From: YANJUNA@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu
Subject: Re: Is that Susan Richards' new costume?
Organization: Yale University
Date: Wed, 06 Jan 93 14:04:42 EST

In article <1993Jan6.085131.1@skcla.monsanto.com>
jjfink@skcla.monsanto.com writes:
 
>
>In article <1idanhINNrur@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu>, ce547@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Kurt M. Wilcken) writes:
>>
>> In a previous article, Chagnon_A@msm.cdx.mot.com (Andrew Chagnon) says:
>
>If it wasn't for the fact that it's being handled so poorly, I _like_ the idea
>of a grim-n-gritty Sue Richards.  Too many of the comic women heroes are
>passive or victims, usually of some kind of violation.  The FF are usually too
>passive, too reactive to the threats around them (as are other superheroes).  A
>pro-active Sue Richards could get Reed off his butt in the lab.
>
 
    Why?   If there's (IMO) one "type" of superheroine      that there is
not enough of, it's a "traditional" wife-mother type.  Now, I'm NOT advocating
that every superheroine becomes a traditional wife-mother, but if they
wanted a grittier heroine, there are stronger candidates and/or there are
quite a few out there already.  Also, a grim-and-gritty (tm) member (any
memeber) of the FF would destroy the "family" element completely.
(Teams with g-and-g members don't tend to get along well; e.g. Wolverine
on X-Men was somewhat of an outsider even within the X-Men [at least it
looked that way when I was still reading it]; He might make a nice distant
cousin, but not a member of a nuclear family, which is what FF is.
(Unless you want to make FF a lot more like the Simpsons or the X-Men,
and not like the Waltons, and IMO, there's already more than enough
of X-Team Klones or Simpsons Klones out there.  How many Waltonesque
families are there in the superhero world?)
   (And before you say Waltons are boring, that's because Waltons never
had a decent enough story; Lee & Kirby, and Byrne did some nice things
with FF acting as a nice nuclear non-dysfunctional family.)
   As for "reactive" FF, first of all, it seems to me, Reed was never
interested in superheroing for its own sake, [again, back in the days
when I read FF], but rather just an interesting sideline while he did his
research, and a lot of their adventures came from side effects of his
research [e.g. Negative Zone], and they got a lot of milage out of those
stories.  [Perhaps Reed felt responsible for any villains coming out
or using the Negative Zone.]; and a lot of Dr. Doom adventures arose from
Doom's jealousy of Reed's scientific prowess.
    Ben and Johnny did the superhero gig for kicks; a nice change from
all those angst-ridden superheros.
    And Sue seemed quite forceful enough when she was handled by Byrne,
namely her battle with Doom and taking over FF when Reed was kidnapped
(Galactus/Doom/Kidnapping of Reed storyline), or FF vs X-Men story
(actually written by Claremont) without having her go over to g-and-g.
    Hell, the biggest reason I dropped FF was that after Byrne left,was that
family element disappeared and  FF  turned into "The Generic Superteam"(tm)
 
 
>Still... wouldn't you think that a woman who can levitate things on force
>fields and make various things invisible, and a man who can stretch various
>parts of his body, would have the best personal life in comics?
>
   On the lighter side, I've wondered about this myself quite a few times.
Reed and Sue seem to be curious type of people, and while they may not be
sexual dynamos, they do seem to enjoy using their powers, so if they wanted
to experiment
in the privacy of their boudoir...
   Would the moral majority approve?  After all, they're married, but
did God intend humans to try  *CENSORED*   :)
 
    Junsok Yang
 
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