What characters do you feel are underutilized and how do you think they can reach there full potential? Pic related

SO many underutilized x-men.

Fucking hell, I even miss hope and cable summers

Cable has been in Uncanny Avengers post-SW

Cable is on the Uncanny Avengers team

I think hope is literally still stuck in a coma

.....Cable is in the Uncanny Avengers right now and will be leading them when Marvel NOWER starts.

>Batwoman
do a run that properly cements her as 'the member of the batfam that specializes in the occult'

>Morph
perfect super spy since his powers make people intuitively trust him. could also pull duty as team therapist if you argue his powers let him begin to intuitively understand whoever he's morphing into.

oh Christ what are they going to do to Rogue?

How did X-Factor end anyway? Well? Poorly? I liked it a lot initially but I kind of stopped reading it at some point because I kind of lost interest. Just wondering if I should go back and reread the whole hing again.

So many fucking underused Mutants. =(

>>Batwoman
>do a run that properly cements her as 'the member of the batfam that specializes in the occult'
Also make her and Wonder Woman besties with breasties.

Nobody cares about the X-Babies.

Sorry but they gotta use the same supermodels over and over again.

Yeah, it was an interesting concept as far as him absorbing skills and knowledge, but then they fucked it up by having him develop some sort of multiple personality disorder and his dupes not being perfect copies mentally.

If I were writing him, the first thing I'd do is establish that he has REALLY good situation awareness as a matter of him knowing whats it's like to remember an event happening from multiple perspectives. I'd also throw in that he plays multiplayer video games for fun, because he can control a whole fucking team and plan shit out perfectly. Maybe toss in how he doesn't trust normies to do work because he can get one of his dupes to usually do the same thing, better.

Come to think of it, I have similar issues with telepaths, like the most interesting thing they can do is make them read a mind and then either use mind control, or be snarky about the fact they can read minds. You never get one where they always say the right thing because they know what the other person wants/needs to hear.

Sunspot and Cannonball were all over both hickman's avengers run, as well as New Avengers.

Dacosta is pretty much the *star* of new avengers.

>abloobloo
>3 of those 5 have major roles in current titles
Fuck off m8

...

Sounds like solid ideas. I'd love someone to get their hands of Madrox again and write him well.

I loved early X-Factor, and the Marvel Knights Madrox, but after he absorbed his own kid and shit it went downhill for me.

I never really supported/liked Jamie/Layla.

Jamie's powers are #1 on powers I'd love to have if powers existed.

Come to think of it, why didn't people freak the fuck out over Jaime/Layla like they did Sam/Jet?

- Fuck the League of Assassins. They have done her no good and all bad. Make her fly solo and keep her there.
- Focus on themes of violence, revenge (her own experience of achieving her goal and having to find a new lease on life), philosophy (bring some taoism to the table) and otheration/alienation (willful or otherwise).
- Take a page from Will Eisner/Kazuo Koike/Alan Grant and make it more about other people's stories that she waltzes into rather than her own. Keep her characterization simple but strong, no convoluted backstories or shitty motivations. I'm looking at you, death wish.
- Speaking of Koike, follow Lone Wolf and Cub rules of combat: 90% of her fights should be spectacular but easy, 9% should require some degree of struggle or lateral thought, and 1% should be absolute Battles.
- Fights should be 50% believable, with real systems and styles and such, and 50% crazy-ass kung fu extravaganzas. HnK-style pressure point bullshit should be allowed when fighting superpowered foes.
- Always leave space for her healing abilities to shine. Make her more than just a death-obssessed fighter.
- Arkham Origins design. Use it.

I was kinda indifferent towards the end and i never read new x factor so i dont known how good it was after

It was a simpler, better time.

And what about other characters semi-related to Lady Shiva?

Richard Dragon? David Cain? And the like?

Why didn't they ever finish his solo book? So much wasted.

also it turns out da Costa has Warlock with him, too

Sunlock?

Warspot?

I think Spot might be an interesting 'prep-time' villain

Someone who doesn't have the battle-instincts of other supers, but has a useful power that can be very effectively used.
His lack of battle-sense could be his weakness as he gets flustered when things fall outside his plans/predictions

I think using the character this way could allow for cool implementations of his powers and neat moments yet would still give him a reason to job

Because beta cucks get triggered by popular Cred Forums memes.

Dragon I'd like to keep as a hyper-isolated hermit, a real man on the mountain type, outwardly nicer and gentler than Shiva but in his own way just as detached from the rest of mankind.
Ben Turner, on the other hand, would be the one member of the classic Kung Fu Fighter trio who couldn't get rid of his humanity that easy. He'd be more down to earth and relatable but also more weighed down as a result.
Not gonna lie: I never liked Shiva being revealed as Cass' mom, and I disliked the way it happened even more. At most I'd have Shiva and Cass meet at some point, with Shiva recognizing Cass' need to fill her life with something but wondering if she hasn't changed one set of masters for another, and Cass eventually showing her that it's the sheer fact she made that choice that matters, but the rest of the plot I could do without.

I want another mini like Longshot Saves the Marvel Universe so fucking badly

Some got endings, which is the best thing to happen to them until some writer decides to kill them off for cheap drama years from now.
Madrox and Layla retired to a farm
Strong Guy is the king of Hell
Rahne works at a church with that one Madrox clone that had a family
Monet finally became a full-fledged X-Men
Havok joined the Avengers
Darwin is still a Death God
Siryn became the new Morrigan
Polaris was cured of her bipolority and joined the new X-Factor
Longshot finds out that he and Shatterstar are each other's father, Longshot and Dazzler don't remember Shatterstar being their son because he went back in time to erase the memory of his birth.
I'm pretty sure Shatterstar and Richtor fuck off and be happy somewhere.
Pip went back to space.

Poison Ivy and Swamp Thing.

Make Poison Ivy an Antihero, give her Swamp Thing's job. Still doesn't like humans, but isn't a terrorist.

Fair enough.

I figured that Bronze Tiger and Richard Dragon and maybe David Cain and Henri Drucard are some of the few people that had heard a modicum of Shiva's respect and would be secondary or tertiary characters to any series they have.

Way I see it, one of the most interesting things about Shiva at her best is that she lives completely detached from any earthly concerns, never doing anything unless she feels like it. One should never be able to force her to do something she doesn't want to, and shouldn't even try unless they value their guts. So much in the same way she was presented as a contrast to Vic Sage's turbulent, conflicted and insecure self, what's interesting is to pit someone with that much confidence and clarity of purpose with people who have more baggage or who refuse to detach themselves like that.
So people like Tiger, like Cain, even non martial artists, anyone who carries a cross would be interesting to bring in as foils to that line of thinking.

I'll be honest. If Dragon and Turner and Shiva have martial arts as being spiritual and the like, I would see David Cain as looking at it like martial science.

That you can study these things empirically and be able to go about and do them.

That would also mean that the whole fighting as communication would be 100% Cain's bit (that he teaches Cass, of course).

Would not pair them romantically of course, that would be weird.

(Though if I recall correctly, Drucard is a quandary Batman character and all I remember about him is that he's a crazy old assassin type that's on his last legs)

Makes sense. Cain could be used as a positivist, scientific approach to martial arts geared towards an apparently attainable goal (i.e.: the creation and eventual mass production of perfect killers) given by an outside force, as a foil to the more naturalistic pursuit of martial arts for self improvement. So you can pit Cain's artificial emptying of a human being's sense of self against Shiva's own personal, natural, willful emptying of her own and play with their similarities without necessarily presenting one as being in the "right", especially when you consider Shiva isn't a paragon of righteousness herself. Make something like Paul Auster's City of Glass but with kung fu.

>Shiva's own personal, natural, willful emptying of her own

I think in this case Cass should be retained as Shiva's daughter. Rather than the conflict center around a literal death wish, it instead is a philosophical death wish, the metamorphosis of the self. Cass is a lingering attachment that she cannot break as Cass actively seeks her out. Cass is the shadow between the idea and the reality.

The problem with Cass as Shiva's daughter is that it means Shiva gave birth, and wether you use the old backstory or make a new one it's bound to create awkwardness. What's interesting about Cassandra in this equation though is that she's the polar opposite of Shiva in that she doesn't try to empty herself; she fills herself up with ideals of heroism, courage, love, the Batfamily, etc. She's a third way, a more virtuous way, between the etheral detachment of Shiva and the unfeeling coldness of Cain. And you can do that without burdening either character with a filial relationship. Hell, Puckett did it in the first half of Batgirl V1.
Plus, if we're gonna do an arc about Shiva having to face a lingering thread of her own humanity, I'd much rather do it with her parents.

who knew that I wanted Cass as Yotsuba

Do they sell superhero shirts in DC/Marvel universe? Do heroes sometimes buy their costume t-shirts?

They do. Off the top of my head I remember the Punisher stealing a skull shirt from a store when he was bloody and stranded

I think the problem with Shiva as Cass' mom is the way in which they did it. Either way I think that filial relationship isn't a burden on either of them directly, as neither of them define themselves through the relationship, rather it's something thrust upon them by others who fundamentally don't understand their natures or interactions. This would almost exclusively be a factor on Cass' side, as only Bronze Tiger has the humanity and inclination to approach Shiva about the subject.

It's my headcanon that Spider-Woman's jacket is actual in-universe merch that she got from the Avengers Tower gift shop.

>it's something thrust upon them by others
Heheheh. "Thrust." But that's my main beef with it, and this is 100% a "Not Muh" issue for me: I don't feel like Shiva is the kind of person who can be forced to do anything. So she either had a child before her sister was murdered and abandoned her to go get herself some revenge (and at some point Cain picked the babby up) or she had a child after getting her revenge, which even if it was written as an attempt by her to go back to a normal life still rings awkward.
I think it's entirely possible to make their relationship work without having to make them actual family, and in some aspects I even find it beneficial, but again, I'm terribly biased because that whole storyline soured me the fuck up.

Same person who knew I wanted them as Ogami Itto and Daigoro.

To be fair, Jamie has had like, 3 or so giant fucking comics with him as one of the main characters. I feel he's at least had a good time in the spotlight.

The storyline was awkward as fuck. But both scenarios can play heavily into the notion of Shiva "emptying" herself. In the first case by putting her biggest attachment as the first thing she left behind makes everything that comes after easier while in the second case you can bring the idea that Shiva has always existed apart and was simply lying to herself, in essence she was the one who was forcing herself to do something she didn't want.

Ehh, I like the second idea better I guess. You could probably fit it somewhere after the end of Kung Fu Fighter (Shiva has gotten her revenge a long time ago and is no longer working for GOOD) and the start of Question. But it still feels like overdoing it much, like giving her too much backstory. To me it's better if she gets her revenge and that is what leaves her empty, so she tries to fill the void with violence and danger (which she has already experienced by now) and eventually realizes she needs to embrace and become the void rather than try and fill it. Crowbarring Cass in there feels like that time back in the early 00s when she was suddenly from Detroit: too much for too little.
Plus, I'll be honest, it really bothers me that a lot of people seem to care for her solely because she's Cass' mom. When she first showed up in the New52, I remember entire threads of "Ok, so when's Cass?". I'm still super salty about that.

Put her in her place.

To be fair, a lot of people like Cass and were super salty about what DC did with her. So when her mother shows up it's only natural to want them to bring her back too.

And you could easily have her doing numerous things in an attempt to fill the void, including motherhood, before realizing that she is the void.

Also the best thing about her first showing up in the Nu52 was the thread about dino-themed marital arts styles.

>So when her mother shows up it's only natural to want them to bring her back too.
I have two flavors of salt regarding this: one, that it means they only care about Shiva as a prelude to Cass. And two, that nobody gave a shit about *how* they brought Shiva back. It was, and it still is, fucking terrible. But as soon as the writer went all "Well she's much younger in this arc" nobody cared even more. I know Cass is a cult character and I know she's been wronged by DC, but it grinds my gears that people only seem willing to talk about Shiva when it involves her. Or Tim Drake. Or Jason fucking Todd.
But rant aside, eh, I'm just biased and salty and I think it's better to remove the blood ties and let them come together more organically as opposite roads to the same level of kung fu haxery: one by forsaking the world and the other by reaching towards it. It's what I liked about Puckett's run up until the death wish bullshit.

Pic not related unless you're going for literally the present tense -- yes he's not in the spotlight but he had X Factor volume 3 for like three years and it was flawless.

>The problem with Cass as Shiva's daughter is that it means Shiva gave birth
You could always do "my own clone" thing I guess.

Weird character

Cassandra god damn Cain for sure. And how to "fix" her is the simplest thing in the world: stop trying to fix her and just use her as she was originally designed. Give her her original origin story back and just have her be the Bat character who has impossible nonsense kung fu fights on the wings of moving airplanes all day all night. That's what she was meant for and that's what she's good for.

>The problem with Cass as Shiva's daughter is that it means Shiva gave birth, and wether you use the old backstory or make a new one it's bound to create awkwardness

How? Age is not a problem, Shiva was almost forty in the previous continuity.

Sounds boring.

You don't need to like it, but that's literally what her intended purpose is and what I want from DC.

Black Widow. Make her investigate old Cold War stuff, mysterious KGB stories, a bit X-files, double-agents, assassinations, graveyards of russian nuclear submarines, stolen nukes, deserted russian sites, etc. One could do so much with her.

No and he doesn't need to be. Let him rest.

I don't want Modern Marvel touching him.