Who was the best Madame Hydra? Was it the original (now Viper)? Crazy death addict Madame Hydra from the 80s...

Who was the best Madame Hydra? Was it the original (now Viper)? Crazy death addict Madame Hydra from the 80s? Val Fontaine? Elisa Sinclair?

I like Elisa DESU.

Goddammit, why does it keep turning ToBeHonest into DESU?!

Why do they keep both Viper and Elisa around at the same time? What the fuck happened to Contessa as Madame hydra?

>What the fuck happened to Contessa as Madame hydra?

I don't know, I don't care, and I'm still mad they did that to Contessa in the first place.

Dugan's an LMD, Contessa's a mole, Fury's old as shit, and everybody else is dead or forgotten. It's a bitch being a SHIELD fan.

I like Viper the most, but I like her best when she's not with Hydra.

And even if you liked Hill, now she's being replaced by Nuquake and the shit heels from the TV show.

I feel like Hill was finally finding her niche in the Marvel U and now this happens.

What's the status on Viper now? Bendis failed to understand comics as usual and thought she was really Spider-Woman's mom, then she got a headsquid in Secret Warriors and then just kinda vanished.

Classic SHIELD >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> nuSHIELD

Honestly, I wouldn't mind if the whole Miriem Drew thing were true. It wouldn't really take anything away from Viper and it would only make Jessica more interesting (god knows she needs all the help she can get).

I like elder semen demon Elisa

The problem with the Merriem Drew scenario is that it places Viper as a character tied into the supernatural side of Marvel, which is a somewhat odd fit with the spy-vs-spy or terrorism angle she had presented as before and after that story. That's really the reason that they went back on it right after Spider-Woman ended. If that had been the last Viper story ever, it would actually have been a pretty good capstone. Reveal her origins, have her finally break her control and rebel to save her daughter and die.

But in an ongoing story, it is kind of a dumb idea.

Elisa was created wholesale by the cosmic cube, right?

>Was it the original (now Viper)? Crazy death addict Madame Hydra from the 80s?

Aren't those both the same person/character? Ophelia Sarkessian?

Sinclair is a shit tier semen demon user and you know that

Granted, but it feels like most people disregard Jessica's (admittedly retarded) origins and her original, supernatural adventures anyway.

Really, we need to decide once and for all where Jessica fits into the world. Spy, detective, superhero, monster hunter. Pick one, two at most.

I remember back when the Rucka/Williams Batwoman was running, a guy said to me it was the best Spider-Woman book he ever read.

No. The original Madame Hydra decided to cut ties with HYDRA in the early 80s, murdered z-lister supervillain Viper and took over his identity and role in the Serpent Squad. With her going freelance HYDRA started recruiting replacements, and one of them turned up in Nick Fury vs SHIELD to become an ongoing enemy of Nick and his agents. That Madame Hydra never got a real name AFAIK and later died.

A woman that spent most her childhood in a coma and thought she was a spider walked as a man?

I've said this a couple of times, but man I feel like Jessica Drew really could have a niche as an urban supernatural superhero, like her first series. It's a niche that is woefully underexplored at Marvel, it offers something different than the by now tired and stale spy shit (just how many fucking superspy books has Marvel done in the last 10 years?) and urban fantasy is always popular.

Essentially it'd be Kolchak the Night Stalker but with Spider-Woman in the lead role.

>Jessica has the life experience of a child who's been mindfucked by EVERYONE she's ever met in the body of an adult
>let's give her a baby

I know who you're referring too - but she wasn't the crazy death addict. That was Viper/Opheilia.

Little girls love to play mommy

Oooops, wrong page.

Gruenwald's Red Skull is so fucking over the top. I always expect Doctor Doom to walk in and tell him to dial it down a little.

Red Skull a bitch. Doesn't understand the pure aesthetic of chaos.

Also it's funny how Claremont was running his own race with Viper where she did things she never did otherwise and which were barely acknowledged in other stories. partnering with the Silver Samurai, lusting after and marrying Wolverine, becoming part of the Hellfire Club... seriously, that last one was a plotline that just vanished

no u

Gruenwald really understood how to have each of Cap's enemies have a distinct rival political philosophy.

I think a lot of writers don't realize how important that is for Captain America villains.

Gruenwald was a brillaint world-builder like that. He did many really good editorials about it which are still readable today. He loved taking different story ideas from past runs and weaving them into a coherent storyline, and presenting the characters as if they really existed in the same universe.

His belief was that Cap needed at least 12 different enemies to fight so that if necessary you could have 12 different one-shot issues a year. That's of course never done these days, but I love that he tried. He also really wanted each villain (or group) to represent a different type of threat. It wasn't just fascism, it was homegrown extremism, morality watchgroups, racism, sexism, nihilism, megacorporations and financial interests, militarization... His threats ran the gamut and felt really interesting with the exception of a few duds. His run was really the anchor that Cap needed at the time and which laid the groundwork for Waid, Brubaker and others to do their thing in the future.

Sure, Gru was far from flawless. He was a continuity hound who could be childish about things he didn't feel "belonged" or "was in character". He pretty much solidified the use of "Marvel time". And he wrote mediocre stories at times. But the good far outweighs the bad between Squadron Supreme, Quasar and Captain America (just to count off his three most influential titles).

That would require Marvel to actually give a shit about their supernatural/mystical side of their universe so that's not going to happen.

Not really, not at all. Spencer at least has a clue, coming from a political background.

>He did many really good editorials about it which are still readable today.

Where can I read them? This is right up my alley.

> He was a continuity hound who could be childish about things he didn't feel "belonged" or "was in character".

Like what?

>He pretty much solidified the use of "Marvel time".

I noticed at the begining of his run, Cap would still talk about being thawed out in the 60s and that he's been running around for 20 years since. By the end of his run, over a decade later, Cap wouldn't mention that at all.

That would require Marvel to actually give a shit about their supernatural/mystical side of their universe which isn't going to happen.

Spencer suffers from Political Science 101 syndrome so he really doesn't.

>Hellfire Club
she fit in well there I thought

>Like what?

Gruenwald was the mastermind and lead writer for the first few versions of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, the publication with quantified and made official various things for the Marvel Universe which had previously been undefined. Gruenwald sought to bring order into the chaos that was the first two decades of Marvel by assigning each hero specific limits to their powers and deciding what was and was not in continuity. As such, Gruenwald and the other OHOTMU writers were essentially the arbitrators of what was and was not canon in regards not just to their own stories, but any story that had taken place in the past.

That's still way more political knowledge than most of the people who've written Cap since Gru.

Her being a sidekick/henchwoman felt out of character.

I would take a political book written by Brubaker over Spencer any day of the week.

I can't think of a single interesting political thing Brubaker did with Cap.

What bits did you like?

I barely even know who Elise is. She's more of a plot device than a character

Still hoping for an answer...

A decent part of the run has to do with geo-politics, specifically on how Russia acts on the global scene post-Cold War. Skull manipulating Steve's memory also plays nicely in how the media shapes our perceptions on ourselves and how we see historical figures. There's also the ideals of the "Greatest Generation" vs corporate influence and how those ideals may be dying out post-9/11.

What do you like about Spencer's run revolving around politics?

Steve Rogers comic hasn't had much IRL politics, but I've really been liking the Sam Wilson comic.

Serpent Society, race relations, and even SJW villains.

Haven't been too enthused about Spencer's Sam Cap run but I'm glad that you're enjoying it.

I really wanted to keep reading the Gru Cap storytimes but work and school kept me from keeping up with the storytimes. How the fuck is Preacher able to do all these storytimes?