Agents of Shield - Season 4
- Thread starter MarsWeeps
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It was at least until Power Man and Iron Fist. I haven't read beyond there.
One of my favorite podcasts is Jay and Miles Xplain the X-Men. One of the common tropes they have is the "angry Claremont-ian narrator." While it happened to a degree in the X-Men (and Claremont was definitely a hostile narrator), it's Iron Fist where Claremont is always speaking in second person basically accusing Danny Rand of being a failure the entire time.
Yeah, I'm glad Claremont got over being the second person narrator on X-Men (The worst instance was in UXM 96, where he was telling Cyclops that it was his fault that Thunderbird dies). Although, On Iron Fist, the second person narrator was there before Claremont took over.
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It is a little odd to read, but I've always seen this sort of second person narration to be a subconscious inner monologue rather than a conscious one. As if the subconscious is a separate awareness. The inner critic one might say. Not sure I'm explaining it very well.
Apparently, the bullet hole is from the comics. Not the original GHOST RIDER comics from the 1970s, but from a more recent comic-book plotline involving Johnny Blaze getting shot in the head by magic bullet.
EDIT: Okay, here's the reference from Wikipedia:
"The "Road to Damnation" series, by Garth Ennis and Clayton Crain, finds Johnny Blaze trapped in an endless cycle of torture and escape in the pit. It is here that the angel Malachi appears to the Ghost Rider, offering to free him from Hell with his soul intact, in exchange for hunting down the demon Kazann who has been unleashed upon the earth.[volume & issue needed]
Johnny thinks he's free, but gets shot in the head by a dying priest (whom he had blasted with hellfire earlier) with a holy bullet and is sent back to Hell."
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^^ Nice. That's contemporary Marvel for you. 
Yeah, Satan could not get his soul because of Roxanne's love and Johnny's own basic decency-- that was the tension, up till issue 17 or so, that Johnny's soul was "hanging in the balance." But he was definitely not an undead sort of character, like Dracula or Simon Garth. He was more like Jack Russell, struggling with a curse and hoping to be free of it.
That's a good idea, but he doesn't have to be dead to be free of aging. It could be part of the curse. "Die of old age? You don't get off that easy." Or there could be another reason. One idea I've played around with a couple of times is a character who ages normally in human form, but not in their supernatural form. As they get older, they feel compelled to spend more and more time in their supernatural form to avoid old(er) age and death, until it becomes an obsession.
Oh, inner turmoil, definitely. That was what made Marvel great. I thought we were talking about killing and harsh vengeance and so on.I definitely recall a whole page of anguished monologing in that first issue.
*googles*
OK, photobucket is down, so I can't show you the scan, so I'll have to transcribe it: -
I'd say that qualifies as melodramatic inner turmoil.
Third-person narration is dated? How? Why? When? It's the most common form of narration, and always has been. I can see how second-person narration could be seen as dated, because it's kind of artsy, and we live in artless times, but third-person is pretty much the default.
I've always associated it most with Gerber's Tales of the Zombie. It can be a bit artsy, but the 70s were an experimental time, and I think it's a useful device to help the reader really get the experience of a character that he might not otherwise relate to. Gerber also used it briefly in one of the last issues of Man-Thing. Now that I think on it, I believe it was the normal narration mode for DeFalco's Spider-Girl.
Yes, that's about the size of it. Like any form of narration, it can be used in various ways, but it's mostly used as an inner monologue that bypasses the filters-- that's why it often comes across as accusatory, because it's the character talking to themself without excuses or justifications. In comics, it can very often be seen in thought balloons, too-- "Nice going, Peter, you've really screwed up this time." It also works really well in Interactive Fiction, for obvious reasons.
Didn't DC do something similar with Captain Marvel in one of the end times books? It may have been either 'Kingdom Come' or DKSB, but I think the gist of is was that Billy had actually died of cancer or a heart attack some years prior, so he was forced to hold his Captain Marvel form indefinitely.
Not sure it would work as well with Ghost Rider though, I mean I don't know if a flaming skull guy could have gone so long undetected by the likes of SHIELD if he'd been forced to hold that form more and more over time.
Actually now that I think about it, didn't Robbie say the transformation erases any injuries? I may be misremembering. If it works that way then maybe Johnny could age normally in human form, but the second he transforms it snaps his body back to the age he was when he was cursed and he has to start all over?
Maybe for the last few decades he's been trying to stay away from that world, retired and hoping for a natural death, but when the Darkhold was stolen he was forced to become the Ghost Rider again. That might account for why he's in a recruiting mood. He just doesn't have it in him to do this kind of thing anymore.
Most comics these days use first person narration when they use narration at all. It goes hand-in-hand with the elimination of thought bubbles. Now, if you want to know what the character is thinking, you have the character narrate things in first person.
Granted, many books just don't have narrators at all anymore. The narration of the silver age where every action shown on screen needs to be described as well is long gone. I'm trying to find the interview I saw (it was about a Marvel book that occasionally used thought bubbles). He attributed this trend to the success of Frank Miller - particularly with The Dark Knight Returns, as well as Alan Moore's Watchmen.
If I had to guess I'd say it's probably the influence of movies and TV more than anything.
Early comics were thought of as prose written stores with lots of pictures, whereas modern books seem to have shifted their mindset to them being more akin to storyboards.
IMO the latter seems to imbue more trust in the artist to convey most of the stage direction and tonal side of the story, leaving the lettering to mostly just handle the dialogue.
Early comics were thought of as prose written stores with lots of pictures, whereas modern books seem to have shifted their mindset to them being more akin to storyboards.
IMO the latter seems to imbue more trust in the artist to convey most of the stage direction and tonal side of the story, leaving the lettering to mostly just handle the dialogue.
Please, it isn't a silver age story unless someone is rolling with a punch.
What? Thought bubbles are largely gone? Why?
Yet again, I'm glad I've stopped reading Marvel.
Priests with holy bullets? Gotta love comic books.
Reminds me of that old Peter Jackson movie with the kung-fu priest: "I kick ass for the Lord!"
Well hopefully he starts actually trying to tame the monster within, becuase so far it seems like he lets it do whatever the fuck it wants in the hope it goes away while occasionally making excuses for it roasting people. Though the last two episodes basically shouting "get it under control" at him will hopefully help.
It wasn't 'Kingdom Come' since the big twist in regards to him there was having been Billy the whole time before actually turning into Captain Marvel.
Yeah, he doesn't exactly seem to convey any sense of being cursed if that's what they're going for, he seems quite content with the actions of the Rider.
There's an old joke that all Marvel comics are being narrated by the Watcher to Iron Fist. Because back in the day, the only Marvel comic to use first person narration was "What If," narrated by the Watcher (who didn't take part in most of the stories, so it essentially was third person), and the only one to use second person was Iron Fist.
In fact, the Spectre's backstory includes him being exiled from reality upon Christ's birth because of that very contradiction. It's the whole reason he has a human host in the modern day; that's now the only way he can indefinitely operate in the material world.
While at the same time denying any personal responsibility for what it actually does to the people he aims it at. Clearly he still hasn't come to grips yet with the full implications of what he's doing.
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