The Day The Pool Post Died

So endeth the weekly pool posts. We didn't make it to the pool today. Sad sad news. Wish I could say we did something exciting today instead, but we really didn't. This afternoon I did take Quinn to the toy store while Ginger and Catherine were napping. He's convinced now after driving around in the battery powered car last weekend at Rob's that he needs to have one of those. Because of that, he spent like half an hour in the section with the battery powered cars (for some reason he spent most of his time in the corvette that had product placement stickers all over it so that it resembled something from NASCAR). He also has decided he wants a batting helmet. I managed to let him wander around the store for a while and escaped without actually buying anything. After that we went to the pet store and bought an irridescent shark (which is really just a catfish).

And I simply have to respond to Matt's comment from yesterday. I still can't believe he wrote all of that in a comment.

(probably biting off more than i can chew, given the author's creds)

I'm surprised you don't think Iron Man, Silver Surfer, and Namor aren't household names. The Silver Surfer was popular/obscure enough reference to use as spice in Crimson Tide and Ozzie used to sing about Iron Man.

... he's the personification of all that makes the American Dream something great.

That whole Truth: Red, White and Black thing put a stink on the American Dream part of Capt.

Heck, I'm really happy (and quite frankly surprised) they didn't choose Doctor Strange. I never understood why he seemed so popular (so long ago...)

I too would have selected Storm and/or Rogue rather than either of those two, although both of them being X-Men probably is pretty biased. Sue would have been a good choice also.

If it's really people from the Marvel world, I think it would have been cool had they used some choice villains, like the Red Skull, (you already mentioned) Galactus, Venom, or Doctor Doom.

It doesn't seem to me they're too driven by upcoming marketing, otherwise Johnny Blaze would have been a natural choice.

That's what I'm talking about! Someone else that gets it.

Awesome Matt.

In regards to Silver Surfer, Iron Man and Namor. I think they're ranked in that order as far as popularity. And Namor has never had what I would call a large following, even though he may be well known, he's not what I would call popular. I use my Mom as my benchmark of namebrand popularity. Ask my Mom who Spider-Man is, she would know. Ask her who Namor is, and I highly doubt she would know. Ask her about Silver Surfer and Iron Man, then you're getting into the maybe range.

Rogue would have made my list. But my list isn't normal. Rogue from back in the day when she had Ms Marvel's powers and memory was great. That crap that showed up in the X-Men films, which they eventually changed the comic character to mimic the films (because we wouldn't want new readers of the comic to get confused even though the comic is responsible for the movie), is crap though. So in her present form, Rogue doesn't get my vote. Rogue from the Claremont Golden years though, she's definitely in.

I still stand by my belief that Steve Rogers (a.k.a. Captain America) is the personification of the American Dream. Yea, the whole Red White and Blue makes the super soldier program look bad, but that was a program run by the government. Steve has never been a government lackey and does what he feels to be right. And I never got the impression that he knew about the previous experiments before they recently came to light (since they were retconned * in there for the rest of us also).

And I agree with your spot on assessment of Dr Strange. I mean what's up with all the fan service this guy gets? He had a couple of crappy TV movies in the 70s and I think has guest starred in Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends and in the newer Spider-Man animated series also. But why does he have such a following. He's got to be the hardest character to write. What problem is there that he can't solve by with the "Crimson Bands of Cyttorak". And let's not forget his awesome catch phrase: "By the hoary hosts of Haggoth". Trust me, that line kills with the ladies.

As for Blaze, I got the impression that Marvel choose their character by taking a popularity / power combination and whoever scored highest got in. Which would be why I think Thor isn't there (although it could be that Thor isn't exclusive to Marvel and the concept of Thor can be in any comic, but Marvel only owns a version of the likeness of the character). Along those same lines, Daredevil didn't get a stamp, and yet Elektra, which spins out of his story did.

Man, it's a good thing not a lot of people read the weekend posts. This is probably some boring stuff for 95% of you).

* Retcon stands for Retroactive Continuity, where the writer with a story in the present will introduce elements to change or rewrite the backstory from the past, there are small offenses (adding in a character responsible for the 'accident' that caused someone to get their powers) to large (we rewrote the history of the universe, all the old issues no longer apply).

This post probably won't be showing up when I wrote it. That would be because my garrulous post apparently filled up the server on blogger since I got this gem of an error message when I tried to post.

There were errors. (Hide details ...)
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