Superman is bisexual now!!!

[Hawki]

Continuity is fine...to a point.
But *this* was briefly and shallowly summed up in one movie:

Looking at the list, it does seem pretty insane. Still, I read the Civil War graphic novel and got the gist of it, and frankly, the MCU version is still better.

The MCU was, essentially, a rebooted universe. And it probably needs to end before they resurrect (and recast) Iron Man and Black Panther. It's working just fine, for now, but the new Spider-Man movie is gonna have a hard time shifting people to read the Spider-Man comic in which Peter Parker graduated from high school 56 years ago

I don't think much of that is likely.

There's no financial standpoint to end the MCU right now. The amount of material it's producing now is greater than it's ever been, and they seem to be comfortable replacing legacy characters - Iron Heart will replace Iron Man, Falcon's become the new Captain America, there's a new Black Widow (I think?), and Hailee Stienfeld's archer character seems to be replacing Hawkeye. Maybe Tony Stark will be resurrected, maybe Black Panther will be recast, but neither seem likely right now. It's been explicitly stated that T'Challa won't be recast, IIRC.

Also, the MCU doesn't need to get people to read Spider-Man comics. The MCU doesn't need to get people to read any comics. Comic sales are absolutely dwarfed by film sales - I've seen the numbers run, and the gulf is unimaginably vast. And while this is anecdotal, I've seen every Spider-Man film, watched every episode of Spider-Man TAS and Spectacular Spider-Man, and played a few Spidey games. Wanna know how many Spidey comics I've read? Maybe a few stand-alone issues, and that's it.

The comics could end today, and the MCU wouldn't be affected. In contrast, the MCU could end today, and Disney would probably lose its biggest cash cow, with the possible exception of Star Wars.

And that's fine, honestly. It's what I want the comics to shift to: multiple self-contained AUs with beginnings, middles, and ends that happen to sometimes share the same basic characters. Give them unique titles and you can steer people towards the kinds of stories they want.

I'm agnostic about this though. There's certainly segments of Marvel I think would benefit from being segregated (e.g. the X-Men), but for comics in general? Eh...There's quite a few IPs that have had multiple series in the same universe/multiverse I can name, that's never really been a problem for me per se. The level of continuity that Marvel and DC have seems to be the exception, not the rule.

 

[Hades]

I'm not exactly in tune with comics. Is there a lot of pushback against this from those ''in the know?''

I mean, I can definitely guess a lot of grifters who don't know Jon isn't the mainline Superman to shout about those gosh darn sjws ruining everything again. But what of those who are a bit more knowledgeable about this?

Because this being a big deal would carry some unfortunate implication. Jon's about the most natural way to include it without changing anything at all. For most of his run he's been a young boy with no interest in romance so now he's reached the age where he's interested in dating there's nothing to change. If this is already a bar too high for people than what else is there to do? If this already wouldn't be deemed acceptable than what else is there to do?

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

I'm agnostic about this though. There's certainly segments of Marvel I think would benefit from being segregated (e.g. the X-Men), but for comics in general? Eh...There's quite a few IPs that have had multiple series in the same universe/multiverse I can name, that's never really been a problem for me per se. The level of continuity that Marvel and DC have seems to be the exception, not the rule.

Oh yeah, it's 100% the exception. It's also the only sector of US comics that's struggling, cries of weird nerds proclaiming the death of comics notwithstanding. I just figure that's not a coincidence is all. Like, to figure out the origin story of this kid, you've got to filter through 2 universe reboots and a retcon:

Jon Kent (DC Comics) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Worst part is, his origin story is relatively straightforward and unambiguous by DC or Marvel standards.

I'm not exactly in tune with comics. Is there a lot of pushback against this from those ''in the know?''

I mean, I can definitely guess a lot of grifters who don't know Jon isn't the mainline Superman to shout about those gosh darn sjws ruining everything again. But what of those who are a bit more knowledgeable about this?

Because this being a big deal would carry some unfortunate implication. Jon's about the most natural way to include it without changing anything at all. For most of his run he's been a young boy with no interest in romance so now he's reached the age where he's interested in dating there's nothing to change. If this is already a bar too high for people than what else is there to do? If this already wouldn't be deemed acceptable than what else is there to do?

What you need to do is invent time travel, go back 30 years, and have the character come out as bisexual in 1991. Anything short of that has a portable goalpost strapped to it.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Interesting that the ‘then’ portion of the thumbnail contains art styles from at least three different decades, even to my barely trained eyes.

Yes but the theme of "cool" and "strong" is consistent through all those styles. While art always evolves there are constants between the decades.

Looking at the now side of the art, the characters look like they belong on Tumblr not fighting evil....though i suppose people on Tumblr believe they ARE fighting evil so perhaps it still fits.

You know i wonder how much uproar there would be if Witchblade came out today (see attached).

 

[Casual Shinji]

I'm not exactly in tune with comics. Is there a lot of pushback against this from those ''in the known?''

I mean, I can definitely guess a lot of grifters who don't know Jon isn't the mainline Superman to shout about those gosh darn sjws ruining everything again. But what of those who are a bit more knowledgeable about this?

Because this being a big deal would carry some unfortunate implication. Jon's about the most natural way to include it without changing anything at all. For most of his run he's been a young boy with no interest in romance so now he's reached the age where he's interested in dating there's nothing to change. If this is already a bar too high for people than what else is there to do? If this already wouldn't be deemed acceptable than what else is there to do?

Well, that's the beauty of it, isn't it? Right-wing grifters have effectively crafted the narrative that non-straight, non-cis inclusion is by its very nature forced, and something that is forced on us is typically something we automatically disagree with. This is why even people who aren't crazy pants like Tucker Carlson, Steven Crowder, or Ben Shapiro, or maybe don't even consider themselves conservative, will still go 'Ugh, now Superman is gay too!' (I know Jonathan Kent is bi and not gay, and that there's a clear distinction between gay and bi, something the bi community is still fighting for.)

It's easy to slide people into this mindset since I was there myself not too long ago, getting pissed that I was suddenly asked to care about something I previous didn't have to acknowledge. Eventhough in the same breath I would speak about how bad homophobia is.

Can't say there's been too much grifter rage regarding this particular case so far though. Let's hope that's a good sign.

 

[Gordon_4]

Yes but the theme of "cool" and "strong" is consistent through all those styles. While art always evolves there are constants between the decades.

Looking at the now side of the art, the characters look like they belong on Tumblr not fighting evil....though i suppose people on Tumblr believe they ARE fighting evil so perhaps it still fits.

You know i wonder how much uproar there would be if Witchblade came out today (see attached).

The two twins are no weirder looking to me than Hawk and Dove, if borrowing a little too much from Tron. The girl looks like Amanda Waller in her teenage goth phase if she were white. Or she's Bouncing Boy's sister. Or she could be a mission control character. Point is, I don't give a shit how someone wants to draw their heroes.

 

[Samtemdo8]

Honestly, it's the idea that Marvel and DC comics should have a vast, connected, chronologically contiguous meta-world that needs to die. Going back to pre-Disney copyright laws and letting most of the big ones be public domain would solve a lot of that problem. Let writers and artists have some characters and make a story with them that has a beginning, middle, and end without the expectation that it's going to slot cleanly between Action Comics #1215 and #1232 and won't get hijacked by Prelude To The Big Summer Crossover Universe Eraser. You don't have to check is a character is tied up in another story, or in space, or currently fucking dead. And then, you'll have that run of superhero books you can point to fans of movies and whatever. People who like the Spider-Man movies wanting to read more Spider-Man won't be blindsided by the fact that Peter Parker graduated high school in fucking 1965.

Thats hurting Marvel and DC superhero comic books way more than a bare minimum of clumsily handled progressive stuff.

Sorry, but when it comes to DC the vast, connected, chronologically contiguous meta-world IS the story in DC.

Multiverse

#Perpetua's Multiverse was the original form of the multiverse but it was twisted by its creator, Perpetua, into a dangerous self-sustaining weapon. It was reformatted into the Original Multiverse by the Source with Perpetua sealed behind the Source Wall. The Multiverse is a collection of...

dc.fandom.com

 

[CriticalGaming]

he two twins are no weirder looking to me than Hawk and Dove, if borrowing a little too much from Tron. The girl looks like Amanda Waller in her teenage goth phase if she were white. Or she's Bouncing Boy's sister. Or she could be a mission control character. Point is, I don't give a shit how someone wants to draw their heroes.

Honestly art is very important to a lot of people. Character design is important and I can't tell you how many good comics and manga that I've outright dismissed because the art style drove me crazy.

So how you draw your characters is very important to attracting customers to your book. So when you have a character like Starfire's daughter and expect people who previously love the Teen Titans to jump on board with your new OC, then you have a big hurdle ahead of you. You not only have to ask the audience to get on board with a brand new character but also have to get them on board with the brand new art style and character design. That isn't to say it can't or wont appeal to some people, but I am curious to see how much overlap they might get between someone who loves comics like Spawn, Witchblade, or The Darkness, to come over to Not-Starfire. Or even the other heroes who are named Snowflake and Safespace.

If nothing else it seems rather cringe and honestly feels like a mockery of what super hero comics once represented.

And I wonder how much of it is the result of this seeming push back against attractiveness as a whole. Not necessarily a "uglification" of characters, but surely a downplaying of physical appeal to a degree. The hyper-idolised versions of characters seems to be very present in Western-based media. Rhyykr did a video showcasing the differences in Diablo 2's remake character models. Apparently the character artists released their original designs for the Amazon and Sorceress characters to be featured in the Remake, and the original characters are much more attractive in the face. The bodies didn't change much but the faces certainly did.

In the same video they showcase that the original models for the Druid and Necromancer didn't change at all. Both characters remained basically the same except for different hair colors. And it just another example of this occurring. I'll bring up The Last of Us 2 in which they definitely dirtied up Dina's model to be a bit "plainer" than her real life basis. Additionally now World of Warcraft is in the middle of removing female artwork and replacing it with fruit, they are actively removing voice lines and emotes and jokes and character names that might have either sexual references or be too gruesome. As if the solution to not having female's harassed in the workplace is to remove all possible temptation from the art they are creating.

And while it's happening in places in the video game's industry. I wonder if it is also happening in comics.

 

[Gordon_4]

Honestly art is very important to a lot of people. Character design is important and I can't tell you how many good comics and manga that I've outright dismissed because the art style drove me crazy.

So how you draw your characters is very important to attracting customers to your book. So when you have a character like Starfire's daughter

So that's who it is. And that would technically make her Starfire's second daughter since Ma'ri Grayson/Nightstar was invented for Kingdom Come yonks ago. But she's Earth-22 so I'm not sure if that's the mainline these days.

Then again I looked up that graphic novel, which appears to be a one shot outside regular canon but I can't keep up any more, and it doesn't say who her dad was. And that for some reason intrigues me.

 

[CriticalGaming]

So that's who it is. And that would technically make her Starfire's second daughter since Ma'ri Grayson/Nightstar was invented for Kingdom Come yonks ago. But she's Earth-22 so I'm not sure if that's the mainline these days.

Yeah I have no idea about other possible daughters. The DC multiverse thing is a bucket of mess imo. One of the big things about comics I really hate is that every new writer they get wants to make their own version of the character and so you get different universes so that each writing team gets to do their own version. The problem is that doing so completely ruins any sense of continuity and makes things incredibly hard to follow.

Not to say Marvel is innocent with that, but I feel like Marvel always had a big main cannon thread that ran through all the main comics, then there would be some off-shoots and "what ifs" series that ran along side the main cannon at times.

There is also some positives of having several cannons, in that you allow new readers to get into a character without decades of backstory built up behind them. I just don't think DC does it very well.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Sorry, but when it comes to DC the vast, connected, chronologically contiguous meta-world IS the story in DC.

Multiverse

#Perpetua's Multiverse was the original form of the multiverse but it was twisted by its creator, Perpetua, into a dangerous self-sustaining weapon. It was reformatted into the Original Multiverse by the Source with Perpetua sealed behind the Source Wall. The Multiverse is a collection of...

dc.fandom.com

Look at that. You look at that and tell me that the problem is Bi Superman.

Like if, if, that storyline was being handled by one author instead of it being a cludged together plot line run by dozens or hundreds of authors over the decades, then maybe it would have a chance at being decent. If they'd planned it.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Yes but the theme of "cool" and "strong" is consistent through all those styles. While art always evolves there are constants between the decades.

Looking at the now side of the art, the characters look like they belong on Tumblr not fighting evil....though i suppose people on Tumblr believe they ARE fighting evil so perhaps it still fits.

You know i wonder how much uproar there would be if Witchblade came out today (see attached).

Zero.
Stjepan and Linda Šejić are still publishing new comics in the same vein and they're a big hit with the "SJW" crowd. You can do all the sexy you want as long as you aren't shit at it. Like, I dunno what to tell you man, but their main claim to fame thus far are an AU about Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy and a long running comic about adults doing BDSM. They're working on several new projects like "milf chasing after son runs into sexy fairytale witch", "hot women in battle robots", "sexy videogame shenanigans", "better Witchblade", etc (I am doing all of these a horrible disservice, please go look at their projects, they're fantastic)

You know that Witchblade wasn't published by Marvel or DC in the first place, right?

 

[CriticalGaming]

Look at that. You look at that and tell me that the problem is Bi Superman.

Like if, if, that storyline was being handled by one author instead of it being a cludged together plot line run by dozens or hundreds of authors over the decades, then maybe it would have a chance at being decent. If they'd planned it.

I gotta be honest. I don't think these heroes coming out as LBGT, or new heroes being LBGT is really the problem. I think the problem is the preaching and the overall storylines that have been just awful imo. I think these writers need to get better at incorporating the messaging in an entertaining way, because it feels so out of place they way they are doing it.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

I gotta be honest. I don't think these heroes coming out as LBGT, or new heroes being LBGT is really the problem. I think the problem is the preaching and the overall storylines that have been just awful imo. I think these writers need to get better at incorporating the messaging in an entertaining way, because it feels so out of place they way they are doing it.

The overall storylines *have* been awful, but you only hear this level of bitching about the LGBT stuff.

 

[CriticalGaming]

The overall storylines *have* been awful, but you only hear this level of bitching about the LGBT stuff.

That's true and it's not really fair, I think it is used too much as a jumping off point as to why comic's are ass right now. But in truth the LBGT is a symptom of the problem so I understand why it gets pointed out. These latest comics and stories and very heavily leaning into the progressive SJW/LBGT material and that is why I think it gets called out so much.

Female Thor, for example, isn't specifically a problem. Female Thor who is a man-hating lesbian douchebag IS a problem. Just as an example.

I feel like they could be easily doing their diversity quota without having to make that diversity the SOLE purpose of the comic. They want Bi-sexual Superman fine, but that shouldn't be the marketing focus. Make a good superman story and instead of wanted to fuck Lois Lane he starts hooking up with Larry Boner instead. Superman's love life was very minimal in the vast majority of his stories and really just served as a way to anchor him to the real world, nothing more.

 

[Worgen]

That's true and it's not really fair, I think it is used too much as a jumping off point as to why comic's are ass right now. But in truth the LBGT is a symptom of the problem so I understand why it gets pointed out. These latest comics and stories and very heavily leaning into the progressive SJW/LBGT material and that is why I think it gets called out so much.

Female Thor, for example, isn't specifically a problem. Female Thor who is a man-hating lesbian douchebag IS a problem. Just as an example.

I feel like they could be easily doing their diversity quota without having to make that diversity the SOLE purpose of the comic. They want Bi-sexual Superman fine, but that shouldn't be the marketing focus. Make a good superman story and instead of wanted to fuck Lois Lane he starts hooking up with Larry Boner instead. Superman's love life was very minimal in the vast majority of his stories and really just served as a way to anchor him to the real world, nothing more.

Was female Thor a man hating lesbian douchebag?

 

[Hawki]

Was female Thor a man hating lesbian douchebag?

Based on some panels I've seen...kinda.

Or, rather more specifically, she fight against some generic woman-hating villain, so therefore gives as good as he does, or something. Misandry and misogeny are fine in fiction if done well, but the dialogue had the subtlety of a brick.

And while on the subject of female Thor, I'm not sure why there is a female Thor. I mean, it's not as if Norse mythology is lacking in female figures - valkyries, Sif, Freya, etc.

 

[Worgen]

Based on some panels I've seen...kinda.

Or, rather more specifically, she fight against some generic woman-hating villain, so therefore gives as good as he does, or something. Misandry and misogeny are fine in fiction if done well, but the dialogue had the subtlety of a brick.

And while on the subject of female Thor, I'm not sure why there is a female Thor. I mean, it's not as if Norse mythology is lacking in female figures - valkyries, Sif, Freya, etc.

Well, as I understand from the comics. Thor isn't just a person, Thor is kinda transformed by Thor's hammer into Thor. I know for awhile Thor was a dude who needed a cane to walk and I think there was some deal about if he lost the hammer for too long then he couldn't become Thor anymore. I'm assuming female Thor is just a woman who was deemed worthy of the hammer and thus could transform into Thor.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Well, as I understand from the comics. Thor isn't just a person, Thor is kinda transformed by Thor's hammer into Thor. I know for awhile Thor was a dude who needed a cane to walk and I think there was some deal about if he lost the hammer for too long then he couldn't become Thor anymore. I'm assuming female Thor is just a woman who was deemed worthy of the hammer and thus could transform into Thor.

Yes technically you are right. Again the problem isnt the gender of the character, it is the preachiness of the character that showcases the real reason WHY the character had to be a woman. And sadly it doesnt come across as writers just thought it would be cool to make a female Thor for a while and offer a new perspective. And frankly this applies to most of the "progressive" changes being sprung up throughout beloved characters.

 

[Worgen]

Yes technically you are right. Again the problem isnt the gender of the character, it is the preachiness of the character that showcases the real reason WHY the character had to be a woman. And sadly it doesnt come across as writers just thought it would be cool to make a female Thor for a while and offer a new perspective. And frankly this applies to most of the "progressive" changes being sprung up throughout beloved characters.

Welcome to most comics. Most comics are written like that, for good or ill, great comics aren't but most comics aren't great comics. They can still be written like that and be good, but they can also be bad. The only reason people ***** and moan is because of the dreaded sjw inserting wumminz or the gayz into white mans world. Seriously, if it wasn't for gay or female there wouldn't be this discussion, because it would have been some form of the default and gone unnoticed by the whining brigade.