Episode 275 of the Letters Page: Writers’ Room: Freedom Five #392

Let the metal sing to you

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Regarding the question about the use of drones in the 80s, I can say with confidence that the term “drone” was well known at the time to indicate a remotely operated mobile device. Most commonly a spy-drone or camera-drone, but I know there was also the concept of a drone used to mean a body being driven around by an external AI.

The distinction is that a robot runs on an internal decision making system or preprogrammed routine, while a drone is directly controlled by an external entity.

Even what we nowthink of as a drone was pretty well already invented. The Cyberpunk 2020 RPG books printed in 1990 had drones nearly indistinguishable from a modern quadcopter among its drone designs.

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Yeah, the weather is getting nuts. D:

I am also still surprised this surgery is outpatient, that’s totally valid.

All these nurse names sound like villains, and Edge Nurse is the best one. :smiley:

I wanna hear more bad dialogue, darnit! D:

The Letters Page Podcast: Not how concerts go!

And then Choke was suddenly Fanatic.

Boy, this is an awful lot of housekeeping here, no wonder this went over 2 hours.

Choke sees metal and is like, “It is so shaped.”

Honestly, I have to wonder if threading metal through a rock would cause it to stop screaming at her.

Faraliss unlocked the achievement: The Burden Of Being Known

Okay, after that Moritz letter, I don’t want to hear shit about people drinking Guise, okay? >:V

Someone really needs to introduce Christopher to Darkwing Duck.

Darnit, I really wanna know what cover this cover is based off of! D:

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and Gargoyles.

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So did Stuntman ever try to look up KNYFE at some point when she was off-world, really confusing the Paige that was native to the world?

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For anyone who does not know Bushroot from Darkwing Duck the most important point about him comes not from Darkwing Duck but from the Duck Tales reboot. In the new Duck Tales Darkwing Duck was a popular TV show and at one point two characters are debating if Bushroot should be called a villain or not. Sure, he is doing mad science plant plots, but he is a sympathetic outcast just trying to “make friends” or “improve” the world to be more accommodating to him (and his friends/plant monster soldiers) he is not being evil to be evil he is just awkward and lonely… and oops the city is buried under kudzu.

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Well, I guess if we’re being formal about things:

“Darkwing Duck, I’d like to introduce you to Christopher Badell, noted game designer. Mister Badell, this is the Terror That Flaps In the Night, Darkwing Duck. I believe you both share an interest in superheroics.”

I admit Emily Post is silent on the subject of supranyms, but it seems pretty clear that they should be used while a hero is in costume. Even a hero with a public civilian identity should probably be referred to by whichever persona they’re currently presenting. It would always be a tremendous social blunder to reveal a secret identity during an introduction, assuming one is even aware of such information.

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That lines up with the general “is Poison Ivy really a villain? I mean besides the murder?” discussion in many circles. With Bushroot being a goofier version of Ivy, that fits.

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Poor Jason Woodrue/Floronic Man/Floro, he gets forgotten in the “is plant villain X really a baddie?” discussions. Then again, he’s also unintentionally silly a lot of the time (more so than Bushroot, who’s supposed to be funny) and has been associated with some truly cringe stories over the years. Not only was he briefly a hero in the New Guardians team - which book also brought us the villain Snowflame - there was also that awkward marijuana story that dragged in Poison Ivy as well.

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As to the question of what Chris Hemsworth did in the meta-verse that there would be a Kris Shemsworth in the comics- Over in the RPG forums FrivYeti is creating heroes and villains to populate an “also ran” comic company from the meta-verse and one character is perfect for Hemsworth.

Skybreaker II, the Celtic demigod Cú Chulainn a bombastic, anachronistic fish out of water hero inheriting the name of a golden age character who was a mortal man wielding the weapon of a Celtic god.
Close to Thor, only using a spear instead of a hammer and hair dyed super red.
If you have an hour, ask our Christopher about his opinions on spears.

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I mean… the original Thor was a redhead, too, so that isn’t going to stop anyone.

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I considered a tangent about Jack Kirby making Thor blond for some unknown reason and then a “Golden haired” Siff with black hair.

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IMHO the most notable thing about Cú Chulainn isn’t his red hair anyway (despite my gingerphile tendencies), it’s the fact that he’s basically “what if The Hulk was an oversexed, probably bisexual pretty boy”.

But honestly I loved the canon thought that Chris Hemsworth was in the Secret Lads movie alongside Liam Neeson. My brain’s immediate reaction was “I deeply regret that will never be a thing because I’d watch the hell out of that”.

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Consider the possibility that Thor has been wearing Sif’s Dwarf-crafted wig throughout his entire Marvel run, while she’s been using one of her many alternates. Turns out she’s got a collection to rival the Casually Comics gal on youtube.

You know you want a scene where they’re fighting together and get caught in a big attack that knocks their hairpieces off and they wind up with the wrong ones on afterward and have to make an awkward exchange at the end of the fight. Issue ends with Sif’s thought bubble about how this lady prefers blondes. :slight_smile:

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Did they ever straighten out how Choke, being an adult in this story and later being explained as an Omega, got her powers this far in advance of the Young Legacy vs Antimox arc? Is the Nolan Generator way older than I thought it was? Or is this a massive plot hole, on the order of Lilian Corvus being way too young to have been the villain in Absolute Zero’s first appearance?

I’m trying to follow their explanation, but I’m having a hard time working out what final answer they land on.

I believe there was an explanation that Omegas could always happen but what Antimox was doing made it more common. Also, in general timing/aging in comics is never a good measure. We actually have Legacy and Felecia age over the decades but Wraith who has been around just as long as Legacy remains in her late 20s.

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I believe the explanation they give in this one is that early prototypes of the generator, before the “main” one was built, also created small amounts of Isoflux Alpha and Choke got her powers this way.

Keep in mind also that the generator and Omegas are a retcon introduced much later, at the time of this issue it’s not something that existed. Also, Sentinel Comics has a sliding timescale, so while the issue was published in 1982 these days these events probably only occurred 11ish years ago.

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On top of that, the Sentinels sliding timescale is a lot more like DC’s spaghetti nonsense than it is like Marvel’s wibbly chronology, only without the universal reboots half-smoothing things over.

With Marvel, there’s a rough guideline of “3-5 years of publication time equals one year of comics time”. All of the characters who were teens in the 60s are currently in their early 30s, and the characters who were teens in the 80s are all in their early 20s. There’s a certain amount of individual variance, but it’s within the envelope.

With DC, character aging and time passing is just all over the map. The joke about Legacy starting as a baby, growing up, having a kid, and being in his 50s in the present while Wraith moves from “college student” to “late 20s” seems directly based on Batman’s entire chronology being a mess.

Bruce was in his early twenties when he became Batman and DC is allergic to letting him become middle-aged, so he’s currently more or less locked in his late 30s. Dick Grayson was originally about fifteen years younger than him, but as the timeline keeps contracting the age he started as Robin keeps going up so he’s been steadily closing in on him in age for years as he moves into his mid-twenties. Jason Todd was introduced as a ten-year-old when Dick Grayson was already an adult, but then he grew up into an adult and Dick Grayson stayed the same age so now they’re only a few years apart. Barbara Gordon was about five years older than Dick when she was introduced, but she just never got any older and every time they revisited her backstory they pushed it back a bit so now she’s about five years younger than him.

Anyway, with all of that in mind, it’s entirely possible that Choke was created in 1982 and was also part of the first-generation Isoflux experiment that took place a year before 2011 and we’re just not supposed to think about it.

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Even worse is Beast Boy/Changeling from Teen Titians.
He was 2 or 3 years younger than Dick when he joined the Titians.
It has been retconned that he lied about his age and shifted to look older than he truly was, but the closer Dick gets to 30 the harder it gets for Gar to be under 18

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I think they also said that the particles can travel back in time because of its many weird properties and unnatural origin