comic book heroes represent socially acceptable fantasies and villains unacceptable fantasies. for instance you might want to be hero and save the world which is okay, but you might also want to genetically engineer killer dolphins with mounted lasers for fun and that's not okay.

heroes tend gain powers by accident or heritage (Thor, Spider Man, Captain America, Daredevil, the Fantastic Four, most of the Avengers) villains by planning. the hero then decides to protect the populace from danger the villain to use his power for personal goals. is this implying that only a villain would scheme to lift themselves above normal people? it definitely implies that people must sacrifice themselves to societies best interests to become a hero. it appears to imply that the society that created the comic book values natural ability over acquired skill, and self sacrifice over individualism, or perhaps merely destructive individualism because villains rarely come up with legal ways to get what they want.

the heroes are reactive. the villain makes a plan then the hero encounters and thwarts the plan. heroes rarely enact their own plans to better society, possibly because the nature of their powers is often destructive, on the other hand reed Richards is apparently smart enough to span the dimension's why doesn't he take five minutes to invent a free, limitless power source, or create something that works like star treks replicators? based on the number of villains the hero's fight who are motivated solely by monetary gain if he did this he would only have to deal with the occasional planetary invasion.

comic books are designed for an audience with less attention span then novels. most comic books over in 30 minutes
that is not to say comics cannot tell stories with emotional depth or tackle social issues

art is an integral part to the story in a comic book complementing or hindering the writing a comic book can fail on the quality of it's art but not succeed if the art is good and the story is bad. and if one aspect is extremely good and the other mediocre or bad I believe the comic can still be worthwhile.

are comic books designed for people with less reading comprehension then the target audience of novels? I say that some comic books tackle complex moral and social problems that the reader needs good reading comprehension skills to grasp

comic books have the most consistently fantastic stories, dinosaurs, mutants and space-gods, sometimes all in the same story, this is what I and I think many people find most attractive about them. is this to attract young male audience? yes it's the coolness factor. that does not make it a bad thing comic books are the most consistent resource of awesomeness created for awesomeness own sake, something wonderful that should be preserved. and something that is not necessarily mutually exclusive with a creative work that improves society and individuals.

similar to heroes being introduced as fantasies women are often introduced as sex objects either due the creators own deficiencies or due to the perceived target audience. This necessarily changes when the character begins to develop depth and back-story.

as others have mentioned the comic books have been telling the same story for 60 years (marvel comics at least) this lends tremendous back-story and depth of character to comic book characters found in no other medium.
care to post your own thoughts on the medium?

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"This cosmic dance of bursting decadence and withheld permissions twists all our arms collectively. But, if sweetness can win - and it can - then I'll still be here tomorrow, to high five you, yesterday, my friend. Peace" - Adventure Time

I was talking the other day about continuity in comic books and I came up with this thought:
Nothing really matters.

Using the infamous Spider-Man story One More Day as an example...
The merits/demerits of this story have been discussed elsewhere and I do NOT want to revisit them here, but to paraphrase what Reed said on the subject:
"He chose his should-have-been-dead-20-years-ago Aunt over his supermodel wife."

I submit that it doesn't matter. The end result of that story, Peter Parker is single, is all that matters in terms of reading an issue of Amazing Spider-Man. There is no discussion about WHY he is single in Amazing Spider-Man 658 and married in Amazing Spider-Man 550 and as a result the WHY is irrelevent.
UNTIL a writer decides to bring it up.

Comics are unique in that they just might be the longest story ever told. But every arc, while building on what came before, is really just it's own story.
What a writer chooses to do with what came before informs who the character is but every writer makes that choice himself...


Anyways, I think I lost my train of thought there but maybe something to think about?

I enjoyed your thoughts on the medium too.

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Do not bore me with such trite cliches. For I have you in my clutches, and should I choose, I could snuff out your insignificant lives in an instant.

I am not sure I buy this premise. As many signifigant number of heroes are self made, trained, or unpowered. Iron Man (designed his own suit), the Punisher (all Training), Nick Fury (All Training), Cap (who while he is genetically altered is almost as much training in his ability as that), Black Widow, Black Panther, Doom, Doctor Strange (mysticism, but taught mysticism), Hawkeye, the Swordsman, Electra, The Wasp, Pym. None of these are accident or heritage.

And a good portion of those who gained their powers from birth (Mutants) were and remain a good social commentary on prejudice and equal rights.



I would argue this is both a part of just story telling (hard to have a book where a hero is constantly stopping crime before it happens), and an offshoot of our own justice system (innocent before proven guilty). Doing it another way would be like minority report, which would become boring. Reed Richards is smart, but intelligence alone is not what is needed to form a perfect society. It takes social prowess (something Reed has shown over and over again in comics he lacks) and practical governing experience to achieve that kind of utopia.



I would also disagree with this. Much like the serialized novels of the 1900s, Comics do and have told stories with as much emotional depth and social relevance as any book. Sure they have to do it over many volumes, but they do it all the same. It could be argued they do it all that much better with the introduction of Art as another facet of the story telling process. Sure bad art can hurt a story, but the same is true of any story telling that uses multiple forms - such as movies. Because you have acting and writing, it doesn't invalidate the medium or makes it less relevant, it just ups the challenge. I would argue because of this, when comics succeed, it is a greater then then when a book gets across the same message because of the challenge.

Say what you want about Civil War, it has some decent writing in parts of it, and it made valid points about how a democracy can slip into tyranny if allowed to (they made the point just where heroes were concerned, but considering this came out not long after the Patriot Act, it is not hard to make the correlation).



While this is true of some parts of comics, you run into the problem of using the word Comics when you mean Marvel or DC. Comics is a big world, and there are a lot of books that are amazing and have none of these things.



I would argue this has less to do with a perceived target audience, and more to do with a preponderance of male writers in the comic book medium. Just as with the male dominated Movie and TV industries. Watch a string of prime time shows and blockbuster movies. Women are either portrayed as either matronly or a sex-object. And this has gotten worse since reality TV came along. This is a media bias, not a comic bias.



Again, when you say Comic Books you should be saying DC or Marvel. There are several single volume, readily accessible titles on the market that are not weighed down by back story and continuity. In the case of Marvel and DC, this is both a help, in building rich stories, and a hidernece, in making those stories inaccessible.

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I somewhat agree with Doom here. I like the continuity, but it doesn't matter to a writer currently writing a good story.

Also, a lot is made of the long runs of comic characters, but you never hear about soap operas being weighed down by "continuity", or Pro Wrestling (arguably indistinguishable from soap operas)

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My argument: Iron man designing his own suit does not make him self made. he did not consciously decide to become a hero until the situation was thrust upon him, and when it was he reacted in the typical hero fashion (with great power comes great responsibility, the Punisher would never have been a hero (if he is one) if his family had not been killed. he was not a normal guy who decided to protect society consciously he is a man on a mission of vengeance. nick fury I'll give you that one but I don't think he's a superhero, although he is a great character; without powers cap would have been a normal soldier, Black widow, hawkeye and swordsman yes all lack superpowers and are self made but they had more selfish reasons for becoming superheroes they wanted fame, money, power typical villain motivations; except held in check by ethics, doom villain proves my point if he's self made, pym was the result of a lab accident same motivations (great power = great responsibility) janet become a hero to spend time with pym. Electra I've never read. I agree with you about mutants. the point I was trying to make is that people generally decide to become villains they wake up one day and say to themselves "today I will build a giant robot to rob fort knox" whereas heroes generally attain powers and then decide what to do with them. I think this is true with all the heroes you mentioned except hawkeye and the swordsman. (not the black widow because in the iron man comics she gets magic boots, then finally makes her decision to break away from the soviets.


I'm not saying he should run the world just that he has the capability to invent something that could effectively end scarcity and it would be the moral thing to do.

um... that's what I said. double negative screw you up?


I meant marvel and I agree.

I generally mean marvel because that's all I've read. but the fact remains it's the only medium with consistent characters that have that kind of history.

Writers can and should have the ability to pick and choose what portion of continuity they want to deal with in order to tell a good story now, but that doesn't mean continuity shouldn't matter.Most characters are not what they were originally conceived as a result of 60 years of history.

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"This cosmic dance of bursting decadence and withheld permissions twists all our arms collectively. But, if sweetness can win - and it can - then I'll still be here tomorrow, to high five you, yesterday, my friend. Peace" - Adventure Time

Good Points on those. I guess I am also falling back on the "heroes are normal people with greatness thrust upon them" thing. Harry Potter (student forced to avenge his family and save the world), Odysseus (On a journey for Fame and Glory), Bilbo (hobbit) or Frodo (LOTR) Baggins both had their quests thrust upon them, Luke (A farm boy pulled into galactic war) or Han Solo (also pulled from his scoundrel life into heroics) from star wars, Rick Blaine from Casablanca.

I would argue that most literary, cinematic, and yes comic heroes are have the situation where they become heroes thrust upon them. Many have ulterior motives which does not invalidate their being labeled heroes, no more then it invalidates Han Solo and his original quest for money or Odysseus and his quest for glory. A hero isn't a hero for where they start, they are a hero because of where they end up.



Thats on me, totally misread what you said.



That is one of the things that gives Marvel both its strength, and what makes me enjoy Marvel (hence this site and the order). I do encourage you to read up on titles like Preacher, Fables, and the Walking Dead. They are a totally different kind of comic then what you get from the big 2.

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rocket-
The recent run on Fantastic Four (and FF) by Jonathan Hickman does touch on your point about Reed Richards. You should check it out.

His tenure on the series starts immediately after Secret Invasion with a five issue mini-series called Dark Reign: Fantastic Four.

From there he begins his run on Fantastic Four with #570 and goes through #588.

At that point Fantastic Four is (temporarily) cancelled and FF begins. FF runs by itself for 12 issues and then is joined by Fantastic Four starting with #600. The two titles then run side-by-side.

Especially since you bring up your point about Reed being able to help everyone, I highly recommend it. Hickman is a GREAT writer (I can't believe I left him out of the thread about great writers) and he tends to write long term- meaning his runs are usually doubly rewarding when read from the start.




To the bit about continuity-
True most characters have evolved over 60 years, as they should have. My point is that while all those thing have happened to Peter Parker, not all of them inform the voice with which a particular storyteller will create for him. All that matters is "what is true right now?"

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Do not bore me with such trite cliches. For I have you in my clutches, and should I choose, I could snuff out your insignificant lives in an instant.

Although, if there ever was a point to be made about the over complexity of Marvel comics and how it daunts new readers, that is a prime example.

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I know. I felt like a total nerd typing it.

But I did make it pretty easy!

Seriously though, that's just another problem with comics.... DON'T MAKE IT SO HARD TO FIGURE OUT WHAT'S NEXT!!!!

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Do not bore me with such trite cliches. For I have you in my clutches, and should I choose, I could snuff out your insignificant lives in an instant.

Personally, I am in awe of the succient nerdiness you displayed....two traits that are usually not found together.

In all seriousness though, one of my goals for this sit is to "demystify" reading marvel. Make it accessible.

I think I will start a "looking to start marvel" page for the site, and make it prominent off the home page. Try to give people a way to start reading.

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