Thursday, November 12, 2009

Oh, Mark Waid, How You've Let Us Down

Actually, that should be "Oh, Mark Waid and Landry Walker, how you've let us down." But, there's only so much room in a post headline, and Mark Waid is the more famous one, so, there you go.

You may recall, a couple of months ago I was raving about how freakin' cool the character of Cap'n Mummy was in Incredibles #0. You may also recall that I was astonished by the appearance of this fellow:

No name, no powers, just hangin' in the background of the Confederacy Of Crime.

Well, this week, in Incredibles #2, he's back...and this time, Waid and Walker give him a name:

What??


Oh, no, indeed. What a bitter disappointment. Centsus? Really? Is that the best you can come up with??

Because A) Centsus isn't even a particularly good pun, and B) is in no way particularly evil or frightening or threatening or cool or a good villain name in any sense of the word. Because who's scared of the census?

Especially in comparison to a bitchin' name like Tronasaurus. Sigh...

I mean, you could have called him Bad Penny ("He always turns up!!"). You could have called him Coppertop, or Copperhead. You could have called him Dishonest Abe. He could be a commie, and you could call him Red Cent.

But Centsus?? Man, that's beyond lame.

So, Mr. Waid and Mr. Walker, I refuse to refer to him by that name. Until you come up with a more fitting moniker for our copper-plated Lincoln-headed villain, I'm just going to always refer to him as "Evil Penny Guy." Because I'm embarrassed to tell my friends about this rad new character called...Centsus.

Fix this. Thank you.


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dude, was there a copyright injunction over the use of "Bad Penny"? Because, you know, he always turns up.

Landry Q Walker said...

"Actually, that should be "Oh, Mark Waid and Landry Walker, how you've let us down."

I'm not taking the bullet on this one (sorry Mark), my version of the script had the name "Copperhead" or "Copper Penny" or something.

Regardless, I apologize for the pain we have caused you. It was irresponsible of us. I promise that we won't make the same mistake again until issue 4.

So did the name ruin the whole issue for you? Or were you able to fight past the blinding pain and finish the book?

Props to "theotheradamford" on the name and slogan "Bad Penny". In my head, that's his name now.

snell said...

Not pain, just profound disappointment--which was brought on by the ridiculously high expectations caused by my rapturous joy over Cap'n Mummy.

But of course I loved the whole issue, as I have all of the issues so far.

Landry Q Walker said...

If I have to point the finger of blame regarding "Centsus", I also have to give full credit where it is due. Cap'n Mummy was (to the best of my knowledge) all Mark as well.

Glad you liked the book! There will be more in the future. Which I guess is kind of a given. Anyway...

Kaiser The Great said...

Maybe they just call him "Centsus" at the meetings. Like a cute nickname or "hey we don't like you" nickname type thing.