Character Rehab

[Kerensky287]

I have a question. In both the DC and Marvel universes, you've got hundreds and hundreds of people with huge special powers. In real life, a SINGLE one of these heroes would probably end crime single-handedly, or go mad with power and take over the world.

So... why does everybody go about their normal life despite there being so many fucking superheroes and supervillains?

I mean, seriously, if the good guys decided to get together and rid the world of evil, then they could probably do it with no trouble. Dr. Doom doesn't stand a chance if the Fantastic Four, Spiderman, the X-Men, and everybody ELSE all decide they want a piece of him.

And while we're at it, a good half of the superheroes are geniuses and/or technologically gifted. In such an age of great people, why isn't there more technological development? The comic book universe pretty much constantly stays at the same point technologically, except for like, Stark Tower and.... fuck, wherever the hell the Fantastic Four stay.

Yeah, so I don't read a whole lot of comic books, but it really doesn't make sense to me that you have all these special people and no special changes to how the world works. If it were up to me, you would have a comic WITHOUT normal people, because all they ever do in comics is whine about how the heroes are actually criminals and then almost get killed by stuff and change their minds.

It would kind of mess up the whole "heroes save people" concept with no powerless people, but it's the only way I can see there being an equilibrium that makes sense.

[Mashirosen]

These are good questions, Kerensky, but they don't really pertain to the topic in the same way the political digressions do. Would you like me to separate your post into a new thread where you can get some answers?

Originally Posted by Kaneda

Some Wall Mart manager exploiting illegal immigrants wouldn't be able to put up much of a fight.

Sure he could. Have him have ties to some kind of racist militia and oh crap, suddenly Superman doesn't have to deal with just one exploitative fucker but a bunch of his heavily-armed psychotic buddies all at once (this works best with a Superman who's less ridiculously overpowered than he usually is, obviously, but I think that's probably a feature of Fifth's concept as well). Which could also provide a way to comment on the hypocrisy of the sort of consumer who's happy to get their bigotry on against illegals while simultaneously benefiting from their status as criminally underpaid labor. And of course, at the end the workers remind Superman that he's only dealt with one asshole manager who'll only be replaced by another just like him or worse, and that other workers are suffering under the same company and others just like it all across the country. Nothing will get better for any of them unless the companies' policies change, or the government's. Perhaps it's time he aimed his fists of righteousness a little higher...? THE END -- OR IS IT.

Originally Posted by Fifthfiend

or she's made out of clay I mean can we at least find a less obvious way to objectify a character than having her literally be an object?

I hadn't thought about that version of her origin that way but that's such a good point. I just thought it was a neat little reference to the Galatea myth without even considering the weird object-y implications of that. There really is just a hell of a lot of creepy baggage weighing the character down and has been from day one -- ever read that Michael Chabon essay "A Woman of Valor"? It's mostly about how Big Barda gives him a Mega-Rod, but in service of comparison he also goes into the many, many ways in which Wonder Woman the actual character has historically failed to deliver on the promise of Wonder Woman the concept. It's so frustrating because it'd be so easy to fix -- something like your idea would work just fine and it doesn't even require a whole lot of shuffling around of existing stuff -- but they never bother because hey, she sells t-shirts just fine as she is.

Speaking of that kind of character:

Throw him into an atom smasher?

Just like Wondy, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with Wolverine as a character that radical chainsaw surgery of his backstory couldn't fix. I mean obviously refraining from shoehorning him into just about every title ever except maybe Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane would be a good place to start, but don't let's ask for the stars here.

The amnesia thing isn't a bad character element itself, or at least it wouldn't be if it hadn't been done to death, but it's been used pretty poorly in his case. The thing about inscrutable badass characters is that they have to remain inscrutable -- the more you let the audience know, the sooner they get bored. It's the striptease principle -- whatever the audience imagines is probably a million times better than anything they could actually be shown, and they have to be left wanting more without ever being fully satisfied. Amnesia's a good enough way to get away with this, but then they blew it by making him all gung-ho about recovering his memory, which to me is emotionally unrealistic.

I mean, a guy wakes up one day with seemingly inexplicable rages, a vague sense of having been seriously physically violated in some way, and no idea how any of this happened or even who he is -- maybe this is just Sunday morning as usual for some people, but I don't think it's necessarily a given that the guy's response would be an obsessive desire to know exactly what the hell happened, especially for a member of the Greatest Generation (I refuse to acknowledge Origins on the grounds that it's fucking retarded). I think a whole Egyptian delta's worth of denial is more likely, and could potentially be a more interesting character arc. I have a whole long-ass post detailing what I'd do to make this work, which I might post later although I'm kind of embarrassed about having devoted that much thought to fixing Merchandise McActionfigure. I just like that kind of character when they're done well okay :(

[Meister]

Originally Posted by Mashirosen

Nothing will get better for any of them unless the companies' policies change, or the government's. Perhaps it's time he aimed his fists of righteousness a little higher...?

Well, take that idea a little further, and you get Black Summer.

[Fifthfiend]

I have separated out as much of the political stuff as looked sufficiently distinct from the comics stuff because it was killing me to read and I actually like that sort of thing so I can't imagine anybody else wants to wade through that when they're just looking for posts on how awesome it would be if Wolverine had, like, four claws dude!

These are good questions, Kerensky, but they don't really pertain to the topic in the same way the political digressions do.

I think it fits if you change it from the question of "why don't they just have everybody have superpowers and gets to live the neat futurized lifestyle that Reed Richards enjoys" to "What I would do is a comic where pretty much everybody has superpowers and gets to live the neat futurized lifestyle that Reed Richards enjoys." I mean it's not actually that bad as a concept - other writers have sort of played around in that space, the best example I can think of being Kirby's Fourth World.

POS actually had a great idea for a Morph revamp based on his view that in the Marvel universe basically every third person almost does have superpowers of one stripe or another, I should go holler at him to post something about that in here.

Actually Kerensky re: the comics technology gap, Superman comics from somewhere roundabout 2000 to maybe 2004 actually did this thing where they turned the whole city of Metropolis into a high-technology futuristic sci-fi supercity and actually spent a fair amount of time playing with that idea and its consequences so you might enjoy checking out the books from around that time period.

Just like Wondy, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with Wolverine as a character that radical chainsaw surgery of his backstory couldn't fix.

I have to be honest I think at this point I just fundamentally hate Wolverine as a character.

It might be less anything inherently wrong with the character than just wretched overexposure and poor writing for the last 20 years but that doesn't make me hate him any less. I don't really even think that's so much the case as just that the inherent qualities of the character lend themselves so readily to poor writing and overexposure. In whichever case ever since the Wolverine Is Five Inches Taller than Cyclops movies I just haven't been able to stand him and I sincerely think the best thing Marvel could do with him is throw him into an atom smasher and keep him dead for the next say, ten or fifteen years.

By way of an actual notion of how to change the character without outright killing him I would throw out the claws altogether*, scale his healing factor back down to something that resembles "healing factor" and not "instantaneous regeneration", and bring back the element of his past where he doesn't know what his past was because an actually spooky and mysterious government agency brainwashed him and did crazy experiments and implanted him with a bunch of false memories along with who knows what-all hidden programming.

...In fairness, I will grant that one important difference here between him and Wonder Woman is that there's nothing wrong with Wolverine that doesn't keep lots and lots of people from wanting to read or watch anything involving Wolverine, however much I personally disagree.

Whereas the thing with Wonder Woman is that she's been mucked around with as a character in ways that make pretty much nobody want to actually read any comic starring her. Which fascinates me because it's such a fantastically simple concept that you would only even need to be sort-of halfway competent in order to wring money out of until you were swimming Scrooge MacDuck-style through a sea of hundred-dollar bills** and it actually takes long years of hard, dedicated incompetence to screw it up.


*Yes, I would get rid of the claws. I hate the stupid claws.

He can keep the metal skeleton.

**As demonstrated - as I probably mentioned in the other thread - by Xena: Warrior Princess, which I maintain was Sam Raimi's actually sort-of halfway competent attempt at taking the bare-bones "Wonder Woman" archetype, fixing the couple of glaringly obvious flaws in her usual execution, and then letting heaps of money fall into his lap.

[Tev]

Originally Posted by Fifthfiend

*Yes, I would get rid of the claws. I hate the stupid claws.

He can keep the metal skeleton.

Could you be convinced into accepting bone claws ala Marrow? Maybe even ones that he has to shed after each use due to the healing factor of his DNA? I only ask because a wolverine without sharp scratchy things is just a fluffy kitty that had it's fur rubbed the wrong way.

[Fifthfiend]

Could you be convinced into accepting bone claws ala Marrow?

I AM ESPECIALLY GETTING RID OF BONE CLAWS.

[01d55]

Originally Posted by Fifthfiend

I actually don't like the concept that terribly much as it feels too much like "Superman.... but for women!!!1", but that's at least an improvement over the current "Superman.... but she's a woman!!!11 and she's hot and you could fuck her maybe."

I do tweak the backstory a bit in that Steve Trevor crashes on Themyscaria and Diana meets him and wants to know about this world where men and women live together and Steve's like actually for a lot of women it kind of sucks and so Diana goes to her mom and is like hey this guy just told me about how women get kicked around out in the world and we should do something about that! And Hippolyta's like yeah we all knew that already which is why we stay here and don't have anything to do with that because the Man's World sucks and is dumb. And Diana's like well it's sucky and dumb to just go letting things suck and be dumb so she ditches Themyscaria to go back with Steve Trevor and make the world a better place. I figure the rebellion angle gives her an excuse to spend less time farting around Themyscaria which as I said in the last thread I totally hate.

I'm not a fan of the "Socialist Shit-Kicking Superman... but for Women!" angle either, but it points in the vague direction of what I do like, which is Internationalist Shit-Kicking Wonder Woman. You keep Themyscira and the whole mission to end war and fucking commit to it. When she first shows up she says "oh don't worry guys, I'll just enforce existing laws" but then it turns out she's talking about those international laws, the ones nobody actually enforces. Y'know, the ones that say aggressive wars are illegal. Once you run out of viable "Powerful nation state tries to/wants to bully/manipulate shitty third world nation but WW fucks their shit up" stories, you can switch to "Powerful nation state(s) come up with crazy scheme to get rid of WW so they can get back to fucking with foreigners."

It's kind of funny that my WW concept is so much like your Superman concept, because my Superman concept is nothing like that. It's like this. You just drop any semblance of continuity and have Superman vs. Lex Luthor antics, Road-Runner/Wile E. Coyote style. You could (and should) take this approach with any Super Hero every once in a while, but I think Superman lends himself to doing it all the time.

[Mirai Gen]

It might be less anything inherently wrong with the character than just wretched overexposure and poor writing for the last 20 years but that doesn't make me hate him any less.

Plus I think that Wolverine-as-Everyone-in-Marvel picture that got posted a while back kind of was like a wax-seal on the Wolverine coffin.

But, I digress. I haven't read an X-Men comic in years and I only got back into comics in general last year, so I'm not too up-to-date on anyone from that pool lately.

By way of an actual notion of how to change the character without outright killing him I would throw out the claws altogether*, scale his healing factor back down to something that resembles "healing factor" and not "instantaneous regeneration", and bring back the element of his past where he doesn't know what his past was because an actually spooky and mysterious government agency brainwashed him and did crazy experiments and implanted him with a bunch of false memories along with who knows what-all hidden programming.

I'm in agreement here in every category but one, which leaves me curious - what's so annoying about claws (and bone claws for that matter)?

[Archbio]

The introduction of bone claws sort of just hammered out an intricacy in Wolverine's power and theme for no gain at all. I mean with the metal claws you had a bestial man with kind of bestial powers being transformed into something even more thematically beast-like with something totally added. With the bone claws it just became: well, Wolverine was always exactly the same only not as awesome!

Just see how the second X-Men movie got a great line out of just ignoring the bone claws altogether.

[Tev]

Originally Posted by Archbio

The introduction of bone claws sort of just hammered out an intricacy in Wolverine's power and theme for no gain at all. I mean with the metal claws you had a bestial man with kind of bestial powers being transformed into something even more thematically beast-like with something totally added. With the bone claws it just became: well, Wolverine was always exactly the same only not as awesome!

Just see how the second X-Men movie got a great line out of just ignoring the bone claws altogether.

Yes but a Wolverine without claws is really just Sabertooth for all intents and purposes. We all know just how popular that background villain is. >_>

I guess it would make the Wolverine vs Sabertooth fights more interesting in a more physical version of Spy vs Spy kinda way, but you'd have to really hit home their mental differences and such to distinguish them from on another.