(07-01-2013, 01:30 AM)Bea Wrote: Some bid'ness about the greatest supernatural detective of all time. All of it true.
Still super-thankful that you introduced me to this. Excellent read, excellent character.
To contribute a few more:
![[Image: Invincible_Iron_Man_Vol_1_25_Textless_Variant.PNG]](http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120422192545/marveldatabase/images/4/4b/Invincible_Iron_Man_Vol_1_25_Textless_Variant.PNG)
Iron Man. And not because of the recent surge in popularity, or Robert Downy Junior's performance (though I do maintain that he is accidentally the best method actor for the part of Tony Stark).
Instead, we've got a few reasons he makes the top of my list. The first of which is that Iron Man makes a promise that no other superhero has, or even could make. Superman promises that there will always be someone watching out for you. Batman promises that no one can escape their comeuppance. A whole myriad of superheroes promise that there is an immutable "right", and that all it takes is one person to stand up for it, and eventually, it'll all get smoothed over.
Iron Man promises that someday? We'll all be Iron Man. Every last one of us. This is a man who built a machine that fights creatures who call themselves gods. He demonstrates, time and again, that there's absolutely nothing that keeps humanity from reaching into the hostile, exceptionally dangerous universe it exists in, and snatching back not only our survival, but our autonomy as a species. He shows us that we don't have to bow our heads to things that were simply born "better" than us. Through our ability to adapt and invent, we can overcome anything.
On the flip: Iron Man shows us that it's never going to be an outside threat that wipes Humanity out. Whatever curveball comes our way, we'll handle it. Our biggest issue is ourselves. Tony Stark is largely his own worst enemy. "Demon in a Bottle" gets a ton of talk on this issue, but self-medication is a symptom of a greater issue. The trouble that this character runs into is a fear of greatness, and a fear of choice. With the kind of freedom that Stark's money buys him, and the kind of level his exploits as a superhero raise him to, he kind of buckles under the weight of reality. When you've got the tools to tell a god to fly up it's own ass and disappear, there's not a lot that's gonna stop you from making...like any decision at all.
As much as Iron Man promises us that one day, we'll all shrug our shoulders at a hostile world, the stories also ask "Are we ready for that?" In your usual story, you'd see the protagonist come to a definite affirmative, but I appreciate that the better writers Iron Man has seen have had the balls to say "Y'know what? I don't think we are, and I don't know when we will be." Because, let's face it: We're not infallible. We're going to stumble, and fall, and sabotage ourselves, and we might make one misstep too many. Then again, we might not, and it's worth the shot anyway.
Next up, we've got:
![[Image: ultimate-spider-man.jpg]](http://www.weloveflixfix.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/ultimate-spider-man.jpg)
Spiderman. Now, he makes the list on some less lofty grounds than Iron Man does. Mostly in that he's just kind of in a perpetual state of ruin. Doesn't even matter which "Spiderman" we're talking about. In any iteration, of any timeline, we find an individual who projects competence and confidence, but is basically falling apart in their real-world existence.
On this end, I see Spiderman in the same light I see Captain Ahab. This is a guy so possessed by, so utterly consumed by their own mission that they slowly but surely sacrifice absolutely everything that they've ever held dear. They kill bits and pieces of themselves in their pursuits, and, in my opinion, are at their most interesting during the aftermath. When Peter Parker tracks his uncle's killer, what exactly does he gain? There's no closure there. There's no thrill of revenge. There's just the hollow realization that this all could've been different, if he'd cared/thought ahead/done X,Y,Z a bit more.
He spends the rest of his life obsessively trying to prevent the next incident that would create another "Uncle Ben" to the exclusion of all else. And what does it get him? A heap more trouble and a shrinking list of friends and family. Spiderman never truly "wins". He can't. Somewhere, he knows he can't. But he's kind of too committed to the fight to quit.
Anyway, I bring up these two (I could go on forever about this list of favorites) for the purposes of the sub-question here. There's a bit of Iron Man and Spiderman in Isaac. There's the struggle against the inevitable present in the character, as well as a similar promise that Iron Man makes. He's a firm believer in the democratization of power. At the same time, he's not nearly as stable or sure as he would project, and his past is riddled with some exceptionally poor decisions in pursuit of something he may never achieve.
More thoughts later.
