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Post by tingramretro on Feb 21, 2017 10:43:43 GMT -5
Heroes like Hal Jordan and Barry had no edge and had interchangeable personalities with many of the DC characters. They redefined Hal as a daredevil in the 90's, It's too bad he wasn't that way from the beginning. I agree. Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, Ray Palmer...they had different costumes and powers, but exactly the same voice, for far too long. That's why I've always preferred Marvel as far as the Silver/Bronze age stuff went. They had actual characterization. |
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Post by Prince Hal on Feb 21, 2017 10:52:40 GMT -5
Heroes like Hal Jordan and Barry had no edge and had interchangeable personalities with many of the DC characters. They redefined Hal as a daredevil in the 90's, It's too bad he wasn't that way from the beginning. I agree. Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, Ray Palmer...they had different costumes and powers, but exactly the same voice, for far too long. That's why I've always preferred Marvel as far as the Silver/Bronze age stuff went. They had actual characterization. Let's not go overboard here. In Silver Age Marvel, you could substitute Ben Grimm's dialogue for Nick Fury's; the Wasps for Sue Storm's; the Torch for Spider-Man's (and both for the Rawhide Kid's); Professor X's for Reed Richards'; etc. etc., without missing a beat. I'll grant you it was different from DC's, but it got just as trite as what you're saying was the case at DC. |
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Post by Cei-U! on Feb 21, 2017 10:57:05 GMT -5
I disagree. I never read Sliver age Flash, but Silver Age GL was a devil-may-care cad. Whereas other heroes of the time were seemingly born righteous, he was more of an everyman trying to live up to the heroic standard. Silver Age DC didn't tend to do internal characterization all that overtly, but it was there. I only ever saw him exhibit that personality in the JL Year one mini. It's all through the Silver Age material, especially the early issues when GL was being lionized at cocktail parties and squiring eligible women around town. This was behavior wholly unlike any other DC hero's at the time. It was the contrast between hot-shot test pilot Hal Jordan and dependable, white bread Barry Allen that made the '60s Flash/GL team-ups enjoyable, something that wouldn't have worked if DC's Silver Age heroes' personalities were truly interchangeable. It may not have been the deepest charcaterization, especially compared to what Stan Lee was doing at Marvel, but it was there. Cei-U! I shore up shax's argument! |
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Post by Icctrombone on Feb 21, 2017 11:47:10 GMT -5
I think I need a microscope to see it.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Feb 21, 2017 14:41:22 GMT -5
I disagree. I never read Sliver age Flash, but Silver Age GL was a devil-may-care cad. Whereas other heroes of the time were seemingly born righteous, he was more of an everyman trying to live up to the heroic standard. Silver Age DC didn't tend to do internal characterization all that overtly, but it was there. I only ever saw him exhibit that personality in the JL Year one mini. His love interest regularly accuses him of being less mature than her and, unlike Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne, it isn't a ruse. But beyond even that, whereas all other heroes got to pave their own paths, he is inducted into a galactic organization he knows nothing about as the low man on the totem pole. |
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Post by MDG on Feb 21, 2017 15:46:30 GMT -5
I never saw Hal/GL's personality as much different from the other Schwartz-edited Silver Age heroes, but I think that's a function of Julie's gimmick/plot orientation to story. Any "personality" probably came from Fox or Broome.
The outlier is probably Elongated Man, where he's not a serious as the other heroes and the Ralph/Sue dynamic is a little more front and center.
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Post by Rob Allen on Feb 21, 2017 15:57:54 GMT -5
Here's a relevant story I read somewhere... in a JLA story in the mid-60s, Gardner Fox's original script had Wonder Woman deliver a long explanation of something. The Batman TV show was immensely popular at the moment, and Julius Schwartz wanted to emphasize Batman's role in the JLA, so he changed the script to have Batman deliver the explanation. But he didn't have to change a single word of the dialogue. None of the heroes except Snapper Carr had any distinctive speech patterns.
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Post by Cei-U! on Feb 21, 2017 16:03:18 GMT -5
One of many reasons I'd rather read John Broome's Silver Age scripts than Gardner Fox's.
Cei-U!
I summon the preference!
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Post by Prince Hal on Feb 21, 2017 16:39:08 GMT -5
I never saw Hal/GL's personality as much different from the other Schwartz-edited Silver Age heroes, but I think that's a function of Julie's gimmick/plot orientation to story. Any "personality" probably came from Fox or Broome. The outlier is probably Elongated Man, where he's not a serious as the other heroes and the Ralph/Sue dynamic is a little more front and center. By way of The Thin Man movie series, right down to the wife's status as a rich heiress. |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 22, 2017 21:25:18 GMT -5
I do feel DC's Silver Age heroes had similar personalities with minor differences. Marvel's heroes had different personalities but all had a flaw in their character to make them more "human".
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 22, 2017 22:52:39 GMT -5
I do feel DC's Silver Age heroes had similar personalities with minor differences. Marvel's heroes had different personalities but all had a flaw in their character to make them more "human". Ehhh...some did. A number didn't. Ant-Man/Hank Pym really had no discernible personality...certainly not until the Bronze Age. Thor really was nothing but Marvel's answer to Superman with no real personality of his own for at least the first couple of years of his existence. Sue Storm was a very generic damsel-in-distress for a long time. Tony Stark was less a character flaw and more a "I'm going to whine about my heart". Otherwise he was a pretty generic playboy hero. For every Ben Grimm or Peter Parker there was a Marvel character who was just as soulless as anything DC had. |
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Feb 27, 2017 9:08:02 GMT -5
The outlier is probably Elongated Man, where he's not a serious as the other heroes and the Ralph/Sue dynamic is a little more front and center. And how much of that was just from riffing on Jack Cole's Plastic Man? I still maintain that Hal Jordan had a personality, but I agree with your generalization overall. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jun 13, 2017 16:57:22 GMT -5
I think I need a microscope to see it. If you're raised on Marvel's "I'm going to whine about my problems for 7,000 words and eight pages" style it can be tough to see, I suppose. But it's very definitely there - Start by noticing how differently each of the main Schwartz heroes interacted with their girlfriends/significant others. Marvel had more cookie cutter romantic angst but DC had more varied and deeper relationships. And Rob's right too, of course. The characters in Justice League were completely inter-changeable blank slates. It was only in their solo stories that individual personalities shown through. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Jun 13, 2017 19:05:18 GMT -5
I think I need a microscope to see it. If you're raised on Marvel's "I'm going to whine about my problems for 7,000 words and eight pages" style it can be tough to see, I suppose. But it's very definitely there - Start by noticing how differently each of the main Schwartz heroes interacted with their girlfriends/significant others. Marvel had more cookie cutter romantic angst but DC had more varied and deeper relationships. And Rob's right too, of course. The characters in Justice League were completely inter-changeable blank slates. It was only in their solo stories that individual personalities shown through. Ha. That whining formula made them #1 to stay. I think they were interchangeable slates everywhere they were published until maybe the mid 70's. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jun 13, 2017 21:50:24 GMT -5
If you're raised on Marvel's "I'm going to whine about my problems for 7,000 words and eight pages" style it can be tough to see, I suppose. But it's very definitely there - Start by noticing how differently each of the main Schwartz heroes interacted with their girlfriends/significant others. Marvel had more cookie cutter romantic angst but DC had more varied and deeper relationships. And Rob's right too, of course. The characters in Justice League were completely inter-changeable blank slates. It was only in their solo stories that individual personalities shown through. Ha. That whining formula made them #1 to stay. I think they were interchangeable slates everywhere they were published until maybe the mid 70's. It is tough to see - The DC books didn't have a lot of the characters signifiers that the Marvel books did - The dialog pattersn and rhythms were basically the same and their was simply a lot more emphasis on plot and less on character dynamics, and the best DC characters were never as vivid as the best Marvel characters... But the Schwartz DC characters did behave very differently from each other (Except when they were altogether in Justice League, which is especially strange) and they did react to situations differently. Green Lantern was a lot more gung-ho than the Atom, the Flash was a lot more absent-minded-professor nerdy than Hawkman. Certainly the Marvel formula was more successful - Well, sort of, I've read that comic sales in general went down something like 70% from their peak in the '50s to the '70s* - and I'd agree that the best of Marvel's Silver Age hero books were better than the best of DC's. (DC dominated pretty much every other genre, though! Certainly the DC war books were more adult than anything published by Marvel.) Still, I'd say the Kane Green Lantern or the Kubert Hawkman are worth a re-read... I can't imagine that you'd miss the unique characterization now that you know that you're looking for it. * And I wouldn't be surprised if we lost another 70% between the 70's and today! |
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