Just Another Thing - Boomerangs
By RazzaTazz 6 Comments
Here's me always trying to pick up on every little thing which comics gets wrong. I was editing the "Wonder Woman's tiara" page yesterday and one of the previous editors write in that the tiara returns to her hand because of its magical abilities. As far as I know this is wrong, Wonder Woman has to make a specific throw to get her tiara to return when thrown. The return throw or the boomerang is fairly common in comics whether it be Batman's batarang, Captain Boomerang or Boomerang (the Marvel villain) there is often the poorly held concept that a boomerang can be thrown, hit someone and then return to the the thrower. Aboriginal hunters did in fact have a stick which would return when thrown, but it was more of an oddity. There real stick were meant to be thrown only in one direction. There has been a move to make this a lot more realistic - batarangs are a lot more like shuriken and the two villains use boomerangs more as thrown weapons which don't return. However, it is curious to me how anyone ever thought that this might work. At one point Captain Boomerang even had the weird ability to throw himself like a boomerang and return to where he started from after attacking whoever mid-air. There is not such a big deal with that in comics, just I usually call it flying. One example I think of who gets it right is Captain America with his shield, in that he is such an expert with it he can throw it to make numerous hits and then return. As far as I know though, that is partially because it is made of vibranium. Another good example was when Wonder Woman used it to cut Superman's throat before Infinite Crisis, and thats because of you are going to throw something it either hits the object and conveys all that kinetic energy to the recipient at which point the object usually stops, or theoretically in Wonder Woman's case a glancing blow might still allow for a return. Still even though I am pretty sure it is wrong, I wanted the previous edit on the tiara to be right as magic is one of the few good explanations for a return projectile weapon. Boomerangs are good for kids, but not for heroes and villains.