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Matt's abilities in comics and TV

[(Anonymous)]

Does anybody have any opinion on how Matt's powers work in the comics vs how they work in the show? In both he has vastly improves sense of hearing, taste, smell, and touch, but his radar sense that features in the comics isn;t mentioned in the series. In the comics he can also do a bunch of other things like read printed text by touch and tell colors by touch and stuff that he doesn't appear to be able to do in the show.

What does everyone think about this? When you write, do you incorporate additional skills from the comics that haven't been mentioned in the TV show but that he may still have, or do you miss them out and stick to established show canon?

Re: Matt's abilities in comics and TV

[(Anonymous)]

in terms of the radar sense and the 'world on fire' I see them as basically being the same thing it's just that the Matt's have two completely different ways of describing it.
(partially because netflix matt is being a flirty little shit with claire but lmao)

Like in waid's run he calls it a tactile sense in that he can 'feel out' everything around him and in terms of visual representations the show and the comics seem to be similar. In that they both involve impressions of the objects and space around them.
(I just think the 'world on fire' is different because the show tried to combine all the senses together in a cohesive way, to create an expression of how matt experiences the world around him) (the comics tend to explain or examine matt's senses as separate entities from what i've seen)

I kind of interpret the whole radar sense thing as human echolocation without making the clicking sounds. Like I was watching some videos from the World Access for the Blind organisation and Daniel Kich and some people said that the brain rewires itself and they train with the echolocation enough that the audio feedback they get helps create a mental image of the space.
Which again, reminds me of visual representations of matt's sensory experiences.

In regards to the 'reading text by touch' and other such skills I kind of like the idea that if he concentrates really hard or under the right circumstances, sure he can do stuff like that. But it's not the most effective way of getting things done and it's kind of a pain in his ass all things told. he doesn't try and do it all too often.

Re: Matt's abilities in comics and TV

[(Anonymous)]

IIRC, Matt takes his glove off to run his fingers over the maps in the warehouse in episode 9, which suggests that he can read at least some printed text by touch. But that probably takes a lot of concentration and obviously it's not something he can do in public, so I assume mostly he doesn't bother and there hasn't yet been any reason for him to demonstrate or explain the trick to any of the other characters.

I agree that the "world on fire" thing is just Matt trying (badly and awkwardly) to be poetic about the synthesis of his other senses that he uses to get a picture of the world around him. I figure he probably uses a mix of echolocation, radiating body heat, disrupted air currents, and subtle vibrations from people's weight shifting on floors or the ground. YMMV, obviously!

Re: Matt's abilities in comics and TV

[(Anonymous)]

Thankfully, in Modern Age DD comics, feeling colors seems to have been dismissed as Silver Age wankery, along with such brilliant abilities as piloting/navigating airplanes and spacecraft by touch