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Are we cynical about superheroes?

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Robbery Since: Jul, 2012
#176: Feb 4th 2015 at 12:46:44 PM

[up]Not so sure that I'd call it a scathing deconstruction so much as Alan Moore's deconstruction, with ample helpings of all of Moore's favorite hobby-horses. That may sound harsh, but it's not meant to be; I like the story too, a lot. But a great deal of Alan Moore's writing, particularly as he become more confident and editor-proof, betrays similar themes and elements, regardless of what genre it is. You'll find the same ideas in From Hell, for instance. He's a shade more subtle about it than Frank Miller.

Moore regrets crippling Barbara Gordon? Then what was he thinking when he wrote it? That DC would decide The Killing Joke wasn't canon?

GAP Formerly G.G. from Who Knows? Since: May, 2011 Relationship Status: In love with love
Formerly G.G.
#177: Feb 4th 2015 at 12:58:11 PM

[up] See the Comicbook Dark Age for more details on the topic.

"Fan, a Mega Man character."
KingZeal Since: Oct, 2009
#178: Feb 4th 2015 at 1:08:14 PM

It's not easy to convince writers or publishers that they don't have what it takes to tell deep, compelling stories. Nearly every promotion for everything ever nowadays uses catchy, feel-good buzzwords like "rich", "complex", "deep", "mature", and "thought-provoking", even if the plot itself turns out to have the depth of wet toilet paper.

But good luck convincing them of that. Hell, George-Fucking-Lucas recently went on a rant about how "Movies today have no substance". And that man made the Prequels.

edited 4th Feb '15 1:08:41 PM by KingZeal

wehrmacht belongs to the hurricane from the garden of everything Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
belongs to the hurricane
#179: Feb 4th 2015 at 1:50:46 PM

most of the people who've written stories i consider well-written are very humble, and critical of their own work. i think that says a lot.

it's easy to think that you can do a better job than everyone else, and even after your work is out there and is not very good, a lot of people continue to have high opinions of their own work, undeserved as it is.

Moore regrets crippling Barbara Gordon? Then what was he thinking when he wrote it? That DC would decide The Killing Joke wasn't canon?

he probably thought it was alright to do for the story he was telling at the time; to my knowledge it's one of those decisions he looks back on and wishes he hadn't made.

edited 4th Feb '15 1:53:08 PM by wehrmacht

LordofLore Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Consider his love an honor
#180: Feb 4th 2015 at 2:15:00 PM

IIRC he didn't think DC would make it main canon. He thought it was just going to be a one off that wouldn't impact the main series at all aside from maybe making Joker a bit more feared by the readers.

comicwriter Since: Sep, 2011
#181: Feb 4th 2015 at 2:56:23 PM

Yeah there are hints that the story is not supposed to be canon. For one, there's a scene of Bruce looking back at a photograph of the original 50's-era Batfamily as part of a "How did things go so wrong?" moment, even though they never existed post-Crisis.

It actually reminds me of Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader by Neil Gaiman. It was less concerned with being seen as canon than it was with making meta commentary about the franchise.

NapoleonDeCheese Since: Oct, 2010
#182: Feb 4th 2015 at 6:05:30 PM

Originally, Post Crisis was going to retcon Barbara Gordon as Jim's daughter and as his wife instead. That's why in Miller's Year One we saw a Barbara Gordon as Jim's wife. Killing Joke actually was scripted before Year One (1986), but ended up being published later (1988) because Brian Bolland is a very slow artist. Then DC's management changed their minds on Babs, and she ended up being brought back as Jim's now crippled biological niece and adopted daughter, so we now had two Barbaras. This was in effect as soon as in 1989, when Barbara's crippling is first mentioned in continuity during Death in the Family, and shortly after (1990 IIRC) Babs debuted as Oracle in the pages of Suicide Squad (Oracle wouldn't start assisting Batman until 1992, in Azrael's debut story).

Robbery Since: Jul, 2012
#183: Feb 4th 2015 at 9:53:46 PM

[up] Actually, they were going to, and did, though hardly anyone remembers it, retcon Barbara (Batgirl) Gordon as Jim Gordon's neice, the daughter of his no good brother whom he adopted, to more closely jibe with Miller's timeline from Batman: Year One. It was detailed in an issue of Secret Origins. I think it was Miller's intent to simply anticipate Barbara's eventually being born by giving Jim's wife the same name as his future daughter, even though his timeline would have made her, if the Gordons' biological daughter, much too young (Jim's wife's name was given as Barbara Kean as early as 1981). In the Secret Origins story, Babs even mentions that it'll be confusing having two Barbara's in the house. The story is framed by Batgirl, in the present, tracking down a young theif, and remembering her own origin in the process. If I remember it right, she actually refers to Killing Joke and having been shot by the Joker, but having recovered.

Tiamatty X-Men X-Pert from Now on Twitter Since: Jan, 2010 Relationship Status: Brony
#184: Feb 4th 2015 at 10:04:55 PM

So, I think I have a good solution to superhero cynicism: Ms. Marvel. It is the anti-cynical book. It's optimistic and hopeful. It's inclusive. It doesn't treat the superhero as the only one who can save the day. It doesn't set "the fate of the city/country/world/galaxy/universe/multiverse" as the scale - it sets the scale at the lives of people. It encourages us to care about people we don't even know. And it doesn't treat violence as the only or best solution.

Ms. Marvel is probably the most optimistic take on a superhero story I've ever seen.

edited 4th Feb '15 10:06:02 PM by Tiamatty

X-Men X-Pert, my blog where I talk about X-Men comics.
Aldo930 Professional Moldy Fig/Curmudgeon from Quahog, R.I. Since: Aug, 2013
Professional Moldy Fig/Curmudgeon
#185: Feb 5th 2015 at 4:18:42 AM

What about those of us who have other reasons to be cynical of superheroes?

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."
KingZeal Since: Oct, 2009
#186: Feb 5th 2015 at 5:14:30 AM

[up][up]You have now guaranteed that I will check that book out.

The only reason I haven't is because I haven't really been buying books at all, and the few I did were characters I'm familiar with.

windleopard from Nigeria Since: Nov, 2014 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
#187: Feb 5th 2015 at 7:23:39 AM

@Aldo930 so what are your reasons for being cynical about superheroes?

wehrmacht belongs to the hurricane from the garden of everything Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
belongs to the hurricane
#188: Feb 5th 2015 at 9:58:21 AM

it depends on what you're being cynical ABOUT, honestly.

Robbery Since: Jul, 2012
#189: Feb 5th 2015 at 11:56:46 AM

[up][up][up][up][up] The complaint is not that the heroes are cynical (though there are enough of those), nor that the handling of them is, necessarily, but that we are cynical about them. I'm sure even with Ms.Marvel and its more personal scale that you could find comics fans who could be cynical about it; the question is why that might be.

NapoleonDeCheese Since: Oct, 2010
#190: Feb 5th 2015 at 12:01:16 PM

I'm more cynical about superhero settings than about the superheroes themselves. In the Modern Age, it seems all heroes ultimately can do is briefly hold the tide, with great effort and sacrifice, for it all ultimately end up pointless as, shortly in-universe terms, they are killed off/their city is blown up/the universe is erased and rebooted anyway.

wehrmacht belongs to the hurricane from the garden of everything Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
belongs to the hurricane
#191: Feb 5th 2015 at 2:51:57 PM

I don't have a problem with superheroes themselves so much as Marvel and DC and the way they construct their universe, it just so happens they mostly tell superhero stories. nothing has any finality, any important character shift is at the mercy of some hack, and there are way too many cooks in the kitchen with so many authors working on separate books and such. given the largely darkerandedgier happenings of a lot of books these days, most attempts at drama fall completely flat.

It actually reminds me of Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader by Neil Gaiman. It was less concerned with being seen as canon than it was with making meta commentary about the franchise.

W Htt CC is probably the last truly great superhero story I read. I stopped caring about marvel and dc shortly afterwards. easily one of the greatest batman stories of all time.

edited 5th Feb '15 2:54:42 PM by wehrmacht

Robbery Since: Jul, 2012
#192: Feb 5th 2015 at 2:53:56 PM

DC and Marvel kind of tend to paint themselves into corners. Fans love big crossover events (as much as everyone you ever hear talk about them SAY that they hate them, the giant crossovers DO sell very well). Comics universes become event-driven. Events require change, and at least the temporary illusion of consequences. Problem is, DC and Marvel want to keep publishing their properties, and too much change can render a property unusable, or unrecognizable. Hence the rebooting. And periodic rebooting, re-imagining, updating, back-pedaling and characters who "get better" from death makes both new and long-time readers cynical.

As cool as shared universes can be, I frequently wonder if it wouldn't be better to dial the inter-connectedness and synergy back a bit. I for one really DO dislike the giant crossover events, and I haven't bought any (outside of connected issues from series I already read), but, again, they are apparently VERY profitable so I don't see them going away any time soon. So the problem will persist.

wehrmacht belongs to the hurricane from the garden of everything Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
belongs to the hurricane
#193: Feb 5th 2015 at 2:56:05 PM

i wouldn't mind the crossover events so much if the changes in them were actually permanent. i really just prefer a solid, well-planned story that ends as opposed to a serial that goes on indefinitely, which is what all superhero books boil down to.

i feel like a shared universe is a cool concept that works out very poorly in practice.

edited 5th Feb '15 2:58:37 PM by wehrmacht

Robbery Since: Jul, 2012
#194: Feb 5th 2015 at 3:11:42 PM

Well, that's just it. DC and Marvel's properties are characters that they want to keep publishing, because they remain profitable. It doesn't suit their interests to "end" them. They expect some readership turnover.

Honestly, the best example of a shared universe that I've ever seen is is the writings of PG Wodehouse, a British-American humorist. He wrote over something like 70 years, and his characters would refer to other characters as people they knew, mention the same fictional locations and institutions, and once in a while even cross over with each other. It was handled lightly and deftly, and he never threw two characters together just to throw them together. It always served the story he was telling.

VampireBuddha Calendar enthusiast from Ireland (Wise, aged troper) Relationship Status: Complex: I'm real, they are imaginary
Calendar enthusiast
#195: Feb 5th 2015 at 11:07:30 PM

I have to wonder to what extent people actually enjoy the mega-crossovers and how much of their profitability is driven by the sentiment of "OK, so in order to understand what's going on in Iron Man I have to buy Spider-Man, Captain America, The Avengers, and X-Men for the next three months".

Ukrainian Red Cross
indiana404 Since: May, 2013
#196: Feb 6th 2015 at 2:06:49 AM

Or how many people go "forget this, I'll just watch the cartoons instead". Much like with Jumping the Shark, when you realize that your preferred characters' emotional turmoil is for naught, that their personal quest will never conclude and the story itself will have no consequences beyond a growing bodycount caused by the villains, and that the editors and creative teams fully intend for it, then there's no point in reading, apart from the occasional quippy fight-scene - and there are plenty of other sources for those.

Conversely, what I most like about Deadpool stories is that they're basically comedies with no central arc the character is built around. Joe Kelly made him a villain aspiring to be a hero - pointless romantic angst notwithstanding, the book did what it was supposed to. Fabian Nicieza turned him into the wacky sidekick to Cable's gruff straight man - in my opinion, by far their best iterations. And now, he's a free range adventurer with no pre-set limits or obligatory villains, able to take on any job, as grim or groovy as fans and writers please. The guy has plenty of problems, but the draw is in how he manages to live with them, rather than constantly try and fail to resolve them. He's like Tintin with tantos. A simple concept, but a concept the perpetual comicbook medium works with, not against.

edited 6th Feb '15 6:08:31 AM by indiana404

bookworm6390 Since: Mar, 2013 Relationship Status: Abstaining
#197: Feb 6th 2015 at 4:29:42 PM

And that's why I usually stick to the kid friendly depictions of the characters! Not as cynical. Why can't our heroes ever be happy and have a true victory? Or just stop giving people reason to be cynical and just enjoy the corny Wish Fulfillment! Corny's good. Excessively Darker and Edgier = BAD! I'd rather read Showcase Presents collections than some uber dark storyline with lots of pointless blood and sexualization.

wehrmacht belongs to the hurricane from the garden of everything Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
belongs to the hurricane
#198: Feb 6th 2015 at 4:55:42 PM

darker and edgier fits some characters better than others, but even with the ones where it fits you might end up with some problems.

batman lends himself to be darkerandedgier naturally but Cardboard Prison makes him look really impotent if the villains are all horrendous psychotic murderers with huge body counts.

indiana404 Since: May, 2013
#199: Feb 6th 2015 at 6:05:28 PM

Indeed, but it's not just that. I get the Punisher, where the draw is to see those types get their equally gruesome no-holds-barred comeuppance, even if some of them prove popular enough to get resurrected for a do-over. The issue is with the forced holding back that makes the Darker and Edgier elements pointless. When a guy sets off to be frightening, and goes the whole nine yards on anything marketing can classify as non-human, regardless if it's otherwise sentient, then the whole deal about not killing people leaves me with two impressions. For one, in the meta-sense, that it's just a crutch to facilitate the aforementioned Alan Moore rip-offs, namely that one scene where the Joker gloats in his face while he smolders in impotent angst. And in-universe, it just makes him look like a gigantic hypocrite grasping at straws to excuse his own insane refusal to just do the deed and move on with his life - as corroborated by him living in a cave full of otherwise useless trophies, prominently featuring a giant Joker card. That's the character killer for me - the notion that unrepentant complete monsters endure not because of any ignorably unrealistic survivability on their part, but simply because the heroes let them, in full knowledge of the consequences. That sort of attitude in real life is what used to drive people to crime-fighting comics in the first place.

Conversely, the only thing lost by dropping the one rule is that one scene. The Joker could still be used, only necessitating more imaginative reasons for him not getting his jugular slit by a batarang come first chance - but, y'know, perish the thought of writers actually having to write, instead of rehashing the exact same story with the exact same characters over and again. Right now, Batman in particular dwells in a rather strange limbo of not being cheerful enough for a truly Lighter and Softer turnaround, while stubbornly refusing to go that extra mile in order to be a genuine anti-hero. Really, when the lady in the corset and go-go boots proves more pragmatic than you, you know you're just phoning it in.

edited 6th Feb '15 6:36:19 PM by indiana404

wehrmacht belongs to the hurricane from the garden of everything Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
belongs to the hurricane
#200: Feb 6th 2015 at 8:27:41 PM

what sucks even more is that the stories are constantly trying to justify his position and it just ends up drawing even more attention to it. literally every time someone (jason todd, batman himself, etc) has pointed out how much more sensible it would be to just make an exception just for that one time and off him, they come off as Strawman Has a Point.

What's even WORSE is that sometimes batman goes out of his way to SAVE the Joker, almost as if to prove some point nobody cares about.

literally the only justification for not killing him i can think of involves a huge meta rationalization; namely that there's no point because he'd be brought back anyway. but that would probably give him more downtime than being at arkham anyway.


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