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      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!
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Story, Wednesday September 21, 2016

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1 hour ago, Vorlonagent said:

but over the objections of a couple of Lois Lanes...

So would the Wonder Woman option.

1 hour ago, Vorlonagent said:

No, actually.  A normal human has *better* magic resistance than the Earth-1 Superman.

You mean Earth-1 human.

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2 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

Obviously the best choice would be a Kryptonian female, i.e Supergirl.  Power Girl was native to Earth-2 at that time.  Technically, both women were Kara Zor-El.  Given the obvious physical differences between the two, cross-dimensional pairings (Earth-1 Superman + Power Girl, Earth 2 Superman + Supergirl) might be genetically viable, but over the objections of a couple of Lois Lanes...

I think you underestimate Lois Lane.  She might insist that either Superman were considered a sperm donor, or Power/SuperGirl be considered a surrogate and she and Clark be the baby's legal parents.  But I don't think she would demand the species go extinct.

On the other hand, you, Vorlonagent, have just proven you are a cad.  ;-)

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2 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

DC Lore prior to the mid-1980s Crisis on Infinite Earths, which reset the DC universe, had a proto-hominid species seeding multiple worlds with humanoid life forms, including both Earth and Krypton.  It's how Supes looks so human.  He is in fact a distant cousin. 

Earth had these seeded humans but also hosted a unique subspecies that was called Homo Magus, which was capable of magic.  Homo Magus tended to dilute into the general population, giving all humans what amounted to some magic resistance but no real ability. 

Is it just me, or does this seem especially idiotic to anybody else.  We're going to explain why everybody is humanoid and capable of interbreeding with a story about how they are all related, and then we're going to add this unrelated species that is humanoid and capable of interbreeding....

 

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46 minutes ago, malloyd said:

Is it just me, or does this seem especially idiotic to anybody else.  We're going to explain why everybody is humanoid and capable of interbreeding with a story about how they are all related, and then we're going to add this unrelated species that is humanoid and capable of interbreeding....

He did say H. magus was a subspecies (which means it really should be H. sapiens magus), not unrelated.

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7 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:


I don't know how well Earth-1 magic was resisted with willpower,  It's been too long.  Superman's will is usually considered exceptional.  Some DC lore has Kal-El as planned to be a Kryptonian Green Lantern candidate, but I don't remember if that was pre-Crisis, post-Crisis, or both.

I believe it was pre-Crisis. Bronze Age, specifically.

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Well, the Stone Age does come before the Bronze Age, and the 1960s were also part of the "Rock Age" (as in Rock and Roll)...

Although a major part of why 1960s-70s American comics were so superficial was due to the Comics Code Authority and the banning of sex, drugs, graphic violence, and such themes as "letting the bad guys ever win" or "portraying heroes as less than moral paragons", and by extension, "portraying villains as sympathetic or anything besides morally depraved". This led to the simplistic and repetitive "the flawless heroes defeat the vile villains before the end of each episode" format, lacking in any moral complexity.

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1 hour ago, ijuin said:

Well, the Stone Age does come before the Bronze Age, and the 1960s were also part of the "Rock Age" (as in Rock and Roll)...

Although a major part of why 1960s-70s American comics were so superficial was due to the Comics Code Authority and the banning of sex, drugs, graphic violence, and such themes as "letting the bad guys ever win" or "portraying heroes as less than moral paragons", and by extension, "portraying villains as sympathetic or anything besides morally depraved". This led to the simplistic and repetitive "the flawless heroes defeat the vile villains before the end of each episode" format, lacking in any moral complexity.

This is true! But happily (if unintentionally) it also led to a lot of independent comics rebelling against the Code and specifically exploring all the themes it banned. Some of these alternative comics were true marvels and eventually had great influence on the mainstream. (As a kid, I absolutely loved the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. Many years later someone told me that they 'glorified the use of drugs'. I was, like, WHAT? If there was one thing those comics did NOT, it was glorifying drug use. On the contrary, while the Freak Brothers generally got portrayed as sympathetic, a persistent theme was how much they totally screwed themselves up with their drug abuse.)

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15 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

I think you underestimate Lois Lane.  She might insist that either Superman were considered a sperm donor, or Power/SuperGirl be considered a surrogate and she and Clark be the baby's legal parents.  But I don't think she would demand the species go extinct.

On the other hand, you, Vorlonagent, have just proven you are a cad.  ;-)

You're probably right about Lois Lane, but it was too good a line to pass up.  Can you imagine what it would actually be like trying to care for a baby with that much super-strength?  I'm amazed that the Kents survived Clark's first year of life at all, let alone with all their parts and pieces intact.

I anticipated charges of caddishness, actually.  I'm attempting a Matrix dodge.  I'm either not a cad with maybe a rip in my uniform for how close the bullet came to connecting or I'm doubly so.  :)

Power Girl is not literally the Earth-1 Superman's cousin.  She's a cousin to his Earth-2 equivalent. 

Since there are certain...well...obvious differences between Earth-1's Kara Zor-El (Supergirl) and Earth-2's Kara Zor-El (Power Girl).  It suggests other genetic differences under the hood.  Power Girl may not actually be a first cousin to Earth-1's Superman at the genetic level, but they're still both pureblood Kryptonians.

So naturally if Earth-1's Kal-El and Earth-2's Kara Zor-El can breed safely, there's a good chance that the same can be said for the Earth-2 Superman and Earth-1's Supergirl.

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15 hours ago, malloyd said:

Is it just me, or does this seem especially idiotic to anybody else.  We're going to explain why everybody is humanoid and capable of interbreeding with a story about how they are all related, and then we're going to add this unrelated species that is humanoid and capable of interbreeding....

 

Have pity on some dusted-off 25-year old memories first off.  I don't actually remember where Homo Magus came from as compared to the seeded humans.   I just remember that Earth had both and they interbred, with Homo Magus being genetically subsumed.

Second, writers had to stitch together continuities that were not written to fit together so sometimes they had to make do the best they could.  Legion of Superheroes was set in the 30th Century and featured heroes from dozens of worlds (Superboy commuted to the 30th Century now and then to help out)  The primary membership was established during the 60s, so all the Legionaires were human-looking.  They had to explain it somehow...

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8 hours ago, ijuin said:

This led to the simplistic and repetitive "the flawless heroes defeat the vile villains before the end of each episode" format, lacking in any moral complexity.

Not only moral.

5 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

I'm amazed that the Kents survived Clark's first year of life at all, let alone with all their parts and pieces intact.

When Clark was that young, he was strong for one-year-old baby, but not as strong as adult.

4 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

Second, writers had to stitch together continuities that were not written to fit together

Some of them had trouble working on it's own. DC (or Marvel) continuities are not exactly well though, because they "evolved" naturally instead of being planned in advance.

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Just now, hkmaly said:

When Clark was that young, he was strong for one-year-old baby, but not as strong as adult.

You may be thinking of the post-Crisis DC continuity where Kal-El's powers phased in as he matured.  Pre-crisis, baby Kal-El was hellaciously strong.  Superman: the Movie (based on Earth-1 continuity) has Superman as a toddler lifting a truck off Pa Kent without apparent effort.  That could well be mild for what Superbaby was capable of in the hands of some writers.  Alan Moore in the final pre-crisis Superman annual has a baby of Clark and Lois Kent idly squeezing a lump of coal into a diamond.

7 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Some of them had trouble working on it's own. DC (or Marvel) continuities are not exactly well though, because they "evolved" naturally instead of being planned in advanc

DC's post-Crisis was pretty well thought out.  I think the high-level ideas were in place but details were left to writers.  Superman's first-post-crisis writer, John Byrne, was a fan of the "Psionic Superman" model for explaining how Krytonian powers worked and wrote it into his stories.  He also introduced the idea of Kryptonian powers phasing as Clark/Kel matured.  Successive writers quietly dropped the first but kept the second. 

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32 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:
49 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

When Clark was that young, he was strong for one-year-old baby, but not as strong as adult.

You may be thinking of the post-Crisis DC continuity where Kal-El's powers phased in as he matured.  Pre-crisis, baby Kal-El was hellaciously strong.  Superman: the Movie (based on Earth-1 continuity) has Superman as a toddler lifting a truck off Pa Kent without apparent effort.  That could well be mild for what Superbaby was capable of in the hands of some writers.  Alan Moore in the final pre-crisis Superman annual has a baby of Clark and Lois Kent idly squeezing a lump of coal into a diamond.

That's quite possible, I'm not so well versed in DC to recognize continuity.

Hmmm ... ok, child who can press coal into diamond would be REALLY hard to raise. (It's definitely harder than lifting a truck.)

34 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

Successive writers quietly dropped the first

That's not something which is supposed to happen in "well though out" continuity.

Although I believe that it was even worse pre-Crisis.

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19 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

That's not something which is supposed to happen in "well though out" continuity.

Although I believe that it was even worse pre-Crisis.

Byrne's "psionic Superman" thing is filed under "the details were left to the writers" part.  He may have just done it anyway.  It wouldn't be the first time Byrne departed from script with a comic, though might be the first time he did it as a writer (Byrne started as an artist and graduated to writer/artist)

Pre-Crisis continuity was much worse because the 60s and 70s creators weren't thinking in terms of continuity or canon.  I don't think those concepts really existed in comics at the time.  The writers and artists were just trying to bang out this month's issue.

Edit:

Draining the continuity swamp and resetting things to something approaching sense (plus integrating characters from recently-bought Charleton Comics) may well have been the reason for Crisis to begin with.

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The "psionic Superman" idea would explain quite well how he can lift a battleship without just punching a hole through it--even if he is strong enough, the ship is not strong enough to be held up by such a small area.

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7 hours ago, ijuin said:

...the ship is not strong enough to be held up by such a small area.

That is why you always pick up a large vessel by the bow where the structural systems of the ship converge to their narrowest point.  And then be sure to hold the vessel vertically.

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8 hours ago, ijuin said:

The "psionic Superman" idea would explain quite well how he can lift a battleship without just punching a hole through it--even if he is strong enough, the ship is not strong enough to be held up by such a small area.

That is how Maxiuma does it.  Super Hiro, on the other hand is just strong.  He has to be careful.

Quote

Syd:  So you can lift things with your mind, but only if you are touching them?

Max: Well, it sounds stupid when you say it like that...

 

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12 hours ago, ijuin said:

The "psionic Superman" idea would explain quite well how he can lift a battleship without just punching a hole through it--even if he is strong enough, the ship is not strong enough to be held up by such a small area.

...Except that Superman was not unique.  Everybody with Super-Strength was able to do the same thing.   So everybody who is strong must also be psychic?

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3 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:
15 hours ago, ijuin said:

The "psionic Superman" idea would explain quite well how he can lift a battleship without just punching a hole through it--even if he is strong enough, the ship is not strong enough to be held up by such a small area.

...Except that Superman was not unique.  Everybody with Super-Strength was able to do the same thing.   So everybody who is strong must also be psychic?

Well, only alternative explanation is that writer is idiot, and most writers would prefer not admitting that, wouldn't they? :)

In some movie, Superman hold big flat piece of ice by edge. Now, the thing how he can make ice by blowing at water also seems like something not really working according to physical laws, but holding ice by edge?

7 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

That is why you always pick up a large vessel by the bow where the structural systems of the ship converge to their narrowest point.  And then be sure to hold the vessel vertically.

Wouldn't help in case of Titanic, as proved by it breaking in situation MUCH better than being hold by the bow.

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3 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

...Except that Superman was not unique.  Everybody with Super-Strength was able to do the same thing.   So everybody who is strong must also be psychic?

Considering the physics involved, yes, probably.  Or magic, or some other force besides just body strength.  Otherwise, Superman would end up pushed down into the ground with a train on top of him because all the train's weight would be concentrated on the area of the soles of his feet, and the ground would give beneath him.

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11 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Well, only alternative explanation is that writer is idiot, and most writers would prefer not admitting that, wouldn't they? :)

 

4 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

Considering the physics involved, yes, probably.  Or magic, or some other force besides just body strength.  Otherwise, Superman would end up pushed down into the ground with a train on top of him because all the train's weight would be concentrated on the area of the soles of his feet, and the ground would give beneath him.

Those comics writers were simply making liberal use of the Rule of Awesome.  The Earth-1 Superman can pick up a Battleship...cool!  He can move the earth if it comes to it.  Why bother with the realistic problems associated with actually trying to make a human-sized object interact with these much larger ones? 

Reality is a spoiler of fun.

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4 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:
13 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Well, only alternative explanation is that writer is idiot, and most writers would prefer not admitting that, wouldn't they? :)

Not at all.  Those comics writers were simply making liberal use of the Rule of Awesome.  Superman can pick up a Battleship...cool!  He can move the earth if it comes to it.  Why bother with the realistic problems associated with actually trying to make a human-sized object interact with these much larger ones? 

Reality is a spoiler of fun.

It's true it was still closer to real physics than most cartoons. But I'm not completely convinced most writers really realized how impossible it is.

On the other hand, with the amount of comics they were supposed to produce, perhaps they didn't have TIME to think. I have personal experience with how the amount of care I have for quality of my work is limited by how much time I get for doing it.

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Just now, hkmaly said:

It's true it was still closer to real physics than most cartoons. But I'm not completely convinced most writers really realized how impossible it is.

On the other hand, with the amount of comics they were supposed to produce, perhaps they didn't have TIME to think. I have personal experience with how the amount of care I have for quality of my work is limited by how much time I get for doing it.

There's also the question of audience.  If your audience is males, ages 8-13, your writing is allowed a lot of room for flights of fancy and there's no reward for being realistic.

Later on, comics got adopted by the college-age crowd requiring smarter writing in all ways.

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4 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

There's also the question of audience.  If your audience is males, ages 8-13, your writing is allowed a lot of room for flights of fancy and there's no reward for being realistic.

This is just excuse. Children are nowhere near as stupid as producers of children "entertainment" claim to be.

6 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

Later on, comics got adopted by the college-age crowd requiring smarter writing in all ways.

Weren't that college-age crowd the same group who read comics before? They just refused to end enjoying it after they aged out of target group. (Which is another reason why you shouldn't rely on children being stupid: nostalgia have limits.)

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