InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Our last best hope for victory"

pyrotwilight (pyrotwilight) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-10-30 21:32:00

Entry tags:

char: red inferno/seth aiden, char: red tornado/ulthoon/john smith, char: t.o. morrow/thomas oscar morrow, creator: ed benes, creator: j.p mayer, creator: jose luisi, creator: kevin vanhook, title: red tornado

Red Tornado #2
In the last issue you were introduced to Red Torpedo and re-introduced to Red Volcano as Reddy searches for his robo siblings, now it's time to meet the Inferno, Red Inferno!

Continuing with Torpedo and Tornado we see them get under attack from Jets at Pearl Harbor where the two are flying around. Torpedo during the course of defending herself performs an attack that looks like she was going to kill those in the Jets.

After giving us less than satisfactory answers on whether she would've actually killed them Torpedo gives her origin story to the group.

"Us?" Not sure if that means she actually met her other siblings before. Probably.

She presumably is talking about Volcano though it'd be a twist if it were the decommisioned Inferno...

After hearing the story the duo catch wind of the situation with Volcano and Morrow. The two rather easily free Morrow but Volcano escapes so as to not fight both of them at once.

Now we turn to Golden Valley High School where Traya goes to on Wednesday to take advanced music lessons. There we see young Seth Aiden being bullied on by his peers.

I won't respond to the fellow boys fondling him but it seems little old Seth has a secret even he doesn't know about.

Seth Aiden is...the RED INFERNO! One of his smaller abilities is common sense. I'M ON FIRE. I also find it amusing he has an arrow pointing down to his...chest...that's it.

Immediately after this Seth run into Volcano who looks ready to pop his block off.

I'm interested in seeing what happens with the robo family. Volcano will likely be defeated but what of Torpedo and Inferno? Torpedo seems slippery as an eel someone who doesn't seem to want to be good or evil but simply free like a river flowing. Inferno had no clue he had powers so hopefully we'll see what the story with that is. Seems very Victor Mancha-esque.

What are everyone's thoughts. Like, dislike?

(Post a new comment)

	jamspread 2009-10-31 02:07 am UTC (link)
	Ahhhh, so that's what robo-boobs are for. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	silverzeo 2009-10-31 04:08 am UTC (link)
	And when you think about Beast Wars... it just makes Tarantulus a bigger sicko and all the more reason to respect Blackarachnia (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	midnightvoyager 2009-10-31 07:46 pm UTC (link)
	Kinda makes Silverbolt a perv, too, really. >_> (Reply to this) (Parent)

	jamspread 2009-11-02 01:50 am UTC (link)
	O_o ??? I just thought you'd respect Blackarachnia because she could beat you up. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	ex_darkblade992 2009-10-31 02:10 am UTC (link)
	Well at least ninjas can't catch him now. (Reply to this)

	manofbats 2009-10-31 02:15 am UTC (link)
	I love that her boobs are hollow metal cones. Why the hell does she even have those? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	glprime 2009-10-31 02:56 am UTC (link)
	...ballast tanks? (Reply to this) (Parent)

	pyrotwilight 2009-10-31 03:20 am UTC (link)
	insert joke about bombs (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	danielolsen 2009-10-31 03:23 am UTC (link)
	Worked for Aphrodai A. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	salamangkiero 2009-10-31 04:09 am UTC (link)
	...Howabout Morningstar Breasts on chains? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	salamangkiero 2009-10-31 04:11 am UTC (link)
	I forgot about the AXE BREASTS. You shold see what the other Mazinger Angels have... (Reply to this) (Parent)

	barnesarama 2009-10-31 03:21 am UTC (link)
	Because Morrow is a perv? (Reply to this) (Parent)

	nagaoka 2009-10-31 12:08 pm UTC (link)
	All the others have symbols on her chest except her. Obviously her symbol is her chest. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	nagaoka 2009-10-31 12:08 pm UTC (link)
	bleh "symbols on their chest" (Reply to this) (Parent)

	jlbarnett 2009-10-31 01:46 pm UTC (link)
	well she is the Red TORPEDO. But actually her design brings to mind the original Red Tornado design. When he was a bad guy, so I think it's foreshadowing (Reply to this) (Parent)

	deepspaceartist 2009-10-31 01:56 pm UTC (link)
	Well, they are torpedo-shaped. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	thokstar 2009-10-31 02:15 am UTC (link)
	The basic story is solid and I have no problem with the art. Van Hook's narration is mind-numblingly bad "Tell rather than show" at its worst. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	bluefall 2009-10-31 02:25 am UTC (link)
	at its worst. You're not giving VH enough credit. He can do much worse narration when he tries. When writing Oracle, for instance. I mean, this may be tortured, but from what I see here, at least it's not glaringly out-of-character. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	thokstar 2009-10-31 02:33 am UTC (link)
	If I recall, Oracle: The Cure didn't have nearly as much scene-setting narration as Red Tornado does. When I say at its worst, I'm really talking about the use of that device (as opposed to Van Hook's worst story: I'll cheerfully admit that the underlying story here is much better than the underlying story of Oracle: The Cure.) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

bluefall
2009-10-31 02:39 am UTC (link)

Ah, I gotcha - I speak in the sense of quality, as opposed to quantity. His narration here has an overwrought excess to it, not just in the sense of there's too much of it, but in the sense of the sentences themselves are awkward and overselling his story. I consider that poor writing, in any quantity... but I consider it less poor writing than awkward overselling sentences that are also glaringly OOC (even if there are more of them this time).

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	crinosg 2009-10-31 02:16 am UTC (link)
	Sorry, I've been playing too much team fortress 2 lately, so when I read him saying "I am on fire!" I did so in a German accent. Then I imagined there was a guy in the locker room with a gas mask laughing his ass off. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	manofbats 2009-10-31 02:24 am UTC (link)
	The only problem I have with the art are the hideous "costumes." I'm not a fan of Red Tornado's design in the first place, so three more characters with variations of his design aren't winning me over. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	bluefall 2009-10-31 02:26 am UTC (link)
	I'm indifferent to Reddy. But Torpedo's... head... thing... is really not working for me. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	manofbats 2009-10-31 02:27 am UTC (link)
	Yeah, kind of took the Torpedo thing a bit too far. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	pyrotwilight 2009-10-31 02:31 am UTC (link)
	I dunno I thought it kinda made sense cause as one of the scans shows it's like a water bubble helmet with retractable glass since she needs water to run. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	unknownscribler 2009-11-04 09:27 am UTC (link)
	It drinks from the same cup of fail as the reimagined Centurians from BSG (Reply to this) (Parent)

	mullon 2009-10-31 02:26 am UTC (link)
	Who is her dad? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	pyrotwilight 2009-10-31 02:32 am UTC (link)
	You don't know Traya? She's Red Tornado's step daughter. Her mom is (married?) together with Red Tornado in his John Smith identity. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

bluefall
2009-10-31 02:43 am UTC (link)

They were married in YJ, though apparently not legally, since the government failed to recognize him as next of kin (or, in fact, sentient and possessed of rights of any kind). But then he proposed to her in McDuffie's JLA, like they were only ever together.

Two wanks to cover this: either John Smith married her, which became void when the gov't found out John Smith isn't real, or AIs gained legal status at some point between YJ and JLA v4 and he wants to get re-married, but legally this time.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	jlbarnett 2009-10-31 01:48 pm UTC (link)
	or Traya considers him her dad no matter what the gov't says. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	bluefall 2009-10-31 06:50 pm UTC (link)
	Reddy referred to Kathy as his wife in YJ, and Kathy referred to Traya as his daughter. Traya's perspective doesn't even enter into it. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	jlbarnett 2009-10-31 07:01 pm UTC (link)
	I was just talking in this issue. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	lieut_kettch 2009-10-31 03:11 am UTC (link)
	I thought Traya was going to Elias along with Cissie, Greta and Cassie. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	pyrotwilight 2009-10-31 03:13 am UTC (link)
	To my knowledge she does. She comes to this school for Advanced Music Lessons. Which makes sense she seems to be a music prodigy and is way younger than a high school student. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	mssolo 2009-10-31 08:58 am UTC (link)
	But wasn't Elias a high school? By the time Cassie dropped out she was about 16. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	(Anonymous) 2009-10-31 07:03 am UTC (link)
	Cassie still goes to Elias? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	lieut_kettch 2009-10-31 02:04 pm UTC (link)
	Not really sure. In the Wonder Girl mini, she was living in Georgetown and wearing a Georgetown hoodie, but it was never mentioned that she was going to college there. She's just the right age for a college freshman, though. (Reply to this) (Parent)

jlroberson
2009-10-31 08:07 am UTC (link)

To be honest, I've always found the arrow and other symbols connected with Reddie confusing and meaningless ever since I was a kid. The winds in a tornado, for instance, do not go down(it goes around and around)--and nor does fire(it goes up). WATER wants to go downward if it can, not either of those. And I've never ever EVER understood what the one on his chest denotes. So it makes little difference to me.

I would suggest, however, that--speaking as someone who was reading comics since Alan Moore started all this "elemental" guff--I am sick to death of DC's use of it, whether in Firestorm, here, or adapting it to the Green Lanterns by pretending that only the ROYGBIV spectrum exists and only 7 emotions/drives exist. The last times I found it interesting were Mark Millar's "trials" story with Swamp Thing, and Jamie Delano's exploration of "the Red" in ANIMAL MAN(which I'm surprised no one else has picked up & run with). There are other motifs, and ones that are more complex, interesting and...less classical or medieval.

The thing about the Aristotelian "elements?" He meant them in the way we mean the word now. But he was wrong about that, as he was with most everything. None of them are. Water is a compound. Earth is a mixture of elements, including water, in fact, as well as air(like nitrogen). Fire is a chemical transitional/catalytic state between energy and matter. And air too is a mixture of elements, one of which is water. These barely even describe categories of things, let alone elements. The world is not made up of these four; these four are part of the world that is made up of things more basic and also more complex than that. It's not just tired; it's useless as a metaphor--it's gibberish. The world is made up of CHEMISTRY, not alchemy. And even further down, physics.

When I see this now, twenty years on since Alan Moore introduced it(though Gerry Conway did plant the seed where Reddie is concerned), I wonder when we'll get a comic based on a motif of the four humors or a flat earth. (Of course, DC has always been one for simplistic cosmologies; think of the Silver Age view in DC of the cosmic battle between Good and Evil, embodied in Earth-3)And I have to wonder just how much can be gotten out of hammering pre-existing stuff into the motif at this point. I dunno, just, yawn.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	icon_uk 2009-10-31 10:56 am UTC (link)
	and I've never ever EVER understood what the one on his chest denotes It's the letter T (for Tornado) in a sircle (Reply to this) (Parent)

	lots42 2009-10-31 09:30 am UTC (link)
	Yellow on pink not worky. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	icon_uk 2009-10-31 10:57 am UTC (link)
	Whose outfit is pink? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	lots42 2009-10-31 11:03 am UTC (link)
	Peek at the text. Hard to read. Like Wired article. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	divi_d 2009-11-03 11:16 am UTC (link)
	But very feminine! And in the end, isn't that all that matters? (Reply to this) (Parent)