Name a Superhero you just can't stand
Name a Superhero you just can't stand
For some reason I've just never liked Spider-Man. He comes off as a whiney, ignorant child that never seems to grow up or mature despite everything he goes through. I love a good coming of age story, but he just never seems to become an adult.
Jane Foster when she was the wielder of Mjolnir. Not for anything about her personally, but the fact that Thor was treated as a codename. It's the dude's actual name, it'd be like if Sam Wilson went around introducing himself as Steve Rogers when he took the Captain America mantle. It's happened a few other times like with Eric Masterson, but at least he had the excuse that for most of the time he used the name he and the actual Thor were sharing a body.
The Flash.
Not because I don't like the character but because he honestly should be one of the strongest characters in DC but they constantly nerf him in the writing because they realized just like superman he could literally just show up and fix everything before anyone else even realized there was a problem
Batman. He's a billionaire playboy living in a city full of poverty. He may not kill but he has no problem crippling someone for life. And the fact he apparently learns nothing about the joker over the decades has resulted in so so many people dying to the joker's schemes.
And the reality is that he's still that same child in that alley but in an adult's body. He takes on different child robins because he never grew past that. He has trauma that was never treated and one of the main symptoms of trauma is being stuck in the time period that the trauma happened. He doesn't really have a personality beyond the trauma.
Superman.
He's just a dude that was made of perfection. Nothing can go too wrong for him. Perfectly strong. Perfectly sound. Perfectly everything.
Yes I know and am aware of the arcs he's been in where writers have tried to give Superman internal challenges and struggles about who he is as a superhero. But it's like he's going to bounce back from it all anyways because he's walking perfection.
And a lot of over-compensating guys idolize that.
I have to assume you've only seen the Spider-Man movies of recent years and not the comics, the original live action show, or the 90's animated series.
All of those go well into Peter Parker's adult years and he's a much more likeable character. I don't particularly like what they have done to him in the modern stuff (outside of Spiderverse since Miles is a totally different person anyway). It doesn't help that it's been rebooted 3 times so all they've shown is his origin story a bunch of times. I can't stand modern Spidey, either. And it's extra infuriating because Spider-Man is my favorite.
Cyclops. What a toolbox.
And in the X-Men ‘97 reboot, WOW! have they ramped up the toolbox factor.
She-Hulk, read a few of the comics, saw another version, I don't get the appeal. So she's a lawyer, so is Daredevil, it's a job that doesn't lend itself well to perilous adventures. Filing a brief....at the edge of madness! She forgot that the county clerk's office is closed on Memorial Day (US observed)!!! Dun dun duuuunnn
Did you ever watch the Spiderverse movies? I feel like you’d appreciate Peter B Parker a lot.
Personally I don’t really hate any superheroes. I never fell in love with Wolverine like most people did though. My first experiences with X Men were the first two live action movies, however.
I'm kind of annoyed by most superheroes as characters because of the costume thing.
The spandex thing that's a pretty-common convention was because the Comic Code Authority disallowed nudity. Solution? Skintight outfits.
Now, I've got no problem with nudity, or salaciousness, or outright adult comics for that matter.
But we've got all that historical baggage of just about everyone running around in skintight outfits. So a lot of the genre winds up with having to come up with elaborate explanations as to why they're wearing the things.
The CCA is long dead. You can have nudity or salaciousness in comic books if you want. But the convention is still with us because of designs that date to that era, and it's just senseless. I feel like it kinda restricts the genre and doesn't help the immersion.
There are comic characters who don't do the spandex thing. John Constantine or Dick Tracy wear trenchcoats. Dream in Sandman doesn't have fixed garb, but doesn't do spandex.
The Parahumans series -- Worm and Ward web serials, not comic books but certainly superheroes -- are what I'd call some examples of modern superheroes that don't have a design dating from an era where there were CCA constraints. Granted, they aren't graphic novels or comic books, so there are different incentives, but even so.
All of them.Deadpool was kinda funny.
Permanently Deleted
Modern Batman and Modern Superman.
I won't go on my 2 hour rant off everything wrong. But a short version is the writing for them is lazy and undeveloped. Both of them represent the most uninteresting form of a power fantasy. The modern Batman of 'having a plan for everything' and being this overburden angsty character is just awful. If Batman was a d&d character, he has loaded dice and is throwing that 20s on intimidation. And for Superman he's just not interesting, because with the amount of power he's been given and the amount of abilities he has the fact that lex luthor is somehow a villain of his is laughable.
Batman used to be the world's greatest detective. And for me the last time I saw Batman be Batman was the '90s animated series. And frankly the most recent movie The Batman also did a very good job I thought in that regard.
Superman used to have limits. He was fast but not infinite speed fast. He was strong but not infinite strength.
In both cases it feels like the people who write for these characters use one simple rule... This my favorite character so he win. Neither character feels like their struggles are earned, because the writing is forced. Like it used to be if Superman needed to save somebody you weren't 100% sure he'd be able to get there in time, stop the bad guy save the people! Modern Superman is like, a being a hundred light years away, tripped and their falling! They need your help before they get a boo-boo and I have no doubt Superman would get there somehow and then save a hundred worlds along the way. (An over-exaggeration I know but I want to get the point across at how lazy I feel the writing is). Or the fact that anybody fears Batman when most of his villains barely fear him. You have members like Green lantern, Martian manhunter, Superman, and Wonder woman who act like in any way Batman is a threat to them.
I'll stop ranting cuz I can honestly go on. But I will say with the massive decline for me personally with these two, I've been far more receptive of some of the other DC characters that I used to overlook when I was younger. I can't believe I 100% slept on the flash like that dude is straight boss. Or plastic man! So at least some good came of it.
Are you judging by the movies, or the comic books? The movies keep him a perpetual teen; he's way more sassy and adult in the comics.
There are tons im not wild about. Can't stand. I dunno. at this point there have been multiple versions of most and usually at least one interpretation is decent.
All but Dexter.
Basically all of them.
Superheroes are fucking boring. You know how the movie will end from the title. Even in the impossibly rare instances where mortality is even considered as a possibility it's usually reversed or unreliably narrarated.
They're for children.
BuT mUh CaMeO!1!
MuH cAnNoN iMpLiCaTiOnS!
Never read the comics have you?
Captain America
"He just never seems to become an adult"
What are you expecting? That fictional superheros grow up and get old?
Spiderman first appeared in -62, so you'd have never seen him as an immature teenager, but a grumpy middleaged dude.
On that note, there are depictions of adult Spiderman. Like in "Into the Spiderverse" or what was it.
But the essence of the character is the relative immaturity. Like Batman's is gruff vigilanteism and Superman's overtly good nature.
All of them: I want authenticity,
and "superheroes" are fake human-meaning, engineered to push distractine power/ego-fantasy instead of actual-human development.
Read both of John Truby's books, "The Anatomy of Genres", & "The Anatomy of Story", and become much competenter in what story/movie makers should be doing,
and then consider how much is being invested in preventing realism-of-context from being known by mass-media consumers..
..and then understand the long-term consequences of deliberately/systematically diverging mass-awareness from what real meaning, real human context, is, .. through decades..
It's part of a whole-class, or whole-population, suckerpunching, but it seems to be of unconscious, not conspiracy, intent.
Pretence-programmed populations are less realistic & less reality-competent.
Bollywood & Hollywood both produce divorce-from-reality.
That isn't required, for story, or human-meaning, is it?