Despite repeated losses to Daredevil, in-universe I think the Hand is supposed to be scary-formidable. Non-Hand ninjas, and ninjas in video games and movies, though; you can plow through them no problem. The Ghost Dance referenced is based on Warren Ellis's description of it in
X-Calibre #1, and probably isn't 100% historically accurate. In that issue, set in the Age of Apocalypse, Angel describes it to Kurt
Wagner Darkholme, who considers it the dumbest thing he's ever heard, since that universe's version of Kurt had a bad experience with the church and was godless. The Hand may once have been able to bring the dream-versions of themselves to life, when they had the scary rep, but try that nowadays and you'd get fruit-slicing ninjas or disposable creampuffs...
Why did I not already know that Sleepwalker was on the Goddess's side during IC? I know he was involved with everyone else Marvel owned or published back then, just not that, nor did I know he did that to Johnny & Darkhawk. Wow. Legit didn't know that happened until today. See, who says your blog isn't informative?
ReplyDeleteI believe the writer of the current Punisher series & the Punisher's doing their best to rehabilitate the Hand into being more formidable, so let's so how that goes.
They were really never the same after letting Matt run that place were they, or the Kingpin before him. Who's next to run it, Ghost Rider? Forbush Man?
No idea which song Sleepy's going to use to wake of Rick, my top 3 choices would be whatever's currently popular, something mainstream annoying like "Who let the dogs out?" or the remix to "All I want for Christmas" by Mariah Carey, or maybe even some loud-known only to Norweigan's-Norwegian Death Metal band.
So their secret power is a vision board? Maybe they should just stick to the all-consuming shadows and nunchuks. Kinda makes the Hand seem like the Foot otherwise.
ReplyDeleteMan, not enough people get the parody elements of the original Ninja Turtles comics. I realize that's out of left field but all this Hand stuff got me thinking about it.
@H: Depends on the particular generation of TNMT fan, but yeah, I'm sure the fact that it was a parody of Daredevil isn't as widely known as it should be, even though it REALLY should be pretty obvious. I mean, you can't tell me Shredder doesn't look like Gladiator or Whirlwind on steroids.
ReplyDeleteI didn't even think about that. The story is that Shredder was based on a cheese grater but I can see what you're saying. I was more referring to the Hand/Foot and the Stick/Splinter stuff, as well as the obvious Miller homages in the art. Also, people (creators included) seem to take the TMNT way more seriously than they should. The original series and special issues were usually a parody of comic book tropes and that seems to have been forgotten in most of the series since then.
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