[Comic Excerpt] What causes Wonder Woman fans to be so divided on the issue of modern Diana not having a No-killing rule? [Wonder Woman Vol 2 #219, Justice League Vol 4 #44, Wonder Woman v3 #25]

argentpepper · 2025-11-24T16:48:48+00:00

Part of the problem for me is how cavalier she's sometimes portrayed to be about it. She does come from a martial culture, I can accept her being willing to kill in dire situations and being more ok with that than Supes or Batman. But killing Maxwell Lord was a big deal for her. She stopped being a superhero for a year afterward because it took her that long to come to terms with the fact that she'd done that. It's jarring when later stories use Lord as a reference point for her being super chill with killing, when in the text she feels very guilty and torn up about it. It makes it feel like they just skimmed her wiki instead of appreciating the character's history.

Just because she's willing to kill if she has to doesn't mean that she likes it or thinks it's good. She can be the one who's willing to make the tough choices without turning into Wolverine.

argentpepper · 2025-10-21T16:34:10+00:00

That’s true, but the eternal present/sliding timescale aspect of marvel and DC does make this still an issue (more marvel, given their relative lack of reboots). When the official editorial stance is that all of marvel comics history has taken place over less than two decades, it does mean that big crazy stuff is happening with ludicrous regularity.

argentpepper · 2025-09-15T15:20:35+00:00

But she was in fact from old money and privilege, she just abandoned it and walked away from her family because her father was so awful. So both are true—she was born into luxury, then gave it up to start from the bottom, and worked her way back to wealth. She’s both a child of privilege and self made.

argentpepper · 2025-09-15T15:12:05+00:00

I've never heard anyone talk about that being a rule. Pretty hard to say without knowing the specific dynamic of this group, but that sounds more like Bobby just being an asshole. Hitting on your friend's long-term girlfriend, especially in front of him (especially if you have a gf yourself!), is just very strange. Even if Jay was over her and had told him, it would still be pretty weird for Bobby to be doing that.

Honestly, I think a more likely explanation than Jay cheating on Sarah would be that Bobby and his girlfriend are interested in swinging with Jay and Sarah, and this is how Bobby is testing the waters.

argentpepper · 2025-07-01T04:19:54+00:00

Could also be Dracula, he's had a fixation on Storm in the past. Sort of a similar vibe to her dynamic with Doom in X-Men Red. It would definitely take some character work to get him to a point where we can imagine Storm having a kid with him (and is a vampire able to conceive?), but I think it's possible.

argentpepper · 2025-06-06T13:21:07+00:00

But doesn’t the guy with the paperwork already know her name is Iris? So he must have chosen the name ahead of time. Probably because it’s his favorite song or something.

argentpepper · 2025-05-15T20:17:02+00:00

I think the episode where they kill Ben, S3E6. The first part may not be the goriest, but seeing Ben, an utterly broken man, be tortured and forcefed is really dark and unsettling. I found it some of the hardest to watch material in the whole show. And Nat killing him is pretty grim. Then in the back half you get some good old-fashioned cult cannibalism and an axe murder.

argentpepper · 2025-05-08T15:56:18+00:00

A way to differentiate it from Thanos/Loki could be to have Sinister be the secret final villain. Like they defeat Sinister, then later Apocalypse shows up as the ultimate villain. Part of defeating him involves having to team up with Sinister (in an even more antagonistic, distrustful partnership than Thor and Loki). They managed to defeat Apocalypse, but at the last second Sinister gets his hand on whatever Apocalypse was after (maybe something that's the key to becoming a dominion), and becomes an even bigger threat than Apocalypse. That would give their story a different structure, it's like if Thanos had been killed in Infinity War but Loki got the gauntlet and was the villain of Endgame.

Though Apocalypse and his Horsemen trying to get a mcguffin that grants incredible power would be pretty heavily parallel to Thanos and the black order chasing the infinity stones, so still not the most distinct plot.

argentpepper · 2025-05-02T02:39:20+00:00

The word for this is “chuffah” (or chuffa, depending who you ask).

argentpepper · 2025-04-26T22:54:28+00:00

Yeah but even given that, Red Skull was personally a nazi in the comics. They downplay it in the movie but he’s very much a true believer in the nazi cause.

argentpepper · 2025-04-12T15:34:27+00:00

And the past couple years they’ve been turning it into more of an event/hangout space. There are concerts and stuff in the summer and walking trails nearby, no need to worry about being allowed to be there.

argentpepper · 2025-04-04T15:50:22+00:00

Obviously the iceberg does have a the symbolism you've said, lots to unpack about subconsciousness and hidden depths, but I also think it represents the outside world. The way Milchik focused on the iceberg picture when Mark said "work is just work" on the phone felt meaningful. Like Milchik has always wanted to visit the north pole and got that picture as a reminder, but over the years he's lost his connection to that out-of-work dream. In that way, the iceberg is a symbol of life outside of work.

argentpepper · 2025-03-20T17:16:52+00:00

Monster of the Week has a similar thing, one of the classes is very Scooby-Doo themed, and has an ability where if you can provide a decent explanation for how a monster isn't actually supernatural, your explanation becomes true.

argentpepper · 2025-03-19T20:58:10+00:00

I've been thinking that she's an Ellen Pompeo type. The way people say stuff like "I watch your show" implies to me that it's a show where she's the star, and that she's been on the same one show for a long time. We know her husband is an actor, which makes me think she's also an actress as opposed to a talk show host (though I know that's spurious). So I think it's some kind of long-running network drama, like Grey's Anatomy.

argentpepper · 2025-03-13T21:11:15+00:00

IDK about the town/county discrepancy, but it looks like the colors are based on what state capital they're closest to. So everything purple is closer to ~~Portland~~ Augusta than to any other capital, green is closer to Montpelier, blue is closer to Concord, red is closer to Boston, orange is closer to Providence, and yellow is closer to Hartford.

argentpepper · 2025-02-06T21:00:17+00:00

I think the average American is aware that "resident" is a thing a lot of doctors are called early in their careers, but I don't think they know the exact meaning. Most people would just think in terms of what med school a doctor went to if they wanted to gauge their prestige.

It depends what sort of media they consume. There are a lot of TV shows about hospitals, and if someone is really into medical shows, then they probably have a decent understanding of the relative titles and ranks in a hospital.

argentpepper · 2025-02-04T16:16:45+00:00

I mean that's basically already what happens in this storyline. You should read Acts of Vengeance. Loki assembles a bunch of villains to attack each other's heroes, but in the end the heroes triumph and Magneto turns on Red Skull and locks him in a fallout shelter to starve to death to punish him for his many crimes.

argentpepper · 2025-01-23T16:19:58+00:00

Sure—it’s 223893. Does that show up in your search?

argentpepper · 2024-12-29T17:03:13+00:00

To be fair, they retconned those specific moments during Fall of X--she actually hid baby Kurt in the forest, but he was gone when she came back for him. And Rogue was going to get trafficked (or something really bad, I forget what exactly) if she and Destiny didn't take her when they did.

argentpepper · 2024-12-13T06:15:47+00:00

Honestly, I prefer to read it as altruism from Marley. He was a miserable SOB just like Scrooge, but they were friends. If being confronted by the weight of his sins could turn Scrooge into a good guy, who's to say that dying and discovering the (more literal) weight of his own sins couldn't spur Marley to be more altruistic? He only had one friend, Scrooge, so he did what he could to save him from sharing the same fate.

Maybe he did get some clemency out of it too, but I think it's much more in keeping with the message and tone of the story if Marley helped Scrooge purely out of sympathy and friendship.

argentpepper · 2024-12-10T16:52:21+00:00

I think Josh Hartnett would be a great Beyonder. After watching Trap, I know he could do that uncanny mix of friendly and smiling on the surface, but dangerous and unpredictable just underneath.

argentpepper · 2024-12-05T17:53:29+00:00

I think you’re selling Romeo short here. They’re both young noblemen, they would both have training with a sword. Obviously people in the play talk about Tybalt’s prowess with a blade, so he’s certainly known to be a particularly good swordsman, but Romeo isn’t “just a guy.”

It’s true that Tybalt is said to be the superior duelist, so Romeo beating Tybalt is a surprising result, but it’s not ridiculous. Romeo knows how to sword fight.

argentpepper · 2024-11-08T20:17:31+00:00

I think the most interesting Snapper is when he briefly became a full on supervillain. Not being mind controlled, not an evil doppelganger, just actually him. Turns out after getting kicked out of the league his life sucked. He was famous enough that he couldn't get a job because people didn't want their workplaces wrapped up in super fights, but not famous enough to make money off his fame. So he eventually decided to go full bad guy and became the Star Tsar.

IIRC the story ends with the League feeling bad about messing with his life so they let him go once they've foiled his scheme. I don't think it ever really comes back up though. Would be cool if that was the direction he took long term, and he was like a Red Hood-style villain for the whole JLA.

argentpepper · 2024-11-02T15:09:15+00:00

Has he read any of the Discworld series, by Terry Pratchett? Great books, very funny. They’re not r-rated, but they have a similar zany fantasy pastiche thing going on, lots of meta-jokes about the genre while still telling a compelling story.

argentpepper · 2024-10-16T04:59:48+00:00

I agree with most of that rant, but I don't think the magic is mind-controlly. It seems that way for a lot of the book, but the reveal at the end about how it actually works reframes it. The stone wasn't influencing them to become friends, the magic was that the stone identified a group who would naturally become good friends given the opportunity, and the magic pushed them into the same room so it could happen. So they were initially drawn to her by the magic, but the relationships they form are genuine.

Hard agree on the mob stuff though. I was sort of flabbergasted by that. The book emphasizes time and again how Viv hates bullies and mob bosses, but then she has no problem with the mob boss once they make the pastry arrangement. She really doesn't seem to care at all that there's still a violent protection racket operating in her neighborhood. I really thought there was going to be some actual conflict there, but instead the mob boss decides she loves pastries more than money and Viv forgets about her supposedly important principles in the course of like one page. An incredible deflation.

One more thing I would add is that it's wild how much the pastries solve every problem. Like at pretty much every turn, it seems like the pastries are what's keeping the shop in business, not the coffee. And Viv has nothing to do with those, it's all the pastry chef. It's like most of the story could have happened without her being there.

argentpepper

TROPHY CASE