World Enough and Time

Quoth the friend, miraclo AKA Mike Norton:

Marvel has with increasing frequency let almost anyone they think might help sales write whatever they want, no matter how much it flies in the face of items already established, that I've gotten well beyond arm's length distance from such things. It occurs to me that I didn't read the BOOKS OF DOOM, and as I cast my mind back for the most part my memories of Valeria are from a long time back. Much as with last year's (at least roughly last year's) mini on Stephen Strange (come to think of it, there was more than one in the past couple years) which I tried reading but couldn't stomach, I come around again and again to Marvel's editorial positions continuing to sinecures or at least a misnomer. In the end all Joey Q cares about is how many market percentage points they are ahead of DC. That's the only measure of success they pay attention to.

Claremont introduced a Valeria Von Doom during his often lamentable run on the current volume, then we end up with a Valeria Richards...

Once upon a time I would devour and catalog - even if only somewhere in mind - every new detail, but once upon a time I've come to realize is long, long ago. The feeble hope remains that the Marvel Universe will eventually return to more caring, custodial hands, but as month follows month of carelessness and wanton ugliness - it's like having some gang of well-armed punks invade one's hometown and decide that anything to get a laugh is worth doing - it becomes more and more difficult to disentangle. If they can't even be bothered to coordinate events happening in their huge crossover events (Civil War, and the ongoing Initiative and World War Hulk, are good examples) then how much hope do we have for details of characters and history?

Still, hey... Kurt Busiek took a good stab at fixing things during the early run of his last contact with Avengers, and we've seen Geoff Johns come in and do some wonderful repair work at DC, including the redemption of Hal Jordan in a way that didn't just toss out the stories that went awry, but - instead - used that info to his own ends.

So, back around to the initial question, I don't recall a full name being attributed to her.

Beyond that, I don't know what the current condition and location of VVD's childhood sweetheart may be. At this stage I'm convinced that who, what and where she is, under current Marvel policies, will be who, what- and wherever one of Marvel's "hot" creators will decide based solely on whatever whim hits them.

Mike's got one of the better memories for this sort of historical detail outside of, say, Peter Sanderson in my experience. If he doesn't recall a surname given to Valeria I(for want of a better alias), then no one's likely yet bothered with it.

I don't entirely agree with all of his opinion, although I've had my moments of sympathy...