Sunday, November 11, 2007

Doin' Things Differently Today

I'm doing something a bit different with today's post, because I feel it merits it. Namely, addressing the lack of chronological continuity.

First off, here's the strip for Friday the 9th:
I'm glad to see that, even within the comic, people realize that the Persuader's tactics are less persuading and more common thuggery. I also like Robbie's labeling of the Persuader as "hoodlum." Remember that, at this point, the Persuader is entering the Daily Bugle building. In any case, onto the strip for Saturday the 10th:
It looks like we'll never know why Spider-Man decided to go to the Daily Bugle building, but there he is. Supposedly, the Persuader is just now entering the elevator to get to Jameson's office. For some reason, the Daily Bugle has really shoddy security despite the fact that weirdos in masks with super-powers are constantly barging in demanding things of Jameson, not to mention Jameson's hatred of Spider-Man.

All right, we've established that the Persuader is in the Daily Bugle building and Spider-Man is sort of hanging around and waiting for some reason, on the Daily Bugle building.

I'll ignore the fact that the Persuader thinks he could do anything to Spider-Man. Then again, Spider-Man does have some odd weakness against large men in suits. I'll also allow for Spider-Man visiting our friend, King of the Newspaper Jockeys. He's a super-hero, and he was no doubt investigating things on behalf of his employer. Instead, I'll focus on the final panel. That's the one with the Persuader in it.

The Persuader, who was just entering the Daily Bugle building mere moments ago (comic time). There's no logical reason to why he's there, other than to think threats at Spider-Man. In a physical sense, the Persuader can't be there because web-slinging is faster than walking, and even if the King of the Newspaper Jockeys was only a block or two away, the Persuader would still had to have run pretty fast (super-humanly fast, in fact) to see even part of Spider-Man's spiel. In a narrative sense, the Persuader would have been in the Bugle's elevator by the time Spider-Man even left. The Persuader wouldn't even know Spider-Man had left. What the heck?

So, what we have here is either sloppy storytelling or subtle hints that the Persuader is more than a man. Perhaps he wields some sort of precognition akin to Spider-Man's spider-sense (which, come to think of it, would be giving off minor twinges right now) that allowed him to know that Spider-Man was leaving the Daily Bugle building. If so, then we'll have to assume that the Persuader either has Olympic-level sprinting abilities (maybe he's some sort of Captain America-esque super-soldier?) or has some sort of travel-based super-power like teleportation, flight, or super-speed. If we allow for that, than the Persuader's threat against Spider-Man is perhaps a little more serious than previously thought.

Then again, maybe the Persuader has a Venom-type symbiote which would cover pretty much everything at this point.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you sure that the Persuader is really going into the Daily Bugle building? I assumed that the thing with the sign on it was just another roadside newspaper stand.

Kaitlyn said...

Wow.

I read every single post on this website today, in about 3 hours.

I'm just glad I finished, and then next week (or tomorrow) I won't be so behind.

My favorite character? JJJ. He's just so... I don't know.

I saw the first Spiderman movie, and then discovered there was a daily comic through the CC.

So here I am!




Who's the Kingpin?

Mike Podgor said...

Thanks for reading, Kaitlyn. As for the Kingpin, he's a crime boss who is especially large and bald. You can find out more about him here:
Official Kingpin Biography

jvwalt said...

This storyline reminds me of the very early days of Superman, when this super-powered Man of Krypton routinely went after run-of-the-mill bad guys in trenchcoats. He'd track them to their lair; they'd try to shoot him; the bullets would bounce off; and he'd punch their lights out.

This got old after a while, and the writers started inventing super-villains. I guess, in the imaginary world of Stan Lee, everything old is new again.

Kaitlyn: Kingpin is a longtime Marvel Comics villain, a big, strong mob boss who's kind of like Lex Luthor without the "science." Rich, powerful, never gets caught, etc. He's appeared in several different Marvel series, and was the bad guy (played by Michael Clarke Duncan) in the "Daredevil" movie.