Are we cynical about superheroes?

I think they should make more all ages stories. Or treat superheroes like Superman as volunteer firefighters with super powers.

Pretty much, yeah. I want the default status quo to be good, so that when the story at hand inevitably returns to it, the experience is rewarding rather than disenheartening. By default, before and after a story, the villain thereof should be either in prison, or missing, presumed dead. By default, unless you're advertising the next Punisher book, no villains should be able to just shrug off the legal system. And neither should the heroes - by default, even big-name teams are mostly unofficial cooperations by otherwise independent operators, with no establshment larger than the Avengers mansion or the Hall of Justice. By default, superheroes operate within established legal frameworks, eccentric as such may be, rather than constantly be at odds with democratic authorities and society in general.

Really, there's nothing difficult about this. There's like a ton of superhero-style action cartoons built on that same formula, making the case that the problematic aspects found within the big two publishers exist for their own sake, produced by the regurgitating of sacred cows decidedly not inherent to the genre. One need only look at Hellboy and the BPRD comics to see how a superhero setting can work once cleaned up of all the chaff that's considered standard for the genre, like convoluted yet static continuities or an over-emphasis on personal dramas rather than action.

(And in that regard, virtually no superhero but Marvel's mutants has a leg to stand on when complaining about their lifestyle, since it's a lifestyle they chose. Batman has been a freakin' drama queen ever since post-TDKR wannabes shifted his characterization there into the mainstream, and DC has decided that his is the only way for a superhero to be "deep" and emotionally engaging.)

In short, the potential is there, no inherent problems obstruct it from developing, and the main thing needed now is a creative direction focusing less on the personal dramas that every other genre can do - and do it better since most other fiction is allowed to have status quo changes - and more on the high-flying action of the kind that only superhero stories can deliver. 'Nuff said.

As long as the Meatgrinder mentality of the late 00s/early 10s never comes back

It's doubtful it ever really left.

More like 1 and 3 really.

I've been watching DC Super Hero Girls recently, and it really does do what Indiana is advocating for. The heroes are likable and (mostly) good, and when villains do appear, they're an interruption to an otherwise-pleasant status quo. Never Be a Hero is completely averted by Barbara becoming Batgirl because she's awesome, and quite apart from fetishising eternal villainy, this series takes an optimistic, hopeful route with villains such as Gorilla Grodd, Big Barda, and Blackfire going for redemption and becoming heroes.

(Also this version of Harley Quinn is adorable).

What makes you say that or is it a case of Its left DC and gone to Marvel?

I'm largely a DC fan

I'd say a major factor contributing to overall cynicism is Marvel's continuing emphasis on having their heroes fight each other, and DC's continuing emphasis on doing big crossovers dedicated to sorting out (or further complicating) their continuity. Especially the latter, as it can be particularly alienating for new readers, and even old-timers get sick of it after awhile. I'd like to see a moratorium on comics about comics for awhile.

As to philosophical matters, I'm not sure I'm in favor myself of characters who become super-heroes "just because they're awesome." I'm not saying it can't work, but for the most part that motivation feels weak to me, and at the very least isn't particularly interesting from a story perspective. It's been said that the "why" of a super-hero is actually the most important aspect.

I know the tendency of established super-heroes to be leery of newbies is one of Indiana's hobby-horses, but you can find just as many instances of "Hey, glad to have your help" in the annals of super-hero stories as you can "Go home, you'll just get hurt." I can see how that latter attitude might irritate someone, but I don't think it's as constitutionally pervasive as Indiana seems to think it is.

I'd say the why of the superhero is indeed a major aspect, and one vital to undestanding the difference between cases of "good work, newbie" (most examples being legacy characters or adopted sidekicks), and "go home, interloper" (most examples being deliberate strawmen of heroes from competing companies). Simply put, what is the problem that superheroes are the solution of? Back in the Golden Age, superheroes acted outside the legal system precisely because the legal system was corrupt and ineffective. This is what made them different from similar pulp heroes like Mandrake or Doc Savage. Of course, what with WWII and all, they were quickly retooled into stunning symbols of patriotism, fighting the same larger-than-life threats as their pulp progenitors... and also the Japs. Nobody wants to remember the part about the Japs.

Similarly, social upheaval in the sixties and the seventies resulted in another boom of new superheroes, often explicitly tailored to particular mistreated groups. To contrast, the more optimistic and gung-ho days of the eighties and nineties saw a rise in conventional heroes - mostly pseudo-military specialists like G.I. Joe, or space cowboys like Brave Starr and the Galaxy Rangers. There was no perceived need for superheroes on that front, while the massive inner city crime waves called for much darker vigilantes than before - heroes who fought not in the name of those oppressed by the legal system, but those terrorized by crime itself.

Which leads us to the present situation. The problem nowadays is that writers are both reluctant to present heroes in full support of civil autorities, and also skittish about again making them outlaws in full. They want for their heroes to be celebrated by society at large... but don't have that many nice things to say about said society overall.

Here is also where the problem with newcomers arises, as not everyone is of the same opinion as to what constitutes a pressing problem, never mind the respective solution. Conventional capes are none too bothered by someone like the Ray or Kamala Khan joining the great responsibility club and doing the exact same thing as them. They don't rock the boat. But those who don costumes voluntarily - like the Punisher or the Vigilante - tend to have a particular criminal problem in mind, and are none too restrained about solving it their own way. Fittingly, Marvel's heroes - very few of which are dedicated vigilantes - are a lot less bothered by their respective anti-heroes' operations than the DC capes. They're not defined by fighting criminals, so they have little to lose by someone else outright killing them.

The question now is, what are the problems of today? What are the villains of today, so that new heroes can be created and old ones retooled to better fight them? Notably, going explicitly political has not been doing either big house any favors, so apparently, a subtler and more even-handed approach is required, at least for stories aiming at poignance. Otherwise, comics end up being mirror images of the pro-gun, pro-military, pro-Murica extravaganzas in the Baen Books catalog, and at least those come one finished story at a time and don't cost fifteen cents a page.

Superhero comics are escapist fantasy for kids. At least, they should be. Having excess cynicism in them is silly.

They can be escapist fantasies for anyone! But I agree that they should be escapist. I want to read a Superman comic to see the day being saved in a fantastic manner, not to see Clark mope about not being able to save everyone.

I've mentioned before how the simplest way to keep superheroes escapist is - per the very definition of escapism itself - to keep them separate from mundane matters as much as possible. To my observation, DC Superhero Girls is more of a Highschool AU than anything, but Justice League Action and the old Teen Titans cartoon do well to feature a mostly self-contained setting where the political and social implications of superheroics are mercifully ignored.

The other option - one more befit Marvel, I believe - is for superheroes to be fully integrated in what essentially becomes an alternate history post-cyberpunk version of reality, wherein the Hulk thrashing a random Arizona town is treated the same way as a hurricane wrecking another - still not a nice thing to happen, but not exactly fuel for adventist anxieties.

Essentially, superheroes functioning outside civil authorities is all well and good; every hard-boiled detective or pulp adventurer works like that. But superheroes regarded as existing beyond civil authorities - that's where all the pointless pseudo-political baggage tends to mount up, with cynicism being an expected reaction when none of it leads anywhere.

In the case of characters like Punisher or Vigilante, I think any individual character's problem with them would stem from A. How closely said character worked with established authority (because established authority would definitely have a problem with Punisher and Vigilante) or B. Whether the character in question draws the line at killing their opponents, or at letting people kill anyone (even criminals) wholesale, or some combination thereof. There's really nothing inconsistent or even hypocritical about a vigilante who doesn't kill his/her enemies; it's a pretty common occurrence for people to feel that different laws or taboos carry different weight. It's really a matter of characterization as to whether characters will come into conflict with each other.

Cynicism arises the more attention is drawn to the essential unreality of the situation. The more writers build stories around and call attention to Batman not killing the Joker, the more it draws attention to the fact that the Batman/Joker scenario exists to perpetuate a (thus far) successful fictional status quo. In short, it's stories that are themselves built on cynicism that in turn generate more cynicism.

Regarding working with authorities, as dark as it sounds, the Punisher tends to have a number of friends on the force who, as Jack Burton put it, have better things to do than get killed. Meanwhile in Gotham, there was a nice JLA/Hitman crossover where Batman leaves the titular hired gun to the cops... who leisurely take him to his favorite bar, since they also like to have someone around who actually reduces the supervillain population. I reckon that's a functional framework, if not exactly family-friendly.

As for the Joker problem - given the unreliability of comic-book death itself, one cannot in good faith claim he's left alive merely in order to be kept in circulation. Instead, I find this to be little more than an artificial inflation of his importance, since in all other aspects, he simply doesn't cut it. He's a weak physical fighter, his plans nowadays revolve around pointless destruction, his dialogue consists of lame fauxlosophical waxing... there's just nothing compelling about him.

Consequently, the no-kill code is only ever used to milk artificial drama out of situations that wouldn't otherwise warrant it - by definition, this is cynicism for its own sake. So in turn, if you open a superhero comic with the expectation of seeing the hero triumph over the villain or at least try their best - which is a reasonable expectation in any other medium - chances are you won't be opening another one after encountering a few too many of those incidents.

I don't think a No-kill rule is necessarily wrong, especially for Batman in particular since most of Batman's enemies aren't actually in a fit mental state to take responsibility for their actions. The problem is maintaining the status quo, none of those mentally ill villains get better. In one episode of Batman the Animated Series, the Ventriloquist actually does get better in his final appearance, having had therapy to help him cope with his condition and symbolically triumphing over it by destroying the Scarface puppet by the end of the episode.

But that's the sort of catharsis (and it is cathartic, it's one of my favourite Batman TAS episodes) that can't exist in comics because you just know that even if they did go for it some hack would kill and replace him or give him amnesia or wreck it in some way sooner or later because that's what comics are. It's the constant need to keep the status quo that's the problem, not the no-kill rule.

I think Rogue and Songbird are the only former villains whose redemption arcs have stuck.

I'm not sure that's it either. Even with the well-accepted stability of the overall status quo, you can still have separate stories end on a high note, as if they are definite endings.

Another toxic aspect of the no-kill rule - one far more cumbersome to handle - is when characters try to enforce it on others, including actual civil authority officials. Back in Rucka's Checkmate run, for instance, the titular organization pretty much had to switch to rubber bullets in Superman's presence... in the middle of a firefight with terrorists. Conversely, it's just as common to have people mention that the current enemies are technically non-human, so they can be slaughtered with extreme prejudice at will. It's a rare story - such as the aforementioned JLA/Hitman crossover - that actually tries to address more maturely the matter that lethal force is often necessary rather than an expression of pointless brutality, and it's the capes themselves that are privileged enough to choose not to use it.

Which might be a major point to be had here. Modern writers love to shill their beloved characters as larger-than-life and oh so much better than ordinary people... but I notice this tends to make them unrelatable; unattainable, as it were. There's a reason Batman is pretty much the only DC character with a stable following - his financial resources aside, he can still sell the idea of someone becoming a hero through personal effort and skill, rather than birth or happenstance. One can't choose to be Superman, but Batman is a whole different story. Over at Marvel, I reckon Deadpool exploded in popularity for much the same reason - he became who he is by choice... and the virtues of Canadian healthcare, natch.

To contrast, I notice the opposite idea - that superheroes are to be put on a pedestal, intentionally beyond the abilities of mortal men - roughly coincides in implementation with the decline of popularity of the titlles that utilized it. Perhaps in that regard, the inflation of idols is just as cynicism-inducing as the glorification of monsters.

Superman is who he is because he was raised right.

Which is another thing people can't actually choose. If anything, one of the major accomplishments of the DCEU is presenting a Superman becoming who he is in spite of how he was raised.

Deadpool got popular because of fourth wall humour and memes, nothing more. His popularity was sort of maintained by a decent movie but if you're looking for a Marvel selfmade man Iron Man is right there (and given that I've had several people actually quote that as a reason for liking him) along with Peter Parker for an ordinary person wrestling with superpowers.

Heck, using Badass Normal as the baseline for "relatable" doesn't work either because we have examples of both shoddily written unrelatable B Ns (too many to count, mainly anti heroes from the 90's) and well written relatable non-B Ns (Superman as played by Christopher Reeve is the prime example that springs to mind).

If Checkmate switched to rubber bullets in Superman's presence, then the writer of that particular story was betraying his/her lack of understanding of the character, or projecting some odd prejudices about him. There are literally hundreds of stories where Superman displays absolutely no reservations about the police (or the army, or some other exponent of civil authority) employing deadly force if such force is warranted by their lives being in danger or at risk. I've always interpreted the no-kill rule as essentially the hero looking squarely at the legal justice system and saying "If you want this villain dead, then you kill him. Here he is, gift wrapped for you."

Herein lies another problem: after so many years of publication, you can pretty much find examples of Superman doing any thing, you can find stuff to prove Indiana's point, and you can find stuff to disprove it. The best solution to the conflict that would likely be generated if a no-kill hero should come into contact with a killing hero is probably not to have it happen.

Batman is by no means realistic, and I doubt very many people actually find him so. He does all manner of things that are entirely impossible, for one thing. For another, the average person tends to read exceptional intelligence, martial arts skill, even just plain talent, as super-powers anyway, not taking into account the work one needs to develop them. It's stuff the average joe can't do, and so it's considered mysterious and elusive, even if it is entirely attainable.

As to Deadpool...well for one thing, he's a mutant with a healing factor, which in his case has been employed to give him the kind of invulnerability enjoyed by Wile E.Coyote. His popularity, as has been stated above, most likely stems from the irreverent, bawdy tone of his adventures and his sense of humor, rather than from his motives. I'd be surprised if most of his fanbase was aware he even has motives.

edited 22nd Dec '17 1:57:47 PM by Robbery

Anyone who thinks Batman is realistic in any capacity is deluding themselves. He's just as much a childhood wish fulfillment as Superman and the rest of the superhero comics industry.

Also, as has been pointed out, Batman is hardly the regular person, he's from a family of incredible wealth.

Also the World's Greatest Detective, one of the best martial artist, knowledgeable in chemistry, physics, engineering, etc.

By that account, the Punisher would also be considered superhuman, what with being a master combatant, sniper, strategist, weapons and explosives expert, psychological warfare manipulator... Yet in-universe, he's usually regarded as just a guy with some guns and dedication, no inherently different from any other soldier on a mission, if one somewhat more unwholesome than most.

Point is, with the exception of campy and comedic stories, the more larger-than-life and glamorous superheroes are made out to be, the more their regular audience evidently shrinks. It sounds kinda obvious when put like that, but stories focusing on heroes explicitly beyond the likes of ordinary people, aren't exactly appealing to a market consisting entirely of such people, various otherkin fantasies notwithstanding.

For instance, look at how the comic market exploded back in the nineties, when the general impression was that all it took to be a hero was a nice big gun and maybe some high-tech accessories. The idea was so strong, it actually threatened the status of the more traditional staple heroes, to the point writers began to intentionally discredit it... and so the market dwindled, would-be fans fully moving to video games and sci-fi action books, never to return. Who'da thunk that when you do your best to demonize a popular hero concept, the people who like it are gonna give you the finger.

Flash forward a couple of decades, however, and it was precisely one such hero who, against all odds and explicit executive meddling, became a smash hit. One year later, the skull-chested vigilante who guest-starred in another series explicitly in an attempt to deconstruct his philosophy and methodology, received his own show, one successful enough to warrant another season.

How much more obvious can this principle be? For all the industry's own fluff to the contrary, glamorized icons and paragons have little staying power with general audiences compared to more relatable and down-to-earth heroes... especially when this doesn't automaitcally make them melodramatic bores. All in all, it might be a prudent and profitable move to re-explore that aspect of superheroics, even if requires some traditionalists (both in-universe and on the writing boards) to take a back-seat for a while.

That whole post was full of generalisations that don't really stick, but this sticks out as legitimately wrong. Writers began to discredit the Liefeldian 90's anti-hero when it just got out of control in The Dark Age Of Comic Books (and there's a reason it was called that). It was just nothing but a load of gritty muscleheaded overblown crap. It had its day. It wasn't some genius idea stilled in the cradle. It ran roughshod over comics for the better part of a decade before it killed itself under the weight of its own stupidity and it was after that that comic book artists picked over its corpse with stuff like Kingdom Come and Knightsfall.

Also, if anything it was this fad itself that contributed to the comic book crash with its overall decline in writing quality, alongside many other factors like takeovers, shorttermism from upper management, the consolidation of the distributor market, speculation, and cover gimmicks. It was not people rage quitting because of a lack of 90's Antiheroes.

People do not inherently find Badass Normal vigilantes more appealing. For example, Superman outsells Batman in more economically deprived areas. In addition, there is some crossover between paragon and Badass Normal - see Captain America, who has also been pretty popular in cinemas.

Deadpool was pretty damn successful, no one's denying that. But it didn't change the comic book movie industry (or at least, hasn't yet). Deadpool's not relatable because he uses swords and guns because ordinary people with swords and guns *don't grow back legs when they're lopped off*. He's relatable because of his humour. So he wouldn't even back up your point even if he did fit the archetype you're trying to uphold.

(If you want a Badass Normal self made man comic book movie that changed the industry Iron Man is *right there*. I don't know why you're ignoring that one.)

The problem here is that you're trying to find some sort of magic formula that will appeal to loads of people, but the simple answer is that there's no replacement for good writing. The problem with comics isn't about some magic hidden trick - especially not embracing a fad that's A- been done before and B- nearly wrecked the industry.

edited 23rd Dec '17 6:34:12 AM by Sigilbreaker26