Lupine said:
Squanchy said:
Lupine said:
Squanchy said:
Lupine said:
Squanchy said:
Samtemdo8 said:
So can we now finally stop with the whole "Batman is more relatable than Superman because Batman has no powers, he is human like us, Superman is too OP."
Can we finally stop with that excuse now since THIS just recently happened and to comic book readers that are reading the new 52 Spoilers:
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/d0z51jpofjkbb9bkbm3v.jpg
(Yes yes I know Gawker Media is the devil, I just linked a Jpeg so you will just see the image and I do not know how to show a whole image in a post)
I'm sorry, you really think it's so odd that people find a human being more repeatable than a literal alien? Putting aside all of the good points made by other people over two pages here, and the many more to come I'm sure, that alone should be enough.
I relate more to batman because we share a species.
Um...yeah. Because the human in said situation might as well be a robot usually for all the emotion he displays and the life he leads and lends to the proceedings. While the alien is pretty much just a regular joe with super powers that he kinda wishes he could get rid of. So literal alien or no, the fact that he looks exactly like a human being, lives as a human, works, and even identifies as a human most of the time...basically it is like trying to argue Star Trek aliens vs terminators. One is obviously more human even if not literally human than the other dressed in human tissue.
Bruce Wayne is no more alien than John Wayne Gacy, John F. Kennedy, Gandhi, Carlos Hathcock, or any of the other notable human outliers. People can be very cold, and training can do amazing things to people. I can't imagine what goes on in the mind of someone who doesn't even share my physiology though, someone who can keep up with The Flash can think like a supercomputer after all. I know how Superman ACTS, but he's truly alien.
Bruce Wayne is just a highly trained operator with a typically traumatic past, lots of money and luck. Superman can turn back time if he's motivated enough, or enslave humanity on a bad day. These are not things a human can ever imagine, and the ability to do things like destroy a planet and all of its life, on a whim, is very alien. No human has ever had that power, never mind that power available in a moment of rage, sorrow, or desperation.
undeadsuitor said:
Happyninja42 said:
For you Clark is the relatable thing for the character, but for me, it's an act. Clark Kent is his perception of what a human is. It's his facade, not his true self. His true self is a demigod alien who could stomp the planet if he basically wanted to, but doesn't because he's not a dick. Bruce is 100% human, and is basically just a guy with a guilt complex, trying to make the world a better place, the only way he knows how. You seem to be against Bruce because he's basically a 1%'er, and thus is unrelatable, but every representation of him is pretty down to earth, that's why people like him so much.
But Clark Kent was Clark way before his powers emerged and he became superman. He was raised as a human and he still retains the human morality. The idea that superman is some uncomprehending alien God is probably one of the most inaccurate summaries I've ever seen. Even man of Steel had him as a human first (both in history and mindset. He still sacrificed his people to save the earth) you can say that his Clark Kent identity is underused in media, which it is, but for all his power he's still Clark Kent first.
He was raised as a human, but he was never human. You can raise a cat with dogs, and there are some interesting results, but it's never a dog.
You mentioned The Flash in your post. Superman can't turn back time, it is one of those things that the movie came up with for some reason, but The Flash literally can go into the past. He could conquer the world on a bad day, literally tons of beings in the DCU could. So I'm not getting your argument here, powers aren't instantly inhuman in the DCU. There are tons of very human characters in Superman's league and possessing similarly extraordinary gifts; so because Superman was born with them, he's less human than the guys who got them in accidents? Is The Flash not human because of his abilities? Wonder Woman? Wondie was even crafted from clay and imbued with life from the Greek gods and we don't see anyone arguing her humanity.
Not being human though, that's something. The Flash is a guy named Barry Allen, not a Kryptonian named Kal-El. You can raise a cat with dogs, it's going to act a lot like a dog, but it's not a dog. I realize that this sounds like a racist rant, but keep in mind that I'm not associating a value judgement either way, and Superman is literally an alien. He's not superficially different, while being fundamentally the same; he's superficially similar, but fundamentally alien.
Still, The Flash can go back in time, but it doesn't go well. Superman could just steer a comet into Earth on a bad day, if he didn't feel like taking it over Injustice style. I would argue for the record, that Wonder Woman isn't human either, but she's not alien either. Something that's part of the mythological history of humanity, takes human form and has human physiology strikes me as more relateble than an alien. Have you ever stopped to think that maybe Clark Kent's all or nothing morality is actually a result of his alien nature? Maybe he's more fundamentally different than you're giving him credit for, just different in a way that makes him a paragon of virtue.
Lupine said:
Similarly, Clark doesn't ACT human, he is human (If you're arguing biology, that's sort of silly because we don't know much of anything about kyrptonian biology and I mean nothing, beyond they physically look human).
We don't, but obviously there are some pretty big differences, or he wouldn't fly around like that.
Lupine said:
He's lived all his life on planet Earth, he's been exposed to nothing but human culture for the majority of his life and physically he's similar enough to us that there has never been an issue with his physiology and we're talking a guy that is married and has a sex life.
Again, no matter how much you try to make a cat a dog, it's still a cat acting like a dog. His upbringing is presumably why he's a lot less jarringly alien than he could be. Then again, I find his personality to be pretty odd. He's other a perfectly good guy, or a monster. People tend to a have more variation.
Lupine said:
His origin is alien yes, he feels an outsider because he knows that he's an alien and that his people are gone, but just as easily if he'd never known there would probably be very little difference in him as a person or as a character. Clark Kent is Superman, not the other way around. Bruce tried to make himself less human, to run away from his humanity after a fashion because the pain of losing his parents traumatizes him and makes him wary of ever letting anyone so close to him again. You're right that he's as human as the rest of us, but you're wrong in saying that he isn't trying to be inhuman, because he is. He wants to be something strong enough to keep what happened to his parents from ever happening again, and so he's given himself over to that goal, to being more than human because that's what it takes in his mind to reshape the world into something better. By comparison though Superman has always believed in humanity. He believes that people are better than they think they are, he believes that if he's a symbol of hope and stands up, that other people will too. They are both human. The issue however is that only one of them wants to be, and that isn't Batman.
They're not both human, unless you just want "human" to mean whatever you like.
So I read all of that as, biology is all I care about in regards to the character and don't know how to separate the idea of humanity as a species from humanity as an ideal.
Do you know why that is? It's NEVER BEEN AN ISSUE. As humans, we have no real experience with humanity that isn't human. We pretend, imagine, and fantasize about it, but as far as anyone can tell, only humans experience or demonstrate humanity. It would be hubris, anthropocentric hubris to assume that our most prized characteristics (called "Humanity") are universal. They're not even universal for humans living on the same planet, in the same countries, and even less so for humans living in different times.
Like "Goodness" or "Evil", "Humanity" is a vague thing that is a matter of perspective, and context.
Lupine said:
Besides I brought The Flash up for the same reason you thought to point out that Superman can steer a comet to Earth. Guess what, The Flash isn't likely to go back and change the past this is true, but likewise it is less about it not going well for him and more to do with Flash's morality and his responsibility with his powers. Just like Barry Allen has that, Clark Kent also has it. But my point is that Flash is easily as powerful or more powerful and that doesn't make him less dangerous because of what planet he's from.
Maybe he is, that's a fun debate to have, but the point is that Flash's time traveling powers don't work like, "Go back in time, Kill Zoom, Profit." If he tries, it goes wrong, he gets temporally bitchslapped. Superman by contrast has no essential limit keeping him from going all Rods From God on us on any given bad day. He is just casually omnipotent, for all intents and purposes. He didn't have to try for it, didn't have to work for it, it's just his biology.
Lupine said:
As for have I stopped to think, have you? First off, Clark Kent doesn't have all or nothing morality. That's a pretty big assumption that is demonstrably false. We've seen Superman in morally ambiguous positions before, he's not fond of them but we've seen him there still and while he holds himself to a pretty strict moral threshold, he doesn't really do the same to others. Be they criminals, or even allies. Remember the Tower of Babel storyline? Most of the League are pissed at Batman post event, Superman kind of agrees with him and he has even gone out of his way to give Batman Kryptonite...because quite literally he has no idea what might happen in the future but he trusts a good friend of his to have everyone else's best interests in mind first. Superman isn't just good or evil, those are just the stories that people are always harping about. The stories you hear less about are about the time Superman walked across the country because someone made him feel like he'd gotten too high and mighty and he decided to see if they were right by simply doing everything on foot and meeting and talking to people as he went. A few times he was a dick, but we also have things like him talking a suicidal woman down from a building and promising to her that if she jumped he would not save her unless she wanted him to.
Now do I think Superman is psychologically different from humans...I'd reply to that, that most humans are psychologically different from one another. Sure we share certain experiences and some of us even react similarly to similar stimuli, but in the end it becomes a matter of both nature and nurture for us humans so I'd ask why would you assume it to be different for him when so far we've not seen a lot that speaks of divergent/inhuman behavior in him or any other kryptonian for that matter.
He's different, but again you're comparing the variation between humans and then inserting an alien. Maybe he's a somewhat typical human, but a totally batshit alien? One thing I can't argue against though, is that Superman and every other alien in virtually all fiction is written like a human. In the same way that 1000 year old vampires still act like teenagers, aliens act like humans (most of the time). It actually takes a powerful imagination, and good writing to do otherwise, and there isn't a lot of either to be found.
Lupine said:
Again, you don't read a lot of Superman if you think he's the perfect guy. He's a good guy yes.
I think he's a fanatical, all-or-nothing kind of guy. As I've said before, he's never shown living his life in anything other than extremes. He's dictator, or a savior, a commie or capitalist. As Injustice shows, he's just one personal tragedy away from flipping extremes.
Lupine said:
He's a guy that feels for others, he wants to help them and feels that he should because all the gifts he has. That's Clark Kent, but at the same time he isn't perfect. He can be pigheaded, he can be a bit arrogant or too sure of his own power or cultural outlook. Some of the best Superman stories are simply Superman having to deal with another culture and consider if maybe his own ideals are wrong or at the very least incompatible with lives that people are living. You called his morality all or nothing, and this is the guy that was willing to stop a war with his bare hands but left without doing anything when a warlord made a pretty good argument about war and human nature that Supes felt that maybe he was trying to force his values on a segment of humanity that he isn't equipped to understand, let alone make judgements about.
And yet he and other Superheroes are all vigilantes and thus up holding their own interpretations of justice and morality already. So yeah, him being a little introspective about the whole thing seemed pretty in character, especially seeing as I mentioned him being a little naive before and we know where he grew up wasn't exactly war torn Bosnia.
None of which makes him more relateable than someone who is human, who has to train and work for strength and speed, and who is naturally vulnerable, not invulnerable. In other words, a mortal human, however weird or rich or criminal.