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Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2019 10:00:02 GMT -5
Although lots of superheroes have strengths and weaknesses, some must be harder to write convincing opponents for than others.
Batman has numerous capabilities, but I would imagine it's fairly easy to create convincing opponents for him because he can be knocked out, incapacitated, overwhelmed with sleeping gas, etc. His ankle can be sprained, he can get a concussion, broken nose, etc. For all his strengths, it can't be that hard to continually create challenges for him.
So, in your view, if you were given heroes to write, which ones do you think would be quite hard as far as coming up with credible threats for?
Luke Cage is one. When a guy has a body as hard as his, it must be quite the challenge to keep coming up with opponents who have the means to defeat him. I mean, you can't keep depowering someone or having a giant robot in every story.
Iron Fist's martial arts skills are what they are, so I always felt it must be hard to keep coming up with threats against him. Whether man or not, the threats are at the mercy of his skills.
Obvious choices are Flash, Silver Surfer and Dr. Strange. If I was handed one of those characters to write, well one would have to keep coming up with ideas for foes who can handle or outperform Flash's speed, Surfer's cosmic powers, Strange's spells, etc.
Omnipotent characters must be hard to write. This is probably why (I'm presuming here) that Q, from Star Trek: The Next Generation, could never be a total villain - and descended into comic relief. No-one can really challenge him. Or Doctor Manhattan. I mean, if Doctor Manhattan had his own comic book, page one might be interesting, but what happens after he's defeated the foe on the first panel of page 2? The same could be said for the likes of the Spectre and Phantom Stranger.
This is why I really do like characters who do have numerous vulnerabilities. Spidey is a great character, but it's probably easier to come up with convincing foes for him on a monthly basis. But I would not relish it if I was handed a 12-issue assignment for Luke Cage and the editor said, "Keep him in Harlem - and I want him to get beaten up and hurt by a different opponent in each issue." What would I do?
Other than the ones I've mentioned, what other characters do you think fit the criteria of this topic?
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Post by rberman on Dec 27, 2019 11:23:19 GMT -5
It all depends how consistently the powers are being written. Someone like The Flash should be able to handle anything because of his instantaneous reactions, but he's rarely written so omnipotently. Likewise Superman, who has all that plus a whole lot more.
Q is not intended to be defeated physically. He's more of a Satan figure who shows up to tempt the heroes and then stalks off when they show their moral fiber.
Most superheroes should be susceptible to psychological attacks, blackmail, kidnapped loved ones, etc. Poison gas or oxygen deprivation. Heroes with melee attacks can be immobilized in midair by anti-grav, strong winds, forcefields...
Iron Fist would not fare well against beam weapons (lasers) or area weapons (grenades) or gas attacks.
In the 1960s or early 1970s, a comic book could get by just facing Luke Cage (or whoever) up against a different foe every month. Strength-man. Jumping-man. Glue-man. Flying-man. Etc. But the aging audience wanted more character development. As the first season of the Luke Cage TV show demonstrated, there's a lot more to do with "strongman in Harlem" than have him rassle a different spandex foe in each installment.
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Post by codystarbuck on Dec 27, 2019 12:35:51 GMT -5
Superman was hard to write because of his power levels and because of his virtue, though I believe that is down to poor writing, rather than the character. terry Pratchett proved you could write a virtuous character and make him fun and interesting, with Carrot, in the City Watch novels, as he is pretty much in the Superman mold (while lacking superhuman powers). Some writers got it; many didn't. Also, since they were writing to kids, they concentrated on making it imaginative, which meant puzzles and natural disasters and such.
Dr Strange is one, because the way magic worked was so undefined. Giving it a definite set of rules would have given a better structure to build stories around, which is why it was so inconsistent and depended more on visual flair than the writing, in much of its life.
Flash, traditionally, was about employing his abilities in clever ways. As Justice League Unlimited showed, when Luthor inhabited Flash's body, he was probably more powerful than anyone, except Superman. In practice, though, he had to reason out ways to get past his foes death traps and gimmicks. That was the beauty of the Silver Age stories, as they were speed puzzles. By the Bronze Age, that was old hat and it was hard to do something different with him, which is why the book was rather ho-hum through much of the 70s, with pockets of great stories.
Green Lantern was another, especially after the O'Neil and Adams experiment. The wonder was gone from the character and they tried to change things by changing his job. Plus, he was still paired with Green Arrow, who had a more dominant personality.
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Post by mikelmidnight on Dec 27, 2019 12:59:44 GMT -5
It all depends how consistently the powers are being written. Someone like The Flash should be able to handle anything because of his instantaneous reactions, but he's rarely written so omnipotently.
When I roleplayed Jay Garrick a couple of times, I had to completely dumb him down otherwise he'd have captured every villain in a couple seconds. It was sort of frustrating.
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Post by mikelmidnight on Dec 27, 2019 13:02:44 GMT -5
Superman was hard to write because of his power levels and because of his virtue, though I believe that is down to poor writing, rather than the character
Another complexity to the Silver Age version of the character was that in addition to being near-omnipotent and virtuous, he was also a scientific genius with otherworldly technology.
I always thought it was a shame Jim Starlin never had a tenure during the pre-Crisis era (aside from a DCCP arc), as he might have taken him in a cosmic dimension which would have been interesting to see.
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Post by brutalis on Dec 27, 2019 13:26:23 GMT -5
Any hero can be challenged by anybody at any given time. We the readers and the creators (writer/artists) have to remember that no one person is ever perfect in their power set or abilities. The heroes and villains are all at their core essentially human. Flawed and capable of mistakes, errors in judgement, abuse of powers or responsibility, arrogance and so forth and so on. This means that a hero can always find someone or something to challenging them whether it is in mind or body.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2019 15:34:54 GMT -5
In the 1960s or early 1970s, a comic book could get by just facing Luke Cage (or whoever) up against a different foe every month. Strength-man. Jumping-man. Glue-man. Flying-man. Etc. But the aging audience wanted more character development. As the first season of the Luke Cage TV show demonstrated, there's a lot more to do with "strongman in Harlem" than have him rassle a different spandex foe in each installment. That's a good point - and one worthy of a future debate. I have to say that I am one of those ageing readers who actually prefers the era of standalone stories with occasional two-parters/three-parters. I'm reading the early Iron Fist stories thanks to picking up the "Essential" volume at a car boot sale, and while there is an arc, it's good to see a different opponent each month. I did enjoy the Luke Cage Netflix series, it's very compelling and engrossing. However, much like the Iron Fist series (which I also enjoyed), I can't help but think that fewer episodes might have worked. Or at least 3 3-parters with different opponents, perhaps tied into a larger arc. Both approaches can work, of course. But here's one thing I think about: as a kid, 12 Batman issues over a year meant 12 different opponents - or 11 if there was a two-parter. Today, with six-issue arcs being a 'thing', it means that in a calendar year, you're only really getting 2 stories/2 opponents. So if they published a Luke Cage comic today, and the first six-issue arc featured Bushmaster while the second six-issue arc featured Diamondback, we're only getting to see him battle two opponents in a year. It's part of the "writing for the trade" concept, I guess. I do think both approaches have their pros and cons. I was chatting about this recently with my brother (we were discussing classic TV vs. modern TV). The benefit of something like The A-Team and The Six Million Dollar Man is that, while you didn't really get character development/long arcs, you got lots of different stories in a season - and could watch them in any order. Today we get season-long arcs in a lot of shows, often featuring one antagonist. That does mean you have to watch every episode in order. The benefits are that you get a lot of character development and depth, but you are only really getting one story. |
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Post by rberman on Dec 27, 2019 16:03:49 GMT -5
In the 1960s or early 1970s, a comic book could get by just facing Luke Cage (or whoever) up against a different foe every month. Strength-man. Jumping-man. Glue-man. Flying-man. Etc. But the aging audience wanted more character development. As the first season of the Luke Cage TV show demonstrated, there's a lot more to do with "strongman in Harlem" than have him rassle a different spandex foe in each installment. That's a good point - and one worthy of a future debate. I have to say that I am one of those ageing readers who actually prefers the era of standalone stories with occasional two-parters/three-parters. I'm reading the early Iron Fist stories thanks to picking up the "Essential" volume at a car boot sale, and while there is an arc, it's good to see a different opponent each month. I did enjoy the Luke Cage Netflix series, it's very compelling and engrossing. However, much like the Iron Fist series (which I also enjoyed), I can't help but think that fewer episodes might have worked. Or at least 3 3-parters with different opponents, perhaps tied into a larger arc. Both approaches can work, of course. But here's one thing I think about: as a kid, 12 Batman issues over a year meant 12 different opponents - or 11 if there was a two-parter. Today, with six-issue arcs being a 'thing', it means that in a calendar year, you're only really getting 2 stories/2 opponents. So if they published a Luke Cage comic today, and the first six-issue arc featured Bushmaster while the second six-issue arc featured Diamondback, we're only getting to see him battle two opponents in a year. It's part of the "writing for the trade" concept, I guess. I do think both approaches have their pros and cons. I was chatting about this recently with my brother (we were discussing classic TV vs. modern TV). The benefit of something like The A-Team and The Six Million Dollar Man is that, while you didn't really get character development/long arcs, you got lots of different stories in a season - and could watch them in any order. Today we get season-long arcs in a lot of shows, often featuring one antagonist. That does mean you have to watch every episode in order. The benefits are that you get a lot of character development and depth, but you are only really getting one story. I am happy for both TV and comic books to move into longer form storytelling. The opportunities of stand-alone stories were largely exhausted throughout the 20th century for both forms of media. If one wants to read self-contained comic book stories in which the hero punches until the villain falls down, a lifetime's worth of those already exist. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2019 16:17:46 GMT -5
That is a good point, but I suppose I could criticise it on many levels. I mean, I have little incentive to buy single issues now, not when they cost three or four quid. I'd rather wait for the trade because ten or twelve quid for a complete story is better than three or four quid for an incomplete tale. That's one other way of looking at it.
I do think, and you have conveyed it well, that longer-form storytelling has benefits. One criticism I have of older TV shows is that things/characters were forgotten about. Someone could be tortured in an episode, or lose a partner, and the next episode wouldn't mention that. Someone could find the love of their life - and if they died, the next episode wouldn't reference that. A modern show would. If Luke Cage got a third season (I wish!), and a woman he dated died, we'd see the ramifications of that for many episodes to come.
On comics, I feel some things can be contrived when you have to fit them into six instalments so that a trade can be released. I mean, some stories need to be longer. I've recently read the Avengers story "No Road Home". It needed to be a long story. But then there have been some stories where six episodes seemed too many, three or four might have sufficed. Writing six episodes purely to fit a trade paperback's requirement feels a little bit like "tail wagging the dog" for my liking.
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Post by rberman on Dec 27, 2019 16:22:51 GMT -5
That is a good point, but I suppose I could criticise it on many levels. I mean, I have little incentive to buy single issues now, not when they cost three or four quid. I'd rather wait for the trade because ten or twelve quid for a complete story is better than three or four quid for an incomplete tale. That's one other way of looking at it. I see little incentive to buy individual monthly issues. That distribution model is almost dead, and rightly so. I'd rather see a longer story with better art published less frequently. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 28, 2019 7:14:25 GMT -5
I agree with you.
With some Christmas money I was given, I bought War of the Realms earlier today (reprinting issues #1-6). For fifteen quid. To have bought those issues individually would have cost on, around or over twenty quid. So I have saved five quid and got a complete story.
Regarding the monthly frequency, human beings, in any endeavour, tend to do things because 'that's how they've always been done'. It's like the majority of UK comics are on a weekly frequency, it's what we've been conditioned to accept. I could never imagine The Beano switching to fortnightly or monthly. Perhaps the US comic industry thinks because the majority of its titles have always been monthly, it should stay that way, but I do think the distribution model makes no sense in 2019.
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Post by hondobrode on Dec 28, 2019 9:29:31 GMT -5
the right hand of God  |
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Post by beccabear67 on Dec 28, 2019 14:42:22 GMT -5
Omnipotent characters must be hard to write. This is probably why (I'm presuming here) that Q, from Star Trek: The Next Generation, could never be a total villain - and descended into comic relief. No-one can really challenge him. I find DC's Mr. Mxyzptlk and Marvel's Impossible Man pretty much destroy the credibility of any story they're in. Just the existence of a Q or magical no-rules creature character can undermine the entire series or title. I used to have a problem with Scarlet Witch but luckily some writers did finally define her seeming magic hex power in a more rational way (I still dislike Gambit intensely though). Sometimes a character's limitations can lead to their getting into a rut in terms of adversaries... The Flash has to fight someone where super-speed or a spin-off of it will be effective. Green Lanterns have to indirectly use the power ring to deal with anyone yellow (or wood for the Alan Scott). And there's only so many times they can appear clever thinking up a work-around. The Hulk just gets madder and madder most of the time and usually can't be beaten, they'll even tell you that, so I found the more Bruce Banner was involved the better the Hulk character worked. Or you just give him a truck load of hostess fruit-pies.  |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 28, 2019 14:59:07 GMT -5
It's slightly different from what we're discussing here, but having seen the first two seasons of The Adventures of Superman, I do wish there had been more episodes where George Reeves' Superman had faced bigger threats.
The episodes are very watchable. He does have to have his "detective head" on to work out where Lois or Jimmy are being held hostage. And it's satisfying to see him punch normal bad guys, but now and again, I'd have liked to have seen some sort of sci-fi/supernatural threat really hurt him. It doesn't detract from the series, though.
(And it made me smile the way Reeves' Superman punched bad guys heads without breaking their skulls!).
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Post by hondobrode on Dec 28, 2019 15:16:10 GMT -5
I've always thought that the concept of challenging Superman was to have him encounter threats of the biggest scale, like space wars, or cosmic disease; having those mind-bending threats as a contrast to his family and citizens of Earth would keep even a Superman pretty busy.
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