I despise the very concept of superheroes

[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.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

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.

It still happens though, doesn't it? Wasn't there a thread a few weeks ago about a new timeline in which Doc Ock takes control of Spiderman's brain and erases him for good? Or that Injustice game where Superman becomes evil and kills Lois in a different timeline?

 

[Racecarlock]

How can works of fiction that exist primarily to celebrate the innate superiority of one group of persons over the rest of humanity be so popular?

Because nobody wants to fantasize about being a 9 to 5 accountant or cancer patient. You can sympathize with those people, but you probably don't want to be them.

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

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I'm honestly curious about this too, I distinctly remember most Shounen manga being harsh on characters with quirky power sets. Even the magical girl and giant robot series tend to give a hard time to characters with unconventional powers/mechs.

Although given his one example is JoJo's Bizarre adventure, I don't know how much faith I have in his interpretation. That series was pretty much centered around bizarre powers being used in fights so its a poor representation of attitudes in manga and anime in general.

And there you have it, the reason why I don't even want to give a concrete answer. It won't convince anyone, ever.

Your one example is a series dedicated to showcasing bizarre powers and weird fights. Its like me making the reverse statement about Eastern Series and using the Hitman comics as my one example (i.e. a western series based around a team of heroes with bizarre or no powers at all). It undermines my point more than it helps it.

You have to admit though that within the established powers, they rarely go crazy with it. Toaru Majutsu no Index has the same basic powers (and one OP to the point of god) but in a different light.

Green Lantern can create energy constructs, Kakine Teitoku can create a matter capable of warping the laws of reality and even reenacting past event in locations

Static can drain electricity and fly with the aid of a disc, Misaka Mikoto can fly using only electrolysis of water, create a railgun out of an arcade token, hack electronics, and create a sensory field around her.

and then we have Accelerator who can use vector manipulation to rewrite human neurology, create plasma out of thin air, and even slow the earth down by five minitues to use the energy in a punch.

So yeah, nonstandard powers may be eliminated quickly but the established powers are taken to extremes

 

[spartan231490]

Oh, you think all people are born equal, that's so cute . . .

 

[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.

It still happens though, doesn't it? Wasn't there a thread a few weeks ago about a new timeline in which Doc Ock takes control of Spiderman's brain and erases him for good? Or that Injustice game where Superman becomes evil and kills Lois in a different timeline?

That's part of a story, not a character inconsistency, a character inconsistency is when a comic book writer picks any character and has them act however they want, a comic story is when you have setup to an event, the event, then the fallout of the event.

 

[SwagLordYoloson]

Technically Ironman is not 'normal' either as he was genetically modified before birth. So you really only fall back to Batman in your super heros that you respect. Well in the current canon at least.

 

[EternallyBored]

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You have to admit though that within the established powers, they rarely go crazy with it. Toaru Majutsu no Index has the same basic powers (and one OP to the point of god) but in a different light.

Green Lantern can create energy constructs, Kakine Teitoku can create a matter capable of warping the laws of reality and even reenacting past event in locations

Static can drain electricity and fly with the aid of a disc, Misaka Mikoto can fly using only electrolysis of water, create a railgun out of an arcade token, hack electronics, and create a sensory field around her.

and then we have Accelerator who can use vector manipulation to rewrite human neurology, create plasma out of thin air, and even slow the earth down by five minitues to use the energy in a punch.

So yeah, nonstandard powers may be eliminated quickly but the established powers are taken to extremes

Er no sorry, pretty much all of those powers have been demonstrated in Western Heroes with similar power sets as well, you've just cherry picked your comparisons. Although I do have to give props on your comparison picks because those are probably some of my favorite characters from the series, Misaka's railgun is just a completely awesome move that looks stunning in the anime itself.

But unfortunately now I'm going to have to burst your bubble on some of these.

First up, in response to Misaka we've got extremis level Iron man with a body infested by superadaptable alien nanomachines that give him the ability to form various armors at will, hack pretty much any electronics he wants to, power blasts and makeshift weapons out the wazoo, and the nanomachines once possessed him and shapeshifted him into one of his female opponents (yeah its just as weird as it sounds). Speaking of sensory fields technically Storm from the X-men did it first and pretty much in the same way, doesn't make Misaka's abilities any less cool though.

As for your description of Accelerator, you pretty much just described Magneto at the height of his power level (he's since been toned down a lot). Lesse here:
Mind Control, oh yeah hes done that by manipulating neurochemistry
Create Plasma, yeah hes done that before too (they kind of played fast and loose with his magnetism powers and what they entailed in the 90's and early 2000's)
Slow the earth down, yeah that too in fact by the end he could pretty much destroy Earth on a whim, but like many super villains, he doesn't out of his own sense of megalomania (and author fiat)
As a bonus Magneto could also accelerate giant hunks of metal to near light speed, which is how he "killed" Kitty Pryde once by trapping her out of phase body in a big asteroid and launching it to the other side of the galaxy.

As for Mr. Teitoku, honestly any reality warper worth his salt can pretty much do the same thing and there are dozens of them across both the Marvel and DC verses. Odin is one and he can reach galaxy busting levels with his reality warping power, (yeah not many people realize that Thor's father is pretty much right below omnipotent beings on the Marvel power scale.) On a more local scale, Scarlet Witch pretty much has that powerset to a T and even rewrote all of reality once without realizing it (which might actually make her closer to Haruhi Suzumiya in powerset.)

Honestly I don't know why, but it seems anime and manga fans that don't follow the western series, have this view of them as being stodgy and conservative compared to the wacky free-spiritedness of anime and manga, I guess it's kind of true if you only follow the cartoon and movie series as they tend to cut out the weirder stuff, but seriously Western comics has given us plenty of bat-shit crazy stuff, like Superman's ice breath giving him super ventriloquism powers, or Squirrel girl defeating Doctor Doom by sneaking an army of squirrels into his armor, or the Flash being able to destroy the planet or time travel just by vibrating himself fast enough (no batteries required).

Like I said though, none of these things really detracts from the great powers and abilities that do pop up in anime, I'm mostly just loathe to declare a winner when both sides tend to go completely off their fucking rockers from time to time.