Soldier zero

@SeanNOLA: Although I agree that the exoframe was a pretty horrid idea, I think that the basic idea behind Fighting Chance was actually pretty good: nobody expected Cap to live so long (technically he should be about 80-90 years old right now) so it's likely that the Serum might have some unpredicted side-effects. Unfortunatly it was the 90s, so they had to stuff in some really crazy art.

@G-Man said:

The idea of the serum affecting his DNA is something that was added later. It was a little odd that he needed a complete blood transfusion when the serum was causing his body to shut down yet he got the transfusion from Red Skull in his cloned body. In order for the cloned body to have the Super Soldier Serum in it means it had to have affected his DNA.

Actually the transfusion from the Skull was to give Cap a dose of the "anti-serum" developed by Superia that reverted the degeneration started with Fighting Chance.

Stripping the Serum out of Cap has been done at least 3 times over the years, but the results were very different.

At the end of Streets of Poison (Captain America Vol.2 372-378), Hank Pym was forced to strip the Serum out of Cap, through a total blood transfusion, since another drug has entered Cap's system and was making him crazy. Cap remained big and buff, but lost something in terms of efficiency forcing him to fight a little more dirty than usual against Crossbones. (the blood was later pumped back into Cap, but a couple of pints went into his then-girlfriend Diamondback)

On the other hand, in more recent stories Cap got stripped of the Serum and returned to be the small and frail Steve Rogers.

Personally I prefer the first interpretation given by Mark Gruenwald, the Serum gave Steve a starting boost, but he has to train constantly to keep himself in top shape.

About having Richards, Stark or Pym to reproduce the serum, the possibility was ruled out years ago. If I rember right it was stated that lacking a full physical record of Steve before the Serum, it's incredibly difficult even for a super-genius to work out the element of the Serum from Cap's body.

@tectonic_prose said:

Typically, biologically species are indicated by a genetic lock and key, that is to say, mutants are not humans if that do not have regular reproductive capacity with humans, and rather have that only with other mutants. So, I believe mutants appear to be humans who have a genetic anomaly.

This is actually a very serious science discussion which involves both a re-clarifying of technical speciation and a recap of the genetic history of the X-Family. I'm trying to think of mutants who have had genetically human offspring, but can't. Humans have mutants, but do mutants have non-mutant human offspring. Can anyone help me out here?

There are at least two cases of mutants with non-mutants children. First was Luna, the daughter of Quicksilver and Crystal. Both her parents are genetic offsprings of baseline humanity, but she has no power nor any discernible x-gene/inhuman genetic element. The other case is Graydon Creed, who is perfectly human in spite that both his parents are mutants. Also there was an old storyline about Magneto's first daughter, Anya wasn't a mutant, but she died very early so she might not count.

So, at least in some cases the process can work in reverse. Which makes sense, given that the x-gene is a genetic trait there's always a possibility for it to become recessive over the course of generations. It's very likely that these offsprings still carry the x-gene, like Moira MacTaggert.

@doordoor123 said:

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY GREAT PEOPLE DYING! STOP IT! (tear)

Quote for truth.

Now, you'll excuse me I have some mourning to do.

Today is that day the Clown Cried.

I don't think that any other epitaph can sum up how I feel about this news.

I think that the franchise started to go downhill with E for Extinction, Morrison's run. And they pretty much ruined it completly with the decision too keep the mutant out of Civil War.

Everything in hte middle is just a low agonizing decay.

Right now the X-titles don't seem to even exist in the same continuity of the rest of the MU.

Every time I read this kind of news I find myself syphatizing with people like Cain.

It's the boon and the curse of the digital age, everyone is entiteld to share his/hers opinion, unfortunatly lots of people mistake thi for the opportunity to clog up other human beings with bullshit.

As we all know, PETA has a list of past complains that is probably longer than the Route 66, some are understandable, others legitimate and then there's this. I mean, after such an article the next logical step is sueing any company who produces full-body animal pajamas. After all kids might decide that wearing animal is fun.

@ntb1124 said:

@Soldier zero said:

While G-Man has a point here I think that the reasoning can be reversed.

Lets just say that the Avengers keep their base secret, but they tend to appear always in the area of New York. What would keep Kang from blasting all of Manhattan out of the map just to destroy the team?

I was sold on the fact that having a public headquarters was a bad move, but I never thought of it this way, makes a lot of sense, but maybe they should build it in the middle of Wyoming or somewhere remote....

You have a point here. Unfortunatly there's a careful balance between rapid response and remoteness that is difficult to achieve. Granted in some cases it's a none issue - the JLA watchtower has teleporters. I don't think that having supersonic planes wreacking havoc across the landscape will be appreciated by the locals.

While G-Man has a point here I think that the reasoning can be reversed.

Lets just say that the Avengers keep their base secret, but they tend to appear always in the area of New York. What would keep Kang from blasting all of Manhattan out of the map just to destroy the team?

In my opinion what made BtAS (and the rest of the DCAU by extension) superior to all its contemporaries, and many shows after it, was the decision not to stick too close to the story but to rework it.

At the time comic book based series tend to move in two directions: sticking as close as possible to the source material (like X-Men did), or transforming the whole deal in a "villain of the week" show (it pains me to remember that Iron Man did this). BtAS found a third route, they took tons of source material and distiled a sort of essential version of the characters and setting. One that referenced many eras and versions without actually being strictly tied to any.

The other element that skyrocketed the serie was the decision to push the bonduaries of animation ghetto and try something more adult and visually stunning (I still have the creeps when I recall watching the Man-Bat transformation for the first time, until then my only TV Batman was Adam West).