It'd be easier to list the ones who are not being written OOC to be honest.
As of this Wedensday Spider-Man and Mary jane are totally out of character for their post-OMD incarnations....which means they're actually in character for a change...
It'd be easier to list the ones who are not being written OOC to be honest.
As of this Wedensday Spider-Man and Mary jane are totally out of character for their post-OMD incarnations....which means they're actually in character for a change...
Sandman but he has an excuse due to mind control. Hey marvel can you please break his mind control in the next 30 years. How long has that plot hole been going? Even Polaris got rid of her mind control after a few years! Sheesh!
Its a hard question, because sometimes I find that fans see being written 'out of character' as the same as 'being challenged or having a different story' There seems to be a very fine line there.
Imo
Thor and Carol are most out of sorts from their more common personality
Others might be away from their norm, like say doom, but that's more an arc they are going through
In thor and carols case I think it's due to poor handling by the creatives
Of course some might say the writer knows better, but that's not my point, that's how it feels to me as a reader, imo, and that's all I can comment on
To be fair to modern writers, I don't really count "expansions" of characterization as being OOC. I love classic comics, but it's true that writers often spent little time on characterization outside of the most prominent characters back in the day, and even then the focus was usually on plot and action. Many characters, even many prominent ones, didn't really get distinguishable personalities until the 80's.
I think one of my favorite examples is Simonson's Thor. Simonson didn't contradict anything about Balder, Sif, Volstag, etc., but he did add nuance and made them all more three-dimensional. Odin certainly wasn't as big of an ass as he was during the Lee/Kirby era (an entertaining ass, granted) but all of the compassionate, wise, traits that Simonson emphasized were already there in the 60's. Contrast this to "wise-cracking" Dr. Strange, which has no precedent and is glaring given that Strange has always been one of Marvel's more serious characters with the occasional display of dry wit.
Don't know if it counts, but the Eternals? Aren't they supposed to have regeneration that can bring them back even if just a small handful of their atoms are still in existence? How did they manage to kill eachother?
I haven't read, so I'm keeping everyone's response, reasoning, and which point they start being OOC, as a summary and personal guide
The Thor one has the clearest explanation for someone who haven't read. So are Tony and Strange. Good job.
I'm unclear on the Iceman one.
The Jubilee discussion can still continue
Last edited by Restingvoice; 07-17-2018 at 09:12 PM.
Totally disagree on the prospects of Iceman and Jean being out of character. With Iceman I think people are just confusing dislike of him being gay with their concept of him as a human being. He is exactly the same as he always has been, just with levels of humor fluctuating depending on the tone of the current arc or the writer's tendency to take it over the top. The X-Men have been dragged through the mud for years and acting like a clown 24/7 would not only be in poor taste given the severity of the events occurring but also paint him an insensitive fool, and foolishness is something he has outgrown. The only real difference with Iceman now is just that he is far less bitter and petulant. Traits that, when writers wrote him as being heterosexual were rooted in his deep sense of loneliness and difficulty in 'growing up' the way his peers had, and when written as closeted, well. It's easy to see why he was so bitter and angry when you look at it from that point of view. I'd read him as closeted ever since the late 90s. Some may think him no longer being aggressive/bratty to everyone and finally having some kind of breakthrough in finding himself and bettering himself is out of character. I think of it as character growth. Not that being gay is growth but rather the things it's lead to him assessing about himself and using it as a starting point on a map to retrace the parts of himself that he can improve. If people are wondering why he feels different it's because for the most part, he finally seems happy without it being a front, like he's gained enough clarity to finally navigate his life better. I like happy Iceman.
Jean in Red has been so on point with the Jean I remember. She's always been absolutely terrifying, a lot of characters have been scared of her and anyone who pushed her or took her lightly paid for it. She's always done whatever she had to do when the stakes were high but she still retains that sense of self awareness and empathy. She still has these quiet heart to heart like moments with people which is something i've always attributed to being one of her defining roles on the team but I think for a long time she was overshadowed by Scott, Storm and Xavier as a character that only took up leadership roles during emergencies. Now we have a Jean who is calling her own shots and responsible for her own people and its just really working for her imo.
Characters I think are out of sorts right now? I'd say X-23 ever since she joined the All New O5 and currently on Red. Her Red dialogue is especially painful as shes talking in a way that does not sound like her and this symbiotic relationship with Honey Badger is starting to wear on me. She always struck me as a very soulful character but these days shes just like an edgy teeny bopper or something.
Imo I absolutely think this is a fair summary of Thor and odin
Odin might have been an ass at tines, but that was almost more at his family than others,
But he was also wise, powerful and acted with an awareness of a greater purpose behind his actions others didn't grasp as he was protection ting them from some greater threat
now he's just a pompous fool, arrogant and bigoted indiscriminate, or at least almost universally, though if I was to think of it being directed a a new target I would say Jane and Freya, he now uses his brother as council when he knows he's not trustworthy
This is new characterisation, he's now a damned fool and generally a pompous bigot to everyone
I feel this is an analogy for some specific real world people, but that's just my best guess
Either way it's very out of character based on decades of past writing
As has been thors self loathing, shame, drinking as a crutch and general abasement for the past few years
Very much out of character of them both
Imo
Last edited by kilderkin; 07-18-2018 at 12:32 AM.
Disagree with this. Changing Iceman's sexual orientation turns his characterization upside down and when it comes to personality, he is now a sociopathic jackass. The solo has him complaining about their old headquarters being turned into a gym when their supposed to be in mourning, acting like a jerk to his parents, and attacking a random woman and not apologizing for it. And now he's having drunk one night stands at what was supposed to be his ex's wedding. This is a complete 180 of the wisecracking ladies man that cared about his friends. The idea that he was "closeted" before is asinine. Bendis decided to fundamentally change the character. Don't pretend that was always the intention. And Jean? She used to be compassionate, restrained, and a proponent of Charles Xavier's dream. Now she's a vindictive, intrusive segregationist who pretty much says X's dream is dead. It would make more sense to say that she's Maddy than Jean. The only argument that one can make that this characterization is consistent with is Morrison, who I think also wrote her tremendously out of character along with Cyclops, Beast, and Magneto.
This I agree with. Laura has lost all of her flaws and Honey Badger is one of the worst characters in comics IMO. I hate that she's saddled with her. And Laura taking the mantle from Logan in the first place to honor him is so perverse considering the last thing Logan wanted was for her to follow in his footsteps.
Last edited by KurtW95; 07-18-2018 at 01:33 AM.
Good Marvel characters- Bring Them Back!!!
Oh, christ. No. Iceman's not acting like a "sociopath," that's a stupid thing to say. He yelled at his parents? Hey, it's not the first time he's done that! And he's shown as still loving them, and they still love him. You think someone hooking up at a wedding is bad? Are you frigging serious? Shit, even when weddings are disasters, there's hooking up going on, because weddings get people thinking about romance. Complaining about the old headquarters? You may not realize this, but people handle grief in different ways. Maybe you think that if a person isn't wailing and weeping, they're not sad, but nope, plenty of people actually deal with grief with jokes. And it's not like any of them there were actually all that close with Black Widow. They hung out for a short time a while back, they weren't exactly best friends. So again, not exactly unusual that Iceman wasn't deep in his feelings.
As for Jean: Again, no, you're wrong. You want to use Jean yelling at a bigot as proof of how horrible a person she is now? Did you forget the part later in the same story where she was keeping an eye on him to see if her words actually helped him? Because, yeah, that's pretty much Jean. She's got a hot temper, hence the telling off, but she's also got deep compassion, hence the keeping an eye on him. And she still believes in Xavier's dream, but she's also acknowledging the reality of the world, that mutants are persecuted everywhere, and she wants to give them refuge. Frankly, a pretty reasonable idea. She's not preaching isolation, she's simply setting up a refuge for mutants facing persecution that threatens their very lives.
You have these insanely extreme views of these characters, and it is ridiculous and does not in any way reflect anything that actually happens in any of the books being published. It is nonsense. It is complete and total nonsense. Entirely wrong-headed views of the writing and characterization.
Has anyone mentioned Aaron's Dr Strange yet?