Irredeemable: Difference between revisions

m
mNo edit summary
Line 5:
A [[Comic Book]] series written by [[Mark Waid]], with art by Peter Krause and Diego Barretto.
 
The Plutonian was once Earth's champion, its greatest and most admired and trusted superhero. But something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. Seemingly without reason, the Plutonian has begun to wage war on humanity, killing indiscriminately, destroying entire cities and swiftly going from the planet's greatest hero to its worst mass murderer. A group of former friends and fellow superheroes, having narrowly escaped the Plutonian's ruthless and swift butchering of the superhero community, have determined to find a way to stop him; however, the Plutonian guarded his identity -- andidentity—and most importantly, his weaknesses -- zealouslyweaknesses—zealously, leaving them only with a few scraps of information to follow in order to find out why the Plutonian has turned his back on his former ideals -- andideals—and how to defeat him...
 
Another title in the same universe, ''[[Incorruptible]]'', began in December 2009. Its plot is the obverse of ''Irredeemable'': as a result of the Plutonian's rampage, supervillain Max Damage has an epiphany and decides to undergo a [[Heel Face Turn]].
Line 39:
** Max Damage has this too. He gets stronger and more invulnerable in proportion to how long he's awake. The problem with this is that when he gets up in the morning, he only has one hour before his skin gets too tough to do simple things like feel, smell, or taste things. Most of the time he can only hear and see, with all his other senses being lost under his invulnerability.
* [[Crapsack World]]: While it may not have been so bad before the Plutonian went rogue, the world's governments and economy are crippled as he's constantly murdering anyone who opposes him and smashing buildings, not to mention what he did to Singapore. The rampage never stops so the world can't recover from anything he does. People are defenseless and terrified, and suicide has become commonplace. This is explored more in ''Incorruptible'' than the main series.
* [[Deconstruction]]: Sort of. It really isn't actually deconstructing Superman through an [[Expy]] -- if—if anything, the writers are celebrating his [[Incorruptible Pure Pureness]] -- but—but rather, the idea that someone given superpowers would automatically [[Comes Great Responsibility|do the right thing]] without being emotionally prepared, and the concept of happily being a [[Slave to PR]] without actual regard for what people think.
* [[I Just Want to Be Normal]]: One of the motives of both The Plutonian and Max Power. The Plutonian because his powers made it impossible for him to have the same kind of stable life most people have, and Max because he loses most of his senses after being awake for a few hours.
* [[It's Personal]]: The Plutonian hates Max Damage because {{spoiler|Max was the first victim of Plutonian's unrestrained rage back when Max was a teen and Tony was still a boy. Max was a constant reminder to Tony that he wasn't a perfect Ace.}}
Line 47:
* [[Super Dickery]]: Deconstructed; a flashback describes the Plutonian's relationship with a Lois Lane [[Expy]], which occurs in a similar fashion as Superman and Lois Lane's in the [[Silver Age]] of comics. Except when the Plutonian reveals his true identity, confidently expecting her to fall into his arms and agree to marry him, she freaks out about the sudden revelation of all the mind games he's been playing on her all this time. He doesn't take it well.
** A major recurring plot thread in these flashbacks to the Plutonian's "good days" seems to be his frustration over how even though he lives in a classic super-hero universe type setting, no one reacts the way they did in the old comics.
* [[Superhero|Superheroes]]es: But of course.
* [[Super Strength]]: Several characters have it, but special mention goes to Plutonian; he can resist the equivalent of ''half the pull of a black hole''.
 
Line 56:
* [[All of the Other Reindeer]]: One of the motivating factors behind the Plutonian's [[Face Heel Turn]] was the criticism he received from the population after all his acts of heroism. It's played with, however; despite a few critical and ungrateful voices, by and large the Plutonian was greatly loved, and the criticism he otherwise received tended to be for things he more or less deserved criticism for. It's heavily implied that the Plutonian, consumed by a desire to have ''everyone'' love him, simply couldn't tolerate ''any'' criticism whatsoever, no matter how justified.
* [[An Arm and a Leg]]: {{spoiler|Gilgamos. Loses one wing in a fight and tears the other off to use the bones as lock picks.}} '''Hard. Core.'''
** Volt tells the Plutonian that he'd "give his left arm" for all he's done for him -- andhim—and is taken up on the "offer."
* [[And I Must Scream]]: {{spoiler|Plutonian was sent to the end of time by his parents in issue #32, where he'd be alone and completely paralyzed for all eternity, doubling as a [[Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere]].}}
* [[Badass Abnormal]]: Charybdis' powers were, for the majority of his life, not up to par with the Plutonian's. The good thing about that? He has had to actually learn ''how'' to fight, so when his powers increased to Plutonian-levels he suddenly begins to smack the [[Physical God]] around, since the Plutonian [[Unskilled but Strong|never really had to learn how to use his powers against somebody on his own level.]]
Line 101:
** In one of the issues before Plutonian got captured and dumped on the prison world, it shows Modeus talking to Encana in a supernatural dimension. It turns out that Modeus has moved past super-science and is now experimenting with sorcery.
* [[He Who Fights Monsters]]: {{spoiler|Charybdis, after doubling in power and becoming the Survivor, is basically undergoing an accelerated version of the Plutonian's turn to darkness in his efforts to stop the Plutonian and be a true hero.}}
* [[Humans Are Bastardsthe Real Monsters]]: The Plutonian's [[Sadistic Choice|Sadistic Choices]]s and mind games seems to be ultimately aimed at proving that. It also seems that he didn't kill most of his old teammates yet because he's striving to break them psychologically, for the same reason.
* [[I Am Not Left-Handed]]: [[Up to Eleven]]. The Plutonian lays a beatdown on the depowered Charybdis, but the tables are turned when we find out that {{spoiler|Charybdis actually has at least twice as much power as he did before.}}
* [[I Never Told You My Name]]: A variation, when the Plutonian refers to the Hornet's wife by name during a [[Flash Back]]. The Hornet had never mentioned her name to him, and realizes that he's spying on his teammates and [[Beware the Superman|may not be entirely trustworthy]].
Line 183:
* [[Who's Laughing Now?]]: This seems to be a major factor in the Plutonian's snap into madness. Flashbacks to his life as a hero show him to be very bad at dealing with critics, to the point that he often seemed to resent the people he felt obligated to save. In particular the villains the Plutonian used to fight are much less comfortable dealing with him once they know he has no trouble killing them.
* [[Wonder Twin Powers]]: Scylla and Charybdis are have something like this going on, where they're only super while close to one another. {{spoiler|Except not really; this is a lie that they used to make Scylla feel better about simply siphoning his brother's power. After Scylla's death, Charybdis only faked being powerless to get to the Plutonian, who he felt he could handle with double his normal power.}}
* [[World of Cardboard Speech]]: HORRIFYING subversion. {{spoiler|Tony mentions why as he was growing up he was ostracized, out of fear he might hurt the other kids, and casually explains that now he's [[The Unfettered]] and doesn't have to worry about such things...chucking a grenade at a terrified mass of huddled schoolchildren in what is one of many [[Moral Event Horizon|Moral Event Horizons]]s.}}
* [[Would Hurt a Child]]: {{spoiler|Tony's first human mother and the one whose desire for a child forge him into a human body, to a horrifying extent.}}
* [[You Killed My Father]]: While the Plutonian needs to die for the safety of Earth and has slaughtered countless people already, the thing that seems to really [[It's Personal|make it personal]] for Charybdis/Survivor is that he also killed his brother.
Line 220:
** He's invoking this trope intentionally, reasoning that he has to be perfect now, but he isn't sure how to do it. {{spoiler|It's implied in places that he's not very good at this, as he may have killed another supervillain and definitely handed over some white supremacists over to the people they previously attacked.}}
** Another reason he might have done this is because he's [[Genre Savvy]] enough to know that nobody would trust him if he still had all his weapons, after seeing that their [[Big Good]] turned on them.
** Also, [[Fridge Logic]] points out -- thoseout—those things might have helped ''a bit'' in fighting The Plutonian, but remember that The Plutonian has always been Max's archnemesis, so if there was anything in there that was really capable of hurting him, it would have been used already.
*** ''Irredeemable'' makes it pretty clear '''no one''' had weapons capable of really hurting The Plutonian.
** Ultimately, the explanation for this trope is right there in the title. Max has to be [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]] because he knows that if he doesn't do absolutely everything he can to be totally and utterly [[Title Drop|incorruptible]], he'll either backslide or never be good enough to challenge the worst supervillain the world has ever known. Thus all the money and gadgets and vehicles have to go, since in his words it's all "blood money".
Line 230:
* [[Morality Pet]]: Max adds Lois Lane and Jim Gordon analogues to his posse to invoke this trope. And boy, does he need it - it is horrifyingly subverted by Jailbait and Headcase, both of whom do their cute girl best to drag Max back down (Jailbait is a sixteen-year-old he saved from sex slavery... who became a bloodthirsty adrenaline junkie and daily ''begged'' Max not to keep being heroic, while Headcase is apparently 22 but looks just like Jailbait, and after the murder of her whole family, has become a truly frightening [[Death Seeker]] [[Yandere]] who would ''kill'' anyone that threatens her warped worldview or her relationship to Max).
* [[No Sell]]: Safeword tries her power on the Plutonian. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't work (to her credit, she didn't really expect it to, but she figured it was worth a shot.)
* [[Noodle Incident]]: [[Ms. Fanservice|Jailbait's ]] [[Fetish Fuel|cage match]] against the [[Hentai]] [[Fan Service|Brothers]]. {{spoiler|Jailbait won.}}
** And it was hot.
* [[Power Nullifier]]: {{spoiler|Sleep. He is vulnerable for roughly an hour after waking.}}