Superheroes — why?

Superman works as long as he has more interesting characters around him to play off him. Most good Superman stories are more about how he affects others, villains, heroes or common folk.

Good Superman stories have a variety of methods. I personally am a fan of Superman battling cosmic threats and forces of nature.

And I also abhor the "too perfect" argument. If anything, he isn't perfect enough.

Superman's best, most interesting traits are almost totally in his personality rather than his abilities imo. Clark Kent, when written right, is an incredibly interesting, lovable character.

edited 8th Jul '12 7:26:34 AM by KnownUnknown

This.

Anyone who claims Superman is boring because he's "too perfect" has clearly never read a good Superman story in their life.

If anything, nice-guy heroes like Superman are a precious rarity in today's "grimdark" comics.

See, for a 'nice guy' good hearted superhero, I actually prefer Captain Marvel. There's something fascinating about the whole 'adult child, but still very responsible and driven' dichotomy of his that I find very appealing, especially since children nowadays just aren't like that.

I admit, however, very very few writers get that right. Even less than those who get Superman.

By the way, favorite Superman writers? Alan Moore's small work pool in the character is a must, of course, but I'd say Elliot S Maggin is my actual all times favorite on him. I also have to say I like Jeph Loeb's Superman, all in all... Loeb's plotting of the huge situations around Superman was very weak, but he was good at handling the character himself, more than he was with Batman anyway (the thing about Loeb's Batman was he always seemed to come as somewhat clueless against plots that went at random, but Batman should always be more in the ball than that. His Superman, OTOH, used to look more capable that that).

That being said, as I mentioned, the larger the situation Loeb's Superman was, the worse Loeb's writing got (with Our Worlds at War being the nadir), so I think his best work with Supes was the much smaller and tighter Superman For All Seasons.

See, that's what I hate about the D Cn U's Captain Ma..., I mean, Shazam. They made Billy Batson a jerk. Ugh. Why can't he be a sweet kid? Must every hero be a douchebag?

I thought Superman For All Seasons was boring and contrived. I have a severe pet peeve for stories where Superman has ANOTHER goddamn crisis of faith and questions whether or not he's doing the right thing.

Here's why: we're talking about a guy who, free of charge and completely of his own will, saves thousands of people constantly. Leaving alone the supervillains and bank robbers (which I actually think are wastes of his time), this is a guy who will stop everything he's doing to stop an earthquake, or an exploding volcano, or bring a vaccine for a plague to some obscure village. People think of Superman as a "superhero", but that is an egregious oversimplification of his abilities. Batman and Spider-man are superheroes, because solving and stopping crime and performing an occasional small-scale rescue is about the extent of what they can do. But Superman? This mofo can single-handedly stop a goddamn alien invasion or a runaway asteroid.

For these reasons, the necessity to have Superman be "humanized" to be interesting is just ridiculous to me. I'm not saying he has to be all A God Am I and stuff, but I swear to God it is so trite and idiotic to have Superman get yelled at by some ignorant hick and then have him spend the second Act of the book hiding at Ma and Pa's farm until one of his parents can make him feel better. Or Lois or Jimmy. Whoever. When someone gets up in Superman's grill because he screwed something up on good faith, his only response should be: "I'm sorry you're upset, but could you hold on a sec? Someone's trying to drown a baby. *flies back* Sorry that took so long. Took me an extra 3 seconds to evacuate water from the infant's lungs. Now, what seems to be the problem?"

That's the problem with Superman. Writing him in demi-god mode is something that can work fine in special ocassions, but in an ongoing, non stop run, it falls flat rather quickly. You can't keep escalating the sense of threats once you already start that high, for one thing. It's hard to find kinks on his armor both mentally and physically, so if you keep that up, he starts smelling of Mary Sue. Then again, if you go the other way, he'll soon start not feeling like Superman (like Early STAS Superman, which got the personality right, but power-wise, felt like a marginally stronger flying Spider-Man). That's why he's one of those characters who work best in small doses and for special occasions.

I don't agree. I did once upon a time, before Anime became popular, but not anymore.

I've mentioned before that the main problem with Superman is that writers try to chain him to the conventionals of Superheroes (Rogues Gallery, solving petty crime, etc.) but ever since the Silver Age, he doesn't work well with those tropes. I was actually interested in Earth 2 at first because it depicted a universe that was constantly at war with Apokolips—which, in my opinion, is an environment where Superman really shines. An Earth that's constantly under threat of an invasion from a God of Evil with soldiers that each rival Superman in power?! Yes, please.

Then he got Killed Off for Real in the first goddamn issue. *Sigh* Oh well.

The reason escalating power scales work well for anime is because there's usually some sort of storyarc which involves a villain that vastly dwarfs the hero(es)' abilities. Even if your hero is juggling cars, the villain is juggling mountains. This remains a consistent conflict throughout the entire arc, until said villain is finally defeated. But where this usually fails is that the hero is given a Shonen Upgrade that makes him MORE POWERFUL than the Big Bad. Here's the brilliant part: Superman doesn't have to WORRY about that! Yes, Superman tends to grow progressively more powerful, but in general, we're meant to believe that his strength level is about the same. American superheroes don't go through Training from Hell to beat their bad guys—they find other resources (such as a team-up) to accomplish their goals. So, there's no reason this formula won't work for Superman.

Yes, but once you take a character who is that powerful, you run out of new ways to defeat opposition in a way that keeps dramatic tension very quickly. Eventually, you start either asspulling, Worfing the hero down and creating a Boring Failure Hero, punking the villains down and creating a Boring Invincible Hero, or a combination of the former.

Those problems are not exclusive to ultra-powerful characters, though. Batman, Wolverine and Spider-man all have the exact same problem. If Spider-man defeats, say, Count Nefaria in one story, his six-thousandth brawl with The Chameleon isn't going to have the same punch.

True, but it's a bigger issue the more powerful a hero becomes. Between relatively low level enemies, it's always easier to justify a shifting gap between who has the edge at each time. Batman might face a better or worse prepared Joker, for instance, or Spider-Man could have a flu and be reeling from Doc Ock's beating when he takes on Puma, or something like that.

The higher you go in the scale, the more invulnerable a guy is, the more consistent that level has to be to remain credible. Once you take Darkseid down from a guy who takes the whole JLA and New Gods down to someone Superman can take one on one, it's very difficult to backpedal on that in a credible way that doesn't involve retcons or reboots.

Villain Decay is a problem at all levels, though. The entire point to Kevin Smith's Daredevil run was that Mysterio had undergone a massive one and failed to be a credible threat. It's also why every time someone wants to have a story in which something terrible happens to Spidey or Bats, they choose The Joker or Norman Osborn: because when was the last time you saw Poison Ivy or The Vulture do something heinous (when it wasn't specifically meant to undo prior Villain Decay)?

edited 8th Jul '12 10:03:39 AM by KingZeal

Me (Post #47): I dislike "Stop Having Fun" Guys who think Superman is boring and too perfect.

Tiamatty (post #50): I find Superman to be an incredibly boring character. He's simply too perfect.

>_>

edited 8th Jul '12 4:09:17 PM by Eagal

What's your point? I hate Superman. I hate Batman, too, for much the same reason. Too perfect. They can do anything, and back when I actually did read them, they didn't even have any particular problems in their personal lives. It annoyed me to the point where I don't give half a shit about them any more, and I couldn't read any of their comics now if I wanted to. Luckily, I don't want to.

I think my problem is that Superman is an archetype. I don't want to read about an archetype. I want to read about a character.

edited 8th Jul '12 8:43:30 PM by Tiamatty

Why do "problems" make a character? A character can be built from challenges too.

If you're talking about Spidey-level problems, where absolutely nothing ever gets resolved just so he can bitch and angst, yeah, no thanks.

It just bored me. They were perfect heroes with perfect lives and everything was just so frigging perfect all the time. Spider-Man had all sorts of conflict in his personal life. The Fantastic Four were a dysfunctional family. The X-Men regularly got on each others nerves.

I remember talking to someone who said that DC treats its characters as archetypes, as ideas, while Marvel treats its characters as people. I prefer Marvel's approach.

Both have strengths and weaknesses.

To quote something I've heard in the past: "Children have problems. Adults have projects." The weakness of Marvel is that the heroes have problems. Things go wrong in their lives and they never take steps to solve them. Or, if they do so, the universe itself contrives the worst Diabolus ex Machina it can think of (Mephisto, Scarlet Witch, SHRA) to make sure they stay unsolved. Eventually, there just ceases to be a point and everyone's holding an Idiot Ball or Conflict Ball just so everybody still has something to bitch about.

Besides that, I find it hard to believe that there is no story for a particular character that can't strike someone's fancy. Unless there's underlying biases involved, there's something to like about a comic book chracter, because there's so many different approaches to them.

I'll admit to being biased. I've pretty much chosen, since getting back into comics a few years ago, to stick with Marvel. I just have zero interest in DC. I don't even have any interest in any indie comics, even though I know I should read some of them.

But the reason I don't even bother to download DC's comics is because I simply don't give a damn about them. The characters just don't interest me at all. Most of Marvel's characters do.

I also dislike DC's method of keeping their characters young. Rebooting every 10-15 years just doesn't appeal to me. But mostly it's the characters that don't interest me. And Superman and Batman are at the top of the list of DC characters that don't appeal to me. Along with Green Lantern. Because, seriously? Giant fists and hammers? That's the best he can come up with? The guy just has no imagination.

Yeah, that's pretty biased. I agree about the reboots, but nothing else. The Green Lantern point just feels particularly reaching.

Indeed. Back in an issue of All Star Squadron, (a comic from the 80's that was about the exploits of DC's Golden Age heroes in WWII,) the first Green Lantern, Alan Scott, created a blast of such proportions that is was essentially the equivalent of the Atomic Bomb. If that doesn't show just what Green Lanterns are capable of, I don't know what will.

... I assume you have never read a single comic with Kyle Rayner in it.

That's part of why I liked Kyle better than Hal. He was creative. And on the subject of 'problems', he had a more complex and believable life than Hal without overdoing it (at least until Winick came along).

I think I read one issue with Rayner. An early one. He was just figuring his powers out. As I recall, he did seem to have at least a little creativity with his powers, even then.

Actually, I think he may have used a giant can opener, once he disabled the guy. It was some loser in power armour.

I also remember an issue of Superman where Hal fought Mongol or whatever his name was with a sledgehammer. He has a ring that can create anything he can imagine, and he imagined a sledgehammer. That's just sad. At the very least, make it a giant battering ram. Or since the guy he was fighting had yellow skin, he could've just stayed floating out of range, and smacked him around with the scenery.

But Hal Jordan is evidently the least creative person in the history of the world. So he went with a sledgehammer.

edited 9th Jul '12 7:05:53 AM by Tiamatty

So what?! The entire point to Hal Jordan is that he like brutal simplicity. So he makes a sledge hammer or boxing glove, because using his own physical power combined with the ring's force is how he's most efficient.

One of the things I like about what Geoff Johns does with the Lanterns is that each one uses their abiltiies different. Kyle Rayner is an artist, so his constructs are amazingly complex and artistic to the point that he can truly do almost anything. John Stewart is an actual mechanic, so his constructs are real, with gears and mechanisms inside and out, and not just hollow projections. Killowog doesn't make constructs at all and just goes for using pure raw energy from his ring. And there's one Lantern who doesn't make any constructs with his ring, and simply uses it to fly and remain impervious to mortal injury.

The entire point is that there's multiple ways to approach a single concept.

edited 9th Jul '12 7:18:02 AM by KingZeal

Status Quo Is God was brought up a couple pages back. That is the reason I tend to like adaptations of superhero comics better than comics themselves. They have definite beginnings, middles, and ends.

That's not to say I don't like the comics, but I tend to take them story by story rather than as a whole.