Are we cynical about superheroes?

It was a gradual, multifaceted evolution, starting in the 70s when the companies for some reason tried to make superheroes relevant. Kids responded well to the more down-to-Earth tone of the Bronze Age, so they kept on getting more serious. As they got mature, kids kept reading comics into their teen and adult years, and the companies increasingly came to cater to the more mature fans, partly because it let them tell better and more nuanced stories, partly because it let them have blood and sex, and partly because those teens and young adults had more disposable income to spend on comics.

The thing is, as you write more serious, complex stories that appeal to an older demographic, the more intelligent and mature readers inevitably think harder about the stories and analyse them in greater depth. Furthermore, as the trappings of the Silver Age were left behind in favour of more realistic and down-to-Earth stories, the potential real-world impacts of the trappings of the genre come to play a greater role in the stories and, by virtuous cycle, the fans' expectations.

The problem is that superheroes are an inherently escapist genre. At its core, the superhero story is about an anonymous vigilante in an distinctive costume who fights evil on his or her own terms. In the Golden and Silver Ages, that worked perfectly well, as nobody was looking for realism. Come the Bronze Age and people start addressing these issues^note Well, Spider-Man was always based around the problems that superheroism brings, but in the Silver Age it was about the negative impact Spider-Man had on Peter Parker rather than the world at large.

Comic storylines became something more akin to Hollywood action movies (and in the last two decades have become actual Hollywood action movies). Action movies have all sorts of gruesome implications if you think too hard about them (which is a frequent and recurring source of article material on Cracked). However, those issues are relegated to the imaginations of viewers, since the movies themselves don't usually show the aftermath.

Comics, on the other hand, tell ongoing sagas, which means they constantly portray the aftermath of the alien invasions, demonic rampages, terrorist attacks, and gang wars that make up their stories. When such a huge chunk of the story is about recovering from the last event, it's no wonder we get cynical.

It's weird that the characters in the Silver Age are always surprised by the new weird threat. Or have arbitrary skepticism. But Seen It All could come of as cynical...

Oh, I dunno. Silver Age Batman seemed to adapt to things like 'I've suddenly been turned into a baby!' or 'I've been turned into a fish-man!' or 'Robin and me will have to keep fighting crime from a submarine or we'll die if we emerge!' with remarkable ease.

I would have said no, but then I saw Man of Steel.

Basically what happened is that a variety of factors led to superheroes (particularly on film) going from strictly children's entertainment to a more generalized fare that in theory is supposed to be enjoyed by teens and adults as well. So while in the past you could get away with certain things because most of your audience consisted of little kids, now they have to be addressed or subverted in some point because adults are more likely to roll their eyes and go "REALLY?"

The other big thing is we've experienced cultural shifts where certain attitudes have been discarded, which begs deconstruction.

For instance, in the movies and modern comics, SHIELD is portrayed in a much more dubious and sometimes antagonistic light, whereas in the Silver Age they were basically a Big Good. SHIELD is a relic of a time where people more readily trusted their government and bought into the idea of a massive intelligence agency as inherently good and moral, which obviously not the case anymore.

S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't "their government" though, it's the United Nations...not that you'd be the first person to forget that, that'd likely be Mark Millar when he wrote Civil War.

Maybe that's it, as far as comics go? Letting people like Millar write superhero books, who'd clearly rather be writing anything else.

Edit:On second thought, it has to go deeper than that since they still found enough of an audience to get more work doing superhero comics...

edited 4th Dec '14 3:17:39 PM by IndirectActiveTransport

Let's not forget that the vast majority of writers and editors in this day and age are Promoted Fanboys. Thus, if there was a story that they always wanted to see (like, say, Superman forced to break his code against killing or Spider-man sleeping with Black Cat), they can totally do it. The more the character was forbidden from doing certain things, the more likely it is somebody, somewhere, became morbidly curious about seeing it happen.

edited 8th Dec '14 12:50:22 PM by KingZeal

I agree with the posts above. Many comics today are cynical because their writers have such a cynical POV.

I mean I don't blame them, we live in an unfair world after all. But superheroes are escapism- they're the place you are supposed to go when you want to see the good guys win. This doesn't mean there cannot be moral ambivalence- in fact the best stories always have it- but it shouldn't feel like the heroes don't matter either.

And yes, in the movies the realism is more for the sake of that part of the audience who isn't used to superheroes. You want to sell them to as many people as possible. But just as a horror film would feel lame if nobody died or suffered, a superhero movie without heroic triumphs also feels failed. Which was my problem with Man of Steel: if there's a hero who should NOT be ambivalent about morality, it's Superman.

Note by the way, that just having superpowers doesn't make you a superhero. We have had some very interesting explorations of what real people would do if they gained superabilities, such as in the (not exactly well titled) Heroes. This is basically its own genre, going as far back as the early Sci Fi novels.

edited 8th Dec '14 3:32:49 PM by Sijo

I should think that super-villains frequently demonstrate that just having powers does not make one a super hero. One of the things I always liked about early Spider Man stories is how often you see the essential elements of Spidey's origin played out in the origins of his villains, and that it was the choice of what to do with their powers that made all the difference.

Could Values Dissonance as well as some serious implications play a role in our cynicism?

More than likely.

Every time I read one of Indiana404's posts, I become more and more aware of the Values Dissonance that results in Rooting for the Empire, and has been harming the Super Hero genre as a whole.

I think we all see it too, but the guys writing these stories don't.

I'd say it depends as much on the tone of the story as on the content itself. For example, the Powerpuff Girls are kindergarten-age superheroes who regularly raze entire city blocks, but it's almost always played for laughs. Things go downhill mostly when the promoted fanboys running the asylum start getting too high on their own prescriptions. For some time now, marketing exaggerations like Batman being a symbol, or Superman getting praised as some sort of Messiah, have been leaking into official in-universe characteristics - that's like if Rambo was officially recognized by the US Military as the walking WMD he's advertised as.

The villains have it even worse, since most of them hail from an age where descriptors like "power-hungry" and "crazy" were used as shorthand for all sorts of ill-conceived motivations, preemptively sabotaging most attempts at crafting complex characters out of simplistic caricatures. I've mostly come to enjoy the career crooks with cool powers and fun quips - guys like the Rogues, for example - while I cringe at every verbal beatdown meant to state how guys like the Joker or Lex Luthor are bad, evil, nasty, bad, wrong, and bad. Beating up your own designated strawman isn't what I'd consider high entertainment, and after the third time or so, any further character development becomes unconvincing, since you can't tell when the next scheduled sermon is going to deconstruct or dismantle it entirely.

In general, current genre marketing tends to write checks the actual stories can't really cash. The premises can only be stretched so far for dramatic effect, before a lot of details start looking uncomfortable when they're really taken as seriously as the plot pretends they should be. Consequently, I don't think the resulting fan reaction can be called cynicism concerning the core concept, so much as simply skepticism regarding the overbearing tone surrounding stories about, well, people in spandex tights punching one another for great justice.

Speaking of that topic... what does everyone thinks about this video?

There was an interesting point someone made a while ago about how collateral damage has gotten to the point where it's impossible to take it seriously or feel any sort of tension. They specifically cited the epic highway fight scene in The Winter Soldier where you have Cap, Black Widow, and Falcon fighting off a squad of HYDRA goons in a crowded city area.

Aside from a single instance of Black Widow screaming for people to get out of the way while she's being shot at, there really isn't much time spent making the audience care about the surrounding area or civilians. They're essentially more props and set pieces than victims and as a result there's really no emotional connection. I mean you have the Winter Soldier causing a massive traffic accident with explosions and cars flipping through the air, but we don't get even a single scene of someone limping or Cap trying to save someone from a burning car.

I think that general attitude has pervaded comics as well since now the bad guys regularly kill so many innocent people that it's impossible to care anymore. "Oh the Joker has a building full of middle schoolers tied up with a bomb about to go off? How's that any different from the building full of office workers we saw him kill with a machine gun two weeks ago in another series? Why do I care, again?"

edited 19th Dec '14 9:52:25 AM by comicwriter

I don't think the whole edgy and grimdark thing is a problem necessarily, but most western superhero comic book writers and artists simply don't have the writing chops to pull off sensitive and dark subject matter in a mature, engaging fashion, partly because of their lack of skill and also because of the very nature of the medium as never-ending stories, plus editorial mandates and a bunch of other miscellaneous problems.

whenever they do try it tends to come off as trying too hard or just juvenile instead of using it to make an intelligent point or enhance the emotional investment of the audience. most of the successful examples of dark subjects being used well I have found in non-cape books like Saga, Blacksad, or Pride of Bagdah because the artist and author have good visual storytelling and generally solid ideas. i insist that Watchmen is still the best example of "taking superheroes superiously", and it's not incidental that it was a massive deconstruction that pointed out just how dangerous and problematic the concept is to begin with.

edited 21st Dec '14 9:47:25 PM by wehrmacht

Ultimately, we started to become cynical about superheroes when, as they grew up, readers changed and the super-heroes, largely, did not.

European and Asian comics are VERY targeted, too. Most are pretty unapologetic about being geared towards a specific audience. In the US there has been a real resistance to that approach, and in some ways the stories can suffer.

yeah, the japanese industry in particular have comics for literally every demographic in every genre imaginable. you are pretty much guaranteed to find something you will want to read if you look hard enough.

It also helps that Watchmen is a limited series, so when it's over it's over, and there's no need to keep things going. (Which is why it doesn't use Charlton characters).

edited 22nd Dec '14 3:54:19 AM by VampireBuddha

No, it doesn't use Charlton character because DC editorial, while it liked Moore's pitch, didn't want to render the Charlton character unusable (which was a bit of a moot point, as most of them have in fact NOT been used much since DC acquired them)...So okay, you're right, that WAS kind of the reason why Charlton characters weren't used..

The complaint that super hero comics never end seems a mite egocentric; there are always potential new readers who haven't read the stories and aren't familiar with the tropes/ story beats that longtime fans take for granted. They're always going to be new to somebody. A character continuing in publication isn't a bad thing, it's a challenge to writers and editors. There are properties in Europe that have gone on for a long time, too (Doctor Who, Judge Dredd, Tin Tin, etc) and, again, all it does is pose a challenge for the custodians of the property. I will admit, editors at DC and Marvel have a tendency to let their writers write characters into corners that only a reboot or retcon can extricate them from; when you know you're in charge of a continuing property, you'd think you'd take steps to keep from happening.

I think the problem with the "never ending" thing is that a lot of people complain about the heavy continuity comic books have these days; that's what they're getting at. It never ends so there's just a hell of a lot of material to try and take in.

At least I think that's what they mean.

Doctor Who, Judge Dredd, and Tintin aren't superheroes.

Tintin isn't really comparable to Dredd and Who. The latter two are still ongoing and have been for decades non stop, while there haven't been any actual new Tintin stories since Herge's death (personally, I've always found wanting to drag your characters into your grave with yourself terribly selfish, since after a point fictional characters become a legacy for mankind rather than your private playthings, but perhaps that's not to be debated here or now).

edited 22nd Dec '14 11:47:45 AM by NapoleonDeCheese

Quite right, but my point was that they were long-running series that haven't "ended," much as Superman, Batman, etc haven't ended. The "not ending" thing isn't exclusive to super hero comics. Heck, for that matter, Archie hasn't ended; admittedly, it has no discernibly continuity it needs to keep track of, but still.

And for some reason I thought Tin Tin was still going on...oh well. Sorry 'bout that.

edited 22nd Dec '14 2:40:02 PM by Robbery