Re: Fantastic Four series discussion (spoilers)
TwilightEL, I like the fact that you're someone who starts some really interesting discussion points about the Fantastic Four (especially with regards to Reed), and really try to dissect what's going on, especially because I feel it's the most misunderstood of the Marvel properties.
Reed reveals that he's created a new type of science called "psychohistory", where he can predict societal trends and the evolution of human politics.
The notion that Reed has created/invented psychohistory is complete balderdash. True, McDuffie owns up to this by saying that Reed was inspired by a work of Asimov's, but as a Psychology major I can tell you that the discipline does exist outside of fiction , even if it is not consistently named as such.
In
Civilization and its Disconcents, Sigmund Freud applied his psychoanalytical theories to history, and therefore proceeded to look at history as something shaped by the underlying urges. (Which is exactly what it sounds like --- a history of Oedipal complexes and other famous Freudian-coined phenomena). This was in 1929, by the way, which would have been long before our 21st century Reed would have been born.
Erich Fromm also wrote about the psychological motivation of politics, and Erik Erikson (best known for his identification of multi-staged developmental theory of personality) used to make calls to examine the impact of personality on history, and he called this hypothetical discipline "psycho-history". There are more examples of 'psychohistory' in the real world, but I've chosen only to mention those I've learned from my college lessons.
Regardless, Reed is completely daft in saying he created this discipline because any scientist with half the brain that Reed has would tell you that the development of sciences (soft fuzzy social ones and hard empirical ones) is one that is an overlapping process, not something that spontaneously comes out of nowhere.
TwilightEL said:
That's right, Reed says that he can calculate THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY. With MATH. To such a degree he's willing to CLONE THOR.
Within the context of the MU and this being a comic book, it's ridiculous. First of all, it completely redefines Reed's role. He shouldn't be a scientist or a superhero anymore, since he's taken it on himself to manipulate the choices of all of humanity. I find the idea that he would simply return to being the leader of the Fantastic Four laughable, but with a movie coming up, that's exactly what will happen.
Reed is a cold, insensitive jerk who sometimes forgets that people have feelings, but he's not some kind of interventionist wingnut.
In fact, Reed has always been consistently portrayed as some kind of
Star Trek:TNG-type who tries to avoid interfering in the natural course of events or culture, and forcing himself only to change things if it spells cosmic disaster (usually when someone else tells him to like say, The Watcher).
You know how Doc Brown invented a time machine in
Back To the Future because he wanted to see "What does it all mean? Where is humanity going"? Reed's not interested in that and all. For all his inventiveness and explorer spirit, Reed is rarely shown intentionally looking into the future, jumping forward in time just for the curiosity of it and back to use the information, he'd rather let history unfold in its natural course.
TwilightEL said:
I don't think this is a bad story, I just don't think a 616 Fantastic Four comic is the place for it, because doesn't make sense and it won't be dealt with properly.
I agree.
The need to maintain status quo for the characters --- for better or for worse --- limits what you can do with The Fantastic Four and other comic book characters. This is why promotional event-writing is very difficult because if you try to make stories expand their reach and scope and try to become more sophisticated, because that means you can't go back again to a 'simpler' time.
Reed can't suddenly become aware that there is a world larger than his intergalactic hijinks, trying to play with the course of humanity and conveniently go back to discovering man-eating flowers in the nanoverse (because it's interesting and fun and hey it's a great place to have a family picnic). It doesn't work on ANY character without proper plot motivation.
TwilightEL said:
Within the story, it's stupid because it's ridiculous. There are too many variables. Reed says his formula can't calculate individuals' actions, but in the MU, the actions of individuals change the fate of the world. Think about the Scarlet Witch and Galactus and the Silver Surfer. There are countries like Atlantis or the Inhumans or Latveria whose leaders are absolute and have no Congress or Parliament to dictate their policy. The actions of these incredibly powerful countries are determined by their DICTATORS, not by the people. Even if he did manage to factor in cosmic entities, he can only factor in the ones he knows about. What about the Sentry, a being of incalculable power who appeared out of nowhere? What's he gonna do when Hulk returns? Shouldn't he have had to rewrite all his equations when Wanda said "No more mutants"? Or maybe the writers are saying that Reed predicted "around this time, a bunch of mutants will be wiped out", which seems to contradict his explanation of what he's done.
Strangely enough, I'm beginning to think this psychohistory (at least the version Reed has conceived) works BETTER in the real world (to an extent) than it does in the Marvel Universe.
Here's why: In the real world, most of us don't have a say in the way the world changes. Sure we vote, we affect the way markets are shaped and we YouTube and blog and Friendster each other to death and we are now Time Magazine's Person of the Year. But that's demagoguery and not hyperindividualism.
In the Marvel Universe, anyone with superpowers is a hyper-individual --- a miniature political, ideological and social faction all his own aligning himself with slightly like-minded individuals who are their own miniature political ideological social faction. From a writing standpoint, they've exaggerated factionalism to a point where one superpowered person asserts their individuality to a greater extent than say 100,000 people with one ideology.
That's why psychohistory CAN'T work in the MU the way it would in the real world. Individualism is exaggerated and pumped up with elastic superbrains, and goblin hulk physique and mutant laser death ray eyes. Every action carries such enormous superpowered weight as to cause enough chaos to make disaster possible every 18 months.
The difference between the Marvel U and our world is that both have scales of balance that even out back to normal for the most part, but the Marvel U's just tips heavier and swings wilder than our world because Scarlet Witch can rewrite history and god-like beings like to 'beta test' humanity and thus chaos becomes the status quo that cancels itself out.
