Thought Exercise: Is Spider-Man more of a DC than a Marvel?

[WebLurker]

I do find it pretty funny that we're wondering if Spidey is more like a DC character, given that he's not only Marvel's most popular character, but the one that really embodies how Marvel was different then DC.

[pageturner]

going back to original post pretty much all of this is true for Daredevil as well. Except the one main GF. Unless you consider Electra that.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

going back to original post pretty much all of this is true for Daredevil as well. Except the one main GF. Unless you consider Electra that.

Reasons 2 through 5 really don't apply to Daredevil IMO.

[KangMiRae]

I do find it pretty funny that we're wondering if Spidey is more like a DC character, given that he's not only Marvel's most popular character, but the one that really embodies how Marvel was different then DC.

It is kinda funny! DC's new hero Sideways is a great example of DC trying to make a Spider-Man/Peter Parker analog.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Luthor and Doom would be like those two guys who are so similar but act like they aren't and don't get along because of it .

The thing is there was a point in Doom's life where he genuinely was a good person. In his youth when he was a caring Romani boy. Even Mark Waid's Unthinkable acknowledged that. There was never a point in his life where Luthor was ever capable of being a good guy.

I am talking about the base character, the Silver Age guy, and Byrne's Post-Crisis take, and the Luthor of 52. I understand that some writers because they buy into the whole "human who takes on Superman = badass" piece of crap ideology wrote some "humanist" concepts to him but that to me has always been counterintuitive. The only version of the character that worked was the one in the Justice League cartoons voiced by the great Clancy Brown (it was a real thrill to hear Surtur sound like Lex Luthor in Ragnarok) where he's a narcissistic abusive psychopath who wants to be god and is totally on board with torching the planet and the universe to do it. And even then he was a lackey to Brainiac.

I mean, Superman isn't the only movie franchise that's re-used it's main villain ad-nauseam.

In his case, it's happened to the detriment of the movies. The only really good Superman movie is the first one, the second one is watchable but flawed. The only Luthor that works is Gene Hackman's used car salesman version of Luthor, who has none of the qualities people want. Every other Luthor after that sucked. Whether it's Kevin Spacey's (not so much for the performance but for the fact that as it turned out, he wasn't really acting there) or Jesse Eisenberg.

People have this idea that Superman has a weak rogues gallery and so on. He actually does have a lot of interesting villains but they're not going to get potential in comics and movies if it's all going to be tied to Lex in some way.

I think the difference there is that Lex, for all his faults, is at least competent.

Until Luthor stops being so. In the case of Norman, the fun and thrill is watching someone pretend to his disgust at being normal and sane, only to know he can't wait to break and get his thrills.

And let's face it, Norman constantly failing upwards is a fairer representation of the topical beat than Luthor being the smartest man alive and so electable. I mean Donald Trump is not a stable guy, he's not a very competent businessman, but he has consistently failed upwards, given numerous second chances and avenues to rebuild from failure and setback because of his wealth and class privilege. That's true of Norman as well.

[Frontier]

The thing is there was a point in Doom's life where he genuinely was a good person. In his youth when he was a caring Romani boy. Even Mark Waid's Unthinkable acknowledged that. There was never a point in his life where Luthor was ever capable of being a good guy.

There have been interpretations of Lex that had him start out as a good kid before his father's abuse or a freak accident basically ruined him. There have even been interpretations where he and Clark Kent were genuine friends before they became enemies.

I am talking about the base character, the Silver Age guy, and Byrne's Post-Crisis take, and the Luthor of 52. I understand that some writers because they buy into the whole "human who takes on Superman = badass" piece of crap ideology wrote some "humanist" concepts to him but that to me has always been counterintuitive. The only version of the character that worked was the one in the Justice League cartoons voiced by the great Clancy Brown (it was a real thrill to hear Surtur sound like Lex Luthor in Ragnarok) where he's a narcissistic abusive psychopath who wants to be god and is totally on board with torching the planet and the universe to do it. And even then he was a lackey to Brainiac.

I love Brown as Lex, but there have been other great takes on him. Mark Rolston, Rainn Wilson, James Marsters, Anthony LapaGalia.

"Where he's a narcissistic abusive psychopath who wants to be god and is totally on board with torching the planet and the universe to do it." - That's kind of baseline Luthor, to be honest.

In his case, it's happened to the detriment of the movies. The only really good Superman movie is the first one, the second one is watchable but flawed. The only Luthor that works is Gene Hackman's used car salesman version of Luthor, who has none of the qualities people want. Every other Luthor after that sucked. Whether it's Kevin Spacey's (not so much for the performance but for the fact that as it turned out, he wasn't really acting there) or Jesse Eisenberg.

People seemed to really enjoy the TV versions of Lex though (John Shea, Michael Rosenabum, Jon Cryer).

And let's face it, Norman constantly failing upwards is a fairer representation of the topical beat than Luthor being the smartest man alive and so electable. I mean Donald Trump is not a stable guy, he's not a very competent businessman, but he has consistently failed upwards, given numerous second chances and avenues to rebuild from failure and setback because of his wealth and class privilege. That's true of Norman as well.

I mean, they're entirely different characters in practice even with similar thematic beats so I don't think there needs to be a one-to-one comparison of their respective storylines.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I mean, they're entirely different characters in practice even with similar thematic beats so I don't think there needs to be a one-to-one comparison of their respective storylines.

I agree about them being different. With Norman, you have a social dimension that you don't with Luthor. For instance, nobody other than Norman Osborn could have been Head of HAMMER. Think about it, you look across the Marvel Universe, most of the human enemies of the Avengers and the Fantastic Four tend to be international (Zemo, Doom, HYDRA, Red Skull, Magneto). None of them could be elected to be Top Cop of the Marvel Universe. elected by the US government, and be a supervillain. Wilson Fisk is one exception but he's fundamentally a local threat, too tied to Hell's Kitchen and New York to be a national level figure. And the issues people have with a non-powered Fisk fighting Spider-Man and so on, and not being a joke (until Back in Black finally did make Fisk into a joke) increase with him being someone who deals with the Avengers and the FF.

So Norman fits that well. He's the only Spider-Man villain to be of an upper class and his dynamic with Peter really has issues of class, and privilege and so on. So him being a rich guy with an anti-metahuman and anti-alien agenda becomes an allegory with some teeth. Because Norman Osborn by himself has a reality to him. He was based on the actor Joseph Cotten who appeared in numerous films in the 40s including Magnificent Ambersons (where he plays an inventor and automobile entrepreneur) and Shadow of the Doubt (where he plays a serial killer who moonlights as a salesman). One of the stories even said that Norman's dad was named Amberson. (I think it was Revenge of the Green Goblin).

Whereas Luthor doesn't have any teeth. The version where Luthor is a rich kid son of some rich evil dad (which Smallville ran with) takes away from Lex the whole I-did-it-all-on-my-own and "I came from nothing to get where I am with my own" part. Likewise, Luthor's weird name kind of sets it apart. I mean Clark Kent sounds generic American...but his bad guy sounds like a Central European Mad Scientist (which makes sense since Luthor was modeled on bad guys from German silent films, like Metropolis which is what Superman's city is named). So this guy has no reality to him at all. The Snyder movies had Luthor being the son of an East German immigrant and so on, and you know that means that the Snyder Luthor just had to have Nazi grandparents which again doesn't make him part of anything real...not helped by Jesse's performance and the weird take Snyder put on Luthor. So basically a Potus Lex story is not really saying anything specific. Luthor became President for the same reason Joker and Penguin ran for Mayor and in the case of Penguin actually did win in some continuity or other. The reason we didn't get good stories out of it, is that there wasn't any organic ideas you could draw from it.

I mean Penguin's Mayoral Campaign in the Batman 66 Series and Batman Returns has more political commentary and insight than Potus Lex as a story.

[Frontier]

Whereas Luthor doesn't have any teeth. The version where Luthor is a rich kid son of some rich evil dad (which Smallville ran with) takes away from Lex the whole I-did-it-all-on-my-own and "I came from nothing to get where I am with my own" part. Likewise, Luthor's weird name kind of sets it apart. I mean Clark Kent sounds generic American...but his bad guy sounds like a Central European Mad Scientist (which makes sense since Luthor was modeled on bad guys from German silent films, like Metropolis which is what Superman's city is named). So this guy has no reality to him at all. The Snyder movies had Luthor being the son of an East German immigrant and so on, and you know that means that the Snyder Luthor just had to have Nazi grandparents which again doesn't make him part of anything real...not helped by Jesse's performance and the weird take Snyder put on Luthor. So basically a Potus Lex story is not really saying anything specific. Luthor became President for the same reason Joker and Penguin ran for Mayor and in the case of Penguin actually did win in some continuity or other. The reason we didn't get good stories out of it, is that there wasn't any organic ideas you could draw from it.

I mean Penguin's Mayoral Campaign in the Batman 66 Series and Batman Returns has more political commentary and insight than Potus Lex as a story.

I think at the point he was POTUS Lex was supposed to have not come from a wealthy family. I forget which origin was canon by that point.

Wow, that's...a lot more thought into DCEU Lex then I think anyone even though of before.

I don't think Luthor as POTUS needed to really say something ala an analogue to Trump as President. I think there were decent stories that came out of it even if they may not have mined as much potential from it as they could have.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

Until Luthor stops being so. In the case of Norman, the fun and thrill is watching someone pretend to his disgust at being normal and sane, only to know he can't wait to break and get his thrills.

Well, how do you know that that Luthor meticulously and carefully crafting a plan and then having it all fall apart isn't something compelling for people to watch or read about? It all in the eye of the beholder. What people enjoy about Luthor doesn't really touch on his sanity, but on his very human (if reprehensible) motivations.

And let's face it, Norman constantly failing upwards is a fairer representation of the topical beat than Luthor being the smartest man alive and so electable. I mean Donald Trump is not a stable guy, he's not a very competent businessman, but he has consistently failed upwards, given numerous second chances and avenues to rebuild from failure and setback because of his wealth and class privilege. That's true of Norman as well.

I mean, the whole President Luthor storyline was done well before Trump (as was Norman's rise to leader of HAMMER). However, that storyline was largely topical when it was done because of the fact that we had Bush and Cheney in the White House. Luthor is a machiavellian, manipulating, incredibly intelligent individual....just like Dick Cheney.

And while Trump may seem to fail upward from the outside, trust me, he's not one to be underestimated. Underestimating him is how we ended up with him as President in the first place.

In his case, it's happened to the detriment of the movies. The only really good Superman movie is the first one, the second one is watchable but flawed. The only Luthor that works is Gene Hackman's used car salesman version of Luthor, who has none of the qualities people want. Every other Luthor after that sucked. Whether it's Kevin Spacey's (not so much for the performance but for the fact that as it turned out, he wasn't really acting there) or Jesse Eisenberg.

People have this idea that Superman has a weak rogues gallery and so on. He actually does have a lot of interesting villains but they're not going to get potential in comics and movies if it's all going to be tied to Lex in some way.

But you understand that that would be like me saying that Dr. Doom is also an awful villain because both of the live action interpretations we've gotten of Victor so far have been...well, they've not been the greatest.

[blackspidey2099]

Yeah. The main distinguishing feature between Marvel and DC was that the heroes of Marvel have problems in their private lives. Spider-Man exemplifies that more than anyone else.

But is that really true nowadays? I don't think so, and I don't think it has been for a long while. Honestly, I think that's a common but extremely outdated adage, and even as someone who couldn't really care less about the vast majority of DC characters, it's quite unfair to DC.

I kinda agree with OP, Spider-Man fits in more with the popular DC heroes of today than the popular Marvel heroes of today. For me, the major thing about most Marvel heroes is that they're very grounded in a way Spider-Man isn't. A lot of them are either with the military, have corporations behind them, or are very tied to realism. And while Peter faces a lot of real life problems in his personal life, I don't think Spider-Man is a very realistic hero - he's a dude in red and blue spandex swinging through the city like it's a jungle gym, somehow has a secret identity, and overall a lot of his stories just have this tone/sense of whimsy that other Marvel heroes often forgo. It reminds me a lot more DC heroes like Superman and Flash than anyone else at Marvel.

[WebLurker]

It is kinda funny! DC's new hero Sideways is a great example of DC trying to make a Spider-Man/Peter Parker analog.

Well, after all the years, both companies have borrowed trends from each other in terms DC going more for the larger-then-life heroes and Marvel doing more "normal people who also have powers." I mean, DC's Green Lantern Jessica Cruz always struck me as being more in the Marvel mold; a person with life problems outside of the hero gig, a notable civilian supporting cast, and all that.

I don't think Luthor as POTUS needed to really say something ala an analogue to Trump as President. I think there were decent stories that came out of it even if they may not have mined as much potential from it as they could have.

As I recall, POTUS Luthor was pre-Trump, although there is a great deal of irony of life imitating art here.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Well, how do you know that that Luthor meticulously and carefully crafting a plan and then having it all fall apart isn't something compelling for people to watch or read about?

It's rarely executed well for one thing. Either Luthor's plans are too Mary Sue-ish in its complexity for it to be believably undone by Superman punching him or other characters are made to look dumb to make Luthor look good.

It all in the eye of the beholder. What people enjoy about Luthor doesn't really touch on his sanity, but on his very human (if reprehensible) motivations.

Being a racist, or a bigot to aliens, isn't a human motivation. It's a human flaw and human defect, but not a rational human motivation.

I mean, the whole President Luthor storyline was done well before Trump (as was Norman's rise to leader of HAMMER). However, that storyline was largely topical when it was done because of the fact that we had Bush and Cheney in the White House. Luthor is a machiavellian, manipulating, incredibly intelligent individual....just like Dick Cheney.

When you said Luthor Potus as President was relevant, I assumed you were referring to Trump and not Bush/Cheney. And that's the context this thread discussed that beat with. In any case Luthor Potus has less to say about Bush/Cheney and the Iraq War then it does about Trump. Where is the DC version of 9/11 that leads to a controversial war that divides people and divides American public and society.

Allegorically, Marvel did that with stuff like CIVIL WAR (albeit not too well since Millar's totally clueless about political allegories and America in general, typical Brit and all that). You had the Stamford Incident that led to overzealous reactions and fears, and paranoia that divided the superhuman community with emotions blinding reason...whether that's too forgiving or too charitable an interpretation of what America did in Iraq is of course another question altogether. The Bruce Timm cartoons at the DCAU, Justice League did that too with the Cadmus Story there, and of course the cartoon president there is implied to be Dubya.

And while Trump may seem to fail upward from the outside, trust me, he's not one to be underestimated. Underestimating him is how we ended up with him as President in the first place.

Well Osborn isn't to be underestimated either. He's self-destructive and unstable but he's capable of destroying and killing a whole bunch of people and stuff along the way and causing a lot of damage.

I tend to think that it's hard for people to accept, offensive you might say, that people like Trump and Osborn are real dangerous threats and not really super-genius masterminds who are undefeatable. It would be flattering if some super-genius like Luthor was behind everything. But mostly you get a guy who's cunning, violent, and incredibly lucky. The thing is that all these guys need to do is get power and influence once. 99/100 times they would not get there, but the one time they do, tends to do a lot of harm and so on.

But is that really true nowadays? I don't think so, and I don't think it has been for a long while. Honestly, I think that's a common but extremely outdated adage, and even as someone who couldn't really care less about the vast majority of DC characters, it's quite unfair to DC.

I kinda agree with OP, Spider-Man fits in more with the popular DC heroes of today than the popular Marvel heroes of today. For me, the major thing about most Marvel heroes is that they're very grounded in a way Spider-Man isn't. A lot of them are either with the military, have corporations behind them, or are very tied to realism. And while Peter faces a lot of real life problems in his personal life, I don't think Spider-Man is a very realistic hero - he's a dude in red and blue spandex swinging through the city like it's a jungle gym, somehow has a secret identity, and overall a lot of his stories just have this tone/sense of whimsy that other Marvel heroes often forgo. It reminds me a lot more DC heroes like Superman and Flash than anyone else at Marvel.

Spider-Man as a comic, and this is rarely commented on, is fundamentally a humor comic and also a romance comic, with bits of social commentary there. It's got strong connections to Will Eisner's The Spirit and also Carl Barks' Donald Duck comics. It borrowed a lot of ideas from outside traditional superhero genres. So that gives it a bigger thematic density then Marvel's other heroes in general. Spider-Man being at heart a comedy also makes him similar to Superman. I mean Superman works best when it's in a lighter, comic vein, and isn't all some weird Nietzschean/Randian/Rockwellian view about being a god among people. There are serious stories with Superman, and also Spider-Man, just as there are comedy stories with Batman.

Also it's true what you say that Marvel heroes are generally very much tied to society, institutions, and groups and so on, whereas Spider-Man is fundamentally a very individualistic story. I mean Daredevil and the Punisher are stories about the legal system, its flaws, its successes, and its weaknesses. You can argue that Jessica Jones and Luke Cage are in the same vein too. Whereas Spider-Man's story is fundamentally a personal story that touches on a bunch of issues. A Fantastic Four comic is about family and exploration, The Mighty Thor and Dr. Strange are fantasies (High Fantasy, and Occult and Urban Fantasy), Iron Man and Capain America are both about the military-industrial complex (from above and from below respectively) and so on.

Whereas Spider-Man isn't tied to any one thing. So that makes it very much like Batman and Superman, because Batman sure is a detective and Superman is a reporter but that doesn't limit or define their stories a great deal. Batman fights ordinary punks but he also fights Clayface and Solomon Grundy. Same with Superman.

[Agent Z]

Whereas Luthor doesn't have any teeth. The version where Luthor is a rich kid son of some rich evil dad (which Smallville ran with) takes away from Lex the whole I-did-it-all-on-my-own and "I came from nothing to get where I am with my own" part. Likewise, Luthor's weird name kind of sets it apart. I mean Clark Kent sounds generic American...but his bad guy sounds like a Central European Mad Scientist (which makes sense since Luthor was modeled on bad guys from German silent films, like Metropolis which is what Superman's city is named). So this guy has no reality to him at all.

As opposed to the guy from the fictional country called Victor Von Doom?

The Snyder movies had Luthor being the son of an East German immigrant and so on, and you know that means that the Snyder Luthor just had to have Nazi grandparents which again doesn't make him part of anything real...not helped by Jesse's performance and the weird take Snyder put on Luthor.

Putting aside this random and potentially offensive head canon of yours, how does having Nazi grandparents make Luthor less realistic?

So basically a Potus Lex story is not really saying anything specific. Luthor became President for the same reason Joker and Penguin ran for Mayor and in the case of Penguin actually did win in some continuity or other. The reason we didn't get good stories out of it, is that there wasn't any organic ideas you could draw from it.

You've yet to explain what makes these stories bad or inorganic beyond you finding them unrealistic which is laughable given they aren't any less wild than what happened with Norman as director of HAMMER.

[Agent Z]

It's rarely executed well for one thing. Either Luthor's plans are too Mary Sue-ish in its complexity for it to be believably undone by Superman punching him or other characters are made to look dumb to make Luthor look good.

Replace Luthor with Norman or Doom and I can argue the same thing. Hell, that fits Doom a lot more than Luthor.

Being a racist, or a bigot to aliens, isn't a human motivation. It's a human flaw and human defect, but not a rational human motivation.

Who said it has to be rational? 90% of super villain motivations aren’t rational. Being human and being irrational are hardly mutually exclusive.

When you said Luthor Potus as President was relevant, I assumed you were referring to Trump and not Bush/Cheney. And that's the context this thread discussed that beat with. In any case Luthor Potus has less to say about Bush/Cheney and the Iraq War then it does about Trump.

Where is the DC version of 9/11 that leads to a controversial war that divides people and divides American public and society.

I’ll get back to this in a bit.

The Bruce Timm cartoons at the DCAU, Justice League did that too with the Cadmus Story there, and of course the cartoon president there is implied to be Dubya.

So DC does have its own 9/11 story after all. And it’s considered better than Marvel’s Civil War.

Well Osborn isn't to be underestimated either. He's self-destructive and unstable but he's capable of destroying and killing a whole bunch of people and stuff along the way and causing a lot of damage.

Norman has never managed anything greater than tormenting Peter. Everything he did in Dark Reign was either negated, reversed or just swept under the rug. Even comparing him to Trump is too much of a high praise. People are actually afraid of Trump. Norman is a guy who peaked at messing with his son’s friend. There’s a reason why for years people debated if Gwen’s death was really Peter’s fault not Norman’s.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

It's rarely executed well for one thing. Either Luthor's plans are too Mary Sue-ish in its complexity for it to be believably undone by Superman punching him or other characters are made to look dumb to make Luthor look good.

Again, as Agent Z pointed out, this is also true of many other villains, from Doom to Magneto and beyond. And, again, there's actually a good number of stories where it is well-executed. I mean, Luthor wouldn't be the classic villain he is today, one that has endured the test of time and considered one of the greatest in the comic book superhero genre if there weren't at least a few great stories about his villainy.

Being a racist, or a bigot to aliens, isn't a human motivation. It's a human flaw and human defect, but not a rational human motivation.

Xenophobia is unfortunately an all-too human trait, one born out of weakness of character and insecurity, but human nonetheless. So, while we may not sympathize with it (at least I hope not many of us sympathize with it), its something we recognize. In Luthor's mind, he's defending his planet from a potentially harmful species of super powerful aliens.

When you said Luthor Potus as President was relevant, I assumed you were referring to Trump and not Bush/Cheney. And that's the context this thread discussed that beat with. In any case Luthor Potus has less to say about Bush/Cheney and the Iraq War then it does about Trump. Where is the DC version of 9/11 that leads to a controversial war that divides people and divides American public and society.

There were many ways in which Luthor was compared to Bush/Cheney. The most obvious one was an issue of Joe Kelly's run on JLA (I think it was issue #83) where Luthor targets Qarac, using justifications that sounded all too similar to the Bush/Cheney reasoning for going into Iraq. I think it all ends up being a weird dream, but the allegorical connection is still there.

Well Osborn isn't to be underestimated either. He's self-destructive and unstable but he's capable of destroying and killing a whole bunch of people and stuff along the way and causing a lot of damage.

Uh, I never underestimated Osborn. I'm not saying that Osborn isn't a compelling villain. I'm just saying that Lex isn't one to be underestimated either.