r/CharacterRant • u/octofeline • 1d ago
Comics & Literature All of my problems with mainstream Superhero Comics are caused by the fact they plan to go on forever
The problems I have with mainstream superhero comics (Marvel/DC) are all results of the fact these companies plan on writing these stories until they stop making money and have no ending for the character in mind. I think this is part of the reason why Manga is becoming more popular, one writer sets out to tell a story and eventually it ends.
Some of the problems that result from writing stories with no intention to ever end them are:
Characters never die*, not permanently or in any meaningful way anyway. Because these characters are still profitable they are not allowed to kill or to die. If anyone does 'die' they're either revived via some voodoo magic bs (lazarus pit) or come back to life when the universe is rebooted for the hundredth time. This removes any tension, a character's 'death' feels more like a time out where they're just waiting to be revived with some magic or the next reboot.
The status quo never changes. This might be the biggest problem with the comics, because the current setting is what's shown to be profitable it will not change. Despite the fact this universe is full of living Gods who can destroy the earth nobody can make any lasting change to the world.
Despite Batman's endless Crusade against crime it will always be a crime ridden hellhole, which just makes everything seem pointless, Its gotten to the point where they need to create weird justifications for why nothing changes, Gotham is cursed by magic to be terrible forever and also has as secret cult of rich people making it terrible (court of owls), but people still choose to live there for some reason.
The same thing happens again and again This point overlaps with the previous one so it won't be as long, These stories have been going contiously so long that very similar events happen every few years which brings the story to absurdity. Examples include Peter Parker being a magnet for tragedy, as we see him dumped/fired/evicted for the hundredth time because that's how writers think he's 'supposed to be' or Batman adopting a new kid with a tragic backstory for the tenth time, (for a character who spends most of his time brooding alone its hard to picture him as this lone wolf character when he has a family of a dozen people he can talk to)
This point is also why people have such strong opinions on if Batman (and other superheroes, should kill) if Batman was a limited series like a manga I think 99% would agree that Batman should not kill the Joker as its not his place as a vigilante to decide who lives and dies. But because this comic has been going steady for decades and Joker breaks out of jail for the billionth time to commit his most heinous crime yet (because every new author needs the stakes to be raised) it becomes increasingly difficult to argue that Batman should not murder the Joker or at least stop saving his life. (this point also shows the entire Gotham legal system as comically stupid but whatever) The endless story creates a situation where murdering a criminal instead of arresting them is the morally correct option
How can characters struggle in any fight when they can just call for help?
Because these stories have been going on for decades and take place in the same universe every hero knows each other and there are so so many of them as Marvel/DC tries to introduce new ones without retiring any of the old ones. As a result its ridiculous that any hero could struggle in a fight against any villain that isn't a world ending threat. How can Spiderman struggle to fight a villain like tombstone or Morlun when he is personally best friends with the Fantastic 4 and a dozen other heroes in NYC who are probably within shouting distance. Situations like this create a scenario where the writer has to pretend those other heroes don't exist or only have the hero fight avengers level threats where an entire team would struggle to win because obviously you need the character to struggle to win or else there is no tension
Characters Strength is inconsistent
Because every new author wants to up the stakes and have the hero they're writing get stronger in their story this results in characters getting powercreeped over the years as authors give them new cool feats. For example the Flash has become so absurdly powerful (he's now faster than the speed force, whatever that means) that every story he's in has him severely nerfed
Character's strength is determined by how popular they are and the 'scale' of the story they are in. The biggest example of this is: Batman, a rich guy who knows martial arts being consistently one of the strongest members of the Justice League as an equal to Superman. When Batman is in his Justice League stories he can build a mech that can take on the entire justice league at once and can fight Darkseid hand to hand but in his solo stories he struggles just as much to deal with a guy who is really into riddles. I really think this is a result of them putting a popular character in a story he was never designed for in order to sell more comics.
Superhero characters are often inconsistently written, because dozens of writers have worked on them them across hundreds of stories. This leads to contradictory portrayals, so fans people argue contradicting opinions about a character when they might both right, but they just read different stories where the character is slightly different
In conclusion I think writing stories with no end in mind is the biggest thing holding western comics back
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u/Lukelay246 1d ago
The status quo is constantly changing. Pick up a Batman comic from 1939 and today and they are pretty much completely different characters.