Over in the forums, there’s a thread about why some of us Revolutionaries are no longer reading Marvel Comics. Allow me to present the most recent exhibit for doing so: They don’t know how to write for the characters anymore. For example, Doom would never talk like this.

Setting aside the whole misogynistic angle of what’s said there, that whole sequence is just not Doom’s style. Doom is proud, arrogant, manipulating, cunning, and evil, but he’s never crude. Just look at these past shots of Doom in action to see what I mean. Here’s a good example of how Doom would make that same threat, in a way that fits his character.

This all really ties into the main problem that exists at Marvel right now: they don’t care about continuity anymore, either historical or when it comes to character consistency.

Just about all of their characters have been acting out of character for years, and they will continue to do so as long as Bendis and Millar are Quesada’s go-to guys.

The only characters that Bendis have really gotten right are Spidey, Daredevil and Luke Cage. Millar hasn’t gotten anyone right at all. These two have written everyone so out of character (turning Tony Stark into a fascist prick, and Mr. Fantastic praticly into Dr. Mengele in Civil War, for example), that Marvel has had to resort to the current Secret Invasion event to try and fix things.

Marvel wouldn’t have had to resort to this event to explain why everyone’s been acting so out of character if Joe Q and the other editors had reigned in their writers and made them write people in character. I thought that was the job of Marvel’s editing staff, or at least part of it.

Somehow, I just get the feeling that SI is going to cause more problems than it fixes, and it’s not going to bring me back into the Marvel fold. Mainly because afterwards, Millar and Bendis are still going to be the "head writers" at Marvel, which was the source of this problem to begin with.

What’s frustrating is that there are some great writers at Marvel, who respect the characters and portray them in ways that stay true to their past. When JMS took over Spider-Man, it was great. Sure, there were some rough patches, but over all, it was Peter, as we’ve always known him. He’s also doing a bang-up job with Thor.

Same thing when Joss took on Astonishing X-Men. He captured the feel of the characters, and it was like coming home.

Peter David is doing fantastic work with X-Factor and She-Hulk. That brings me to Dan Slott, who is a master of not only respecting continuity, but in using past events in unique ways to drive his plots foward.

I really love the characters in the Marvel Universe, and its past. There are some good people there now, but they’re not the ones guiding the main editorial decisions. As long as Joe Q, Bendis and Millar are the top dogs, writing without any regard to the characters and their history, I’ll not be making mine Marvel.

There are a lot of great actors out there. Some become legendary. Even fewer become legitimate icons. Charlton Heston was one of them. He died today at 84, and the world is a lot smaller because of it.

Icon doesn’t even really seem to cover it. Charlton Heston was practically a force of nature that decided to be a man for a little while.

Most actors would be happy to have done a single movie that had the impact of any one of Heston’s films has had on the world. Films like Soylent Green. The Omega Man. Earthquake. Touch of Evil. Ben Hur. El Cid. The Greatest Show on Earth.

Not to mention The Ten Commandments, which pretty much solidified Heston as the voice for God on Earth. When he intones to Yul Brenner, “Let my people GO” you can’t help but get a shiver from the power in his voice.

And, of course, there’s The Planet of the Apes. His performance as Taylor, which he did with the perfect mix of serious and scene-chewing ham is one of the key elements of the film. From his snarled “Take your paws off me, you damn dirty ape!” to the final (and oft parodied) twist of “You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!” Heston nails the role and made it the movie iconic. It would have crumbled and been a silly mess with a lessor actor, and couldn’t really have been carried off by anyone else.

Not only did his performance make that film, he was a heavy influence on the follow up Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and that’s with him only being in the opening and closing of the film! It’s the search for Taylor that drives the movie, and his presence is felt even with him not being there.

It was also Heston’s idea to blow up the planet at the end of the film, so that a third movie couldn’t be made. This resulted in the third flick sending Roddy back in time to the “present.” This set up the cycle of how the Apes became ascendant over man, so it was still a great idea.

The addition of Heston to a movie as a cameo in his later years added an extra layer of cool. Just look at Tombstone, Branagh’s Hamlet, The Planet of the Apes remake (his was the best scene in that movie), and his Nick Fury-style general in True Lies.

Charlton Heston was a giant. He was an icon. He was a honest-to-god legend. There won’t be anyone like him again, and he will be missed.