Posted: 12 June 2018 at 11:20am | IP Logged | 1
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Robert Shepherd: "I get the whole sidekick craze, and I'm not opposed to having sidekicks for the heroes, but that still is not my preference."
*****
When it comes to de-uniquing, I give classic Golden Age sidekicks a pass, even the ones who are "kid" versions of the main hero (Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Speedy, Aqualad). I put the Marvel Family in the same category. Because they're explicitly secondary to the main heroes, they don't diminish those heroes. Same thing with evil dopplegangers. They enhance the original by providing a contrast to the original, making our heroes that much more heroic.
De-uniquing bugs me in two ways: it diminishes the original, and it produces a "de-uniqued" character who is, by definition, a gimmick, a knock-off.
It's also (in my view, anyway) kind of...childish. Over in the Wolverine's New Powers thread, somebody wondered if Charles Soule, father of Wolverine's new hot claws, was five years old. That's the level on which most de-uniquing seems to operate: "What if the Hulk was still the Hulk but he was RED instead of GREEN?" "So there are Green Lanterns, but what if we had lots of OTHER colors of Lanterns?" "One Spider-Man is great; what if we had 62 MORE?" It all strikes me as vaguely juvenile, or (at very, very least) lazy as f**k.
But, hey, I loved She-Hulk, Beta Ray Bill, and old Pre-Crisis Earth-2 stories, so what do I know.
(edited for correct quote attribution)
Edited by Ted Downum on 12 June 2018 at 11:32am
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