Oh, Meggan...

[lyssie]

Every so often, I remember that most comic fans think women in skimpy clothing with big boobs are bimboes. And none of them were more quitessentially that than Meggan from Excalibur. And I'd agree... Except that Warren Ellis pretty much blew that assumption out of the water.

Under his reign she was smart, and sometimes, she did things like this.

Comments

[unanon.livejournal.com]

Oh Meggan, my beloved barefoot superheroine. *misses* How I HATED some of the ways Claremont wrote her...i.e. little more than Brian's personal blonde floozy sex-toy. *sigh*

I bet it was under Ellis' run that she and Kurt had all that interesting Chemistry, wasn't it. *Grumbles*

[lyssie.livejournal.com]

Actually, the chemistry was Claremont and Davis, back in the early stuff. Issues... 10-about30, I think.

Ellis did things like, y'know, teaching her to read and letting her have a brain and actually having powers that were more than just punching shit.

[seraphic-slayer.livejournal.com]

I absolutely love you for posting that because this was one of the very first Excalibur comics I read and watching her do that made me love her SO much.

*I* want those powers!!

[lyssie.livejournal.com]

Yay! Meggan was just... Gah. She had so much potential!

[lyssie.livejournal.com]

*nods* I know. He did a really nice job giving her a brain that made sense with what had gone before. Sigh.

[samy.livejournal.com]

I'm going to disagree. I thought having a character who was a desperate hanger-on with no life of her own was what made Meggan a strongly unique character in the Marvel Universe. During Ellis' run she was just made into an interchangeable hyperpowerful female energy manipulator with no flaws of naivette, simplicity or clinging -- basically turning her into a two-dimensional Jean Grey/Sue Storm stereotype. Just a powerful woman, and nothing more. Me, I feel we had MORE than enough of that type of women already, and Ellis' Meggan was a huge step into the direction of being a very generic comic book heroine.

Plus, he tried to make her badass. There are characters who should be badass, and there are characters who...*shouldn't*. I'll let you guess which I think Meggan falls into.

[lyssie.livejournal.com]

....so her being a two-dimensional bimbo who clings to her man jealously and has no thought but how to please him is better?

Right.

[samy.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's better in not having 400 Jean Greys running around the Marvel Universe. I prefer my universes to have varied characters -- weak, strong, smart, stupid -- not everybody conforming to the same stereotype.

[havocthecat]

I really hope that you're being sarcastic there. Because, yeah, learing to read like all the other grown-ups out there in the Marvelverse sure takes away from her uniqueness. If that whole thing about getting and education and learning to think for herself (among other things) really ruined Meggan for you, then that just doesn't say good things.

[samy.livejournal.com]

I have nothing against her learning to read. That's only one thing. But doing away with *every single aspect* that made her unique in the first place -- not just her illiteracy, but her naivette about the world, her clinging to Brian, her fearfulness and shyness...not only did her loss of these qualities make her a much more generic character, but people just don't change so drastically in a few months or in a couple of years. The vast difference from doormat Meggan to superconfident Meggan not only made her less unique as a character, but also was far too abrupt. That's the kind of change people spend their entire lifetimes striving for. Ellis portrayed it as if she didn't even need to work at it, but she just woke up one morning and was an entirely different character.

[wiliqueen.livejournal.com]

I thought having a character who was a desperate hanger-on with no life of her own was what made Meggan a strongly unique character in the Marvel Universe.

Only insofar as her having that rock-bottom place to grow from. Starting that way made her different and interesting. Staying that way would have made her insufferable. While they could have gone somewhere else with her growth, there had to be growth.

As far as her power level, I'm going to have to say the writing was always on the wall. By the time I quit reading comics almost entirely in the early 90s, certainly Brian and to some extent the team as a whole operated on the assumption that her potential was far from reached.

[samy.livejournal.com]

I agree that growth is good and that's what keeps us interested in characters in the long term. However, growth can happen in two different ways. You can have seven very similar, basic, generic, two-dimensional characters, all of whom grow and branch out in different directions. Unified starting spot, seven arrows radiating outwards from the center in seven different directions. Or, you can have reverse the direction of the arrows and have seven different starting spots, with arrows all radiating towards the center. Seven different characters in different starting spots, all congealing into one unified generic stereotype over the long term. I feel that what Ellis did with Meggan was definitely the latter.

[wiliqueen.livejournal.com]

I honestly never read Ellis' run on Excalibur, so I can't say whether I would agree with that assessment or not. But there are definitely more than two ways available.

I do find it difficult (though not impossible, since again I wasn't there) to believe that Meggan or any other character no character traits other than power level and self-confidence.