Does it Bother You When Characters Act Out-of-Character?

[Cmbmool]

Honestly to answer the original poster question: My answer is Yes.

In fact, it's one of the reason I'm not into DC Comics anymore given their sad excuse for a Flashpoint event and the messed up 52 DC titles and making their heroes "younger."

To extend on this post, one of the reason I never enjoyed Matt Fraction's Iron Man was that he had Tony Stark "FORGET" THE EVENTS OF CIVIL WAR and even have the gall to mention that his actions were "Right at the time." That's one of reason I never enjoyed Matt's Iron Man.

Also the same thing could be said for Reed Richards and Civil War as well.

[marvelguy25]

And another thing the one liners actually try to make it feel all exciting when it also kinda makes it odd since some of the characters we know abd love don't really talk like this making it feel like porn when combined with all of the other nonsense.

[Tony Stark]

Yeah. I do, but I expect it to happen as alot of writers will try different takes on characters.

[Supernature]

It bothers me if the occasional mischaracterization becomes the regular character's personality after a while.

[gurkle]

I don't think characters have to act the same way every time, or under every writer. There's a lot of flexibility here. Shared characters are defined by a few character traits that are "essential," and that every writer has to follow. We all have different ideas of what those essential traits are, though. And characters like Batman have been written so many different ways that every writer can point to some precedent for the way Batman acts.

But I think there are some things we sort of know are unbreakable. We know Spider-Man is a wisecracker, believes his power gives him great responsibility, and really misses Uncle Ben. Batman doesn't like guns and really misses his mommy and daddy. Jughead doesn't like girls and loves food. Some characters are generally nice people and others are generally jerks.

That doesn't mean the writer can't make characters break away from their regular characterization. But he or she should know the "essential" traits, the ones we expect every writer to follow, and if those rules are broken - justify it. If a character is always written nice, and you make them mean, show us why they're acting mean. If Jughead doesn't like burgers and chases girls, if Batman carries a gun, if Thor is really quiet and modest, that requires some explanation.

[jackolover]

I think once characters have acted all Vanilla for decades, that it's fair enough the writers revert them to their starting condition now and then, of non-trust for other super humans. I'm not surprised for instance, that Tony Star has weapons for all the Avengers because he never liked them from the get go. He tolerated them, but always wanted to be in charge of them, so put them in a home of his choosing so he could scrape the hair of each of them off his rug for experiments. Cap was the same. He stepped in a world of super humans he'd never seen before and he didn't trust them, because he never grew up with them. They were thrust upon him so why should he trust them? They were all trust fun kids and full of themselves. Spiderman was accused off all sorts of crimes and even admitted one in public. No wonder he never became an Avenger until Bendis arrived. You could go on and on about them. The Hulk a wrecking crew. Thor is so full of himself he calls himself a god. Ant-man? Ant-man could be hiding in your secret costume closet for all you know, so he's the least trustworthy of them all. His ants tell him what everybody is doing.

No, I'm fine with the characters leaving their vanilla character behind for something a little darker.

[jackolover]

It does bug me when there are changes to personality without real explanation. My example is from New Avengers, because I don't get many mags. Here we have a bunch of people, some who regularly handle cosmic or at least world wide issues, regularly. The go to people to solve whatever issue you might have. And now they are indecisive, reactive, instead of proactive. Strange, yes, I admit, my main focus has lost his zen totally. Reed being so afraid. T'Challa also indecisive. Everyone seems different than I have seen them in the decades that I had read comics. Is the explanation because of the Incursions? But why, when they've handled big crap before? The story is long, drawn out, with a lot of issues that could have been done in a couple of pages for all the story has moved forward. I feel like it is a mystery book that tries to be clever by not giving us clues, to suddenly solve thing in the end. I prefer mysteries that leaves bread crumbs, that after you get to the end you are amazed you didn't put it together, because all the pieces are there. The only crumbs I see are about T'Challa's ancestors wanting him to kill Namor. Those are some big crumbs. Not so much for anything else.

Sometimes when a character is written in a specific way, like the whole No More Mutants thing, the character isn't allowed to recover. People keep rehashing it, when it should be a time that it is realized that they were being out of character, and let them heal.

I allow that writers need range to move around to tell stories. But stories should have evolution of character that lead them to their behaviors, not characters doing things that make it easy for the writer to tell a story. If they need a character to behave in a certain way, they should bring in a character that is prone to that sort of thing. Like if you wanted a god for a funny bar scene. Thor might be amusing, but, to me, Hercules fits much better. We need to understand why the "person" we've known for so long is behaving like this. Tell, don't just show, pretty please.

In New Avengers, if the Beyonder was pawning them wherever they tried to go, then that explains why they can't fight it. The interesting part is, they have met the Beyonder in that series "Illuminati", so Black Bolt should have featured heavily in the the New Avengers under Hickman, because Boltagon is supposed to be Beyonders King. And Maximus has made Boltagons voice amplifiers before, so Planet busters should have been Bolts main weapon in the a incursions, but, where is the amplifier?

New Avengers all smells like manipulation, in this Hickman arc, because none of them are able to break out of their seemingly suffocating ineptitude.

[jackolover]

It's important to remember that (a) identity is malleable, and (b) in extreme situations, people will often behave in ways that don't fit their established behavior patterns.

This. CW proved that if you strain a relationship you get a broken nose. And if the government is determined to make an example of your whole fraternity, you have to hit back.

[jackolover]

Yeah it can be a bother, if someone act out of his character for let's say one issues and it has no long term consequences their is no problem but the first which come to my mind in that case is Reed Richards a brave man which never compromised his believes and always found a solution. He was rewritten/act out of character for CW and Hickmans New Avenger to a point were he is nearly identical with Doom only that Doom is braver and Reed seems to thinks he has already conquered the world.

Naturally when the hero make his villain counter-part competition fans get made and things are messed up.(if the villain makes the hero competition thinks are fine)

The second is Tony Stark which are not that much acted out of character but certainly bend some corners or otherwise said the authors over use him with to do evil stuff. I don't see how making him a villain will help him to make more sales the character will be garbage when the story is through.

The third is the Scarlet Witch yeah I know she had a mental breakdown before Avenger Dissemble because her kids but because it was so long ago and she got over it. It was purely built up from the authors and she acted out of character which resulted in even more.. out of character behaviour in M-Day. It is the same as Iron-Man if the authors continue to use her in that way she will end up as garbage

One of the things about Tony Stark is that we have learned you can push his buttons and make him behave certain ways now. Things like CW, and mind wiping Cap. His buddies know how Tony behaves under certain circumstances now, so they can get him to show his cards, if they just Gang up on him. This is what you learn about Stark from him loosing it now and then.

[HaveAtThee]

I think these days characters are treated more so as props for a particular story a writer would like to tell. This is why there are frequent instances where you scratch your head thinking "Why the heck would Cap do that?" or whatever. I guess that's the fine line writers walk when they're dealing with licensed characters with continuous stories dating back to the 60's. Each writer wants to inject a bit of their own ideas with any given character and it's always open to interpretation by the reader. I think writers and editors get in trouble when they purposely want to shoehorn a particular character or a group of characters into a certain "mega" story. Then there's the major problem of overexposure, when characters appear in multiple titles every month. In my view I feel the plot or story should serve the titular character(s) and not the other way around.

[Punisher007]

Having your own take on a character is fine, to a point. Where it gets problematic for me is when:

-A character acts so completely different/contrary to their established characterizations that they barely even feel like the same character.

-It's not an interesting/good take on the character.

-There's no good reason/context for it beyond plot contrivance. It's what bugged me about CW, or AVX, or a lot of Remender's writing. The characters there act ooc simply because the premise wouldn't work/make sense if they acted in-character. THAT gets annoying because it shows that PREMISE was deeply flawed from the beginning.

[jackolover]

Having your own take on a character is fine, to a point. Where it gets problematic for me is when:

-A character acts so completely different/contrary to their established characterizations that they barely even feel like the same character.

-It's not an interesting/good take on the character.

-There's no good reason/context for it beyond plot contrivance. It's what bugged me about CW, or AVX, or a lot of Remender's writing. The characters there act ooc simply because the premise wouldn't work/make sense if they acted in-character. THAT gets annoying because it shows that PREMISE was deeply flawed from the beginning.

Tony Stark has just realised he's been fighting the Red Skull for 2 months now, so Xavier/Skull has been effecting super heroes for a while now. So this may be the first indication that since the Red Skull had Xavier's brain, (way back after AVX), everybody has an excuse for behaving OOC because they are being toned down by the Skull. Even the Illuminati, because Tony is one of them.

[CaTigeReptile]

It bothers me when writers don't do their research on a character before deciding what route to take or how to portray them. (Same thing goes with any references, whether they be to scientific processes, historical myths, or psychological theories, etc).

Not only just personality-wise, but in terms of connections - who they know, what they've been involved in, who their friends are, who their enemies are, what's been written about their childhood/the context of their lives, etc. But I can understand that would be hard if you're writing a lot of things at once on a deadline . . . but Comic Vine should give 'em a good idea at least, so at the very minimum writers should look at that! :P

I think that goes back to the common response in this thread of "only when it's completely out of the blue and doesn't have any context and so they feel like they're a different character" and "when the occasional mischaracterization becomes the common characterization."

[Doomuniverse]

Every now and then, I see people complain that their beloved heroes/villains doesnt act from past issues. Do you let this bother you? Or do you accept it, given theres years, decades of comics feautring these characters, as long as Doom dont start dancing, Galactus dont start fapping, etc?

Well that's the Brian Bendis gimmick. He doesn't do character research or history tracing like a Mike Carey, Ed Brubaker, or Cullen Bunn, no, he finds slick ways to change them to his liking and usually picks a pet character to keep running back to. He had Cyclops sounding like 1993 Magneto in some of those first Uncanny issues from the last launch...lol. He doesn't know how to write Emma so he keeps her in the background and has her say one liners sometimes. He has a fascination with pushing Maria Hill so he gives her a nice cozy spot. He had a decent voice for Magneto. Stuff like that. It can make you cringe if you know a certain character and his dialogue is off base or ridiculous. Fraction writing Doom or Magneto are BIG TIME No Nos...just not good.

[HUTHAIFA]

I give writer's much the same leeway that I give artists.Thank God, Claremont's X-men wasnt like Stan Lee's Xmen.Writers are like actors to me. Christian Bale's Batman is different from Michael Keaton's version, writer's need to have their own voice when doing characters. Just be some level of consistent is all I ask. Chuck Austen having She Hulk sleep with Juggernaut is insulting and out of character. It didnt bring any new insight to She Hulk at all.