Will Marvel`s fear of change and age eventually destroy them?

[Dread]

How nice would it be to see superhero movies that take place in the 70s.. I can imagine lots of amazing soundtracks..

The music to the 1977-1979 Nicholas Hammond AMAZING SPIDER-MAN series was especially funkalicious.

 

[Franklin Richards]

Sign me up for Power Man and Iron Fist RIGHT NOW!!!

 

[Dread]

Oh, god, that Luke Cage story would probably be on my Top 10 List of Pettiest Superhero Actions (not counting "Superman's Superdickery" because that has it's own website). Luke Cage literally wages war against an entire country and the world's most dangerous supervillain for $200. I mean, yeah, that was a lot more in the 70's than it is now, but jeez. That's like storming to Afghanistan to hunt Osama because he owes you $4,000 (or two months rent in Midtown). Sheesh.

Doom also calls him "a crazy black man". Doom scoffs at political correctness.

 

[Tron Bonne]

Ah, wow, a war against Doom and his country for $200. Sounds like a classic

 

[Dread]

Yeah, he hired Cage for something but wouldn't pay up. That'd be bad for Cage's street cred if he didn't collect. Doom's lucky that Luke didn't drown him in motor oil in the back seat of his pimp-mobile or something.

 

[[A]]

Oh, god, that Luke Cage story would probably be on my Top 10 List of Pettiest Superhero Actions (not counting "Superman's Superdickery" because that has it's own website). Luke Cage literally wages war against an entire country and the world's most dangerous supervillain for $200. I mean, yeah, that was a lot more in the 70's than it is now, but jeez. That's like storming to Afghanistan to hunt Osama because he owes you $4,000 (or two months rent in Midtown). Sheesh.

Doom also calls him "a crazy black man". Doom scoffs at political correctness.

Ah, wow, a war against Doom and his country for $200. Sounds like a classic

Well, with $200 I'd get a new bigger hdd and a couple ram GBs, so.. count me in t:

 

[Tron Bonne]

Yeah, he hired Cage for something but wouldn't pay up. That'd be bad for Cage's street cred if he didn't collect. Doom's lucky that Luke didn't drown him in motor oil in the back seat of his pimp-mobile or something.

Hah, well, in his defense, that is pretty hardcore. Waging war against one of the greatest, and most intelligent(You wouldn't know it the way some write him nowadays) super villains of all time simply because he didn't pay you $200.

Respect.

 

[Dread]

Hah, well, in his defense, that is pretty hardcore. Waging war against one of the greatest, and most intelligent(You wouldn't know it the way some write him nowadays) super villains of all time simply because he didn't pay you $200.

Respect.

But it's the context. It isn't for the good of the world or anything. It's because Doom owes him a week's paycheck. Or is Doom the petty one for withholding it?

It still isn't my #1 favorite petty Marvel villain, Proctor.

 

[Tron Bonne]

Yeah, I got you, I just can't believe someone actually wrote that. I mean, I could understand something like 2 mil, or even 2K, but $200.

 

[Franklin Richards]

This story will be on BET next year. You watch.


"This time it's personal."

 

[Dread]

Yeah, I got you, I just can't believe someone actually wrote that. I mean, I could understand something like 2 mil, or even 2K, but $200.

Again, $200 was more in the 70's than it was now. But, yeah, for Cage's rates it was a week's paycheck (maybe two).

 

[iloveclones]

The thing is, this is a problem that all of Western comics face. Marvel, DC, and probably others.

Dread obviously wants to be that guy too....

(my mom literally dated an inker for G.I. JOE in the 80's).

....and immediately rebounds, and ups his cool factor with that one!

 

[iloveclones]

On a more serious note, I thought that article was one of the many that spend way too much time "thinking about it." But it does make me wonder about one of his conclusions:

I have no interest in manga, but you certainly can't ignore it's impact, certainly when you go to Barnes and Nobles. So it does cause me to ask manga fans if the fact that manga isn't bogged down by continuity and timelines helps it's success.

 

[Dread]

Manga is also helped by that fact that anime has dominated children's TV for at least the past 8 or so years.

 

[Franklin Richards]

If it ain't Starblazers or Battle of the Planets... I'll pass.

 

[iloveclones]

Is Starblazers the one about the Battleship in space with some big-ass gun running through it's hull? I loved that when I was a kid.

 

[Franklin Richards]

Wave Motion Gun! You damn right!!

One episode was just about firing the damn thing.

 

[fifthfiend]

Short answer: No. Everyone loves Uncanny X-Men more than GeNext. Everyone loved the 616 more than 2099. Everyone preferred the Teen Titans to the Titans Tomorrow.

It's part of the genre. It's part of what we like about superheroes. I swear, some people just want to find things to ***** about. Superman needs to be based on quantum physics. Spider-Man could be more realistic. Time needs to move forward.

Just enjoy the comics and quit tying your brain in a pretzel about how realistic it is. IT'S FICTION. IT'S ESCAPISM.

The above is a gordian knot of incoherent nonsequitur.

 

[fifthfiend]

The short answer is that it's not that Marvel is fearful of change or aging, it's that established characters sell more than newer ones. It's also the same reason that, if you look at the big picture, Spider-Man hasn't changed all that much since his debut. Marvel knows that Spider-Man, perpetually in his 20's, makes money. Why mess with a good thing?

It's the same reason new characters rarely sustain the sales figures to continue publishing. It's the same reason Mickey and Minnie aren't married. And it's the same reason Crystal Pepsi and New Coke failed.

The above claim is belied by, among other things, such notable successes as Spider-Man, Mickey Mouse and Coca-Cola, which were all at one point new things which went on to have a fairly significant degree of success.

If established characters were so inherently superior to newer ones, then Timely Comics would still be raking in the dollars with those perrenial market leaders the Sub-Mariner and the android Human Torch, instead of letting those nutcases Lee and Kirby run around half-cocked with their wild ideas about "human spiders" and "mutants".

 

[Aristotle]

That's a fine line of thinking that gives us such wonderful ideas as Brand New Day and Decimation and, yes that's right, Flash: Rebirth.

There he goes with the reductio ad absurdum. Slowtime does NOT demand OMD/BND or Decimation or Rebirths of any kind. Those kinds of stories are usually justified by a desire not to keep time slow, but to reverse it entirely!

It's great to shrug it all away with the "Well it's it's just escapism" excuse until that escapism becomes maddeningly cyclical and regressive and has to justify it with out-of-character devil/chaos/fear demon magic. Readers say "Ugh, I wish writers wouldn't go back to these old ideas all the time" in the same breath that they say "No, I never want characters to move forward!" and it's almost comical, no pun intended

Characters can easily move forward without having to turn 60 in the process. For examples, look to Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, Captain America, Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Jason Todd, Supergirl, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, the New Gods, the Justice League, the JSA, the Avengers, the Teen Titans, Blue Devil, almost every mutant in the history of the MU, Namor the Sub-Mariner, and easily 75% of the superheroes of Marvel and DC's universes.

Because make no mistake: characters cannot move forward if they can't age. There's no such animal.

First of all, no one's talking about characters not aging at ALL. Characters in the MU and DCU obviously do age. The common conversion is four years real-time to one year comic time. Some say 5:1, rather than 4:1. But everyone knows these characters age.

Yet even if they didn't, that wouldn't necessarily stop them from developing! Ever read Calvin & Hobbes? Those characters never aged a day, yet they developed far more than anybody in these vaunted "real-time" stories like Hellblazer and Punisher MAX and the like.

And comparing the desire for superpowers to make sense or whatever to the desire for characters to age is a forced comparison at best. The former is a technical detail. The latter is a narrative one.

I'm sure they would say the same thing.

 

[Blader5489]

The above is a gordian knot of incoherent nonsequitur.

Zuh?

 

[Aristotle]

Yeah, he hired Cage for something but wouldn't pay up. That'd be bad for Cage's street cred if he didn't collect. Doom's lucky that Luke didn't drown him in motor oil in the back seat of his pimp-mobile or something.

Luke Cage: Keepin' his pimp-hand strong. Always.

 

[Aristotle]

Zuh?

Don't worry about it, he's wrong.

 

[BrianWilly]

There he goes with the reductio ad absurdum. Slowtime does NOT demand OMD/BND or Decimation or Rebirths of any kind. Those kinds of stories are usually justified by a desire not to keep time slow, but to reverse it entirely!

Semantics. The consequence of slowing age to a standstill in any comic universe always results in regressions of character, whether it's highlighted by a big event or not. X-Men. Spider-Man. The Avengers. Fantastic Four. The entire DC universe, more than once. I challenge you to find one single exception, wherein a status quo has not once been shifted back to the way it was years and years ago and character progress thrown out the window in order to keep these characters relatable or whatever excuse they use this week.

Characters can easily move forward without having to turn 60 in the process. For examples, look to Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, Captain America, Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Jason Todd, Supergirl, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, the New Gods, the Justice League, the JSA, the Avengers, the Teen Titans, Blue Devil, almost every mutant in the history of the MU, Namor the Sub-Mariner, and easily 75% of the superheroes of Marvel and DC's universes.

You're mistaking change with growth. Batman and Superman have changed a lot in their history, but grown much less. Batman changing from camp to dark, or then from dark to sci-fi, is not organic growth and development of story. All it is is a shift in genre or style. Batman himself is the same stunted 30-year old that he was since the 1940s. Sometimes writers will find new things for him to do or explore new places to take this stunted 30-year old, which is why those stories can still be good, but what's the difference between reading about Bruce Wayne's adventures ten years ago versus reading about his adventure's now? Nothing. Only some status quo changes that are eventually placed back to the way they originally were (Commissioner Gordon's "retirement," for instance), and some cast member shifts that get thrown out whenever the writers feel like they aren't "classic" enough (Cassandra Cain, Stephanie Brown, Azrael, the list goes on and on).

And some of the examples you're throwing out are, forgive me, so riduckulous that I'm not sure you're even thinking when you suggest them. Supergirl hasn't even been able to stay same person for more than a decade, much less grow as a consistent character. Jimmy Olsen? Are you kidding? He's the classic prototype of a kid that the writers won't let grow up, and any growth is immediately undone so that he's constantly a fumbling kid sidekick. The JLA? Are you talking about the same JLA that you yourself have complained has been letting go of the new and letting all the old back in? And Nightwing, Robin, Teen Titans, and the JSA are like the prime examples of characters who have aged and grown and gotten all the better for it through the years, so that's really proving my point instead of yours. Or have you forgotten that half the JSA are made up of characters who were once young but are now sixty-years old?

First of all, no one's talking about characters not aging at ALL. Characters in the MU and DCU obviously do age. The common conversion is four years real-time to one year comic time. Some say 5:1, rather than 4:1. But everyone knows these characters age.

And the natural thing to happen under that parameter is that eventually, some characters would have to reach 60. I'm talking about keeping time slow, just like you. The difference is that I want time to be slow but steady. Ten years of real world time could come down to two years of comic book time for all I care; what I don't want is for those two gained years to be eventually forgotten about or obfuscated. Your definition of slow time is that heroes would just be stuck in indeterminate teens or twenties or thirties forever, depending on the character, all the while mainting the illusion of forward-moving time. All that illusion does is make the problem more apparent, as character claim to be aging and that time has passed and yet everything is the same as it always was.

Yet even if they didn't, that wouldn't necessarily stop them from developing! Ever read Calvin & Hobbes? Those characters never aged a day, yet they developed far more than anybody in these vaunted "real-time" stories like Hellblazer and Punisher MAX and the like.

Apples and oranges. And as much as I love Calvin and Hobbes, I wouldn't tout that strip as much of an evolving story at all.

And even then, guess what? Calvin and Hobbes ENDED. Their story has capped off, given a resolution and closure, and it's all the better for it. If the strip were still limping on today under a different artist and writer, I imagine you'd be singing a different tune. Or maybe you wouldn't be, I dunno.

 

[fifthfiend]

Zuh?

Short answer: No. Everyone loves Uncanny X-Men more than GeNext. Everyone loved the 616 more than 2099. Everyone preferred the Teen Titans to the Titans Tomorrow.

It's part of the genre. It's part of what we like about superheroes. I swear, some people just want to find things to ***** about. Superman needs to be based on quantum physics. Spider-Man could be more realistic. Time needs to move forward.

Just enjoy the comics and quit tying your brain in a pretzel about how realistic it is. IT'S FICTION. IT'S ESCAPISM

The examples cited have nothing to do with actual character change and growth as they explicitly rely on skipping over either of those for an arbitrary new status quo, which itself in no way displaces the utterly unchanged current dominant status quo. "It's part of the genre" is simply in no way true or supportable. "It's part of what we like about superheroes" makes sweeping conclusions which are themselves disproved by the multiple people in this thread explicitly arguing that it is in fact something they do not like about superhero stories as currently told. "Some people just want to find things to ***** about" is just a textbook ad hominem. Then Totle ties it all off with a proclamation about "realism" versus enjoying the story when the entire point of the discussion is what serves to create a more effective, enjoyable story. It's a series of basically unconnected outbursts which don't actually address anything having to do with the actual subject of discussion, except where they accuse all parties to the discussion of being irrational for discussing things.