"Can it be...?"

(Yeah, trying to get this goin' again.)

#tmnt

Yeah, I got nothing, these pages are just very sweet.

#tmnt

The short version is, Redemption Arc Shredder's got nothing on Redemption Arc Megatron. A big part of why being that, even for all James Robertson's creative cheating with his version character, you are allowed to believe it's not really a question and that it isn't possible. Handy Dostoevsky quote at the bottom there.

#tmnt

And after years of IDW giving the team more soldiers and other martial artists, with the only non combat role being tech support, I am more than down with the idea of the Turtles opening a dojo and letting non-Designated Special People learn how to defend themselves.

And giving them a community of actual people to join, not just surround themselves with fellow fighters.

It's not just the tragedies that shape them, Killmonger and Doom's traumatic childhoods, to say nothing of Magneto's, but I think you need an element of this All Star Superman moment to really make it work.

All these men have every reason to hate the status quo and burn it to the ground. But that's as far as it goes, for Doom especially. "You could have saves the world YEARS ago if it mattered to you." Which highlights what -is- important to Luthor.

Magneto's the big example of this for me, because of where Chris Claremont was initially taking his arc, complete with renouncing his ways and leading the X-Men. An arc that was ultimately short circuited because Roger Stern really hated the idea and wrote a miniseries to undo it, but hey.

And this stuff was the basis for X-Men '97, the biggest Marvel anything of this century since the first Avengers movie.

Killmonger and Doom are more similar to each other, and arguably simpler than Mags, because they're tragic fairy tale characters. Doom was hunted from birth because the old world Europe he was born into hates travellers, Eric was kidnapped by people paling around with Klaw, a confirmed white supremacist. Both lost everything, both have every reason to hate the parts of the world that hate them.

But neither stop there.

Doom's the closest to the Morrison take on Lex, the man who COULD have saved the world, and didn't, because what's really important to him is conquering it and being LOVED for that.

Eric is a truly next level hater who wants to destroy everything the Black Panther is, because the Panther was supposed to be there for him and -wasn't.-

Major difference between them and Mags, and an important distinction to make? All of them are leaders, who truly could make something great. But there are multiple roles Magneto could adopt to lead his people. Teacher, general, philosopher, statesman. He's first among equals, with cause to be arrogant when he is.

Doom and Killmonger want to be -kings.- Which is why I think fairy tale is an apt description for them. You know what a man who kills to become a king is.

There's also the setting all three were built to work in, although Eric came along in the 70s and it'd take until around then for Mags to start becoming the multifaceted character we all talk about. The Marvel Universe begins in the Cold War, it's heroes powered by (cartoonish) radiation, often in the form of an accident. Hulk and Daredevil are mutilated victims of (cartoon) radiation.

That's the text. That this stuff isn't beneficial even when it -is- empowering.

DC's heroes were power fantasies. What if just for once strength, darkness, nature, science, fetish (in the case of Wil Marston) were on YOUR side?

Marvel's heroes lived in the atomic age, were powered by it, and didn't want to be here. The Fantastic Four are already kinda the all American ideal, and after their shuttle crash they become superheroes out of self defence, because now America will hunt them down with pitchforks if they don't market their radioactive mutations properly.

Point being, you have all these heroes who never asked for the power and obligation to do anything, and have an ongoing conversation about whether they -can- use those things to affect their society, the one invading Vietnam, never mind if they have the right.

So y'know who'd be a great foil to an uncertain hero? Someone who's utterly convinced he's right and the world owes them for their special pain.

Not every Marvel villain was that, of course. Any in-depth conversation about Magento should include the fact he starts out as a pretty stock mastermind type.

It's also interesting that Doom's first appearance only specifies his interest in black magic and the hubristic accident that scarred him, the fact he was orphaned (and he's Romani!) not revealed/invented until the FF's second annual, published two years after his first appearance.