Your DC-Only controversial opinions (part II)...

[Frontier]

It’s holding yourself to an absolute ideal that is an issue. We’ve seen superheroes kill (and do other questionable things that comic fans don’t seem to care about) without going off the deep end before but a person with a rigid and uncompromising mindset is very likely to snap. If you’re obsessed with not doing something, you’re likely to go down the slippery slope once you do it.

I don't think Batman would be the kind of symbol and hero he is without holding himself to such an absolute ideal.

It's part of the Batman identity's greatest strengths as much as it is one of it's greatest weakness.

See above. Also, there’s plenty Bruce does that would disqualify him as heroic if examined more carefully.

But there's also plenty he does that is unquestioningly heroic.

These people are either villains (like Jason was in Under the Red Hood) or straw men treated as wrong.

I mean, I was thinking of certain members of the Batfamily, but I think it still presents the issue as more grey then black and white.

The Joker being locked up hasn’t been taken seriously as a punishment ever since writers started pointing out how easy it is to break out of Arkham or Blackgate.

But isn't that true for every Supervillain, not just Joker?

That’s fair. Personally, I don’t think killing the Joker would invalidate Batman’s heroism.

I disagree, but I understand your point.

But I think Batman would probably feels that it would invalidates the kind of hero he believes himself to be.

[josai21]

That's incredibly easy to do. You kill them, or otherwise make them incapable of performing their duty. I don't see how that's a difficult thing to accomplish with fictional characters. Ease is not the same as preference.





How is it not sustainable long term? How could you possibly know that? Everything you're saying about these characters you could say the same about Barry and Wally. Do you honestly think people would stop buying Batman in droves if Dick was Batman for an extended period in a well written way that made sense? It's not like any Batman fan is unfamiliar with Dick, certainly not the ones buying comics. Garth has been too disenfranchised historically to replace Arthur, and Arthur has recently just gone through an incredible stretch of quality so now wouldn't be the best time to replace him. I can't say the same with Wonder Woman which has been up and down, good and bad, off and on for years. And Donna's much more on the cusp than Garth.

Roy's problem is Green Arrow isn't even important enough on his own. So whatever hit you would take from a transition would be rough. That said, if Green Arrow isn't so hot in the first place...why not try something new? Why not try doing something with Roy that isn't shitting on him in the most awful ways imaginable. Surely Roy as the major hero is a better idea than having is arm chopped off, high out of his mind, pretending a cat he found in a piss soaked alley was his dead daughter, no? How integral is Ollie being around to DC, anyhow?



These are the express, intentional faults of the people you're saying are in the right. She doesn't deserve it? Why? How? What did Wally do to deserve the mantle more than anyone else? He hadn't been relevant in The Flash for a decade prior to Barry's death, short of a brief scene in Trial where his only purpose was to emotionally betray Barry by doing the "right" thing. Wally was a near powerless college student, not in Titans nor Flash. How did he "deserve" the mantle? Donna is whatever the writers want her to be.

I agree that Donna needs to be fixed. I think elevating her is a way to do it. Perhaps she could be better written and brought back into the WW mythos. She was a frequent part of Wonder Woman's post crisis comic, despite COIE completely fucking up her relationship by rebooting Wonder Woman and beginning the never ending woes of Donna's continuity. Donna was fine before that despite the snafu of her creation. That was a really easy to smooth out speed bump -- she just is what she was created as.



If Barry were an all new character and not a legacy he wouldn't be named the same thing and carry on with Jay's franchise. Barry's Flash comics start at #150 for a reason, and it's not because he has relatively nothing to do with Jay. You're a bit closer on Hal, but still, attributing well known name value and powerset is very much a part of legacy. They're not full blown, family style replacements like Wally. But Wally isn't the only kind of legacy character, even if he's the most dyed in the wool and successful one.

I don't know what else you would call Barry. He's not an original character, he's a spinoff/reimagining who inherited his idea from the previous character. Sure, it was roundabout, but if your hero is Jay Garrick and you become a hero with the same name as Jay Garrick...aren't you his legacy? It doesn't hurt that since then Jay's history has merged with Earth to make Barry his direct legacy. We'll be seeing that return within the next year, hopefully. There's not some nebulous ground between legacy and not-legacy that Hal and Barry occupy. Brave and the Bold showed that much years ago. They are their successors, in comics and in spirit.



Here's the thing. We've been doing it this way for decades. What I'm suggesting is we try it another way instead of, I don't know, The New 52 where they fucked up everything with the world's worst handled reboot because every single title sans Batman and Green Lantern was failing (Batman, amusingly, doing fine with Dick prior to the reboot! So great that they wouldn't dare undo Damian, a character created entirely to pair with Dickbats). We're still living in that awful New 52 universe. Maybe make something better of it.



This is all kind of part of my overwhelming problem with DC: Stagnancy. This is a company that is afraid to move beyond 1960. How pathetic is that? DC's biggest point of progress that they want to sell us is they promoted a minority character from the 80s to the big leagues. But time and time again they revert back to these "iconic" characters who failed them before, so badly that they've rebooted twice! They've stagnated so bad that they've missed the boat on the next generation TWICE. Imagine a DC universe where they never even introduced Hal and Barry because they weren't the original, "iconic" characters of their namesake? Imagine a DC universe where the only comics are the trinity because they happened to be the 3 to survive the collapse of the industry in the 50s. That's what we're advocating right now! Only we moved up the point of stagnation to 1960, before most of us were born and, I'd wager, before most of our parents were born.

I just don't know how so few other people find that insane. There's a reason the Justice League often looks like a Sears catalog from the 90s and it's because they're stuck in a decade where white was right and that's that. We should've moved past these characters ages ago but we're and they're all so stuck on them that history is passing them by. You'd think an archaic medium would at least try to advance elsewhere, but I guess we need another story about how Bruce is sad his parents died and how insane The Joker is. Timeless, unyielding, that'll never go wrong!

100% agree with all of this.

[SiegePerilous02]

That's incredibly easy to do. You kill them, or otherwise make them incapable of performing their duty. I don't see how that's a difficult thing to accomplish with fictional characters. Ease is not the same as preference.

No, it's incredibly easy for you to express the desire, not easy or even wise for a business to do it. What sense is there in killing off or retiring your biggest money maker (Batman) for another character who you cannot guarantee will work out as well. They need to experiment in the areas that are not working, not foolishly throw away what does work to satisfy a vocal minority of fans.

Wise business decisions are not the same as preference.

These are the express, intentional faults of the people you're saying are in the right. She doesn't deserve it? Why? How? What did Wally do to deserve the mantle more than anyone else? He hadn't been relevant in The Flash for a decade prior to Barry's death, short of a brief scene in Trial where his only purpose was to emotionally betray Barry by doing the "right" thing. Wally was a near powerless college student, not in Titans nor Flash. How did he "deserve" the mantle? Donna is whatever the writers want her to be.

She doesn't deserve it because it's up for debate whether she is even a WW character and she has never done anything beneficial to the WW franchise. WW is one of the biggest characters they have, you want to replace her with a character whose ties to her are tenuous at best and who has never been successful in a solo venture? What sense does that make? Wally deserved the mantle of the Flash because he was deliberately created by Flash writers in the Flash's book and had been around since almost as long as Barry. The difference between him and Donna is incredibly obvious.

This is all kind of part of my overwhelming problem with DC: Stagnancy. This is a company that is afraid to move beyond 1960. How pathetic is that? DC's biggest point of progress that they want to sell us is they promoted a minority character from the 80s to the big leagues. But time and time again they revert back to these "iconic" characters who failed them before, so badly that they've rebooted twice! They've stagnated so bad that they've missed the boat on the next generation TWICE. Imagine a DC universe where they never even introduced Hal and Barry because they weren't the original, "iconic" characters of their namesake? Imagine a DC universe where the only comics are the trinity because they happened to be the 3 to survive the collapse of the industry in the 50s. That's what we're advocating right now! Only we moved up the point of stagnation to 1960, before most of us were born and, I'd wager, before most of our parents were born.

I just don't know how so few other people find that insane. There's a reason the Justice League often looks like a Sears catalog from the 90s and it's because they're stuck in a decade where white was right and that's that. We should've moved past these characters ages ago but we're and they're all so stuck on them that history is passing them by. You'd think an archaic medium would at least try to advance elsewhere, but I guess we need another story about how Bruce is sad his parents died and how insane The Joker is. Timeless, unyielding, that'll never go wrong!

The thing is, these characters were not created for adults. They were created with the intention of being enjoyed by children who would grow up and move on to other things while the characters would be passed down to other kids. If you're sick of Batman and Joker stories, move on to something else. They were old AF when I first "met" them in 1992, but it was still all brand new to me. The franchise is not obligated to change because people are sick of the same stuff that they keep going back for anyway, move on to something else. Their big problem is not the stagnation of a shared universe that an increasingly small number of fans give a crap about, it's not pushing all of their characters to their fullest potential in other mediums.

[Dred]

No, it's incredibly easy for you to express the desire, not easy or even wise for a business to do it. What sense is there in killing off or retiring your biggest money maker (Batman) for another character who you cannot guarantee will work out as well. They need to experiment in the areas that are not working, not foolishly throw away what does work to satisfy a vocal minority of fans.

Wise business decisions are not the same as preference.





She doesn't deserve it because it's up for debate whether she is even a WW character and she has never done anything beneficial to the WW franchise. WW is one of the biggest characters they have, you want to replace her with a character whose ties to her are tenuous at best and who has never been successful in a solo venture? What sense does that make? Wally deserved the mantle of the Flash because he was deliberately created by Flash writers in the Flash's book and had been around since almost as long as Barry. The difference between him and Donna is incredibly obvious.




The thing is, these characters were not created for adults. They were created with the intention of being enjoyed by children who would grow up and move on to other things while the characters would be passed down to other kids. If you're sick of Batman and Joker stories, move on to something else. They were old AF when I first "met" them in 1992, but it was still all brand new to me. The franchise is not obligated to change because people are sick of the same stuff that they keep going back for anyway, move on to something else. Their big problem is not the stagnation of a shared universe that an increasingly small number of fans give a crap about, it's not pushing all of their characters to their fullest potential in other mediums.

This thread isn't, "What is the best business decision for DC," you realize that, right? My opinion of "Bruce Wayne should be dead or stop being Batman," has to be the most unpopular opinion possible among DC's current audience. That said, Batman would still be around and that's more important than Bruce Wayne. I'm not saying eliminate the franchises.

Also I can only heartily chuckle at maintaining the status quo in perpetuity as a "wise business decision" from DC. They've been doing that for ages and it sure as hell struggles. Seriously, wise business decisions from the company that, with its current crop of decision makers, was months away from going into reprinting?

Who cares about what was DELIBERATE by writers from 60 years ago? Why is this such a sticking point to you? Those stories aren't even canon two times over right now. Those writers are dead or dying. Move on past that. The biggest influence on modern Diana, Rucka, has expressed that he would really love to include Donna multiple times but was not allowed. There are people who force this status quo on the characters and you're using that status quo as a reason to disenfranchise them. Self fulfilling prophecy.

Wally's deliberate creation didn't make him more worthy of a title. It's such a trivial aspect that actually doesn't even affect the characters themselves, so should have no bearing on how you write them. Lots of dumb shit from the Silver Age hasn't survived, why should Donna's weirdness be the one thing we stick to? Why should any of it, really? Wally was DELIBERATELY created as Kid Flash. If you're so gung ho about the 1960s should he have never become The Flash? He was deliberately created for that, after all! And what you're deliberately created as is the most important thing.

It doesn't have to be Donna, for whatever it's worth, even if she would be my pick. Cassie's around. She was deliberate as heck.

Collected editions will always be around, forever into the future. Especially with online reading swelling. That's no excuse to grasp at the pearls of a dying model.

[LP22]

I think the young justice generation should despair and I love the super sons better and think they should be the generation(Wallace,emiko,jackson hyde)DC should focus on

[josai21]

I don’t think the goal in this idea is so much an instantaneous cut off. Rather it should be natural progression.Bruce should be Batman for another 10-15 years IRL. But begin telling the story of him aging for real. Let him marry Selina. Let Dick or Tim begin to take on more responsibility. Have more of the Titans on the League.

Furthermore, advance the world around you. Aliens and sci-fi tech are much more known. Let’s begin seeing the effects of that on earth. The knowledge of other worlds should vastly increase the authority of the UN.

Let natural progression happen. The way any story should.

What DC has done is the equivalent of Tolkien writing numerous novels of the adventures of the Fellowship before they even get to Moria. It’s the equivalent of Harry Potter never leaving Hogwarts. It’s the equivalent of Aang never mastering the four elements but constantly running around doing pointless missions.

It’s bad story telling and stagnant. Also, it makes everything we read meaningless because we all know it’s just gonna go back to the status quo.

[KC]

DC is still telling good and great stories with the "Silver Age" generation on heroes. And as long as they are, there will be nothing "stagnant" about their current universe.

Fans who complain about "Silver Age nostalgia" are usually nostalgic for the 90's-early 2000's DC and are just complaining because DC isn't pandering to their nostalgia.

[Frontier]

I don't think it needs to be a one way or the other as far as keeping the secondary generation prominent and important while still keeping the Big Guns around in perpetuity.

Like, I want to see Dick Grayson treated well and with the stature he deserves but Bruce Wayne will always be the definitive Batman to me.

I don't think Barry and Wally need to compete with each other as The Flash.

Wonder Woman is Diana of Themyscira but Donna should still be treated better.

[josai21]

DC is still telling good and great stories with the "Silver Age" generation on heroes. And as long as they are, there will be nothing "stagnant" about their current universe.

Fans who complain about "Silver Age nostalgia" are usually nostalgic for the 90's-early 2000's DC and are just complaining because DC isn't pandering to their nostalgia.

Would you mind defining what you consider good and great stories? I personally don't see it and am incredibly bored by DC, but I'm interested to hear why you think they are telling such good stories.

[Aahz]

My entire point is give others the same chance Wally got. Those are still the best Flash comics ever, but it took a year before we even got good comics and 5 before we got all time great comics.

But his comics beeing the "best Flash comics ever" has probably also something to do with that the pre crisis era is general the time where they started to write the big iconic stories.
If you do something like this now, the new character wouldn't have that advantage.

[josai21]

I don't think it needs to be a one way or the other as far as keeping the secondary generation prominent and important while still keeping the Big Guns around in perpetuity.
Like, I want to see Dick Grayson treated well and with the stature he deserves but Bruce Wayne will always be the definitive Batman to me.

For awhile, I think this is possible, but we've reached the point where keeping the big guns around hinders story-telling. Just to be clear, this isn't 10 or 15 years where these characters are operating in the same time area. It's 30+ years. 50+ in some regards. At a certain point, older characters have to make way for the younger. I think the N52 proved the point that trying to keep older characters relevant to the current generation while having the younger characters still maintain their place of prominence is eventually doomed to fail.

Bruce cannot be in his late 20's/early 30's (which is necessary in most cases if you want Bruce to relate to the current generation) and still allow time for Dick, Barbara, Jason, Tim, Cassie, Stephanie, Luke Fox, Kate Kane, Damian, Duke, and Harper to develop, earn their stripes, and shine. At this point, after 70+years of comics, it has become either/or if you want to maintain good and coherent story telling.

[Frontier]

For awhile, I think this is possible, but we've reached the point where keeping the big guns around hinders story-telling. Just to be clear, this isn't 10 or 15 years where these characters are operating in the same time area. It's 30+ years. 50+ in some regards. At a certain point, older characters have to make way for the younger. I think the N52 proved the point that trying to keep older characters relevant to the current generation while having the younger characters still maintain their place of prominence is eventually doomed to fail.

Bruce cannot be in his late 20's/early 30's (which is necessary in most cases if you want Bruce to relate to the current generation) and still allow time for Dick, Barbara, Jason, Tim, Cassie, Stephanie, Luke Fox, Kate Kane, Damian, Duke, and Harper to develop, earn their stripes, and shine. At this point, after 70+years of comics, it has become either/or if you want to maintain good and coherent story telling.

I just don't really see the need to phase out the older characters when heroes like the Trinity still feel as relevant and important as they were back then. But that's just me.

I think the issues with the Batfamily have far less to do with Bruce still being Batman and more just the writers failing to balance and figure out how all these characters fit together or are relevant to each other. Babs being Batgirl again is more of a problem then Bruce being Batman on that front.

It's not like Bruce being Batman indefinitely really hampered the Post-Crisis Batfamily.

[KC]

Would you mind defining what you consider good and great stories? I personally don't see it and am incredibly bored by DC, but I'm interested to hear why you think they are telling such good stories.

I think what would constitute as being a good or great story is self-explanatory and relies on critical analysis and personal preference.

For awhile, I think this is possible, but we've reached the point where keeping the big guns around hinders story-telling. Just to be clear, this isn't 10 or 15 years where these characters are operating in the same time area. It's 30+ years. 50+ in some regards. At a certain point, older characters have to make way for the younger. I think the N52 proved the point that trying to keep older characters relevant to the current generation while having the younger characters still maintain their place of prominence is eventually doomed to fail.

Bruce cannot be in his late 20's/early 30's (which is necessary in most cases if you want Bruce to relate to the current generation) and still allow time for Dick, Barbara, Jason, Tim, Cassie, Stephanie, Luke Fox, Kate Kane, Damian, Duke, and Harper to develop, earn their stripes, and shine. At this point, after 70+years of comics, it has become either/or if you want to maintain good and coherent story telling.

It only "hinders story-telling" if you don't want to read stories about the big-guns.

They don't have to give way to the younger generation. If anythng, the New 52 bought the "Silver Age generation" more time by making them younger.

It has worked for the last 8 years with plenty of great stories.

[josai21]

I think what would constitute as being a good or great story is self-explanatory and relies on critical analysis and personal preference.



It only "hinders story-telling" if you don't want to read stories about the big-guns.

They don't have to give way to the younger generation. If anythng, the New 52 bought the "Silver Age generation" more time by making them younger.

It has worked for the last 8 years with plenty of great stories.

Maybe it's an age thing...but Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, Diana, and their generation do feel irrelevant and I have little desire to read about them. Reading about them is like reading about my father or grandfather's generation. I mean, they might have cool stories, but I don't relate. I grew up reading the Titans/Young Justice etc. and watching them flounder because DC refuses to allow the OG to age and move on (Like they would have in any other story telling medium) does hinder story telling.

And I would argue that the stories being told aren't good. They are just the same stories that have been told over the past 70 years being told in a different package.

Good story telling requires progression.

[KC]

Maybe it's an age thing...but Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, Diana, and their generation do feel irrelevant and I have little desire to read about them. Reading about them is like reading about my father or grandfather's generation. I mean, they might have cool stories, but I don't relate. I grew up reading the Titans/Young Justice etc. and watching them flounder because DC refuses to allow the OG to age and move on (Like they would have in any other story telling medium) does hinder story telling.

And I would argue that the stories being told aren't good. They are just the same stories that have been told over the past 70 years being told in a different package.

Clark, Bruce, Diana, Barry and Hal have been around as the face of their franchises for more than a decade now, and any fan who has started reading in that time has more than likely started with them. And that includes me. They are relevant to a subset of fans who read DC comics. Again, it only hinders story-telling if you want them to age and moves on

And I would completely disagree. I think DC has done many interesting and new things with that generation of heroes.