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Respect Authority

I have to admit I like the spirit.

My main issue with super heroes is they're very hard to respect because the plot requires them to be useless despite Godlike powers. I normally root for the norm governments trying to bring them down or runs where they go evil.

Think you might enjoy Strong Female Protagonist--it's basically about a superhero getting fed up of, well, superheroing, because she feels that it isn't changing or saving the world.
 
There's a very interesting commentary I saw when it came to this intersecting with the whole 'why not just kill the Joker' side of things. For the latter, the question surely is not 'why doesn't Batman (a guy with a code of honour who recognises he's teetering on the edge of villainy at times and puts hard boundaries on what he allows himself to do as a response) kill the Joker. It's why doesn't the State of Gotham just send him to the electric chair?

And if the answer to the latter is because the death penalty is illegal, or because society has decided that's not right morally regardless of the crimes involved, then what right does Batman have to say otherwise, other than to allow people to sidestep the question by just having the guy in the bat costume answer it for them.


The big problem with not killing the Joker - and Carnage, for Spider-Man - is writers having the superheroes hold back mid-fight cos they Don't Kill, this when the villain's actively trying to murder a busload of orphans, and that seems ethically dubious on the hero's part. But not as bad as the time we were told Captain America never killed anyone, which logically means a bunch more American soldiers were shot by German ones because Cap took longer knocking them out.
 
This all seems like the problem of trying to take seriously a bunch of stories which are, by their very nature, ridiculous children's characters. You're never going to make a serious superhero story where the world building makes sense because they're innately ridiculous. To me that just seems proof that you shouldn't try and you should lean into cartoon logic and don't think too much about the world.
 
This all seems like the problem of trying to take seriously a bunch of stories which are, by their very nature, ridiculous children's characters.

Basically. To some extent this is the company's own fault, deliberately cultivating fandoms to see this as sophisticated and allowing creators to do that, but then slamming the breaks to keep it from getting a bit too far from To Sell Toys.
 
Basically. To some extent this is the company's own fault, deliberately cultivating fandoms to see this as sophisticated and allowing creators to do that, but then slamming the breaks to keep it from getting a bit too far from To Sell Toys.

Like the best example of this is Knightfall.
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This is what most recall. Bane broke the back of Batman. Months of comics where Batman was pushed to the edge by a new foe who was stronger, smarter, and more determined. Bane did not just beat up Batman he made the caped crusader stay awake for almost a week and then fight nearly all of his foes only to then strike at him inside of Wayne Manor.

On my wall right now is #500 of Batman comics. It is special to me as it was the first comic I bought. On the cover is batman but you fold it (it was the 1990s and dear lord the crap they sold us) and you saw this...
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To understand this you need to go back to the 1990s when Image seemingly took over the comics market. Edgy, brooding, dark heroes who killed, smoked, slept around and took no names. DC editor Dennis O'Neil HATED Image. He hated the idea that superheroes needed to be killers or dark and brooding. He was focused on "these are fun escapism... why make it depressing?" Finally he had enough of folks asking or demanding for Batman or DC to "get with the program."

His idea was "Knightfall." Batman breaks his back as planned and a NEW Batman arises. Jean-Paul Valley took up the cowl, armored the batsuit, added tech, and endless number of pouches, all the while ignoring the secret identity, partners, and working with cops. No this Batman was taking out Gotham's worst. Now we get the "IDEA" and the "Mandate." The Idea of O'Neil was that for at least six months Bruce Wayne is never seen. We may get Robin or Nightwing but they are not Batman's allies but people who also fought crime. Batman would be dark brooding anti-hero who focused only on the crime. No more detective stories (O'Neil was going to have Robin and Harvey Bullock handle detective crimes) and no more "fun" Batman (Nightwing would become more serious with Barbra and in effect closer to Gordon with Dick becoming a Gotham district attorney - O'Neil hated the idea of Dick Grayson a billionaires kid taking some blue collar job). Just a fixated and obsessed crime fighter.

To O'Neil this would not be a change but allow people to see why this idea just does not work for Batman. Make new characters, show new relationships, let characters evolve but in a very DC corporate growth where the world improves but stays the same.

Almost instantly this was met by DC corporate with a really loud "but Batman Returns is coming out in a few months people will be EXCITED for more Batman! We cannot get rid of Bruce Wayne!" Mind you this was mapped out in 1991 so Batman Returns is out in 92 and does not do as expected but the mandate is in. So O'Neil always a good company man does as asked.

The end result is a muddled story in which the focus is on AzBats (Jean-Paul Valley's Batman), post injury and in recovery Bruce Wayne, Dick, Tim, Barbra, Alfred and more. It was not so much a comment upon how violence and single minded focused anti-heroes were killing the fun of comics but how DC saw this as a chance to make a single minded anti-hero out of Batman and sell some alternate covers and prestige format books to make more and more money.

All in all it was just another pointless exercise in early 90s comics. But I always enjoy the history as it was rooted in trying, so hard, to remind readers that comics are "supposed" to be silly wild adventures and not dark depressing poorly drawn Rob Liefeld worlds. It sounds better when Dennis O'Neil explains the "narrative" he wanted. Guy really wanted to pick his five best writers give them one batman related book a piece and they all would have "elements" of Batman while the main Batman book would just be the Image style Batman. He hoped it would show sales improved on the more character driven stories.
 
The 90s were a particularly bad time for marketing and the editors meddling like that- just witness the Clone Saga.

It's always been a thing of course, but that period seems to be more head-on-desk than usual.
 
I do like how as I got older I realized the fun in comics is not the gritty realism but "look... heroes WIN all the time."

Plus in all honestly, usually 'gritty realism' 90% of the time mean in reality: edgy teen-like maturity and behaviour that mistake blood,sex and attitude for being deep
 
I've always heard of the Authority, knew vaguely what they were about, but never got into them. They always seemed a little "comic book edgy, tryhard deconstruction, realistic I'm an adult look at me how mature and edgy I am." Also I never really read comics until recently, soooo yeah, I really never got into them.

I've always been more interested in comic history than comics themselves. Even now, perusing some of the more modern-JSA and reading about obscure characters like Hour-Man and Star Girl I find them more historically interesting than by themselves.

Fascinatingly for me, this is only coming about a week or two after Lewis Lovehaug over on Atop the Fourth Wall did his review of the Superman comic you mention briefly at the end- Whatever happened to truth, justice and the American way?; so this is an interesting one to go back and forth between.

Same.

Golden Age Supes is strong and fast and jumps real good. He can make a difference in one town that makes sense. When it comes to the demi god who can survive a nuclear blast and fight Gods and has a whole league of similar demi gods and like the world's richest man. Its really telling that they can't fix basic stuff.

I always kind of like "mildly insane New Deal vigilante" Superman. It's definitively not the canonical version.

Its why I think all comics should be set in a relatively short time period, use relatively low end super heroes or be built around how the world is made.

Again, same. Superman being able to fly fast and hit hard while trying to grapple with his limits and various moral quandaries is fun; him flying at light-speed and being able to punch someone into the sun from the Earth takes you a bit out of the experience. Not always, but sometimes.

It's more fun to try and build a cohesive universe out of many, many disparate parts (and 80+ years of serialization have provided a lot of stuff to use). Take a look at the little wikibox mini-series.
 
I've always been more interested in comic history than comics themselves.

Researching the history of how comics got made and companies operated for these articles is a massive trip. DC undermining the Authority when it was one of their top sellers! IPC suddenly getting scared of their horror comic being a horror comic! Acclaim not properly running a company they spent $65m on! Spider-Man plots delayed and altered to fit around a sudden X-Men plan! An editor randomly deciding art bores him! And that's not even touching on the involvement of the mobs in early American comics, both production and distribution, and that this was continuing in some cities so early direct market people had some visits from scary big men...
 
Researching the history of how comics got made and companies operated for these articles is a massive trip. DC undermining the Authority when it was one of their top sellers! IPC suddenly getting scared of their horror comic being a horror comic! Acclaim not properly running a company they spent $65m on! Spider-Man plots delayed and altered to fit around a sudden X-Men plan! An editor randomly deciding art bores him! And that's not even touching on the involvement of the mobs in early American comics, both production and distribution, and that this was continuing in some cities so early direct market people had some visits from scary big men...

I read that article too. It was how I learned that Turok wasn't originally a video game (as I had casually assumed for so many years).

Then also there's DC suing over Captain Marvel because he was outselling Superman, Marvel comics making their own Captain Marvel to get the trademark, and the constant rebranding/name confusion for poor Billy Batson and what his alter-ego actually is. And Will Eisner spending many years drawing instructional materials for the Army, among other things. Just fascinating stuff.
 
Oh, and the suggestion the Comics Code was a way by certain companies to nobble EC Comics above all else and Archie Comics heavily backed the Code because it wouldn't harm them. (This got a reference in, of all things, Simpsons Comics spinoff Radioactive Man and the faux-1950s story "Dr Crab's Commie Comics!" On the last page, the Wertham stand-in saying these horror comics are a communist plot is revealed to be the editor of "Hartley")

Marvel comics making their own Captain Marvel to get the trademark, and the constant rebranding/name confusion for poor Billy Batson and what his alter-ego actually is.

Amalgam Comics merged Captain Marvel with Captain Marvel to become Captain Marvel.
 
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