Why do we read superhero comics as opposed to Star Trek?

[QUOTE=MyriVerse;4367283]The superhero genre is typically more free and open to elements of fantasy and horror, as well as, science fiction.[/QUOTE]

It's changing with the manga influence as well as a lot of properties that began as cartoons becoming comics as well. It will be interesting to see how things develop, but the main reason we read superhero comics over most others is that for most readers, superheroes were pretty much only common in comic books.

Star Trek was, and mostly still is, something you watch on television. Star Wars you watched in movie theaters or on the television. Before the comics code, comics were still for kids, but horror comics, war comics, romance comics and science fiction comics were just as popular as super-heroes. After the code, the other genres migrated to other media and superheroes became even more aimed at children, like Saturday morning cartoons.

Then, when comics exploded in popularity really in the 80's, it was because of the appeal to teenager and young college age students - mostly boys. Teen Titans and the New X-men especially. Today, you get a lot of comparison between the X-Men and minorities, but really they're appeal was that the mutant experience mirrored adolescence.

When most people are little kids, they are cute, harmless and everyone loves them. Then, when they reach their teens, they stop being cute, people who loved them now get angry with them, their bodies change in scary ways, they face judgment from strangers and, worst of all, they feel dangerous. They can get pregnant or get someone pregnant, get into a car accident, hurt someone in a fight. They feel like freaks - and the way New X-men and Teen Titans were written - with terrific artwork, too - really spoke to that.

So, that's when a great deal of comics readers developed a strong emotional connection to the medium and associated it with the superhero genre - and those were the readers who would then go into comics and create a lot of the independent publishers like Image, too. So the entire medium was geared to deliver superheroes even as it became more mature.

I don't think escapist fun can't have something serious to say. My first love is and always be the [i]Transformers[/i] but does that mean it's just big alien robots who change forms and beating the crap out of each other? No, writer James Roberts used the comic book [i]The Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye[/i]to introduce and explore several big issues such as PTSD, same-sex romance, transgender issues, faith vs. atheism, politics, characters who fall from grace, stories of redemption, the nature of heroism and villainy, and still have a wickedly funny and at times very brutally violent series about alien robots who change forms and beat the crap out each other.

I don't like when everybody wears the same outfit. Fantastic Four almost has that problem, but thing is mostly orange and the Torch is red a good part of the time and Sue is often invisible.

i cant watch superheroes like Superman (dont batch me, this is personal opinion :')), where the power basically normal and basic. Having good strength, flying.
I'm more into like weird superpower like spiderman, hulk, xmen etc.

Here is an article from a journalist who has grown tired of super-heroes stories:

[URL="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/26/superhero-movies-have-never-seemed-more-obscene"]Superhero movies have never seemed more obscene[/URL]

I must say I understand her point of view. I mostly read super-heroes comics when I was a child and I never heard of Climate Change, biodiversity loss, ressource depletion… Have we really the luxury to lose ourselves in fantasy with so many pressing threats? Is it a nostalgia of simpler times?

[QUOTE=Zelena;5116853][…]
[URL="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/26/superhero-movies-have-never-seemed-more-obscene"]Superhero movies have never seemed more obscene[/URL]
[…][/QUOTE]

I quote from the paper: «They might save cinema, but the public doesn’t need vengeance and spandex right now – we need voting and vaccines.»
Can someone explain to that "journalist" the simply concept of entertainment and why it is so important when we live in dark times?

About the topic of the thread I would answer with a question: «Why do we eat fish-burger as opposed to fish & chips?» Because they are totally different things, able to satisfy different tastes and the fact that both of them contain fish, doesn't make them interchangeable. This is why we can prefer the fish-burger or the fish & chips, but we can also choose to love both of them and eat a time the first one and another time the second ones.

[QUOTE=Zelena;5116853]Here is an article from a journalist who has grown tired of super-heroes stories:

[URL="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/26/superhero-movies-have-never-seemed-more-obscene"]Superhero movies have never seemed more obscene[/URL]

I must say I understand her point of view. I mostly read super-heroes comics when I was a child and I never heard of Climate Change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion… Have we really the luxury to lose ourselves in fantasy with so many pressing threats? Is it a nostalgia of simpler times?[/QUOTE]

Humans cannot live on constant existential anxiety alone.

[QUOTE=Duskman;5119530]Humans cannot live on constant existential anxiety alone.[/QUOTE]

But once they have been lulled by this false sense of security, do they want to go back in this “existantial anxiety”? Or they are tempted to say: “Oh, maybe, it’s not so serious, after all, it’s not the end of the world, right now. Let’s go back to movies, comics…”

Or if they are convinced that the situation is serious, don’t they feel guilty to have wasted precious time?

[QUOTE=Zelena;5120374][…]
Or if they are convinced that the situation is serious, don’t they feel guilty to have wasted precious time?[/QUOTE]

Absolutely not: the people has to amuse themselves in order to cheer themselves up. For example a common reaction to the pestilence of the thirteenth century (which killed about the forty percent of the European population) was write the so called Macrabe Dances; one example of these dances was recorded by the Italian singer Angelo Branduardi.

[video=youtube;z4ng2_dCO6g]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4ng2_dCO6g[/video]

We aren't living something that the humanity always faced.

Exactly, just look at the movies in the 30's and it is clear people went to the cinema to escape Depression. Almost always, the answer to why people go to any form of entertainment is that they just want to feel good for a little while.

[QUOTE=A Small Talent For War;5120492]Exactly, just look at the movies in the 30's and it is clear people went to the cinema to escape Depression. Almost always, the answer to why people go to any form of entertainment is that they just want to feel good for a little while.[/QUOTE]

True. But there were a lot of gangster movies at the time. As well as Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp character directly dealt with the poverty of the times. Everything wasn't pure escapism.

[QUOTE=ed2962;5121964]True. But there were a lot of gangster movies at the time. As well as Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp character directly dealt with the poverty of the times. Everything wasn't pure escapism.[/QUOTE]

Yes, but Charlie Chaplin made fun of poverty… He was saying: yes, this is your life, it’s bleak but you can still find in it reasons to be happy. You feel stronger after seeing his movies. The world is less terrifying.
If something is too distant from your day-to-day life, once you go back to the reality, you just think: “Here we go again.” And nothing has changed in your vision of life.

So, Marvel or Stark Trek? Depends. Spider-man has always been much loved and nobody has been biten by a radioactive spider.

[QUOTE=Zelena;5121981]Yes, but Charlie Chaplin made fun of poverty… He was saying: yes, this is your life, it’s bleak but you can still find in it reasons to be happy. You feel stronger after seeing his movies. The world is less terrifying.
If something is too distant from your day-to-day life, once you go back to the reality, you just think: “Here we go again.” And nothing has changed in your vision of life.

So, Marvel or Stark Trek? Depends. Spider-man has always been much loved and nobody has been biten by a radioactive spider.[/QUOTE]

It is strange how the essential adolescent drama of Spider-Man often works so well. Buffy had a lot of the same appeal because the supernatural elements were just a little off from the way we dealt with the world as teens. Stephen King makes this point with horror. He believes that even though child-eating magical clowns may be obvious fantasy, there is something in your subconscious that says "if you just changed this a little bit, it's just like the real world" and that's what really makes it scary.

With Spider-Man in the 60's and the X-men in the 80's, superheroes mirrored the strange experience of adolescence where you start to see how socially and physically scary the world really is compared to childhood - in which you were powerless but protected (unless you had a terrible childhood) - but at the same time you are becoming physically and mentally more capable of dealing with the dangers of the world and the society you're entering. A lot of this was reflected in how the golden age heroes had much stronger appeal for pre-teens where the experience of being powerless attracted kids to stories of very powerful heroes, while the Marvel and Bronze Age comics appealed to a more older teenage reader.

[QUOTE=Killerbee911;4022984]American comics at some point became seen as kid thing, And industry hasn't full break that stigma.This is important because scifi gets complex and mature and doesn't fit age bracket/audience comics are going after. Whereas Manga in Japan isn't aimed at specific audience and doesn't have stigma like the US. So all sorts of genre and content are available in comic form and read by adults.

American Comics can deal with serious issue but the American market has been train view to comics for kids, So you will never get push for that type of content(scifi) until American market makes serious turn at adults. That said the american indie market supports wider variety of subject matter so if you are thinking of writing comic and doing scifi you actually have place for that.

Why do we like Superhero comics? Great wish fulfilment with fantastic things happening and they have really good stories of good versus evil in this format[/QUOTE]

Well let us not forget that US comics were for a long time policed as being kids content after a horrid period of controlling content from becoming adult. Starlin for one is able to write what he did as the code became less enforced and that stigma began to wane.

[QUOTE=A Small Talent For War;5122194]It is strange how the essential adolescent drama of Spider-Man often works so well. Buffy had a lot of the same appeal because the supernatural elements were just a little off from the way we dealt with the world as teens. Stephen King makes this point with horror. He believes that even though child-eating magical clowns may be obvious fantasy, there is something in your subconscious that says "if you just changed this a little bit, it's just like the real world" and that's what really makes it scary.

With Spider-Man in the 60's and the X-men in the 80's, superheroes mirrored the strange experience of adolescence where you start to see how socially and physically scary the world really is compared to childhood - in which you were powerless but protected (unless you had a terrible childhood) - but at the same time you are becoming physically and mentally more capable of dealing with the dangers of the world and the society you're entering. A lot of this was reflected in how the golden age heroes had much stronger appeal for pre-teens where the experience of being powerless attracted kids to stories of very powerful heroes, while the Marvel and Bronze Age comics appealed to a more older teenage reader.[/QUOTE]

Marvel had a college age appeal in the late sixties so the age assignment for those dramas is perhaps confining.