Juggernaut is Better as a Hero (A.K.A. Comic Books Have a Toxic Nostalgia Problem)

Any excuse for me to rant about Cain Marko, right?

Hey, bleeders! Let's talk for a second about a very serious problem that affects us all: toxic nostalgia. What that generally means is that some people get so caught up in their memories for something that they end up taking a fat steaming shit on thing they loved by forcing it to match their memories rather than letting it grow and change. This can lead to them making a sequel to a two-film arc that totally negates the character growth and follow that up with a spin-off show that further ruins that character growth. Now, that's not the topic of today's journey into toxic nostalgia (or corporate greed, for the matter) so we'll table that for later.

But we will be talking about it. Oh yes, we shall be talking it in explicit detail.

Today the subject of toxic nostalgia is going to a very particular place: comic books. And let me tell you, nowhere is it more prevalent than there. From Spider-Man's marriage being magically poofed by editorially mandated deals with personifications of the devil to undoing one of the most powerfully dramatic moments in comic history just so one writer can play with a dead character rather than respecting the legacy of said character, comics is chock full of this shit. Now, I'm not saying that retcons are the same thing. Toxic nostalgia in comics can result in a retcon but not every retcon is a result of it. Buuuuuut, let's say this retcon makes it so one or several reformed villains suddenly get turned back to villains because the writer just wants to see them as a group of villains again and hastily sweeps away other writers' work to make those characters grow beyond what they initially were.

Geoff Johns: respecting legacies in one comic while shitting all over them in so many others.

The problem with Geoff Johns' retcon that led to the Rogues group being reunited like it was is that it is a lazy solution to a problem he had with their story. He wanted the reformed Rogues to be villains again so, rather than writing a story about how they questioned themselves that eventually led them to a return to a villainous life they'd long since left behind, he lazily wrote in that they were mindraped into heroes. I say this as a fan of some of his work: Geoff Johns is a severely guilty writer when it comes to toxic nostalgia. He cares more about making his story than he does respecting the work of others before him, so he will arbitrarily force elements to work whatever way he needs them to. It's like when Jeph Loeb wrote that shitty story where Ultimate Pyro (an X-Man and known hero) was used as a henchman/rapist. Research? Pshaw! Writing a character in-character? Fuck that noise! Nothing can get in the way of the "perfect masterpiece" being constructed.

Thank you, Gavok, for shining a light on that idiocy as only you can.

Nothing irks me more as a comic reader than lazy writing, and make no mistake this is lazy as hell. If you can't be bothered to look something up on Google or Wikipedia (both of which work well for catching up on the histories of character histories you might be unfamiliar with) then you shouldn't be using those fucking characters, you lazy sacks of goat vomit. I have not read the entire histories of most comic characters but I have a loose knowledge of many thanks to reading about them either online or in Who's Who type books because I wanted to learn more. If a person like me who isn't getting paid for that can do simple research then people getting paid should do some damn research so their books don't read like bad fan-fiction written by hyper-active 12 year old boys who just really want to see some tits so badly and think rape jokes are hilarious.

Rape jokes are like every season of Family Guy after the first two. They're not fucking funny.

Why am I harping mainly about the whole "reformed villain being turned evil again" thing? Because that right there is the most over-encompassing example of toxic nostalgia in comic books. Writer trot onto a book and decide that they miss when they were a kid and _______ was a villain fighting _______, so they clumsily make that happen. Even worse is when it's an editor that does this though, because then it's even worse handled. They don't care if those characters now have this fanbase of people who love their heroic exploits or find their redemption inspiring because it reminds them that humans are allowed to have bad pasts and move on from that to be better. No, they just want to slam their toys together like they did as a child with no regard to character history, fan reaction, or writing standards.

"I'm sorry if the story of an abuse survivor overcoming his anger & becoming a hero was inspirational to you because I'd really just prefer it if he was a dumb guy smashing shit again. Can't possibly have enough of those, right?"

I use Juggernaut as my chief example of this here because he's the one that pisses me off the most. I am a huge fan of Juggernaut as a character...but I only became a fan because of his character growth beyond being just that big strong villain who gets used by smarter villains. For all the hate that gets lobbed at the Chuck Austen Uncanny X-Men run, the one thing I will always defend is Cain's arc because it was poignant and resounded deeply. He didn't start off as out-and-out hero, but grew into the role gradually. He felt at peace with helping people and had begun mending fences with his step-brother, Xavier, who also experienced the same abuse as a child. And then it all got wiped away because someone wanted him to be the old big dumb henchman archtype again. Surprise, surprise, it also involved magic mind shit because that's the go-to for these things. That marriage bothering you? Magical mindwipes to erase it for everyone who knew about it! That team of villains you dig broke up? Magical retcon mindraping is here to make them just the way they were before they grew as characters! You want a complex abuse survivor to go back to being a one-note bruiser? Magical demon powers making him evil again because we say so!

Making him look fucking goofy is on the artist though. Seriously, one of the worst redesigns I've ever seen of any character. Just wow.

Creativity always takes a backseat to the "status quo", much to the detriment of comics as a whole. People will always expect someone to undo any creative decision because...they tend to always do that. Galactus being a bringer of life with probably get undone the minute Disney/Marvel Studios gets the Fantastic Four rights, for example, because you gotta have that synergy for movie fans who now only know him as a purple planet eater. Well, at least that's the excuse we'll get when it happens when in reality it's just going to be someone wanting him back because they liked it better when all the stories about him were exactly the fucking same (barring events like Annihilation that actually used him well). As I sit here now, it's been revealed that Lex Luthor, a character who has actually been a hero for a while now, is switching back to a more villainous role. We could say it might be for a good story, that it's could be for synergy with the films where he's a villain, or we could just be honest and say "the status quo always wins" begrudgingly. Personally, I'm just gonna pretend I live in a reality where that doesn't happen. A reality where The Karate Kid Part II was the last film until the reboot. A reality where Cain Marko got to keep his character growth. Later days, bleeders.

That reality also still also Alpine White bars, mostly because they were amazeballs.