Any way to improve "coherence" of the Marvel Universe?

[JackDaw]

I read a fair bit of fantasy and historical prose. And one thing that nearly always strikes me (compared to Marvel) is that a lot of the better written novels or series often feature worlds which "feel" more reasonable/ realistic than Marvel's world setting.

What I mean by "realistic" in this sense is that once writer has made his initial fictional assumptions, he works out what might reasonably happen if those assumptions are true. For example, in Patrick O'Brians fictional naval battles...a first rate ship with say 78 guns doesn't lose a gun battle to a frigate with 8 light guns...if the frigate captain is daft enough to allow his ship to be trapped in still air, his ship gets blown to smithereens. He doesn't win because he's a tough dude with attitude! Equally the frigate can outrun a first rate, in most sea conditions

Or take a comic example: Greg Rucka's Lazarus..Greg makes some broad assumptions about how future may pan out (a growing scarcity of resources, some break throughs in bio-engineering, family combines dominating wide areas of the Earth, etc)...but once those assumptions are made, he works out what might happen logically and consistently. A Lazarus (a bio-engineered house champion) does not lose fights to plucky mortals.

Compare that to Marvel...the overall storytelling world doesn't pan out. Take the Jonathan Hickman Avengers run I'm reading (and enjoying incidentally) now. This is full of ultra powerful characters...guys who can destroy planets (and some more powerful still), ruthless villains very happy to kill, etc. Oh...and a level of super hero technology that allows Tony Stark to build a Dyson sphere around sun in a couple of days, and capture a significant level of the suns' total energy, and use it for his own purposes.

And yet we're supposed to believe that Captain America...a normal peak human (i.e. can maybe lift 20 stone above his head, and run 30 miles a hour) and Hawkeye (wow the guy's got a bow and arrow, and can shoot straight) are major players in the pitched battles..they go into fight after after fight...and nothing happens to them, save a bit of blood is sometimes shown on face...and sometimes (shock, horror)...their costume is ripped.

Complete nonsense. And there are sorts of other ways world doesn't make overall sense. Given level of technology, why are there any cars anymore?? What weren't practically all humans bio-engineered to godhood 10 years ago (given the level of scientific feats routinely achieved in a matter of hours)?? Etc, etc.

I know there are writers that can still tell good stories in this overall setting. But I actually think those good stories are achieved in spite of the overall setting, rather than because of it.

Can anything be done to improve overall setting? If so, what??

Or does it have to stay more or less as it is now, and all the mishmash excused with the ever-popular phrase "That's comics."? (NB...No, it's the way Marvel...one very successful purveyor of some comics decides to operate!)

[Xalfrea]

Having things set with specific rules in place would help, but I can imagine how some writers would feel extremely annoyed at having these "restrictions" and this box blocking them from probably doing whatever they want to do. Then again the Marvel Universe has practically been an inconsistent mishmash from day one. I still don't get how the likes of the X-Men are persecuted, while others like the Fantastic Four or Avengers are treated better by comparison. With a universe that has super tech, magic, aliens, dimensions, alternate universes or the like, it would be an extremely uphill battle to try and make things "normalized".

[JackDaw]

Having things set with specific rules in place would help, but I can imagine how some writers would feel extremely annoyed at having these "restrictions" and this box blocking them from probably doing whatever they want to do. Then again the Marvel Universe has practically been an inconsistent mishmash from day one. I still don't get how the likes of the X-Men are persecuted, while others like the Fantastic Four or Avengers are treated better by comparison. With a universe that has super tech, magic, aliens, dimensions, alternate universes or the like, it would be an extremely uphill battle to try and make things "normalized".

(By way...I'll be first to admit that I think it's a tough question...I think there are too many popular characters withs such disparate power sets that there is no fix, I can personally think of, that I think would work. But then often have experience of seeing other people coming up with solutions I can't think of myself.)

Actually, I think overall setting in very, very early days of Marvel worked better than it does now, in terms of overall coherence. There were far fewer super powered characters, and top end feats by humans/ super humans were a fair bit more restrained than now. Yes...Mr Fantastic could always do incredible scientific feats...but he wasn't remotely into large scale manufacturing. So you could look at overall setting...very few super humans, less powerful than now...and sort of more easily accept that largely their world was roughly similar to ours in most respects. And easier to accept that Captain America...and the other low end supers..could be major players when far fewer top end powerhouses existed.

I imagine part of reason for Ultimate line was to re-set world, and try to make it a more convincing setting. For me, that seemed to work quite well. (I only read Ultimate Spider-man, so am only judging on limited data...but that was a more convincing world setting for me that 616 Marvel setting.)

[Ra-El]

The problem with Marvel and DC is that their universes can't evolve beyond a certain point, but the power scale and tech keep going up. So even with Thor and Sentry at Marvel, and Superman and Orion at DC, those publishers can not just admit that popular characters like Captain America and Batman wouldn't be effect and would probably die on the first alien invasion.

[Michael Watkins]

Step one kill Gwenpool

[Matternativ]

Yeah I disagree on that matter.

The fact that anything can happen and one character can battle aliens in space and then get beaten down by evil Henchmen on the street if that fits the tone of either books or the fact that most of it is nonsense is what makes Superhero Comics what they are and give them their unique charme.

Do not forget that the whole Universe is built upon stories that were and often still are aimed at kids.

I've got other franchises and media's for the mature and more complex storytelling. Doesn't mean that you can't tell mature and or complex stories in the context of that Universe but they do not define it.

PS: Silver Age Hawkeye defeated Abomination and She-Hulk 1 on 1 so I would not say the Universe felt more coherent in the past.

[milton75]

The problem with Marvel and DC is that their universes can't evolve beyond a certain point, but the power scale and tech keep going up. So even with Thor and Sentry at Marvel, and Superman and Orion at DC, those publishers can not just admit that popular characters like Captain America and Batman wouldn't be effect and would probably die on the first alien invasion.

Totally agree. The continual "topping" of power level just seems silly. It's a childish fanboy (or girl) conceit; "the character in my story is just so great", etc. I'm not saying that they're always going for the Mary Sue angle, but it sometimes seems that way.

You either have established characters (who were usually just fine imo) having their power levels increased (the whole Omega-level mutant thing being a great example), or you have new characters being inserted at the top of the tree. Does anyone really await with bated breath to see which new character will be more intelligent than Moon Girl, or more powerful than Sentry?
What's the point? Unless you're a 10-year-old playing Top Trumps superheroes in the playground, it's a facile dynamic.

[Sutekh]

Actually, I think overall setting in very, very early days of Marvel worked better than it does now, in terms of overall coherence. There were far fewer super powered characters, and top end feats by humans/ super humans were a fair bit more restrained than now. Yes...Mr Fantastic could always do incredible scientific feats...but he wasn't remotely into large scale manufacturing. So you could look at overall setting...very few super humans, less powerful than now...and sort of more easily accept that largely their world was roughly similar to ours in most respects. And easier to accept that Captain America...and the other low end supers..could be major players when far fewer top end powerhouses existed.

As a fan of the old 'Marvel Handbook' days, I really appreciated the more 'down to earth' power ratings going on back then. The biggest powerhouses like Thor could still only lift ~100 tons, where at that other company, Superman could literally *move planets.*

Some writers seem to feel that 'oh wow' moments have to be all spectacle, and the characters they write become kind of catch-phrases. Hulk is 'the strongest one there is' and called 'Worldbreaker' and suddenly he's bending adamantium and breaking worlds, *literally,* which seems kind of silly, and not as impressive as the writer was perhaps hoping. Wolverine has suffered from this as well, with both his claws and his regeneration amping up to absurdly hyperbolic levels, compared to the dude from the eighties who took hours to fully recover from a shotgun blast, or being poisoned, for instance.

And then there are some characters, like the Sentry, who is a literal hyperbole. 'The power of a million exploding suns?' And you got that from drinking something from a crack team of government scientists who *failed to recreate the serum that made Captain America not-quite-superhuman?* Whatever. The Human Torch can go all out and do a 'Nova blast' that's, despite it's name, not even close to the power of *one* exploding sun (which would destroy all life in the solar system, so, really, not a useful superhero-power to have...), and he's ten times the superhero that hyperbole-man is.

The Authority was the worst at this. Every character turned into a catchphrase. 'Night's Bringer of War.' Yeah, he's some dude who can run combat simulations in his mind. Big freaking hat, very little cat. 'The God of Cities?' He has treads on his feet, because someone watched a terrible Nike commercial, and he can talk to cities and do some urban setting manipulation stuff. A very original and potentially interesting power set compared to 'strong and tough and can fly' or 'mutant telepath,' and yet it was pretty much wasted on this character.

It's kind of boring, all these hyperbole / catchphrase characters who don't really have clearly defined powers, but just sort of arbitrarily are the 'god' of whatever it is they are doing.

Monica Rambeau, a personal favorite, has also suffered from this. She had an amazing powerset, to turn into all sorts of EM energy and fly at lightspeed. Now she just kind of does whatever the hell the writer wants her to do, as long as he says 'something, something control energy!' before she does it, like shapechanging or creating antimatter or whatever.

[vitruvian]

As a fan of the old 'Marvel Handbook' days, I really appreciated the more 'down to earth' power ratings going on back then. The biggest powerhouses like Thor could still only lift ~100 tons, where at that other company, Superman could literally *move planets.*

Much as I cede first place to no one in my love of the good old Gruenwald 1st and 2nd editions of OHOTMU... I do have to mention that much as they did a generally good job of codifying things to date, and the 'blueprints' and so on were awesome to my teenage geek mind, the official strength rankings were never really consistent with the characters' actual appearances and feats, and there were plenty of Marvel stories at the time in which even characters not given the open-ended 'Class 100' rating (that open endedness in itself a retcon with the second edition) lifted and threw objects that weighed far, far in excess of 100 tons unless they were made of styrofoam. E.g., Sasquatch's entries was obviously erroneous, given Sasquatch being listed at 70 tons but lifting and chucking football field distances a 200 ton plus DC-10 in his first ever appearance, and there were many more examples of this kind of inconsistency.

Which only made things that much more fun to nitpick! The thing a lot of people don't get about getting into the details of comic book stories is that for a lot of people who grew up on them, arguing about those details doesn't take anything away from one's enjoyment of the story; on the contrary, getting into the nitty gritty is sometimes half the fun!

[Sutekh]

Much as I cede first place to no one in my love of the good old Gruenwald 1st and 2nd editions of OHOTMU... I do have to mention that much as they did a generally good job of codifying things to date, and the 'blueprints' and so on were awesome to my teenage geek mind, the official strength rankings were never really consistent with the characters' actual appearances and feats, and there were plenty of Marvel stories at the time in which even characters not given the open-ended 'Class 100' rating (that open endedness in itself a retcon with the second edition) lifted and threw objects that weighed far, far in excess of 100 tons unless they were made of styrofoam. E.g., Sasquatch's entries was obviously erroneous, given Sasquatch being listed at 70 tons but lifting and chucking football field distances a 200 ton plus DC-10 in his first ever appearance, and there were many more examples of this kind of inconsistency.

Ooh, very true! I remember that scene well, and various other scenes where strength feats went way over the 'ratings,' or other inconsistencies cropped up, like Thor *not being bulletproof* and having to 'spin his hammer' to stop bullets, and yet also being able to take a blast to the chest *from a Celestial* and just have a torn shirt. Are Celestials *really* less powerful than handguns?

And yet, it's gotten even crazier, lately.

Thor (the Jane Foster version) recently-ish punched Odin so hard that he flew back to *Jupiter* in less time than it took me to type this (it takes *light* 35 minutes or so to reach Jupiter, from the Earth) which is very definition of Spaceballs 'ludicrous speed.' That's just silly.

[JKtheMac]

Much as I cede first place to no one in my love of the good old Gruenwald 1st and 2nd editions of OHOTMU... I do have to mention that much as they did a generally good job of codifying things to date, and the 'blueprints' and so on were awesome to my teenage geek mind, the official strength rankings were never really consistent with the characters' actual appearances and feats, and there were plenty of Marvel stories at the time in which even characters not given the open-ended 'Class 100' rating (that open endedness in itself a retcon with the second edition) lifted and threw objects that weighed far, far in excess of 100 tons unless they were made of styrofoam. E.g., Sasquatch's entries was obviously erroneous, given Sasquatch being listed at 70 tons but lifting and chucking football field distances a 200 ton plus DC-10 in his first ever appearance, and there were many more examples of this kind of inconsistency.

Which only made things that much more fun to nitpick! The thing a lot of people don't get about getting into the details of comic book stories is that for a lot of people who grew up on them, arguing about those details doesn't take anything away from one's enjoyment of the story; on the contrary, getting into the nitty gritty is sometimes half the fun!

I agree with everything you say here including the ‘half the fun’ bit. My caveat is that it would be far less stressful for all concerned if people had this fun with an understanding of the reality of storytelling.

Geek culture has a huge blind spot when it comes to how stories are actually written. Usually areas of ignorance are slowly closed or closely examined over the decades, but geek culture is instead making it bigger. The prevailing geek culture theories run entirely contrary to every established cultural theory, causing widespread dissatisfaction with huge swaths of media based on flawed notions of how things ‘should be’.

An entire subculture trapped between Hume’s ‘Is and Ought’.

The MU is a representation of a universe for the telling of stories therefore it ought to be a coherent universe where all stories are compatible. The fact that nobody has been able to make this happen ever and the more one examines the problem the harder it gets should provide a clue that there is a fallacy in there somewhere.

[MyriVerse]

Can anything be done to improve overall setting? If so, what??

You. Suspend. Disbelief. That is all.

[DigiCom]

You. Suspend. Disbelief. That is all.

"Also, the alcohol helps."

[Alan2099]

To paraphrase a great man, repeat to yourself it's just a comic. I should really just relax.

[Prof. Warren]

To paraphrase a great man, repeat to yourself it's just a comic. I should really just relax.

Yup.

If anyone's actually troubled by such questions as "Gee, how can Hawkeye and Captain America be in so many battles and still be ok?" then they really just don't get superhero comics or the entire concept of suspension of disbelief.

Here's the shocking answer - these characters can keep fighting in one pitched battle after another, month in and month out for years and decades on end because they're fictional creations. They're not real. In real life, someone like Punisher or Batman or Daredevil would see their war against criminals ended in about a week - either at the hands of criminals, law enforcement, by fatal accident, or they would physically be forced to retire after taking one too many savage beatings.

This is all just make believe. Enjoy the fantasy.