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Things can be changed up I agree. Batman Inc. is one of my favored examples of that.
Similarly, it's nice to occasionally find a S.H.I.E.L.D. or Checkmate book that doesn't devolve into random witch-hunts (and not the fun kind) because otherwise it might encroach on the spandex brigade's territory. Or perish the thought, to have their opinions thereof be regarded on their own terms, rather than as the setup for some shady manipulative scheme.
All in all, even within the comics themselves, viewpoints and experiences contrary to traditional superhero ideals (or idealized superhero traditions) occasionally crop up, and I find are worth considering.
edited 23rd May '17 8:54:10 AM by indiana404
I know what the thread is about, but I'm glad you got the point of my question.
edited 23rd May '17 9:08:18 AM by VeryMelon
Well, that was fun; who's up for shawarma?
In contrast with both traditional superheroes and gritty vigilantes, I notice that characters like Doctor Strange and the Green Lanterns - people with a dedicated purpose well outside the scope of mundane law enforcement or even military affairs - don't raise nearly as many political red flags while being involved in just about the same scale of epic conflicts. Moreover, both the Green Lanterns and to a certain extent the organization that trained Strange appear to be rather egalitarian in their makeup, requiring little more than the dedication and willpower expected of any high-pressure profession. (The same likely applies to the Nova Corps, but I haven't yet delved deep enough there to be sure. Besides, I just can't take seriously any title starring a guy named Richard Rider.)
Considering that the Lanterns already have human military officers as members, I kinda wonder just what the political situation might look like if they are acknowledged as interdepartmental operators. Ditto Strange being a liaison regarding all sorts of mystical malarkey. At any rate, I kinda like this concept for superheroes - specialists in a field that doesn't quite overlap with traditional police and military operations but is important in its own right, and being empowered in a more egalitarian fashion than birth or random chance. Campy as they are, the Power Rangers have been demonstrating the viability of this approach for quite a while now.
edited 26th May '17 2:16:44 AM by indiana404
I see what you mean. Of course, you have to remember that these characters weren't created with a shared universe in mind and were just done so DC and Marvel could keep printing books.
In general, the source of the powers or lack of powers shouldn't matter really so long as the hero in question is interested in protecting people and is willing to undergo training. This should apply to all heroes regardless of power. I will say, I wouldn't mind seeing them bring back the Golden Age Amazon ability to enhance physical power to superhuman levels through training.
Though maybe the Green Lantern Corps and the mystical community could use some better screening for their candidates if Sinestro and Mordo are any indication
.
To be fair, it's the interest in helping people that I find to lack sufficient focus these days. Most of the time it's reduced to generic sense of obligation stemming precisely from their abilities, with little actual endgame... and that's not going into the moral code all but precludes any endgame. Real-life US prosecutors may be bloodthirsty enough for fictional cardboard prisons to be ignored, but elsewhere, melodramatic pleas for trust in the judicial system are typically made by the respective crook's lawyers, in defense of token suspended sentences.
More particularly, though, writers keep trying to treat superheroes as drama rather than action characters, even though the static nature of the genre means such efforts never go anywhere, elseworlds notwithstanding. To a casual reader, it's like opening a Sherlock Holmes book where a hundred pages are dedicated to his emotional turmoil brought upon by opium addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder, all while the villain gets away in the end. A marvel of detective fiction that would be.
Consequently, the modern attempts at political commentary are pretty much the inevitable conclusion of this mentality, analyzing superheroes for what they are, rather than what they do. Because unless, say, Spider-Man spends a good chunk of his time helping people rather than moping about what a pain it is to help people, he's pretty much indistinguishable from a random superpowered schmuck on a joy-ride. Now, people like the Hulk, the mutants, the mercenaries - they can have whole stories about them just trying to get by, since it's not a lifestyle they can just walk away from if they feel like it. But the guys who voluntarily don capes and masks, without anyone asking for their help specifically, have no excuse to milk if their efforts start looking counterproductive, controversial etc.
I've frequently thought that the Green Lantern Corps and the Guardians of the Universe were a bunch that had the potential to raise red flags, but seldom does (largely because the Guardians' dictum is generally for its agents to uphold the laws of their respective worlds). Some writers can't seem to decide, though, whether they're supposed to be peace officers or military, which are two very different things.
I figured with an organization that large, it'd be inevitable that the characterization of the Guardians would be all over the place. Most of the stuff of familiar with had them as antagonists of some sort.
Calendar enthusiast
@130: You know, I was pondering something similar today, thinking about how Superman and Batman compare to The Big O.
It comes back to the earlier discussion about how superheroes can work as specialists for the crazy scifi menaces that the police can't handle. Roger Smith is a perfect example of this. While the military police are usually portrayed as mere cannon fodder, any episode which shows them in action for more than one minute portrays them as copetent and effective, just not equipped to deal with the weekly giant monster attacks; for that, they need Roger and Big O. Come to think of it, the Powerpuff Girls operate on the same principle - the police handle the mundane crimes (usually), and the mayor calls in the PPGs when a giant monster or a supervillain appears.
In both these cases, Roger and the PPGs do have a particular purpose - defending Paradigm City and Townsville from giant monsters. The PPGs are explicitly deputised, and while Roger doesn't enjoy official support, he has has a strong, respectful, informal relationship with the cops.
This in turn makes me think about Captain America. Since the Bronze Age, there has been all sorts of pondering about what it really means to be Captain America, and whether he embodies the country itself or the ideals it stands for. However, the man has little purpose beyond punching fascists on his own terms. Back in the Golden Age, while we remember him killing innumerable Nazis, an aspect that tends to be overlooked is that he was created as a mole hunter - his specific purpose in World War II was to root out Nazi infiltrators in the US Army. This gave him the kind of purpose Indiana is talking about, and even warranted a secret identity, since he was a counter-espionage agent.
Thinking about superheroes and Nazis circles back to things we were talking about at the start of this thread. Superheroes haven't really gotten involved in real-world politics since the Golden Age, when half of them spent their fighting Axis soldiers. Back then, the Axis and the Allies were somewhat evenly matched, and the outcome of the war had Hitler not attacked Stalin is far from certain.
During the Silver and Bronze Ages, the conflict between the First and Second Worlds was even more evenly matched, as the United States and Soviet Union simply couldn't directly fight each other or everybody would die. It's no accident that spy fiction was at its height during the Cold War, and this even influenced Silver Age superhero stories - instead of adventures where a superhero went to a Second World country and beat up a bunch of commies, the conflict was increasingly the hero against a single supervillain. Sure, a lot of those supervillains were Soviet saboteurs, but the conflict was more one-on-one or hero vs small team, and the heroes were rarely the invaders.
In the Bronze Age, writers started to bring back the real-life issues that Golden Age comics occasionally dealt with, to mixed results. However, the Cold War still dominated people's psyches, and so the real-world politics tended more toward local social issues like drugs and poverty, only occasionally tackling political issues; Captain America exposing Richard Nixon as a shape-shifting lizard person, while well-remembered, is the exception to the common stories of the time.
And now in the Iron Age, without the threat of Russia (for now), the obstacle to real-life politics is that America isn't evenly matched. Modern warfare is asymmetric, so in any story about an international conflict, America is the vast, overpowering force, while the antagonists get to play the role of plucky underdog. Nobody is interested in such a story, and so real-life politics tends to be put in the background.
Ukrainian Red Cross
A very good analysis, though I think mentioning the PPG of all heroes is pretty out of left-field; their show is a lot more dependent on Rule of Funny, and few of their writers even pretend to care about continuity.
And for better or worse, there are a number of modern superhero writers trying to tap into The War On Terror. The guys behind the first Iron Man did a decent enough job of it, I suppose, but on the other end of the scale there's always Holy Terror...
If one wants an existential threat to "our way of life" I suppose it would have to be in the nature of a villain or villains or movement that wants to mire humanity in the past (maintaining racial hegemonies and animosities, willful ignorance, etc) rather than advancing towards a, hopefully, more balanced and egalitarian future. Of course, having such threats appear in a comic book and not having people immediately label them as one political party or another could be problematic...
Then there's how most superheroes' own perennial aversion to obeying the law and respecting civil authority and public opinion isn't exactly a mark of balance and egalitarianism itself. A good number of stories nowadays are built on the notion that superheroes can easily get on a soapbox and preach on the ills of modern society, but society itself isn't allowed to do the same to them in turn. And never mind how their secret identities have them effectively use said society as a shield when they don't want to be held accountable. When Superman denounced his American citizenship, the least he could do was apply the same to Clark Kent.
I'd say the Iron Man films didn't so much address the matter of terrorist threats, as they simply used it as cover for the tired old corrupt executive cliche, like an action-packed truther expose. Even the first film's listing of the unusually cosmopolitan makeup of the Ten Rings reads like one of those multi-ethnic gangs Hollywood uses so as not to offend anyone... while still using them as cannon fodder with no agency whatsoever.
I also don't think that the US not being the underdog wouldn't be interesting, but that superheroes have for so long played that part, they don't really know what to do otherwise. The PPG are actually a fine example of heroes generally content with maintaining the status quo, but the traditional comic world is all but pathologically playing the rebel without a cause these days.
Seems like everyone else handles superheroes and politics much better than the two companies most known for making superhero stories.
Calendar enthusiast
Oh, you can certainly write an interesting story about that, but I don't think it would fit well in an ongoing story about Americans except maybe as a one-off event. This isn't an issue with superheroes as it is the result of modern tastes in media.
Every popular story today asks us to sympathise with an underdog. For a dramatic example, look as Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. Aang and Korra both assemble big armies to fight off The Empire, and in both cases those armies are defeated, leaving only the Avatar and a handful of companions to take down the giant invading force.
One sees something similar with cop movies. Even if the criminals aren't a vast international gang, the climax will still see our heroes isolated in the criminals' HQ, outnumbered and outgunned, having to fight their way out before backup arrives. Likewise in war movies, the plot usually ends up with our heroes behind enemy lines and having to fight their way out with no time for reinforcements to arrive. In the first Terminator movie, Kyle Reese is a mundane human up against an unstoppable killing machine; when Arnie became a good guy in the sequels, SkyNet responded with more powerful Terminators so that the T-800 would now be an underdog. RoboCop ends up on the run as a fugitive, with OCP and the Detroit Police gunning for him.
More than that, every sports movie is about a weak Ragtag Bunch of Misfits who rise to the challenge and somehow come out victorious over an objectively superior team; this one has gotten so bad that I've seen people complain when the weaker team loses in real-life sport matches, because apparently they 'deserved' the victory somehow. We even see this in romantic comedies, where the hero's beloved is with someone who is more attractive, succesful, well-spoken, and well-connected.
Quite simply, people expect the underdog to be the good guy. If you bring in real-world conflicts as a prominent and ongoing aspect, you risk glorifying terrorism simply because in the real world, terrorists are the underdogs.
Ukrainian Red Cross
Not sure if you can call one man/woman armies like Korra and Aang underdogs. Same with superheroes. Their powers and resources make it impossible for them to be seen as underdogs most of the time
Agreed. The moment Aang turned into a raging ball of destruction as early as the second episode, any potential for underdog drama was wiped out. Even the ending resorted to a blatant deus ex machina rather than actually have the hero defeat the villain through traditional underdog means like improvisation and outmaneuvering. (To contrast, even the bread and butter Spider-Man stories can be fun simply because he actually has a very limited arsenal of skills that he has to use creatively.)
Instead, I'd point out the numerous nineties action films where the challenge comes not from the villain's overall power, but from other advantages such as cover - any random terrorist is threatening when you can't find them. If anything, the idea of superheroes (and the US in general) being unchallenged is more of a self-aggrandizing boast in the chaotic face of modern terrorism.
As for superheroes being better handled by independent producers, I reckon the reason is that they focus on function rather than form, already treating superheroes like specialists dedicated to fighting supervillains, with common criminals on the side. Moreover, there's usually less requirement for supervillains to endure indefinitely. Then again, cartoon adaptations of traditional superheroes are also quite popular, so the more pressing problems are just as likely to be found in the comic medium itself. Things like decompressed storytelling, convoluted continuity and the need for every ongoing issue to tie-in with the next one rather than tell its own self-contained story - all these are elements no other medium inflicts on its audience, save for soap operas, which comics are frequently compared to anyway.
The problems of success...no one ever thinks that they're creating a franchise that'll still be published 70 years on. Even so, continuity is only a problem when it's inflicted on the genre by it's fans or by fans who have progressed to writing or editing the franchise in question. As soon as a writer does story that in some way contradicts something done before, you'll have an army of fans with too much time on there hands crying foul (which was bad enough in the days of the letters columns, but is exponentially worse in our internet era). I'd say the readers of super-hero comics are by and large the biggest bar to any kind of evolution in the genre. Now, every summer cross-over event at DC seems to have to do with them trying to sort out their continuity.
edited 27th May '17 1:37:13 PM by Robbery
And that's the real rub, these are companies and corporations. You have dozens of writers and managers on hand writing stories, and you can't expect new blood to keep the old direction going forever.
I'd say the biggest problem - notably one not present in the aforementioned adaptations - would have to be the now permanent state of crossover continuity that makes every story interdependent with a dozen others, each with different interpretations of supposedly the same events and characters. Even soap operas have nothing on that.
More importantly though, I find a great deal of the modern introspective aspects of the genre to stem from the now canonically acknowledged persistence of supervillains, and what it means for the respective heroes' efforts. When Alan Moore did it, it was just him being Alan Moore, and he never intended for it to become part of the official continuity. Unfortunately, this has flown over the heads of the cuckoos Running the Asylum, who have since been trying to justify superheroes' effective impotence, treating it as some sort of moral badge of honor. Compare and contrast the James Bond franchise, where continuity is just as loose, but the titular hero always gets the job done, even if the occasional evil mastermind endures for a couple of films or so.
The same logic applies to the Punisher's enduring popularity despite minimal marketing, to the point where he got a Netflix deal after a guest stint in Daredevil meant to deconstruct his ways. It's this distillation of the archetypal vigilante man unconcerned with any political or social agendas that gives him his appeal, while writers knowing they don't have to find convoluted ways to ensure the villains' survival means they get more creative freedom in turn.
Yeah that's annoying. No one reading comics actually cares if the Joker keeps breaking out of jail because we accept that Cardboard Prison is used to keep telling stories about a profitable character. Making it a plot point serves no one on either side of this political topic.
edited 28th May '17 7:31:23 AM by VeryMelon
Quite. If anything, the similar impermanence of comicbook death should've long since given a blank check for superheroes to "kill" villains, or at least not to fret so much at the prospect of them dying, without writers having to dig too deep for excuses for their eventual reappearance. Not everyone has to gun down crooks execution-style, but it would be nice to know that when push comes to shove, the hero's priorities put innocent people's lives at least slightly over those of their abusers.
And now for something completely different. As most superheroes are US-based due to creator provincialism, I kinda wonder how things would look like if it was established that just about every country has its own set of capes, or at least some way of managing its superpowered population, and that foreign heroes would have to abide by it. The DC superheroes in particular are already rather overzealous about guarding their own cities from outside intervention, yet often find no problem in strolling into another country in pursuit of a particular villain.
In general, can superheroes even function properly in a multilateral world, one where they can't actually force their opinions or operations beyond their local establishment? Can a superhero universe run on realpolitik? Food for thought.
Only non-US superhero team that comes to mind is Alpha Flight.
DC has loads of non-American super heroes, at least in their stable of properties. From the Global Guardians the Batmen of Many Nations to Soyuz to the Great Ten to The Super-Man. While most of them don't get a ton of attention (given that DC is an American comic company that makes comics for a primarily American audience) the idea is that most other countries have at least a few super humans looking after their interests.
At DC I only think Batman has ever been demonstrated to be especially territorial, and only then since the 80's. With him, it's usually portrayed as "I've got a million operations in the works, and your ham-fisted interference has put my delicate operation in jeopardy" Most other characters are generally only territorial depending on whose writing them.
edited 28th May '17 9:42:40 AM by Robbery
Calendar enthusiast
There's also Captain Britain, who is sometimes supported by Excalibur. And I guess Japan has Big Hero 6?
Ukrainian Red Cross
I think the once the Status Quo in Marvel should be broken for the X-Men, they should permanently have acceptance in society but like any other minority face bigotry. Instead of making them always hated, make them be more like a continuing accepted minority in this country and have people finally recognize their rights as people.