Saturday, September 1, 2018

Should have been a contender, issue 5

Danielle Foccart was a character that got ignored in the Retroboot.  In fact, I don't recall Jacques mentioning her once.  It's not quite clear how many years were to have transpired between the end of the Baxter series and Vol 6.  Obviously, there had to be a few years because Saturn Girl's boys were not infants.  If they aged, it makes me wonder how far Danielle had aged.  She easily could have been in the Academy.  Perhaps Levitz felt anything he had shown with her would have been derivative to her development from the 5YL continuity. Maybe he only threw that hint about her having powers as  just a random element years ago, never to be developed again.   It's unclear.





Reading X-Men Red these days, I find myself missing Danielle more.  Red features a cyberpath cum technopath known as Trinary.  I like her; she uses her powers very well.  Even in our current day, we are very tied in to technology.  Even if we do have a cataclysm in the feature, we still would eventually go back to technology.  That makes these types of characters very dangerous.  In fact in volume 7 of the Legion, Tharok threw the UP into chaos.

Now I mentioned the terms technopath and cyberpath because they aren't exactly the same.  A technopath controls machinery whereas a cyberpath manipulates software.  Danielle herself should only be a technopath where she can not reprogram software.  I would think that by the 31st century, they have developed a lot of anti-hacking tech.

A technopath has a lot practical uses.  She could potentially repair circuitry and computers rather quickly and fly a ship without actually being at the controls.  From a combat standpoint she may not be the best, having to rely on controlling weapon targeting systems and other gear.  But we see drones now, why wouldn't the 31st century have some equivalent?  I wonder though if a technopath could "see" through the sensors of what they control. If she is flying a ship, can she experience ship sensor readouts through her mental link? That would be an interesting application of powers, directly seeing through security systems or piggybacking off the sensors in automatons.

In order to help with offensive powers, she could keep a nanite swarm handy to do her bidding. This would help keep her from being totally powerless if there were no machinery around.

Now it was shown in the 5YL issues that she was able to take down Tharok of the Fatal Five easily.  I wonder how she would have fared against him in Vol 7.  Maybe she could not stop him but possibly negate some of his influence.  Hopefully we have not seen the last of her.

3 comments:

  1. T-spheres with 31st century tech would make her formidable in the field.

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    1. something, right? Brainy never leaves home without his forcefield belt.

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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