Monday, August 28, 2006

Friends! Readers! Comic Fans! Lend me your eyes!

I come to bury Major Victory, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interréd with their bones,
So let it be with Major Victory. The noble Stan Lee
Hath told you Major Victory was parodic:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Victory answered it….

Here, under leave of Stan Lee and the rest,
(For Stan Lee is an honourable man;
So are all the contestants; all honourable men and women)
Come I to speak in Major Victory's valedictory….
He was my hero, faithful and just to me:
But Stan Lee says he was parodic;
And Stan Lee is an honourable man….

He hath brought many screencaps to my home,
Whose rafters did with general laughter fill:
Did this in Major Victory seem parodic?
When that the other contestants have cried, Major Victory hath wept:
Parody should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Stan Lee says he was parodic;
And Stan Lee is an honourable man.

You all did see that on the canine chase,
the lost child, the burning building, all of
Which he did thrice conquer: was this parody?
Yet Stan Lee says he was parodic;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.

I speak not to disprove what Stan Lee spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?

O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason…. Bear with me;
My heart is in the TiVo there with Major Victory,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

33 comments:

  1. You took the words right out of my mouth.

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  2. Dude, you seriously need to consider writing a book.

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  3. Call me bitter if you must, but when I realized that Stan Lee was actually going to take Fat Momma and Feedback to the final two, I instantly remembered why I've hated Marvel all these years.

    Long Live Major Victory and Monkey Woman For They Shall Always Live In Our Hearts!

    Seriously, will anyone actually buy a Fat Momma or Feedback comic book, even if it's just a oneshot? And what's the point of the challanges if your winning them doesn't bring any kind of immunity or reward?

    Sigh... What could have been....

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  4. Bravo, sir. The Bard would be tickled, once he'd gotten over the future shock and had television and spandex superheroes explained to him.

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  5. For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
    And tell sad stories of the death of heroes...

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  6. The Bard would be tickled, once he'd gotten over the future shock and had television and spandex superheroes explained to him.

    Television might be a problem (it's like a puppet show, only not), but I doubt the guy who wrote Julius Caesar and MacBeth would have difficulty grasping a genre where fantastically powerful men in tights beat the crap out of each other for justice.

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  7. It's a very, very good post, but this:

    "He hath brought many screencaps to my home,
    Whose rafters did with general laughter fill:"

    is sublime.

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  8. Was that from Caesar?

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  9. H pfabe: Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar", Act III, Scene II.

    shadow: Actually, that's what I used to do. But you probably mean an interesting book...! Your suggestions on a topic would be welcome.

    tom curry: high praise from a higher source!

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  10. In Feedback's defense, a superhero who gets his powers from playing video games is a concept with merit. I'd give it a trial run.

    And Fat Momma's [i]concept[/i] is great...but she's a team character, not a solo. I could see her as second-in-command of a light-hearted supergroup with Major Victory at the head; unfortunately...

    Also, anyone else find it bitterly ironic that the guy who created Spider-man eliminated Major Victory for being a goof?

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  11. "but I doubt the guy who wrote Julius Caesar and MacBeth would have difficulty grasping a genre where fantastically powerful men in tights beat the crap out of each other for justice."

    Ha. You're probably right: "Thou sayest they are like unto the pagan gods of old--who yet wear hose of motley hue? 'Tis most wondrous!"

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  12. The only contestant I liked at all was Major Victory. And not only because he's easiest on the eyes, but because he looked like he was having fun playing super-hero. He had the right attitude towards the entrprise from the get-go. Feedback is just taking himself and the whole show just too gosh-darn serious. But that's Stan Lee for you. Angst and melodrama will always win out over joy and fun.

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  13. Dorian's got it right. Major Victory is Silver Age DC, Feedback is Silver Age Marvel.

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  14. Allan: the point of the challenges is, and has always been, to provide some insight into the character of the characters. The stated goal has rarely been the real purpose behind them. Which is why I think Stan was a little too harsh on Fat Momma about the Universal trackdown, though only a little. (Fifteen minutes for him, fifteen minutes for him, a frickin' HOUR for her?!).

    Anyway, she clearly won the classroom challenge by a landslide, so that's sort of a wash.

    It's far less clear that Major Victory "won" the Universal challenge. He had the fastest time, but only because Feedback was being heroically chivalrous (while keeping his gloves on even in the face of a call for fine manipulation, no less). And the challenge was to be the fastest while behaving in a superherolike fashion, so behaving more superherolike may trump the time factor.

    Assuming that it does, Feedback won the Universal challenge. Which means that Major Victory came in second in both challenges, while Feedback and Fat Momma each came in first in one and last in the other. Essentially a three-way tie. So it came down to Stan's judgement call.

    I think they should have let Fat Momma take herself out, really. But come on, if one of the criteria is how seriously the contestant takes this gig, you really can't argue that Fat Momma and especially Feedback have seriosity in spades over Major Victory, however heroic Chris has been throughout.

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  15. An autobiography would be nice. Heck, if The Rock could do it, why not you?

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  16. You want Scipio to write the autobiography of The Rock?

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  17. Ha! I know that you can write a biography of another man, but an autobiography must be about yourself. I was just making a joke.

    And yet feel so insecure that I need to write an addendum so that people don't think I'm ignorant.

    Vanity rules!

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  18. Stan misrepresented the situation when he said Feedback would have won if he hadn't fumbled with the penny. If you go by the clock, only three seconds elapsed between the time Feedback was done with the penny and the time he nabbed Black Whatsis. But that can't be correct. It omits whatever block of time it took for Feedback to travel from the purse lady to the Universal globe.

    On the plus side, they finally added the hyphen to Spider-Man's name this week.

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  19. I wouldn't be surprised if Major Victory made a comeback in the finale.

    I mean, heck, they brought back the thug guy as a villain, right?

    It would be very superheroic for MV to achieve redemption.

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  20. Marcos: Your points are well-argued and it is hard for me to dispute them, but I am afraid that they fail on one crucial point: Major Victory rocks and Fat Momma and Feedback suck.

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  21. There's no Marvel hero like Major Victory. Maybe named Major Victory, but not the kind of hero Major Victory emulated.
    It was only a matter of time before Major Victory was sent back to obscurity.

    But hey, there's always the Surreal Life.

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  22. Marjor Victory may have been a parody, but I to saw him as a guy with a sense of humour and style. Feedback is the epitome of a C-lister and Fat Momma is literally a joke character.

    If Feedback wins this it will essentially be for going under the radar as they say in the Reality TV business. Whereas contestants such as MV, Tyveculus and Monkey Woman put themselves out there, proudly, to be judged.

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  23. Quoth Michael:
    Major Victory is Silver Age DC, Feedback is Silver Age Marvel.

    So then what's Fat Momma? SA Hostess ads?

    I kid, I kid. I mean, duh - the Hostess ads were totally Bronze Age. FM could have been Fawcett, though. Easy.

    Some anonymous coward:
    Stan misrepresented the situation when he said Feedback would have won if he hadn't fumbled with the penny.

    I doubt Stan lied - I think it's more likely that the clock didn't match the edited footage it was superimposed on. It was close, either way.

    Allan said:

    Marcos: Your points are well-argued and it is hard for me to dispute them, but I am afraid that they fail on one crucial point: Major Victory rocks and Fat Momma and Feedback suck.

    Well played, sir. Well played.

    Based on sheer style - which is what the audience is after no matter what the judging is like - the final two should have been Major Victory and Monkey Woman. The Battle of the Adjacent Initials! Ah, well.

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  24. Major Victory was eliminated because they'd never be able to do a Major Victory TV Movie or a Major Victory Comic Book, as the name is owned by DC Comics.

    Feedback should have been eliminated, because he lost both challenges. As I stated last week, Feedback should have been eliminated last week because he broke a rule of the show, giving personal information to a stranger (Batman doesn't go around telling people his parents were murdered).

    I cannot stand reality shows like this. I'm smart enough to know that it's a reality altered to be entertaining, but when they start cheating on the rules they've set in motion, then what's the point?

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  25. Oh, woe is me. I wax meloncholy at the elimination of Major Victory. I miss him so...

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  26. That, sir, is amazing. Bravo!

    I don't suppose I could read that on my podcast, could I? I would naturally give your genius all the credit.

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  27. Alas, poor Victory! I knew him, Scipio: a fellow
    of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
    borne the show on his back a thousand times; and now, how
    parodic in my imagination it is! Where be your puns now? your poses? your songs? your flashes of white teeth, that were wont to set the Lair on a roar? Not one
    now, to mock your own grinning? quite cape-fallen? Now get you to Fat Momma's chamber, and tell her, let her have donuts an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that.

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  28. "I don't suppose I could read that on my podcast, could I? I would naturally give your genius all the credit."

    Feel free!

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  29. You know, I was going to suggest a companion show to this one, called Who Wants To Be A Super-Villain?

    Then I realized, that show is already on the air. It's just called by a different name: The Apprentice.

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  30. Hahaha, win. It's basically a training ground for the new contenders to the Post-Crisis Lex Luthor's throne.

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  31. Wow, this guy is good! I wonder how he got Warren Beaty to stand in for his promo photo!

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  32. Feedback was my favorite from the get-go...he's just so sincere. I'm planning on buying his comic...and I've never bought a comic book in my life! Major Victory would do wonderfully in a parody though.

    I was afraid of FM winning the title for the whole of the last episode; I would have had to have killed myself if she had.

    What are all of these references to Marvel for though? The comic's being published by Dark Horse!!!

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