How Would YOU Have Written Statesman?

Let's see if I can get this into words.

Marcus Cole is a man out of time. When he got his powers from the Well of the Furies, it was 1923 (?) and the world was a much different place then. The world had barely begun to recover from the Great War, and the rumblings that would lead to the second were only just starting. In some ways, Good and Evil were a bit more cleanly defined, and it was very easy for Marcus Cole to know how to devote his energies to fight for Good.

Times change. Marcus Cole watches a man who was his friend become a bitter enemy. Society explodes in revolutions and counter revolutions and movements and social disorder and an almost complete rewrite of what right and wrong are. In the middle of all that, Marcus cole is driven by his own Moral code to keep doing the right thing.

Old generations of heroes die, New heroes are born and Statesman now feels increasingly out of touch. He still is driven to fight evil, but it's less obvious what Evil might be these days. He feels lost. The few times that things become clear again, say giant meteors from space and alien invasions, he knows exactly what to do but, otherwise, younger generations of heroes see him as a museum piece. Too rigid and inflexible in his morality. Invulnerable, Undefeatable, Dull, boring. Sure it's nice to have him around when the Rikti come to call, but he's a bit of an embarassment.

"We can take care of Nemesis," they tell him "and the council, and Arachnos, you know ALL OF THE PEOPLE YOU COULDNT GET RID OF"

Just to make this even more complicated, the Well that gave him his powers in the first place is getting more and more... pushy. it's getting harder to resist its demands.

He has a major conflict. He wants to keep fighting for good but he's tired. The well wants to use him but he doesn't want to let it. The world doesn't really want him around anymore but refuses to let him go.

He wants to end it all but he's not sure he can.



I think thats how I would present the character.

People keep bringing up "Statesman the arrogant 'dick'".

That Statesman only ever existed in comic issue seven. Perez or whoever wrote that arc wrote him as "drill seargent Statesman". He was even drawn as some kind of middle-aged military drill seargent, in comparison to how he was drawn both before and afterwards. Despite it being only one story arc (in a comic that quickly became "the Manticore and friends show" anyway), that's the arc that seems to stick with people who love to hate Statesman.

If there are other explicit examples of this supposed arrogance, I'd like to know where they are. There are a lot of people who can't stand the idea of Jack Emmert's Mary Sue being the signature hero of the game and there are a lot more who can't stand the idea of there being ANY NPC hero who is bigger than their own heroes. As far as I can tell, that's where 90% of the Statesman Hate comes from. There certainly aren't (m)any such examples within the game itself.

If I was to change anything, looking back, I'd have done pretty similarly to what Sam (I think it was Sam) was talking about: Involve him early and continue to involve him as a mentor and make him someone the player could come to trust and count on rather than a distant paragon of virtue or put on a pedestal as an ideal to aspire to.

This, I think, is a question that's going to be raised time and again regarding any character who is seen as one of the following:

Old school 'four color' hero

A patriotically-themed and idealist

A 'Mary Sue' who can apparently do everything and anything others can't

Apparently arrogant and with no redeeming features


The first thing I'd do to write the character is that I would expressly make a disclaimer that Statesman, Marcus Cole, is not in any way representative in personality, demeanor and general character that of Jack Emmert. This is a dead weight hung (and I would argue unfairly) upon the character by a figure that by the measure of the meta-story of the game and its canon does not exist in the universe. I can appreciate there is a great deal of negative feeling towards Mr. Emmert, but he is not Marcus Cole and he is not Statesman the fictional character. This is an utterly necessary seperation of real person and character that needs to happen in my opinion before anything else.

Perhaps some people are bitter and unwilling to let go of their resentment of Mr. Emmert and project that onto Statesman. And that's fine, I'm not going to insist that they do, nor would I as a writer insist that they 'like Statesman because I say so'. But to write a disclaimer and to simply air and acknowledge that grievance I think is critical.

So, to the character himself: a lot of patriotically-themed heroes aren't popular in a world of 2012 where morality is measured in shades of grey and nationality can be as much a rallying point of fanatacism as it can be nationalism...and sometimes they can be one in the same. So the first step would be to address just who Marcus Cole is. A man seeking to avoid a horrible death by mustard gas poisoning. Is he a coward, seeking to cheat death? Is he power-hungry? If we go by the other Marcus Coles, perhaps...but when he does gain the power, he voluntarily focuses his abilities to the service of others. No other Marcus Cole that we know of has done that, so we can mark this as a point in his favor.

Marcus Cole is a patriot and a fair-minded man. He's not stepping in to voice his opinion about politics or anything else until the 1970's, when he declares the Phalanx above world politics. This is forty years after his debut as a superhero. That's remarkable restraint, but it also speaks of frustration after seeing a world war, the threat of nuclear war and yet humanity seems incapable of learning from sending itself to the brink of extinction.

Combine this with his 'natural' attributes of being the Avatar of Zeus (who was indeed a haughty, arrogant and often self-serving god) and you have a wonderful conflict between Marcus Cole the man and Marcus Cole the Avatar of Zeus. I would write him as someone who has been pushed a lot more towards being the Avatar after the death of his wife (and I have written so in my own AE arc) because one of his key anchors to being truly empathic to humanity has died. I don't think that can be stressed enough. It also plays against the Mary Sue a lot; he can do a lot of things, but the one thing he would want to do more than anything, save his wife from death, he could not do. I can only think that would eat at him even now.

Statesman as I would write him would be the 'wary god'. Not only has he lived the heights of being a great figure, he's also seen the downsides. Not only embodied in Stephan Richter, but the borderline actions of his own granddaughter, Manticore, and even himself when the Avatar tries to manifest itself fully.

Whilst I wouldn't write him as being the first hero you'd meet in the game, I would write him at the end of the initial Atlas Park arc to thank the hero personally. He's had his hands massively full having driven back Recluse and trying to stabilise Galaxy City. Someone had to step into that breach, and it was the player character. If anyone is going to know the trials and tribulations that lie ahead, it's going to be him. I'd give him some mentoring lines, a reassuring word. I think something like:

'I'll let you in on a little secret: when I first started out, I was making it up as I went too. Trust in yourself, trust in the heroes around you. I do.'

That element of Zeus we often neglect, the caring father of his children, I think applies here. I think Statesman (even though it's not said) thinks of all the heroes are 'his' children. He is almost literally the wellspring from which they flow. And he wants to see his 'children' do well.

I often draw the parallel between Statesman and the British character Doctor Who, because they share a tremendous number of character traits, up to and including being a godlike figure who is as equally feared and reviled as he is admired. The irony is never lost on me when the Doctor is referred to as 'The Coming Storm'...he can be capricous, dangerous, devious, enigmatic, wonderous, magical, loveable, worshipped, and even deified.

But I bet both characters would tell you they fall far short of being any of those things.

There's a great passage in one of the shows that I think is as much Statesman as anything I've heard (paraphrasing mine):

'I've seen him; he's like fire and ice and rage.

He's like the night and the heart of the storm in the sun.

He's ancient and forever. He burns at the center of time and can see the turn of the universe.

And...he's wonderful.

He has saved your lives so many times and you never even knew he was there.

He never stops; he never stays.

He never asks to be thanked.

But I've seen him.

I know him.

I love him.

His name....is Statesman.'

I hope what I've written here in my ramblings is how I'd write Statesman. Because of what I did write, that Statesman, my Statesman is in my head and I would give my right arm to put him in a medium where I could show everyone my vision of him. Maybe I still will.



S.

It might be interesting to explore the whole issue of immortality and how different people handle it. While I understood where Robin Laws was going with his novel, I think it's a mistake to continue to project that onto Statesman as if it's some kind of angst that he'll never be able to fully conquer.

At some point, you either come terms with it or you destroy yourself. Statesman appeared to come to terms with it at the end of the novel and that ought to be the end of the story for the most part.

It's not as if he has no peer group to look to for support about these issues.

Lady Grey appears to be a fellow Incarnate and she is possibly even older than he is.

Dark Watcher is his contemporary. Personality conflicts aside, the Statesman and the Watcher should be able to talk to each other about the emotional issues that occur when you outlive everyone you care about.

Sister Psyche is a fellow old person in a young person's body, and she's a close friend to boot. It's likely that Marcus still thinks of Shalice as a child in his own mind, with that impression compounded by her own apparent youth. Despite that, she ought to be able to reach him on levels that others might not, given her psychic abilities and her position as a trusted team member.

I feel like I'm forgetting a couple of the "ageless" crowd; I'm pretty sure that there are some around. He's not alone in his immortality. There are people who could be a support group for someone like Marcus.

I could see an interesting story seed in Statesman getting into a debate about immortality with Nemesis.


Not that any of this matters any more.

Well, to expand a bit on myself here, I also know what I would like to see happen with Statesman.

He dies. No, really, flatline on the brainscan and everything.

In the afterlife, before being sent on to the great whatever, the spirit of the well speaks to him and tells him how disappointed it is in him. Then, it leaves but, before States can finally relax, he's brought back to life.

I know, very comics cliche but don't we all kind of expect this by now?

Here's the practical point of all of this. Stateman comes back as a highly experienced, very powerful hero but NOT a walking god. That's right, he has lost all contact with the well and is no longer an incarnate.

He gets to pick up his life again. He's starting to age again, but only because the 'pause' button has been switched off. He now knows that he can and, eventually, will die and that gives him a bit more spark, a bit more motivation to leave the world a better place before he goes.

He gets more involved with the modern world and the heroes in it, in fact, he takes it upon himself to try and teach the basics to the newest heroes.

To sum up, He becomes a normal lv 50 and becomes the first contact in either a revised tutorial, or a new set of arcs in Atlas that replace both Matthew and Twinshot.

Oh, just so people know, I joined the game after Jack Emmert left so I have no personal animosity for the man (he's never done me wrong.) I've never really hated Statesman either. It's just the character was always a bit.... blah.