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[rdrsfn82]

Year One? Man of Steel?

Both better than Kingsley.

[Zechs]

It's hard to keep track, DC is so lame about stuff.

Do they have an official superman origin?
They refuse to have an official joker origin, which is lame.
Green Lantern is such a squandered franchise, of course that is more recently.

That's the entire fucking point of the Joker. If he's to have an official origin any reader would like to think of it as all of the above.

[Zechs]

Both better than Kingsley.

They're DC retcons you failed to mention fool! Not to mention complete rehauls. This was a nice softer retcon that made more sense.

[Spidey-Man]

TWO YEARS. The Goblin was around, but Norman appeared two years prior to being revealed as the Green Goblin. Ned was around since well almost day one. So the question is, why the hell didn't he become a supervillain then?

No he didn't.

Norman's only appearance as a named character was two issues prior to the reveal of who the Goblin was.

a character who looked like Norman, unnamed, appeared in a few issues before that as a background character. i think he had one line in all of that. No indications he was anything but filler.

It doesnt matter whether ned made sense. it doesnt make sense to retcon a mess 15 yrs later. let it go.

(it was explained by the original retcon Ned did it at first not to be a criminal. but then....went a little whacky)

[Rockman]

But that's the point. Slott says the character's book was closed. So why the hell do you bring him back only to close the book again? Just saying.

He should have done the very thing he said he wouldn't, and let it be a mystery. Have Pete track down kingsley, and discover that he in fact did not come back. Have it revealed in six months that it was Phil Urich who had gone insane for some reason. That would have been better than this drech.

And for the record, mysteries suck when you know the answer. Having the reader know the outcome, while the main character doesn't it so stupid and boring. And Phil Urich, while not the best character ever, is slightly likeable. Having him become some crazy murderer ruins that, he's just some crazy sociopath now, another electro. All the paths he could have went with the concept, and he just decided to go "I'm evil.... just because". Instead he could have had a guy who desperatly wanted to do the right thing, but his own mental illness was taking him to the point where he couldn't see the line anymore. You have a potentially tragic character, who is now just some evil schlubb for Pete to take down some more *yawn*. Oh and bringing back the Kingpin to Spidey's rogues? Lame, Spidey used him up and spat him out for Daredevil, no reason to bring him back. Especially after the events of back in black.

[rdrsfn82]

They're DC retcons you failed to mention fool! Not to mention complete rehauls. This was a nice softer retcon that made more sense.

I listed Byrne's Superman.

[Rockman]

That's the entire fucking point of the Joker. If he's to have an official origin any reader would like to think of it as all of the above.

it's overrated.

They should just use the flashbacks from the killing joke as his official origin.

[Zechs]

No he didn't.

Norman's only appearance as a named character was two issues prior to the reveal of who the Goblin was.

a character who looked like Norman, unnamed, appeared in a few issues before that as a background character. i think he had one line in all of that. No indications he was anything but filler.

It doesnt matter whether ned made sense. it doesnt make sense to retcon a mess 15 yrs later. let it go.

(it was explained by the original retcon Ned did it at first not to be a criminal. but then....went a little whacky)

And that's the point. You read the Stern stuff you really have to scratch your head at the explanation given. Ned didn't want to be a criminal? Um in Stern and DeFalco's stories the Hobgoblin RELISHED being evil. He killed and did things to people before he took the Goblin serum.

[Zechs]

it's overrated.

They should just use the flashbacks from the killing joke as his official origin.

But Paul Dini's Case Study is good as well. It's a nice counter to the Killing Joke that's equally left up to the reader to decide if it's the one to go with or not.

[spidertour02]

Copied and pasted from another board ...

Slott clearly has no idea what he's talking about.

The most interesting thing about Kingsley is that he has sanity on his side. Unlike Norman or Harry, Roderick wasn't batshit crazy, which made him a much more dangerous opponent. Kingsley could form meticulous plans and follow up on them. He was ruthless, cunning, calculating, and capable of high levels of deception. All of these things make Kingsley an interesting character under the mask, let alone wearing it.

The main problem is that writers like Slott don't understand what makes the character work.

This whole thread is about a character who hasn't appeared for like 20 years, lol.

Bullshit. He was the primary villain in The Amazing Spider-Girl for virtually its entire run. And it was awesome.

[Zechs]

Copied and pasted from another board ...

Slott clearly has no idea what he's talking about.

The most interesting thing about Kingsley is that he has sanity on his side. Unlike Norman or Harry, Roderick wasn't batshit crazy, which made him a much more dangerous opponent. Kingsley could form meticulous plans and follow up on them. He was ruthless, cunning, calculating, and capable of high levels of deception. All of these things make Kingsley an interesting character under the mask, let alone wearing it.

The main problem is that writers like Slott don't understand what makes the character work.



Bullshit. He was the primary villain in The Amazing Spider-Girl for virtually its entire run. And it was awesome.

THANK YOU.

[Rockman]

But Paul Dini's Case Study is good as well. It's a nice counter to the Killing Joke that's equally left up to the reader to decide if it's the one to go with or not.

I haven't read it.

But let me clarify a little.

I don't think we should know every minute detail of the history of the joker, he's an enigma and it works. When you get too much it usually ends up sucking (wolverine). But I think you something, just a little something, to help you relate to the character a bit. Like in mask of the phantasm, where we know that prior to becoming the joker he was a hired gun of some kind. We don't know how he became joker, we don't know what his childhood was like, we don't know anything, all we know is that prior to becoming the joker he was a pretty mean mobster. It allows to realize that he did in fact have a normalish life at one point, and allows us to imagine for ourselves what kind of tragedy transformed him into the clown prince of crime. Tying his history to Batman's a bit also helped.

Maybe it's just me but it helps the character to work better. I think that's one of the many reaosn why I always like the animated batman better than the comic book versions, all the characters good or bad had some kind of motivation you could relate to on some level. Straight up pyschos are much less intriguing villains because we as individuals can't connect to their base motivations, because most of us aren't crazy.

[Rockman]

Copied and pasted from another board ...

Slott clearly has no idea what he's talking about.

The most interesting thing about Kingsley is that he has sanity on his side. Unlike Norman or Harry, Roderick wasn't batshit crazy, which made him a much more dangerous opponent. Kingsley could form meticulous plans and follow up on them. He was ruthless, cunning, calculating, and capable of high levels of deception. All of these things make Kingsley an interesting character under the mask, let alone wearing it.

The main problem is that writers like Slott don't understand what makes the character work.



Bullshit. He was the primary villain in The Amazing Spider-Girl for virtually its entire run. And it was awesome.

I'm not one of the 12 people to read it, sorry.

[sdsichero]

Hobgoblin, all incarnations, sucks.

[john lewis hawk]

I've always liked Hobgoblin simply because I think he's one of the few successful professional supervillains. Too often supervillains in comic books are psychos or morons (and usually both) where they're too incomptent to accomplish anything. Nowadays, writers use a villain's psychopathic nature as character development and that's utter shit. We fans are stuck with repetive and stagnant stories because the writers barely develop the antagonists.

As for the Joker, he doesn't need an origin story. The Joker was more than likely a completely different person before he became the Joker so his pre-Joker life doesn't matter. I personally love the idea that one day, the Joker just showed up in Gotham City and just started to plot crimes and murder people without any warning.