taffer

I think bland personalities described about every DC character before the 70s-80s. That was the thing that Stan Lee did with his Marvel characters in the 60s that was so revolutionary was to give them all good personalities.

Then DC had to play catch up in the 70s and 80s by doing things like changing Batman from Adam West into the "Dark Knight Detective" and changing Superman from a bland goody-goody boyscout into someone with more of a real personality.

fujishig

I forgot about the wings on his ankles, but hey, that enables him to fly, which again makes him better than "guy-who-mindrapes-fish." Plus he's in the X-men, unless Whedon wants to use him in his films, in which case he has nothing to do with the X-men property.

Supermallet

Namor is in the X-Men? WTF?

taffer

I know Namor is a mutant, but he belongs more with the Fantastic Four. Is he really part of the X-Men movie property rights?

Its confusing, kind of like Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch being the mutant children of Magneto but also having history with the Avengers.

Obi-Wanma

Offically he is a mutant. He has rarely been associated with the X-men, but in recent years he has been a member. I don't think he's part of the X-men film rights though.

As far as film rights, I thought it was reported somewhere recently that Universal still has him somehow.

Supermallet

I thought Namor was an Atlantean. Or is that only Aquaman?

DaveyJoe

I label him a Hatelantean.

Obi-Wanma

He's half Atlantean, half human, and a mutant.

taffer

They're both Atlantean. Namor is just a mutant Atlantean, like how Wolverine is a mutant Canadian.

Josh-da-man

I would suspect that Namor is a notable enough character to be licensed out on his own and not as a part of either the X-Men or Fantastic Four franchises.

anomynous

Universal has still has Namor apparently. They got the rights to him way back when they got Hulk for the original movie. At least I think.

Solid Snake

Wouldn't those rights be back at marvel now though? Considering fuck all was done with him?

Obi-Wanma

You would think that, wouldn't you? But Kevin Feige recently confirmed that Universal still has him. http://screenrant.com/hulk-3-sequels...-namor-rights/

Spottedfeather

Since when was Namor in the X-Men ?

Obi-Wanma

Just within the last 4 or 5 years. He's not a member currently, but he was.

Solid Snake

Since I think earlier this year. dark X-Men, I think it was. Not sure what the premise was. He also had part of the Phoenix force in him along with 4 others as well. I don't think Namor has had this much exposure in a while.

Turns out he fucked Emma Frost a while back too. I love hearing that shit from him. He's fucked a lot of the MU women. I find it hilarious. He just says it. We never see it but I just happens and he drops the info.

Obi-Wanma

Longer than that. I stopped reading comics 2-3 years ago and he was a member then. Dark X-Men was run by Norman Osborn when he was the head of SHIELD (or HAMMER, as he renamed it), it was a period called "Dark Reign", and he had several "Dark" versions of superhero teams. When that whole thing ended Namor went back to Utopia with Emma and the proper X-men.

Solid Snake

Damn. Guess it has been a while.

hanshotfirst1138

Hasn't he been retconned as "Marvel's fist mutant?"

That's weird, especially given that the rights to Spider-Man seemed on the verge of expiring so quickly.

Didn't they change Batman into the campy version of the character to coincide with the TV show which was popular at the time and then darken all of the characters post-Watchmen?

Dragon Tattoo

Spider-man's popular. They probably gave Universal a 20-year contract in the hope of getting a fucking Namor movie.

majorjoe23

The 60s series was pretty accurate to what the Batman comics were like prior to the show, though I'm sure they started hamming it up a bit more in the comics once the show was a hit.

Batman got dark not long after the cancellation of the show when Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams started working on the character.

Dark Batman was also popular before Watchmen. The TPB Of The Dark Knight Returns came out the same month as Watchmen issue 2.

PhantomStranger

The forum comes full circle, Aquaman is charged with telepathic rape.

Namor was a great guest character for many years in Marvel's books. He has the perfect personality to show up, cause trouble and then disappear for a year. "Imperius rex!"

What's his cousin Namorita up to these days?

Josh-da-man

He claims he did, but we never see it.

He's so deep in the closet that he's in Narnia.

Namor's been running around in nothing but a Speedo since World War II. When I was a kid, I knew he was gay and I didn't even know what 'gay' was.

Josh-da-man

taffer

They don't mean chronologically the oldest, just the oldest in publication.

Back in the 1930s and 40s Marvel was known as Timely Comics. Timely evolved into Marvel Comics in the 60s, and a few of the more popular characters from the Timely era, such as Captain America and Namor, made the transition as well.

Chronologically, I believe the oldest mutant is Apocalypse. He's supposed to be something like 30,000 years old. Then of course there's Wolverine born in the mid 1850s.


No.

DC Comics was originally pretty gritty stuff inspired by the pulp crime noir genre in the late 1930s/early 40s, but it had evolved into the campy stuff by the late 40s. It was mostly due to people complaining that comics were too violent for kids. There was propaganda such as the book Seduction of the Innocent which was also where the idea of Batman and Robin being gay originated. The Comics Code Authority (CCA) was established in the early 50s as a response, but by that time the comics had already fully entered camp.

As a consequence of Batman and Robin being called gay, DC decided to kill off Alfred (since the idea of three lone men living together was considered gay) and introduced Dick Grayson's Aunt Harriet. Contrary to popular belief, Aunt Harriet wasn't created for the Adam West TV series. She already existed in the comics. DC also created romantic interests for Batman and Robin (Batwoman and Batgirl). This Batgirl wasn't Barbara Gordon but rather Betty Kane. Barbara was actually the second Batgirl, and she was introduced in the comics simultaneously with her first appearance on the Adam West TV series.

So really the Adam West series was just an accurate portrayal of what the comic industry had already been like since the early 50s. The comics didn't change to match the TV series at all.

Then in 1971, writer Denny O'Neil and artist Neal Adams were put in charge of revamping Batman. This is when Batman became the "Dark Knight Detective." A lot of people tend to think it was Frank Miller in the late 80s who turned Batman dark with The Dark Knight Returns, but no, this is very wrong. It was O'Neil and Adams who were responsible.

O'Neil and Adams got rid of a lot of the sillier Silver Age campy elements like Batmite and Batwoman (although they kept Barbara as Batgirl). Dick went off to college, so he wasn't around much. Batman worked mostly alone now. O'Neil and Adams created Ra's al Ghul and Talia, who would of course become classic characters. They also returned Joker to his homicidal maniac roots as he was first written in the early 40s. That story (from Batman #251) is one of the best Joker stories ever written.

Comics in general really started maturing in the 70s. Stan Lee had some major balls and defied and CCA by writing the controversial story of Harry Osborn being addicted to drugs. The CCA refused to put their seal on that three part comic story. O'Neil and Adams also wrote a similar story for DC with Green Arrow's sidekick Speedy being addicted to drugs around the same time. This one was approved by the CCA. I'm not exactly sure why it was when the Stan Lee one wasn't. Then of course a few years later Stan Lee wrote the major storyarc with Green Goblin (Norman Osborn) killing Gwen Stacy and then Norman being killed by being impaled by his own glider.

Frank Miller also started writing Daredevil in the late 70s, and he did in fact start maturing Daredevil. Miller wasn't responsible for maturing Batman, but he was for Daredevil. Miller introduced some major retcons to Daredevil's history such as having trained with the Hand ninja clan and introducing Elektra and of course bringing Kingpin over to the Daredevil comics as his new archenemy, and Kingpin became far more brutal than ever before. He discovered Daredevil's secret identity and royally fucked his life up.

Anyway, I guess its time to wrap this novel up. I didn't mean to type so much when I first started this.