LogFAQs > #898033520

PakoPako posted...

Reed Richards is useless. One what-if scenario had him and Stark team up and magic NY into utopia... that eventually went straight to hell.

Reed Richards is actually worse than useless - he's basically a mad scientist supervillain who just barely avoids crossing the line into evil (this is not an uncommon cliche for Marvel - it's been observed multiple times before that Hank Pym often comes across like a mad scientist desperately trying to be good but constantly fucking up because he's far more suited to be a villain than a hero).

Reed's more or less an amoral genius who can't quite connect with the idea of how human emotion works (see also, pretty much every social interaction we've ever seen him have with Sue). Even his initial decision to encourage the Fantastic Four to become heroes was more motivated by his understanding that they would be far less persecuted for their powers (and potentially more able to profit from his inventions) if the public viewed them as heroes rather than potential menaces than it was out of any sincere desire to do good.

It's been explored in the comics before, but it's incredibly easy to postulate an alternate universe where events went slightly differently, and Reed basically just becomes a straight-up villain (whether one with good intentions or just one who doesn't give a fuck about people and who will sacrifice anything in the name of SCIENCE).

Ironically, science villains like Doctor Doom or even Lex Luthor tend to make better heroes when looked at in the right light (and when presented in a variant setting where circumstances don't make them "evil"). Doom's probably done far more good for the people of Latveria than Reed has ever done for the entire world.



Krazy_Kirby posted...

Yellow posted...

I hate to be that guy, but this is why Batman is the "realistic" superhero.

batman has bullshit suits of armor too

Worse than that - Batman's incredibly unrealistic, because it's pretty much impossible to wear anything resembling body armor and still be flexible enough to be one of the best ninjas in the entire world. And constant fighting and injuries sustained every single night without prolonged periods of rest would absolutely leave him crippled within 5 years (see also, the physical state most older football players and wrestlers wind up in, made worse by the fact that Bruce simply cannot psychologically take months off to have corrective surgeries and rehab injuries rather than "playing through the pain").

As much as people tended to dislike the movie (for justifiable reasons), The Dark Knight Rises might be the most realistic version of Batman there's ever been, because we basically see how only a few years or so of being Batman have left him a broken wreck both physically and psychologically. Bruce isn't even 40, and he's in worse shape than most PotDers.

Of course, that realism goes right out the window when he invents a special knee brace that apparently corrects all of his knee problems perfectly enough to allow for more top-level ninja-ing, and later when he gets someone to magic-punch his broken spine back into perfect alignment, but the early version of Bruce is exactly what a "realistic" Batman would wind up being.

And that of course is assuming that someone hadn't shot him in the face or killed him in any of the dozens of other ways a vigilante operating at his level would have realistically died long beforehand.


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