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Change in Superhero Comics - Toon Zone Forum
From another thread:
Quote: : The Incredible Hulk took him from a dumb but loveable brute to having him retain banner's intelligence.
At that point where do you go but back because he's really no longer the hulk?
Maybe you don't change that particular aspect of the character anymore.
Planet Hulk was a great new direction for the character, and they really should have just left him there.
But eventually, I think you just stop telling ongoing stories about Hulk.
You tell stories about new characters.
You force the fans to embrace change by only giving them change.
There's a perpetual problem in the entertainment business that they give the audience dumbed-down, safe, softballed entertainment, because they think/know that the audience wants that.
But if you only give the audience smart, intellectual, artistic entertainment, they will consume it.
If you refuse to make Marley & Me and Crash , and instead force the audience to watch Syriana and Gran Torino , it's not like they'll stop watching movies.
Give the audience intelligence, and they will rise to the challenge.
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Who said anything about dumbing it down?
I love smart entertainment like Buffy or Supernatural.
Crash isnt smart as people think.
It's basically saying, deep down we are all racist.
I like Marley and Me, but that's a true story.
However, the ending was a bit of a downer.
I think in the book they got a new pup.
Ending right after marley's put down was the wrong move.
I don't think it's about "intellectual" entertainment but rather multilayered entertainment.
Thinking's fine, but it's nice to be able to just sit back and relax and be entertained.
Then in later passings you can watch for symbolism, etc.
First and foremost art has to be entertaining.
If things get too complex, that's also a problem.
Clarity might seem simplistic but it's your friend as a storyteller.
Change is neither good nor bad.
It depends on the context.
Doomsday works as a mindless beast.
However, i think he works the way smallville did it, where he's part of another being.
I think the execution, especially by the end was wrong but the idea was solid.
Changing superman so that he doesn't have the power to move a planet or the moon is a good thing.
Having him eventually marry lois is a good move.
It allows for new stories.
Marriage doesn't make everything better or end the tension.
50 plus years of "will they, won't they" sexual tension was enough.
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Mod Note: As this is spilling over from another thread, I just want to reiterate to keep this civil.
I'm not saying that it's gone in that direction, but I have seen times when it has, so everyone play nice.
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Quote: : Kazama Mod Note: As this is spilling over from another thread, I just want to reiterate to keep this civil.
I'm not saying that it's gone in that direction, but I have seen times when it has, so everyone play nice.
I'll try and use "I" statements.
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Quote: : who said anything about dumbing it down?
Static serial fiction is, to me, dumbed-down.
Quote: : I love smart entertainment like Buffy or Supernatural.
Do we really want to define smart television as teenage vampire slayers?
I'd like to aim the standard little higher, like Arrested Development or The Wire.
Quote: : Crash isnt smart as people think.
It's basically saying, deep down we are all racist.
The real problem with it is that it's just saying that.
It poses no questions, it simply presents answers.
That's easy and digestible and requires no real thought process from the viewer.
Quote: : I like Marley and Me, but that's a true story.
What, a true story that two people owned a dog that didn't obey?
What's the story?
What does that story accomplish?
Quote: : I don't think it's about "intellectual" entertainment but rather multilayered entertainment.
I use intellectual as a pretty broad term.
What I generally am talking about is the quality of the piece.
Art doesn't have to push the envelope, but it should at least stay pretty close to the envelope.
Quote: : Thinking's fine, but it's nice to be able to just sit back and relax and be entertained.
To me, that's the function of the dumb summer popcorn action flick.
Romantic comedies are a gross emotional manipulation and they reinforce all kinds of terrible attitudes about romance and gender that are too numerous to list here.
A dumb-fun action flick, on the other hand, is so over-the-top that the only people who could watch it and take away any kind of reinforced attitude are, frankly, a bit too dim to be discussed anyway.
Quote: : If things get too complex, that's also a problem.
I disagree. Art should be difficult.
It should call audiences to rise above their presently-defined philosophies and beliefs, and leave them with far more questions than answers.
Quote: : Change is neither good nor bad.
It depends on the context.
To a degree. But as a rule, it is better to move forward than to stay static.
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Quote: : To me, that's the function of the dumb summer popcorn action flick.
Romantic comedies are a gross emotional manipulation and they reinforce all kinds of terrible attitudes about romance and gender that are too numerous to list here.
A dumb-fun action flick, on the other hand, is so over-the-top that the only people who could watch it and take away any kind of reinforced attitude are, frankly, a bit too dim to be discussed anyway.
Sure there are movies that do earn the stigma of being dumb, simplicity does not a dumb movie make.
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Buffy is a well written show.
You have to get passed the title to recognize its brilliance.
I enjoy AD, but that show isn't beyond being immature and silly.
What does a story have accomplish beyond entertaining and getting to people's emotions.
Why does it have to make you think?
How does Macbeth make you think?
I think you took the Quote: about sitting back and being entertained out of context.
My point was that you should first and foremost enjoy it.
THEN you can look for symbolism, meaning, etc.
A lot of things can make you think.
That doesn't neccessarily make it good.
Should be difficult?
Says who?
Comics are present day myths.
The purpose is to entertain.
If they want to leave people asking questions, they can still have a point of view all their own, but that's not the primary.
The primary is to tell good stories with a plot and characters.
Anything can make you think, so it's a pretty shallow compliment.
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Quote: : buffy is a well written show.
You have to get passed the title to recognize its brilliance.
Well-written, in the sense that it's a Joss Whedon show with snappy dialogue, but the plots are pretty basic, and the themes are all pretty easy to spot.
Quote: : I enjoy AD, but that show isn't beyond being immature and silly.
Of course not. Neither immaturity nor silliness are mutually exclusive with being intelligent.
Quote: : What does a story have accomplish beyond entertaining and getting to people's emotions.
Why does it have to make you think?
Because if it doesn't accomplish anything, if it doesn't make you as a viewer work for something more than a simple story, it's just a retreaded rehash of things past.
Quote: : How does Macbeth make you think?
First of all, Macbeth isn't required to do as much as modern art, because Macbeth was created at a time when art as we know it was, in a very real sense, still nascent.
Second, Macbeth isn't a particularly compelling story, in light of all that has come since then.
Third, Macbeth becomes compelling only when you examine it in its context as a major creative force in everything that came after it, hence, you're working and thinking to get something out of the piece.
Fourth, Macbeth, like any Shakespeare work, is a tapestry of language, and there are so many ways that one can simply read and re-read, listen and re-listen, to the script, just to enjoy the language, leaving aside the dramatic content and plot structure.
Quote: : A lot of things can make you think.
That doesn't neccessarily make it good.
To me, a piece that makes you think-- really makes you think, and not just about what the piece was trying to say, but also about what you have to say to the piece--is inherently better than a piece that does not.
Quote: : Should be difficult?
Says who? Says me.
We're having a discussion and exchange of opinions.
Easy art dumbs us down and does not change us and does not realize the potential of art, and of the viewer.
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Quote: : Well-written, in the sense that it's a Joss Whedon show with snappy dialogue, but the plots are pretty basic, and the themes are all pretty easy to spot.
Of course not.
Neither immaturity nor silliness are mutually exclusive with being intelligent.
Because if it doesn't accomplish anything, if it doesn't make you as a viewer work for something more than a simple story, it's just a retreaded rehash of things past.
First of all, Macbeth isn't required to do as much as modern art, because Macbeth was created at a time when art as we know it was, in a very real sense, still nascent.
Second, Macbeth isn't a particularly compelling story, in light of all that has come since then.
Third, Macbeth becomes compelling only when you examine it in its context as a major creative force in everything that came after it, hence, you're working and thinking to get something out of the piece.
Fourth, Macbeth, like any Shakespeare work, is a tapestry of language, and there are so many ways that one can simply read and re-read, listen and re-listen, to the script, just to enjoy the language, leaving aside the dramatic content and plot structure.
To me, a piece that makes you think-- really makes you think, and not just about what the piece was trying to say, but also about what you have to say to the piece--is inherently better than a piece that does not.
Says me.
We're having a discussion and exchange of opinions.
Easy art dumbs us down and does not change us and does not realize the potential of art, and of the viewer.
So what if the plots and themes are simple?
That means they are relatable.
Showing characters that are like us and achieve values is value to readers.
Anything can make you think.
Just because the piece is clear about where it stands on a subject doesn't mean you have to agree.
Even if someone writes a Superman comic where the theme of power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, that doesn't mean that people can't dwell on that idea and think about the consequences of power.
Everyone will take away something different even if the themes are explicit.
Not having a POV can often times come off as lazy.
Easy aren't doesn't dumb people down.
Hard to follow plots are frustrating and often come off as people making things overly complex for no other reason than to "make them think".
They muddy the waters to make themselves look deep.
Would you write an essay for school that's hard to follow?
Clarity is your friend.
Change is fine if it's organic.
If the characters change due to an experience that's okay but most people don't change as it's difficult.
There's a line that has to be walked.
Having characters switch back and forth between good and evil can be frustrating unless there's a good reason.
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I have to admit that I'm not certain how any of the above discussion has anything to do with superhero comics or their tendency to portray the illusion of change rather than actual change.
As a result, I'll choose not to comment on what's already transpired (and honestly, because it also seems that doing so would just be trying to step into an argument that's running in circles so fast that it's drilled halfway to the center of the earth by now and I'm not interested in playing that game).
However, in a possibly vain attempt to bring this back on the ostensible topic of superhero comics:
Quote: : But if you only give the audience smart, intellectual, artistic entertainment, they will consume it.
If you refuse to make Marley & Me and Crash , and instead force the audience to watch Syriana and Gran Torino , it's not like they'll stop watching movies.
The equivalent to this statement for the superhero comic book world is that if you stopped making Batman or Spider-Man comics, then all those people currently reading them would stop and say, "Oh, I have no more spandex puncheminnaface stuff to read.
I might as well go read Love and Rockets and Persepolis and Cerebus instead." Or possibly even, "Well, I have no more Spider-Man , I might as well give this new Gravity comic book a try."
I just don't think that's true.
Those existing superhero comic book fans would just stop reading comics if that happened.
Marvel and DC can't get anybody to read a book that doesn't star one of the icons, and nearly every single attempt at a new book or something that's different or more intellectual has, for the most part, fallen flat on its face in the marketplace.
Vertigo is the exception, not the rule, and even then the overwhelming majority of their output is rather disappointing sales-wise compared to the top direct-market sellers (and even in the trades, which is supposedly where they do most of their business).
In other words, if Hollywood did just make Syrianas and Gran Torinos and the "important" movies, I do think people would probably just stop going to the movies.
I think there is no natural affinity between Spider-Man and Love and Rockets just because they share a medium in common, any more than I think there's a natural affinity between trashy romance novels and The Brothers Karamazov just because they're both fiction books or between the average bad comedy movie and The Insider just because they're both movies.
At this point, though, it seems to me that the real reason why DC and Marvel continue publishing a lot of the superhero comic icon books is due to inertia and to lock copyright and trademark status on their cash cows.
It sure isn't for the money or for the audience, since publishing isn't much of what either company makes compared to licensing and revenues from other media like TV shows and movies.
I think both companies could stop publishing comics entirely tomorrow and not really notice much of a difference in their bottom line.
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Comics tend to change because of different cultural attitudes.
Women used to be submissive in comics back in the 50s.
Now we have quite a few examples of strong female characters.
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Don't you realize you're coming up with a hypothetical scenario, Jono, that would put elitists out of business?
If Goodbye Chunky Rice was the baseline, lowest common denominator comic what would the elitist namedrop to make him feel superior?
Would he draw any enjoyment at all at reading the same dense, intellectual product that all of the unwashed masses enjoy?
I think these things should stand on their own merits, anyway.
If they find readers they should find readers because they are above the crowd, not by default because they are the only kind of comic provided.
And that's assuming that forcing it on people would make them accept it, I don't think it would.
People have different tastes and like different things, even dumb things, and people aren't necessarily what they read.
An intellectual can enjoy a Ditko Dr.
Strange or even an Archie Comic as well as they could enjoy Blankets or Jimbo.
Especially if they don't fall into the terrible trap of belieiving that the only themes and value in a work are the ones intended by the author.
That's of course not true, if you look at in the right way you can draw as much truth, especially "bad truth," out of a 50s-era B monster movie like "Horror of Party Beach" as you can some highbrow art film, and in some cases it means more because it's unconscious and therefore not encumbered by artifice.
One could write much more about the meaning of Superman than they could about a character from Astro City.
At any rate, instead of trying to force audiences to consume highbrow material many of them don't want, I believe in the marketplace model for ideas.
Let people put what they want out there, in as wide a range as they want, and people will find the material that suits them and the most compelling will rise to the top.
Oh, yeah, and on a topic that has more to do with comic books, comic books have conventions you have to realistically accept to enjoy them.
Marvel Comics has come up with a character that they can use to explore certain themes and storylines in the Hulk.
They could stop telling stories about the Hulk and then when they wanted to tell stories along those lines again create a similar character to tell them, but what purposes does that really serve?
They lose the familiar character that people have an emotional investment in and have to start all the way over to tell a story that could have just as easily been told with the Hulk?
So instead they keep updating and changing the Hulk, keeping him up with the times as much as possible without changing him so much that they'd have to end the story, and use him to tell those stories.
I can hear you saying in your head, right now, why don't they tell new stories?
But, honestly, there are universal themes in storytelling, wells that people go back to again and again.
The best comics characters are popular because they draw lots of water from one or more of these wells.
Nothing about their existence is stopping an up and coming creator from making a new comic with a completely new story and trying to sell it, it might not sell as many copies but that shouldn't be a foremost concern for someone trying to create new art or a new idea anyway.
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Quote: : Liu I think both companies could stop publishing comics entirely tomorrow and not really notice much of a difference in their bottom line.
Do you have any data to back this up?
Because if it's true, I wonder if they'd do it.
Things are so bad now, there's only one option left.
Yes, you guessed it: the latest trend.
We have to get the government involved.
Good comics clearly can't survive on capitalism alone, so if taxpayers can involuntarily pay for art or public broadcasting, why not comic books that don't suck?
It's the only way they'll exist anymore.
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Quote: : So what if the plots and themes are simple?
That means they are relatable.
I don't think relatability is really something to aspire to in art and fiction.
What does it accomplish?
We used to use entertainment to rise above our staid, boring reality.
Now we use it to just get more of our staid, boring reality, because we'd prefer to see something we recognize, which doesn't challenge us, than something new and innovative.
Quote: : Anything can make you think.
Teletubbies cannot make you think.
Quote: : Just because the piece is clear about where it stands on a subject doesn't mean you have to agree.
It does mean you don't have to think about it AT ALL.
Quote: : Everyone will take away something different even if the themes are explicit.
Really? Did we all take something different away from Crash ?
From The Passion of the Christ ?
Are there just a plethora of meanings coming out of John Grisham's books?
From Dan Brown's books?
Is it hard to figure out where Secret Invasion was coming from?
Quote: : Not having a POV can often times come off as lazy.
It comes off as lazy when it is lazy.
The end of Bowling for Columbine , for example.
Quote: : Easy aren't doesn't dumb people down.
By definition, it does, if it's the vastly dominant form.
If that's all there is, it's all people expect from art, so they get frustrated when art is more than that.
Quote: : Hard to follow plots are frustrating and often come off as people making things overly complex for no other reason than to "make them think".
Sometimes that's true.
But it's rarely the actual motivation.
Quote: : Would you write an essay for school that's hard to follow?
Essays for school are not art.
They are journalism.
Quote: : Clarity is your friend.
If you want to make a lot of money, that's true, because it's easy to sell simple, easy, basic art that anyone can understand without trying.
If you want to make art that challenges audiences to go beyond what they already know, then yes, you want to remain clear only insofar as it serves that innovation.
If, to deliver innovation, you have to be less obvious about it, then that is what you do.
Quote: : Having characters switch back and forth between good and evil can be frustrating unless there's a good reason.
That's not change in the sense that I'm referring to it.
That's very staid and overdone.
Quote: : Liu The equivalent to this statement for the superhero comic book world is that if you stopped making Batman or Spider-Man comics, then all those people currently reading them would stop and say, "Oh, I have no more spandex puncheminnaface stuff to read.
I might as well go read Love and Rockets and Persepolis and Cerebus instead." Or possibly even, "Well, I have no more Spider-Man , I might as well give this new Gravity comic book a try."
I just don't think that's true.
If all that's available is caviar, then all they will buy is caviar.
Quote: : Hopkins Don't you realize you're coming up with a hypothetical scenario, Jono, that would put elitists out of business?
If Goodbye Chunky Rice was the baseline, lowest common denominator comic what would the elitist namedrop to make him feel superior?
Would he draw any enjoyment at all at reading the same dense, intellectual product that all of the unwashed masses enjoy?
You'll find this shocking, Shawn, but an "elitist" is just someone who prefers the elite to the boring and mundane.
As an elitist myself, I would love it if everyone else was an elitist.
Name-drop? You think I enjoy name-dropping?
I live in Kansas!
If I was to "name-drop" Seamus Heaney in the average conversation in Kansas, people would think I was talking about an Irish whiskey or something.
Quote: : One could write much more about the meaning of Superman than they could about a character from Astro City.
That's because Astro City isn't really about the characters.
Astro City is a stylistic exercise.
(And if you don't agree, you're demonstrating why Astro City is inherently more interesting than the average Superman story--it's something that can be discussed beyond the level of "But it contradicts continuity and I don't like the art!")
Quote: : Let people put what they want out there, in as wide a range as they want, and people will find the material that suits them and the most compelling will rise to the top.
Yeah, capitalism worked real well for the economy too.
Quote: : They could stop telling stories about the Hulk and then when they wanted to tell stories along those lines again create a similar character to tell them, but what purposes does that really serve?
I should have been more clear with that.
I mean that the ongoing soap-opera stuff doesn't really need to continue.
Quote: : I can hear you saying in your head, right now, why don't they tell new stories?
That's weird, that's something that I wasn't saying in my head.
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From a PM conversation, a point I would like to make clear.
Quote: : Are you implying/saying that enjoying simple entertainment makes a person dumb and that we should feel ashamed for enjoying simplicity?
Not at all. I own all four Die Hard movies.
The problem is when that's all we enjoy, and all we are presented with.
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