villain trying to take over things, inhuman "destroy everything" villainous species to provide action sequences, and odd cultures that function as both friend and foe depending on the situation.

That said, it's quite well-written. The characterizations are generally good, the action and battle sequences are good, and the plotting is excellent, with many diffferent characters trying to manipulate events. The plotting has a bit of an I,Claudius (helps that it's a Roman-like culture) or Song of Ice and Fire feel to it, without the bombast and relentless hopelessness that many people get from those works. In particular, as you might expect if you've been following the White Council storyline in The Dresden Files, the political maneuvering in the story is quite well done, with many plots within plots and unexpected alliances.

The most interesting thing about the series, and the most important thing to know if you want to read the whole thing, is that the first book is by far the weakest thing I've ever read by Butcher. It was his first full novel, though not his first published work, and it just isn't as polished as the Dresden stories or the rest of the Aleran stories. You'll notice a huge jump in writing quality when you hit the second book; from there on, the writing is as good as you'll see in a Dresden novel.

One final thing that I enjoyed about it was that while it was six books long, making up more or less a single, continuous story, it's still digestible. Six books is fairly brief by epic fantasy standards, and the story has a defined ending, something you don't always see with these multi-book epics.

I am not an authority on current Superman comics, but this got me to thinking several things.

First, because Superman is stronger than most adversaries a writer can invent, over the past several decades, many of the challenges he has faced have been written to be primarily mental or emotional rather than physical. Put another way, writers have tried to present him with villains who cannot be beaten simply by literally beating them up. For example, in recent Superman stories, Lex Luthor is president of the United States. While I suspect the writers did it mainly as a thinly-veiled political commentary*, it also renders Luthor "untouchable" in some sense. Superman could beat him up, but he can't just attack the president without causing a legal mess and can't force the people of the United States to reject Luthor just because Superman knows he's evil.

Second, apropos of your kryptonite hat comment, back when I was really into Superman as a kid in early '80's, kryptonite-themed villains seemed fairly rare, and when it was mentioned, it was often a more indirect threat (e.g., the weird-colored kryptonite is making Superman crazy, what happens?) than a tool for superpowered villains. Now, I seem to hear a lot more about it as either a character's gimmick (e.g., '90's Superman villain Conduit) or just something used by other villains (e.g., Luthor's kryptonite ring from the "Death of Superman" era). Maybe they do have kryptonite hats these days.

Third and most importantly, when I hear people complain about "Superman is too powerful!", I think it misses an aspect of the character that's often overlooked in these days of continuities full of hundreds of superheroes. Remember that at the time he came out, Superman was more or less the only superhumanly powerful hero. Originally, and continuing at the very least through the '50's, part of the draw of Superman was exactly that he was so powerful. His contemporary heroes in the pulps of the '30's and early '40's were often highly capable men, but Superman was literally superhuman. The character very intentionally tapped into readers' fascination with a character with "powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men."

This continued through the '50's at least, and it was probably part of Superman's "power creep" that's so regularly criticized by both fans and writers these days. The thrill for young readers of Superman comics in that period doesn't seem intended to be, "Will Superman survive this peril?" as "Superman is so powerful, it's amazing!" A well-known Superman cover of the time showed him towing some entire planets on a chain. A character who can tow planets on a chain is hard to beat in a fight, but at the time, a man towing planets on a chain was itself exciting to read about. (Still should be, in my opinion, for all but the most jaded readers.) The focus was on the powers themselves, not the obstacles they were used to overcome.

The problem, of course, was that as story styles and reader tastes changed over the ensuing decades, just towing planets around was not enough. In the mid-'80's, when DC did its first "reboot" (long before that usage of the term existed) of Superman, and one of the things it did was cut back his power level. Readers wanted to see their protagonist challenged, and this required a weaker protagonist, though "weaker" is a relative term when you're discussing a character who throws chunks of concrete, flies, and shoots rays of heat from his eyes.

This is still more or less where things stand today. It seems to me that many fans and writers remain uncomfortable with Superman's level of power "because it makes things too easy." What they overlook is that the character's powers were designed to appeal to a different kind of interest. The character was designed for uncritical, young readers, not the savvy, fashionably cynical adult comics reader of today. I think it's no accident that most writers who really seem to enjoy working on Superman today are most interested in using him as a symbol, whether a political one as in the Lex-as-president situation or a more general "inspiration to mankind" vein. I think it's also no accident that as readers have come to enjoy more flawed heroes and more perilous situations in superhero stories, Superman has been eclipsed as "the face of the superhero" by Batman, a character who can easily be put into challenging-seeming situations because he can be challenged by almost anything that challenges a real person. (I'm restraining myself here from an extended critique of Batman .... okay, I think the desire to trash him has passed. )

Bottom line? I think it's a shift in what readers are looking for out of the character and his stories.

* Critical as I am of the Luthor-as-political-commentary idea, to be fair, it's not like the idea of Superman fighting a villainous politician is something new. Quite the opposite, in fact. The very first Superman story had him fighting an evil lobbyist, and similar stories continued for over a decade in various media, notably the Superman radio show, where crooked political bosses were among the primary antagonists.