What is the obsession over "respecting" a character

[Hcmarvel]

Just had to ask this, and not trying to be hostile in anyway, it's an honest question I have.

I see a lot of posts here, especially those that are negative or highly critical, often upset that creators aren't "respecting" a character. And they do seem to mean respecting "the character". Not what prior creators have done on that character, but that some how the writer in question isn't respecting the "character" themselves. As if the character was a real person that the creator sought to belittle in someway.

It's not that I don't know what they mean by it in a literal sense, but it just strikes me as such an odd complaint.

I've read comics for 30 years, since I was 5 years old. I love comics. Love them. I have lots of characters I love. Daredevil, Cyclops, Spidey, Captain America, Kate Pryde, Rogue, Nightwing, Wally West, Magneto, etc. But I've never once read a comic and felt like a certain character wasn't getting enough respect and therefore the comic was bad. Have I disliked storylines involving favorite characters? Yes, but I always just thought of them as bad stories, not disrespectful ones.

The idea that a comic book character is worthy of respect is such a reach for me? Like...take Magneto -

I don't like Planet X by Grant Morrison (New X-Men 146-150). (**************SPOILERS FOR A SIXTEEN YEAR OLD COMIC AHEAD**************)

I think the Xorn is really Magneto twist is fun, and sort of set-up through the run so it's a good reveal moment, but I just really did not like how Morrison wrote Magneto in Planet X. I understand what he was getting at, but it was a very John Byrne-esque fidelity to silver age Magneto that the character has clearly evolved past thanks to Chris Claremont's work. So having Magneto running death camps for humans, without textually acknowledging his background as a holocaust survivor, just didn't work for me.

But I never thought of it through the prism of not "respecting" the character of Magneto. I guess I thought it didn't show much respect to Claremont's work, or what future creators might want to do with Magneto (by having Logan "kill" him at the end), but the idea that the character himself wasn't being respected never occurred to me. He's a comic book character. He's not real. His every action is at the whim of writers and artists to do with as they please. On what planet do creators owe characters "respect"?

Or take Wally West and Heroes in Crisis. I hated it. In my opinion, it failed in what it was trying to do as an examination on PTSD and what it did to Wally West sucked. But do I think Tom King didn't "respect" Wally West enough? No. That's insane. Why does Tom King, a grown ass man being paid by DC comics, who owns the character and can do whatever they want with him, have to "respect" Wally West? I may not like the story but I never thought of it as a matter of not respecting the character. Wally West has never "actually" saved the world.

I saw someone on here upset that Anole, ANOLE, was not treated "respectfully" in the most recent New Mutants issue. And again, I'm just baffled by this. On what planet does Anole need to be treated with respect? He's a background X-Men character. I mean sure, treat his status as a homosexual with respect obviously, and try to do right by the character when they're in a book of course, but getting upset about an entire issue because Anole wasn't respected? In a book that is not even about him?

Can someone try to explain this phenomenon? Are some comic book fans so insecure that they need their personal favorite characters to always be treated with "respect" because it reflects the lack of respect they feel in their daily lives somehow? That sounds harsh but I'm straining to explain this thing I see on here. Do some fans so identify with a favorite character that if they are not written exactly as the fan thinks they should be, they take it as the creators not respecting the reader and project this respect thing on the character? People just get so upset about this topic and it is one thing about fandom that I've never been able to understand.

[Zelena]

I won’t answer your question because I am sometimes quite baffled by the energy, passion, vehemence with which some readers defend the characters they like.

Disappointed, I am, quite often, because an author made me like a character in the past and I don’t recognize him/her anymore with another author. It’s a sort of “death” except the character is still present, has vaguely the same apparence, everyones talks like he/she is still alive… and I don’t feel the same.

I won’t say the author doesn’t “respect” the character, my first reaction is that they don’t respect “me” as a reader and my vision of the character which is a unlikely fusion of the visions from all previous authors.

I don’t read it, I don’t buy it and that’s the end of it: the characters I liked are buried in my memory.

[Snoop Dogg]

respect and disrespect is just shorthand for well written or poorly written, but respect and disrespect sound way more dramatic so when you're dunking on a book and you want to sound all extra you say "they're disrespecting so and so!!!" and if you're giving something the rub you say "so respectful of what came before!"

[Lucyinthesky]

I agree with Snoop Dogg and Zelena, it´s not really about "respecting" the character, it´s about the character having a development by different writers with some core characteristics. So what happens when a writer comes and changes everything about that character except his or her name? It can be seen as the writer just having another take on the character? or it´s another character completely who just happens to have the same name? and in that case, if everywriter can just come and write his or her version of the character with the same name and nothing else why should a reader care about the story as a series? If I only liked a writers take on the character I could as well just buy those books and call it a day, that´s a problem for a medium like comics in which any character can change or develop but also needs to keep some things to make them recognizable as a character and ususally that´s the editors work., to make sure there´s a logic behind the actions taken by the characters that doesn´t erase the work other writers have done but that allows that character to change while still being recognizable.

Imo when this doesn´t happen it´s usually when readers may said "the character is being disrecpected" but it´s really more like " I don´t recognize this character anymore" and the story doesn´t give it enough reason to get me behind the new characterization. That´s how I see it.

[evolutionaryFan]

As has been pointed out... there are 2 phenomena here relating to "respecting the character"

1. Character arc and development

ie: To respect the character means that the character behavior "makes sense" somehow based on prior events... ie: taking into account character history. eg: Batman doesn't suddenly turn into a boyscout-like character overnight.

2. Respecting the character as if it's a real person

I agree this is a bit silly. I think it's simply that people don't enjoy seeing characters they like going through bad things. It's silly, but at the same time it's the whole point of stories isn't it? You suspend your disbelief and let yourself get emotionally swept along in a set of events that are completely fictional. You end up "caring" about these fictional characters so you get upset when they go through hell. So what happens is a sort of mix of two worlds... you care about the characters in their fictional world... but then you take that "care" out into the real world and blame the writers for putting the fictional characters through hell.

[The_Last_Czarnian]

Biggest example. For me is King In Black. Apparently Cates didn't even know that Sentry had merged with Void, and Marvel editorial didn't bother to correct it either. Just to service the current story. As a huge Sentry fan, that just annoys me.

[MichaelC]

For me, "respect" is just a shorthand for treating a character as a main character, and not a mook who is there to make a main character look good, either by being a helpless victim of the villain, or just a villain for the main character to punch. Most of us like various characters as main characters. So when they are just used as a victim or villain, we get very annoyed.

[Exciter]

I do think there is a responsibility that comes along with the undertaking when you agree to write or draw iconic characters that have a legacy and established fanbase. You didn't create them and don't own them, but you are contributing to their official stories. In a way, when you take up creative duties you are acting as stewards of the property. A healthy amount of respect for the characters is, in my opinion, necessary. You shouldn't leave them in worse shape than you found them. You shouldn't do things that devalue the property. You should respect the creators that came before you and try to contribute something worthy.

[jwatson]

Just had to ask this, and not trying to be hostile in anyway, it's an honest question I have.

I see a lot of posts here, especially those that are negative or highly critical, often upset that creators aren't "respecting" a character. And they do seem to mean respecting "the character". Not what prior creators have done on that character, but that some how the writer in question isn't respecting the "character" themselves. As if the character was a real person that the creator sought to belittle in someway.

It's not that I don't know what they mean by it in a literal sense, but it just strikes me as such an odd complaint.

I've read comics for 30 years, since I was 5 years old. I love comics. Love them. I have lots of characters I love. Daredevil, Cyclops, Spidey, Captain America, Kate Pryde, Rogue, Nightwing, Wally West, Magneto, etc. But I've never once read a comic and felt like a certain character wasn't getting enough respect and therefore the comic was bad. Have I disliked storylines involving favorite characters? Yes, but I always just thought of them as bad stories, not disrespectful ones.

The idea that a comic book character is worthy of respect is such a reach for me? Like...take Magneto -

I don't like Planet X by Grant Morrison (New X-Men 146-150). (**************SPOILERS FOR A SIXTEEN YEAR OLD COMIC AHEAD**************)

I think the Xorn is really Magneto twist is fun, and sort of set-up through the run so it's a good reveal moment, but I just really did not like how Morrison wrote Magneto in Planet X. I understand what he was getting at, but it was a very John Byrne-esque fidelity to silver age Magneto that the character has clearly evolved past thanks to Chris Claremont's work. So having Magneto running death camps for humans, without textually acknowledging his background as a holocaust survivor, just didn't work for me.

But I never thought of it through the prism of not "respecting" the character of Magneto. I guess I thought it didn't show much respect to Claremont's work, or what future creators might want to do with Magneto (by having Logan "kill" him at the end), but the idea that the character himself wasn't being respected never occurred to me. He's a comic book character. He's not real. His every action is at the whim of writers and artists to do with as they please. On what planet do creators owe characters "respect"?

Or take Wally West and Heroes in Crisis. I hated it. In my opinion, it failed in what it was trying to do as an examination on PTSD and what it did to Wally West sucked. But do I think Tom King didn't "respect" Wally West enough? No. That's insane. Why does Tom King, a grown ass man being paid by DC comics, who owns the character and can do whatever they want with him, have to "respect" Wally West? I may not like the story but I never thought of it as a matter of not respecting the character. Wally West has never "actually" saved the world.

I saw someone on here upset that Anole, ANOLE, was not treated "respectfully" in the most recent New Mutants issue. And again, I'm just baffled by this. On what planet does Anole need to be treated with respect? He's a background X-Men character. I mean sure, treat his status as a homosexual with respect obviously, and try to do right by the character when they're in a book of course, but getting upset about an entire issue because Anole wasn't respected? In a book that is not even about him?

Can someone try to explain this phenomenon? Are some comic book fans so insecure that they need their personal favorite characters to always be treated with "respect" because it reflects the lack of respect they feel in their daily lives somehow? That sounds harsh but I'm straining to explain this thing I see on here. Do some fans so identify with a favorite character that if they are not written exactly as the fan thinks they should be, they take it as the creators not respecting the reader and project this respect thing on the character? People just get so upset about this topic and it is one thing about fandom that I've never been able to understand.

It's a way for people to demand what they want but make it imo appear more "story" based than personal taste. People don't respect real people the way they claim they "respect" some of these characters whose ideals have been shaped by many.

But then i guess i'm weird because i don't get the whole respecting and honoring dead actors etc. I mean people don't honor their dead coworkers they worked with as much as the hemming and hawing over people they don't know. But i will accept that could be a character flaw on my part since sometimes i take things very literal.

And sincerely no offense intended just my honest opinion.

[jwatson]

I do think there is a responsibility that comes along with the undertaking when you agree to write or draw iconic characters that have a legacy and established fanbase. You didn't create them and don't own them, but you are contributing to their official stories. In a way, when you take up creative duties you are acting as stewards of the property. A healthy amount of respect for the characters is, in my opinion, necessary. You shouldn't leave them in worse shape than you found them. You shouldn't do things that devalue the property. You should respect the creators that came before you and try to contribute something worthy.

Then that would be on the editors and owners of the properties who read what the writer had intended and still decided to hire them. The writer in most cases is doing a job he presented and was accepted by said owners. They don't owe the fans or the characters anything other than materializing their pitch in the best way possible.

[Ezyo1000]

As has been pointed out... there are 2 phenomena here relating to "respecting the character"

1. Character arc and development

ie: To respect the character means that the character behavior "makes sense" somehow based on prior events... ie: taking into account character history. eg: Batman doesn't suddenly turn into a boyscout-like character overnight.

2. Respecting the character as if it's a real person

I agree this is a bit silly. I think it's simply that people don't enjoy seeing characters they like going through bad things. It's silly, but at the same time it's the whole point of stories isn't it? You suspend your disbelief and let yourself get emotionally swept along in a set of events that are completely fictional. You end up "caring" about these fictional characters so you get upset when they go through hell. So what happens is a sort of mix of two worlds... you care about the characters in their fictional world... but then you take that "care" out into the real world and blame the writers for putting the fictional characters through hell.

I disagree a bit about your 2nd point. Characters go through bad things. That's just comics, the story has to have a problem for the hero to solve, which involves bad things happening to them or the characters around them.

It also goes further then just I don't like how they look in this story. This is a medium that can also point to larger
issues when certain characters reach out and represent certain demographics. For instance, Black Panther was created in 1966 by Lee and Kirby to be the antithesis of racial prejudices and stereotypes against Africa and black people in general. Wakanda is an uncolonized, African nation who developed on it own unencumbered by western influence and kept its culture and advanced its technology atleast a century ahead of the rest of the world.

T'Challa is a genius warrior king who is a good man who saw that the technology his nation possesses can help the rest of the world. It's been established for 50+ years that he is a humanitarian who loves his people and wants to be King so he can protect them as well as the rest of the world. His nation also very much has mutual respect for both men and women and they are equals.

Enter Ta-Nehisi Coates. In his take, not only is present day Wakanda full of tons of the most racial stereotypes the west has usually had viewed towards Africa, but then there is misogyny and gender inequality never before seen and rampant that does even make sense from a continuity or logistical story standpoint, but then apparently T'Challas core characteristics are stripped away and is revealed to never wanted to be King, wants to hide away in a lab because he is a scientist at heart (this has never been the case, the character is not Reed Richards) and he resents his people and wants to run away from his responsibility as King (all of this has been established as not the case for his core characteristics).

Wakandas history is that they were uncolonized by the west on top of despite always been centuries ahead of the rest of the world for 10k+ years, never felt the need or desire to be conquerors or colonizers. Enter Coates who now says early preWakandans (before they officially became Wakanda) colonized the area that would come to be known as Wakanda abd drove out the denizens of the area and banished them to a different dimension, complete with chains and everything.

That's where people will come in and say a writer is disrespecting a character or their mythos, because they take the core of the characteristics and Establishment of the place then turn it into something it's not, seemingly overnight to tell a story regardless of whether it makes sense or not, which is especially bad from a storytelling standpoint. Your story should fit around the character and what id established of how they would behave and react, not have them do whatever the plot needs to drive the story. Ie all of a sudden Batman, who doesn't kill or like guns, for the story plot, is wielding wielding a glock and going on a shooting spree.

[sunofdarkchild]

I think most of the time it's a matter of authors not necessarily being as familiar enough with the characters and their history as the fans who follow the specific characters, which is something that is very hard to do. Like I don't know how I'd ever be able to track down all of Wolverine's appearances. or figure out which ones are important.

One issue which readers can often smell is when writers aren't interested in certain characters or stories. I'd say the recent Ed Brisson issues of New Mutants had that problem. It was obvious that Brisson was interested in Glob, Boom Boom, and Magik, and not so much in the rest of the cast. This led to characters like Dani Moonstar seeming less intelligent and competent than they should be. This was also the problem with X-Men Gold under Guggenheim where the author's interest in most characters only extended as far as their relationships with Kitty Pryde and Colossus.

It is possible for a writer to write a character wrong even if they do really like and respect the character. Lousie Simonsen's run on New Mutants is the poster child of this for me. She really did like those characters, but she still wrote them completely wrong, especially Magik, who seemed to forget every lesson she learned in her origin story.

Cases where there was clear disrespect for a character include what Marvel did to Madelyne Pryor after they brought Jean back and Scott ran out on her. Instead of having Cyclops stay with his wife and newborn son or deal with the consequences of his actions they turn the victim into a supervillain to get Scott off the hook. Another case was how Stephanie Brown was killed off in War Games, where she was deliberately written as a gigantic failure who made everything worse and got herself killed, ignoring all character development and motivation she ever had. This was a case of editorial wanting a sacrificial lamb for what was already a bad event and not caring about the character who would be affected or the objections of the writers who were pretty uniformly against the idea. It's cases like that where the problem is editorial and not the writers where I'd be more likely to use the word 'disrespect.' One More Day for Spider-Man and Mary Jane also falls in that category.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Just had to ask this, and not trying to be hostile in anyway, it's an honest question I have.

And a good question too. It's actually quite interesting to address what this means.

[...] But I never thought of it through the prism of not "respecting" the character of Magneto. I guess I thought it didn't show much respect to Claremont's work, or what future creators might want to do with Magneto (by having Logan "kill" him at the end), but the idea that the character himself wasn't being respected never occurred to me. He's a comic book character. He's not real. His every action is at the whim of writers and artists to do with as they please. On what planet do creators owe characters "respect"?
...
Can someone try to explain this phenomenon? Are some comic book fans so insecure that they need their personal favorite characters to always be treated with "respect" because it reflects the lack of respect they feel in their daily lives somehow? That sounds harsh but I'm straining to explain this thing I see on here. Do some fans so identify with a favorite character that if they are not written exactly as the fan thinks they should be, they take it as the creators not respecting the reader and project this respect thing on the character? People just get so upset about this topic and it is one thing about fandom that I've never been able to understand.

I think you need to appreciate that fans in general aren't the most articulate of bunches, nor are they always able to define what they feel or put it into words. So what people mean by "respect the character" covers a lot of feelings that are deeper and genuine. The word "respect the character" has a connotation of entitlement, and it adds to this sense of fans are entitled to something and that kind of language fosters an attitude of dismissal and polarization which makes things worse. Instead I think "emotional investment" and "engagement" is what is meant by "respect the character".

And the thing about "emotional investment" is that it's double-edged. Writers and creators are always trying to get audiences to care about these characters, to get engaged with it, and so on. So when audiences start feeling these characters are real or have a life of their own...then they essentially become victims of success. When Neil Gaiman's The Sandman invalidated an earlier version of the Sandman (the one between Wesley Dodd and Morpheus), nobody (to my knowledge) really cared or cried or whined that Gaiman didn't respect the character because...nobody cared for that guy whose sole claim was that he was married to Lyta Hall (a former B-List superheroine Gaiman turned into a supervillain). What that means is that you have a lot more freedom to "disrespect" characters nobody cares about. When Alan Moore made Miracleman into an authoritarian fascist at the end of his Miracleman run, people saw that as tragic, poignant, scary and sad...they didn't think Miracleman was being disrespected because again the original kid's comics version of Miracleman had become moribund allowing Moore to go further with him than he would with the mainstream Superman. People cared far more about Gaiman's and Moore's takes on these character than they did for the ones originally introduced.

The reason why fans read the stories is because they care. These characters may be fictional but what's real is the level of engagement, the joy, the identification they share with these characters, the emotional sensations they derive from reading. You know fans of a generation talk about "i was there when Claremont did "The Octopusheim Saga" or they'll have a parent, or kid, or best friend who shares with them that story, or they see McKellen from the movies and read up the comics that led to that"...all of that are real things. So when Grant Morrison wrote Planet X and dropped it at the height of Magneto's fame and favor in the wake of the movie...well, it's predictable what happened. The same with Wally West who was the Flash. People care about these characters. None of this is to say you can't do something drastic or controversial with established pop-culture mainstays or big superheroes...it's just that you need to pull out all stops to make it work and sell it to the audience. Morrison's Magneto didn't even bother making that case.

Take a good consensus example -- the Alien Movies. Ridley Scott's first film was Alien, a big hit and classic of the genre. James Cameron then arrived and made the sequel Aliens also a big hit. In that sequel, Cameron introduced new characters who the audience cared about...like a potential love interest for Ripley (Michael Biehn) and a daughter figure (Newt). And then 10 years later a sequel drops (Alien 3)...which kills off the supporting cast in the opening scene or credits (I forget which). That decision to do that, ten years later, ten years after the fact when both Alien and Aliens became enshrined as classics passed down from the first generation audience to people who picked or heard about it on TV or home video...yeah, that was defintiely going to be controversial. Does that mean it was wrong to have done that? On paper no, but it means that producers needed to have a great sense of confidence and assurance that they can offer something comparable to what they are subtracting or asking the audience to subtract. They need to give back far more than they are asking the audience to give away. So that explains it I think.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

"Respect the character" is an indirect way of saying "respect the fans". If a writer comes along and ignores character development and/or treat the character as utter ****, it can come off as condescending to the fans that like that character.

Things like Morrison's take on Magneto, Cyclops being killed off-screen in X3, and Wally West practically being ignored for so long are all ways that writers indirectly say "Eh, what's the big deal with this character anyway?"

[dkrook]

For me, "respect" is just a shorthand for treating a character as a main character, and not a mook who is there to make a main character look good, either by being a helpless victim of the villain, or just a villain for the main character to punch. Most of us like various characters as main characters. So when they are just used as a victim or villain, we get very annoyed.

See Blue Marvel, in Doom's book!