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Post by foxley on Jul 22, 2016 18:47:11 GMT -5
Ha. Maybe The question should be which origin isn't silly. The Punisher. A man's family is killed by the mob and he uses his considerable military skills to take revenge. Pretty straightforward, with no chemicals, radiation, mutation, or mysticism inolved whatsoever. And it was just as good when Don Pendleton used it as the origin for The Executioner novels. |
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Post by dupersuper on Jul 22, 2016 20:48:15 GMT -5
Ha. Maybe The question should be which origin isn't silly. Batman. Boy sees his parents murdered, and devotes his life and fortune to training to be able fight criminals. dressed as a giant bat...in a batcar with batarangs... |
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Jul 22, 2016 20:58:38 GMT -5
Batman. Boy sees his parents murdered, and devotes his life and fortune to training to be able fight criminals. dressed as a giant bat...in a batcar with batarangs... dresses a 12 year old boy as a tweety bird in short pants and abuses him by sending him out into hazardous situations. From time to time they sleep in the same bed |
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Post by Icctrombone on Jul 22, 2016 21:07:22 GMT -5
You make it seem like a bad thing...
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Jul 22, 2016 21:10:58 GMT -5
You make it seem like a bad thing... Michael Jackson's favorite comic |
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Post by chadwilliam on Jul 22, 2016 23:27:30 GMT -5
I was impressed with the way Alan Grant handled the origin of his creation Zsasz (that serial killer Batman villain who would cut a line into his body every time he murdered). Grant was careful to emphasis that there really was nothing unusual about Zsasz that made him stand out in any way prior to his becoming a serial killer. His parents had both died, yes, but it was a natural death and not one of those "gunned down in front of my eyes while my planet was about to explode" deaths. Grant noted that while Zsasz was saddened by their passing, he was saddened the way any grown adult would be - sad, but he moved on. He did inherit a vast sum of money, but just spent it on mundane pursuits and not on Zsasz-mobiles or anything like that. No training, no vows, no exposure to radioactive anythings, nothing like that. Zsasz was so unaffected by and so indifferent to life in fact, that he saw no reason to go on living. Real life 19th century sociologist Emile Durkheim actually had a name to describe this sort of detachment some individuals have with the rest of society - anomie. It was only because a guy tried to mug Zsasz with a knife during his suicide attempt that Zsasz killed his first victim - in self-defense and it was at that moment that Zsasz realized that he derived enough pleasure from killing to go on living.
Yeah, yeah - his origin is "I had an epiphany that I liked killing" but it was so underplayed in Grant's telling. Zsasz was a mundane, boring guy whose defining moment came to him with a shrug and not with a powerful caption or panel depicting this momentous event. He was just a messed up guy who never realized he was messed up until he killed a man in self-defense. So his origin was essentially him recognizing (after 30 or so years of obliviousness to this fact) that his lack of passion, drive, interest in life was due to his being a sociopath and upon realizing that, deciding to just go with it. |
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Post by berkley on Jul 23, 2016 1:45:41 GMT -5
Accepting the obvious fact that all superhero origins are silly - how could they not be, since superheroes themselves are inherently silly when viewed from outside their own fictional fantasy world - perhaps the more pertinent question is which origins are good or bad from the (superhero) story-telling perspective.
For example, Marvel's first Captain Marvel should have been a creative (as opposed to commercial) disaster, since the whole motivation was strictly to cash in on the loophole left by DC letting their rights to the name "Captain Marvel" lapse (someone let me know if I have that wrong). And calling him "Mar-Vell" certainly wasn't a good start. However, they came up with what I think is a very effective character concept: a Kree war hero who decides he's fighting on the wrong side of the war, an alien Captain America who comes to think he's one of the bad guys and decides to start fighting for the Vietnamese. That is pretty damn compelling, IMO.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Jul 23, 2016 1:59:03 GMT -5
Certainly better than the Captain Marvel who appeared in between Fawcett's and Marvel Comics versions  |
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Post by foxley on Jul 23, 2016 2:49:31 GMT -5
If we accept that all superhero origins are silly to some extent, there is still a world of difference between the classics (like rocketed to Earth as an infant, or swearing an oath of vengeance after seeing your parents murdered), and things like being given a transfusion of mongoose blood to cure a cobra bite an gaining superspeed as a result.
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Post by tingramretro on Jul 23, 2016 6:10:30 GMT -5
Accepting the obvious fact that all superhero origins are silly - how could they not be, since superheroes themselves are inherently silly when viewed from outside their own fictional fantasy world - perhaps the more pertinent question is which origins are good or bad from the (superhero) story-telling perspective. For example, Marvel's first Captain Marvel should have been a creative (as opposed to commercial) disaster, since the whole motivation was strictly to cash in on the loophole left by DC letting their rights to the name "Captain Marvel" lapse (someone let me know if I have that wrong). You have that wrong. Fawcett's Captain Marvel wasn't acquired and relaunched by DC until 1973; Marvel's C.M debuted in 1968. The rights had never been with DC at that time, or if they were, had never been used by them. Marvel created a character called Captain Marvel because it was an obvious name for a Marvel hero...and in order to avoid another embarassment like the MF Enterprises version shown above potentially being confused with their company. |
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Post by Rob Allen on Jul 23, 2016 15:53:34 GMT -5
I was impressed with the way Alan Grant handled the origin of his creation Zsasz ... I haven't read any of the stories of this character, but his name seems like a clear reference to Thomas Szasz, the maverick psychiatrist. Was this mentioned in the comics, or in an interview? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Szasz"... he was best known as a social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, as what he saw as the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as scientism. [...] Szasz argued throughout his career that mental illness is a metaphor for human problems in living, and that mental illnesses are not real in the sense that cancers are real. Except for a few identifiable brain diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, there are “neither biological or chemical tests nor biopsy or necropsy findings for verifying or falsifying DSM diagnoses", i.e., there are no objective methods for detecting the presence or absence of mental illness." |
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Jul 23, 2016 17:58:32 GMT -5
Some of the more revered origin stories are objectively the most ridiculous. The spider-man origin would be a well known joke in comicdom if the character hadn't become so successful. And I love the X-Men origin: "uh, they were just born that way". Later writers turned it into something brilliant, but Stan was just lazy on that one.
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Post by Icctrombone on Jul 23, 2016 18:52:24 GMT -5
Some of the more revered origin stories are objectively the most ridiculous. The spider-man origin would be a well known joke in comicdom if the character hadn't become so successful. And I love the X-Men origin: "uh, they were just born that way". Later writers turned it into something brilliant, but Stan was just lazy on that one. Wow. I thought it was the opposite. The radioactive spider bite is goofy, but his attempt to cash in resulting in his Uncle being killed because of his selfishness was Brilliant. |
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
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Post by shaxper on Jul 23, 2016 19:31:17 GMT -5
Some of the more revered origin stories are objectively the most ridiculous. The spider-man origin would be a well known joke in comicdom if the character hadn't become so successful. And I love the X-Men origin: "uh, they were just born that way". Later writers turned it into something brilliant, but Stan was just lazy on that one. Wow. I thought it was the opposite. The radioactive spider bite is goofy, but his attempt to cash in resulting in his Uncle being killed because of his selfishness was Brilliant. I meant the radioactive spider bite part  |
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Post by foxley on Jul 23, 2016 20:03:33 GMT -5
I was impressed with the way Alan Grant handled the origin of his creation Zsasz ... I haven't read any of the stories of this character, but his name seems like a clear reference to Thomas Szasz, the maverick psychiatrist. Was this mentioned in the comics, or in an interview? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Szasz"... he was best known as a social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, as what he saw as the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as scientism. [...] Szasz argued throughout his career that mental illness is a metaphor for human problems in living, and that mental illnesses are not real in the sense that cancers are real. Except for a few identifiable brain diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, there are “neither biological or chemical tests nor biopsy or necropsy findings for verifying or falsifying DSM diagnoses", i.e., there are no objective methods for detecting the presence or absence of mental illness." I'm sure I have seen this referenced somewhere, but can't find the specific reference at the moment. |
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