For some reason I’ve just never liked Spider-Man. He comes off as a whiney, ignorant child that never seems to grow up or mature despite everything he goes through. I love a good coming of age story, but he just never seems to become an adult.
She-Hulk, read a few of the comics, saw another version, I don’t get the appeal. So she’s a lawyer, so is Daredevil, it’s a job that doesn’t lend itself well to perilous adventures. Filing a brief…at the edge of madness! She forgot that the county clerk’s office is closed on Memorial Day (US observed)!!! Dun dun duuuunnn
So she’s a lawyer, so is Daredevil, it’s a job that doesn’t lend itself well to perilous adventures.
Perry Mason’s kind of a Sherlock Holmes-type character. Not a superhero, but a lawyer character who does get into dangerous situations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Mason
Perry Mason is a fictional character, an American criminal defense lawyer who is the main character in works of detective fiction written by Erle Stanley Gardner. Perry Mason features in 82 novels and 4 short stories, all of which involve a client being charged with murder, usually involving a preliminary hearing or jury trial. Typically, Mason establishes his client’s innocence by finding the real murderer. The character was inspired by famed Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Earl Rogers.
I kinda hate all spin-off superheroes. Supergirl, Superdog, Batgirl; although it’s mostly _Girl versions of _Man. You never see WonderMan. WhitePanther wouldn’t get much love. It just feels like wringing the ol’ franchise of every last drop of blood.
Sometimes it bites me. SpiderVerse is supposed to be good, but it breaks my spin-off Rule.
There is actually a Black Panther spin-off called White Wolf . But you’re right, he doesn’t get much love
LOL they should have named him “White Power Wolf.” Maybe that’d have helped.
White Panther
This idea is like nitroglycerine
googles
You never see WonderMan.
Apparently not a “spin-off”, though it looks like there was some friction over the relationship to Wonder Woman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonder_Man
Marvel Comics’ then-publisher Stan Lee said in 1978, “You know, years ago we brought out Wonder Man, and [DC Comics] sued us because they had Wonder Woman, and… I said okay, I’ll discontinue Wonder Man. And all of a sudden they’ve got Power Girl [after Marvel had introduced Power Man]. Oh, boy. How unfair.”[7]
Nice sleuthing!
I didn’t mean so much similar names, as identical characters differing only by gender/race.
Yeah, spin offs aren’t my thing, except for Frasier.
Removed by mod
It’s stupid because you don’t understand it? Aeems like you are the dumb one then.
I’m a big fan of Supes myself, but it depends on who’s writing him and what the goal is.
He is at his best when it’s a problem he can’t punch away, it’s about courage, and honor of defending others. Superman without powers is still the same stand up powerful character, that is crux of what makes him interesting.
First, the appeal of Superman is his heart more than his strength. There’s one comic where he fights a giant robot and stops a runaway train, but the scene everyone remembers is when he talked someone down from the edge of a building.
Second, Superman may be invincible, but Lois Lane isn’t. It’s easy to defeat a villain, but much harder to defeat them while also keeping Lois safe. And she actively invites danger, so it’s always tricky keeping her safe.
Third, not every problem can be punched. Luthor’s greatest weapon against Superman isn’t kryptonite; it’s Public Relations. You can punch a monster, but that won’t help you stop a smear campaign.
I love the version of Superman where he growing up and is friends with Luthor and he’s like ‘I cannot tell him my secret because my dad would disapprove’ and it’s got accidental closeted queer vibes.
And there’s this comic book (not in the same continuity) where Luthor is this mad genius who escapes from prison easily and Clark interviews him and he’s like “I like you Clark, you’re so humble and down to Earth, but I hate Superman who is the opposite of that.”
and then Lois likes Superman more than Clark, at least to start with, in some versions I think.
And then with Brainiac there’s the possible storyline of ‘this computer has a lot of information stored on my lost culture but he is also an existential risk to all sapients everywhere in the galaxy ahhhhggg’.
And how will Clark deal with an environment where everyone is hostile to immigrants when he is one himself and also dedicated to upholding the law?
And the first comic where he interacts with Batman is actually fairly good: Batman threatens to bomb people if Superman unmasks him and Superman is like ‘oh shit, he is not lying, I can hear his heartbeat’, but Batman was actually threatening to explode himself. And the cartoon where Batman is fighting Brainiac and his costume gets ripped to reveal he was Superman all along was hilarious: “I did not predict this possibility.” The Justice League series in general (part of the same continuity) was pretty good actually.I like the potential stories there. There’s so many emotional possibilities. Stories where he just punches stuff are indeed boring. He is, frankly, under-utilized as a character imo because many writers don’t understand that, or think the solution is to make a version of him that is evil which still involves him punching stuff, or because they’re scared to actually touch on political issues like immigration or queerness. (can you imagine how many people would explode if Luthor was an ex-boyfriend for both him and Lois and they bonded over how shitty Luthor was as a date lol.)
it’s his ideals make him interesting, his nemesis litterally is an evil billonaire
Kryptonite exists precisely because superman with all his powers ISN’T interesting. Without it, he can’t be brave because he can’t die or be harmed. He can’t be generous because nothing is a challenge. Every heroic act is the equivalent of a billionaire handing a homeless person a dollar. The only thing remarkable about him is that he doesn’t abuse that power. Which is a very low bar to congradulate, idolizatize and worship someone.
The times that he does get reduced to semi mortal status by kryptonite, he wins because the writers made it so. eg. overconfident/stupid villains that gloat instead of taking advantage, deus ex machina etc. Most of the time when he is mortal he is shown to be much more vulnerable than a normal person psychologically and combatwise because he relies so heavily on his powers instead of having to develop fighting skills and coping strategies like everyone else does.
you are too focussed on the x vs y aspect of the stories. To me fights are the least interesting part you should read all star superman
He’s OK if you stick to classic Superman. He wasn’t a god, back then. Couldn’t turn back time, out-speed The Flash, or fly into the sun and pupate for a hundred years into some ultimate being.
He became increasingly absurd over the years.
Yeah, I don’t think that it’s a fantastic recipe for a character. The powers restrict the plots.
I think that less-potent powers tend to make for better story.
A lot of fictional series in various formats – not just comic books – make things more-important or more-powerful over the course of the series, to top each previous thing, and I think that the plots tend to become increasingly constrained late in a lot of series.
“He just never seems to become an adult”
What are you expecting? That fictional superheros grow up and get old?
Spiderman first appeared in -62, so you’d have never seen him as an immature teenager, but a grumpy middleaged dude.
On that note, there are depictions of adult Spiderman. Like in “Into the Spiderverse” or what was it.
But the essence of the character is the relative immaturity. Like Batman’s is gruff vigilanteism and Superman’s overtly good nature.
Pretty much all of them.
Are you judging by the movies, or the comic books? The movies keep him a perpetual teen; he’s way more sassy and adult in the comics.
Being a grownup i hardly ever spend time thinking about superheroes. Bring in the downvotes. Sorry idc.
“Being a grownup, I spend no time thinking about media or hobbies. Real adults watch paint dry and mow the lawn 🤓☝️”
Then this question was not for you. Why did you even answer?
Same reason why you felt like leaving an unwarranted reply to my comment, I guess.
Batman. He’s a billionaire playboy living in a city full of poverty. He may not kill but he has no problem crippling someone for life. And the fact he apparently learns nothing about the joker over the decades has resulted in so so many people dying to the joker’s schemes.
And the reality is that he’s still that same child in that alley but in an adult’s body. He takes on different child robins because he never grew past that. He has trauma that was never treated and one of the main symptoms of trauma is being stuck in the time period that the trauma happened. He doesn’t really have a personality beyond the trauma.
The Flash.
Not because I don’t like the character but because he honestly should be one of the strongest characters in DC but they constantly nerf him in the writing because they realized just like superman he could literally just show up and fix everything before anyone else even realized there was a problem
This annoys the shit out of me. I don’t care if you nerf your speedsters, at least make them consistent.
I have to assume you’ve only seen the Spider-Man movies of recent years and not the comics, the original live action show, or the 90’s animated series.
All of those go well into Peter Parker’s adult years and he’s a much more likeable character. I don’t particularly like what they have done to him in the modern stuff (outside of Spiderverse since Miles is a totally different person anyway). It doesn’t help that it’s been rebooted 3 times so all they’ve shown is his origin story a bunch of times. I can’t stand modern Spidey, either. And it’s extra infuriating because Spider-Man is my favorite.
I’m starting to think maybe we just related to the whiney teenager more when we were one, (looking at you 90s TV show) but experiencing him as a jaded adult just doesn’t hit the same.
I’m kind of annoyed by most superheroes as characters because of the costume thing.
The spandex thing that’s a pretty-common convention was because the Comic Code Authority disallowed nudity. Solution? Skintight outfits.
Now, I’ve got no problem with nudity, or salaciousness, or outright adult comics for that matter.
But we’ve got all that historical baggage of just about everyone running around in skintight outfits. So a lot of the genre winds up with having to come up with elaborate explanations as to why they’re wearing the things.
The CCA is long dead. You can have nudity or salaciousness in comic books if you want. But the convention is still with us because of designs that date to that era, and it’s just senseless. I feel like it kinda restricts the genre and doesn’t help the immersion.
There are comic characters who don’t do the spandex thing. John Constantine or Dick Tracy wear trenchcoats. Dream in Sandman doesn’t have fixed garb, but doesn’t do spandex.
The Parahumans series – Worm and Ward web serials, not comic books but certainly superheroes – are what I’d call some examples of modern superheroes that don’t have a design dating from an era where there were CCA constraints. Granted, they aren’t graphic novels or comic books, so they’ve got different incentives, but even so.
Are you claiming that Batman wears spandex because originally he was supposed to be naked but the CCA wouldn’t allow that?
Don’t hate spiderman. Hate the writers roughly spice 2000 that only let him have a break from misery when he’s in an alternate universe where he never became spider man.
Having been introduced to Spider-Man through comic books, I always disliked him. And the comics came out well prior to the 2000s. I was just found him obnoxious.
Jane Foster when she was the wielder of Mjolnir. Not for anything about her personally, but the fact that Thor was treated as a codename. It’s the dude’s actual name, it’d be like if Sam Wilson went around introducing himself as Steve Rogers when he took the Captain America mantle. It’s happened a few other times like with Eric Masterson, but at least he had the excuse that for most of the time he used the name he and the actual Thor were sharing a body.
Excuse me, but that’s always been the case. The first ever appearance of Thor is in Journey into Mistery #83, that’s before he had his own comic, in that comic a guy called Don Blake finds a cane, and when he grabs it this happens https://static1.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/journey-into-mystery-83-thor-debut-1.jpg
So Thor has always been the title of the person in possession of the Hammer, he converts himself into Thor by grabbing the hammer, the movies then changed that because in the Marvel Ultimate universe it’s different, but Jane Foster is from the original comics, where holding the hammer made you Thor, and she did exactly that in the 70s, just a couple of decades after Don Blake.
I think it’s both, his name and his power. In Thor 1 when Odin sends Mjolnir to earth he whispers to it something like “May he who’s been worthy possess the power of Thor”.
Yeah, I don’t mind it. Thor is a name and a title/power. God (presumably) is a name, and Thor has the power of a god.
Prince is a title. It’s also a name. And, to some musicians, Prince is a god.
It’d be rare to win an argument by invoking Prince, but there you go.
Well wait then how come Steve Rogers doesn’t have the full kit?
Because the point was to show that he’s worthy without completely changing him. Same with vision.
I thought vision was able to lift the hammer because he wasn’t a living being? At least I came to that conclusion because he never possessed the “power of Thor”
Vision is alive. His body is composed of living tissue woven together with the mind stone and vibranium. That whole speel by Stark arguing that vision could only lift the hammer in the same way an elevator would was him rationalizing why his creation was worthy but he wasn’t. The whole point of the scene where vision lifted the hammer for the first time was to show that he could be trusted. Because at that point, almost everyone had their doubts.
The thing is that, as you said, it’s happened several times before. Beta Ray Bill, Red Norvell, Eric Masterson… it’s been established for a long time that in the Marvel universe the title of Thor, God of Thunder, may be held by people who aren’t Thor Odinson (and that he might occasionally lose it, though so far only temporarily, at least in the main continuity).
All but Dexter.
All of them.Deadpool was kinda funny.
