Willowhugger
Civilian
- Joined
- Nov 19, 2004
- Messages
- 484
- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 11
I, for one, am actually enjoying these comic books. I have never really been a fan of Helmut Zemo for a number of reasons. I think we can boil them down to three bullet points...
* He's not the original Baron Zemo.
* He's got this silly looking costume while Cobra Commander got the REAL Baron Zemo outfit.
* You don't really know what makes Zemo tick.
The Thunderbolts plot was when Helmut really got out from under his predecessor's shadow by coming up with an astoundingly clever plot-line that nearly worked in conquering the world. It also got to show that Helmut wasn't completely half assed by facing him off against some fairly deadly enemies as Citizen V.
I, for one, had some problems with Zemo's attempted redemption arc because let's face it....he's a Neo-Nazi. Unlike the stupid Neo-Nazi villains of DCU's current JSA series, he's close enough to the most dangerous ones of real life to be forfeit any sympathy from me. The "pretty" Baron being the worst. It doesn't help that I love Songbird and their romance just creeped me the Hell out.
However, I liked the fact that the ending revealed that Baron Zemo WAS sincere in his plotline. He's still a malicious elitist but he was entirely trying to work on proving that he'd changed. That's sort of like what I love about Doctor Doom (when he's not, you know, skinning his girlfriend). Even at their nicest, they're smug bastards.
The Born Better series threatens to do what the Book of Doom failed to do and that is simultaneously re-establish and revise the villainous character into something that's both admirable in its own way and still loathsome. Issue 2# suceeded in overcoming the main hurdle. Nothing says getting over one's neo-Nazi past like trying to rescue a Jewish family from a bunch of murderers without thinking about it.
They seem to be making Helmut more interesting than his father by essentially turning him into what Doom occassionally played upon in the idea of being "noble" but not good. Helmut's ancestors were all bast*** but they weren't all that different from what their time demanded. I think we're going to see that Helmut is realizing that he comes from a lineage no greater than anyone elses even as he also realizes that his father was a complete failure rather than the demigod he thought him to be.
Helmut is rocketing through time and meeting his ancestors. It's almost certain that he'll eventually meet with Baron Zemo his father. Given Zemo has abandoned Nazism and started to realize that even if he's an evil man, he's not someone that's particularly VICIOUS versus his father (whose a NAZI DOCTOR for Godsakes), I'm hoping we'll see a throwdown between the generations.
Make no mistake, Helmut is still an evil scumbag but he's picked up a form of ethics in his travels from underneath his father's shadow. That can only be good for future bedevilings of our heroes.
* He's not the original Baron Zemo.
* He's got this silly looking costume while Cobra Commander got the REAL Baron Zemo outfit.
* You don't really know what makes Zemo tick.
The Thunderbolts plot was when Helmut really got out from under his predecessor's shadow by coming up with an astoundingly clever plot-line that nearly worked in conquering the world. It also got to show that Helmut wasn't completely half assed by facing him off against some fairly deadly enemies as Citizen V.
I, for one, had some problems with Zemo's attempted redemption arc because let's face it....he's a Neo-Nazi. Unlike the stupid Neo-Nazi villains of DCU's current JSA series, he's close enough to the most dangerous ones of real life to be forfeit any sympathy from me. The "pretty" Baron being the worst. It doesn't help that I love Songbird and their romance just creeped me the Hell out.
However, I liked the fact that the ending revealed that Baron Zemo WAS sincere in his plotline. He's still a malicious elitist but he was entirely trying to work on proving that he'd changed. That's sort of like what I love about Doctor Doom (when he's not, you know, skinning his girlfriend). Even at their nicest, they're smug bastards.
The Born Better series threatens to do what the Book of Doom failed to do and that is simultaneously re-establish and revise the villainous character into something that's both admirable in its own way and still loathsome. Issue 2# suceeded in overcoming the main hurdle. Nothing says getting over one's neo-Nazi past like trying to rescue a Jewish family from a bunch of murderers without thinking about it.
They seem to be making Helmut more interesting than his father by essentially turning him into what Doom occassionally played upon in the idea of being "noble" but not good. Helmut's ancestors were all bast*** but they weren't all that different from what their time demanded. I think we're going to see that Helmut is realizing that he comes from a lineage no greater than anyone elses even as he also realizes that his father was a complete failure rather than the demigod he thought him to be.
Helmut is rocketing through time and meeting his ancestors. It's almost certain that he'll eventually meet with Baron Zemo his father. Given Zemo has abandoned Nazism and started to realize that even if he's an evil man, he's not someone that's particularly VICIOUS versus his father (whose a NAZI DOCTOR for Godsakes), I'm hoping we'll see a throwdown between the generations.
Make no mistake, Helmut is still an evil scumbag but he's picked up a form of ethics in his travels from underneath his father's shadow. That can only be good for future bedevilings of our heroes.
