Your DC-Only controversial opinions...

[Trey Strain]

Yes I know it's your opinion but you can't act like his popularity declining is your opinion when you treat it like it's fact, which it isn't.

This is my last response to you. This information isn't secret. Everyone who is interested in it already knows it or can easily find it out. It's all online, and is well summarized in this fan's blog. Not that I necessarily agree with his opinion as to why it's happened.

http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2011/07/w...-superman.html

[AquaLantern]

Superman's popularity has declined because he's outdated. He's too powerful. You can't make fanboys believe that though because they don't know how hard it is to write such a supremely powerful character.

Ironic because fanboys treat one of the street-leveled characters as an non-corruptible invincible "Chuck Norris" god and complain when writers don't treat him as such.

[Buried Alien]

The Flash is pretty powerful, writers have even complained that it's difficult to write characters with super speed because they have such an advantage.

At the speeds the Flash is supposedly able to attain, no stories about the character should be able to be told at all...and yet, we have 70 years (and counting) worth of FLASH stories, with no end in sight.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[Ascended]

Superman's popularity has declined because he's outdated. He's too powerful. You can't make fanboys believe that though because they don't know how hard it is to write such a supremely powerful character.

Dude, that's a load of bull. There a a ton of characters more powerful than him that still sell just fine.

You can argue that he's out-dated, that he no longer reflects modern sensibilities, that DC has mismanaged him for thirty years, that the basic foundation he's built on isn't stable enough (things like the secret identity and glasses), lots of things. But power level? That's not the problem. I will give you that some writers can't write a powerful character, but that's on those particular writers, not the character, and as many successful books that feature high-end characters as there are (like Thor), there are more titles that underperform for their quality (like Invincible) but aren't going anywhere.

When did his popularity decline?

When he got less powerful after the 86 reboot.

Not that that was the whole reason for his decline. That goes way deeper.

[Ascended]

Wonder woman should be bisexual....

Is that a controversial opinion?

Well, I suppose it is, but it seems a fairly popular one too.

Im down with it. Island of women and no men? They're advanced, not chaste, and a girl's got needs. And from what I can recall (which is vague at the moment) Marston didnt seem to intend for them to be virgins either. I dont think he ever got into it directly (how could he? Even now that'd be polarizing) but he skirted the edges better than anyone.

[Dataweaver]

Is that a controversial opinion?

Well, I suppose it is, but it seems a fairly popular one too.

Im down with it. Island of women and no men? They're advanced, not chaste, and a girl's got needs. And from what I can recall (which is vague at the moment) Marston didnt seem to intend for them to be virgins either. I dont think he ever got into it directly (how could he? Even now that'd be polarizing) but he skirted the edges better than anyone.

The all-female population of Paradise Island is… problematic. It requires DC to either make the Amazons objectively different from everyone else (e.g., “they're immortal”) or to have them engage in sexist activities (if they're not immortal, where do they find men to father their children, why do they ban the fathers from being involved in their childrens' upbringing, and what do they do with their sons?). The best course I can imagine to resolve this is to say that the goddesses provided them with a magical means of Parthenogenesis, letting an Amazon with a maternal yearning to conceive without (hetero-)sexual intercourse.

The harder solution would be to abandon the all-female characteristic of Thymescrian society, but to portray it as either matriarchal or non-patriarchal. That said, those options would tend to undermine Diana's origin story.

[colonyofcells]

I am fine with amazons having sex with men to have children.

[t hedge coke]

The last thing DC needs to use the Multiverse for is extended excuses to dip into nostalgia and visit past "worlds." Or, to keep everything the same as the normal universe(s).

I remember with JLA: Earth 2 came out and people were livid that on a world where everyone is evil, Jimmy Olsen was a pathetic pervert and Superwoman was abusive to him. Ultraman wasn't just saying he was "evil" and being pushy, he was mean! People flipped out.

We may say, collectively, that we want the old, bring back the old, but when they do, we get Convergence, with had dozens of really excellent two-part comics, and we dismiss them, anyway, even when they're great standalone stories or were used to finish off older storylines that got cut short, as "filler," and "meaningless."

Instead of chasing "what people want to see," they should just focus on worlds that serve the purpose of stories they actually want to tell. Novelty or variations they have a reason to show us.

[Lorendiac]

The all-female population of Paradise Island is… problematic. It requires DC to either make the Amazons objectively different from everyone else (e.g., “they're immortal”) or to have them engage in sexist activities (if they're not immortal, where do they find men to father their children, why do they ban the fathers from being involved in their childrens' upbringing, and what do they do with their sons?). The best course I can imagine to resolve this is to say that the goddesses provided them with a magical means of Parthenogenesis, letting an Amazon with a maternal yearning to conceive without (hetero-)sexual intercourse.

Years ago, I was in another discussion about this sort of thing, and I learned that what you imagine as "the best course" (creating little girls without needing any of those troublesome males to help out in any way, shape, or form) is roughly what Wonder Woman's creator William Moulton Marston actually had in mind, way back in the 1940s. (Although it was also canonical that all of the adult Amazons of that era were physically immortal and thousands of years old, as I understand it.)

I think the original discussion took place on this very forum, and would have been erased when the forums did their reboot, but I'll try to reconstruct the essential points (with a little Googling):

1. In the 1940s, there were at least a few "Wonder Woman" comic book stories which showed that some girls, younger than Diana, were growing up on Paradise Island in that era. They were collectively called "the Amazonettes." The scripts of those published comics did not clearly address where those little girls came from if the adult Amazons had spent the last 3000 years (or thereabouts) in quarantine, totally isolated from all the men of the outside world.

2. On a similar note: there was also a "Wonder Woman" newspaper comic strip for a while in the 1940s, and in one scene in a published strip, the goddess Aphrodite said, in response to an appeal from several of the Amazons of Paradise Island: "My Amazons desire children. I shall grant their wish." Marston wrote that dialogue! But he never followed up on it with an explanation of exactly what Aphrodite then did to "change the rules" so that Hippolyta would no longer be the one-and-only Amazon who had been allowed to miraculously acquire a daughter, and thus be called "Mother."

3. However! Years ago, I was told that a guy named Brett Jett has dug up evidence that Marston, in letters to friends, occasionally referred to the idea that, the way he envisioned it, after Hippolyta created a clay statute of a little girl and saw it miraculously come to life as her new "daughter," Aphrodite subsequently allowed this to become a common occurrence on Paradise Island. Any other Amazon who wanted a daughter could do the same thing, pray for a miracle, and see another clay statue come to life! And several of them did! (Hence the Amazonettes.) It's just that this unorthodox method of creating a "new generation of Amazons" was never actually spelled out in any published story before Marston died (in 1947), and nobody at DC bothered to follow up on that notion after he was out of the picture. But the thought was there!

[DGraysonWorldsGreatestSpy]

There is nothing wrong with Superman power levels but Kryptonians have moved from a race that everyone reached the power of Superman and were more futuristic humans that having complete alien biology no human will ever obtain. Classic Golden age characters like Batman, Superman, & Dick Grayson don't move too far from their original origin when done right ( ex. New 52 Dick vs Pre 52 before Grayson) but Superman has had the most changes too his first origin and looking back the explanation is far more simpler and inspiring too humans than how he is now as a solar battery. Maybe they could return his biology back to that and contribute new powers to the Sword of Superman.

[Lorendiac]

It's only the poor reader who remembers, because he or she has all the comic books to prove it. Sometimes I think DC would like us to burn all our old comics, so we don't remember every time they tried to pass off a moldy oldy as freshly baked.

Years ago, someone on these forums stated for a fact that Jeph Loeb's "Hush" qualified as the first time anyone at DC had the nerve to show Batman and Catwoman getting seriously interested in each other -- as opposed to years and years of occasional flirting that didn't go anywhere.

As you might guess, some of his fellow fans (including yours truly) disagreed with him, and wondered where on earth he had gotten the idea that Jeph Loeb was the Very First to show a serious romance between the two. But it illustrates the point that there will always be someone to whom a particular plot twist, involving a particular character or set of characters, seems "new and exciting!"

[The Darknight Detective]

I bet if you compared power levels of every superhero with their place in overall sales, you wouldn't find anything conclusive to suggest higher power levels mean poor sales.

[batnbreakfast]

I like Batman actually more for the reasons he's not hated: Young and inexperienced in Miller's Year One or Kelly's Imperfect or for the "Bingo" moment/smile Greg Capullo gave him. I like the Bruce-Alfred/Bruce-Gordon relationships and I never cared about the playboy/richboy aspect of the character. He dresses like a movie character (Zorro was the last movie he watched with his parents), not sure if he's aware of it. That makes him a romantic and idealistic, even optimistic in my book. The fact that he isn't a happy person and a loner is a PLUS for me, I can always balance that with lighter reading material. Sometimes Batman is successful for the wrong reasons, I guess (fighting machine, master strategist, costume) but I can look up to the ideas he represents (honing mind and body) any day. Currently my favourite versions are The Brave and the Bold cartoon Batman/Beware the Batman and LEGO Batman.

[The Darknight Detective]

FYI, guys, trolling is a bannable offense here.

[Götterdämmerung]

FYI, guys, trolling is a bannable offense here.

Did I troll? How? Read my post again, I simply gave my opinion on Batman, I wasn't deliberately baiting anyone. This is more like censorship, as this is an opinion topic.

I would like my post put back up, please. It was the reaction to my post that was puerile and unnecessary. I'll have to write the admin.