General Marvel Legends

hmmberto said:
but also of the push for more representation in mass media.
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That part I like. Like I said, I don’t dislike Robbie as a character at all, I just think his general time-and-place aesthetics suck. But also I’m not a “car guy” at all, so a car feels like a downgrade from a motorcycle to me, not that I’m a motorcycle guy either. The car feels cumbersome for a “Rider” in a way that a bike or a horse does not. It feels “square peg, round hole” to me, and also like it was trying too hard to be “cool” at that time.

But I’m also the guy who’s like “Peter Parker can be reframed as not-white and still be Peter Parker (and maybe he should be), and I’d prefer that to a new character”. I had no problem with Jack Russell being reframed that way in live action, and I’d have no problem with Johnny Blaze being reframed that way as well.

Anyway, this all probably sounds like I’m more against Robbie than I am. I just think the 2000s car-culture connection is dippy, and “grieving stunt rider cursed by the Devil” is just always gonna be my jam.
 
hmmberto said:
I wonder how often Marvel asks/tells Hasbro to include certain figures/looks. There are certain figures that seem like they almost had to have been a mandate, especially those that come out barely a year after the look debuts in the comics. I don't necessarily have a problem with it, because ML should cover the whole range of what Marvel is, and it helps me pay attention to stuff I might otherwise miss. But I have a hard time thinking Hallows Eve or Chasm immediately jumped to the top of the list without a little help.
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But Hallow's Eve's design is purely toyetic - one look at her debut cover and I wanted the figure. I expect the ML team thought similarly - and being able to "give in" to whatever editorial pressure may or may not have existed was a bonus.
 
AceofKnaves said:
I hear that, and I think that my issue with Robbie’s pop culture trend trappings is that unlike the 70s trend-running characters I love, I was actually alive and literate when the “Ghost Driver” debuted. It’s the difference between “oh I see, this character was originally created to follow a then-popular trend back in the day, how interesting” vs “ahhhh jeez, this *new* character just popped up and is clearly based on a thing that is being pushed in pop culture *right now*”. I wonder if I would be so keen on the original Ghost Rider if I actually lived through all the Evel Knievel stuff in real time. I *did* live through the 90s Ghost Rider resurgence with enough media literacy to know what was going on there, and while I did dig on Danny a bit I was, even as a teenager, annoyed that they’d replaced the original character and were trying to chase current pop culture trends with Danny.

. . . also I admit that the particular trend involved with Robbie’s visuals is not a trend I’m charmed by. My stomach totally dropped when I saw the new Ghost Rider was 1) not Johnny and 2) obviously riffing on a movie series and general “attitude” that gives me big yuck. I do know that Robbie is actually interesting as a character and the F&F stuff is largely visual trappings, but still: ick.
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You described exactly what I was trying to convey! Also I can't believe I didn't make the connection to Johnny's roots myself while making that point, but it's exactly right - he is also a product of his time, just like Robbie, and I think that's neat. All the main Ghost Riders are, really - the Western craze, Evel Knievel, 90s leather and chains badassery...

AceofKnaves said:
That part I like. Like I said, I don’t dislike Robbie as a character at all, I just think his general time-and-place aesthetics suck. But also I’m not a “car guy” at all, so a car feels like a downgrade from a motorcycle to me, not that I’m a motorcycle guy either. The car feels cumbersome for a “Rider” in a way that a bike or a horse does not. It feels “square peg, round hole” to me, and also like it was trying to hard to be “cool” at that time.

But I’m also the guy who’s like “Peter Parker can be reframed as not-white and still be Peter Parker (and maybe he should be), and I’d prefer that to a new character”. I had no problem with Jack Russell being reframed that way in live action, and I’d have no problem with Johnny Blaze being reframed that way as well.

Anyway, this all probably sounds like I’m more against Robbie than I am. I just think the 2000s car-culture connection is dippy, and “grieving stunt rider cursed by the Devil” is just always gonna be my jam.
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No doubt, and I almost threw in a disclaimer that *obviously* representation is not an issue you have with him.

I get the aversion to the milieu that spawned him - it probably helps that I don't know much about any of that, because the association just doesn't carry as much baggage.

This is a larger conversation, but it does seem like Marvel (and probably DC) have learned not to let legacy characters push out the originals/more established versions. I'm not sure how much Marvel ever was guilty of that, but I do remember the controversy around Kyle Rayner and Wally West at DC. I feel like Marvel has always been better about letting them coexist, even if the originals evolve or change in some way.
 
Schizm said:
But Hallow's Eve's design is purely toyetic - one look at her debut cover and I wanted the figure. I expect the ML team thought similarly - and being able to "give in" to whatever editorial pressure may or may not have existed was a bonus.
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Totally, and I actually really like the figure and the fact that this kind of modern stuff makes its way into ML. Just saying, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Marvel involves itself in character selection from time to time - it would be more surprising to me if they were totally hands off.
 
Schizm said:
But Hallow's Eve's design is purely toyetic - one look at her debut cover and I wanted the figure. I expect the ML team thought similarly - and being able to "give in" to whatever editorial pressure may or may not have existed was a bonus.
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I had never read a single issue with her and bought the figure. "Cute Halloween lady with mask-based superpowers" is not a hard sell for anyone who puts way too much effort into their costume every year. I think the team choosing her for the line was not much more involved a process than me buying her on sight.
 
Thor-El said:
I once figured out the dimensions of this at 1:12 scale and printed out a flat copy to see how big it would be. And even scaled down it would be HUGE. Even moreso if it's made to fit five figures in the cockpit like an actual Quinjet. So as much as I'd love to have one of these classic comic Quinjets, I don't think it's realistic.
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So, I was looking back at this, and if you take the handbook dimensions... you're not going to believe this... but the canon Quinjet, at scale, has a nearly identical footprint to the Rattler.

Rattler is basically 34x10x32. This would be 35x10(ish)x24.

Of course, the Rattler can fold up and the "true" scale Quinjet wouldn't, but if it were constructed as like a 4-part shell that locked together, it'd have quite a bit of space for figures. Still surely too big for a Haslab without fudging, but not quite as outrageous as I'd have expected.
 
The Quinjet as mostly open space would work. The cockpit with some seats, an open area with some panels on the walls, and then a side that could be removed to display as a playset that would hold a dozen figures seems doable to me. If they packaged it disassembled (cough), the box might not be too huge.
 
fac said:
The Quinjet as mostly open space would work. The cockpit with some seats, an open area with some panels on the walls, and then a side that could be removed to display as a playset that would hold a dozen figures seems doable to me. If they packaged it disassembled (cough), the box might not be too huge.
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Yeah, the main issue is display. It'd be like the 4H dragon in that to display it properly you'd basically have to let it take over most of a table. No way it's going in a Detolf. Granted, folks bought that dragon so maybe that's not as big a hurdle as it used to be. I think size-wise, as the hollow pill design, it's doable even at scale or close to it.

Would it sell well? I dunno, but I'd bet better than the EoV simply because Avengers fans are a much larger cross-section of the ML collecting community. Anyone can go in a Quinjet.
 
AceofKnaves said:
That part I like. Like I said, I don’t dislike Robbie as a character at all, I just think his general time-and-place aesthetics suck. But also I’m not a “car guy” at all, so a car feels like a downgrade from a motorcycle to me, not that I’m a motorcycle guy either. The car feels cumbersome for a “Rider” in a way that a bike or a horse does not. It feels “square peg, round hole” to me, and also like it was trying too hard to be “cool” at that time.
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Something I will actually give the Marvel team is that they've done an incredible job fitting a whole-ass fuckin' car into dynamic fight scenes and shit. On the surface, I have the same problem of thinking 'Jesus, a CAR?' I didn't like Robbie at first specifically because he's a Ghost Driver, not a Ghost Rider and it made my brain angry. But following him in the comics - they did such an incredible job making it make sense. He feels like a very different character from Johnny and Dan.

I would never want Robbie to be the ONLY Ghost Rider. But having him there alongside the other two works really well for me and does do things that the motorcycle variants don't do. It can be a lot of fun. But if they ever just Crisis'd the other Riders out of existence and made it just Robbie, I'd be pissed because he still does feel like an ancillary character rather than the main show.
 
Damien said:
I would never want Robbie to be the ONLY Ghost Rider. But having him there alongside the other two works really well for me and does do things that the motorcycle variants don't do. It can be a lot of fun. But if they ever just Crisis'd the other Riders out of existence and made it just Robbie, I'd be pissed because he still does feel like an ancillary character rather than the main show.
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Totally fair.
 
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