Sometimes, he blathers about RPGs and comic books.

The more I learn about the Marvel Universe and superhero movies and comics in general, the less impressed I am with the so-called creativity of some of my tabletop-RPG buddies from back in college.  Every time I watch another superhero movie, or even read a little bit online about some comic book/graphic novel, I recognize a character that one of my gaming friends supposedly came up with entirely out of his/her own imagination.   The squirrel, for example, who was a blatant imitation of Rocket from Guardians of the Galaxy, including the gageteering.  The “brick” (character whose powers are strength-based) who had a backstory a lot like Tony Stark’s (which is funny-ironic for reasons I cannot explain without a lot of blathering about novel inspirations and voice actors) but whose personality was more like Clark Kent’s would be if he was a bully and a goody-two-shoes (Lawful Stupid, we called characters like that) who thought that being a farmboy made him morally superior to everyone else and wasn’t hesitant to threaten anyone who didn’t agree with him.  (See me NOT saying anything about the person who came up with that character.  I could, but maybe some of my blog followers don’t have clearance for that, y’know?)  It’s no wonder a lot of people assumed one of my characters was a deliberate rip-off of one of the less-famous X-Men characters, based solely on a vague similarity of “hero” name.  After all, no one ever comes up with their own ideas, right?  (I can guess which character you’re probably thinking of, and you’re wrong.  The game character I’m referring to is female, and you’ve never seen any stories about her, nor will you — at least not in any form that would be recognized.  My game characters were always story characters first, so I suppose I, too, had a habit of “borrowing” from written fiction, only I borrowed from my own.)

I’ll admit, there was one time I had an RPG character who was based on a character from someone else’s fiction, but 1) the gamemaster told all of us to do that, and 2) that character doesn’t count as being from a comic book since he was only in one once as a guest character because his author was there, too.  (What was Claremont thinking…?  And what was up with that moustache??)

Anyway.  Some things I’ve learned about the Marvel Universe are not at all disappointing.  Did you know that Peter Quill (a.k.a. Star-lord) and Kitty Pryde (a.k.a. Shadowcat) used to be/are together…?  I just found that a few weeks ago from reading a post on Therefore I Geek.  (Yes, pretty much my first thought was, Dude, you really need to read that sci-fi novel.  It’s by one of Kitty’s favorite authors, who also used to be in one of her favorite bands.  May be a good idea to read stuff by the drummer, too.  Hey, if I can’t occasionally recommend good novels to fictional people… Wouldn’t be the first time, either.)  I blathered a bit about Kitty Pryde in an older post, “‘Mayhem’ is missing” and in an aside in this post.  (I’ve said it before, and now I’m saying it again:  if I was standing about five feet from the protagonist from a novel by my favorite author, and I was introduced to that person by name, I’d recognize him.)