User blog:Nausiated/Project 11/61: Sidekicks and Antagonists

So just finished the next few items in my project. The first 10 years of publications for both Rick Jones and the Red Hulk as they were characters who appeared in. As with my other expanded history pages that feature characters who have made many, many appearances over the years I've only done the first 10 years of publication. This also includes any flashback tales that took place before their first appearances (In the case of both Jones and Ross that is everything prior to ) and all the flashback stories that happened in between the issues published between 1962 and 1969.

Here are some of my thoughts on each of the characters:

Rick Jones
Rick's Past: I was a little surprised at how little they've explored the past life of Rick Jones. The only real exposition they've done dated back to and a brief rehashing of those sequences that appeared in. With such a prolific sidekick character you figure they would have went back and revisited his past and explored it more. The guy was an orphan and the only information we know about his past is that his father liked music and he died. Nothing about his mom. It would be interesting to explore further.

Sidekicking: Rick Jones was basically the boy sidekick that was passed around from title to title. He started off as a sidekick to the Hulk starting in, then he moved on to paling around with the Avengers in , becoming Captain America's partner in (which proved to be his shortest stint) until ultimately becoming linked with Captain Marvel in. He sure got around a lot, appearing in about 107 stories from that era. Not bad for someone who was a supporting character.

Interesting Continuity: Over the last decade or so, Marvel has gone back and revisited the early days of the Avengers and Avengers related characters. This of course was likely to cash in on the hype and popularity of Marvel's most recent run of movies. It also gave them a chance to modernize and update old tales that -- to be honest -- haven't aged very well. This has created some messy continuity for this era as various writers have tried to update stories. I understand why they did it. Its the 21st century, stories from the early 60s are not going to appeal to newer readers unless they are updated for a modern audience. Other than the aesthetic and topical reference updates, Marvel also hasn't been governed by the Comic Book Code Authority for almost 20 years. A lot of the early stories were severely hampered or neutered due to the CAC. So in a lot of cases when other writers have written modern takes on these tales they changed certain details either for dramatic effect or artistic license. It hasn't drastically changed the stories that they are unrecognisable, but told them in a modern context and usually from the a different perspective than the original stories from the 60s. However in the end it does cause some wonky stuff when it comes down to how that affects Rick Jones involvement in early Avengers stories. The biggest one was (and I believe I mentioned this in my Hulk blog) was updating Teen Brigade from Ham Radio enthusiasts to a group of hackers. But in other cases stories had slight differences. In most cases I have listed both recountings of events whenever possible in the main body, if there was no way to fit it into the narrative, I put it in the citation notes. That said, I would strongly recommend reading Avengers: The Origin Vol 1 (which expands and retells the events of, as well as Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes Vol 1 (which fleshes out a lot of the "behind" the scenes stuff and personal relationships between characters during the course of through ) and Captain America: Man Out of Time Vol 1 (which is similar to Earth's Mightiest Heroes but focuses on Captain America between  and. Seriously, they are great supplementary tales.

General Ross/Red Hulk
Another Sliding Timescale Thing: It should be interesting to note that a lot of the origins of General Ross have recently been retconned. Originally in it stated that General Ross' grandfather fought in the Civil War and his father in World War I. It also stated that Ross himself fought in World War II and the Korean War. This of course had to be retconned due to the Sliding Timescale, because by that account Ross would be no younger than 88 years old today. A little hard to believe that an 88 year old is running around as the Red Hulk. Not only that, but considering that it states that Betty was born prior to the Korean War which began in 1950. That would make her 64 years old today. So of course these have been generalized. The first retconning of Ross occurred in which shows a young Thaddues Ross playing with Franklin Storm in 1953. More recently in states that Thad's childhood was roughly 50 years ago, relative to the modern era. At the time Thaddeus was depicted as being about 10-12 years old, which relative to 2014 places those events in the 1960s. This creates an interesting problem though as Captain America: Patriot #4 places Betsy Ross and Jeff Mace (two World War II heroes) as his aunt and uncle. I would suspect that as time goes on and it is no longer practical to place Thad's childhood in the 50s, they'll likely retcon that as well, perhaps making them great-aunt and great-uncle, and even stating that the Thaddeus Ross running around in 1953 was an older relative that Thad was named after (It's plausible since that's what they did to Willie Lumpkin to explain how he could have appeared in the 1940s in and still be delivering mail today)

Minor Character: It's interesting to note that while most modern readers know General Ross at least as the Red Hulk, back in the 60s he was just a minor character who didn't really do much from issue-to-issue. Most of the time he was there to be a stand-by antagonist for Bruce Banner and the Hulk. His dialogue was always repetitive, and he also flip flopped between wanting to destroy or capture the Hulk, usually after listening to his daughter Betty cry over Bruce Banner (As you can understand Betty wasn't exactly a strong female character, as such was the norm back then). They didn't really start doing much with General Ross -- other than use him to harass and hound the Hulk frequently -- until the late 70s and 80s.

Coming Up Next
I'm moving on to characters who appeared in. This will include:


 * The Watcher -- Who to date has made some 360 appearances. That said, I will only be doing his chronology from his early life up until 1969. This will be an expanded history page.


 * The Red Ghost - Since he has only made less than 70 appearances over the years, I will be doing his entire history. It will be on the main page.


 * The Super-Apes: I will be working on Miklho, Peotor, and Igor and the team itself for now. These apes have only made a handful of appearances as well, I'll be doing full histories of these characters and it will be on their main pages.