mattfromitaly
asked:
Black Bolt is a great character with a long story of repressing at the utmost an uncontrollable power, since a simple Wimper could destroy a city easily; Always extremely controlled, he never used to fully shout unless in the direst of situations. Seeing how he lately seems to be far more proactive and screaming his lungs out a lot to the same effect (WOK, FF, Infinity 3) would you consider his change in demeanour a step up from his previous characterization, or do you like more the old version?
I think it’s the genie out of the bottle effect in action. To give you a different example, for twenty years nobody other than Thor could lift his hammer. Then, Walt Simonson did his Beta Ray Bill story, in which Bill became Beta Ray Thor by doing just that. And suddenly thereafter, all sorts of other people began lifting the hammer. So something that was considered taboo in a sense was then broken, and thereafter everybody who followed felt free to make use of it. Same sort of thing with Black Bolt. Once people began using his voice as an offensive weapon more casually, it became even more casual still.