Editor’s Note #68

We somehow missed having any Independence Day related when we have an episode releasing July 4th

Upcoming schedule:

• Tuesday, July 4th: Episode #254 - Writers’ Room: Ambuscade vs the Prime Wardens
• Tuesday, July 11th: Episode #255 - Writers’ Room: Citizens of the Sun Civil War
• Tuesday, July 18th: Editor’s Note #69
• Tuesday, July 25th: Episode #256 - Writers’ Room: The Scholar encounters Darkstrife and Painstake

Expected recording schedule:

• Friday, June 30th: Episode #254 - Writers’ Room: Ambuscade vs the Prime Wardens
• Friday, July 7th: Episode #255 - Writers’ Room: Citizens of the Sun Civil War
• Friday, July 14th: Editor’s Note #69
• Friday, July 21st: Episode #256 - Writers’ Room: The Scholar encounters Darkstrife and Painstake

I had completely forgotten about that letter, but I’m really glad I wrote it! It’s so nice being able to get a life update from C&A. And I am still up to date!

Also very happy I was apparently right about Rambler at that point in time.

Can’t believe Christopher is just now reading Gene Wolfe. Those books are forty years old now, and pretty much on the mandatory reading list if you want to experience the best 20th century scifi has to offer. Wolfe’s worldbuilding and writing style are stunning, up there with Jack Vance, C.J. Cherryh and Frank Herbert.

I know he’s young enough that they wouldn’t have been realistic childhood reads, but the books show up on “Must Read” lists all the time. Hate to think how much enjoyment I’d have missed if hadn’t dug into scifi from the 40s, 50s and 60s, not to mention the much older stuff like actual Victorian sf/horror authors.

Love that image in the show notes.

Aw man, I have an appointment that Friday. Recording at the normal time probably would still have run into it though. Big sad.

I love Adam’s use of the word “demerits”.

Yes, Trevor left the Puddingverse bit in! XD

I still think the Vanessa Long of the metaverse is a little girl named Vanessa something-else who had some kind of incurable disease and got turned into the Visionary, or even the Dreamer, for the comics through Shmake a Wish or something.

Still looking forward to the day when we find out who the guy in the red suit is.

I am so glad we finally got the eye story. It’s fascinating, and not as bad as I had feared, though I still feel bad for Christopher’s poor mother.

So one question that I have, but never submitted, and was reminded of thanks to some of the discussion early in the episode: Why is there no hero in Sentinels who’s similar to Spiderman?

I do remember Christopher talking in one episode about why there’s no “portal/teleportation” hero, with the answer being that there wasn’t really a good way to translate that power into the cardgame.

But have they ever talked about why there isn’t a mainline hero who’s archetype is similar to Spiderman? (Maybe they have and I just missed it?)

My thoughts are that Setback fulfills that role (which is why I really liked the thought of the "Riske"verse… “Riske” - averse?). What really makes Spidey special is that Parker Luck . That’s Setback’s whole thing.

We’ve seen “hybrid” characters before, like Cursor is approximately Captain Cosmic + Parse. Certainly somewhere in the infinite Multiverse there’s a cross of Setback and the Adhesivist with tingly luck sense and wrist mounted glue shooters.

It seems to me, and I might have to write in a letter like this, that the “fixed points” are not so much something that ALWAYS happens in the Multiverse, so much as they define the Multiverse. It goes back to the various debates about infinity that have happened over the course of the Letters Page. A while back (after thinking about one of the few multi-timeline Trek stories I actually liked, “Parallels”), I was debating someone about multiple universes (sci-fi nerds, ya know?), and I posited that there may be infinite universes, but the idea that “you” are in every one is nonsense, because there’s only so far “you” can be changed before you are no longer “you.” The number is stupidly big, but it’s not infinite.

So Fixed Points. And the new Spiderverse movie had a bit about this that kinda worked (though the conflict inherent there between certain characters also aligns with a few things, but that’s another debate). But anyway, what if the fixed points are what defines the “Multiverse” of Sentinel Comics. There are universes that share few if any of the fixed points of the primary timeline, but if the connection is too thin, then it’s not really part of the Multiverse, as usually explained.

Or, put another way, it’s not that horrible things ALWAYS happen to Vanessa Long, it’s just that ONLY the ones where horrible things happen to her are accessible in the multiverse. Others are beyond the visible horizon, as it were.

I dunno, Pete seems to much of a himbo to match enough of Spidy’s essential characteristics. Sure, luck is important, but so are brains.

Maybe Alpha?

Whenever I’m “Sentinels-izing” a movie or something, I tend to use Absolute Zero for Spider-Man, because snark. But it also depends on the Spiderman. :B

I’ll agree that Pete Riske doesn’t really feel very Spiderman-y to me either. (Though I do like the idea of an alternate-universe Pete Riske / Adhesivist combo.

I feel like Alpha’s closer our-world equivalent would be Blade?

I’ve always thought of Absolute Zero as more of a “good guy Mr Freeze”, or else a “tragic fire and ice Iron Man”. (Yes, Bunker has a suit, but he’s always struck me as being closer to War Machine).

… I think Alpha is a BIT more socially well adjusted than Blade. But point taken.

Maybe Headlong?

Alpha is clearly the Hulk…

I think the only thing both Setback and Alpha miss for those matches is intellect. But only so many characters can get to be the geniuses.

I mean, Setback isn’t a scientific genius like Peter Parker, but he’s not stupid. I think the comparison’s pretty apt - he’s physically very powerful, but often outclassed in one way or another, and is usually pretty morally inspiring to those around him.
Also, I get the impression that fighting Setback can be just as infuriating, because you spend the whole fight thinking you’ve got him under control, and then he pulls out a win from nowhere!

My headcanon insists that part of why the Black Suit Symbiote thing went so wrong stems from it fishing up Peter’s memories of that incident. Here it is thinking it’s found a cushy setup as superhero outwear and then it finds out how Pete treats his poor costumes. Who can blame the poor thing for worrying about winding up in a trash can without so much as a fare-thee-well itself?

Which, to be fair, is pretty close to what actually happens in comics. “Hey, Dr. Richards, can you help me get this costume off? It’s not actually a problem right now, but I’m ready to go back to my old one. Eh, you can keep it, I don’t want it anymore.”

Leaving a living being in the hands of Reed Richards is arguably worse than the trash can. Especially an alien. That’s just a Mad Science Accident waiting to happen.

Hey, that’s not fair to Reed. He only has Mad Science On-Purposes. Same end result, though.

Only on purpose? The FF’s origin story is an unauthorized flight in an untested rocket leading to cosmic ray exposure turning Reed, his best friend, his fiancee and her kid brother into freaks of nature. You sure you want to insist that was intentional rather than an horrific accident?

He on purpose stole a rocket, yes. Mad Science happened due to his choices. Tomato, tomahto.

Not necessarily in terms of the stories, but in terms of gameplay, I’ve been looking to Void Guard Writhe for this. I think he has the right sense of agility, of balancing vulnerability vs “swinging away,” and of causing special effects to tie up or confuse enemy targets.

this is an extremely interesting take

Especially interesting, considering he’s the closest to Venom