madimpossibledreamer

pre-transition Alexandria (so some misgendering, not that anyone knows that)

         “I am the daughter of nobodies. I am nobody. What do you people want from me?” She’s scared, Jenna thinks, before the reality of that fact hits her. She’s scared. She’s a young girl who’s been kidnapped, as far as she knows, by enemies who want who knows what from her, and Marsh is hardly helping, as intimidating as he is and glaring at her.
         So she kneels in front of the young lady, trying not to crowd her. “You are what some might call a bastard, but Harris was not your father. We have been seeking you to execute your father’s will for a long time.”
         She looks a little less scared, a little more thoughtful, as she stares at her hands.
         “I know it’s hard to believe you are probably the case of adultery…” Marsh begins, and she shakes her head.
         “That’s...actually the least surprising thing here,” she corrects. She smiles and straightens up a little. It’s not as if she actually trusts them, though Marsh is acting as if she is. But then, maybe this is a good thing—this kind of watchful, wary frame of mind can only keep her alive. “I, um. I’ve got friends, here. Can you…?”
         “I’ll order a few teams to keep a discreet eye on them,” Jenna assures her, and she nods and stands.
         “Willow Rosenberg, Jesse McNally. Thanks.” They already know those names from the surveillance, but then, she probably knows that. Knows that if they mean ill, there’s little she can do.
         “We should get going,” Marsh growls, and she just...raises an eyebrow at Jenna. She’ll fit right in.

I really like the oddballs when it comes to superheroes.  I really loved the Captain Comet Mysteries in Space two-part volume (and am kind of bummed I seemed to have misplaced it during college).  I’ll have to rewatch to see if it still holds up, but I also really, really like the Blue Raja and the Bowler, from the Mystery Men, an underrated superhero movie.  Bowler, specifically, is one of my favorite female superheroes.  Again, I’d have to rewatch to make sure it’s not problematic, but from what I remember, she had an actual revenge arc treated with the respect it deserved (not just as a cliché), her power was bowling, which is awesome, she was treated as just another member of the team, rather than as The Female Member of the Team, I liked her sense of humor, and…well, she didn’t come off as cliché.  Like, she was pretty, yes, but that wasn’t a focus.  She was pretty like an actual human being instead of Pretty Like That’s All Women Are.  (There was some risqué humor, but not with her.)  She had a normal costume, not a revealing one.  She wasn’t Raging Feminist, she wasn’t Anti-Fun (just focused on the mission), she had a sense of humor, she took over from her father and did just fine carrying on the superhero name, she went to graduate school.  She was so different from anything I’d seen before (and honestly since) and she’s my definite favorite from Mystery Men.

Is that a dude with a sword—yes.  That is a dude with a sword.

This is…did I somehow go right from Spider story?  Because there are pirates on a train now

That’s a missing head now okay vigilante it is (I kinda got that from the look but still)

Also obligatory: WHO’S DRIVING THIS TRAIN

And a dude through the roof

And…a train pole through, like, three people…this one’s violent

And a crunching boots on head…

…there’s not blood everywhere and it’s a little more brown than fresh blood would be and it’s pretty vicious

You’re…missing half your beard.  And hair.  And mustache.  That’s…a look

Look you totally said brigand.

Guessing this is the type of paranoid guy who can’t fully relax, but.

They’re totally teasing them.

Yeah, yeah, intimidating, big Ollie-like goof.

Seriously I feel like I’m reading Oliver/Tommy stuff here

Ra-Man is basically a Dr. Strange villain?

Also this feels like the Mystery Men villain party.

Gotham?  Is this DC?

Shows how much I paid attention to the front cover.  Duh.

Is this the infernal counterpart to the Colt?

Is Rose your evil AI or your evil…uh.  Bob?  (what do they call ghost spirit familiars?)

Wait that looks tech.  evil AI is my bet.

Just sneak out to fight crime, that’s good.  (also look at that cape movement and crouch.)

And he knew about…maybe not the hit, but that he’s plotting something?

“Are you mad?”  “Not in an unproductive way.”

Oh, uh, thanks for the gruesome exposition there, Midnighter.

Oh, kidnapping the boyfriend superhero and going to…Death?

Is that the dude who experimented on you?

Surprise hug!

Look I fully expect him to fight Death for the guy.

(what are their actual names?  Unless they just go by super names all the time)

Okay, Constantine|Dr Strange has also gotten with a guy.  Possibly an angel, possibly a griffon.  Who knows.

…demon worlds are weird.

Waaaait Fercifer—hang on.

…

DC.  Constantine is DC.  I’ve heard that name before.

Processing.

Neron, I…don’t know if I’ve heard that one.

He pulled a Jotaro “there’s your receipt”.  Brilliant.

Uh.  Demon ninjas, color-coded.  That’s different.

…oh.  Ohhhh.  It’s not about the hope, or earning it.  It’s because of the story, the tragic story where Apollo had a male lover.  Isn’t it.  (no?  pity that would’ve been cool)

Well that answers that question about the angel thing

No!  they did do the thing!  haha!  (thanks for making me feel smart dc)

Apollo, really?  I don’t need you breaking the 4^th wall now

Aww.  That one was good.  And definitely Hellblazer adjacent.

this story is brought to you by a slightly more sane NRA, aka everyone needs guns but you should definitely train with them and keep them locked up away from the kiddos (sadly, not even kidding, it's one of the letters "The Spider" answered in the back of the magazine...)
(It comes off as especially bad when compared to the Twilight Zone/Shadow episode I'll talk about soon on first look and also...maybe not so good an inspiration for Spider-Man which apparently according to the (unfortunately late) Stan Lee he was somehow??)

honestly though?

The Spider is not as fun as The Shadow.  The Spider definitely comes off as a copycat (though I find the limp interesting, that’s like…a single detail).  I have no idea what this man does for a living.  Sure, he’s a vigilante, but what’s his day job?  I don’t get the sense that the writer has an idea of his backstory, only where he is now, and that’s good and all but that’s a single aspect of the character. 

There’s definite similarities in the writing but I like “Grant’s” writing less.  Part of it is the construction—not sure what’s up here, but…eh, part of it might be that hyphens are liberally used rather than further elaboration.  I dunno, I’ll pull out one of my Shadow Magazines tomorrow to do a comparison.  (Looking at it now…The Shadow doesn’t overuse exclamation points.  Yeah, okay, it’s largely a punctuation thing.  The excess of hyphens/dashes and ellipses [problems I’ve got but I work on it] and exclamation points [which I do not have as a problem] make it a much less smooth read, unlike The Shadow where semicolons are often used correctly and unobtrusively.  It’s an issue of flow.  There are a few issues where dialogue also feels less good in flow, but.)

And part of that lack of character understanding leads to a less charismatic character.  One of the best parts of the Shadow is his organization, actually, which is something some of the adaptations miss.  And while there was the occasional Shadow story with racist stuff (largely in the radio adaptations, though again I’ll dig through and find the single story I’d found so far that was over the top—that would be Lingo, which has a Chinatown segment and also Jericho being cool), Jericho’s an important and especially for the time complex portrayal of an African-American character.  He plays a little into the gentle giant stereotype but subverts it in that he has to be just as quick-witted and fast on his feet as his (probably white) fellow Agents. 

(Again, I’ll look more into the stereotype later, but especially in analysis of Detroit: Become Human I’d heard about the stereotype and it seemed different than that.  [Looked into it.  Okay, TV Tropes says that it’s the mere fact that they are scary, but there are subversions you can do with the stereotype and I’d say this is one, particularly when the villains are portrayed as unintelligent for believing the stereotype and underestimating him, particularly his intelligence.  Quite honestly it’s bad that we’ve got more nuance in a story from the 1930s than David Cage can dream of.  Okay, I’ve come up with a good analogy.  It’s like Charlie Chan, which is simultaneously stereotypical, regressive, progressive, and kind of fun, and there’s no problem with liking it [I do!] but you have to be aware and acknowledge and maybe even discuss that you can’t separate one part from all the others.]) 

It’s even sexist with the main villain woman being a cardboard cutout femme fatale.  While Margo was again, just as capable an Agent.  (Not always portrayed that way in movies or the radio program.  Unfortunately.)  The Shadow as portrayed in the magazine series, which almost always has more nuance, like I mentioned, than the movies or radio, is not perfect.  Certainly there are problematic aspects, but it seems less pervasive and one-sided than many of the other work I’ve seen from the time. 

It just seems like while “Maxwell Grant” thinks about layers and layers of stuff that never makes it onto the page (and sometimes contradicts itself making the Shadow ever more so “terribly mysterious” [quoting Blue Raja there]), “Grant Stockbridge” just isn’t.  In other words, don’t just tell a story with things you find cool.  That’s first draft material.  Once you get to second and especially final draft, you have to question why things are there, what the audience will think, why why why.  Creators aren’t creating in a vacuum; what they make is both impacted by and impacting the world they live in, because media shapes public and private opinion.  It could go further (a female Shadow would be really cool, for instance), but I really like where the Shadow was, especially for its time, and I just…don’t like where the Spider is.  Not for today, and especially not for its time.  (Maybe I just read the worst of the Spider stories, kind of like how I’d write off the entirety of Star Trek if the first episode I saw was the TNG episode Code of Honor but…it’s not exactly a good look/start.)