• fuck you sentry is awesome, and fuck bendis for raping the character. Why won't any of you dipshits blame Bendis for raping continuity/the avengers/sentry/marvel comics?

• Its a huge character derailment for Ronnie because before he died he actually was trying to learn chemistry to make better use of his powers in the absence of having a physics professor in his head and in the issue I saw him he was starting to get pretty good at it. Whoever is writing is just throwing that out the window.

• Were you drunk when you posted this? You sound like a real dick.

• When I first discovered x-men through the animated show I kept sayin', "Dude, that's what latex gloves, condoms, and saran wrap are for!"

• <I>"Damn it! I haven't read Villains for Hire! Put a SPOILER ALERT label next time!"</i> ...Choke on it. This is the Internet. If you don't like spoilers, don't read blog posts or forums with threads about comics. Spoiler challenged wankers deserve no sympathy whatsoever, because all they do is bitch, moan, whine and otherwise disrupt and delay conversations. People like you would get upset if someone told you that the Bible begins with "Let There Be Light".

• Damn it! I haven't read Villains for Hire! Put a SPOILER ALERT label next time! Also, fuck that Rogue/Sentry thing! Trying so hard to make some character connections... Bullshit!

• I totally agree with ZeroCorpse, there's not a single line that says she fucked the Sentry. All she says is that she could hug him and Cyclops and them just seem to talk about dating or hanging out with or whatever. It makes no sense for Sentry to be cheating on his wife. Yet it also makes no sense for Rogue to be bringing up they dated if it was eons ago. Also when Sentry first came in, he was married already, so it seems weird if they really did it before that. If they did, it would be erased anyway. The fact that it came out in a one shot makes it worse anyway. The whole damn thing is still unnecessary though.

• &#64;Zerocorpse: I actually said the same about the 'how long' comment being weird. What would the answer be <i>"Oh he could keep it up for hours"</i>? I do say the writer MEANT to imply sex, but he did it really badly, and I blame no one for not accepting it based on this. However there's something else. This <i>cannot</i> have taken place long ago (which only would've made Rogue severely underage anyway) because Jenkins himself wrote a scene once where it was a established that before he disappeared, the only X-Men the Sentry knew were the original 5. He sees Logan, Kurt and ROGUE in the current times and <i>doesn't recognise any of them</i> because he'd been gone so long. He only recognizes Warren and asks why he's blue. So Rogue CAN'T have dated/screwed the Sentry in some distant past. By Jenkins' very own writing. The Sentry never knew her then. So that would mean it would've had to've been recent, which is all but impossible to accept. Sure is a mess, isn't it?

• And she doesn't say "sex" or "fuck" or anything of the sort. She says he was the "only one who could hug me". - As I said in my other comment, this would have been a long time ago, before Gambit ever appeared and before the Sentry got married. It would have been in the years immediately following her joining the X-Men, and as she doesn't say anything about sex, I don't know why everyone thinks they're talking about fucking. She dated him, and it was solely because he could embrace her without fear. - Sex has nothing to do with this scene. Seriously. Read it again.

• This is stupid. First of all, that's not Siege #4. That's a one-shot about the Sentry's funeral. Second, WHERE does anyone say "she fucked Bob"??? I don't see it. I read the whole comic, and what I DO see is that she's having a problem with his funeral because she DATED him. The comment from Johnny wasn't "Did she fuck him?" but "Did they--?" and "How long?" - Unless you think Johnny's asking "how long did they fuck?", it's pretty stupid to assume he's talking about sex. - He's asking whether or not they were close and if they were seeing each other, and then wonders how long they were a couple. This had to be a LONG time ago, as it would have been before Bob married his wife (he wouldn't have cheated on her). Marvel's timeline is a little weird, but a good guess would be that she started seeing him not long after she joined the X-Men... And she kept it a secret because AT THE TIME he was, indeed, the only one who could touch her for longer than a second, and if you understand what she's saying, it's not about sex-- it's about romance, being held, being kissed, and being embraced without worrying about killing him. - Jeez. Fucking READ the books, kids.

• Sorry, double post.

• Sorry, but many of you don't read or remember your comics very well. Until this cheap Sentry nonsense, the only person Rogue ever had sex with is Gambit. -Longshot. Only kissed once, just to take his power. -Magneto. Kissed three times. Twice to take his power. One was a telepathic power glitch. In the Savage Land she was depowered but they never even kissed. They just had one brief moment of attraction where they almost do. But don't. Then there is no possibility for it to even have happened off-panel. Really just Gambit. First in Antarctica (of you choose to see it) then when they live in California without powers for months. So how Jenkins can write her in this scene as 'Sentry was the only one' is beyond me. He clearly has no knowledge of Rogue or her history.

• Sorry but a lot of you don't actually read or remember your comics very well. The only person (until this Sentry nonsense) who Rogue has ever had sex with is Gambit. -Longshot: Never even kissed except once to take his power. -Magneto: She was depowered in the Savage Land, but read the story: they never even kissed then. They had one moment of brief attraction where they ALMOST kissed, but it didn't happen. From there on, there isn't even room in the story for it to have happened off-panel. I think a lot of people get confused with the alternate Age of Apocalypse reality. Really, Gambit was the only one. First in Antarctica (she pretty much tells Storm he was her first) and then plenty of times while they lived without powers in California. I don't mind if someone wants to 'reveal' she had some other encounter with someone but this Sentry scene is just ridiculous. It makes no sense and fits absolutely nowhere in continuity.

• Seriously, who even cares anymore if DC (or Marvel for that matter) kills someone off. There's a pretty good chance they'll be back before the years out. Seriously, who has stayed dead for any period of time... They brought back Bucky, nuff said. Wait, not quite enough, now they're trying to bring back Cap...or have they finished that tragedy yet: "he was displaced in time or blah blah blah", it's really hard to care about anything that happens anymore in comics when they can just rewrite EVERYTHING in a deal with the devil.

• Northstar.

• "Why? DC is all about legacies. That's the whole point of the line - that characters give up their roles and they're taken on by someone new. That's what saved the comics industry back in 1956 when they started the Silver Age." As I mentioned already, this is inaccurate. Hal Jordan and Barry Allen weren't "Legacy" characters. The Golden Age Flash and Green Lantern lived on an alternate reality and it was years before they ever showed up in the Silver Age. Barry and Hal had absolutely no ties to the originals. They didn't become legacy characters until DC merged Earth 1 and Earth 2 together. And, the only reason why Jay Garrick and Alan Scott weren't eliminated the way the Golden Age Superman and Wonder Woman were, was because they had different names and costumes. Now, if you think DC should have created an alternate reality where it was similar to the Marvel Ultimate Universe, that would be the same thing. As for regressing? What regressing? Kyle Raynor and Wally West haven't disappeared. Rayner will be featured heavily in Green Lantern Corps as one of the main stars. It's likely that Wally West will get his own series too. The only crime Geoff Johns is guilty of is trying to make all the fans happy.

• I always wondered why she didn't just get into latex play. Put some lube on a dental dam.

• So, as the numbers I provided prove, Raynor's Green Lantern (written by Martz) was around 45,000 - 49,000 issues. Hardly the smash hit you seem to think it was. The only time it went above that was when Hal Jordan was in the book.

• I would be happy to provide numbers: I was only able to go back to 1996, but I will certainly keep trying to find sales charts before then. I also didn't include every single issue, but to be fair, I randomly chose months: Kyle Raynor - Green Lantern #80 (Final Night Tie-In) - 55,500 Green Lantern #81 (Enchanced - Funeral for Hal Jordan) - 72,300 Green Lantern #82 - 51, 600 Green Lantern #83 - 50,100 Green Lantern #84 - 47,900 Green Lantern #85 - 45,800 Green Lantern #86 - 45,800 Green Lantern #99 - 49,400 Green Lantern #100 (Featuring Hal Jordan as Green Lantern) - 82,400 Green Lantern #101 - 54,300 Green Lantern #102 - 54,000 Green Lantern #113 - 49,200 Green Lantern #122 - 41,000 Green Lantern #123 - 39,300 Green Lantern #129 (Judd Winnick's First Issue) - 37,600 Green Lantern #133 - 36,500 Saying that Winnick drove it into the ground is a bit unfair, since the book was bleeding readers for awhile. Also, why all the hate for Winnick? Exiles was one of the best series Marvel produced and his Green Lantern run was really good as well. Hal Jordan - Green Lantern Rebirth #1 - 95,000 Green Lantern Rebith #2 - 86,300 Green Lantern #1 - 165,000 Green Lantern #2 - 117,000 Green Lantern #3 - 108,500 Green Lantern #11 - 78,900 Green Lantern #14 - 72,900 Green Lantern #15 - 70,100 Green Lantern #19 - 62,412 Green Lantern #20 - 60,537 Green Lantern #25 - 90.491 Green Lantern #38 - 68,896 Green Lantern #45 - 102,323 Green Lantern #48 - 100,325 BTW, for April 2008 - Wonder Woman, that character Geoff keeps mentioning can't sell, sold 58,712 copies For November 2007 - Wonder Woman #11 sold 53,071 copies So at certain points, Wonder Woman outsold Kyle Raynor too. If Kyle had been introduced earlier and was training to be a Green Lantern and then the Corps had faced a huge threat that wiped out the Guardians and killed the power battery, and Hal sacrificed himself to save the universe. That would be one thing. Turning Hal evil came out of left field and alienated longtime fans. I will note that no other character created as much a furor over the way the replacement was done as Hal's death did.

• Rogue has been one of the most interesting characters of the X-Men for over a year now, starring in her own title. Sentry, on the other hand, sat around sulking until someone made him run away in the middle of every major battle he was in. Good riddance.

• I'm not gonna read all the comments, so I dont know if anyone mentioned this, but I do believe Rogue "bumped uglies" with Magneto, while she was de-powered in the Savage Land. Good for him, btw.

• I'm willing to bet that you read more wikipedia articles about comic books than actual comic books.

• I guess you don't read any X-Men titles then?

• Rogue and Gambit are still around? Hmmm...I thought they died with the 90's at least that's the last time any one gave a squirt. To be honest Sentry has been more of a player in the Marvel universe than either of those two, he's been the bi-polar Superman of the avengers for quite some time now. She'd be lucky to get some from some one who still fuels a story arc.

• Rouge- simply cheap shock tactics Choi- I liked the character, I bought his comics, but he didn't need to be the atom. Couldn't of DC given him some other shtick to work with? Like they did when they made Guy gardner the warrior, but without the stench of failure. Hell even pulling a Cassandra would have been better. Also about the villain team killing off Choi, that team felt like it was diversified so it would be okay to kill off Choi since it's minority killing minority rather than a white power hit job.

• "mockingly accusing you of being gay is homophobic?" Yes, it is. Using that statement in this context implies there's something wrong with being gay, since you are using it an insult.

• The Sentry actually had potential; too bad Bendis got a hold of him and dragged him through the mud. What if instead of being a liar, drug addicted thief and now adulterer, he was an incredibly moral person who was reluctant to act not only because of the Void, but because of his vast strength he might easily kill by accident? Or he didn't want to be a crutch for humanity? I'm not sure their are bad characters, except, of course, the Red Bee. Ryan Choi was decent, but lets face it: he was a clone of a niche character. The fact he was asian had nothing to do with it. If you disagree you might be an idiot. In the Suicide Squad Adam Cray (a new, white version of the Atom, was killed with a nail, promptly ensuring the return of Ray Palmer.)Sound familiar? I'd have preferred he retire to focus on research or something, but I won't really miss Mr. Choi. I think Palmer is a great character (read Power of the Atom, Sword of the Atom, or anything Tom Peyer wrote) and I'm a little surprised Morrison felt the need to remake him. I don't mind when DC kills a knock-off, but I do when they kill a long time character to bring out a "new culture sensitive version." It's fake and patronizing. Also, Hercules is dead? I know he'll be back, but damn...

• Do either of you have actual sales figures to back you up? I'd be interested in seeing what sales were actually like during Kyle's tenure versus Hal's, but I can't believe that relative sales are an "absolute fact" one way or the other without seeing some numbers.

• Kyle Rayner's run outsold Hal Jordan's big time. That's why it lasted so dang long. It wasn't until Winick came on the book and basically ran Rayner in to the ground that they made the decision to do Rebirth. (In fact, before Rebirth was considered, they were planning a John Stewart series instead.)

• you have a point there!

• So Green Lantern was a good seller for DC, they decide to turn Hal Jordan evil and kill every member of the Green Lantern corps, to try and boost sales. They create some Image type character to take his place and sales fall. The customers weren't happy with it and DC kept telling them to stick it, "learn to love the new guy." Despite trying to push Kyle as the one, true Green Lantern, fans still don't buy his book. So, according to you, telling the majority of your customers that they are wrong and ignoring them is good business. According to you, Dan Didio was wrong for bringing back Hal Jordan and doing 4x (if not more) the sales the replacement did. I suppose Coke should have just kept New Coke and not turned the clock back.

• Not quite the same thing. The golden age Flash and Green Lantern weren't in publication for over ten years. The Silver Age Flash and Green Lantern had completely new rogues galleries, supporting casts, costumes, lived in different cities, and even a new origin (for Hal Jordan). They also didn't kill off the original characters, fans of those characters could still occasionally follow their adventures. If the demand would have been high enough, DC would have released an on-going Earth 2 Flash or Green Lantern series as well.

• He's on Monday Night Raw.

• It's like saying "minorities only deserve hand-me-down identities." Can't they come up with an original idea for them?

• That article is actually claiming DC is racist. It does so, by bringing terms like "white-washing" into play. It's a bullshit, Fox News type move. It ignore facts (like Firestorm having a white face) and ignores other moves DC has done in the last few years (like brining the Milestone characters into the DC Universe). Hey, just like Fox News. I understand fanboy selfishness (if it isn't done exactly the way I want it, I won't like it), but insinuating racism is a low blow.

• "But, yes, DC should feel bad about killing off those characters, because that's a failure of editorial direction. Killing characters off for no reason is one of the biggest problems in comics," You mean like when they killed Hal Jordan? Or Barry Allen? Or Ronnie Raymond? Or Kara Zor-El? Or Arthur Curry? Or does that statement only fit with characters you like?

• Who doesn't have a hard-on for Rogue?

• quick someone play "Chicago - Fight For Your Honor"

• mockingly accusing you of being gay is homophobic? and really? "noob"? you're just a sad little bag of internet crusader cliches aren't you? I get it. you get your keyboard sticky by sticking up for poor helpless strangers on the internet. and it's so very impressive, you big hero you. keep on keepin' the internet safe from big meanies like me bro!

• I don't know. What's it like to be painfully close-minded?

• Well, could be worse...it could be revealed that Rogue boffed Ryan Choi to death because he was asian. Oh god—that's actually better, isn't it?

• The amount of fail. You could have responded with something like "Oh, my bad." or something equally innocuous and be done with it. But no, you go straight for denigration, and personal attacks, not to mention homophobic ones at that. To sum up using internet parlance, cry more noob.

• Chris Sims is a great writer.

• Oh, and what the fuck happened to Jericho?

• So... pretty much the thing I take away from these comments is that Rogue's fucked every important man in the Marvel universe but acts like none of it ever happened...

• I WAS wrong. I didn't actually complain about or deny that. Did that mean he had to go beyond the correction to rush to find his copy to type out the entire page in a Rogue-defending rage? or that you had to pull his cock out of your ass to come defend him for it? No. No it didn't.

• That's just friggin beautiful man. I love it.

• Someone was wrong on the internet and can't handle being called on it.

• Random BBB reference ftw.

• given that Rogue can finaly be able to touch some one without absorbing their powers one would think the first time she got some would be with gambit but the sentry instead. not to mention the sentry was married. at least fans were spared the thing off panel. as for dc killing Ryan Choi . surley they could have found some way to keep him for after all the dc universe has had more then one flash and green lantern and even robins. talk about a dumb and a little racist move on dc part.

• The real irony of that statement being that the Silver Age versions weren't the first or original versions of the characters.

• "The handful of the people who became fans of this new wave are just readers who were too young to appreciate the Silver Age versions." This is a pretty good example of the slavish fanboyism I mention in another comment above. The idea that the version of a character that made the biggest impact on a specific individual, be it creator or fan, is the one, true version of that character. And anyone who likes a different version of that hero is naive and unenlightened.

• The problem is creating new legacy heroes to begin with. Time and again, it's been proven that creating new characters to replace existing characters doesn't work. It creates animosity from fans of the original character and it the new character still has all the baggage the original character had. The reasons for creating the version is to have a character that new fans can read without any continuity issues. Except that continuity still exists. The original characters are consistantly mentioned. They pop up in other comics, their rogues galleries still exist, etc. Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, Mr. Terrific, and Ted Kord worked because they replaced characters that weren't used. Kyle Raynor failed because they replaced an existing, well-loved character with a completely unknown character. Wally West worked, because he was a known character in the Flash books and Barry Allen died saving the universe (when it was still rare to see a character die). Sales for the Flash increased, which is the exact opposite of what happened to Kyle Raynor's Green Lantern. For all the snide Hal Jordan doesn't have a personality comments (which would be true, except for all the comics where he has a personality), Emerald Dawn was a monster hit for DC. As is the current Green Lantern book. It is an absolute fact that the only Raynor issues that sold as well as Jordan's was the issues Hal Jordan as Green Lantern appeared in. John Stewart could have worked. If you're in charge of DC and you see angry customers furious over Hal not being Green Lantern and his books sold really well and Kyle's didn't, what would you do? Why was there a new Atom? The character works in a team book, but has never sold as a solo book. Who besides people into gigantism would be interested in reading the continued solo adventures of a guy whose sole power is getting really small? If DC wanted to create a new Asian chracter, the issue was making him the Atom to begin with. I agree with you about Wally West, though. But, because his book was so popular in the fifties and sixties, an arguement could be made that Barry Allen is more well known outside comics.

• I bought the Titans special yesterday expecting something along the lines if Secret Six so I was sorely disappointed to find something more along the lines of Cry for Justice. The thing about Ryan Choi is that he was completely out of the picture at DC with the exception of a brief appearance in, coincidently, in Cry for Justice. That makes it irrelevant for Choi to be killed off. He sticks to Ivy Town while Ray Palmer is international. There is no need to kill the new Atom to make the original Atom standout when the new one is out of sight in the first place. If they wanted to kill off a hero, take out one of the Great Ten since their queen can just make more or take out one of the Global Guardians or a lesser known hero. With that said, my real problem is with the way DC is handling Deathstroke. The guy is all over the place now. He's been that way since Geo Force slit his throat. If I recall correctly, didn't Deathstroke vow to change his life in Faces if Evil: Deathstroke? And then it actually looked that way when he took in a little girl but then they fought, I believe, Batman & Robin, making him a bad guy again. By the way, what happened to that girl? Then in the Teen Titans Blackest Night issues, Deathstroke admits to only fighting against the Teen Titans to force his children to fight against him and protect them through disassociation. As I recall Jericho even joined him. Now, he's a bad guyafain and, if that line at the end of Titans us correct, going after the Teen Titans again. WTF? He has gone from one if the baddest villains to the deus ex machinability villain if the DC universe.

• <a href = "http://lantern7.blogspot.com/2010/05/comic-rant-letter-to-dan-didio.html">Here's my response to Dan Didio.</a> I honestly didn't know what else to do. I might just cave in and go to the convention in Philly just so I can holler at some hapless schmuck from DC Comics over Ryan's death.

• The cold hard truth about the DC "whitewashing" is that the real crime isn't that they're bringing back the "white" characters, but that they tried to replace them with "minority" characters in the first place. It was obviously just a diversification stunt, and that's why the characters didn't last. The handful of the people who became fans of this new wave are just readers who were too young to appreciate the Silver Age versions. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with introducing the characters into the DCU. Just don't do it on a whim. I was furious when Firestorm, Atom, Question, Blue Beetle, and Mr. Miracle were replaced; not because of who they were replaced with, but because they were replaced. I would have been perturbed if they replaced them with a "white" guy. And much like people are doing now, I would have been holding my breath waiting for the "real" ones to come back. The only reason Wally West worked for so long isn't because he was white, but because he had a real connection to Barry and was carrying on his legacy. In the end, though, it WAS Barry that he was honoring, so he would naturally want Barry to be the Flash again if he came back(*). It's not that Wally was a better Flash, it's that comic writing has become more sophisticated and refined over the years and Wally has had some amazing artist and writers working on his run. Jaime Reyes is the only replacement character I've seen of late that even holds his own in the DCU. I would love to see Ted Kord come back, but since he didn't use the scarab anyway they could both exist. That's really not the case with the rest. It's overkill. Is Jason a good Firestorm? Maybe, but that didn't stop the fact that the three most anticipated returns in Blackest Night were Aquaman, J'onn J'onzz, and Ronnie Raymond. Say what you will, but Ronnie was an awesome member of the JLA and never should have dies in the first place. (*)I will agree, DC makes horrible decisions and jumps on bandwagons thinking that one idea that works will work across the board. Hal Jordan's comeback was phenomenal and for that reason they brought back Barry the same way. Barry Allen is my favorite character...EVER, but I'd rather he stayed dead a great hero than be brought back to be ruined by the people holding the reigns today. Wally has proved himself able to hold the mantle on his own. Though it's true that his sales had plummet quite a bit in the last year of his run, he just needed better writing again. You may not like the regression, but the truth is most of these newcomers were just placating placeholders that were doomed to eventual failure. Everyone knew that the "real" heroes would be back...it was only a matter of time. The only regression I really have a problem with in comics right now is a regression in writing quality.

• "Except the quote says "he was not white enough for DC"." You're going by a joke wikipedia edit? Really? "If no one does anything with those characters, should DC feel bad for letting a writer kill one? Especially in a book that seems to have a pretty diverse cultural group. Tattooed Man is black. Cheshire is Asian. Black Adam jr is from Kahndaq (sp?)." For one thing, Atom had no reason to be in that book in the first place; he was just killed off because he was somewhat recognisable. But, yes, DC should feel bad about killing off those characters, because that's a failure of editorial direction. Killing characters off for no reason is one of the biggest problems in comics, and it's especially so at DC. A second failure is that they're playing on nostalgia for heroes that weren't all that interesting in the first place. Just because their current editorial staff liked these characters, it doesn't make them any more interesting than the modern counterparts. And, great, Titans - a horrible book - has a lot of minorities in it. I'm sure when it's cancelled or rebooted yet again, people will eulogise it using exactly those words. There's a significant difference between a couple of tokens on a team and being the lead in a solo book.

• someone's got a little hard-on for Rogue...

• There is nothing wrong with killing off characters when it is done well... in a way that respects story, that character's history and their fans. But it is always a bad thing when you can feel the editorial machinations at work behind a character's death with you are reading it. And I believe that is the case in both of these deaths. Ray Palmer is coming back so that means get rid of Ryan Choi. And the death of the Sentry makes me feel like Marvel is a lot closer to introducing Marvelman into their Universe than many suspected.

• Except the quote says "he was not white enough for DC". So clearly SOMEONE is saying it and other people are implying it, even if you aren't. I get why people complain about not enough ethnicities represented in comics and media in general. But you can't artificially create compelling characters based on their ethnicity just to please a percentage of your readers. The fact is that one of the biggest problems in comics is a lack of new characters in general. The public might accept a new Firestorm or Atom character, but they just don't seem to want to buy a series based on them. If no one does anything with those characters, should DC feel bad for letting a writer kill one? Especially in a book that seems to have a pretty diverse cultural group. Tattooed Man is black. Cheshire is Asian. Black Adam jr is from Kahndaq (sp?). I don't really see what the fuss is about.

• You should read the Comics Alliance article that Bibble 3000 links to above. No one is accusing anyone of actually being racist; they are merely saying the inadvertent whitewashing of the DC Universe is an unfortunate byproduct of slavish fanboyism by the creators and fans alike.

• That article is great.

• What are you getting at? If you wanna accuse Marvel of racism, grow a pair and just say it.

• The Sentry has been mismanaged for years (thanks to Bendis who has been writing him for years) and his death ends Marvel's inability to create a thoroughly fleshed out character that is analagous to Superman, which they never should have done in the first place. Then, to give him a "proper" sendoff, they get Paul Jenkins, who created the Sentry in the first place, to write a fluff comic that paints him as a saint! The Sentry has done nothing in the last two years but be painted as broken/psychotic/evil and NOW they want to cannonize him? Hello Hal Jordan in Final Night. As for the supposed 'whitening' of the DC Universe, I am appalled by the reaction of fans. So in this year, 2010, you're telling me the first kneejerk response to "let's bring back the legacies" is "DC's full of racists!" Is that what we do when someone kills off/injures/removes a character of a different race now? Bring out the racecard like a bunch of Fox News stooges? Simple answers are this guys and girls: DC is a business. The business is being run by a woman, a white guy, an asian and a middle eastern man (Geoff Johns is originally from Lebanon - thank you Twitter!). None of them have any interest in whitewashing an entire group of characters. Everyone knows that in order to reach the widest audience, you appeal to as many people as possible. I read a LOT of superhero comics by the big two and Ryan Choi is no big loss to the world. Yes, every character is someone's favorite, but suck it up people. Ray Palmer is more well known, and Blackest Night brought him back to his heroic self. It's time to move on. Call out the companies for doing things lazily...not for being fake racist. And that ComicsAlliance piece is the worst kind of journalism. He blatantly accuses DC of being racist, but stops to say he doesn't believe they do it purposely. So...what's you're point? Don't introduce evidence that they might be racist and then backpeddle. Also, don't call someone a racist without pulling proof that they probably aren't. Makes you look like an asshole.

• Also, every second villain in the Marvel Universe seems to have some form of power-negating device. The government has them for detainees. You don't think that maybe Rogue could get her hands on one of those and then get to business?

• Rogue... the girl who was constantly having villians negate her powers every other day? I always wondered why she and Gambit didn't just keep one of those Genoshian collars...

• Yah, they went out to help the Shiar because the Phalanx were attacking or something like that. The mining suit was one of the many things that happened around that time that made me finally give up reading X-Men. I was like "HEY ROGUE CAN TOUCH PEOPLE NOW THIS IS BIG THIS IS HUGE THIS IS AWESOME THIS IS OH WAIT WE'RE JUST GOING TO FORGET ALL ABOUT IT AND PRETEND IT NEVER HAPPENED WITHOUT EVEN A ONE LINE EXPLANATION ABOUT HOW THE SUIT RAN OUT OF POWER OR SHORTED OUT OR WHAT THE HELL EVER OH OKAY FUCK YOU MARVEL".

• But in the Marvel panel above, It's nothing but white folks.

• I always assumed off panel Gambit just stuck it through the zipper of his jumpsuit, and wore a condom to tap that Rouge ass. Condom's equal almost safe sex (sometimes they break and only 99% effective against STD's and power draining.) , and I can't believe no one tried that with her. On the Atom thing I didn't see why the couldn't just keep both around. I mean at one time DC had 3 Flashes, and 5 "Earth" Green Lanterns. Why not two Atoms?

• No, she wasn't, and it says so right in the captions in the same issue (UXM #236) it supposedly happened in. Check the series of captions during the slow close-up to Rogue's cell. The guards slapped her around some and made fun of her, but nothing along the lines of actual rape happened: All they did was touch her. Rude hands, ruder glances--taunting promises of worse to come. She couldn't stop them. For so long, she dreamed of being able to touch another person, without her power absorbing his/her psyche. To hold, to caress, to kiss, just like any other-- normal-- teenage girl. In those dreams, it was the most beautiful of moments. She never imagined being handled against her will. Note also that Rogue's Carol personality, as an "eyewitness," says in UXM #244 that "Nothing happened. But that wasn't the point."

• I've got a vague memory of rogue wearing a mining suit while running around in Shiar space. It emited a very low level forcefield that allowed her to touch people. Then, almost as soon as they got back to earth, she changes out of the suit hangs it up in the closet, presumably, and never takes it out again. This is why I have no sympathy for Rogue when she pulls the "Oh woe is me for I can not touch anyone" play

• Like Mr. Terrific, the Blue Beetle, the Question, and all the Milestone characters DC aquired?

• Those are my thoughts exactly. The strength of the comic is in the heart felt connections these heroes gave to the Sentry. The problem is that the connection is irrelevant and technically non-existant. The Sentry did nit exist before New Avengers so for them to try to add him to the Marvel history was ridiculous in the first place. I'm with Rob, fuck that guy. He was a junkie playing superhero who was the mist powerful being in Marvel? What? Only Quesadilla could come up with that. The Rogue thing was the least of my problems. The whole issue was horrible and dull.

• Firestorm's face wasn't white in Brightest Day, it's a combination of both their colors.

• The thing is, in order to establish the new characters, you have to move the originals offstage. That's the main reason Wally West held, and why Kyle Rayner lasted for over a decade: because DC had the balls to say "no, in spite of what you're saying, we're not brining the old characters back. Learn to like the new ones." Barry was *banished*, with Waid only teasing his return when he needed to further establish and define Wally's character. Hal wasn't quite as gone, but between Marz and Morrison they had established Kyle as *the* GL. Of course, no one at DC has any stones anymore, so now they flip flop like a bad politician. If DiDio had been in charge after COIE, Barry would've been the Flash again by 1988 and we'd never have gotten the Waid and Johns run, which were the best Flash comics ever. I miss Mike Carlin. This shit didn't happen when he was in charge.

• ... wow, how's it like to be fifty years old and not having read a Superman comic since 1972?

• Oh, you mean flaws like how they created one specific substance that can hurt him which is supposed to be rare but everyone seems to have a bunch of it because the character was designed with no other flaws? Yeah, I guess. When you are the strongest force in the world and you keep getting attacked by someone calling himself Toyman you aren't getting stuff done.

• No one's saying it's BECAUSE he was Asian - at least, we hope to hell that it's not. But between this and about half a dozen examples in the past year or so, it just looks REALLY bad. It's more misguided nostalgia than racism, but the effects are overriding the reasoning behind the decisions.

• I dont't dissagree, they should not have killed Choi off, but that doesnt mean they should ignore Ray or any of the older characters. A characters age and race and gender is irrelevant to his or her abblity to star in good stories. Ray Plamer particularly had a ton of emotional baggage that was nicely outlined in Geoff's Atom and Hawkman, and I am greatly looking forward to reading more of him.

• You know, that's really an excellent point. I wasn't looking at it that way. I always looked at it from the idea of trying to figure out a puzzle. "What is it that makes this not work?" Is it the abilities, the character, the supporting cast, the setting...all things that can be looked at individually, and have different things tried. Superman's sales start flagging; electric powers. Captain America's ideals seen as "antiquated" by today's youth; Bucky Cap. Spider-Man's not as much "fun" anymore; marriage dissolved by Mephisto. And what happens when these things no longer work? They go back to zero and try again. You always come back to your template and build from there. But that's just the way I see it...your point of view makes a lot of sense too.

• Yeah, that was a seriously lame thing to do with Rogue's character. Seems just thrown in for the sake being there - it probally wouldn't have been as dumb if it were just about any other character. Bad writing and editing!

• The Tick live action series did this sort of story line years ago (Captain Liberty killing The Immortal). Funny thing, it was better the way they did it.

• Well, the first step is admitting it.

• Also.. "She just told us on the way here." I laughed my ass off!

• How exactly do we know that Ryan Choi was killed bc he wasn't white? The Atom series was cancelled and they weren't using him in anything. Meanwhile Ray Palmer is being used in the JLA. If it's a question of fans loving the character, I understand that, but jumping to conclusions of racism without any real proof is... actually it's very typical these days. Whatever.

• These types of jokes are why it's still fun to be a comics fan.

• If a preponderance of alternate realities is turning you off now, I hope that you're too young to remember the Silver Age. This isn't a new thing (although DC sure as heck did TRY to eliminate the complaint, before Geoff Johns started with his Turn Back The Clock initiative).

• "Personally, I give the companies a lot of credit for trying, but if people don't BUY, then what do you expect them to do?" The point is that people weren't buying these characters in their original form to begin with. It's not like DC made Batman or Superman into a minority, or turned Wonder Woman gay (... mind you, I don't doubt that'd finally make her sales figures equal to her billing...). They took characters that no one really cared about or were willing to support and, in the tradition of the company for the prior 50 years, inserted new characters in their place. That they also took advantage of the situation to diversify their lineup a little bit should be lauded. So these characters didn't really hit it big. So what? The come out of it with a bunch of heroes who have more diversity and are selling the same low amounts that their predecessors were. Listen, there's plenty of hamfisted ways to do this. Judd Winick suddenly turning Kyle Rayner hispanic (... because he had black hair, which I suppose also makes Bruce Wayne hispanic) was idiotic. But we're talking about characters who were, at BEST, filler on the JLA B-team. DC wasn't losing any money by trying, and there was no financial incentive to reverse course.

• <i>Xavier helped her with that</i> I'll bet he did.

• This. One thing that has turned me off from the new comics is the plethora of alternate/parallel realities and different writing team's re-interpretations/killing off/re-birthing of characters.

• What really pisses me off are eulogy comics that take an entire issue and fill it with nothing but a group of characters standing around gabbing about about a friend that just died. Marvel's been putting out one of these a month practically. They just did it last week with Nightcrawler and then with Hercules a month or so before, only: the Hercules one was awesome because it involve the Sub-Mariner making horrified faces to stories about elvish-ticklers and homoerotic encounters with North Star. The Sentry one sucked, mainly because it involved the X-men so much, who have nearly no links to the Sentry whatsoever, but they're at every Marvel funeral. All it was misisng was Wolverine flying off in a rage, like he does when anyone dies. Plus there was no mention of the Sentry being a completely psychotic-dick who was better off dead. The other thing that pissed me off was the fact it said the Thing was about to snap one of the Wrecking Crew's necks and the Sentry had to stop him, and then the Wrecking Crew guy killed a schoolbus full of kindergardeners, which is way off base for both character.

• I just hate the tell and not show aspects of both these stories. Its lazy and bad storytelling. These are major developments and deserve to be properly shown in the comics instead of mentioned in passing or used unnessarily in a book not even about them.

• there is absolutely no way that Sentry is better than Superman. Superman has flaws and gets stuff done too.

• What this person said...mostly. I think the idea of the comics industry and the actual reality of it are quite a bit different than we, the readers, would like it to be. For all the bitching that "nothing ever changes", the moment the companies try to shake things up, they're "ruining" things. It's really a no-win for them. As cool as "new" characters are, name me ONE new (within 10 years) character that has had the popularity to compete with Batman or Spider-Man. Hell, even Deadpool, which is the newest "big 2" character I can think of with anything approaching that kind of love, is NINETEEN years old. People want what they know, and they're not really willing to try new things...at least, not enough of them are to justify the bottom line that DC and Marvel have to keep up. Sure, there have been a couple breakouts; Runaways being the best example I can think of, but even that book isn't being putting out right now, and when it is, it's always in danger of cancellation. The lager population of comics readership, which includes more than just us who are fanatical enough about it to post on the internet, want established characters. Which is part two of the problem. Superman and Batman were created in the '30's. Captain America's been around since WWII. Spider-Man came around in the 60's. Hell, as over-exposed as he is NOW, Wolverine didn't make the scene until 1974...he's pretty much the "new kid" of the popular characters...and it wasn't really until then that someone actually created a popular character that was even CANADIAN. The problem with this is that in the time period in which most of these guys were created...not a lot of racial diversity. The older characters were created by older white guys because the people who could actually get hired to create comics were older white guys. I'm not saying it was <i>right</i>, just that it happened. People tend to write what they know, and so white guys beget white characters. It's also why there aren't more (realistic) female characters, gay characters, religious characters (even though the bulk of the guys writing comics back then seem to have been Jewish)...it sucks, but it's history, and if there's one thing Booster Gold has taught me, it's that you can't change history. Personally, I give the companies a lot of credit for trying, but if people don't BUY, then what do you expect them to do? Of course, having said all this, I've always been a big fan of Ray Palmer, and was upset when they changed the character...but I found that I really like(d) Ryan Choi. He was a great character, and if they had to "clear the way" for Ray to be the only Atom again, I wish they would have found a less shameful way to dispatch of Ryan.

• The Sentry was awesome. Marvel found a clever way to fool the fans and introduce their own version of Superman who was far cooler than Superman because he had flaws and actually managed to get stuff done. Anyone who can rid us of Carnage is awesome in my book.

• Platelet wouldnt be sad-- now he and Atom can ride together in the afterlife.

• I thought Longshot and Dazzler use to be an item, or else in the future they had a child, and that's how Shatterstar came to be... so incderdibly gay.

• I, too, gave up mainstream comics years ago. I enjoyed Planet Hulk story and watched it devolve into a series of minis, one-shots, and an inconclusive summer event comic. Lately, I have realized I will always have comics to read Things aren't that bad, you just have to look. And the cool thing is, if you read only the best, the comics industry suddenly appears vibrant.

• not like they won't all be alive again in 1-2 years though.

• But, again, I'm sure there were fans of Jay when Barry took over, and I KNOW there were fans of Barry when Wally took over. People dealt with it. DC, for the better part of fifty years, was about moving on. Now, they're about moving backwards, and although I think this move is mostly motivated by stupidity rather than intentional racism, they're basically saying "hey, guess what, these minority heroes aren't as good as the old ones." For crying out loud, it's not like Ronnie / Ted / etc. had been any great shakes in terms of sales in the past 20 years. If enough people cared about Ronnie Raymond, he'd have been a featured player in a book or had his own solo series. He didn't. And, frankly, I'm more objecting to the fact that DC's going back to heroes who've already failed. If they'd gotten rid of Choi in favour of a new great white hope, it would still look bad, but it wouldn't offend my sense of what the company apparently stood for.

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