#like i struggled with deciding if i wanted to include batman but ultimately went yeah | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

spaceleviathan · 6 years

Text

Fic: It Blooms

Fandom: Batman

Summary: Harleen's got a date with 4 lucky contenders: Her psychiatrist, her best friend, her new beau, and the mysterious figure all in black.

Read on A03

Harleen’s appointment with her new psychiatrist, the kind but confused Dr Deller, went like this: Harley was fifteen minutes late, Deller was thirty, and together they realised that Harley was somehow functioning in at least one aspect of her life despite debilitating illness. Lucky for capitalism and all the lovely men and women in Arkham, Harley’s entire ability to function had been forcibly channelled towards her job.

She told Deller, “Well, it’s no hardship. I’m mentally ill, and so are the patients.” It sounded like it shouldn’t work, even as she said it, but truly there was no better way to connect than compare dysfunctions. She admitted, “I forget what red flags are sometimes. Self-harm’s an outlet, so let’s get it out! If something’s that bad, why do they have to keep it in?”

Which was why she was here, she told Deller. “Maybe I’m not functioning so great at work, either.”

Her main problem areas, work notwithstanding, included her home-life. “I forget, y’know. To do laundry, to cook, to consider my electricity bill. I’ll leave the lights on all night, then I gotta pay an arm an’ a leg, and it’s just stupid.”

“What are your relationships like?”

“Yeah, I guess I should talk to you about that one too,” because she’d always struggled; keeping people in her space was suffocating, and sometimes there were already too many noises in a one-person house.

Deller had been concerned about Harley’s lack of friends. “Oh, I got my dogs. They’re beautiful. Huge things, god knows what breed, not sure if they’re actually dogs, y’know? Rescued ‘em from a shelter a coupl’a years ago.”

“Harley, what do you want to talk about?”

“How about that guy in the news! The guy at the chemical plant? Apparently some poor bastard was there late and the Batman shoved him into a great big vat full of junk. Not that I think he did it, you’ve seen what the media is like with Batman, right? They hate him-“

“Why that story?”

“I dunno. They haven’t found a body yet. They said they should have at least found a scrap of him.”

“Do you not like thinking about your own problems, and instead focus on others?”

“Isn’t that everyone’s problem, doc? We delve into fantasy, we fixate on the news, we indulge ourselves in the messed up lives of celebrities, all because we don’t want to face our own messes? No, I don’t want to think about my diagnosis, ‘cos it’s never the same.”

“I’d like to work with you a big longer. Figure out what medication is more appropriate for your symptoms as they arise.”

“Wanna give me something that’ll help me to work on time?” she joked. “I’m on antipsychotics at the moment.”

“For schizophrenia, yes.”

“I’m not schizophrenic.”

“Why do you take the medication then?” Deller asked, and Harley shrugged.

“I’m hear things, sometimes. Can be a drip of a tap; like water torture, you know, drip drip drip, all the time. I think they help, then.”

Deller had nodded. Run through the standard tests, do you experience things that aren’t there, do you sometimes feel sad for no reason, and let Harley go an hour after she’d arrived.

“See ya next week?”

Harley switched on the news when she got home, hugged her monster dogs, Bud and Lou, and re-watched the story of the man who’d disappeared, seemingly due to the Batman.

“He wouldn’t,” she told her dogs, as she’d told anyone who would listen. “Bats is a good guy. He’s helping the crime rate.”

Harley would like him to help the crime rate, anyway. Working in Arkham, and with her own shortcomings, she’d decided against moving out of the Narrows. She hadn’t even bothered to move apartments from when she was a student dreaming of something better. After this many years, she figured if she hadn’t already been murdered by now she was probably in one of the safer neighbourhoods. She had her dogs who’d growl at the barest high wind anyway, so it wasn’t like anyone could sneak in.

Maybe it was wishful thinking, but she found herself further soothed by the idea there was a big ol’ bat flying around and scaring the bejeesus out of petty crooks. She’d give it to the madman, he certainly didn’t do anything by half.

-------------------

At work, she had a steady stream of patients, and she made sure to see each at least every three days. A few needed daily therapy, and a few less were even making progress. It was hard to administer help to people who didn’t want it, and she was thankful she wasn’t the one making sure the patients had swallowed their medication.

The halls were gloomy, full of long echoes and far off screaming, and hid nothing from the doctors or the other patients. If Harley strained her ears, she reckoned she could hear the noise from the canteen on the other side of the building. She liked it here; she never felt alone. All she needed now was a couple of beds for her dogs, and she might as well move in.

Occasionally, if she’d get lost in a research paper or fascinated by the medical and criminal history of a new patient, Harley found herself walking alone in the dark. There was little point having a car in the Narrows, which were too densely packed together and difficult to navigate by foot, never mind with a great honking vehicle. Also, there was no safe place to put it when you weren’t using it, so ultimately Harley kept a pair of flats on hand and trekked to and from the hospital. This was not always the safest idea.

Harley would tell her psychiatrist, who would worry about a trauma Harley refused to acknowledge, that she had been cornered by some grinning idiot, and threatened with a knife. They’d managed to catch her neck, which she’d start to joke was a ‘shaving accident’, before the Batman had grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him up and out of sight, straight over the rooftops of the Narrow’s tall buildings. Harley had been left, gaping and bleeding, alone in the street, which was, she considered, marginally better than not-alone with a maybe-murderer, but less better than not-alone with the Batman. Deller privately thought alone was better than either of them.

Harley got home with the help of a man with dark hair and green eyes, who pressed his thumb on her wound and asked her if she was ok.

“Just completely petrified,” she answered with a smile. She smiled back, concerned, a little startled. Harley was used to that last one, less used to the former. She told him what happened as she clutched his arm and kept on refusing to call any sort of authority, or take a visit to Gotham General. “It’s just a scratch, I went to medical school. I can probably handle it.”

“What about shock?”

“Nothing some good hard liquor won’t handle.”

“I don’t think-“ but upon her insistence he had left her to it, giving her a number, telling her to call if she needed anything.

Harley called Pamela, instead. Got three words out before Pamela hung up, not before snapping, "I'm working, Harley. I'll call you back." Harley waited. Pamela called back in just under a minute.

“You should stop just hanging up on me, just ‘cos it’s me,” she complained. “What if I have something important to say?”

“What do you mean you got stabbed?” Pamela demanded.

“Yeah, exactly! I got backed into an alley. It’s not like its serious, but it smarts something awful.”

“A stabbing isn’t serious?”

“Well maybe stab is a slight exaggeration.”

Pamela had grilled her for details, before sighing and telling Harley that she was a complete buffoon. “I know that,” Harley replied. Pamela hung up again soon after, sighing about Harley wasting her time, but the fact she’d been even a little bit concerned made Harley smile. Pamela was a hard cookie to crack, but inside she was made of delicious gooey stuff.

She ended up leaving late again the next day, but had since had time to process. She felt okay, despite co-workers offering to help her get back or telling her that she had to leave before sunset. She probably wound up waiting until all the working streetlights turned on out of spite. She wasn’t going to examine it too closely.

What she ended up fixating on, instead, was the fact that Batman had saved her last night. And Batman, being the reliable sort of nightmare creature that she had always known he was, would do it again.

She found herself home safely that night, through luck rather than any caution on her part, just to find a gentleman waiting at her door, with his green eyes and dark hair, and a startled expression.

“Oh! I- I, uh, I haven’t been here waiting for you- I just thought, I just-“

She thought it was sweet, because he was biting his lip and looking mortified at his own actions, and she found herself forgiving him for showing up unexpectedly at the door of a complete stranger. “You wanna come in for a drink?” She offered. “Not the hard liquor, that’s reserved for nights when I gotta be saved by a man in a bat costume.”

“That’s alright, you can keep it,” he said, but did come in for coffee.

“Let the Batman guide you safely home,” she told him when he was ready to leave a couple of nice, if slightly stuttered, conversations down the line. His name was Jim, and Harley liked her new friend. “If you wanna come over, ring me next time!” She called after him.

He yelled back, “I don’t have your number!” before disappearing into the Gotham fog.

“Shit.” She said to herself. Texted, shit, my bad, to his phone.

Use your brain, Harleen, he replied. Can’t ring you if I don’t have your number.

Maybe I’ll keep it secret, keep some mystery about me.

JUST GIVE ME YOUR NUMBER HARLEEN.

She left a message all about him on Pamela’s voicemail that night, since this time Pamela only let her get as far as, “Hello!”

-------------------

There was news that the Batman was fighting supervillains; insane folk with red masks, or exploding umbrellas, or creeping vines. Harley loved watching the news, rewarding herself for getting up early by the Batman’s latest night-time exploits, laughing at the outrageous events that had befallen Gotham.

He’s not helping crime, said the critical newscasters who had never felt unsafe in their own homes, during their commute, at their jobs. He’s escalating!

Good morning, Jim would message her at eight, like clockwork.

“He helps me,” she told Dr Deller, like she’d told Pamela when Harley had made the perilous train journey into the city centre to accost her botanist friend during her lunch break. “He’s organised and neat and stuff. He won’t let me sleep when I ignore my alarms. He keeps ringing me ‘til he knows I’m up. I’ve been eating breakfast before I leave for work.”

“That’s good,” Deller said, in a tone that almost made it not sound like a question. Harley beamed at her, a congratulations on finding the correct answer. “I’m glad you’re reaching out to new people.”

“Couldn’t do it without ya, doc.”

“How is your psychiatrist?” Pamela asked when she’d gotten bored of the Jim talk, which was approximately three minutes after Harley had started.

“She’s ok. Not as good as me.”

“Any prognosis on the diagnosis?”

“It’s getting there. I think she thinks I’m bipolar.”

“You’ve been saying that for years,” Pamela pointed out. Harley shrugged.

“I don’t have many depressive episodes, it’s not my fault that they look at the available evidence and come to the most likely conclusions.”

“So this one’s an idiot then, if she thinks you’re bipolar, the way that you, who are also a psychiatrist, think you are. You, who deal with a higher rate of bipolar disorders than they do, because they’re more concerned with snivelling middle-aged middle-class people in the middle of a mid-life crisis.”

“You wanna say that three times fast?” Harley snorted. “Anyway, no, I don’t know if I’m bipolar, I just thought I was way back when, and I know I’m not schizophrenic, and only time will tell if my psychiatrist is an idiot.”

“You shouldn’t have to wait to get the right kind of help, Harley.”

“It doesn’t work like that, kid,” she said, glancing at the time and kissing Pamela on the forehead. “I’m gonna miss my train.”

“You’ve been here 10 minutes!”

“Well, maybe if you hadn’t wasted so much time in your stupid lab-“

“My lab is not-“

A lot of their conversations ended that way.

-------------------

“Hi!” Harley exclaimed with delight, whilst the mugger next to her babbled incoherently and began to back away.

“H-hey, stay back, man!” he said, emptying the clip at the ominous shadow that had taken up the alleyway and blubbing like a fish out of water when nothing hit. It made something electric run up Harley’s spine. Thrilling.

He scampered away, disarmed and terrified, whilst Batman turned his disapproving glare on Harley.

“Go home,” he ordered her, ready to pursue the pathetic attempt at a mugger, but Harley shouted him still, lashing out to grab at his arm.

“Whoa, no! Lemmi at least say thank you!”

“You’re welcome,” he said stiffly, gently prying her hand off of his glove.

“Are those your muscles?” she gaped, instead of the thousand more sensible questions she could have asked. It at least worked to make him pause, reassess her, and she would have resented being looked at like maybe she was the crazy one running around in a batsuit if not for the fact she had her hands all over his arm again. “Watch me home?” She asked, because the mugger was long gone, and was not worth the Batman’s time, besides.

His compromise, though he didn’t say much to argue except disappear onto the rooftops and leave her to scowl after him on the pavement, was to literally watch as she walked back to her apartment. He stalked along the miles of interconnected buildings, occasionally leaping between blocks smoothly, to which she’d politely applaud. On the way, she yelled up questions, she talked in the spaces where he didn’t answer, and she startled them both when she whirled around, convinced she’d heard the click of a gun, a verbal threat up against her ear. “Sorry, I just thought-“ she said.

“Are you okay?” the Batman asked her when they got to her front door, and she reminded him absurdly of Jim. She touched him again, couldn’t seem to help it, and he didn’t stop her. He was made of leather and metal, the barest hint of a face, the smallest glint of eyes amid the darkness. “Do you have locks?”

“I have dogs,” she answered, which he quickly discovered for himself. The monsters were already jumping at the window, equally excited that she’d come home and horrified by the appearance of yet another stranger.

“Locks are safer.”

“I dunno, you’ve not met my dogs.”

He frowned at their snarling faces through her lace curtains. He looked back to Harley with a delightfully unimpressed expression. She couldn’t seem to stop grinning.

“Harleen,” she offered to shake his hand. “Quinzel.”

“You’re a doctor at Arkham.” He stated.

She nodded eagerly. “You’re sending us a lot of new inmates. Maybe tone it down, a touch?”

“Many of these people need help, not prison bars.”

“And we need more staff to keep up,” she told him, but not without delight. “But thanks.”

“For what?”

She shrugged, turning to unlock the door and glancing back to see him gone. “Everything, I guess, you ridiculous bat,” she answered to the night, and knew the night would get the message back to him.

-------------------

Lou was acting really weird. He wasn’t a shy pup, and he always bounded gleeful around the place, but he didn’t like Jim. That wasn’t unusual, because he didn’t much like anyone who wasn’t called Harley or Bud, but he’d shown improvement since Jim had moved in. And Jim had moved in because Jim had not liked being called in the middle of the night to be told that Harley had once again been attacked, this time with a gun; his blood pressure was definitely taking a turn for the worst, or so he told her.

He ended up ringing her at five o’clock each PM, telling her he was waiting outside, and if she didn’t want to get him stabbed she’d better finish up quick. He would eat dinner with her, and more often than not crash on her sofa, or curl up with her in bed, and eventually just stopped leaving. Bud avoided him, which he took little issue to, because Bud was even worse than Lou. Lou stopped barking when he saw Jim at the door, which was more progress than Harley had ever hoped for. Then she stopped seeing Lou almost completely.

Jim shrugged when Harley asked him, wondering if he’d ever seen anything like that in a dog before. “Our dogs were always quiet. Nothing like your crazy things.”

“Lou’s hiding,” she told him when she found her big, scary, strong monster mutt in the corner of the bathroom, under the table in the kitchen, in as much of her closet as he could fit in. She couldn’t drag him out with anything less than promises of walks and treats.

She forced them both out one evening, when Bud had started to copy Lou and sneak away into quiet dark places, and Harley was distinctly at the end of her patience with the both of them.

“Do not make me take you to the vet,” she warned them as they sniffed around the corners of seedier alleys. “’Cos I will, y’know, and that will not end well for anyone. Especially that poor vet.”

Her heart lightened, however, as the long walk seemed to make them bounce again. They were yipping at every stranger that passed, and she was so delighted to hear them that she didn’t bother to apologise, even when people started crossing the road and her insane puppies began to howl for absolutely no reason.

As soon as they were home, however, with Jim exactly where she’d left him, lounged on the sofa, engrossed in some hammer horror, they disappeared back to where she’d pulled them from, and her mood plummeted straight back down, and then further.

“What the hell is wrong with them?”

“Shh,” Jim replied.

-------------------

The latest schmuck that Batman left on their front door, this time with a little note that said: For Dr Quinzel (which she told herself very sternly was irritating and not outrageously adorable), was a victim of a violent home. She found herself moved in a way that this same story, told unfortunately often in these hollow walls, had never driven her to. She had to cut the session short, citing that he was still very delicate and sore (Batman may have the right ideals, but with muscles like his he would never be soft-handed) and needed some rest. She had to bite down her own tears until she was alone, turning away from the door where the orderlies led the man down the corridor, and leaning her head against the cool glass for some sort of sensation that wasn’t her own whirling emotions.

“I don’t know why it got to me so much,” she confided in Dr Deller four days later. “I had to refer him to another doctor because I couldn’t handle it. I’ve seen a hundred cases of parents hitting their kids.”

“Maybe that’s one hundred too many,” Deller replied calmly, sympathetically. “There’s a tipping point for everything, Harleen.”

“Maybe this is depression. Maybe I’m depressed.”

“You’re not depressed-“

“Hey, you can’t tell me what I’m feeling.”

“You know what depression feels like, Harleen,” Deller told her, as if she didn’t already know. “Is there something else happening in your life? Perhaps your recent attacks have made you feel more aware of the violence towards others.”

“That’d suck,” Harley pondered. “I deal almost exclusively with violent people. I’d have to quit my job.”

“Maybe we should adjust your therapy, slightly.”

Pamela thought it was Jim’ fault. “The dogs don’t like him.” She said. “There’s something wrong with him.”

“The dogs don’t like anyone. They don’t like you either.”

“That’s reasonable, I don’t like them. But they’ve never hidden from you.”

“There’s nothing wrong with Jim,” Harley said decisively, gathering her things and preparing to huff away.

“If all you wanted a live-in alarm clock, you could have just asked!” Pamela called after her.

-------------------

“Did you fall?” Deller asked, and Harley nodded, showing her the impressive bruise on her arm.

“Good, huh?”

“Fall off what?” Pamela asked, and didn’t seem interested in the answer. Asked instead, “Does the Batman know where you live?”

-------------------

She hugged her dogs whenever she found their newest hiding spots, taking them out as often as she could, but they were quiet, and she was quiet, and she fell asleep sometimes, curled up on her bedroom floor with her precious babies on either side of her, throwing a blanket over them all as if it could hide them from the world.

She watched the news on silent with them late at night, early in the morning, following the Batman as he made his way across the city, saving the people who needed saving, keeping the streets quiet and clean.

She’d stopped her extended trips home in the dark, and never walked the pups after sunset. She hadn’t seen the Batman in a long time, and hoped he still remembered her. Prayed, sometimes, that he’d drop by for a coffee, peek in through her curtains at just the right time. The hero always won in the end.

-------------------

“Help,” She said, “Pam, help me!”

Her phone was shattered against the wall as Jim yelled, WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING-

“Don’t!” she said, “I didn’t- I don’t know-“

He grabbed her by the hair, flung her across the room, and she thought she’d be lucky if she could emulate her mobile phone and shatter into a thousand pieces, because that’d be the end of it.

She was sobbing, loud and ugly, begging him to stop, and he was screaming that she shut the hell up, the neighbours are going to call the cops, IS THAT WHAT SHE WANTS, and she screamed when he raised his hand, only for it to land with a thick, resounding fleshy noise on something that was not her. Still silent, except a whine that Harley had never heard from her brave dogs, Lou had stepped in front of her and was staring solidly at Jim. Bud was backing away, had been the one to get hit first, and was stepping underneath Harley’s arm. She clung to her beautiful girl, and tried to grab at Lou’s collar, get him out of the way.

“Move!” Jim yelled, unapologetically, kicking the dog in just the right way, and Harley had already known, but couldn’t bear the sight of it as he lashed out at the only two creatures in this world that deserved nothing less.

“Stop it!” she screeched, high-pitched and horrified. “Get the fuck away from them!” She wrestled them away, pushing them behind her, struggling to her feet.

Jim was still lashing out at her dogs, who were doing nothing to defend themselves, whilst Harley started hitting his chest. “Back the fuck off! Get away from my dogs!”

He grabbed her again by the roots of her hair, dragging her towards the kitchen. “Here’s what I think of your fucking dogs,” he threatened, and she knew what he was going to do even before he reached for the firearm in the drawer. She screamed, kicked him at him and hit him again and again, but couldn’t stop him as he aimed the barrel at the protective pups. They had followed her, now starting to growl lowly, ready to jump to her defence. “Don’t! Please, don’t hurt them!”

She managed to grab him, bash his elbow into his face, and she screamed loud and heartbroken when a gunshot was followed by a high yelp. “You evil fuck!” He let go of her to cradle his own face, turned towards her when she scrambled away. She grabbed the first thing in reach, and slashed at his face with her biggest kitchen knife. Once she started, she couldn’t stop. “Get away! Don’t fucking touch my dogs!”

Eventually, the noises in the house stopped, and Jim was lying in a deep red pool. Harley had followed him down when he’d fallen, and she was sitting next to him now, breathing deep, looking up only when a hesitant nose touched her blood-drenched arm.

“Bud,” she choked, then looked up and saw Lou limping towards her, bleeding from his leg. She grabbed him, and he tried to resist, but she was strong with fear. It was barely a wound, a graze, and she flung her arm around them both, sobbing anew, relieved that they’d gotten through it, that they were all alive.

A shadow enveloped them, and Harley shot up to her feet, knife still in hand, prepared to defend the three of them anew. “Fuck!” she said instead, when it was just the Batman. “You scared the shit out of me. Make some noise, maybe?”

“What happened?” he asked, glancing between Harley and Jim, still on the floor, stiff and silent. There was a bullet-hole in her wall, a dropped gun half-way across the kitchen floor, and blood across three of her four walls. Her dogs were wild all of a sudden, and the Batman had to grab them by the collar, take them out of the room.

“He tried to kill my dogs!” She told him, equally as unhinged, surprised that the Batman didn’t lock her in the bedroom too. With Bud and Lou safe, though she could hear them pawing at the door, Harley felt herself let loose a breath. With it, came every ounce of rage she’d been saving up.

“That fucker there has been hitting my dogs longer than he’s been hitting me! He was smart, he was fucking careful not to do it where I could see. But I knew, I knew when he started on me. What sort of monster fucking hits dogs.”

“Harley,” the Batman said, then again louder, grabbing her shoulders and shaking some amount of sense into her crazed head. “Harley!”

“He was hitting my dogs! He tried to shoot my dog!”

“I know,” he said. “They’re safe now.”

“Yeah! Thank you!” she exclaimed loudly, angrily, realising belatedly that the words and the delivery were incongruent. She rethought her statement, deciding she agreed with what she’d said, and repeated softer, “Thanks.”

He shook his head, his hands still on her arms. She closed her eyes, took a couple of deep breaths, and wondered where he came from.

“There was an anonymous tip of a disturbance,” he told her. “I was heading your way and I heard the gunshot.”

“Fucker,” she said again. “He’s just lucky that Lou isn’t hurt any worse, cos then he’d be hurt worse.”

“Worse than what, Harley?” Batman was looking very intense, not that he wasn’t always intense-looking, and something about it managed to filter through Harley’s fury, make her startle.

“I,” she started, stopped, looked up into the Batman’s face. He had blue eyes, she could see in her florescent kitchen light. He had beautiful blue eyes, like cornflowers. She looked down, saw the blood she had smeared over his leather and metal outfit. “Oh, god.”

Pamela burst through the door then, yelling for Harley, yelling at Batman, making almost as much racket as the dogs behind the bedroom door, but quietened when she’d taken stock of the room, catalogued every feature, new and old, made a keen observation of every splatter of blood. Saw Harley lean into Batman’s chest, crying anew in absolute silence.

“Thank god.” She said.

-------------------

Pamela leaped into immediately into action.

Harley hadn’t let go of the Batman, gripping onto his cape every time he tried to step away, unable to stand without him, and so he had to sit down with her when Pamela had pushed her blood-stained friend onto the sofa and gone to make tea. The dogs had been let out and were sat over Harley’s feet, as close as they could and starting to sleep.

“What are you going to do?” The red-head asked him promptly whilst handing out mugs. She had one hand on her hip, glaring him down whilst she sipped one of her own brews. Harley hugged it to her chest, savouring the warmth and the soothing smell. It was something green, and strange, and almost overwhelmed the smell of blood.

Batman, usually so cool in the face of criminal activity, seemed to have absolutely no clue what to do about this. A domestic crime, with a woman he’d protected before, a woman he should have protected more. Pamela pushed, “Are you going to arrest Harley?”

“You should,” Harley said into his beautiful, solid pectorals. “You definitely should. I should turn myself in. Shit, fuck, I gotta-“

“Sit your ass down,” Pamela ordered as Harley had tried to pick herself up, dragging her mug, her dogs and the Batman with her all at once. Pamela saved them all an undignified tangle of limbs when Harley didn’t disobey.

“So, what will it be?”

The Batman spent some time looking at Harley, and Harley tried to look back. She felt she should be horrified at herself, but there was a growing numbness that only allowed shame to bleed through.

“I’m sorry,” she told him with sincerity; not for what she had done, but for the position she’d put the Batman in. “I’m so sorry you couldn’t save us.”

“Because,” Pamela interrupted. “If you’re going to sit there being indecisive, I’m taking Harley home.” She kneeled down, and pried her friend’s sticky red fingers from the Batman’s cape one by one, letting Harley lean against her instead.

“Your plants will poison my dogs,” she told Pamela’s boobs, feeling Pamela sigh, run her fingers more thoroughly through her hair.

“I suppose then you’ll stab me too.”

“Pam-“

“I think I can handle you, Harleen. I can handle you too, you realise.” She waited for the Batman to reply, but he was leaving the house.

“Wait,” Harley tried, weakly, not expecting anything. She was so surprised when he listened that she almost forgot to say more. He was more patient than she took him for, and eventually even looked back at her. “Please don’t leave me.”

“I’ll be keeping an eye on you, doctor,” he warned, but it sounded more like a promise.

-------------------

The unavoidable reality of the Narrows was that it had an unreasonably high crime-rate, which meant that when a young man was found stabbed and slashed three miles from Akham Asylum, the police hardly bothered to do more than file it away. There had been more maniacs with knifes lurking in shadows than they could shake a gun at, and whilst the Batman had been doing his best to round them up, some of them always slipped through the cracks.

“Probably got mugged on the way home by some escaped loony,” Officer Heiden said, as she called his loved ones. His girlfriend, hushing her barking dogs, had said softly, “Happens all the time around here.”

Wasn’t that just the truth. “Maybe get out of the Narrows for a while,” she told the girlfriend, Harleen. “There are some weirdos around.”

“I’ve got a friend,” Harleen replied, and it gave Heiden with a small measure of relief.

She ended the conversation with a gentle, “Stay safe,” and smiled when Harleen replied, “You too officer. Thank you, for all you’ve done for the city.”

“No problem, ma’am. We’ll get to the bottom of it.” They wouldn’t, there was too much mess left to clean up, the world spiralling into madness the more the Batman tried to tighten their control, but Harleen Quinzel didn’t know that, and never would if she was lucky.

#Batman #fic #spaceleviathan #harley quinn #WARNINGS THERE ARE WARNINGS

1 note · View note

hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 7 years

Link

I’m struggling to remember an article by CBR which has been worse than this one.

Let’s go through this point by point.

“Peter Parker’s Spider-Man is one of the most famous and beloved superheroes of all time. He has had almost a billion movies (rough estimate) and more cartoons than Mickey Mouse. ”

So first of all even if we were obviously recognizing this as not being intended literally it’s entirely disingenuous. There have been FIVE Spider-Man movies, the sixth one being this year. Excluding crossovers, movie serials or animated films there have been six Superman movies and eight Batman movies.

I don’t see the allegations of ‘a billion movies’ directed at them though.

“However, while we all love Spider-Man (after all, he does whatever a spider can and that includes release pheromones that make you helplessly devoted), we’re not quite sure this particular Spider-Man should be in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.”

I agree with the latter point but I’m going to place money that it’s not for the same reasons the article is going to list.

As for the former point that’s literally not part of Spider-Man’s powerset and never has been.

“In fact, there’s an argument to be made that the movies would be a whole lot better if he just dropped dead and allowed a different Spider to take his place.”

Yes there is an argument like that. It just happens to be idiotic and ill considered.

“we firmly believe that Peter Parker’s Spider-Man should take a dirt nap right about now and let someone who hasn’t had three different franchise series into his big webbed tights. (Someone like Miles Morales, for instance.) Anyway, this one’s for YOU, true believers!”

‘We’? Who is this ‘we’?

All of CBR?

I doubt every staffer of CBR believes in this attitude.

Or perhaps this is the royal we?

Moving on...two.

Spider-Man has had TWO different movie franchises to his name. The MCU version will be the third. But like I said Batman has had technically a minimum of 4. No one is complaining at least not as forcefully about him. In fact I notice nobody asking for Robert Downey Junior to shove off and allow Rhodey or somebody else become the new Iron Man even though Tony Stark has starred in 6 movies now and will continue to do so for at least 2 more. The same applies to Captain America who actually had 2 other movies before the MCU as well.

So WHERE exactly is this rule of ‘Well look you’ve had X number of movie franchises that’s enough now’. Frankly given how Peter Parker is you know, Marvel’s mascot, the most profitable superhero ever, one of the three most famous comic book characters of all time, Stan Lee’s favourite character, and frankly THE BEST of all of Marvel’s iconic characters he is absolutely OWED more movies.

Especially when you consider the Raimi and Webb movies didn’t get him right and screwed up various aspects of his history. Never have we seen the Death of Gwen Stacy done right. Never have we seen Mary Jane or Venom done right. Nor Green Goblin. And how about all those iconic Spider-Man stories which were landmarks in the comic book industry?

The Master Planner Trilogy

The Death of Jean DeWolff

Nothing Can Stop the Juggernaut

We’ve only had 5 Spider-Man movies and 1.5 of those retold material from the first 3. None of them went beyond Spider-Man’s college adventures when that is nowhere near the entirety of the character’s journey.

But we want to throw him away for...a derivative version who whilst maybe good unto themselves is objectively not as original nor as actually layered as a character.

Yes, this surely is ‘for us true beleivers’.

And you know SOMEHOW I just knew I’d hear Miles’ name brought up. And brought up first. I do ever so wonder if literally ANY other Spider-Heroes will get a mention.

Oh and learn to spell check will you. I’m not perfect but I don’t write for a professional website that pays me.

Seriously

“who hasn’t had three different franchise series into his big webbed tights.”

This is laughably bad sentence construction. I don’t even know what I’m reading.

15)

“Let’s face it, there aren’t a ton of stories to tell about Spider-Man. His villains? Sure, but Spidey himself? He’s unlucky in love, his uncle dies, everyone he knows is actually a villain. That’s pretty much it. ”

Okay so in these few sentences you’ve proven that

a) You don’t know anything about Spider-Man

b) You are thereby unqualified to be writing this article about Spider-Man

c) You are an idiot.

And you see I know all this because nobody who does know anything about Spider-Man, who is thereby qualified to write an article like this about Spider-Man and isn’t an idiot would have ever written that.

Because there are 50+ years of fucking stories across two ongoing universes which prove that you are wrong.

Jesus Christ.

There are a ton of stories to tell about Spider-Man’s villains more than Spider-Man? Yeah, because we all remember those plethora of stories about Electro, Scorpion, Shocker and Mysterio right?

They’re soooooo interesting.

Jackass most of Spider-Man’s villains are gimmick characters with cool costumes. Oh he has deep villains like Norman Osborn and Doc Ock and a few others. But Shocker shoots vibrations, Electro electrocutes things, the Rhino literally up until the 2009 was a rampaging brick. They are not Batman’s villains. Some of them have layers but they are not the psychologist’s wet dream like Batman’s rogue’s gallery.

You’d know that if you’d actually read much Spider-Man, which I’m betting you have not.

Similarly you’d know there is much more to Spider-Man than you pathetically oversimplified things down to.

He’s unlucky in love? Yeah because dating the teen secretary to a millionaire media mogul when you are in high school, having the most popular girl in school wanting to date you, dating the daughter of a respected police captain, a thrill seeking reforming cat burglar and actually marrying someone who’s not only very attractive to you, not only an actress/model but also has your back in a crisis is sooooooooo unlucky right? As is dating all those other people he’s been with.

Everyone he knows is actually a villain? Yeah...no. Harry Osborn, Norman Osborn, Frederick Foswell, Felicia Hardy and arguably Jameson are more or less it. Nobody else he knows is actually a villain. Or do you know something about Aunt May and Mary Jane that we do not?

And franlly...not a lot of stories to tell?

Uh huh.

The death of Gwen Stacy, Spider-Man vs. Wolverine, When Commeth the Commuter, the Wedding arc, the Death of Jean DeWolff, the Clone Saga, the Totem saga, the Master Planner Trilogy, Spider-Man No More, the Owl/Octopus War, the Alien Costume Saga and literally too many others for me to list disagree with you...and also call you an idiot who doesn’t know what the fuck they are talking about.

“You can tell an origin story and a pretty good villain story, but after that you’re left treading water. What can you do next?”

I dunno maybe you could examine the realistic pressures of living with the burden of being a superhero and have him decide to give up that burden only to reaffirm the lesson he had previously learned and then choose to risk it all for the sake of emotional fulfilment by being with the woman he loves?

And then perhaps getting arrogant over his apparent successes and letting power go to his head corrupting him into something he isn’t until he reasserts who he truly should be and then has to deal with the ramifications of his actions in the manifested form of a dark reflection of himself?

OR maybe you could have him learn that sometimes using his power to try and save people isn’t enough because someone he cares about dies inspite of his actions and then he has to go through a realistic human grieving process?

I figure MAYBE those could be sound premises for movies other than his origin story.

Maybe?

“Well, you can kill him.”

This is the laziest and most unimaginative idea for a Spider-Man movie I’ve ever had the misfortune of hearing. And I’ve heard the idea that Spider-Man has sex with mary Jane on top of a bridge.

“See, Spider-Man’s best stories of the last few years have been when he died — most notably in Amazing Spider-Man #700 and in Ultimate Spider-Man #150”

Again...you don’t know anything about Spider-Man and/or are an incredibly pathetic literary analyst.

Because if you weren’t either of those things you’d have noted how godaweful and just plain asinine Superior was and how mean spirited ASM #700 were. You are talking about a storyline which literally only happened because Spider-Man was so stupid that he didn’t try telling the Avengers his mind had been switched with Doc Ock.

That is if you’ve actually bothered to read the stories. I’m not convinced you have though.

“They’re powerful stories that show Peter is true to his word, and that he knows with great power does come great responsibility… no matter what.”

Maybe the USM story is powerful (and poorly built up) but ASM #700 isn’t. Especially when you consider that Peter DIDN’T die in the story. He’s literally alive in his body in Superior Spider-Man #1.

14)

We really do not need Miles at all.

Miles Morales was created less than 10 years ago and has been the subject of decompressed 4+ part stories including multiple crossovers and events.

What does this mean?

It means long term there is entirely too little material about Miles to justify him being Spider-Man long term and what little material there is not movieworthy.

To begin with almost half his history is tied up in events which cannot by their nature function as solo Spider-Man movies due to the presence of other characters and elements that do not pertain to Spider-Man’s core concept.

Or do you think it’d make for a positively thrilling Spider-Man movie to see him run around trying to stop Galactus (who Marvel don’t own) before a giant Kitty pryde (who Marvel don’t own) knocks him out?

All of Miles’ OTHER stories are equally unsuitable for film as Spider-Man stories.

He works as an agent of SHIELD? Spider-Man is about being a normal guy who happens to be a hero so no spy shit shouldn’t be in a movie.

His mother dies because of Venom? Yay, let’s fridge another woman (and a woman of colour to boot) in a story decision that even the original writer regretted and reversed just three years later.

Oh! He could fight Captain America in another Civil War. Oh wait we just did that movie.

HEY how about having his origin story again?

Audiences will just eat up ANOTHER movie about a smart teenager who gets bitten by a science spider, gains super powers, doesn’t use them when he can resulting in someone dying, feeling guilty about it and then deciding to be a superhero.

I mean they just LOVED seeing that for the second time in 10 years so surely they’d love seeing it for the third time in 15.

On top of all that hey genius, MILES IS A TEENAGER!

There exists ZERO stories about his life beyond his teens which means you have NOTHING to base a movie upon when the actor soon enough ages beyond the point where he’s a teenager. With Peter Parker though you have stories of him as a high schooler, college student, grad student, young man leaving education and a married adult.

“Look, we love Peter, you love Peter, but we need Miles Morales. It’s a different world out there than when we were kids, a world which has six different Peter Parker movies with a seventh one on the way.”

Yes it is a different world. We have 8 Batman movies now as opposed to the 5 from 20 years ago.

And if you mean it’s a different world in regards to something to do with race, putting aside how you know...there are still a lot of white people around...just cast Peter Parker with a poc actor!

That’d be cool and keeps the awesome iconic character of Spider-Man rather than the less developed, less original, has less stories to tell version of Spider-Man.

“Peter Parker is cool and all, but we’re pretty sure most audience members would be fine if he had less movies than Harry Potter. ”

I see...you’ve compiled a comprehensive survey about this have you?

A survey which suggests that mass audiances who’ve been used to Peter Parker being Spider-Man for 50 years would be okay with this other character being Spider-Man whom they no little-nothing about.

Okay.

“Miles, honestly, is just a bit more interesting than Peter. His first reaction wasn’t, “Oh joy, Spider Powers!” it was, “Oh no…” He has a different background, different friends, and a different story — one we haven’t seen on-screen almost 10 times. Give Miles a shot, gang.”

Fuck. You.

No seriously.

A character who is scared by his new powers is more interesting than one who decides to use them for personal gain whilst neglecting the good he can do, learns his lesson the hard way and carries that guilt forward into his life driving him to be a hero?

Jackass your saying 1950s DC characters’ origins are more interesting than the 1960s Marvel characters’ origins which are MORE REALISTIC!

Peter Parker had flaws to his character more serious than Miles’ and took more time to get past. Miles is a good kid who does the right thing relatively quickly.

Peter wasn’t, even when he decided to do the right thing he tripped, stumbled had to get passed his personal issues and grow as a person. He wasn’t immediately great at being a superhero, he ran away crying in his very first issue after a super villain fight. He was hated and hounded by the press and police.

He had to provide for his famiy in the absence of his father figure who’s death he had a hand in. And on top of that had to deal with unpopularity at school and life generally taking a crap on him.

Oh...but he’s ‘just not as interesting’ as the kid who had little-none of that to deal with.

I’m not even saying Miles sucks or hasn’t got a lot of merit.

But fuck you no, he is absolutely not as interesting as Peter Parker was.

As for his different background and different friends guess what genius you haven’t seen that for Peter either. You’ve never seen Flash Thompson or Joe Robertson done properly. You’ve seen only the briefest of glimpses into Jameson. You’ve never seen MJ done right, Jean DeWolff or anything like that.

And again...you saw SOME of Spider-Man’s supporting cast in a mere 5 movies which repeated beats from one another which didn’t cover even a 10th of Spider-Man’s wider history.

13)

“Heck, the comics have already killed him and brought him back a bunch of times! Ultimate Spider-Man was the first series to make a thing of it and it’s the series that Spider-Man: Homecoming most resembles. ”

Again...you clearly no sweet fuck all about Spider-Man.

a) If you knew anything about Spider-Man including the Miles Morales version you would know that Holland’s Spider-Man most closely resembles him not Ultimate Peter Parker

b) Spider-Man died and came back multiple times in the 616 universe long before Ultimate ever did it

“But while he’s dead, we can explore a different and cooler Spider-Man; one we haven’t seen before.”

See above as to why Miles isn’t cooler and why you are unqualified to write this article.

“ But the point is that the comics have killed Peter Parker off before and it worked out wonderfully…”

Yeah like remember that wonderful outcome where a super villain was Spider-Man and tried to rape Mary jane for a whole issue. WONDERFUL!

12)

“We might be belaboring the point here (we can already hear you typing your Facebook comments now), but Peter Parker has been the star of two different trilogies in the span of 10 years (though one was mercifully cut short). ”

‘Two different trilogies’? Up top you said three. Whch is it.

But whilst we’re belabouring points see above about the hypocrisy of using this argument given the number of films OTHER characters have had.

Also learn some mathematics. If a films eries lasts for TWO movies it’s objectively not a TRILOGY!

“There’s no shortage of Peter Parker content out there. Plus, he’s not like Batman where there’s a bunch of interesting characters for him to play off of. ”

I’m sensing a Batfan who doesn’t know much about Spider-Man is writing this.

Regardless Mary Jane Watson, J. Jonah Jameson, Joe Robertson, Jean DeWolff, Flash Thompson, George Stacy, Betty Brant, Liz Allan, Ben Urich, Felicia Hardy, Harry Osborn, Randy Robertson, and Norman Osborn (i.e. the best supporting cast of all comic books ever) grossly disagree with you about there being no ‘interesting characters for him to play off of’.

“There’s basically just Spider-Man and his enemies…”

*facepalms so hard it shatters skull*

As if I needed more confirmation.

Hey asshole? Even people who don’t READ Spider-Man know his life involves his normal people supporting cast waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than his super villains who’re egregiously less important. THAT’S LITERALLY WHAT MADE HIM POPULAR IN THE FIRST PLACE!

“and all those girls he’s too poor and/or nerdy and/or too devoted to his aunt to date.”

Yeah like Betty Brant, Gwen Stacy, Felicia Hardy, Deb Whitman, Mary Jane, Carlie Cooper, Lian Tang and so on.

He NEVER dated any of them because he was too poor, too nerdy and too devoted to his aunt...who set him up to date one of them.

FFS

11)

“Hey, you know what makes audiences think twice? When you kill off a main character. Remember Phil Coulson’s death back during The Avengers? It was amazing, it was shocking, it was memorable, and it’s a big part of why that movie was better than a lot of other MCU movies — because it had actual stakes. We all genuinely cared about Phil Coulson, as we watched him in all of the different movies.

In the same way, we all genuinely love Peter Parker, and seeing him — especially such a young and hopeful him — dying on-screen would be super devastating and prove that the stakes are real in the MCU. None of the heroes have fallen yet — the closest has been Rhodey getting his back hurt — but at some point one of them is going to have to — why not the one you’d least expect, and the one you might love the most?”

Killing off for cheap shock value and not because it makes sense for the character is a lowly form of writing...also Coulson came back genius.

And if you want this to happen then surely killing off Steve Rogers who also has a black person as his legacy, has had legacies before, had a better death storyline, is a bigger deal to the universe at large and has lived a longer life thus making it less cruel for him to be struck down as a child, would make a million times more sense than Spider-Man dying.

10)

“Peter Parker is more or less regarded as the heart of the Marvel Universe. He’s the youngest, the one most down on his luck, and the one who sacrifices the most to be a hero.”

Yeah...Peter Parker is the youngest hero. As we all know Richard Ryder, Kamala Khan and every Young Avenger ever is older than Spider-Man.

And as we all know he’s the most down on his luck. Daredevil who’s girlfriends have a history of you know...dying looks at Spider-Man and saying “Well at least I’m not THAT guy. He has to worry about his mother’s health. I don’t have to do that because my mother left me to be raised by my Dad whilst she worked as a nun and never sees me.”

“He is the most heroic of all of the heroes in the Marvel Universe and nothing would prove that better than to show him sacrificing himself. Being the true hero.”

We already know how heroic he is and know that he’d give his life to save others. We don’t need him to die to prove that. See Iron man in Avengers Asemble. And you know fucking Quicksilver who already proved stakes are real!

“What would work better to establish him as the beating heart of the Marvel Cinematic Universe than to show that — above everyone else — he is the guy to make the sacrifice play. With all of those others standing so tall, he could stand as the true embodiment of what it means to be a hero. In fact, killing him would show just how much of a hero he always was.”

Again..see Iron Man in Avengers Assemble. And Bruce Banner in Incredible Hulk who wasn’t risking his mortality perhaps but he was willingly condemning himself to a fate worse than death by becoming the Hulk again. It’s established he’d rather be dead than be the Hulk, but he still chose to become a monster again and ruin his life in order to save lives.

Oh and Captain America in First Avenger and Winter Soldier. He was willing to sacrifice himself in the first movie for the greater good and in the second movie it was just to save his BFF.

In fact just see Captain America. In the MCU it’s debatable whether he or Iron Man are the heart of the universe, but Cap is objectively the most heroic.

And you want self sacrifice...dude...Cap was literally a soldier...in World War II.

Spider-Man in the MCU isn’t a hero to that degree yet. In-universe arguably he isn’t that degree of hero yet. Perhaps nobody could top Cap in that regard.

“When Phil Coulson died, it was a rallying call for the Avengers to get back together and take the fight to Loki and help save New York. It was pretty cool but if the Avengers are going to come back together after being so heavily divided, then it’s going to take something big. Maybe something like the youngest Avenger, the one all of them met for a short time, dying in battle.”

So we’re going to kill off Spider-Man not for the sake of his story but for the sake of the wider Marvel Universe thereby reducing him to a prop.

Charming.

Putting that aside this is so stupid because Thor and Hulk don’t even know he exists whilst all other Avengers except for Iron Man don’t know him personally at all. It’d just be some kid who died which is sad to them I guess. Half the team saw him as an enemy anyway.

When Coulson died he was at least on speaking terms with like half the team. He had some sort of relationship with them.

Spidey in the MCU currently does not...at all.

There is more justification for them to be affected by Quicksilver’s death!

“Maybe then the heroes will realize that something needs to be done and the Avengers will… well, you know… Avenge! Spider-Man’s death could be a call for the Avengers to become bigger and greater and cooler than they’ve ever been — and as we know, the Avengers got their name from avenging Phil… why not continue the tradition and avenge Spider-Man?”

How would Spider-Man’s death motivating the Avengers somehow make them ‘cooler’?

And they should probably not continue the tradition by Avenging Spider-Man because it’s cheap and makes Spider-Man’s death more about the Avengers rather than about him. Especially when you consider Spider-Man is about being a normal down to Earth guy. But the global threat fighting taskforce that is the Avengers are going to be motivated by some Goblin nutter offing him?

Or perhaps you mean it’d be appropriate for Spider-Man to die at the hands of a cosmic threat like Thanos even though that’s well outside the remit for his character’s core coneption and theme.

“Unfortunately there are a lot of issues that go against our entirely cool plan to kill the Spider”

Your plan isn’t entirely cool. Merely entirely foolish.

“such as Tom Holland saying he has plans that he’s put forth to keep playing Spider-Man until the character is in his thirties. To wrap your head around that, the Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War is about 15 years old. Holland wants to play this character for 20 freaking years.”

So Tom Holland wants to respect the Spider-Man character and do his story justice by showing him grow and mature into his adulthood which is what Stan Lee his creator and architect of the entire Marvel universe intended and what eventually happened in the comics leading to some of the best Spider-Man stories ever such as the Death of Jean DeWolff.

What an asshole I guess.

“So, unfortunately, it seems like Spider-Man — as Peter Parker — isn’t going anywhere for a very long time indeed.”

Oh no what a shame. Peter Parker who IS Spider-Man, the original, the genuine article, the best one in fact, will remain Spider-Man.

Man...this is almost as bad as when I heard Clark Kent would be Superman.

“It would be like introducing Hank Pym only to have him immediately… oh wait, that actually happened.”

I don’t even know what your saying here. Hank Pym didn’t die in Ant Man.

“nyway, what we’re saying is that grabbing the rights to Peter Parker for the MCU is one of their biggest scoops of recent years — Guardians of the Galaxy big ”

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

‘Guardians of the Galaxy big?

What planet are you living on? Guardians of the Galaxy made a lot of money and was a smash hit. Guardians though wasn’t even as big in the movie business as the FIRST Avengers movie.

Peter being in the MCU is an almost UNPRECEDENTED working relationship between two competing film companies, especially when one of them is Disney.

It’s grossly a bigger deal than Guardians, hence news coverage went nuts when it happened moreso than when Guardians happened.

“Yes, okay, while Peter Parker is incredibly prolific across every single form of media, there’s a pretty fair reason for that. The dude is popular. He’s one of the best-selling comic characters (arguably the best selling) of all time. He’s basically a license to print money, and while Miles Morales is pretty awesome and super popular in his own right, he’s not Peter Parker popular. Yet.”

And he never will be.

Peter Parker as Spider-Man is a 50+ year institution.

You say he’s prolific because he’s popular.

But he’s popular because he’s a GREAT character.

Great in ways that Miles, whilst good unto himself, is mostly derivative of.

“While it might be a great creative move, when it comes to money, Peter Parker’s the safe bet. (Which would probably amuse the permanently poor character to no end.)”

Spider-Man isn’t permanently poor. Putting aside stupid stints like Parker Industries or when Mary Jane was raking in the cash as a supermodel, Peter has had periods of time where he is merely financially stable as opposed to poor.

He wasn’t even really ‘poor’ in Ultimate Spider-Man which I’m guessing is the only source of Spider-Man you have that much familiarity with.

And for many reasons stated above, Peter isn’t the best choice creatively. And it because of that that he’s not the best decision financially.

Creatively Peter has 50 years of history to draw on to make great movies out of. Creatively Miles has less than 10 and not even all of that would be conductive for a movie.

“While this is arguably the most controversial argument, it’s also incredibly true. Marvel has a bit of a white-dude-as-lead problem. As in, all of their movies thus far have had a white dude main character. Sure, Black Panther is coming later but, look, if there was another version of Black Panther that was a white dude… let’s just say Marvel most likely would have gone for that version.”

First of all I’m shocked to learn CBR has this massive insight into Kevin Feige’s mindset that they know for a fact they’d make amovie out of the Caucasian Black Panther if he existed.

But hey...here is a thought. Maybe...just maybe...the reason Marvel’s movies have had white leads thus far is because in the source material they base the movies on...the characters are ALSO white?????????????????????????????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Look...I’m not saying you should always keep a character white if they were in the cource material, but from a branding point of view and a fan point of view (of which Feige is known to be) it makes a shitton of sense that Marvel would want the characters to visually speaking look like they leapt off the page as much as possible.

So no...Marvel wouldn’t have used the Caucasian Black Panther if they could have, they would’ve used the African Black Panther because Black Panther is in fact someone from the African continent.

Same way they made kept Gamora green and Nebula blue because int eh comics they are effing green and effing blue!

Again, racebending is okay under the right circumstances and Spider-Man was one of those circumstances.

But saying Marvel are determined to have as many white leads as possible is despicably idiotic and judgemental.

“Heck, Ant Man and Wasp is going to be the first movie to have a woman even co-headline! While Marvel makes good movies, they’re also a bit regressive. Suddenly making a movie about a young mixed race kid whose uncle is a thief seems like a bit of an inauspicious start for the company. Give them time, and Miles will appear onscreen. Eventually.”

The same applies here.

Marvel makes movies based upon the source material they have and the most successful source material at that, or at least the one which serves their purposes the most.

And unfortunately most of their big characters in the source material are white males.

Does this mean they shouldn’t do female led movies? No of course not.

Should they have done them before now?

Maybe in the case of Black Widow but otherwise from a practical POV probably not.

MCU Phase 1 was designed to get us to the Avengers and do so as quickly as possible. To that end they did movies based upon the biggest Avengers characters, the real icons.

Cap, Iron Man and Thor are the trinity of the Avengers. Hulk is however the most famous classic Avenger in all pop culture so he had to be in there.

Hence Phase 1 was movies about those guys leading into Avengers.

Phase 2 consequently comprised ONLY sequels to those movies in order to as quickly as possible follow up to the smash hit that was the first Avengers film. The ONLY exceptions to those sequels were Ant Man and Guardians of the Galaxy, both of which were made primarily for PRACTICAL purposes more than anything else.

Ant Man had been in development since around the time of the first Iron Man movie so there was a huge financial incentive to just get it finished and out the goddam door.

Guardians meanwhile existed for the EXACT SAME reason Iron man 2 existed, that is to say set up things for the future. Iron Man 2 primarily existed to set up Avengers whereas Guardians existed to set up the cosmic side of the Marvel universe thereby giving the MCU more potential films whilst also setting up Infinity War by explaining who the Hell that guy from the post credits scene of Avengers was and what these Infinity Stones actually are.

Guardians was a movie they HAD to make more than anything.

So we have 2 necesarry movies and then sequels to the established stuff. Could they have done a Black Widow movie? Maybe but at that point in time there was no indication that there was enough interest in Black Widow to do that and they were already taking a humungous risk on Guardians and to a lesser extent Ant Man.

Black Widow got popular to the point where EVERYONE was demanding she get a movie after Winter Soldier, that film came out in 2014 with phase 2 scheduled to end the very next year meaning they literally had no time to give Black Widow her own movie before Phase 2 was done.

Could they do it now? Sure, but they are also doing a male/female co-lead movie as well as their own female led movie in Captain Marvel.

Could they have done Captain Marvel earlier. Not really no. Carol Danvers hadn’t yet reached her current point of popularity circa the Phase 1 movies and more poignantly she was nowhere near the same level of popular, iconic or a surething as a movie as the Phase 1 characters were, let alone being necessary.

Hulk was the most famous character followed by Cap. Cap along with Iron Man and Thor are THE iconic Avengers, you can’t do a movie without them.

Beyond Carol though all their big female solo heroes do not have the same degree of popularity as other male heroes. Spider Woman and She Hulk are nowhere near as popular as Spider-Man and Hulk so if you are making a billion dollar financial investment in a superhero movie you’re not going to go for the former in favour of the latter, not initially anyway. NOW though we’re in a better position to do that.

Phase 1 had to lay the ground work, Phase 2 had to solidify things and not rock the boat too much, now in Phase 3 the MCU’s place in pop culture isn’t a one hit wonder or five minutes of fame. It is now in a position to be bolder in making different types of movies.

My point. There are legitimate practical reasons as to why Marvel hasn’t yet made a female led movie but we are NOW in a position to make it happen.

“Kevin Feige — the dad of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — has said that Marvel Studios has a clear plan for where Spider-Man’s going to go: and it’s to college. He’s said that he wants to make the Spider-Man movies work similarly to the Harry Potter movies, where each one documents one year of Peter Parker at school. And Feige has said he wants to do at least seven of them, carrying Peter Parker all the way through high school and almost all of the way through college. While Tom Holland’s enthusiasm makes the prospect of Miles Morales appearing as the prime Spider-Man a bit dubious, Feige’s claims make the prospect pretty much dead. Maybe he’ll change his mind, but until then, get ready for years of Peter Parker. Years!”

How dare Kevin Feige wish for Spider-Man to go through the same iconic character arc from the comics which made him popular. And how dare he enter the status quo in which he gained pop culture stardom.

Dropping the sarcasm though this sounds utterly fucking awesome and the correct approach to Spider-Man.

“One problem with replacing Spider-Man is the fact that it hasn’t happened yet — ever. There haven’t been any legacy characters yet, so introducing the idea with Spider-Man would be a bit of an odd step. It would make more sense to have Bucky take over Captain America or War Machine take over as Iron Man. These characters are already set up and their legacies make a bunch of sense.”

Jackass ANT MAN IS A LEGACY!

“Once Steve Rogers or Tony Stark aren’t the men behind their respective masks, the idea of Miles becoming the Ultimate Spider-Man would be a lot more palatable for somewhat squeamish audiences.”

Yu realize Feige has stated he’d rather recast Tony Stark than reboot the MCu right?

I doubt we’re gonna get to the point where Tony and probably Steve get legacied.

“You know what comic books are great for? Advertising. Each comic basically works as an advertisement for all of the toys and movies and video games. That’s how Marvel actually makes all that sweet money from these characters. The money they get from the comics isn’t shabby, but it’s mostly a really well-written commercial.”

Holy crap you really don’t know anything do you?

First of all the comic money is pitiful. It’s chump change in the grand scheme of things.

But more importantly the comics AREN’T COMMERCIALS FOR THE MERCHANDISE!

An issue of Spider-Man is read by at best 100,000 people per month, most of whom are older people who’re less inclined towards buying merchandise. And they are mainly sold through speciality comic book shops which aren’t on the mass goddam market.

This means the comics DOESN’T PROMOTE THE MERCHANDISE THE MERCHANDISE PROMOTES THE COMICS!

How the Hell do you not know that seriously! Whenever a movie comes out the comics contort to be like the movies because they know they’ll get a sales bump from it, not because they think the few 100,000 tops people going to speciality stores and are older people who’ve been reading for decades might be swayed to watch the movie that’s been advertised in trailers and posters everywhere they go in their daily lives!

“Thinking of comics that way, you can see which products that Marvel values highest: and the winner is Peter Parker, who stars in (at last count) three books, with cameos in many more. As for Miles Morales? He has his own and an occasional crossover. ”

*facepalm*

FIRST of all Miles appears regularly in Champions and before that he was regularly appearing in All New All Different Avengers and before that he was regularly appearing in All-New Ultimates.

And what is this ‘occassional crossover’ crap?

Spider-Men

Divided We Fall

United We Stand

Cataclysm

Secret Wars

Civil War II

Miles had tie-ins to ALL of those crossovers and appeared in many of them. In fact he had VITAL roles in the last three I listed.

Wow. I’m shocked because I found nothing objectionable in this final entry on this list.

In summation.

This was laughable and the author should be ashamed of the pathetic levels of ignorance and lack of research evident in this article (for lack of a better word).

I am appalled that the author was paid actual money to make this garbage list.

#spider-man #spider-man: homecoming #Miles Morales #Ultimate Spider-Man #Peter Parker #marvel cinematic universe #mcu #Batman #Iron Man #Ant Man #Captain America #Kevin Feige

146 notes · View notes