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Post by Deleted on Jan 1, 2019 15:35:09 GMT -5
I totally forgot Super Turtle and thanks for posting this beccabear67 and I do remember seeing it in DC Comics books, especially in various Superman's titles and all that.
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Post by sunofdarkchild on Jan 1, 2019 16:22:07 GMT -5
I liked Byrne's and later post-crisis writer's explanation of Krypton. A race of beings that can become practically godlike just by leaving their homeworld and gets wiped out because they refuse to leave that homeworld - which is true of every version - has to have something seriously wrong with it. This is the only Krypton that both makes sense and feels truly alien.
And I think the post-crisis version also showed why Kal El is special more than simply having another Kryptonian try and fail to fill his shoes. It did that by establishing him first of all as the inspiration for literally every other hero besides for maybe Batman and by having people on earth take up directly after him like Steel, Matrix/Linda, and Conner. He wasn't just more competent than other people with the same powers, he was the example both other heroes and regular people aspired to. The 'similar person replaces regular hero but fails' isn't exactly uncommon. It's been done with Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, and a bunch of others. It comes and goes and doesn't leave much of an impact. But consistently showing the impact Superman has on the people around him over the course of years, that sticks.
I think the bigger issue with characters like Supergirl, even more than 'diluting' Superman, is that the character is always going to feel redundant. What does someone with the exact same powers as Superman have to add if they team up? How different can the stories about these similar characters actually be? Someone like the 90s Supergirl both lends herself to different kinds of stories and can do things Superman can't, providing a help in a fight beyond also being able to punch things. There's a lot more that can be done with someone who can shapeshift, turn invisible, use telekinesis, teleport, or use angelic powers than with someone whose powerset is the same superstrenth and heat vision as Superman, both in a teamup and in her own book.
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Post by comicsandwho2 on Jan 1, 2019 20:01:06 GMT -5
I know he's outside of 'continuity' but I loved Super Turtle most. The turtle of steel rules! There I said it. I'm not the only one; they included him in two of the "Silver Age" event books. This one written by Mark Waid was great fun... and this one with art again by Ty Templeton but more in the Henry Boltinoff style is also clever with lots of details for us true fans... From 'Dial B For Blog': www.dialbforblog.com/archives/314/This is the funniest thing I've read this year! Loved Brainy Yak, Shh Ell, and the 'only one ship' gag.
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Post by chadwilliam on Jan 1, 2019 20:40:02 GMT -5
I think the bigger issue with characters like Supergirl, even more than 'diluting' Superman, is that the character is always going to feel redundant. What does someone with the exact same powers as Superman have to add if they team up? How different can the stories about these similar characters actually be? Someone like the 90s Supergirl both lends herself to different kinds of stories and can do things Superman can't, providing a help in a fight beyond also being able to punch things. There's a lot more that can be done with someone who can shapeshift, turn invisible, use telekinesis, teleport, or use angelic powers than with someone whose powerset is the same superstrenth and heat vision as Superman, both in a teamup and in her own book. A fair point, but if I can whine just a bit more... One of the biggest red flags a new writer can wave when taking on Superman is saying "He's too powerful so I toned down his abilities". Aside from making me question how much different a Superman who's as powerful as 100 atomic bombs could be from a Superman who's only as powerful as ten, it always sounds like an admission that because their own imagination and creativity isn't limitless, the stories you can tell with Superman shouldn't be either. So while the question of "Well what's so special about Superman when there's a Supergirl?" for instance, is completely valid, it's a question the writer should be addressing rather than evading. The fact that the question is hard to answer doesn't mean it should be ignored - it being a difficult question to answer is what makes it the set up for a great story. Chester Gould used to write his Dick Tracy strips only far enough in advance that the strips which had his detective placed in an impossible trap would make it into newspapers before Gould had come up with a way for Tracy to escape. He would purposefully give himself seemingly impossible death-traps to escape from and then sit down and try to figure out what the hell to do next. That's what I liked about Superman - he's the guy on the cover but you've got a girl, a dog, a bottle city, and a Phantom Zone filled with people with his abilities, now go show me what makes him special. Superman's also the guy from who we got Batman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter - well, just name a superhero post 1938 and he/she/it came from Superman. You can either accept that you're no longer special or you can accept that circumstances have just upped the ante and you've got to step up to the plate. Bring on the clones, I say!
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Roquefort Raider
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jan 1, 2019 20:53:52 GMT -5
I think the bigger issue with characters like Supergirl, even more than 'diluting' Superman, is that the character is always going to feel redundant. What does someone with the exact same powers as Superman have to add if they team up? How different can the stories about these similar characters actually be? Someone like the 90s Supergirl both lends herself to different kinds of stories and can do things Superman can't, providing a help in a fight beyond also being able to punch things. There's a lot more that can be done with someone who can shapeshift, turn invisible, use telekinesis, teleport, or use angelic powers than with someone whose powerset is the same superstrenth and heat vision as Superman, both in a teamup and in her own book. A fair point, but if I can whine just a bit more... One of the biggest red flags a new writer can wave when taking on Superman is saying "He's too powerful so I toned down his abilities". Aside from making me question how much different a Superman who's as powerful as 100 atomic bombs could be from a Superman who's only as powerful as ten, it always sounds like an admission that because their own imagination and creativity isn't limitless, the stories you can tell with Superman shouldn't be either. So while the question of "Well what's so special about Superman when there's a Supergirl?" for instance, is completely valid, it's a question the writer should be addressing rather than evading. The fact that the question is hard to answer doesn't mean it should be ignored - it being a difficult question to answer is what makes it the set up for a great story.
Yes!!! If it’s a challenge, a writer should rise up to it, not brush it under the carpet! I love the way writers over the years showed that Superman was more than just a fancy set of powers, just like Captain America is more than a shield and a strong square jaw. I never felt that Krypto, Kara or Kandor diluted Superman’s uniqueness. If anything, they enriched his legend. Sure, having a super-dog does make a character a little less connected to our real world... but is that a real problem?
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Post by Chris on Jan 2, 2019 3:23:03 GMT -5
If you're asking about Bryne's intent, I know that he's said on numerous occasions that by introducing other survivors of Krypton's destruction, Superman was "de-uniqued". In The Krypton Companion released by TwoMorrows Publishing, Byrne (along with others) was asked if he felt that Supergirl, Kandor, Krypto, etc. made Superman less unique to which Byrne responded "if by unique you mean 'one and only' then the answer should be obvious'. I've seen comments by Byrne about this "de-uniquing" thing. I can see his point, and I'll agree that DC sometimes (or even more than sometimes) went overboard in this regard. But I also think Byrne is limiting his view to nothing more than a character's powers. According to this logic, if someone has the same powers as Superman, then Superman is immediately and unavoidably de-valued, no other considerations apply. The worst case of this limited view is when he claimed (more than once, I believe) that the Green Lantern Corps de-uniqued Green Lantern, because there were 3599 other Lanterns with identical powers. This, to me, is a clear case of Completely Missing The Point. For one thing, Green Lantern was a member of what was essentially a police force. Their beat was the entire universe, but still basically police officers. Saying other members of the Corps de-uniqued Hal Jordan is like saying Baker on the TV show CHiPs was de-uniqued by the addition of Ponch. The Green Lantern series had a setup that is essentially a science fiction police comic.* Even Batman, with all the crime drama tropes, doesn't even compare. And I don't know HOW many times Hal was shown to be the best GL. Sounds pretty unique to me. And for another, Green Lantern was (and I think largely still is) pretty much the only character with any such setup, which immediately sets him apart. Making him rather, shall we say, unique among superheroes.How many superheroes have a setup that is essentially a science fiction police procedural? Even Batman, with all the crime drama tropes, doesn't even compare. So to reiterate, this "de-uniquing" thing is mostly just a very narrow way if interpreting characters. * In fairness, DC usually didn't treat the series this way. Most writers and/or editors just cranked out run of the mill superhero stories for GL, only occasionally touching on things like jurisdiction and cause to intervene.
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Post by sunofdarkchild on Jan 2, 2019 8:50:59 GMT -5
A really good writer might be able to make it work, but I haven't seen it done right. The Supergirl show was the final straw that convinced me Kara would never be a good, unique character in her own right and would always be just taking stuff from Superman rather than doing anything to be set apart. It's not a question of 'what's so special about Superman if there's a Supergirl?' It's 'what's so special about Supergirl if Superman was there first and is always going to be the best?'
Another issue I have is the way it limits how the cast can expand in other ways. Not having any family from Krypton both forces and allows Superman to find family on Earth. People like Steel and Matrix can become family or something close to it. But once you introduce a blood relative from Krypton Kal El now has no motivation to seek that sort of family on earth. For example, the acclaimed story, 'For the Man who has everything.' It really is a great story, but I was always bothered by the fact that according to that story, in Superman's perfect world there would be no Lois, no Jimmy, not a single person from earth. The only person he knew in real life who would exist was Kara. How can the people he supposedly cares about the most mean so little to him that he'd be happier in a world where they never existed?
I have a similar problem with Damian Wayne, a character who I actually like. Once you introduce Bruce Wayne's biological son there's nowhere to go from there. No one else can be Robin after that. No one else can be the heir apparent. The door to further expansions of the cast and mythos is basically closed. So I'm of the opinion that if a character like that must be introduced, it should be later, after the cast has already been expanded to the point where it wouldn't matter if it couldn't get any bigger. I'd much rather have a 90s-style 'team Superman' of 3-4 unique characters than just have another Kryptonian.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 8, 2019 9:11:54 GMT -5
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Post by Icctrombone on Jan 8, 2019 10:17:14 GMT -5
Ha. I never heard of that book.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2019 13:27:16 GMT -5
Wishing DC and Marvel would still collaborate. They missed a trick in 2016, the 40th anniversary of Superman VS The Amazing Spider-Man. They could have published a Supes/Spidey team-up, which would have been their third. I mean, three is a good number, right? Three parts of an egg, water in three forms, film trilogies, Holy Trinity, etc.
I was thinking about ideas recently: Green Lantern Corps in the Negative Zone, Aquaman VS Hydro-Man (predictable, I know), the Flash teaming up with Nova, etc.
Will DC and Marvel ever collaborate again?
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2019 15:19:15 GMT -5
Wishing DC and Marvel would still collaborate. They missed a trick in 2016, the 40th anniversary of Superman VS The Amazing Spider-Man. They could have published a Supes/Spidey team-up, which would have been their third. I mean, three is a good number, right? Three parts of an egg, water in three forms, film trilogies, Holy Trinity, etc. I was thinking about ideas recently: Green Lantern Corps in the Negative Zone, Aquaman VS Hydro-Man (predictable, I know), the Flash teaming up with Nova, etc. Will DC and Marvel ever collaborate again? It's not up to Marvel and DC, it is up to Disney and Warner. And that's not going to happen. -M
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2019 15:24:17 GMT -5
You know exactly what I meant. If I wanted corrections on semantics, for the sake of being contrarian, there's a certain other comic forum I'd visit.
I'm fully aware of who owns what.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2019 15:57:14 GMT -5
You know exactly what I meant. If I wanted corrections on semantics, for the sake of being contrarian, there's a certain other comic forum I'd visit. I'm fully aware of who owns what. It's not semantics. It's a different reality. Marvel was not a part of a corporate entity when those cross-overs took place. They are now, That fact changes the situation and makes such cross-overs in the future unlikely at best and a legal nightmare to negotiate if they tried. You asked why they don't do it, if you knew they were both under corporate umbrellas now and the reality that entails, then you already knew the answer to your question, so why ask it? If you don't want an answer to a question, don't ask it. If you simply want to express you miss those crossovers, that's one thing, but you don't need to ask a question to express that. If you ask a question, you will get an answer and the answer is it won't happen because of the corporate reality that both publishers currently exist in. If you already knew that, as you stated, why did you then ask a question you already knew the answer to? -M
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2019 17:27:18 GMT -5
Contrarian as ever, I see. I knew who owned what. I did not know there was a policy prohibiting crossovers, hence my question. I have no office at WB or Disney, I am unaware of any corporate staff who have an opinion on crossovers. That is why I asked the question.
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Post by Icctrombone on Jan 16, 2019 7:14:08 GMT -5
You know exactly what I meant. If I wanted corrections on semantics, for the sake of being contrarian, there's a certain other comic forum I'd visit. I'm fully aware of who owns what. It's not semantics. It's a different reality. Marvel was not a part of a corporate entity when those cross-overs took place. They are now, That fact changes the situation and makes such cross-overs in the future unlikely at best and a legal nightmare to negotiate if they tried. -M You might be overstating this. If some fanboy CEO wanted to see a crossover, it would be done. No legal nightmares would ensue.
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