BehattedWanderer said:
Some of those ideas sound good. But, there's a problem that I face--nothing I've ever seen or red about him has ever made me give the slightest care in the world about Superman. Not one. He's anachronistic to the world he's in, and he's a blind patsy to "the American Way", a racist, sexist, xenophobic, economically-driven, power-hungry ideal that usurped peace for terror across the world.
You realise that a couple of years ago (pre-reboot) he renounced his American citizenship for pretty much these reasons, right?
See, I've always found Superman to be an interesting character. Obviously you have the battle of personality versus powers, where
if he wanted to he could become God-Emperor of Earth, but because of the way he was raised and the man he has become, he doesn't. He just wants to help. He's also torn because he
could be helping a lot more (see
Red Son) but has to restrain himself because he knows that over-protective nannying will in the long run be detrimental to humanity's development - interestingly, a belief he shares with Lex Luthor, though obviously they disagree on what level of intervention is acceptable.
I don't like the modern trend of bashing Superman as bland and boring. Yes, his powers make him pretty dull, but his
character makes him interesting. He's more human than many of his biologically-human contemporaries because he embodies all the things we consider the best about ourselves; honesty, compassion, mercy, justice and so on. He may be physically alien (another interesting facet to the character that gets frequently ignored by haters is that he's so incredibly
lonely, because his powers set him so far apart from everyone else that there's practially nobody he can relate to) but he's emotionally human. More than anything, he's a symbol. People might be glad when Batman saves them from a rapist, but they're still afraid of him. When Superman shows up, they know that whatever happens, things are going to be OK, because Superman always saves the day. It's what he does.
BehattedWanderer said:
Batman is the least interesting thing in his own stories, which is mercifully why the focus is usually on the villains, because they are usually ever so much fun.
Not really. I know Yahtzee said so, but that doesn't automatically make it true ;-)
The villains are often pretty boring and repetitive. That was the point of the whole Hush storylines, that Batman's villains were generally stuck in a rut of the same old thing, and Batman was able to defeat them easily because they were generally quite predictable. The most interesting thing in Batman stories is usually how Batman gets out of the situations he finds himself in and his own determination and drive to fight.
BehattedWanderer said:
Wonder Woman I'm not all that familiar with, apart from the cartoon, so I can't really chime in on her.
I've always been of the opinion that listing Wonder Woman as one of DC's "big three" was making a statement rather than because she's a great character - "Hey, look, we have girl superheroes and they're totally equal to the dudes!" - since she's frankly not very interesting. I love comics, I've read thousands of them, and while I can talk about Batman or Superman or even obscure DC characters like Tommy Monaghan, Spoiler or the Doom Patrol for
literally hours at a time, I have nothing to say about Wonder Woman. Can't really remember anything interesting she's said or done. Don't remember more than a couple of her storylines. Even when she was prominent in a JLA story I happened to have been reading, she seemed to fade into the background.
BehattedWanderer said:
The Flash? Fastest Man Alive breaks physics, magically doesn't cause climate problems by moving that fast or an accidental atomic explosion when his mass runs at lightspeed into an atom, as an upsized version of the LHC particle collisions.
All this can be excused though, since the Flash is awesome ;-)
BehattedWanderer said:
Green Latern, Green Arrow, The Martian Manhunter? Probably the most fun, and therefore won't get the focus they deserve.
I think with Green Arrow, we run into the balance issue. Hawkeye in Avengers played his role and was a useful member of the team because with the exception of Thor and Hulk they weren't massively powerful individually. When you compare GA to his teammates, a guy with the boxing-glove arrow seems a little useless standing next to the dude who runs faster than sound or a man who can bench-press the moon. Batman gets away with it partly by being a memetic badass (it's
fucking Batman!) and partly by being a full-fledged genius in matters technical and tactical, but Green Arrow - much as I like the guy - always felt outclassed.
BehattedWanderer said:
Aquaman. He has all the strength and speed of Superman!--underwater. Yeah, that's really useful.
And the rest of the time too. He has the same strength and speed wherever he is, which is one of the reasons the Aquaman bashing fad annoys me. Yeah, we get it, talking to fish is a bit dumb. That doesn't mean that's
all he can do. I think it would be interesting if they used the comic book version of Aquaman, who is actually king of Atlantis (basically a massive underwater civilization) and therefore the de facto ruler of two thirds of the planet, with everything that entails - ambassadors to foreign countries, a standing army, the works. I like the character because he's got power in more ways than just physical; he's a genuine player on the world diplomatic stage.
BehattedWanderer said:
To sum up--yeah, I'm really betting this won't be that good. Marvel has a much better set of toys to work with.
I strongly disagree. DC have tons of interesting heroes and villains, and a million great stories to tell. You just need to look past the fashionable bashing of characters as "boring" or "useless" and see them as more than one-note jokes.
