The real problem I have with Superman

I certainly don't think that's true. I wouldn't own the collection of Superman comics that I do if I thought it was impossible.

even though I already said that isn't true.

Well, not that basically I disagree with you, but there may be others who do, and are in their every right to do so.

There's a difference between "Superman is impossible to write interesting challenges for" and "Writers don't write interesting challenges for Superman".

You're saying that the end of a story either justifies the superhero's psyche or proves it wrong. That's a lot like saying people are either male or female. The phrasing makes it seem like one is less interesting than the other, and no other possibility exists. Once a scientific paper is written about an experiment that was done, then you have to arrive at the pre-assumed position that the experiment matched the results, instead of anything else.

Superman: Red Son was similar to The Metropolitan Man in how it broke down the psyche of Lex and Clark. Each character does exactly what they thought was needed, and the story eventually ends on a high note, with humanity achieving greatness.

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Except that in no way counters the point I was making and, in fact, confirms it.

Especially in the cases of a franchise, superhero stories are not going to suddenly start running the aesop of the superhero being unjustified, unnecessary, and overall have little to no impact on the world they inhabit. Red Son still comes to the conclusion that Superman would be a key instrument in "humanity achieving greatness". (Sure, not by himself, and some of his actions might even be a negative influence. But, still, his actions and existence have achieved a net positive.) Hell, the entire book argues that his very existence is a Stable Time Loop that justifies itself.

My point isn't that you can't tell an interesting story with such an examination. I'm saying that any such examination is—to some degree—both forced and artificial. Even the argument of "Batman makes everything worse overall" argument is hollow because being Batman, in itself, has become its own justification. I've mentioned in the past that it's like every story with a "violence is bad" message where every fight is still badass and awesome. Even if the outcome or consequences of the fight are bad, the fact that they even existed is often enough to justify them. For example, we knew that Kryptonians with unchecked power are awful before Man of Steel demonstrated it, but the fights were still ultimately a spectacle.

Even Watchmen, considered the quintessential comic book deconstruction, still falls into this trap. The story's most overarching problem (nuclear war) is possibly delayed or postponed by the actions of the main villain (a former superhero). Even if you argue that he didn't achieve this feat as a superhero, and that superheroes themselves are largely ineffective in the story as a whole, keep in mind that he got the idea for his plan from the ranting of a superhero (the Comedian) and the desire (but helplessness) to do good from another (Captain Metropolis) during a time when he, himself, was a superhero. And yes, even if you argue "But it's left ambiguous as to whether or not this actually solves anything", that is beside the point. It creates a possible validation of superheroes and then ends the story before giving an ultimate conclusion on the subject. We have a trope for that.

Any examination in superhero stories, almost invariably, will ultimately validate its own premise.

edited 11th Mar '15 8:05:35 AM by KingZeal

Okay... but I don't read superhero stories because I care about superheroes.

I read superheroes because some of them tell interesting stories about human beings. The superhero genre is pretty much the oldest genre in existence, assuming you agree that characters like Herakles were essentially the same thing. Trying to prove that characters like Odysseus were unjustified, unnecessary, and overall have little to no impact on the world they inhabit is not going to happen.

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I don't disagree with you, but I'm just speaking about the "unspoken rule" that people consciously choose to put out of their heads when it comes to superhero stories. Whenever I hear someone say, "I like Batman because he deconstructs what toll being a superhero would take on a person", I tend to roll my eyes because that's kinda rubbish.

The real life examples of people acting like a self-appointed vigilante and failing miserably are the deconstructions of being a superhero. Batman deconstructions are power fantasies seeking a way to validate themselves.

But isn't that basically the point of Spider-Man? Or at least it was in the 60s.

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I think that's people not knowing what "deconstruction" means.

No, Batman is not a person from real life who becomes a vigilante. I enjoy the tension between the ideal of "protector of Gotham" and darkness of "terror in the night". But he's more a modern day Odysseus than a real person who fights crime with a wallet.

Peter Parker is an Every Man Hero, not a deconstruction of what a real person who fought crime would be like.

edited 11th Mar '15 11:05:05 AM by crazysamaritan

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His early days were a deconstruction, though. They went through all that basic superhero tropes of that age and either had Spidey fail spectacularly at them or gave a more realistic look at why they wouldn't work.

...why are these superhero discussions so easily derailed?

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Because they involve more than one person, and conversations evolve.

"Whenever I hear someone say, "I like Batman because he deconstructs what toll being a superhero would take on a person", I tend to roll my eyes because that's kinda rubbish."

I can understand that. People frequently don't have logical reasons for liking the characters they like. You''l hear people rip apart one character and laud another who's guilty of all the same stuff, in perhaps different ways, as is the character they hate.

You know: here's the solution to this argument:

I love Superman for being very "classic". This demand for realism in comic universes is ridiculous and I think we need to go back to classics.

Heck, there's even this DC YOU turn where Superman is reverting to his Golden Age version (I'll have to look more into that).

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i think part of the problem is that people have certain expectations of what a superhero story is supposed to be like.

the general idea is that superhero stories are supposed to be about action, with the primary conflict being a physical confrontation between the hero and the villain.

superman is a hero where stuff like that is possible, but that lends himself more easily to character exploration and drama, with the action being the least interesting thing going on. what does it mean to be a paragon? the one who everyone looks up to all the time and who people expect to do the right thing, always? what does it mean to be the ultimate immigrant? what are the various ways people react to this? etc etc.

it's kinda funny that people complain about supes being too powerful, and yet doctor manhattan is for all purposes a god in watchmen and it doesn't impede the story at all because of how it's constructed, i.e it's a story about ideas and characterization, not action.

edited 14th Jul '15 2:24:47 PM by wehrmacht