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[QUOTE=80sbaby;1570023] . . . 4. Dick Grayson should be the best (heroic) HtH combatant on the planet. This is based on the fact that he's naturally gifted and has been training longer against dangerous opponents from a young age.[/QUOTE]I take it you're only referring to [I]pre-[B][COLOR="#FF0000"]Flashpoint[/COLOR][/B][/I] Dick and ignoring that his back story changed with the [I]New 52[/I]?
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[QUOTE=Crazy Diamond;1570374]Also, I've never understood why fans should care whether a character is iconic or not. I mean, Superman is iconic, but if his book sucks who cares?[/QUOTE]
I do think there is a larger cultural component to characters like Superman and Wonder Woman that dwarfs their actual representation in comics. Superman and Wonder Woman have become symbols for ideas far larger than the content of a comic book, and I think that's why it's so hard to actually get into their comics on a ground level-- the idea of Superman is so much bigger and more pervasive than any story that he appears in. Superman the idea is everywhere in popular culture; Superman the lead character in a comic book appeals to a small segment of people. Where this gets confused is when people argue that Superman iconic because of any particularly incarnation of the character rather than the ideas that he represents. It's not Golden Age Superman or Silver Age Superman or Byrne's Superman or movie Superman, etc, that is iconic; his iconic status comes from his being a symbol for conceptions of strength, fairness, caring, etc. Superman is far more than just a comic book character, and it's rare that any particular comic can reflect that cultural reality.
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[QUOTE=BohemiaDrinker;1570001]Sure!
Six white people and one green dude are good enough![/QUOTE]
Who can't see themselves in a bald widower who loves junk food and pretends to be white at his day
job?
(I wish I still made AMVs, just for the excuse to Immigrant Punk some J'onn footage. Poor Martian dude. The token POSC.)
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[I]Year One[/I] is better than [I]Dark Knight Returns[/I].
Superman should grow up with his powers from day one. Any version that doesn't isn't a [B]REAL[/B] version.
[I]Gotham Central[/I] was the best Bat book ever made.
[I]Infinite Crisis[/I] sucked and was completely unnecessary. The Earth 2 Superman deserves better.
DC is deliberately undermining other characters, especially Superman, because all they really want to write is Batman.
The post-Crisis Wonder Woman was the only [B]REAL[/B] version of the character.
The DCTV universes are better than the movie universe.
Grant Morrison is overrated. The only good story he ever did was the first [I]Action[/I] story arc. That, and [I]WE3[/I].
Frank Miller lost his damn mind years ago and should never be let near another DC character again. [I]DKR[/I] should be a stand alone story.
The new [I]Earth One[/I] universe is actually better than the mainstream universe.
The New 52 reboot or something like it was unavoidable.
Joker is severely overrated and Max Landis got him exactly right in that [I]Adventures of Superman[/I] story.
So is Batman.
DC never should have gotten rid of the old JSA.
Superman was actually better when he was married to Lois.
I'm glad Barbara Gordon got the use of her legs back.
Lobo is a stupid character and never should have been created.
Jim Lee can't draw as well as he did when he was with Marvel.
The New52 version of Hal is kind of a jerk.
The [B]REAL[/B] Wally is a white kid with red hair.
The [B]REAL[/B] Donna Troy is not a man hating murderer.
Superman's parents should still be alive.
Killing clowns shouldn't be a crime.
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[QUOTE=superduperman;1570650]The post-Crisis Wonder Woman was the only [B]REAL[/B] version of the character.[/QUOTE]
"Real," in no dictionary, means "one I like," except the fanboy dictionary (which I've used myself for other terms).
[QUOTE=superduperman;1570650]Lobo is a stupid character and never should have been created.[/QUOTE]
Lobo is Daffy Duck with Elvis hair and a big bike. Who doesn't love to laugh at Daffy Duck?
[QUOTE=superduperman;1570650]The [B]REAL[/B] Wally is a white kid with red hair.[/QUOTE]
When he can lend you ten bucks, I'll believe that.
[QUOTE=superduperman;1570650]The [B]REAL[/B] Donna Troy is not a man hating murderer. [/QUOTE]
Neither is the one currently appearing in comics. No more so than if an adult killed someone by throwing a baby at them very hard makes the baby a murderer.
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[QUOTE=superduperman;1570650] . . . Superman's parents should still be alive.[/QUOTE]Which ones do you mean: his birth parents or the couple who took him in and raised him?
The idea that "The Kents should still be alive" would probably be an age-related point, though. They had always been dead by the time Clark became Superman prior to the [I]post-[B]CoIE[/B][/I] revision in the mid 1980's. So they therefore were dead for more of Superman's published career than they were alive.
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[QUOTE=t hedge coke;1570740][QUOTE=superduperman;1570650]
The [B]REAL[/B] Wally is a white kid with red hair. [/quote]
When he can lend you ten bucks, I'll believe that..[/QUOTE]
Related: The REAL Wally West is [B]not[/B] a kid.
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[QUOTE=Jim Kelly;1570024]Even though the comic book fans like to say Fredric Wertham was wrong about everything, at the same time they post many of the same thoughts that he had in SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT.
He was attacking comics for the way they used people of non-white skin colour, fostering racism. And he worked in Harlem with Black youth, so he would have seen firsthand how the image of Black people in comics (shown either as feeble servants or evil savages) impacted the psyche of Black children.
He was attacking Batman and Robin for having some kind of homosexual relationship mixed with pedophilia. Which I think is a wrong interpretation on so many levels. Yet comic book fans say the same thing about those comics.
He was attacking Superman for being a Fascist. Again something I don't agree with--but you get comic book fans and comic book writers saying the same thing about Superman.
He was attacking Wonder Woman for being a role model to girls--but the wrong role model in his mind. Not just because there was a level of Lesbianism in the comics, but because WW was as strong as a man and was born from clay, formed by her mother. In other words she had no father--she didn't even have the decency to be born from Zeus like Athena. Well, I guess comics have fixed all that and made Wonder Woman better according to Wertham's standards, because at least WW now has a daddy and she's got a boyfriend who's more powerful than her.
I still don't think that Wertham would have liked anything in today's comics. But the stuff we see in other entertainment and in society generally would tend to contradict his diagnosis of the problem. However, I don't see comics and the fanbase actually doing anything to contradict Wertham's premise. Comic books are ultra-violent and many adults would rather have comics as their own preserve rather than written for children.[/QUOTE]
That was interesting.
I did not know he attacked comics for their terrible portrayal of people of non-white skin color.
It is true comics and pulp magazines portrayal of Blacks, Asians and Latinos was mostly horrifying at the time.
The Batman Robin thing it's true some people do joke about how some of the back issues make their relationship look, but they are just foolishly mocking it . I think Wertham was coming from a place, that he genuinely thought reading them would turn young readers gay. I don't think anyone today is suggesting that is/was the case .
LOL at 40s Wonder Woman being more progressive, and modern Wonder Woman becoming closer to the "safe" Wonder Woman he wanted.
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I see a lot of young people walking around wearing Marilyn Monroe gear who I guarantee have never seen one of her movies. Don't get me wrong. I think Marilyn was great, even underrated. But I don't understand why people who don't know the first thing about her buy her merchandise.
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Iconic is one of those formerly great words, like classic, awesome, terrifying and horrific, that idiots have ruined by using them to hype mundane things.
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[QUOTE=Güicho;1570842]That was interesting.
I did not know he attacked comics for their terrible portrayal of people of non-white skin color.
It is true comics and pulp magazines portrayal of Blacks, Asians and Latinos was mostly horrifying at the time.[/QUOTE]
Even though Wertham does a little too much bragging about what a good person he is, I do think he was actually a good person. He was clearly trying to help a lot of youth in crisis, the best way he knew how. It's hard for me to get angry at a guy who was trying to do good in the world. Although, some of his ideas are exaperating in the extreme.
[QUOTE=Güicho;1570842]
The Batman Robin thing it's true some people do joke about how some of the back issues make their relationship look, but they are just foolishly mocking it . I think Wertham was coming from a place, that he genuinely thought reading them would turn young readers gay. I don't think anyone today is suggesting that is/was the case .
[/QUOTE]
The thing is Wertham blows things up out of all proportion. He doesn't just single out certain scenes that he might have read as being too intimate between the boy and his surrogate father. And as is the case with a lot of his examples, he doesn't clearly identify which issues and stories he's using. But rather he challenges everything about the relationship and the whole Batman story. He's hostile toward every panel. An innocent scene of Bruce and Dick sitting together at the dinner table is offensive to him because it looks too frilly and effeminate. He's utterly homophobic about everythng.
While there are scenes that are laughable when viewed in a modern context, some readers have such fright of anything that appears the least bit gay that they want to take everything out of Batman that could be read as such. To the extent of retconning out of the Batman story most of Bruce's fatherly nature.
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[QUOTE=Trey Strain;1571005]Iconic is one of those formerly great words, like classic, awesome, terrifying and horrific, that idiots have ruined by using them to hype mundane things.[/QUOTE]
Let's add epic, mythic and legendary to that list. All three of those words used to refer to certain kinds of stories, but now people use them to just mean "really, really great".
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[QUOTE=MajorHoy;1570775]The idea that "The Kents should still be alive" would probably be an age-related point, though. They had always been dead by the time Clark became Superman prior to the [I]post-[B]CoIE[/B][/I] revision in the mid 1980's. So they therefore were dead for more of Superman's published career than they were alive.[/QUOTE]
I kind of want one of the Kents to have lived in this continuity, but their deaths and Clark's chance to bring them back and using it, instead, to save those good folks on Mars is way better than any Clark sits and has a beer with his old man stories we could get, instead.
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I think the industry is strangling itself to death with its dedication to floppies. A twenty page book, with maybe five panels on average per page, at four bucks a shot, that only comes out once a month, and can only be found in hobby shops? And people wonder why comics dont sell? Why the industry hasn't completely moved on to digital boggles my mind. Comics could generate some solid profit right now if the publishers would stop pretending that it's still 1980. They still treat digital comics like the red headed step child; they dont get much attention or focus, and almost always get the scraps from the talent table.
Did you guys know that in 2011 digital comics sold something like 24 million copies, but in 2014 they sold 100 million? By comparison, print comics only gained something like 9 million more readers during the same period.
Imagine how much more that increase could have been if the industry had actually worked at their digital presence?
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Some characters are better as older characters, and DC's need to make everyone younger really is a disservice to those characters. It's the comic equivalent of people who say history isn't important because it happen before i was born. It feeds into my belief that corporations want an audience that's ignorant of both the world around them and their own history, because to be honest people who have no sense of history tend to be focused on trends and gimmicks or whatever the corporation is selling them now. It's a destructive mentality that isn't exclusive to comics, but it does tend to rear its head in comic quite often. The Post Crisis DCU was good because it had a nice mix of old and young characters that span numerous ages. Making every character young is bad because...
1. It makes the universe smaller. This is suppose to be a universe right? Universes are by their nature big.
2. It destroys a bunch of characters in a vain attempt to bolster characters that to be honest don't really need bolstering.
3. It's ageist
4. It almost always ends with writers retelling stories we have already seen before rather then coming up with new ones.
5. It doesn't fix the real problem which is the fact that people can't get into comics because of the way they are written not the age of the characters.