Are we cynical about superheroes?

Yeah, nobody called them out on it. Well, Superman did when Magog killed the Joker but the public was on Magog's side for that, an approval that opened the door for more extreme behavior from more extreme supers which escalated until the point where it didn't matter if anyone called them out on it because no one had the power to stop them.

I guess that is one reason to be cynical, noraml people cannot do anything unless you are some sort of badass normal with superintelligence, training and skills.

So in other words, they're not people with thoughts and ideas, they're just a marauding horde of strawmen?

I suppose if you put it that way.

Pretty much, yeah; just like the Elite or the Red Hood whenever he guest stars in a Batman ongoing. Simply put, DC can't handle an honest discussion on differing methodology, so the issue is invariably debate and switched whenever it comes up.

And I'd say a lot of cynicism comes precisely from post-Morrison company policies artificially trying to separate superheroes from normal people. The way I see it, they are normal people. Particularly the speedsters and the Lanterns are really just regular guys who got superpowers as adults, so it's not like they'd suddenly start lugging planet-sized god-complexes around. Meanwhile, the more powerful humanity's regular arsenal becomes, the more inane the whole puny earthlings attitude looks. Nowadays, the gods are the puny ones.

Basically, much like the Bat-god hyperbole, DC's cape deification was a marketing gimmick that leaked into canon, has since long overstayed its welcome, and has gone stale and uncompetitive, with Batman now being touted as DC's premier "human" superhero in films and other media... which is only slightly less silly given his resources, but it'll have to do. In my opinion, the company really needs to focus on its mid-carders - people with superpowers who aren't total powerhouses - rather than always play the human-god binary contrast. Same goes for the lethal action aspect - at least some heroes can have a more pragmatic mindset without being treated as if they've gone all Punisher on the general populace.

edited 4th May '15 12:32:34 PM by indiana404

Again I don't get why you have a problem with supers being portrayed as more powerful than normal human weapons given the former. How does it strain suspension of disbelief more than the concept of super powers to begin with?

Furthermore, DC heroes for the most part still have secret I.Ds and interact with friends and family. Even WW's pre-Flashpoint job as an Ambassador required interaction normal humans. And she was portrayed as being pragmatic without being Punisher level crazy. At least in her own book.

In her own books, she usually fights nominally not quite human opponents, which is another bundle of joy in itself. When she snapped a guy's neck after explicit deliberations on why it was the only choice available at the time, she got enough flak to make a jacket.

And it's not so much about powers outweighing weapons (though really, modern weaponry simply has to be utterly downplayed for such stories to work), but rather the idea that governments can't have loyal metahumans themselves, or spruce up new generations of powered armor, super serums or whatever else can tip the scales. In general, the idea of superheroes as uncontested autocrats is both inherently cynical, especially considering their anti-establishment origins, and just silly in terms of internal consistency, since it hinges on the improbability of superpowers being only available by birth or accident, or that the only guy able to reliably take down rogue capes usually walks among them while dressed as a flying rodent. Not exactly a stable premise for polemics, methinks.

The only reason she got flak for killing Lord was because the tape that showed her doing it left out a lot context to the situation.

The supers are not portrayed as uncontested aristocrats and any time they start behaving in such a manner it's usually acknowledged as part of the story's aesop.

edited 4th May '15 2:12:00 PM by windleopard

Yeah, uncontested aristocrat supers is generally a sign that our heroes have come upon a dystopia run by alternate versions of themselves.

That said, fuck DiDio for (among other things) mandating that any attempt to have a life outside of superheroism is doomed to failure.

edited 4th May '15 7:56:58 PM by ElkhornTheDowntrodden

Well, the ordinary mortals weren't entirely helpless in Kingdom Come; they had their solution to the super human problem, it just wasn't one anyone wanted to implement.

The solution would cause more danger than it actually solves? Humans are screwed either way.

Well, the notion that humans are screwed, at least without the influence of superheroes, is one of the recurring staples of the genre. It's frequently used to justify not only why humanity needs superheroes in particular (rather than well-equipped special agents or strike teams), but also why the technological resources available to capes shouldn't be more widely distributed, out of fear that humanity will destroy itself if it adopts any technology with potential applications (which we've spent about 70 years not doing, so I really think we should be cut some slack at this point).

Conversely, stories trying to justify the opposite - why capes themselves shouldn't be more proactive - usually present them as small steps heroes, stating that only humanity can resolve its own problems... even though every revolutionary improvement in human history, from the printing press to vaccination, is invariably the result of one leap of inventive thought getting mass-produced, and shared with the rest of the world. Sure, Superman might be under some alien non-interference clause, but there's no reason for Batman not to share some of his toys with worldwide law-enforcement... that is, apart from him being a manipulative control-freak.

Basically, the problem is inflation. Some superheroes are simply so overpowered, that stories have to bend over themselves to explain why all their resources are utterly inconsequential to the world at large. We all know it's a weasel, and usually don't mind its presence. But when it's used as part of an aesop, it can get downright misanthropic. For that matter, the gimmick that superhero stories in general have to be grand polemics rather than fun action-adventures, has probably sucked more life out of the genre than all the rage 'roid monstrosities of the 90's combined.

edited 5th May '15 10:56:45 PM by indiana404

To be fair, Batman doesn't share his technology with himself most of the time. He can build robot suits that shoot knockout lasers, but 90% of the time he's got (at most) some kevlar protecting his chest, and insists on fighting using just his fists, feet, and bat-shaped boomerangs.

Just because you wouldn't shit on them for "trivializing real problems" doesn't mean a lot of other people wouldn't. Remember the kerfuffle over giving Babs Gordon her ability to legs back? The one about how triggering it was to make her not paralyzed anymore, not the one about DiDio's Silver Age fetish?

edited 6th May '15 8:29:02 AM by ElkhornTheDowntrodden

Interesting article on Batman and Superman-as-enemies, even though it gets the Nolan movies' morals completely backwards and is making some big leaps in logic about the BvS trailer.

I guess I must not be cynical then. Course not. According to my worldview, a happy ending is guaranteed. Eventually.

You could say that DC loves their happy endings.

Except the characters can't ever have an ultimate happy ending, because that would mean no more stories. At least no more high stakes stories.

You see, now I have to say "There are no happy endings — because nothing ever ends." And "A happy ending is always guaranteed. Just find a quiet place to stop reading."

Moving back to the Nineties being when the dialectic screeched to a halt, am I the only one here who thinks AzBats could've been a good thing under the pen of someone who wouldn't just use Jean-Paul as a strawman for Bruce to inevitably shit on?

As Azreal, sure. His only reason for being Batman was to serve as a straw man, a "grimmer and grittier" Batman. If they'd kept him as Azrael and actually threw some resources into that, as a character independent of Batman, then he might've worked just fine. But I don't really think anyone's ever going to make an extensive go of a Batman other than Bruce Wayne unless they're willing to eschew everything that's gone before and start from scratch. And they won't do that because they've got too much invested in Bruce-Bats, and besides, there's no reason for them to do so as Batman remains pretty successful.

That's the point of my question. What if he wasn't set up to fail, to be told that he's a Bad Person and that he should feel Bad?

edited 19th May '15 8:21:05 PM by ElkhornTheDowntrodden

He'd kind of have to be a different character.

I think the reason we are cynical about this genre or the two companys actually is because the genre is more focus in sustain itself than to tell a good story.

That means the necesary wessel become vital to them, why continuity is tie about what comic sell more(after all killing joke is still reference even when it add nothing important to batman aside of how good it was) how villians cant be kill because they are to good or the world is "the same" even when there is alien invasion,hell,etc since they cant be really allow to end, the quirky stuff the genre is expect to have become chains around them.

Or a least that is my take

That makes some sense, comics have all sorts of things going on and yet evil is almost never thwarted and in some cases it can get even worse for the world at large.