Great Supporting Characters - Max Mercury
One of the standouts of Mark Waid's acclaimed "Return of Barry Allen" storyline was the introduction of Max Mercury (ostensibly a reinterpretation of a Golden Age superhero, but really, this was a brand new character), the Zen master of speed.
The coolest aspect of Max was that, since he had no history, Waid was free to do what he wanted with him, so his personality could go in different directions than Waid could go with established characters.
After a couple of years of being an interesting supporting character in the ever-expanding Flash cast of speedsters, Max moved over to the Impulse title, as the mentor of the title character.
That was a very smart move on Waid's part, as it gave him (and future writers) a separate main character to play the wacky Impulse off of, and also a second main character to give plots to.
It is too bad that Max is in limbo, because he was a great supporting character.
The coolest aspect of Max was that, since he had no history, Waid was free to do what he wanted with him, so his personality could go in different directions than Waid could go with established characters.
After a couple of years of being an interesting supporting character in the ever-expanding Flash cast of speedsters, Max moved over to the Impulse title, as the mentor of the title character.
That was a very smart move on Waid's part, as it gave him (and future writers) a separate main character to play the wacky Impulse off of, and also a second main character to give plots to.
It is too bad that Max is in limbo, because he was a great supporting character.
posted by Brian Cronin at 11:11 AM
2 Comments:
You know, I think it's funny that the only deaths that are respected by the comic writer are of characters you REALLY would like to see ressurected. Isn't it strange that only crap characters come back from the dead and well-rounded, well-thoughted characters like Max Mercury get to stay dead forever?
Max isn't really dead, last I knew. At the end of Impulse, Rival possessed him and this Rival/Max combo subsequently became lost in the timestream.
But, yeah, it sucks that he's in limbo 'cause he is a great character.
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