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Peter Martin
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 March 2008
Location: Canada
Posts: 16126
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| Posted: 21 April 2025 at 8:55pm | IP Logged | 1
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A lot of superhero characters are potentially lame and it's a testament to good storytelling (and respect for the characters and medium) that most are pretty cool.
For the record, Puck was a good character. What is lame in that list is the contempt shown by the storytellers in the panels with Spider-Man and Paste-Pot-Pete.
There's nothing cool about a writer or artist looking down their nose at the characters they are working with.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 21 April 2025 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | 2
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Sadly, as the market has shrunk, the ennui-engorged fanboys have increased their numbers, proportionally, and as some of them have even crossed over to the professional side, their influence has increased accordingly. Look at the kinds of stories that have pushed their way to the fore, where honor and nobility are to be scoffed at, and authority figures are deliberately diminished.
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Brennan Voboril
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Joined: 15 January 2011
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| Posted: 21 April 2025 at 10:56pm | IP Logged | 3
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Could not agree more. As a child comics taught me so much about doing the right thing, honor, bravery, etc. Today’s books?
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James Woodcock
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Joined: 21 September 2007
Location: United Kingdom
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| Posted: 22 April 2025 at 5:35am | IP Logged | 4
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Three things, to my mind, cemented lame characters and ‘there are no true
heroes.
Scourge, THE DARK KNIGHT and WATCHMEN.
After those three, characters were never the same.
There were occasions beforehand, but post those, there was a train that
just about everyone wanted to be on.
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Kevin Brown
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 31 May 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 9120
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| Posted: 22 April 2025 at 5:25pm | IP Logged | 5
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No Squirrel Girl? I'm seriously shocked.
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Paul Kimball
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 September 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 2228
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| Posted: 25 April 2025 at 4:44am | IP Logged | 6
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puck is an interesting character and as far as I know, unique.
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Rodrigo castellanos
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 03 July 2012
Location: Uruguay
Posts: 1555
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| Posted: 27 April 2025 at 6:20am | IP Logged | 7
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Look at the kinds of stories that have pushed their way to the fore, where honor and nobility are to be scoffed at, and authority figures are deliberately diminished.
Similar thing happened with American cinema in the '70s.
And it was an incredibly creative era that gave us a lot of classic films.
But then Spielberg and Co. went the other way in the '80s and heroes came back with a bang.
It's all about cycles. If comics couldn't appropriately respond to the "grim n' gritty" stuff (debatable) with a superior vision I'm afraid it's comics' fault.
Interestingly, film world has been dominated by the very same superheroes for the better part of the past two decades while comics haven't been up to the task.
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Brian Floyd
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 07 July 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 8805
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| Posted: 28 April 2025 at 3:56am | IP Logged | 8
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I think sometimes you need lame or whacky (whack + wacky) characters, to make the weird/mediocre ones look more interesting:
Hero #1: "Oh, crap! Its Pinetaurus, the Baseball Minotaur!"
Hero #2 (less than thrilled): "This goon is going to be a problem. Why couldn't it be someone like Hindsight?"
Hero #1: "Really? I'd rather not have to capture a freak whose eyes are on his butt cheeks again!"
Edited by Brian Floyd on 28 April 2025 at 1:21pm
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Mark Haslett
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6823
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| Posted: 28 April 2025 at 6:44am | IP Logged | 9
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Rodrigo: Similar thing happened with American cinema in the '70s.And it was an incredibly creative era that gave us a lot of classic films.
**
Categorical difference. Superhero comics and "American Cinema" are not 2 of the same kinds of things.
And even if we test the case for the fun of it, we find the most successful works of that era of American movies were not not "scoffing" at honor and nobility, but critiquing traditional portrayals of it and looking for new ways to see it. When authority figures were deliberately diminished, it was (at least faintly) a defense of honor and an attempt to expose hipocricy or institutional injustice.
Superhero comics became a weird kind of echo of an echo in that regard. "Watchmen" prototypically tears down the "facade" of heroism using a group of characters who were invented to be hypocrits. It was going through the motions, as if the failings of the Watchmen were emblematic-- only they were in no way emblematic. At best, they kind of resembled the heroes with feet of clay that were found in 1970's American cinema. They were trotted out and their "failings" were their downfall-- but it was a kind of Kabuki performance of false heroes-- a "critique" that had no actual target.
And, in many ways, that was some kind of high-point for comic writing in the last 40 years.
At any rate-- it's no defense of superhero comics to say American Cinema went through a similar cycle. Superhero comics are about one thing: Superheroes. Scoff at nobility in that context and the heart of the thing stops beating.
Edited by Mark Haslett on 28 April 2025 at 6:51am
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Rodrigo castellanos
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Joined: 03 July 2012
Location: Uruguay
Posts: 1555
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| Posted: 28 April 2025 at 3:46pm | IP Logged | 10
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Hrmm... if you think WATCHMEN was this lethal wound that superheroes couldn't possibly come back from ever, then I guess you don't think much of superheroes.
I, of course, think that's ridiculous. But I guess it's telling either way.
Since we're talking about similarities and differences between film and comics (which I find super interesting!), the WATCHMEN film came out mid (or maybe even pre) superhero movie boom and basically nothing happened.
People lined up even more so to watch the Avengers being heroic afterwards. It wasn't a lethal wound or anything of the sort. So, again, maybe comics should look at themselves in the mirror.
Edited by Rodrigo castellanos on 28 April 2025 at 4:11pm
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Kevin Hagerman
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Joined: 15 April 2005
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| Posted: 28 April 2025 at 3:49pm | IP Logged | 11
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Some characters are interesting in a "I can read minds" way, and that's fine. Puck interested me in that he had that "I know a lot of things about a lot of things" mystique that drew me to the early days of Wolverine. So Alpha Flight #17, their first face-to-face meeting, was really cool ("That WAS you that time in Maracaibo, wasn't it?").
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Vinny Valenti
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Joined: 17 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 8252
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| Posted: 28 April 2025 at 4:31pm | IP Logged | 12
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A good time as any to mention JB's uncanny ability to make even lame characters look good.
Exhibit A: 
And the villain's name is......Trump!
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