I despise the very concept of superheroes

[briankoontz]

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Wow that's a little hyperbolic, also extremely factually suspect, with the way most superhero comics are. I'm honestly not sure if you even read comics or know what Fascism actually is since what you described has very little to do with it. Facism is the glorification of the state, I.E. the government, and national or cultural identity above the self; it is about looking to a strong central authority figure, and relying on nationalism and military conquest to obtain autarky, economic self-sufficiency and independence. Hitler's ideas on genetics and racial superiority, are not a necessary part of Fascism, and even then much of German propaganda was about celebrating the common (non-Jewish, non-gay, or pretty much any race other than white) German man as superior to the rest of the world, I don't know where you got this idea that he thought the German people were dead, when he spent so much time telling them how much better they were than everyone else.

Fascism is the marriage of concentrated capital and the state, making it not much different than the situation in many countries these days, where corporations purchase government officials and their policies, as well as other techniques such as ALEC. Nazi Germany was merely one type of fascism and is not the archetype.

Just like the self-esteem movement in the United States, the only time people need to be told they are awesome is when they feel they have no value. Examine the history prior to World War II - Europe has a long history of in-fighting which culminated in World War I. After the war harsh economic policies (detailed excellently by Keynes' Economic Consequences of the Peace) were enforced against Germany which decimated the German economy, which had long been strong and a source of German pride. The prolonged economic stagnation that resulted allowed a right-wing populist party, the Nazis, to come to power. Hitler used the despair of Germans, their injured pride as well as their empty bellies, to justify extreme nationalism and genetic cleansing. Hitler wanted them to be proud again, to eat as much as they want, and whoever stood in the way of that (real or imagined) got the gas chamber.

Now here's where I question if you even read comic books, because any time normal citizens get off their ass and does something, they basically either end up kicking the superheroes in their ass, or the superheroes fall on their knees in praise of the "awe-inspiring" efforts of the normal citizens. Although we could just use the whole superheroes as mythical figures thing, since we have had superheroes doing their thing thousands of years before Fascism was even an organized political concept, but that sinks your entire argument before we even get into modern comics.

So, in Marvel who runs the Avengers? it's S.H.I.E.L.D, which used to be a primarily U.S. organization, but later became a more world-wide anti-crime organization. And this super -organization that controls a good chunk of superheroes in the world is run almost entirely by normal people. Of course this is before we get into the fact that the major superheroes will immediately start talking about how awesome they think normal people are the second they get the chance. Superman will talk random people out of committing suicide by telling them how awesome they are, and anytime a public servant is brought up (policeman, doctor, firefighter) most superheroes will immediately start talking about how they (the public servants) are the real heroes, and how they couldn't do what they do without them. This is because a lot of comic books are still set in the "modern real-world" just with superheroes, so they act as morality lessons to their younger readers. So many superheroes also preach about multiculturalism and how all the countries need to get along to stop wars and international problems, which is pretty much the polar opposite of Fascism. Very few superheroes are also pro-government, with many of them being outright considered criminals by the governments of their respective settings, another facet that is pretty much the opposite of Fascism.

With a lot of modern superheroes getting their start fighting Nazis in WWII, a lot of influence on the comics industry is downright anti-Fascist, so I'm really confused on where you got your impressions from.

The Allied Powers of WWII were not anti-fascist, they simply weren't keen on Germany ruling the world. They would have opposed Germany's quest for world domination regardless of their type of government. Many American corporations did business with the Nazis, for example. The "anti-fascist" aspect of the war was used as propaganda to gain popular support for the war. Americans were just fine with America ruling the world, which they effectively did for a few decades after WWII, until transnational corporations (many based in America) took over.

You display a lot of faith in superheroes when you believe their words of "regular people are awesome!". People generally don't need to be told they're awesome, and you may wish to consider the possibility of subconscious patronizing condescension on the part of the "super" people.

I've read very few comic books but according to everything I've heard the TV shows and movies based on comic books are usually very true to the source material, and I've watched many of those. Time and again in these shows and movies the super people team up with other super people to cause great destruction to some unfortunate city in the name of stopping some super villain, who only ever exists in the fictional universe itself. The actual human beings who are having their city destroyed are rarely even shown except as props for the super people to show their awesomeness by saving them from the super villain. One can only imagine the body count of actual humans who are in buildings that collapse, in cars that are crushed, etc. - I say imagine because of course the superheroes are too busy displaying their awesomeness to much care about that. They defeat the fictional big bad guy, smile and give each other high fives, bow in acknowledgement of their awesomeness, and then fly away to their false human lives, secretly wishing for another super villain to show up so that they can be super-awesome once again and having their wishes eternally granted with seemingly infinite sequels.

If superheroes were serious and not vain narcissistic glory seekers they would become law enforcement agents, tracking down criminals BEFORE they became super-powerful super-villains, but of course that would defeat the whole purpose which is to display their super-awesomeness. That countless regular people die in order for them to display said awesomeness is mere collateral damage, a small price to pay. Your death was not in vain, John Smith - Superman got to display his fucking laser eyes again!

 

[Ftaghn To You Too]

I think you are wrong. Superman is the everyday american hero standing up for the american dream and way of life yet hes an immigrant to america. Sound familiar?

And if that were discussed it would be interesting.

But superman represents the smoothest form of immigration. A person who is TOTALLY indistinguishable from the native population in almost every way coming to the country, with a flawless accent and english and as such he wont have any of the issues that someone who is blatantly not from here will have. He fits in, he basically IS a native in every way it could possibly cause him something negative. And in every way it could be a positive thing its exaggerated and drawn out. He gets all the bonus's for not being human but none of the negative aspects for not being FROM here. No one ever freaking mentions it because he is basically a carbon copy of a regular human but with added superness. He doesnt have to deal with ANY of the issues of not being from here but he gets all of the perks from not being from here. The fact hes a "Perfect" human caucasian male is quite frankly totally bizarre and it means he has no issues integrating into our society. Theres no culture clash or isolationism because he looks and acts JUST like everyone else. But he also has super cool god like add ons.

It irks me that not only is supermans power boringly flawless but his origin story, despite having the capacity to explore some AWESOME themes about being literally "alien" and another species defender, is pretty much white washed into the most boring story ever.

"Alien from another planet lands in America! But its ok because he can look, talk, walk, converse and interact EXACTLY like your average american to the point where NO ONE recognizes him as different unless he specifically tells them!". Does any arc ever explore how superman feels about sheparding the humans? Do the humans ever comment about having this guardian from another world plunge into their planet and become the earth police? Its avoided because for practical purposes the story pretends he's a superMAN as the name suggests.

The story pretty much pretends he is a human (because its convenient to) unless narrative involving his powers demands we realise "oh yeah hes an alien lol i forgot".

I think the idea is that he's Jewish. Since his creators were both Jewish, that whole idea of "I'm American, I've lived in America my whole life, I am indistinguishable from an American, but I'm still different, and apart from the average person even if I don't want to be, necessarily" is what mainly informs him being indistinguishable but different. He's an ideal, for a person who is apart still working with the whole for the greater good. He feels it's a burden sometimes. But he keeps doing it.

He's just as human as you or I, but he's not "human", I think is the point.

 

[Queen Michael]

I've read very few comic books but according to everything I've heard the TV shows and movies based on comic books are usually very true to the source material, and I've watched many of those.

No. No no noooooooooo. They aren't. The TV shows might be, I don't watch the live action ones but the cartoons are good. But the movies? Noooooooo. In almost all superhero movies, the titular hero is the only superhuman in the entire world. In the very first issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, you saw proof that Spider-Man was just one hero amongst many others before you even had time to open the comic book. The cover showed Spidey together with the Fantastic Four. But in every single Spider-Man movie, there's never been any superhero apart from Spider-Man, and less than five supervillains altogether.

And there's never been a faithful Batman movie. Every Batman comic takes place in a world with superpowered beings. Not a single Batman movie does. That's kind of a big deal.

If superheroes were serious and not vain narcissistic glory seekers they would become law enforcement agents, tracking down criminals BEFORE they became super-powerful super-villains, but of course that would defeat the whole purpose which is to display their super-awesomeness. That countless regular people die in order for them to display said awesomeness is mere collateral damage, a small price to pay. Your death was not in vain, John Smith -- Superman got to display his fucking laser eyes again!

Ett: Superheroes do track down regular criminals before they become supervillans. But if Spider-Man stops a mugger and gets him thrown into jail, so that the mugger doesn't, say, manage to steal anough cash to afford supervillain weapons, then we won't know that there was ever a risk of that in the first place.

Två: Several superheroes do work for the police or other organizations that do good as their secret identities. Barry Allen worked for the police. Batman devoted his energy to earning enough money to pay for his equipment and works together with the police. Superman's powers started manifesting before he was able to join any crime-fighting organization more serious than the Encyclopedia Brown fanclub. He didn't have the option of working for the government. And nowadays he's so good at crimefighting that he doesn't need any help. He's skilled enough to make sure that no civilians are wounded by his actions.
As for why superheroes in general don't start working for the public good until they become masked vigilantes, well, it varies from hero to hero, but if you read the comics it's clear that its not just so that they can look awesome.

And I don't get what you're trying to say with your last remark -- do you mean that they shouldn't go fight supervillains with their powers, or what? If Doctor Octopus is running amok ad the police clearly arenät equipped to handle him, then we need Spider-Man.

 

[Queen Michael]

I think the idea is that he's Jewish.

His name is Kal-El. El is Hebrew, I think.

Edit: I hope that the italics doesn't make me sound rude.

 

[Ikasury]

typically you have to step away from the 'mainstream' comics to find the really wonky-non-ubermensch stuff... love you Vertigo and Dark Horse~

though for my own commentary, this concept of 'ubermensch' isn't new in anyway, its the basic premise of the 'hero's journey', namely the boiled down 'plot' of just about every 'hero' thing ever written... all 'heroes' are super-human in some aspect, else they'd just be normal people and no one would be interested, its the idealized fantasy of people wanting to be 'different' and 'unique' and thus vicariously living it out in these mediums and stories...

look at any historical fiction: Gilgamesh, Odessy, the Bible, all these stories either center around demi-gods or 'the chosen one', typically hashing out 'good guys' and 'bad guys' and the ambivalent masses no one cares about... yea, its older then dirt, no one cares about the majority of 'normal people' because in general and in real life, 'normal people' don't really do anything .-. yes, 'teams' make the things we find in history, but only one person generally has the drive/ambition/whatever to be named 'the chosen one' or 'the hero' of whatever story... people like conflict, like clear cut good/bad, as much as they like to deny it nowadays, boil it all down and its all the same story really... all these remakes nowadays petty much make that clear-cut...

personally i like the idea of Eugenics, because imagine how much more advanced we would be if we were all breed correctly, or at least with the idea of 'improving the species' like nature intended instead of us all just wasting and doping 'whatever'... i mean we still apply a kind of Eugenics still in how we choose our mates, i just think it'd be pretty spiffy to be able to give my kid super-strength, infinite telemeres, or a perfect immune system, to give them every advantage from the beginning, so, hopefully, they don't have to worry about that and continue on and be awesome...

'Social Darwinism' i have a severe problem with, as its just painted up racism/culturalism/classism and whatever other kinds of 'isms' out there people use for arbitrary bs to call others 'less' for no reason...

the point of these 'stories' is some 'unique' person or small group changes the world, not a huge groupd of people, as its a far more romanticized version, yet oddly correct .-. 'unique' people change the world, not so big 'thing', they're usually just the unnamed masses used by these 'unique' people, like all wars, like now, that's the real sad part of that story, we're all just npcs, no one cares, unless we get that 'big break' we're pretty much always going to be npcs...

these stories are just fantasies, people wishing they were the 'unique' ones, i mean honestly, if you asked someone if they would rather stay as they are or have some superpower, which do you think they'd choose? they wouldn't care about all the social implications or any other 'problems', all they'd think is 'SWEET!! SUPERPOWERS!!' what they'd actually DO with those powers is the big mystery and test of 'character'... the fact superheroes even 'care' about the 'lesser people' is pretty astounding (ESPECIALLY when you consider most are non-human and/or not raised on eath with our moral set), because we all know that in reality, if someone got whatever superpower, they wouldn't give a damn about the rest of the world... humans in reality are quite selfish...

so i suppose i 'disagree' in the sense that there ARE 'super humans' out there, anyone that made history wexcelled at 'something' that made them stand out, otherwise everyone would be in 'history', but we're not, we're just npcs...

though, i suppose for the sake of stating, i hate the 'chosen one' angle, is poor writing in my opinion, a ''perfect' character, a freakin' 'sue', is so bland and tasteless, there's no challenge, nothing fo them to truly overcome or grow out of... its... sad... really ._. part of why i always found Superman and Saiyans so freakin' boring... they need a power, BAM! its there *sigh* i like a character with challenge, mental screw ups, terible past to over come, yattta yatta, like Guts from Berserk or Raven from Teen Titans... they're both rather dark takes on the same formula as the others but instead of getting boost up from their 'auspicious birth' they kinda get a kick in the gut... or its 'just a thing'... i prefer that so much more, someone who starts off 'less' then an npc but grows throuhg adverstiy to be so much more :3

and as a sidenote, if there's a bunch of screw ups in this, i blame this retarded ad that's covering like half my typing box -.-

 

[Diddy_Mao]

Heh, The entire time I was reading the OP all I could really think was. "This is the way I assume Lex Luthor looks at things."

 

[Julius Terrell]

I kind of agree with you, but that's probably because I'm more of a fan of how japan does things. Super Hero Worship makes me feel ill. I'd rather get real fantasy works than stupid superhero movies. Nobody really cares about real sci- fi and fantasy. Makes me glad I read books.

There is the Game of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings. They are exceptions and not average. Hell there was steven speilber's A.I. which was fantastic, but nobody cared.

Define "real Sci-Fi and fantasy". Because I have no idea what you mean.

OT:
I've never really been too keen on the whole superhero thing, some I like, some I don't, most I haven't heard of or just don't have any real interest in. I quite like Thor, but that's probably more to do with my interest in Norse mythology than anything else.

What I'm really saying is that I get tired of all the same old characters they use for comic book based movies. I just want to see other comic based movies. Watchmen and Sin City was a great starting point. I enjoyed them immensely.

and as far as defining real sci-fi and fantasy. I want to boldy go where nobody has gone before. I want to see a sci-fi film that makes me feel the same way 2001: A space odyssey. Like someone is actually using their imagination for once. Not just cashing in on something that already exist. This is EXACTLY why I read epic fantasy novels.

If Hollywood knows people love comic book movies, do others. Not just recycle the same old thing over and over. I probably wouldn't have as big a problem with comic book movies then.

 

[EternallyBored]

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So at least you've given me your definition of Fascism, although it seems to be one that is far too broad to the point of uselessness. By your definition basically everything you seem to disagree with falls under Fascism, even if it contradicts itself (hell by the definition you gave me, both Socialism, Communism, and some forms of Capitalism fall under Fascism as they all gather capital to the state in one form or another). In your first paragraph you name Fascism as the control of capital, but what your missing is that the state has to be the one in control of the capital for a nationalistic purpose in order to obtain Autarky (pretty much one of the central goals of fascism). Your example of private corporations in the modern day purchasing political power only works if those corporations are amassing political power in service to the state for nationalistic purposes, otherwise it falls under other designations such as corporate oligarchy, which is still bad, but it's not the same thing as fascism, as one serves the state and the other solely serves private interests.

Your second point is just way too broad on itself, and the idea that any sort of boosting of the human ego being equivalent to your original point of portraying humans as drowning in despair and useless, comes off as you trying to have your cake and eat it too. Considering the similarities between superhero comics and the ancient epic myths, your basically purporting that a significant chunk of fiction has been spreading "fascism" since before the idea of a unified state was even a concept.

Concerning everything else, your right you really don't know much about comic books and seem to assume way too much about them. Nothing proves this better than your last paragraph, so lets break down where you seem to have inserted your own interpretation of the entire industry versus the reality of the situation.
1. The Avengers that I mentioned in my previous post? they are sanctioned law enforcement agents. They work under S.H.I.E.L.D. which used to be a United States Agency and is now a world-wide agency, so now they are more like Interpol agents, which again the whole world-wide versus single-nationalistic purpose is pretty much the opposite of Fascism. There are plenty of criticisms to level against the Avengers, but not every bad thing is immediately filed under Fascism
2.Tracking down criminals? oh hey guess what S.H.I.E.L.D. does? Comic stories based around SHIELD are basically all about tracking down super-villains before they commit crimes, and solving crimes that weren't stopped by any supers at all. The Justice league has a whole division dedicated to this (also sanctioned by the U.N. depending on the continuity). Hell Batman is called the world's greatest detective, half his schtick is stopping crimes and super-villains before they hurt anyone. They do keep escaping but that has nothing to do with beating down the common man, and everything to do with resetting continuities and bringing back popular villains solely for popularity and financial reasons.
3. You do realize that comics go out of their way to show how little random civilians actually get killed in most of these fights right? It's pretty well lampshaded by superhero parodies and deconstructions about how contrived it gets with so many superheroes duking it out in abandoned secret labs, empty islands that don't exist in real life, abandoned city slums (that they will go out of their way to mention there were no deaths there), and alien planets. That's why so many comic book geeks raged at Man of Steel for portraying what was likely Superman accidentally killing thousands of civilians off-screen, because in most of his comic portrayals go out of their way to prevent him from doing that. Hell in the Superman cartoon Lex Luthor built an entire empty city (because that's how you sell real estate in Metropolis apparently) just so they could avoid any uncomfortable questions when Superman had a no holds barred fight with Darkseid in it.
4. Ok last point because I'm rambling here and I don't want to get too specific since you already admitted you don't actually know much about superhero comics. In the end, superheroes are much MUCH closer to being anarchistic than Fascistic, The government (I.E. the state, kind of an essential part for Fascism) is often portrayed as at odds with various individual super powered groups, this is usually done in service to a message about free expression and openly criticizing the Government. Blowing off the state to pursue personal goals and beliefs is pretty anarchistic behavior (cause' fuck the man yo). Your suggestions about making superheroes subservient to the state as official peacekeepers is far closer to a potential Fascistic scenario than most current groups, Except as I mentioned a number of groups do work directly under governments and international agencies as sanctioned peacekeepers or with direct government permission.

Look, I've talked to many comic book writers and artists in my long time participating in my geeky hobbies and going to conventions. You have to remember that comic books were very niche for the last 20 years until superhero movies started becoming popular, so even the big names still aren't pulling down large amounts of money. A few of them have messages they want to sell the reader, but individual writers can hardly agree on lunch let alone some form of coherent Fascistic message capable of damaging society. The initial concept often seems to come out as, "man I really like Sherlock Holmes, I should invent an awesome detective that solves crimes and uses awesome gadgets on top of it all" and thus we get Batman.

I'm going to tell you the same thing I told the original poster, your reading way too far into something that just isn't there. People want to read about Hercules and Sherlock Holmes, not random convenience store worker Bob Smith. I don't read Heinlein to experience the life of an asteroid miner, or Tolkein to experience the life of a random peasant. People read these stories to experience things they can't in real life, because if any significant portion of the population decided to be heroes, adventurers, or super sleuth detectives, society would collapse into anarchy in short order. It's very simplistic escapism, nothing more, nothing less, and that's all it needs to be. If it brings a coherent message or metaphor along for the ride, then that's just bonus baby.

TL;DR These types of stories have existed since the dawn of humanity and will exist long after the both of us are dead, if comic books didn't destroy society at the height of their popularity in the 1950's and 60's I doubt their going to damage it now.

 

[Queen Michael]

and as a sidenote, if there's a bunch of screw ups in this, i blame this retarded ad that's covering like half my typing box -.-

Dude. That's offensive, dude. You're supposed to call it a "special needs ad."

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

I kind of agree with you, but that's probably because I'm more of a fan of how japan does things. Super Hero Worship makes me feel ill. I'd rather get real fantasy works than stupid superhero movies. Nobody really cares about real sci- fi and fantasy. Makes me glad I read books.

There is the Game of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings. They are exceptions and not average. Hell there was steven speilber's A.I. which was fantastic, but nobody cared.

what exactly does Japan do differently, i think i understand in that people are either the type to work towards overwhelming power or they have their power but feel great pressure from it and try to understand the reasoning behind it and would hope not to use it.

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

Next is the downright mean-spirited treatment of anyone with unorthodox abilities and the under-utilization of the most popular abilities. Basically, what I got from reading the comics is that anyone with unorthodox powers will most likely be dumber than bricks, and will die very very quickly, or retire early after having realized just how outmatched they are. Also, nothing screams "laziness" more than having a super have an ability listed as, "Mastery of Multiple/All forms of Martial Arts".

There's this other Japanese series named JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and one of the abilities Stand users can have in that series is the ability to open and close zippers. That's it. Try having a super laugh at that before they get all their bodyparts zipped open. Hell, even Japanese manga aimed at middleschoolers tend to have a focus on a single martial art that's drawn with so much better action than almost all the martial arts scenes I read in most superhero comic books.

I can kind of agree. for the best example, let's compare electromasters. Static from the DC comics is the most creative of the American electric wielders: induced flight on a disc and is smart enough to know that electricity can still be used against insulators.

Now let's compare Static to Tokiwadai's ace, Misaka Mikoto: magnetic control over all metals, sensory field, enhanced hacking and of course

Yeah, i think I know which level of electrokinesis I want

 

[Something Amyss]

I kind of agree with you, but that's probably because I'm more of a fan of how japan does things.

... Y'mean Super Robot and Super Sentai? I'm having trouble parsing the meaningful differences here.

It's Japan and Japan has no flaws? I don't know.

Maybe it's the way America treats comic books and how Hollywood treats Super heroes. It's just always the same old damn thing with very little imagination.

And again, you can apply the same generalisation to Eastern heroes.

 

[Something Amyss]

The only two you like happen to be born into insanely wealthy families and are incredibly smart? Basically the real world equivalent to superpowers?

Give me Spider-Man over that crap any day.

It's okay if you're REAL WORLD superior...Even though that's the sort of thing he alluded to being wrong in the first place....>.>

 

[xPixelatedx]

When one looks at superhero franchises like Superman and X-Men, or fantasy works like Harry Potter, the common characteristic is the existence of a super-human class with genetic and innate traits that make them superior to regular humans. In all of these works of fiction, humans are at the complete mercy of these Ubermensch to save us because we are too weak to do it ourselves. And what's more, human attempts to level the playing field with technology are generally rendered ineffective because most superheroes and supervillains are conveniently immune to human weapons.

Not true
I don't know the exact cannon, but many of the storylines of the Xmen cartoon had a lot to do with time-travel.

In the episodes were Professor X was removed from existence, Humans and Mutants were in a war that was destroying the world. The humans were winning, btw.

In another time travel episode involving Bishop, Humans and Mutants were at war after regular history played out. Human's weren't exactly winning, in fact we were all losing... I think that was the point of that storyline, though. Ultimately, it was a pretty good message.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

There are no super men. Although there have been standout examples of great people through history, all of them were assisted in innumerable ways by other people. Human progress is the product of human collaboration, and not the product of a few.

Huh, that's an interesting way of thinking about things.

I'm generally not a fan of the generic superheroes mostly because I find the idea of contrived superpowers boring. Not despicable, just uninteresting. Maybe it's because I tend to not connect well with wish-fulfillment and I prefer heroes who have as many vices and limitations as they have powers and have to rely on "humanly" abilities like good ol' cleverness and creativity. This gets especially bad when the writers fuck up and make the superhero inferior to the muggles. One of my major complaints of "Harry Potter" was that Voldemort could have been stopped quicker by a couple of guys with machine guns then the main characters.

I don't think, however, that the "idealized superhero" phenomenon is indicative of a subscription into social darwinism and Randian thought though. Keep in mind most traditional superheroes have altruistic motives in addition to stock superiority, characters like Superman don't think "I have powers, thus everyone who doesn't is lesser", they think "I have powers, so I better use them to assist the people who don't".

 

[Warachia]

I feel like the X-Men would in a way be a subversion of the superman trend you don't like, as each character has a very narrow, specialized skill set and has to focus on training and teamwork and having an infrastructure in place to handle these threats rather than merely swooping in and taking them out in one punch.

Are you kidding me? Half the X-Men shoot lasers, the other half has some sort of passive telepathy skill. There're maybe 4 or 5 X-Men with truly specialized skills, and even those get repeated. Nightcrawler=Vanisher, Mystique=Courier, Wolverine=Deathstrike, Colossus=Emma Frost, Xavier=Jean Grey, etc. I get the whole teamwork thing but isn't that the same as Avengers and Justice League? Everybody's super awesome, but they share their screen time anyway?

Remember that scene in X-Men 2 where Deathstrike woke up from the drug, kicked back with a bottle of booze and a cigar while making fun of what was going on around them?
I don't because it never happened. How about that bit where Jean Grey mind controlled somebody? Or colossus gave someone hallucinations?
I mentioned this in another thread but they all have different things they can bring to the table, even if it's just their personality, I thought part of the fun in comics was seeing characters develop, but you seem to identify them only by their abilities, when there's more to the character, for example, I know that Wolverine realized that you shouldn't just train mutants to be fighters (because that's made the public even more scared of mutants than they already were), so he opened his own private school for mutants where they would actually learn, and that's one example, the other characters have their own personalities and development that I never read but have been told is there, whereas you just shrug it off and assume that because they have overlapping powers they must be exactly the same.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I feel like the X-Men would in a way be a subversion of the superman trend you don't like, as each character has a very narrow, specialized skill set and has to focus on training and teamwork and having an infrastructure in place to handle these threats rather than merely swooping in and taking them out in one punch.

Are you kidding me? Half the X-Men shoot lasers, the other half has some sort of passive telepathy skill. There're maybe 4 or 5 X-Men with truly specialized skills, and even those get repeated. Nightcrawler=Vanisher, Mystique=Courier, Wolverine=Deathstrike, Colossus=Emma Frost, Xavier=Jean Grey, etc. I get the whole teamwork thing but isn't that the same as Avengers and Justice League? Everybody's super awesome, but they share their screen time anyway?

Remember that scene in X-Men 2 where Deathstrike woke up from the drug, kicked back with a bottle of booze and a cigar while making fun of what was going on around them?
I don't because it never happened. How about that bit where Jean Grey mind controlled somebody? Or colossus gave someone hallucinations?
I mentioned this in another thread but they all have different things they can bring to the table, even if it's just their personality, I thought part of the fun in comics was seeing characters develop, but you seem to identify them only by their abilities, when there's more to the character, for example, I know that Wolverine realized that you shouldn't just train mutants to be fighters (because that's made the public even more scared of mutants than they already were), so he opened his own private school for mutants where they would actually learn, and that's one example, the other characters have their own personalities and development that I never read but have been told is there, whereas you just shrug it off and assume that because they have overlapping powers they must be exactly the same.

There're so many timelines and alternate continuities I could never bother to get invested in these supposed "character developments". The way I see it comic book artists pick up any mutant bloke who is defined by that one power and make them do whatever they want. So anybody anywhere anytime can be good, or evil, or angry, or cool, and it doesn't make any difference because they're following whatever continuity. All that matters is that Scott's eyes go pewpew and Logan's hands go snicksnick.

 

[Warachia]

If superheroes were serious and not vain narcissistic glory seekers they would become law enforcement agents, tracking down criminals BEFORE they became super-powerful super-villains, but of course that would defeat the whole purpose which is to display their super-awesomeness. That countless regular people die in order for them to display said awesomeness is mere collateral damage, a small price to pay. Your death was not in vain, John Smith -- Superman got to display his fucking laser eyes again!

Sorry, but I need to call you out on your bullshit here, if they haven't committed a crime, they can't be brought to justice, it's that simple.

Most supervillains are A) not criminals before becoming a super-villain, or B) became a super-villain directly due to the actions of the hero, either because of something the hero did, or desire to get back at the hero who put them away, your idea would either create more villains, or if you wanted all criminals to be constantly monitored, would require some sort of Orwellian regime.

What's interesting is recently I read a very short but really good Spider-man story where Peter Parker bumps into a Super-villain he locked up, the guy had gone through prison just fine, but when he came out he couldn't adapt to outside life, nobody wanted to hire a former super-villain for anything, and he was estranged from his family, the inventions he made were nothing compared to the technology they had when he left (which he also couldn't adapt to), he finally decided to go back to robbing banks because that was the only thing he was marginally good at (as opposed to letting his debt pile up to the point that everything is taken away from him), just so he could get thrown back in prison because that was all he really knew, so Peter (a scientist at this time) hired him as a lab assistant, he wasn't a bad guy, just desperate, and there you go, he just stopped a super-villain without any sort of violent action.

 

[Warachia]

There're so many timelines and alternate continuities I could never bother to get invested in these supposed "character developments". The way I see it comic book artists pick up any mutant bloke who is defined by that one power and make them do whatever they want. So anybody anywhere anytime can be good, or evil, or angry, or cool, and it doesn't make any difference because they're following whatever continuity. All that matters is that Scott's eyes go pewpew and Logan's hands go snicksnick.

That's why I only occasionally buy the trade paperbacks and view each as their own story, but just because you don't want to acknowledge character growth that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Incidentally, they have editors there to stop what you described from happening.