Character Derailment - Comic Books

Which character in comics do you think gets the most derailment from writers and/or artists who don't understand what the character is about?

• Superman
• Batman
• Wonder Woman
• Captain America
• Spider Man

Or other?

Off the top of my head, Deadpool.

However, I think you've got the wrong forum.

Aye, moving. Recommend the OP use namespaces when linking to works, by the way.

I don't see how you can possibly derail Deadpool. That's like saying, "They derailed Ambush Bug!"

Well, Deadpool was a Sad Clown wrestling with his own moral compass and trying to give up being a killer in order to become a hero. And he dealt with this by having a twisted sense of humor (and made a fourth wall breaking jokes as throwaway gags).

Nowadays, he's all about the fourth wall breaking and wacky shenanigans and making geeky pop-culture references.

Which is a perfect demonstration of how completely he got derailed for years.

Initially, he was just a mercenary who made a lot of jokes. A couple minis fleshed him out a bit, and showed that he did have some goodness in him, or at least wanted to have goodness in him. Then Joe Kelly started the Deadpool ongoing, and established him as a broken shell of a man who wanted to be good but was eternally held back by his inner demons. His humour was a defence mechanism, a mask to hide how depressed and full of self-loathing he was. He was a tragic character, and at times, a downright frightening one.

Then every successive writer after Kelly played down the drama and played up the comedy, until Daniel Way basically made it a straight-up comedy series (with mostly lazy comedy, but whatever), and multiple other Deadpool comics were launched that did the same thing. And everyone just kinda forgot that Deadpool's not just supposed to be that guy who makes wacky jokes while killing people.

So yeah, Deadpool definitely gets a lot of character derailment.

The current series does deal a lot with his torture and emotional issues. In particular the last issue had a really good ending scene addressing the Sad Clown aspect and how he makes jokes to hide how empty he feels inside.

I think the big issue is that so much of the character in recent years has been painted by Way's run an the LOL SO RANDOM humor.

Deadpool can't be considered "Character Derailment", really. He's, what, less than 20 years old? I'm thinking of 50+ year old characters.

He debuted in 1991. But I'd say he can definitely be considered a case of derailment, because for a span of several years, writers simply didn't write him properly.

If you were going to specify A-listers or characters who have been around since the Golden Age it might have been a good idea to state that from the beginning.

Deadpool was a Rob Liefeld creation who HAD no personality when he debuted.

And then Joe Kelly gave him one and that was the standard for the character for many years.

20 years is plenty long enough for derailment.

About Deadpool though, "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" is probably one of the best Deadpool stories, ever.

One of my absolute favorites.

Probably Cyclops.

Best trope to describe him is Good Is Not Nice because he makes the calls that no one else wants to themselves. Unfortunately, writers also tend to make him an out and out insensitive Jerkass.

edited 2nd Jan '15 9:12:29 AM by Lionheart0

For me, Wonder Woman. Just look at her entry in Character Derailment.

WONDER THONG?!?!?!

As a side note, would you consider Wonder Girl's constant Multiple-Choice Past Character Derailment?

edited 2nd Jan '15 12:47:12 PM by AnotherGuy

Characters like Deadpool raise an interesting issue: at some point, a derailment becomes the new normal—the "derailed" version becomes canonical, and the "correct," ostensibly non-derailed original becomes something closer to a case of Early-Installment Weirdness. Venom also comes to mind. In a way, you almost can't declare it a case of derailment until the character eventually finds his way back onto the rails.

I think that some characters raise interesting questions about what counts as derailment.

For example: Wonder Man.

Bendis took Wonder Man in some directions that I really didn't like, and that Remender kept him going in. Bendis's Wonder Man is an utter douchebag with almost no redeeming qualities. His key character trait is more or less his vanity.

This is very different from the Busiek version of Wonder Man that I grew up with. Busiek's Wonder Man is shy, well-meaning, but unintentionally callous and insensitive. He was still kind of a douche, but a very believable douche.

And the thing is, both of these are pretty valid places to take the character from the same starting point - his characterization in West Coast Avengers. Busiek more or less painted the WCA days as Wonder Man's Acquired Situational Narcissism days, a phase of awful behavior and arrogance that he eventually got over to get more back to how he was when written under Jim Shooter and Gerry Conway - but as someone whose bad actions shaped who he became. On the other hand, the Bendis path of Wonder Man takes the WCA characterization as the "true" Wonder Man, and develops from there, taking the same flaws and expanding on them.

So - which one is the derailment? Did Busiek derail Wonder Man by making him nicer, downplaying his flaws, and essentially idealizing him into the best possible version of Wonder Man? Or did Bendis derail him by reverting him back to his most obnoxious phase? It's an interesting question. I like the Busiek version more, but I have a hard time arguing that Bendis's interpretation is invalid.

Spider Man, One More Day. That is all.

edited 4th Jan '15 8:31:03 AM by AnotherGuy

I would say that all the comic book characters go through derailment at some point, depending on who's writing that character, but Cyclops does get it worse as the writers keep writing him as a jerk rather than as a stern yet understanding leader he was portrayed as early on.

edited 4th Jan '15 11:12:21 PM by Rabbitearsblog

Is this a complaint thread?

No, it's a critical discussion on what "character derailment" actually means to a collaborative art form.

Tropes Are Not Bad. Character Derailment isn't a bad thing WHEN the character's previous course was an awful one and you derail them into a better one.

This trope IS bad. What you're thinking of is Character Development.