WHAT DID I JUST TELL YOU?!

The following is a preview from this month's Fantastic Four #575, featuring the Mole Man and...HOLY CRAP MORE PEOPLE LIFTING UP MANHOLE COVERS AS IF THEY WERE MADE OF PAPER MACHE!  Didn't people read my post from a while ago explaining that it's actually really, really difficult?  Sigh...apparently not.

Manhole covers notwithstanding, I suppose I'm enjoying Jonathan Hickman and Dale Eaglesham's early run on the main Fantastic Four title.  It's not exactly reinventing the wheel (and Mr. Fantastic is drawn like he's a professional wrestler), but I'm giving it a chance.

One thing that bugs me, though...okay, one thing OTHER than misrepresenting how hard it is to lift up a manhole cover (they weigh hundreds of pounds! If it was easy everyone would steal one and there would be countless accidents with people falling down into open sewers!!), I'm a little irked at how Marvel has seemingly forgotten all about the Fantastic Four/Iron Man: Big in Japan miniseries where all of the Moloids (the weird creatures pictured above) formed into a giant spaceship and rocketed away form Earth, leaving the Mole Man sad and lonely.

Okay, I'm not saying that this particular plot point made a whole lot of sense, but the fact is that a writer at Marvel wrote it, an editor at Marvel approved it (probably several editors), and it went right through the process for publication.  I read it and thought it was crazy, but hey, it is what it is, right?  I guess not, because it's been entirely forgotten.  It seems that if something of this nature is going to be left behind months after it sees print, then perhaps someone within the company should put a stop to the story (or at least that aspect of the story) before it gets that far.

This has happened before, of course, but maybe not as often as it happens to Dr. Doom.  There have been several stories where Doom has seen an incredible power upgrade, changed his costume and told the Fantastic Four that they are now beneath his concern, but he'll kill them at a moment's notice if they bother him again.  Walter Simonson did a great story around FF #350 dealing with a new, improved Doom (who had apparently been in space or somewhere for a long time previous to the picture below), and Millar and Hitch did it again just a few months ago.  But now even though barely any time has passed since the story was printed, Dr. Doom is back to being his same old self, at his same old power level.  It just seems...poorly planned.

I sound like a pretty big nerd right now.  So I'll stop.  But seriously...manhole covers.  Come on.

When will people realize you can't just lift up a manhole cover?

One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from famed director Alfred Hitchcock, who noted that you can make an audience believe the impossible, but not the implausible.  I try to keep this in mind while writing, and it's a tool that I wish more writers - in comics and other mediums - would follow.

In comics, for instance, I have no trouble believing that Superman, as a character, can exist.  Alien from a doomed planet, just happens to look human, gets powers from the Sun being a different color than his...I'm fine with that.  Bruce Banner gets bombarded with Gamma radiation, and instead of, I don't know, dying of cancer, he turns into the Hulk.  Beyond where he gets all that extra mass he's lugging around (and how his pants stay on), I'm fine with it.  Absolutely!  That's integral to the plot, and I can suspend my disbelief for things like that with no problem.

However, I have to draw the line when it comes to events that are just too implausible, even in a world where the Flash can run near the speed of light and not catch on fire from the friction or suffocate from the lack of oxygen (I know, I know...he's got his "protective aura".  Whatever that is.)  I absolutely cannot stand when a character, perhaps one fleeing some imminent danger, decides to take to the sewers as a means of refuge or escape.  This character spots a nearby manhole and makes a break for it.  He or she slyly LIFTS THE MANHOLE COVER out of place, takes the ladder down into the hole, then slides the cover back into place, slipping out of sight.

Don't people realize that manhole covers weigh, like, 300 pounds (136 kg to our international readers)?  Seriously, go outside now, locate the nearest manhole, and try to move it.  Give it a try!  Unless you have something that gives you a decent amount of leverage, it's not going to budge.  If manhole covers were really as easy to move as you'd see in a movie or in a comic book, people would steal them all the time.  College students would take them and hang them up on their walls like they do with street signs.  People would have fun and toss them around like an oversized Frisbee.  Ever wonder why this doesn't happen?  Because it's near impossible to move them.  When work crews come and need to remove a manhole cover, they have tools to facilitate this.  They don't just bend down and grab it.

The above pictures are all from comics I purchased in the last month (though one is, admittedly, a reprint).  None of the characters so nonchalantly grabbing the manhole covers in question is imbued with super strength.  I suppose you could make the case for the Ninja Turtles being stronger than people, but even that's a stretch.  My point is, these writers are all talented.  They work on popular books and characters.  Why, then, do they write such ridiculous, implausible scenarios into their books?

I want to write a scene in a book one day where a character tries to go into the sewer by lifting a manhole cover, and instead of gaining instant access, he gets a hernia from the effort.  Also, I want to write a character who shouts "people only use ten percent of their brains!", and immediately have that character get hit by a bus.  That's one of the most unbelievable phrases I continue to hear and see in various forms of media.