I am guessing his family has similar values to those he presents. If only someone could have taught him the gift of giving.

(While waiting for comments to be approved) Gosh, the SFP commenters will have a field day with this one. /popcorn

Now I’m really curious what Al’s plan was from a few pages earlier…who did she ask him to “second trigger”? Feral? Certainly not herself…

That power is awesome. Sure, it requires some teamwork to make it work, but that’s no different from Paladin needing expensive materials to make her power work.

If Max were a little more evil and ruthless, such that he would see other dynamorphs as resources to fuel his powers instead of as individuals towards whom he feels envy, he wouldn’t be crying right now.

It is very interesting how this comic deals with mundane not-even-evil attitudes.

actually, considering his power and Allison’s incredible level of power, why was he so interested in being with her. Given what we’ve seen so far I don’t believe he was attracted to her because she was doing her job as a fireperson and saved his life.

He’s Support, but he wants to Tank.

Unfortunately his personality clashed with his powers.

First of his class in Narcissism School.

It could be worse, you could be getting paid below minimum wage to cut ferns.

Now onto the other concerning thing.
This capacity? To make non-biodynamic people biodynamic? Highly contentious in my eyes. If he can change the genetic make-up of people who don’t even have the gene, who’s to say only this specific subset of people born at that specific time are concerned? What’s the in-universe reason for why he can’t give, and then sell, powers to anybody?

And then Dr. Rosenblum comment, that the Storm was the most democratic force in history, is completely derailed.
Even assuming it only applies to, say, people born at that time who have the gene but a dormant allele (making it up as we go!), the simple fact that Max, not the best judge we got on this webcomic, and his bias, will come and decide who gets something and who doesn’t, also entirely breaks that development. I am really, really worried where we’re headed if an anomaly is now something some people can choose other people have or don’t.
Right back to where we started.

But that’s not even touching on the fact that we’ve already addressed, expansively, about how superpowers have huge, life altering drawbacks. Even I, and you know me, I think Alison is Objectively the Worst, cannot believe she would consider putting people through that. Or do we need to shove Cleaver in her face again. I *sincerely* hope that’s not her plan.

The only way I could possibly see my way toward sympathy for Max is if he was used for years afterwards by people in authority for his power (superhero name Catalyst), annihilating any sense of agency. They made him into nothing more than a crowbar (superhero name Fulcrum) to make the people who truly mattered matter more.

He obviously suffers from a lack of empathy for others and perspective for himself, but in a world where so much value is placed on the celebrity-level biodynamics, it’s not entirely unsurprising that the self-worth of somebody like Max would get bound up in the superficial.

I’m reminded of the old MMO, City Of Heroes, and the Defender archetype, which was specifically the class designed around supporting your teammates, and which got powerful buffs and debuffs as their primary powerset.

And their -secondary- powerset . . . was a blaster set of powers. Because once you’ve buffed your teammates, or debuffed your enemies, you still need SOMETHING to do, to contribute to the team. Unless you’re specifically the empath/healer, in which case you’re throwing out heals all the time – unless your team isn’t in need of healing, in which case, once again, you need -something- to do, so . . . blast some bad guys?

Max is like a Defender without his secondary powerset. He can’t actually do much on his own.

Now, mind you, he -could- have done what Moonshadow and Feral did, and learn martial skills to compensate for his lack of an offensive power. Heck, his family has the money to have paid for extra training and some equipment, over and above what the government might have provided. Then he could have been a badass normal who also happened to make his teammates stronger, sort of a superpowered take on Captain America’s ability to inspire. But, when looking up at Mega Girl and Furnace, and seeing such amazing power dangled in front of him, power he could never himself possess?

I guess I can see why he got it into his head that being the normal guy who just makes all the others outshine him even moreso was a bum deal, even with badass normal skills.

Loranna

I think it’s pretty easy to see that this is a potentially problematic power. I mean, seriously, as I alluded to above, the classic comic way of handling this would be to give it to a woman, and then she’d be fought over as the perfect prize in the form of the bride (for which there is a lot of literary precedence) and somehow she’d find a way to be happy (and at least somewhat autonomous, though the bar might not be high) and find true love, etc. etc. (If it’s her story. Otherwise, she’ll just be fought over for a while, and then fridged.) Hell, it’s pretty much SOP to give women these complicated low key powers that are super valuable to other people, but that also leave them vulnerable, while making the men tanks. (Paranormal Romance, I am looking at you.) But part of what that plays into is the idea of male power and female vulnerability.

So we get it – this leaves Max pretty vulnerable. And in our society, this is supposed to be an untenable position for a man. Especially for a man who is absolutely stuck on the idea that he is entitled to be first and best in everything.

*Excuse me while I stop laughing, and pick myself up off the chair. And also buy his family gardening staff a round of drinks.*

*And then another round of drinks – sorry, we’re just having too much fun here…*

It’s a tricky sort of power. It probably takes insight and finesse to figure out how to use it to its full extent, especially if the person doesn’t want to just be a pawn. Aw, poor kid.

Has he ever even buffed anyone? We don’t know if it’s a temp buff, permanent, or what form it takes. He could be anything up to Trump 8, depending.

Is it just me, or does he come across as a bit self centered?

MMMmmm not yet, other super factions haven’t been formed to start fighting over him for there gains. There nothing more then a frustrating for a individualist of any kind to be forced into something without their control.

That’s fine. All of the above is true. I don’t think he’s necessarily a laudable person. But he doesn’t have to be, and I continue to support his decision.

“God, I have the ability to give good people strength and to better their abilities, what could I ever use that for?”

I didn’t play many MMOs, but when I did play support in City of Heroes, well . . . let’s just say, on teams with heavily tweaked toons, I rarely felt like my support abilities mattered. Everyone was already nigh-invincible, and by the time I finished throwing out a good debuff, most of the mobs would be lying on the floor. (Buffs would be different, since I could cast those whenever they were ready, but once they were cast, well, what else did I have to do?)

I suppose I just teamed with too many Alisons back in the day 😛

As for whether his power is to grant others new powers, the question remains, can he -control- what powers they get? We still don’t know.

Loranna

Wow, and would you like some cheese with that whine, sir?

I’m in the “I hope she punches his punk ass into vapor” cart.
All my contemptuous lack of sympathy for the brat who got an incredibly useful power that, waah waah, he can’t exploit without someone else.

Go cry into a shotgun barrel, bro.

I doubt he would have ended up like Furnace. Furnace, for all of his faults, did put himself at risk, did save people’s lives, and did want to be in the public spotlight. Max differs from Furnace in that he doesn’t want to put himself at risk just because others ask him to. He’s not as much of a glory hound as Furnace. Or Pintsize. Or anyone in the Guardians, actually. Including even (arguably) Alison in her MegaGirl days (although I think her reasons were a lot more altruistic than just ‘I wanna be a superhero!’ – mostly due to her upbringing by her dad).

This honestly sets up Max’s personality perfectly if you think about it. Take a somewhat entitled 14 year old, and show him that there are real superheroes in the world. He would naturally want to have those powers himself, wanting to be the Superman of the story. Now tell him that all he can do is make other people stronger, he would start to resent it. He would start resenting all the people that got the cool powers, while all that he could do was offer a little boost. So he stops helping people, as if to go the opposite path from the powers he hated, trying to distance himself from them. He sees that all of these heroes are doing fine without him, no one is asking for his help, and he determines that if he did try to help then he would be forgotten or laughed at. After a while he’s formed a philosophy about helping others, that people shouldn’t be forced to do it. This is the philosophy that he has going into adulthood, all of which started because a kid didn’t see the value of a support role.

Trying to resist my sudden desire to go pull Folk of the Air out of the bookshelves. (It’s probably significantly more than 15 years since I read it, but fond memories).

I somehow think that someone as manipulative as Patrick probably only RECENTLY learned about Max, or he would have, long ago, had one of his minions kidnap him and bring him to his lair to force Max to work for him – with the benefit of making Patrick not only able to read minds, but actually CONTROL minds – at which point it’s endgame.

“We just know he’s from a rich family. Are all rich families in the top 1%?”

Pretty much, yes. Unless the economic dynamics of this universe are dramatically different from our own (and we more or less know they’re not by design), then he’s likely from an even more rarified tier than merely the top 1%. To qualify for being a member of the “1%” you only need to have an income of about $425k a year. To make so much that you can own your own helicopter, and at least one estate palatial enough to not only have multiple full-time groundskeepers but multiple wings within ~50 miles of a major city, you’re a whole lot more well off than that.

Besides which, his family is rich enough that Alison sees him as a viable alternative to Templar for major funding of her non-profit endeavors. To be able to give away money on the order of tens of millions without impoverishing yourself in the process, you’ve got to have orders of magnitude more than that available – you’ve almost got to be a literal member of the “billionaire class” – and that’s a LOT richer than merely the top 1%.

With respect to your PS, “privilege” (which I know is a loaded term for a lot of people, but it works for the purposes of this discussion) comes in a number of forms, and they can and do co-exist and overlap. He’s privileged for being raised rich, yes, absolutely (and yes, probably more so than any other single aspect of his background). But he’s ALSO privileged for being white, for being male, and for being straight. EACH of these things offer their own social advantages independently of each other, and those benefits stack for those that enjoy more than one. While a rich black man certainly enjoys more social advantages than a poor one, he’s still going to get hassled by cops more often for no reason, he’s still going to be viewed with fear and suspicion by a disproportionate number of people in his daily life regardless of his dress and demeanor, and he’s still going to be vastly under-represented in popular media (etc.). A rich woman is still going to be hassled more often (especially by her social and economic peers) for her gender than an equally wealthy man. Same for a rich gay guy (or transgender, etc.) versus a straight one. Wealth insulates a person from the downsides of these other factors to an extent, but it doesn’t nullify them.

Haven’t seen anything villainous about him. It seems like it would run counter to his opinion that everyone should have individual choice. Patrick – he’s a super villain.

Admittedly, I’m taking the perspective here that having someone with Max’s powers help someone like Lisa or Patrick, ends up with the Max doing nothing but just Using Their Power, then standing back and watching the Lisa or Patrick go to town. To me, that isn’t helping, that’s being a stat boost for someone else.

I mean, sure, Max could choose when to use his power or not, but if he chooses not to, Lisa or Patrick aren’t going to stop being the mental powerhouses they already are, nor stop their projects. So, I’m having a lot of trouble seeing how someone with Max’s powers would actually have agency if using their powers to empower those who legitimately could make a difference in the world.

Loranna

You wound me. I’ve been obsessively refreshing this page since Friday just to see what new crazy ideas you all come up with, even when reading the 95 or so new comments that popped up cuts into my precious exercise/video game/writing/remembering to eat time!

And that ESPECIALLY includes whatever new zaniness you come up with, hun =D

Also, this is more or less how I imagined Max thinking, in his more rational moments, as he grew older, especially after Alison quit on live TV, and the Guardians started getting beat up by their bad guys a lot more, and the world moved further and further away from classic Superheroes Versus Supervillains. But I may be projecting a bit of introspective insight onto Max that he may not actually have ^_^

Loranna

“Privilege is not a card collection of labels that compensate or beat one another!”
Definition of privilege, a la Meriam Webster:
: a right or benefit that is given to some people and not to others
: a special opportunity to do something that makes you proud
: the advantage that wealthy and powerful people have over other people in a society

You’ll notice, the words race and gender are not in there. Identity labels of race, gender, and sexual preference have NOTHING to do with whether you are ‘privileged’ in a society – what determines whether you are privileged (which isnt a horrible word btw, despite trying to turn it into one, as if people should be ashamed of being successful) is whether you have a definitive advantage over other people – such as superior education, superior physical skills, higher levels of wealth, superior contacts and friends, and superior amount of power, such as political or social influence. All of these things can be gained independent of your skin color, gender, religion, or sexual preference.

“Here, go read literally the first thing I googled about what white privilege actually means and stop saying such… gaaaah http://occupywallstreet.net/st…”

Um… are you really using Occupy Wall Street as an example of what white privilege means? The Occupy Wall Street movement was one of the most backwards, ill-defined protests ever. Most people had no idea what they were even protesting. There were regular news reports from all the different media channels, in which reporters would ask what they were protesting, and most of them had no clue, or it was dumbed down to essenetially ‘Rich people got stuff that we don’t have and we want it.’

The protest which had mass amount of rape, violence, verbal and physical threats, and vandalism, from a whole lot of people who were unemployed yet somehow managed to own iPhones and fancy clothes while not working, or who were getting paid to protest. That’s where you’re getting the definition. That’s sort of unbelievable :/

“Also, because again you need a refresher, “cisgender” has nothing to do with sexual preference”

Perhaps, since you’re being snarky with the ‘refresher’ comment, you should read what I said more carefully. I said cisgender has to do with gender, not sexual preference. Which is why saying cisgender and then either male or female is redundant and poor english. You can either say cisgender, or you can say male or female. It’s only necessary to say both if you’re using a term like transexual, since that implies a change from one gender at birth to another gender either through societal choice or operation (ie, their current gender). Hence you can say ‘transexual male’ or ‘transexual female’ which means someone who is currently male but who was not biologically born as a male, or vice versa. Saying cisgender male or cisgender female means ‘I was born a male/female and I am still a male/female’ – it’s repeating yourself in the same sentence.

“while it’s very progressive of you to say that male is enough on its own it’s a “broken clock is right twice a day””
I’m not trying to be progressive or traditional – I’m being logically and grammatically accurate instead of using some sort of label for belief to determine proper english.

Also the ‘broken clock is right twice a day’ doesnt actually fit as an insult in this analogy.

“a painfully evident divide between the life experiences of cis males and trans males.”
Again, here’s no point in saying ‘cis males’ because a ‘cisgender’ means you were always and are still the same gender that you were biologically born as. If it hasnt changed, there’s no point in saying cis AND male. Just say male. Trans is different, because then you’re looking at a ‘biological gender by birth’ (before) and ‘current gender’ (after), in which trans means the transition, and male or female means what gender you currently identify as. What is so difficult to understand?

“Also you may feel a bit ruffled by my scorn for the express intent of defending cisgendered heterosexual white males”

Wait….. uh… I wasn’t attacking heterosexual white males. I was attacking people not understanding how words and redundancy actually work. If anything, I was defending heterosexual white males by saying that being heterosexual, white, and male does not equate with being automatically privileged, since privilege comes from your place in society, not from your skin color, sexual preference, or biological gender.

Also, I’m not ruffled. I’m more than capable of engaging in a reasonable debate, even if the other person is being condescending.

Did you not understand that?

“if you deem your defensiveness justified well mine is too.”

Uh… I wasn’t saying you arent justified to have your own opinion. I’m just pointing out that saying cisgender male is redundant. It’s like saying you’re a big, large person. Or a skinny, thin person human. It’s using unnecessary words to repeat yourself within the same sentence. Also you’re free to have your opinion about if you think white heterosexual males are the bane of society. I’m going to just tell people who say that sort of thing that their view is, by definition, racist and sexist.

That’s pretty much where I was coming from, but kudos on presenting it so much more clearly.

I think Syndrome is a lot more like Paladin, actually. Except sympathetically evil (well, sympathetically evil at first, then he just becomes evil evil).

I don’t think Max has the same attitude as Syndrome though, beyond both think that everyone has a right to be special. Syndrome is just a lot more warped about it.

I don’t have a sense of the developmental psychology of narcissists, at least in the general case. I had sort of a ringside seat for one instance and… I don’t think that’s how it went? But there were a lot of complicating factors, including some pretty serious bipolar and drug abuse. (And okay, for much of it it was more of a nosebleed seat than a ringside seat…) I do not know.

Yeah. I can’t even begin to understand his problem. It’s like he’s been granted a castle to live in and he’s devastated it’s not gold plated.

Actually, his story reminds me a lot about Paige Guthrie’s story (Husk) in Marvel. She came from a family which had an inordinately large amount of children who were mutants, like Sam Guthrie (aka Cannonball) so she was positive that she’d be a mutant and kept waiting for the day where her mutant powers manifested. And she was STUBBORN about it.

She tried flying. She wound up falling off the barn and landing in a haystack, so at least she didn’t break her ankle.

She tried telepathy on both humans and animals. Nothing happened except the turtles looked at her funny.

She tried telekinesis and couldnt move a single blade of grass.

She started trying more obscure powers, like controlling her body temperature like iceman. She put herself in a tub of ice water, trying to ‘trigger’ the change and she just got cold and almost caught pneumonia.

She eventaully had her mutant ability start when she started pulling at her own hair and was yelling to God about wanting to be a mutant and found her skin came off with like… stone or something underneath, and she found her power was being able to shed her skin and have some other type of skin underneath.

Unlike Max, she found her power to be cool and wonderful (and ignored it was sort of gross). 🙂

Really, Max? You are given a power that makes you the single most desirable asset in the superhero world and you can’t think of one single way to turn that to your advantage? Really?!?

If people are expecting the healer to pull them out of hot water after they dove in headfirst, they don’t need a healer. They need a dose of common sense. ^_^

Loranna

The sad* thing is, the true answer to Max’s question is absolutely “yes,” followed by the epic verbal smackdown Alison gave Cleaver back at the end of Issue 2- “I have your ‘total freedom’ and it’s bullshit, it doesn’t do anything for anybody, and I am so goddamn sick of being great at it and celebrated for it when it’s ultimately useless“… but that wouldn’t help anything.
(Seriously, I’m considering cropping off all but the last three panels of this page and hanging them somewhere with the caption “IRONY – When You Walk Through The Park Blindfolded, Find The Single Remaining Decades-Old Unexploded Land Mine, And Set Your Trampoline On It”)
*Sad for us, and for Alison, who you can just about see being carefully casual about this in the last panel. Less sad for Max, who has narrowly escaped getting destroyed (again!) because Alison knows wrecking his perspective all at once wouldn’t be productive.

A good question is does he have much control over this or when he activates it any dynomorph in range gets boosted.

I was considering the possibility that his power is “leaking”, and this is what’s making the other supers stronger. But if that’s the case, and he landed on the roof of a building full of dynamorphs, then what kind of chaos would arise from that?

“Because transgender people and their allies are telling you? You’re far past the point where you can plead ignorance.”
That’s subjective reasoning though. Not objective. I could say that I’m offended by someone wearing white after labor day, but it doesnt mean other people can’t wear white after labor day.

It’s a moot point though – I’ve dropped this thread because I don’t want to distress some of the more reasonable people on this forum like Shweta.

“So does transgender (except when it means non-binary the entre lifetime). If you continue to insist otherwise people are going to be forced to conclude you’re actively transphobic.”

1) I’m not transphobic. I have no problem with anyone being whatever gender they want to be. My comments have been always about scientific terms and sentence structure. I’ve even spelled out, rather up-front, that I don’t think there’s anything morally wrong with being transgender. I consider transgendered people to be able to do anything that a non-transgendered person can do. They are not lesser than non-transgendered people, and should not be treated differently.

2) Trans does not mean ‘always been one way.’ The prefix itself means ‘changing thoroughly.’ Transverse. Transfer. Transition. Transmission. Transgender. Having proper knowledge of word origin and sentence structure does not make me a bigot. It does make you intolerant that you would throw out labels like bigot just because I am consistent about what word actually mean. Making it into a threat of ‘if you don’t agree with me, you shall be labelled a bigot’ diminishes your argument.

Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to stop talking about this on the thread and agree to disagree, and I’d -appreciate- if you dropped it as well.

Thank you.

By asking what transmasc means? I didnt know that asking questions to learn more was claiming authority. Or was it when I said that I enjoyed reading Shweta’s posts and think he or she is very civil? Was that me claiming authority? Was saying that we shouldnt make assumptions about entire groups of other people ‘claiming authority?’

Which part of what I was saying ‘claiming authority over the rest of us?’

You know what. Never mind – this is beating a dead horse at this point.

“Okay, you invoked authority – “my science background” – let’s see you enumerate that background. ”

Saying that I have a background in the sciences is invoking authority? No it’s just explaining why I have certain views. I was a double major in physics and biology, with a minor in literature. My ‘opinion’ isnt superceding anything. It’s just the definition that is used objectively.

For example, I’m polynesian/asian. But I’m pretty sure there are people who know more about the history of asian culture than I do, or about the genetics behind superficial facial characteristics of oriental vs occidentals.

If I was black, and I was talking to a white doctor about my having sickle cell anemia, I’m pretty sure I’d think his or her opinion had merit, despite the fact that the white doctor can’t get sickle cell anemia.

Thank you. Okay, but why would the name annoy Max? Is it because people have defined him as being privileged because of his race and gender? Is there some sort of wordplay at work – some sort of double meaning of intersectional that has to do with his powerset?

The more I think about it, the more I have to change my mind and agree with Shweta, at least on Max flaunting economic power.

No of course not and I’m not even criticizing the authors they often (always?) do better things than I propose in retrospect, this is just food for thought.

Not to mention that, if Peter Parker had never become Spider-Man, Gwen Stacy would never have been killed by the Green Goblin in the 616 universe. Good and bad things can happen when you are a hero.

PS – Spider-man is pretty much my favorite hero, next to Supergirl (any incarnation of her except Matrix)

“I don’t think a mass whale orgy will help you with any of that, Aquaman sir.”

Doesn’t the rest of your comment addresses your first sentence? The answer being that what I put forth wasn’t a “better reading of Max” but an alternate one that especially doesn’t gel with the one we’ve had ever since he came up? And that you are among those who got that?

Plus it makes the Dracula thing not work because you getting that means you know I defend myself of making presumptions, not cry murder with blood on my fangs.

And really I reread my comment multiple times –and I tend to give up in the wake of multiple people when they tell me an impression they got, and not tell them that they feel wrong– but I really don’t see it. If you do and clear as day, maybe you can help? I insult Max a few millions times sure but not… in a way that says it’s not something I, higher appreciator of Art, do? Even the ever elusive “I blame the authors for that” I have sometimes been much much more close than I was there.

I hope he does not get fridged. I hate the whole tactic of ‘fridging’ in comics, and I don’t think the creators of the comic rely on such lame, lazy cliches anyway 🙂 It seems to cater to more thought-provoking discussions than that.