Cutting the cord

[dotsomething]

Certain individuals on a certain message board on a certain website which shall remain unnamed just can't seem to get that whatever problems the stories in DC and Marvel have, it's not because the superhero, as a story genre, is inherently a bad mode for storytelling.

Comments

[bigscary]

Screw Greece and Rome -- GILGAMESH is clearly a superhero. Vedic religion is, to quote kent_allard_jr basically superhero worship.

Most of the Kojiki could be (probably has been) made into manga that would fit comfortably alongside the fightin'est shounen manga on the shelves.

Of course, there is the (was it Gaiman or Ellis who called it this?) "Nurse Stories" problem in US comics, but that's abating, and has been for decades, and even the majors are dipping toes.

And may I suggest, as others probably have, going over to the Marvel Ultimates line for the duration of the Crisis?

[dotsomething]

All of those too. Cuchullain is another one. Or Beowulf. I'm firmly in the camp that believes Wonder Woman, Flash, Superman, Batman will be remembered thousands of years from now.

I'd like to read Joss Whedon's work on X-Men. Is it out in trade pb?

[mbarr]

Yes, and it's here. The first 6 are out... (second 6 haven't printed fully in "monthly"..)

I have it if you'd like to borrow. I also have a lot of the other Xmen stuff from the reset point they had last year in like may.. (it may not be a reset, but it was a good time to jump on board- a bunch of stuff changed, and you could ignore the stuff before, mostly.)

[dotsomething]

I'd prefer to borrow rather than buy, if it can be arranged. Drop me an email, thanks.

[sdelmonte]

I think that part of the problem is that DC no longer treats its super-hero comics as "merely" super-hero comics. They want "realism!" They want "consequences!" They want to forget that super-hero comics are not supposed to be real. They want to make them relevant to the real world.

In other words, it's like trying to make Star Trek in the style of an indie film. A total mismatch.

[dotsomething]

That could be, in the sense that they are over-compensating in the "making it real" department. You know my view on this--I'm for the reality approach. But only if it doesn't involve a lot of out of character behavior that feels forced.

So maybe they've just gone too far in "making it real"--that in their determination to have consequences, they're wedging character into holes they just don't fit into.

Making it real

[jimmyknocker]

Isn't that what Marvel Comics does? That's the main reason why I won't read Spider-Man. No matter how much good Webhead does, bad things still happen to him.

*GKJD*
(Blame freakin' Jameson!)

Re: Making it real

[dotsomething]

Well, I'm not really talking about "bad things happening" to a character. More that if bad things happen, the characters react in the context of who they are. If they act contrary to character, then let there be a decent buildup to it, so we can see how they ended up at such an extreme point.

Identity Crisis did that very well. I'm still reading Nightwing because even though they have taken that character in a wildly different and morally ambiguous direction, there was a very good build-up to it, we see how he could end up there. (That's a subjective opinion, though, I know a lot of people who like this character who think it was forced and came out of nowhere)

But a break in characterization that just seems wedged in only for the sake of shock value just pisses me off.

Misery just for the sake of misery gets dull too. That's why I didn't like seasons 6 and 7 of Buffy.