Commentary: Descendants #36

Descendants #37 'Of A Feather' revisited the character of Elizabeth von Stoker, AKA Freaque, and introduced a new set of characters, the Outliers. It also served as the first issue of Descendants Volume 4: Confluence and, as it happens, the issue least connected with the overall Confluence arc.

So how did these new characters come to be, and how did 'Of a Feather' become so divorced from Confluence? All that and Peter Parker Syndrome under the cut.

The story for 'Of a Feather' was always based on the Outliers group beng manipulated by Thunderhead. Originally though, it involved them chasing after the Kin because Thunderhead was posing has her father trying to get his daughter back.

The problem I ran into was that it was a follow-up to a One Shot called The Kin's Summer Special that defined the relationships of the members of the Kin more after what I see as my failure to do so during 'Standing with Titans'. That story never really came to pass because I couldn't think up a driving plot for it and because I had to 'hide' Tesser to keep people from noticing that Vamanos had the same powerset. Vamanos was meant to get some build up as a character during Confluence.

I still loved the Outliers though, and decided to tie them into the Warrick/Tink arc by including them in a planned Freaque story. Originally, Freaque was going to take over out of jealousy of seeing the two together, forcing Warrick to protect Tink as Warrick instead of Alloy.

In retrospect, if I had it all to do again, I'd leave these two stories separate. They're a result of a more structured method of story design I dabbled in using to make sure I stayed 'on schedule' in getting the series to where I wanted by Volume 5. I've sense abandoned it, but I think this, and War Machines weakened Confluence considerably.

But I stand by the Outliers and certainly want them to come back, even if they were all based on gags:

Geiger, besides being an Alien reference, also exists because that franchise is my friend's favorites and I'm always pretending to confuse HR Geiger for Hans Geiger (of counter fame).

Kronos is modeled physically after Dr. Manhattan of Watchmen, and personality-wise on the X-men: First Class characterization of Beast. He came to be after a riff on how you can't be a successful physically mutated mutant with Marvel fans without being blue. Blink, Skin, Penance: who are they? Gimmie Beast, Nightcrawler and Mystique! Only applies to mutant though. Mutates like Hulk or the Everlovin Blue-eyed Thing are coolio.

Anura an homage to one of my favorite X-characters, Toad. Well, Toad as played by Ray Park of from X-men: Evolution. In fact, the whole group correlates rather nicely to the Brotherhood's incarnation on that show. She mostly exists to showcase he 'tongue covers', which I think Toad should have eventually figured out at some point, after tasting ever single X-man and the local architecture. I like supers who need gear to make their powers more useful: you see that all over the series, really.

I just want to also point out, while I'm on the subject of Anura, that when she calls Kali 'sis', she doesn't mean literally. Kali is the baby sister of the group and gets treated like it. In editing it, I came to realize this wasn't clear, but wasn't worth adding a long sentence to explain. I'll make it more clear in their next appearance.

Finally, we have Kali, who isn't really based on the Goddess, but on the DnD monster, the Marilith (Mariposa/Marilith). In the game's mythos, the Mariliths are the badass demonic generals that make every one of the infinite layers of the Abyss the awesome live action metal albums they are. So of course, Kali is an enthusiastic, by hilariously poor fighter that is (as mentioned) the baby sis of her crew.

Aside from them, 'Of a Feather' was also about Freaque/Liz and there's not a lot to say here that shouldn't wait until I go back and comment on 'Freaque', but I do think that it's a good place to talk about Warrick's Peter Parker Syndrome.

Peter Parker Syndrome (PPS) is the tendency of the people around a superhero to also become super/badass normal at some point during the story. This could mean they become villains or heroes, as long as they become part of the super 'world'. As per the name, the biggest sufferer of this condition is Peter Parker (Spider-man), who has, over his various incarnations, seen classmates, teachers, mentors, co-workers, and employers all gain powers, usually in ways that have absolutely nothing to do with him other than the fact that they appear in his book.

It's so severe that even the parents of his associates can be affected, and his own parents were retroactively effected, becoming awesome super-spies.

Warrick isn't quite that bad, but to date, he's got Freaque (love interest), Mad Mad Madigan (pseudo-employer), Vamanos (classmate), Spark (sister), Occult (friend), and in a future vision, Tink/Metal X II (love interest) under his belt. And he's not even in college yet!