This week’s theme is “Dysfunctional Parent/Child Relationships.” It’s obvious to even the most casual comics fan that this is the foundation of many, many characters’ backstories. And for good reason — as a comedian whose name I can’t recall once noted, “Nobody can push your buttons better than family members, because they’re the ones who installed most of those buttons.”

This brings us to Odin and Thor. Odin is the All-Father, meaning he’s the progenitor of most, if not all, of the Asgardian gods. Thor is the only one of those gods who’s acknowledged as his bloodson, and he’s also known to be the ultimate defender of Asgard and the gods. Thor is the archetypical golden boy, beloved of the people while his half-brother, Loki, is feared and distrusted. It’s Thor who gets the best presents from dad — Mjolnir ain’t no joke — and Thor to whom everyone defers when Odin is out of town. But Thor’s not the fruit of Odin’s wife — Frigga’s — loins. The identity of Thor’s birthmother is a mystery for many years in the comics, and it causes more problems for Odin than it does for Thor. Shocking, right? Not many wives take kindly to their husbands fathering children with other women, but Frigga doesn’t hold it against her stepson. Eventually Roy Thomas, Mark Gruenwald and Keith Pollard reveal the answer of Thor’s matrilineal descent, in the epic Eternals Saga — so epic it’s collected in two volumes.

In addition to shedding light on who should have been receiving all Thor’s Mother’s Day cards, the Eternals Saga reveals that Odin has a nasty habit — every couple of centuries he kills Thor because he thinks it will forestall Ragnarok and the death of all the gods. When he’s not being snuffed by his father, Thor is being cast out of Asgard by daddy dearest because he’s disobedient, being stripped of his powers and replaced by a new “Thor,” being forced to live as a human with a gimpy leg to learn humility, fighting dad’s ultimate engine of destruction the Destroyer because Odin has plans that Thor is about to upset– Odin teaches more lessons through terrible means than George Bluth, Sr.

And if this is what he does to his favorite son, what does he do to Loki, the evil son? Not much. While Thor is rambling around Earth with no knowledge of who he is, Loki’s in Asgard living the life of a god — and conspiring to kill his brother and take dad’s place as king. Thor constantly thwarts his half-brother’s plans, but before long Odin finds some new reason to ban Thor from his sight, or send him to the far side of the universe on some cockamamie quest, or punish him with amnesia. Thor, being the noble guy that he is, always takes these punishments in stride. OK, during the Eternals Saga he almost throws down against dad, but Odin relents at the last possible moment and then — well, if you’ve read this far you should be able to guess that he once again banishes Thor from Asgard as a precautionary measure.

Currently in the real world, there are two ongoing monthly Thor titles. In the main one, Odin is gone and Thor has become the scapegoat for everything terrible that’s happened to Asgard in the past few years, and yet it’s Balder who is king and supposedly responsible for the people. Even when Odin’s not there, Thor gets shoddy treatment, because that’s how dad raised him. In the secondary Thor book (Thor the Mighty Avenger), Thor is trapped on Earth with no knowledge of how he got here, until the Warriors Three show up and reveal that he’s being punished by Odin with banishment and amnesia — again. Despite being one of the most powerful characters in the Marvel Universe, Thor is forever his father’s whipping boy — and he’s almost immortal, so it really is “forever.”

-Paul

One of my favorite things about these theme blogs is the negotiations that go on backstage before we all agree on who we’re writing about and why. There’s a lengthy email chain floating around in cyberspace in which adults lay out ground rules for what qualifies as a robot — it’s ridiculous, right?

Ah, well. I started it the brouhaha by bringing up the Vision — he’s a synthezoid, not a robot, but we’re still counting him as one. You gotta have standards, sure, but come on; how many robots have a wife and kids?

But that’s why I love Vision. Created by Ultron using the robot body of the original, Golden Age Human Torch and his own wickedness, Vision was supposed to be the weapon that finally killed Hank Pym. Old-timers will remember that Hank built Ultron, so that means Vision is kinda Hank’s grandson. Wait, it gets weirder: Once Vision fought the Avengers pretty much to a stand-still, he decided they were cooler than Ultron, so he switched sides. As a thank-you for not destroying them, Hank imprinted Simon “Wonder Man” Williams’ brainwaves on the Vision (Wondy was dead, he didn’t mind) and just like that Vision had emotions and grown-up feelings. In one afternoon, Hank Pym undid 60 years of science fiction theory and broke, like, all of Asimov’s laws — that’s right, comics are bad-ass like that.

With great emotions come … horniness. Despite the heavy limitations of having Simon Williams’ brain as his guide, Vision soon began dating the Scarlet Witch, they got married (how progressive is THAT?) and then Scarlet hexed up some kids for ‘em. Wonder Man also reappeared, and decided that since the two of them had the same thoughts and feelings, he would think of Vision as his “brother.” That’s sweet and all, but that means that once again Wonder Man comes up as a second-class hero. He, too, was sent to kill the Avengers (by Baron Zemo) and ended up joining them, then died and not one of his teammates tried to bring him back — they just get Mr. Greenjeans here to take his place, plus give him Wondy’s brain.

So one brother is a struggling actor who squandered the family fortune and can’t get a date, the other is a robot with a wife and kids and a steady job. Wonder Man, you suck. Wondy gets even, though — after Vision goes all blue screen of death on the world’s computers, the feds discombobulate him. When Hank Pym puts him back together, Wondy refuses to let them use his brainwaves again because *he* secretly has the hots for Scarlet Witch. Vision ends up an emotionless, chalk-white ghost of his former self and he and Scarlet divorce, but this being comics, he eventually pulls it all together emotionally.

In addition to having one of my favorite ever backstories, ol’ Vizh has some great powers. He can shoot eyebeams, he can fire solar blasts out of his little bindi, he’s got a supercomputer brain, and he can control his density, making himself transform from intangible to diamond-hardness — not to put to fine a point on it, but I’m sure that’s a feature that makes the wife happy. Roy Thomas and John Buscema created him, but I’ve always been partial to George Perez’s rendition. David Michelinie wrote some fine stories that demonstrated the full range of Vision’s powers — Avengers #194, “Interlude,” has a great Vision freak-out in it, as he tears up the Avengers’ training room because Jocasta (Ultron’s robot version of Janet Van Dyne — what is it with Ultron and making robot versions of people he hates?) calls him “almost human.” You can find that one in the Marvel Legends: George Perez series, volume 3. Volumes 1 and 2 are equally worthwhile if you’re a fan of Vision, or of beautifully-drawn comics in general.

-Paul

Robots. Do you trust them? I do. Sometimes. Food and Cleaning robots are cool. Companion robots… Not so much. At least, not the creepy human looking ones that the Japanese keep building. The robot in Rocky IV, that one is ok by me. But what about comic book robots? Well, those tend to be murky territory… I mean, one could argue that the Cyborg Superman is technically a robot. I wont go into detail about that one, but there was a brief conversation that was had about who and what counts as a robot, and the result leads us to this string of blogs. So let’s get right to it.

Aaron Stack, better known as The Machine Man, is one of the coolest robots in comics. Originally an idea that was spun out of the comic adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Machine Man started off as a simple robot (X-51) that was eventually exposed the awesome power of a Monolith which brought him and the rest of this robot “brothers”, becoming sentient in the process. His “brothers” went on a rampage but through some sort of robot love deal with his creator, X-51 did not go insane. So then the good creator died, and X-51 took his surname and lived on as his son, and thus, Aaron Stack was “born”.

X-51 and Reed Richards in one of the many bad Marvel futures

Following that, Aaron was brought into the Marvel Universe and some stuff happened. And it was decided by the powers that be, that Aaron Stack had a soul. Then he just kinda floated around the Marvel U. Sounds boring, right? Well. I wont argue with you there, but that isn’t to say that he’s a terrible character. No. For you see, there was this little series called Earth X. You might have heard of it. Much like DC’s Kingdom Come, Earth X followed the “what if the future sucked” path for Marvel Comics. Machine Man is one of the central characters, tasked by the blind Watcher Uatu to watch the events of Earth unfold through past and present as the entire population of Earth are converted into Inhumans through the Terrigen Mist bombing of the atmosphere as well as the threat of complete population brain-washing through the efforts of a young child. Of note, this is one of those few times where Uatu didn’t interfere with the catastrophic events that were occurring on the Earth. But through Uatu and Stack’s conversations, we find one that one one of the most human characters that Marvel has is actually a robot. Aaron refuses to give in to The Watcher’s urges for him to delete his personality and become a recorder of the end of humanity. However, with respect to those who have yet to read Earth X, I’ll not go into any further details, as this is one story that is best discovered with your own eyes.

But hey, you might be saying, “Earth X doesn’t count, Fleet! Tell us about something that matters.” And for that, I point you to another comic with dubious continuity; Warren Ellis’ “Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E”. This comic featured a team that was made up of B-List & C-List characters and showed us just how cool these characters could be. Plus, there was Captain ☠☠☠☠. But that’s for another time. But Aaron Stack finds himself on a team that’s kinda like S.H.I.E.L.D. but… different? Anyway, his depiction here builds him as a sort of dysfunctional and yet functional Inspector Gadget. Often, we’ll find him morphing his appendages into a variety of mostly useless tools for the situation, or we’ll see him summon the aura of Rob Liefeld by having grossly oversized and impractical giant scissor hands. (which is awesome in this case) Outside of Nextwave, he appears in a couple of the Marvel Zombies books. Most recently, he teamed up with Howard the Duck to deal with the zombie menace. That kinda says something about the path that the Zombies brand has taken over the years… And that path? The Awesome Path. But I’ve yet to mention one of the coolest things about Aaron Stack. And that happens to be that he’s totally Green. Not as in the color, but that he runs on Solar Energy. He’s one ot the best robots for the environment. Add that to his variety of functions, such as; stretchy limbs that can go as long as 100 feet, a chest firing beam-cannon, super-computing skills, his titanium/adamantium hull, his literal “hand guns” (his fingers can shoot out bullets as well as lasers), he has nanotech that self repairs, and he has also hinted that he could impregnate a women from far away.

Now that’s a cool robot. Now, I started off this blog with an intention to show you how cool Machine Man was. What ended up happening was that I got distracted. So, I don’t know if I achieved my mission. But what I do know, is that for a guy who tends to wear the equivalent of a giant purple onesie, he makes for a pretty cool robot and character overall. See ya.

-Fleet

As you may already know, this week we decided that we’d each write a blog about our favorite robots in comics. Now there are a lot of robots to choose from, because where there’s futuristic technology, there’s mechanical automatons to go with it. Whether you’re looking at the colossal, mindless brutes like the Sentinels from the X-Men, or perhaps the more soulful Red Tornado of the JLA, robots are everywhere in every conceivable size and model. However, for my robot choice, I had to go with the traditional nigh-unstoppable engine of death type, which is why I chose Bastion, villain and mastermind behind such X-Stories as Operation: Zero Tolerance and the more recent X-Men: Second Coming.

Now, one of the reasons I like Bastion because he’s actually two mutant death machines rolled into one. He was formed when the already ridiculously hard to kill Nimrod robot fused with an old component of the original Master Mold Sentinel, which was then thrown unceremoniously into a mystical portal known only as the Siege Perilous. What emerged from that series of events was a sentinel with the form, self-righteous arrogance, and conviction of a man, but with none of the compassion.

After his official “rebirth” from the Siege Perilous, Bastion goes on to have quite the colorful career trying to exterminate the mutant race. His achievements include, but are by no means limited to, infiltrating the Whitehouse, starting a government sanctioned mutant-genocide program, almost killing Cyclops, resurrecting and enslaving five of the most dangerous mutant hating people on the planet with a techno-organic virus, and most recently punching a hole through Nightcrawler’s chest. Now if that’s not a full resume I don’t know what is.

However, it isn’t Bastion’s supervillian scorecard that makes him so interesting, although it doesn’t hurt. Bastion is my favorite robot because unlike so many robot villains before him, he isn’t just following his programming or doing what he was built to do, he actually believes he is doing the right thing! Personally, I can’t think of anything scarier than a machine that believes it would be doing the world a favor by wiping me out of existence. Having a goal is one thing, having a goal and carrying it out with conviction is quite another.

So far Bastion has been captured, decapitated (twice), and blown to smithereens, yet despite everything I doubt we’ve seen the last of him. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that you can’t keep a good (or bad) robot down.

-Brent