Indeed all fan fiction I have ever read has been MUCH WORSE. The key problem with fan fiction is that it never truely develops the characters or explores them in any meaningful way. Instead it is content to reiterate all the things the writer likes, seeks to erase everything they don't like and totally ignores the rest.
Aaron clearly has a grand theme. He is exploring these characters by reference to their roots and archetypal place in the history of comics. That in itself is a literary approach. It is indeed inevitable that doing this will rub some fans up the wrong way. Over the decades many of these characters have changed and drifted far from their arcetypes. But that is exactly the point of this story.
In Avengers Aaron is showing this very thing in the story. We are shown Namor reverting to a xenophobic stereotype, we are shown Ka-Zar acting like an old time pulp hero, we are shown Jen drifting towards a more Jekyll and Hyde position. These are all parts of the larger whole that is this story. A story about what exactly makes The Avengers a recurring idea.
Last edited by JKtheMac; 01-13-2019 at 05:09 AM.
Yes, exactly.
Agreed on all of that. I think it's very clear that Aaron has very specific goals with his Avengers run and they're about speaking to archetypes and mythology.
I was recently re-reading the early Avengers issues and it's interesting how Aaron has brought back the antagonistic relationship between the Avengers and Namor that they had in the team's earliest days, just as he made Loki central again to the forming of the group.
He's obviously given these characters and their history a great deal of thought and is openly embracing their roots.
There's nothing haphazard about what Aaron's doing. He's clearly got a big road map in place and where it's leading I think is going to prove to be hugely ambitious.
Last edited by Prof. Warren; 01-13-2019 at 05:48 AM.
Continuity doesn't always line up perfectly. That's a given.
But Hulk's powers - whether it be Bruce's or Jen's - are always subject to unpredictable change. Not every aspect of that change can or needs to come with a full explanation.
As for her change in attitude, the magnitude of the change - and the loss of full control over her Hulk personality that came with it - would explain that.
Aaron wants to have Jen embody the archetypal Jekyll/Hyde aspects that the Hulk character sprang from. Having her exposure to the Celestials bring that about has been the plot mechanism to get her there.
Last edited by Prof. Warren; 01-13-2019 at 05:48 AM.
I showed a page where Jen is afraid of changing. Then I showed a page where she boasts about how she isn't afraid of it at all with no signs of lying.
I'm not asking for a complete explanation for how her powers change, I'm asking for Jen's attitude towards her powers remain consistent and develop in a natural way by the same guy who wrote her. If he wrote her as being afraid of her powers the whole time then I could at least respect that he had a story he wanted to tell, but Aaron decided to have his cake and eat it too by presenting Jen as being in control and needing tutoring at the same time.
(Also, Jekyll/Hyde metaphor doesn't really work here since its show that Jen is the same transformed except for a smaller vocabulary.)
Now there have been hints that there's more going on here that Jen isn't telling us, so maybe she's hiding her emotions. And if so, that would be fine. But until then, I will call out inconsistencies where I see them.
When fans say they want something "in a natural way," it's usually a way of saying "they didn't explain this enough for me" - that in one instance or another the writer didn't walk them through every step of a character's process. Different readers require different levels of explanation.
As for Jen being in control but needing tutoring at the same time, that's pretty clear. She hasn't lost full control of her Hulk persona but yet she isn't as in control as she used to be and, as this is a change for her, that she would need some guidance to handle it.
Also, we see that she is a little fearful of her Hulk side now and is not being fully honest to others about those feelings or about how much control she really has now.
But it does because we also see that Jen is worried about the loss of control that comes with her change and we can see that there is the potential for a darker, more brutish side of her Hulk personality to come forward - a side that Jen may not be able to hold back.
Not really "inconsistencies", but rather tip offs that something else is brewing. This being a team book, obviously there's not going to be as much issue to issue progression for individual characters as there would be in a solo book. So it's going to take some time for whatever's going on with Jen to come to a head.
How is she not in control? She fights the same people Jen fights, protects the same people Jen protects, and has the same relationship with the same people Jen does.
And if they follow up on that, great, criticism rescinded. But until then, I'm bringing it up.Also, we see that she is a little fearful of her Hulk side now and is not being fully honest to others about those feelings or about how much control she really has now.
But it does because we also see that Jen is worried about the loss of control that comes with her change and we can see that there is the potential for a darker, more brutish side of her Hulk personality to come forward - a side that Jen may not be able to hold back.
Not really "inconsistencies", but rather tip offs that something else is brewing. This being a team book, obviously there's not going to be as much issue to issue progression for individual characters as there would be in a solo book. So it's going to take some time for whatever's going on with Jen to come to a head.
What changed? What are those different reasons?
It doesn't contradict what it set up before and there were hints that things weren't as they seemed before the explanation. The explanation didn't come out of the blue on issue eight and you can find posts from people here (myself included) that saw what Aaron was going well before that point. People just assumed Aaron was following what happened in Mariko Tamaki's She-Hulk run without knowing the ending when there was never any evidence of that. It wasn't even represented visually the same way since it was a large green Hulk rather than a gray one.
Matt Murdock's cooler twin brother
I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
Thomas More - A Man for All Seasons
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I'm not denying it's canon, just attacking it's quality
Fanfiction's relationship to mainstream comics should/is like high school football to the NFL. Same game, yes, but the first should struggle to reach the display of skill that the second performs every day.
But that's not been the case in a long time. We have things like Bendis constantly crapping on Tigra because he dislikes the character, for instance.
With Aaron's Avengers series, frankly, it's easy to see the man behind the curtain. All his Agents of Wakanda are characters he's either created or shoe horned into his series in the past (Gorilla Man and Fat Cobra, for instance). Some can work (Broo), others not so much (Fat Cobra, Ka-zar)
It means that if writers write a plot for say, outer space, they ought to use either 1)characters that work in outer space or 2) characters with whom out space will act as a foil.
Not say, use Ka-zar, reasoning that as he's a survival expert, he can survive anywhere
Christopher Priest wasn't a die hard fan of Panther when he was offered the book. So he challenged himself to make the character interesting. And as a result, he wrote the definitive Panther series.
Writers should at least challenge themselves, if nothing else. Not resort to old faves simply to write them.
They're the Avengers support staff. The only qualification they have to have is "superhero stuff." Gorilla Man, who was the right hand of an international empire, Fat Cobra, one of the MU's finest martial artists, and Ka-Zar, a capable survival expert who's spent years leading an entire society in hostile terrain, are not diminished as valid candidates for what's essentially a more ethical, neo-SHIELD because the writer likes them. When the canvas is so broad and the roles aren't even central to the book, there's no problem with Jason picking favorites when he still put together an interesting, diverse team. And it rewards fans who've been following his career to see more of his past work get thrown a bone.
I don't blind date I make the direct market vibrate
But yet she isn't quite the same person when she's the Hulk now. She's said as much.
The worry on her part would be what if that split between her and the Hulk increases.
Again, this is a monthly comic that has to service a large, and ever-expanding, cast. I'm sure Aaron's plans for Jen will play out as time goes on but this isn't a Jen solo book. Individual development in a group title always takes a back seat to the larger storyline.