Daredevil vs. Batman with a side of gibberish to go. Hold the mayo.

[The Overlord]

Re: Siege (Bendis/Coipel)

Nah, but they'll do a year where Gotham City has been destroyed by an earthquake. Or where Batman's crippled. Or where he's dead. And when you consider that he has four monthly titles, that works out to 4 years of Daredevil comics.

All that, and he can fight space aliens.

How good stories are there where Batman goes into space? That doesn't work on so many levels. Ok, in the JLA title , Batman, outsmart cosmic gods and beats alien monsters and then he goes back to Gotham and has trouble with some guy with a hat fetish. That's problem with Batman being in too many titles, it starts to contradict itself really quickly. Batman has access to all this tech and plans in JLA, why couldn't Batman donate tech to Arkham that would make it escape proof or something.

I like Batman, but I have some problems with the mythos at this point.

These are all fantastic examples (please give me the issue numbers). It irks me that I haven't read them (or don't recall them), which most likely means these are exceptions when they should be the norm.

I don't have the numbers on hand, haven't read those in a while. I know the arc with Big Ben was from 2008 or something. I will have to get back to you on that. Still there hundreds of unique stories you can do with a lawyer super hero.

Never said that BORN AGAIN or the other 'hallmarks' of DD were bad. They're most certainly not. It's just that they could be much cooler with Batman.

BORN AGAIN is a good example of both sides of the argument - the basic plot of the supervillain ruining the superhero works better with Batman, he has much more to lose than Daredevil and what he loses is more important to his environment than Daredevil. But! The way that BORN AGAIN gets into the story, through Karen Page, is very uniquely Daredevil and just wouldn't work with Batman.

I mean, you can easily say that Foggy Nelson is Lucius Fox; they both look after the day-to-day part of DD/Bats' business. Ben Urich is Jim Gordon, doing the mundane footwork and his link to the public world. But who is Karen Page? Leslie Thompkins? Alfred? Robin? Batman just doesn't have a "Karen Page" and, I don't think he ever could.

Bruce Wayne could easily befriend his secretary, and she could easily be an important recurring role in his stories, but can you imagine if Bruce Wayne's secretary had a heroine problem? It would never work because he'd buy her an island and turn it into a rehab facility and cure her. But what can Daredevil do? That's why she's wonderful. That's why BORN AGAIN takes advantage of something unique to Daredevil.

And now she's dead.

Daredevil lost an element of his storytelling world, that looking back on it, was integral to him having a unique place in the ludicrously oversaturated superhero genre.

I think you are being too reductionist in your comparison and you are ignoring some of the smaller differences again. I think the comparisons between Foggy and Lucius are over blown, Foggy is more important a supporting character then Lucius, simply because Foggy knows who DD is, Lucius doesn't seem to know who Batman is. Gordon never would have been cowed like Ben was in Born again, an important plot point.

I'm not sure I like Karen getting killed, but she is written in a corner. The problem with Karen, how does DD trust and if there is no trust how can they have a relationship? Love in comic books is often this surgery stuff where characters love each other no matter, which often isn't the case in real life. She can't stay a treacherous junkie, so you have to redeem, but can you, is it realistic these two characters would stay together after that? If someone did that to me, I likely wouldn't want to see them ever again, I wouldn't want them to die, but I wouldn't hang around them.

Penguin is not the correct corollary to Kingpin. Kingpin, to Daredevil, is the tyrant with unending resources and total control over his criminal empire, which drastically outclasses Daredevil's resources. Ra's Al Ghul fits that role, not Penguin.

Again Kingpin is a crime boss, not a terrorist like Ra's. Ra's goals are ideological, Kingpin's goals are monetary. Ra's respects Batman and wishes to make him his heir, Kingpin simply loathes DD. Also Kingpin has hurt DD far worse then Ra's has hurt Batman. The differences are there, if you look for them.

Joker is routinely hired by whatever supervillain team is being made, but here's the thing; Joker's got so much more gravitas than Bullseye. This is (one of the many reasons) why he's one of the most beloved and well-recognised supervillains of all time, and Bullseye is... well, he's like Daredevil. He's got a cult following, but he's strictly second-tier.

Joker is not a hired hand in those teams, those teams are usually made of independent villains who choose to follow a banner of another, its not Joker does errand work for another, like Bullseye does. Bullseye is willing to be a errand boy, Joker is not, its a key difference. The only thing Bullseye and Joker really have in common is they are both complete monsters, which is a common type of villain. Joker's true opposite number would be someone like Jester, a character introduced in the Silver age, who felt like rip off Silver age Joker. He one kinda cool story about media manipulation, but nothing that justified his existence, other thing else about him about is a waste.

Joker is another problem I have with modern Batman mythos, I like Joker, but they use too much and they write him as so evil I wonder why he isn't dead yet. Yeah Bullseye is a very bad guy, but he doesn't try and destroy the city every week and Joker has way bigger body count. Joker has tried to destroy the world and reality at one point, why wouldn't the government kill him at this point? There should be people howling for his blood and Congressmen should be passing new laws just to kill him. I wonder if he isn't insane at all and isn't just a psychopath who is faking. After Batman dropped off Joker in front of the cops should result in one of the cops saying Joker has gun and blowing his head off. That guy would likely be considered a hero

Again, Harley Quinn is a truly beloved character. Typhoid Mary isn't anywhere near her league.

Doesn't make Harley better written though, Harley is one of those characters that shouldn't be overexposed, a little goes a long way, because she can from tragic, to kinda of annoying and stupid if you aren't careful. The door mat thing can get real old, real fast.

I like the fact that Typhoid Mary is far more willful then Harley, she isn't a door mat, when she first met the Kingpin she fought with him, set his clothes fire and then later she randomly changed the rules of her little contract with Kingpin and decided to do whatever she wanted with DD and still later went behind Kingpin's back and made a deal with some demons. I kinda like all that.

Just because they wouldn't, doesn't mean it woudn't be better. As I say, the whole "Death of Elektra" story (which is very good) would probably be more entertaining if Elektra was replaced with Talia or Catwoman.

It wouldn't have the same impact, sometimes when you do a story is more important, in the 80s what Bullseye did was shocking, now its kinda old hat.

As I say - Batman used to shoot people with a gun.
.

Don't think Golden age Batman is in continuity anymore.

But I think what you're really getting at here is this simple fact; Daredevil has a higher-percentage of down-endings than Batman. (Or at least, he feels like he does.)

It's not desperation or any of that - Batman is also put into such situations, the difference is that Batman usually gets out of those situations and Daredevil succumbs and fails.

I hadn't considered this, but it's totally true isn't it? I'm adding this to my list; "Daredevil can lose.".

Sometimes DD loses too much, that's a problem, its getting it a bit a farce when a psychopath comes up and ruins his life every 5 years.

I think it would work brilliantly, and in fact they've teased it many times; the idea that Batman takes over Ra's Al Ghul's League of Assassins. In fact, Batman is more qualified to do it than Daredevil, it makes more sense. Not only is Batman this master of all skills, but he's a billionaire philanthropist. He'd know how to organise and command the criminal underworld. Daredevil, on the other hand... it was a good twist, but I never bought it.

I don't think Batman would do it though, I don't think he would dare, he has never killed because was always afraid of it going out of control and him becoming addicted to that. Batman wouldn't want to make that kind of compromise and expose himself to that temptation. I think there is a reason why Batman never became Ra's heir in the first place, Batman I think has a better understanding of evils of power and its abuse.

DD on the other hand has lost control of things so often, that he goes to insane lengths to gain any control over his life. That's why did that Kingpin that's why he took over the Hand, he has never had the same level control batman has, ever. That's why he does more extreme things then Batman does, because the writers play "Break the Cutie" with DD all the time, way more often then with Batman.

And neither did Bendis, since he said, "Oh, you're a bit mad there, Matt" and suddenly it was all resolved. Ugh.

Well that was a flaw, but I think the story had some good pathos to it.

I was wrong. Gladiator isn't Killer Croc... he's Two-Face.

The guy who goes crazy and wants to be a good guy? Yeah, that's... actually, I'm just being purposefully flippant. While he and Two-Face seems to share similar traits, the description you gave of Gladiator is brilliant, and I'm putting him next to Karen Page and "Daredevil can lose" in my little battle to make Daredevil more than a crappy Batman.

I admit; I got Gladiator wrong and dismissed him too easily.

If you want to compare Killer Croc to a lame DD villain, you could have chosen Man-Bull, a lame, forgettable animal-human hybrid thug who hasn't appear in DD since the 70s, because he is a bore, there DD villains worth picking on.

Insanity is one of the most complex things in human nature. There are many ways to embody it with a character.

I think you've posted several excellent examples of what should be done with Daredevil; you focus on the lawyer and the fact that he lives in a working class world. You don't rely on Kingpin and Bullseye, you don't make him take over the Hand or whatever nonsense, but maximise tragic characters like Karen Page and Gladiator.

What I'd love is to see brand new Daredevil villains that only Daredevil could have..

Thanks for the vote of confidence but again its pretty hard to create a new villains nowadays, I mean think how gimmicks are there that aren't used? Most powers and gimmicks have already taken and have been for awhile. There is a reason why no new good villains have been created in a way.

Besides I always preferred fixing old villains then creating new ones. Purple Man started as DD villain, I wouldn't mind him going a round with DD again. He's pretty scary as villain and a tad unique in terms of an interesting combo of malice and sloth. As a mind controller, he comes off as a way scarier then Mad Hatter, in terms of powers and actions. I wouldn't seeing a rapist like Purple Man face off against a psycho girl like Typhoid Mary.

Mr. Hyde is an interesting concept that is rarely used well, he embodies pure evil, yet sometimes is played for laughs, what a waste. This a character who would like Ultimate Hulk, but more sly, more cunning, more willing strike in methodical, but once his target is chosen, he is pure evil ID. A savage creature who takes what he wants, a far more physical enemy then other DD foes, he relies just on his hands to torment and kill his victims. His methods reflect a rage he has against everything. He is also a mad scientist, which makes him even more dangerous. Unlike Ultimate Hulk there is no good Banner half, his savage appearance reflects his inner evil, a true reflection of his soul.

Another thing that makes DD different from Batman is religion, Batman doesn't have a Sister Maggie character and I'm not even sure if we know what Batman's religion is. We know DD is a lapsed Catholic, that is something that has been used to good effect in the past, at least sometimes. Again a villain can challenge DD on that level. There was an assassin named Bushwhacker, silly name, but bare with me, who hated mutants and had cybernetic gun and was very religious, it seemed recently they Ditched all that and must made him a Bullseye clone who liked killing people. That was a waste, there so many interesting stories with him where he justified his evil acts through bible verses and even had some bizarre moral code that made sense to him alone.

There was one story where he was hired to kill Ben Urich because Ben was writing an piece on a drug lord. Bushwhacker decided to spare Ben's life and let him write the article, the drug lord got off because of his money and influence, so Bushwhacker simply killed the drug lord outside of court just to prove to Ben the system doesn't work.

Now there is a villain with potential someone who uses religion to justify evil acts can be a rule challenge to DD's beliefs, character who has his own warped interpretations of religion can justify anything and moral code that makes sense to him alone. DD's religion is another big thing that separates him from Batman.

Also since Murdock, perhaps he can have a DA he can face off against, not even villain perhaps, maybe just an antagonist. He could corrupt, on the take or maybe he is just career driven and is more of professional adversary for Murdock.

You're absolutely right. Bullseye sits between Deadshot and Joker. When Bullseye is a professional killer, he's better than Deadshot. When he's the lunatic mass-murderer, he's worse than Joker.

With this in my brain-meats, I think I get how to make Bullseye work: drop the psychosis and the manic theatre. Make him professional. If you emphasise that aspect, he'd really come into his own.

That boat has sailed, that his point his obsession with killing has been so ingrained in the character, that you have to contradict everything to make him different.

Anyway this fun debate, better then talking about Siege.

 

[Bass]

Re: Siege (Bendis/Coipel)

How good stories are there where Batman goes into space?

Works great in BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD.

If someone did that to me, I likely wouldn't want to see them ever again, I wouldn't want them to die, but I wouldn't hang around them.

Yeah, but the tragedy would be that you loved them and couldn't help yourself. You know better, but you can't stop yourself.

Again Kingpin is a crime boss, not a terrorist like Ra's. Ra's goals are ideological, Kingpin's goals are monetary. Ra's respects Batman and wishes to make him his heir, Kingpin simply loathes DD. Also Kingpin has hurt DD far worse then Ra's has hurt Batman. The differences are there, if you look for them.

Here's another difference; Kingpin is fat.

But that's hardly hear or there, is it? The point I'm making is this:

Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Morpheus.
Gandalf.
Christopher Pike.

Each of these characters is different from the other, clearly and recognizably unique but they are all the mentor. They all do the exact same thing. They give the hero advice which is crucial to defeating the villain, and they each are absent at that showdown, leaving the hero to do it alone. They are precisely the same role. Not the same character, the same functional role.

Kingpin is the same exact role as Ra's Al Ghul in every way. He is the tyrant with unlimited resources who is aware of the superhero's secret identity. Where they truly differ is that Ra's also tries to get Batman to join him. Penguin is not a tyrant. Darkseid and Lex Luthor are both tyrants. The characters are different, but the role is the same. And Kingpin is far less cool, is all.

The only thing Bullseye and Joker really have in common is they are both complete monsters, which is a common type of villain.

There are, to my knowledge, four supervillains. The Tyrant, who has unlimited resources, controls almost every facet of the hero's world and, most importantly, is immune to legal prosecution. As such, the tyrant doesn't need to be superpowered or particularly challenging, physically. The Hunter, who's sole desire is to get the hero, either to kill him, capture him, exact revenge, destroy him, what-have-you. He's relentless. The Criminal, who commits crimes purely for monetary gain (why they want the money may differ), and has very few resources - these characters need gimmicks or powers to make up for not having vast resources. The fourth is the Monster or the Kook depending on how violent he is. This villain is interested in causing indiscriminate mayhem, and is more like a force of nature than a human being.

Now, some villains oscillate, mix and combine those types. Joker is often the Criminal or the Monster, but in THE DARK KNIGHT he was also a Hunter. Green Goblin oscillates between Hunter and Tyrant.

Bullseye, like Joker, slips between Criminal and Monster, and he's not as good as the Joker.

Joker is another problem I have with modern Batman mythos, I like Joker, but they use too much and they write him as so evil I wonder why he isn't dead yet.

I think Joker is overused too.

But, Bullseye is just as overused. As is Green Goblin and Kingpin. But the most overused villain of them all is Lex Luthor - because Superman has no one else.

I like the fact that Typhoid Mary is far more willful then Harley, she isn't a door mat, when she first met the Kingpin she fought with him, set his clothes fire and then later she randomly changed the rules of her little contract with Kingpin and decided to do whatever she wanted with DD and still later went behind Kingpin's back and made a deal with some demons. I kinda like all that.

That's cool if you like Typhoid more than Harley, but Harley is a better character. She's been consistently one of the most popular supervillains since her debut in '92, and has never missed a beat in 18 years. Typhoid Mary is still an unknown. You may like her a great deal, but she's just not got the same presence as Harley.

It wouldn't have the same impact, sometimes when you do a story is more important, in the 80s what Bullseye did was shocking, now its kinda old hat.

I don't think so. Killing Catwoman would be old hat if it was done in the same way. Every superhero story has the superhero trying to defeat the supervillain. That's not old hat, despite being found in every action story ever. What is old hat, is that the supervillain robs a bank dressed as an animal and has animal-themed powers and gadgets.

Don't think Golden age Batman is in continuity anymore.

So? Continuity is a nonsense artifact that is dismissed and adhered to arbitrarily by whomever writes/edits the title.

Sometimes DD loses too much, that's a problem, its getting it a bit a farce when a psychopath comes up and ruins his life every 5 years.

Agreed. The problem isn't that he can't have down endings, it's that it's the same down-ending. His life is always ruined and his girlfriend is always killed/leaves him. There are other possibilites, I'm sure.

That's why he does more extreme things then Batman does, because the writers play "Break the Cutie" with DD all the time, way more often then with Batman.

The central theme of Batman for the last twenty years (if not more) has been; "How far will he go?" Nolan's movies were both about that. Morrison's RIP was about that. Loeb's Hush was about that. Darwyn Cooke's EGO is about that. It is the unrelenting conflict that dominates the 'gritty' aspect of the character - how far is too far?

Daredevil, on the other hand, is supposed to be the man without fear, not the man with much anger.

Thanks for the vote of confidence but again its pretty hard to create a new villains nowadays, I mean think how gimmicks are there that aren't used? Most powers and gimmicks have already taken and have been for awhile. There is a reason why no new good villains have been created in a way.

Batman is a lucky bastard because he got Bane, Ra's, Harley Quinn, and Black Glove recently. And the Dini/Timm cartoons did wonders for both him and Superman (Brainiac has never been so cool).

That boat has sailed, that his point his obsession with killing has been so ingrained in the character, that you have to contradict everything to make him different.

Nonsense. This is the dirty secret of continuity; Do it well, and no one will complain.

Anyway this fun debate, better then talking about Siege.

Certainly.

 

[The Overlord]

Re: Siege (Bendis/Coipel)

Works great in BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD.

But it doesn't work in the comics, Batman Brave and the Bold is a more light hearted universe and take on Batman, so I have no problem with fighting aliens, but when try to meld the dark urban Batman with space adventures it doesn't work.

From a basic stand point it doesn't make to have both those character types exist at the same time, otherwise Batman looks lazy, foolish or immoral for not using the same tech he used to defeat aliens to make Arkham escape proof or something.

Yeah, but the tragedy would be that you loved them and couldn't help yourself. You know better, but you can't stop yourself.

Except you wonder if DD was an idiot after a while, they never did anything major redeem her,which they needed to do. I don't think they did, so you have question how their relationship can continue without the element of trust.

Here's another difference; Kingpin is fat.

But that's hardly hear or there, is it? The point I'm making is this:

Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Morpheus.
Gandalf.
Christopher Pike.

Each of these characters is different from the other, clearly and recognizably unique but they are all the mentor. They all do the exact same thing. They give the hero advice which is crucial to defeating the villain, and they each are absent at that showdown, leaving the hero to do it alone. They are precisely the same role. Not the same character, the same functional role.

Kingpin is the same exact role as Ra's Al Ghul in every way. He is the tyrant with unlimited resources who is aware of the superhero's secret identity. Where they truly differ is that Ra's also tries to get Batman to join him. Penguin is not a tyrant. Darkseid and Lex Luthor are both tyrants. The characters are different, but the role is the same. And Kingpin is far less cool, is all.

Except I think the role character plays is irrelevant compared the chemistry between the hero and the villain and individual

You can argue Kingpin and Ra's serve the same roles, but that's all they have in common, they have different goals, different personalities, different relationships with the heroes.

I think you are thinking in too much of a general fashion, ignoring the less less obvious character that characters can have. Not everything has to be laid out in broad terms

There are, to my knowledge, four supervillains. The Tyrant, who has unlimited resources, controls almost every facet of the hero's world and, most importantly, is immune to legal prosecution. As such, the tyrant doesn't need to be superpowered or particularly challenging, physically. The Hunter, who's sole desire is to get the hero, either to kill him, capture him, exact revenge, destroy him, what-have-you. He's relentless. The Criminal, who commits crimes purely for monetary gain (why they want the money may differ), and has very few resources - these characters need gimmicks or powers to make up for not having vast resources. The fourth is the Monster or the Kook depending on how violent he is. This villain is interested in causing indiscriminate mayhem, and is more like a force of nature than a human being.

Now, some villains oscillate, mix and combine those types. Joker is often the Criminal or the Monster, but in THE DARK KNIGHT he was also a Hunter. Green Goblin oscillates between Hunter and Tyrant.

Bullseye, like Joker, slips between Criminal and Monster, and he's not as good as the Joker.

Actually there are far villains then that: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Villains

You aren't covering categories like Anti villains. Mr. Freeze and Magneto are both anti Villains, but for completely different reasons. They don't fit into those categories you set up. Magneto is not a tyrant, he is more like Che then Stalin, a revolutionary who seeks to protect a oppressed race, he isn't immune prosecution and doesn't control every aspect in the heroes life, because he often fights the anti mutant feelings the X-Men fight, just in a different way. Magneto isn't Tyrant, yes he is a powerful figure, but not powerful enough to be a tyrant.

Mr. freeze isn't a sadist or merely greedy or just had a grudge against Batman, he had a legitimate reason to be a criminal, he had a legitimate reason to seek revenge on someone who isn't the hero.

Fiction is not so simple that characters can easily be divided into a mere four categories.

I think Joker is overused too.

But, Bullseye is just as overused. As is Green Goblin and Kingpin. But the most overused villain of them all is Lex Luthor - because Superman has no one else.

But I like Brainiac.

Its not just that Joker is overused. Dr. Doom overused, but I don't question why someone hasn't killed Dr. Doom yet, like I do with Joker. Dr. doom isn't vile to the point that I wonder why regular people everywhere aren't howling for his blood, like I do with Joker, Doom is not the mercy of the american justice system on a regular like Joker is. Even Bullseye never raises the stakes to the degree Joker, Joker likely has a way higher body count then Bullseye does. At this point Joker only works as a character if everyone in Gotham is an idiot or something.

That's cool if you like Typhoid more than Harley, but Harley is a better character. She's been consistently one of the most popular supervillains since her debut in '92, and has never missed a beat in 18 years. Typhoid Mary is still an unknown. You may like her a great deal, but she's just not got the same presence as Harley.

I don't think so. Killing Catwoman would be old hat if it was done in the same way. Every superhero story has the superhero trying to defeat the supervillain. That's not old hat, despite being found in every action story ever. What is old hat, is that the supervillain robs a bank dressed as an animal and has animal-themed powers and gadgets.

I think its old hat in general frankly, I'm pretty sick of pretty sick of women getting shoved into fridges, it was done well maybe twice and was shocking maybe back in 70s and 80s, but its tiresome, it doesn't do justice female characters if they only exist to get killed off so the male hero can angst. I wouldn't want Joker to kill Catwoman, I think it be total waste. Here's why I think that story worked better with Elektra, Elektra was a character created by Frank Miller to be killed off in this manner, it wasn't a character someone else created that he decided should die. I kinda hate it when new writers kill off characters they didn't create that have been around forever, in half hazard ways.

So? Continuity is a nonsense artifact that is dismissed and adhered to arbitrarily by whomever writes/edits the title.

That isn't the way it should be though, I'm not a massive continuity fanboy, that's going get mad if the writer forgot what Peter Parker's favourvite food was, but if you massive unexplained contradictions in your work, there is a problem. This why I generally read Spidey anymore, if they are just going to get rid of years of character development at the drop of a hat, there is no reason to read about the character, there is no drama.

Agreed. The problem isn't that he can't have down endings, it's that it's the same down-ending. His life is always ruined and his girlfriend is always killed/leaves him. There are other possibilites, I'm sure..

I wouldn't mind DD getting a few more happy endings, if hero constantly loses and his life always sucks, it gets depressing after a while, you would almost want the hero triumph over adversity just so you get invested in the hero again, otherwise I might as well just watch a depressing movie, its just faster.

The central theme of Batman for the last twenty years (if not more) has been; "How far will he go?" Nolan's movies were both about that. Morrison's RIP was about that. Loeb's Hush was about that. Darwyn Cooke's EGO is about that. It is the unrelenting conflict that dominates the 'gritty' aspect of the character - how far is too far?

Daredevil, on the other hand, is supposed to be the man without fear, not the man with much anger.

I don't see how being without fear means DD wouldn't be a tad peeved after the 5th time someone destroyed his life.

I never seen evidence that Batman would go as far as DD does in Shadowland. I'm not sure Batman has ever physically tortured a guy.

Batman is a lucky bastard because he got Bane, Ra's, Harley Quinn, and Black Glove recently. And the Dini/Timm cartoons did wonders for both him and Superman (Brainiac has never been so cool).

Still Bane was created 92 and Ra's was created in the 70s and frankly I didn't care much for the Black Glove, I don't think they will get much use after RIP. How many good villains have been created in the last ten years?

I mean what kind of villains could you create at this point?

Here's thing I think you are missing, in general there are only 7, maybe 8 plots in fiction period, everything is a variation of these same plots that has existed since ancient Greek theatre its the twist on these stories that makes them compelling. http://us.penguingroup.com/static/html/blogs/seven-stories-rule-world-matt-haig

So yeah on a very very general level you can argue Green Arrow and Captain America or Spider-Man and Flash or DD and Batman are the same, but ignores a million smaller things that makes them different.

I mean all fiction is like that, how many animes are there about giant robots, how many American Network TV shows are there about lawyers and doctors? You can see similarities in almost anything in fiction, to the point where if that bugs you there is almost no point in watching or reading fiction. Hell even the news gets repetitive after a while.

Its the post modern age, almost everything is just a permutation of something else, you can say Lost is similar to Twin Peaks or the Wire is similar to bunch of other crime dramas that came before it, that doesn't change the fact Lost is good and the Wire may be one of the best TV shows ever.

Nonsense. This is the dirty secret of continuity; Do it well, and no one will complain.

How would you do that well though? Often they just seem to change a characters personality and give no explanation or a BS one, either way it comes off as forced.

 

[Gemini]

I think it's completely asinine to assume that you can completely illigitimize a character by saying that said character is redundant given the status of such iconic stature as the ******* batman.

Cause ****ing Sherlock Holmes would illigitimize the **** out of Batman

 

[Iceshadow]

Re: Siege (Bendis/Coipel)

Really? I wouldn't describe Captain America as an activist OR a liberal, by any stretch of the imagination. He's a guy who wears an American flag and more often than not, is performing at the behest of the American government, whether that's SHIELD or the President or similar-such nonsense. Sure, he had his little tiff with taking over the Nomad identity (which honestly, struck me as a little hollow) and siding with the anti-registration camp, but both of these strike me as generally conservative principles. Superhuman registration strikes me pretty clearly as a parallel to gun control. It's about the rights of the individual over the rights of society, which is a pretty roundly conservative value. He believes in a strong military, in "America" as some almost godlike but unexplainable sublime value, in the role of intelligence agencies to work domestically and abroad. He's a conservative character who occasionally has liberal values tacked onto him because at his core, he's really a pretty two-dimensional character. He always does exactly what he believes in, always sacrifices for the greater good, and always stands by his values unswervingly.

Hmm, well maybe activist is too strong a word but I was under the impression that anytime something with major political ramifications happened in the Marvel U. Cap was always the character that seemed to make the biggest stand either for or against it. And I always saw Civil War as more anti-Bush Administration and things like the Patriot Act, which makes Cap liberal by default.

I think Green Arrow, OTOH, is a character with interesting conflicts of ideology and action. Vigilantism is, by its nature a pretty right wing mission statement. It's the Randian ideal of the individual imposing his value systems on the order in place. Green Arrow's a guy with a liberal value set who still feels the need to enforce his sense of right onto the masses. He may frequently do so in the name of "social justice" but just as often he's as likely to lose control of his temper and end up contradicting his own principles. He follows in the Batman archetype but in a ways, he's an inversion of that. He's got a lot of the foibles Batman pretends to have when he plays at Bruce Wayne. He forces his own sense of justice on the world around him in his superhero identity and frequently neglects his family and his girl for the sake of his own hedonism. I also generally think the last few plot lines have been good ideas that have utterly failed in their execution. Oliver Queen as mayor is ace, and to loop around to the Daredevil discussion it touches on something that's rarely addressed in the Daredevil book. How hypocritical is it to serve as a representative of the state on one hand and as a vigilante on the other? Even Cry For Justice could have been an interesting exploration of his inner rage and frivolties balanced against his liberal ideology, although the ball was pretty awfully dropped on that one too. I even think him as the Robin Hood of Star City could be compelling, but I doubt it will happen.

These are all great ideas on what GA should be and how he should be handled, but how often do these ideas get translated well into an interesting story about Green Arrow? I'm not trying to sound like a dick or anything, like I said, I never really read any Green Arrow stories.

When Cap gives up his super hero name because of his disagreement with the public it seems like an attempt to make him relatable. When Green Arrow does it, it's indicative of how the character has been developed.

That's really more of You're Mileage May Vary, one or the other is going to have a bigger impact on you depending on your preferred character.

You're not listing critical components of the characters. You're just explaining things that have happened to them. What's recognizable about Hawkeye? He's a guy with a bow and arrow who's also kind of snarky. There really isn't much development beyond that. He got kind of broody for a while but now he's cool again. He was a villain once but he underwent a quick heel turn and hasn't looked back since. He's really just as one note, if not more, than Captain America.

My bad, I misunderstood the question I think...dammit you win that round. Still don't the experiences make the character? I mean I don't believe that every character has be incredibly deep to make them an interesting character, of course a lot of this falls on the writer's skill.

As for the Justice League connection, huh? Are we judging the characters based on whether or not they join superhero teams? Green Arrow is intended to be a smaller, more local, social action hero. His stories are better told on a smaller scale with more of a socio-political bent. When you put him on a global threat task force, all it does is marginalize the character.

I just threw that out there because I couldn't think of anything else GA had done that was notable recently.

Also, "his most famous story is where he fails to notice his sidekick is a junkie"... Man.... You say that like it's a bad thing.

I think it's not great that failing his sidekick is what he is famous for, it's like how Hank Pym will always be known as a wife beater. I mean who wants to be remembered like that?

Despite DC having treated him like **** for years, he's still one of my favorites, precisely because he is a ****-up who continually fails to live up to his own standards. At his best, he's more human and more believably damaged than any of Marvel's "realistic, down to Earth" heroes.

Ehh, it really depends on how he's being written. I mean one could make the same case for Spider-Man, or possibly Luke Cage, or Daredevil.

 

[Bass]

But it doesn't work in the comics, Batman Brave and the Bold is a more light hearted universe and take on Batman, so I have no problem with fighting aliens, but when try to meld the dark urban Batman with space adventures it doesn't work.

From a basic stand point it doesn't make to have both those character types exist at the same time, otherwise Batman looks lazy, foolish or immoral for not using the same tech he used to defeat aliens to make Arkham escape proof or something.

I don't think so. One of the recent episodes of that show is all about Batman deciding whether or not to kill Joe Chill. And the Phantom Stranger and the Spectre are involved as ominpotent beings who want Batman on their side. Works fine.

Except I think the role character plays is irrelevant compared the chemistry between the hero and the villain and individual

You can argue Kingpin and Ra's serve the same roles, but that's all they have in common, they have different goals, different personalities, different relationships with the heroes.

I think you are thinking in too much of a general fashion, ignoring the less less obvious character that characters can have. Not everything has to be laid out in broad terms

I agree that the relationship is important, but Kingpin and Ra's have very similar relationships. Ra's and Kingpin are closer than Ra's and Lex for example. Or Kingpin and Lex. The only real difference between them is that Ra's, occassionally, wants Batman to work for him.

Fiction is not so simple that characters can easily be divided into a mere four categories.

Mr Freeze has been the Criminal and the Monster. He used to steal stuff for monetary gain, now he kills people and blows up cities. Just cause you feel bad for him doesn't change what he does. Magneto is a tyrant. He lives on an asteroid or an island exempt from the laws of the society he attacks, whilst commanding an army.

The "Anti-Villain" concept is not about what the villain does or how they do it, but a measure of the empathy the audience has for that villain.

I think its old hat in general frankly, I'm pretty sick of pretty sick of women getting shoved into fridges, it was done well maybe twice and was shocking maybe back in 70s and 80s, but its tiresome, it doesn't do justice female characters if they only exist to get killed off so the male hero can angst. I wouldn't want Joker to kill Catwoman, I think it be total waste. Here's why I think that story worked better with Elektra, Elektra was a character created by Frank Miller to be killed off in this manner, it wasn't a character someone else created that he decided should die. I kinda hate it when new writers kill off characters they didn't create that have been around forever, in half hazard ways.

Exactly - it's not that they die that's the problem, it's how and why.

I never seen evidence that Batman would go as far as DD does in Shadowland. I'm not sure Batman has ever physically tortured a guy.

I'm sure he has.

Still Bane was created 92 and Ra's was created in the 70s and frankly I didn't care much for the Black Glove, I don't think they will get much use after RIP. How many good villains have been created in the last ten years?

Black Glove, but apparently, he doesn't count because you don't agree. Onomatopoeia was a pretty good idea for the most part. I forget if Prometheus came out in the last ten years or not. And then there's all the villains for characters like Tom Strong which were fantastic.

There's loads of villains being created, but if you say, "Which new villains have been created for these half a dozen superheroes?" well, maybe not. But then, most superhero comics writing is just stock characters with stock events.

This is what I can't stand about the stranglehold of superheroes. "You can't create new villains" is an idea one could only have if one only considers superheroes through the eyes of Marvel and DC where they endlessly recycle the same plots and characters. In other genres and in other mediums, that kind of thinking is just nonsense. And it's true for superheroes.

Fans just want Green Goblin to fight Spidey for the fifteenth hundredth time. And the writers and editors are either lazy or scared of being disliked and so they just do that again and again and again in the same way with the same reasons.

Here's thing I think you are missing, in general there are only 7, maybe 8 plots in fiction period, everything is a variation of these same plots that has existed since ancient Greek theatre its the twist on these stories that makes them compelling. http://us.penguingroup.com/static/html/blogs/seven-stories-rule-world-matt-haig

So, you say to me that "Fiction is not so simple that characters can easily be divided into a mere four categories" yet you now say that "there's only 7 or 8 plots possible". And the 7-8 plots is nonsense. One of the plots is a "Quest", but all stories are quests in the same sense that all music is made of notes. Every story is a quest; the protagonist wants something and then goes off in pursuit of it. That something may be a physical object like the Ark of the Covenant in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, an objective like defeating the Goldfinger in GOLDFINGER or something abstract like a meaningful life as in ABOUT SCHMIDT. Beyond that you have genres, of which there are dozens and they merge and change.

Where on Haig's list is the Mystery? Or the Disaster "Man vs Nature" plot? Not the "Man vs a Shark" but "Man vs Volcano"? Where is the Coming of Age plot? What about Love stories?!!?

It's nonsense designed to reduce the art of storytelling into demystified soundbytes that label conventional elements so that the guy can pretend he knows all about writing without actually having to do any writing.

It's a theoretical reduction, not a practical one. The theoretical reduction of "8 plots" is designed so that it's easier to talk about and compare the stories for academic discussion, but is of almost no help to anyone actually intending to write them. On the other hand, a practical reduction focuses on identifying and understanding different writing tools for use. It's in that spirit I found that there's only four ways supervillains have ever cause jeopardy for superheroes in 70 years. I can't find a fifth.

How would you do that well though? Often they just seem to change a characters personality and give no explanation or a BS one, either way it comes off as forced.

Continuity doesn't matter. You don't explain why there are changes. You just do it. And if you do the new version in a way that is so mind-meltingly good, people don't care how it fits in because what they're reading is better than the nonsense earlier and they want this to be the new continuity.

Continuity is malleable. You can ignore anything that came before provided what you're giving now is better.

I very much like this thread's title.

I don't. We can have a thread that demands Marvel reboot and fix the Hulk because people don't like him, but if someone points out Daredevil's a cheap knockoff, we have to have a mocking thread title that calls it gibberish. Nice.

 

[Dr.Strangefate]

I am very much for this thread's title.

 

[The Overlord]

I don't think so. One of the recent episodes of that show is all about Batman deciding whether or not to kill Joe Chill. And the Phantom Stranger and the Spectre are involved as ominpotent beings who want Batman on their side. Works fine.

Joker isn't a mass murderer in that cartoon, Batman outsmarting cosmic gods but can't seem think to donate all this technology he uses to defeat space aliens to make Arkham escape proof and keep mass murders off the streets, makes Batman look foolish.

How many Batman fights aliens stories have worked in the comics?

I agree that the relationship is important, but Kingpin and Ra's have very similar relationships. Ra's and Kingpin are closer than Ra's and Lex for example. Or Kingpin and Lex. The only real difference between them is that Ra's, occassionally, wants Batman to work for him.

No they don't Ra's has way more respect for Batman then Fisk does and Ra's never hurt Batman the way Kingpin hurt DD.

Plus again Kingpin's goals and Ra's goals are completely different, Fisk wants to make money through organized crime, Ra's is a terrorist who thinks he saying the world. The kind of schemes these two would engage in are completely different. Its kinda like saying Red Skull and Dr. Doom are same because they both want to take over the world, but ignoring they have different methods (Doom relying on super science and Skull relying on political subterfuge) or that their reasons for taking over the world are different.

Mr Freeze has been the Criminal and the Monster. He used to steal stuff for monetary gain, now he kills people and blows up cities. Just cause you feel bad for him doesn't change what he does. Magneto is a tyrant. He lives on an asteroid or an island exempt from the laws of the society he attacks, whilst commanding an army.

The "Anti-Villain" concept is not about what the villain does or how they do it, but a measure of the empathy the audience has for that villain.

I think you are being far too board and ignoring the smaller things that makes villains different from each other.

Exactly - it's not that they die that's the problem, it's how and why.

Except it negates your point that Joker killing Catwoman would make a better story then Bullseye killing Elektra. Miller created Elektra and he killed her off and he meant for her to stay dead, he didn't take some other character someone else created and had been around forever and then just kill of that character because he felt the character's time was done, he created his own character and killed her off. What Miller did shows more respect for the characters, then some story where Joker would kill Catwoman would. If Joker kills Catowman, it means a writer just decided Catwoman's time was done and killed her off, even though he didn't create Catwoman and ignored the possibility that someone else has a million good Catwoman stories to write. That's why one works better then the other.

I'm sure he has.

When?

Black Glove, but apparently, he doesn't count because you don't agree. Onomatopoeia was a pretty good idea for the most part. I forget if Prometheus came out in the last ten years or not. And then there's all the villains for characters like Tom Strong which were fantastic.

There's loads of villains being created, but if you say, "Which new villains have been created for these half a dozen superheroes?" well, maybe not. But then, most superhero comics writing is just stock characters with stock events.

This is what I can't stand about the stranglehold of superheroes. "You can't create new villains" is an idea one could only have if one only considers superheroes through the eyes of Marvel and DC where they endlessly recycle the same plots and characters. In other genres and in other mediums, that kind of thinking is just nonsense. And it's true for superheroes.

Fans just want Green Goblin to fight Spidey for the fifteenth hundredth time. And the writers and editors are either lazy or scared of being disliked and so they just do that again and again and again in the same way with the same reasons.

Except I once saw an article on Live Journal about villains from the 90s who failed (doesn't seem to exist any more, but the point reamians the same), its not that writers don't create new villains, its that 95% fail in the end.

Look at BND, Slott created several new villains, but all them sucked except for Mr. Negative.

So, you say to me that "Fiction is not so simple that characters can easily be divided into a mere four categories" yet you now say that "there's only 7 or 8 plots possible". And the 7-8 plots is nonsense. One of the plots is a "Quest", but all stories are quests in the same sense that all music is made of notes. Every story is a quest; the protagonist wants something and then goes off in pursuit of it. That something may be a physical object like the Ark of the Covenant in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, an objective like defeating the Goldfinger in GOLDFINGER or something abstract like a meaningful life as in ABOUT SCHMIDT. Beyond that you have genres, of which there are dozens and they merge and change.

Where on Haig's list is the Mystery? Or the Disaster "Man vs Nature" plot? Not the "Man vs a Shark" but "Man vs Volcano"? Where is the Coming of Age plot? What about Love stories?!!?

It's nonsense designed to reduce the art of storytelling into demystified soundbytes that label conventional elements so that the guy can pretend he knows all about writing without actually having to do any writing.

It's a theoretical reduction, not a practical one. The theoretical reduction of "8 plots" is designed so that it's easier to talk about and compare the stories for academic discussion, but is of almost no help to anyone actually intending to write them. On the other hand, a practical reduction focuses on identifying and understanding different writing tools for use. It's in that spirit I found that there's only four ways supervillains have ever cause jeopardy for superheroes in 70 years. I can't find a fifth.

Perhaps so, but that doesn't negate my ultimate point, that I can apply your reductionist arguments about super heroes to almost any type of fiction.

If Green Arrow and Captain america are the same, how is Gundam different then Neon Genesis Evangelion, they are both cartoons about giant robots. How is Godfather different from Sopranos, they are both stories that examine the life a crime family. How is Prison Break different from OZ, they are both character studies about convicts in prison? How is House different from Grey's Anatomy? And to use a British example, how is Eastenders different from Coronation Street? On very basic level you can say a bunch of stories are the same , but there are a lot differences between those stories that are less obvious.

Heck Avatar was just Pocahontas in space and that's one popular movies ever, I even like Avatar somewhat.

Continuity doesn't matter. You don't explain why there are changes. You just do it. And if you do the new version in a way that is so mind-meltingly good, people don't care how it fits in because what they're reading is better than the nonsense earlier and they want this to be the new continuity.

Continuity is malleable. You can ignore anything that came before provided what you're giving now is better.

Except that's not good story telling, I hate when a character's established personality is ditched for the

Civil war was interesting in terms of concept, but in terms of characterization it sucked. Captain America was stupid for no reason, Iron Man become an evil fascist for no reason and no one did anything logical, if they were in character, Steve and Tony would have sat down and came up with some sort of compromise that made sense, instead of just fighting each other. They had been friends for years, that made no sense.

A lesser example would be the Hood's gang of super villains, egomaniacs like the Wizard and complete psychopaths with no interest in money like Purple Man, some how became greedy thugs and deferred to the Hood's leadership, just for the sake of the plot and the plot just sucked, it would have been more fun if these villains were in character.

I never believe in sacrificing characterization for the sake of plot.

 

[Bass]

How many Batman fights aliens stories have worked in the comics?

You're continually altering the parameters of your question to a point where I simply cannot win. I say he can fight aliens one moment and have an urban vigilante story the next by evidence of THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD and then you decide that it doesn't count because it's not a comic or in continuity.

It being a recent television show does not invalidate my point.

No they don't Ra's has way more respect for Batman then Fisk does and Ra's never hurt Batman the way Kingpin hurt DD.

Ra's sometimes has great respect for Batman, and other times great disdain, depending on who writes him, just like Kingpin. Bendis had Kingpin treat Daredevil with respect.

If Joker kills Catowman, it means a writer just decided Catwoman's time was done and killed her off, even though he didn't create Catwoman and ignored the possibility that someone else has a million good Catwoman stories to write. That's why one works better then the other.

No no no. By your logic, the only valid and good stories for superheroes can only ever be written by the person who invented them, yet, you also believe that no one can invent new characters.

So that means no one, can ever, do anything to any of these characters ever, because they didn't invent them and thus can't change the status quo of their lives, but, at the same time, they can't invent new ones.

A writer could come along and tell a brilliant Catwoman story that has her killed by the Joker. And he could mess it up. Depends on him.

When?

THE DARK KNIGHT. Batman beats the crap out of Joker in an interrogation room.

Except I once saw an article on Live Journal about villains from the 90s who failed (doesn't seem to exist any more, but the point reamians the same), its not that writers don't create new villains, its that 95% fail in the end.

Look at BND, Slott created several new villains, but all them sucked except for Mr. Negative.

I liked the Screwball and Paper Doll.

But your 95% thing isn't new. It's always been like that. The villains that survived the last 70 years of comic history are the top 5%. Yes, we get 9 crappy Batman villains like Film Freak and Angle Man, but one of them will be Bane.

Slott's average was pretty damn high!

But even when we get a new villain, they seem less than brilliant because they lack nostalgia, which is a huge force in favour of the old villains who routinely have stories that are just as bad as the new villain's story but survive due to that nostalgia.

Screwball was fine considering people stack her up against 50 years of Green Goblin comics.

Perhaps so, but that doesn't negate my ultimate point, that I can apply your reductionist arguments about super heroes to almost any type of fiction.

If Green Arrow and Captain america are the same, how is Gundam different then Neon Genesis Evangelion, they are both cartoons about giant robots. How is Godfather different from Sopranos, they are both stories that examine the life a crime family. How is Prison Break different from OZ, they are both character studies about convicts in prison? How is House different from Grey's Anatomy? And to use a British example, how is Eastenders different from Coronation Street? On very basic level you can say a bunch of stories are the same , but there are a lot differences between those stories that are less obvious.

Heck Avatar was just Pocahontas in space and that's one popular movies ever, I even like Avatar somewhat.

Exactly. How are they different?

That's what I was talking about. What are the substantive differences between Batman and Daredevil and how do writers use them to tell different stories? The answer is what you mentioned earlier, but most of the time, Daredevil's chief difference is that he is blind and a lawyer and that is why, no matter how much you love him, he is a cult figure.

Batman does Daredevil better than Daredevil does.

Except that's not good story telling, I hate when a character's established personality is ditched for the

Civil war was interesting in terms of concept, but in terms of characterization it sucked.

I never believe in sacrificing characterization for the sake of plot.

Hi, I'm Bass. I've been saying that for years.

You're making this mistake: you are confusing continuity with character.

They are not, and have never been, the same.

When a writer takes on these characters, they're suppose to keep the character the same, but they can more or less choose what continuity they want. Generally this means stories for the last five years, but often times it will mean the last five years plus whatever run they liked in their childhood.

A great example is Grant Morrison's NEW X-MEN run where he just showed up and started telling wild X-Men stories in a completely different X-world than before and he didn't do much explaining, he just dived into it and people didn't mind because it was good.

Continuity is a fan-made nonsense that the editors have to continually dispose of every 5-10 years because it is completely subjective. One writers thinks that what "makes" Spidey is him being a loser, so all of a sudden, he's no longer married. CONTINUITY! People yell in protest. The stories patter on the surface because the writer lacks authorship of the fictional world he's writing in. Fans writing stories of their favourite characters for other fans.

Continuity is the hallmark of fan-fiction.

 

[Zombipanda]

................


I'm still not following the "Captain America and Green Arrow" argument. That **** is PUZZLING.

Incidentally, I'll respond to you later tonight, Iceshadow.

 

[Bass]

I do love that this thread has two completely separate discussions.

 

[Ice]

I don't. We can have a thread that demands Marvel reboot and fix the Hulk because people don't like him, but if someone points out Daredevil's a cheap knockoff, we have to have a mocking thread title that calls it gibberish. Nice.

Wow. It's called a joke? :?

I don't actually find it to be gibberish.

 

[E]

Wow. It's called a joke? :?

NO JOKING ON THIS SITE I WILL BAN YOU ALL

srsly ppl

 

[Ice]

NO JOKING ON THIS SITE I WILL BAN YOU ALL

srsly ppl

Fine. I'll just go back to bashing Mark Bagley! See if I care!!

 

[The Overlord]

You're continually altering the parameters of your question to a point where I simply cannot win. I say he can fight aliens one moment and have an urban vigilante story the next by evidence of THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD and then you decide that it doesn't count because it's not a comic or in continuity.

It being a recent television show does not invalidate my point.

Its a little unfair to use a cartoon to prove a point in this case, considering Batman has a million cartoons and DD has none.

Considering this is the comic forum where I am posting how am I supposed we are counting other media versions of a character?

Ra's sometimes has great respect for Batman, and other times great disdain, depending on who writes him, just like Kingpin. Bendis had Kingpin treat Daredevil with respect.

Except Ra's wants to make Batman his heir, Kingpin doesn't want to do with that.

No no no. By your logic, the only valid and good stories for superheroes can only ever be written by the person who invented them, yet, you also believe that no one can invent new characters.

So that means no one, can ever, do anything to any of these characters ever, because they didn't invent them and thus can't change the status quo of their lives, but, at the same time, they can't invent new ones.

A writer could come along and tell a brilliant Catwoman story that has her killed by the Joker. And he could mess it up. Depends on him.

That's not what I'm saying at all, you I'm saying 9 out 10 comic book deaths suck, especially of female characters.

At this point in the game I'm 90% sure a story where Joker killed Catwoman would suck and I was outlining why I think Elektra death is better, because Miller planned out from the beginning, he introduced the character and killed her off it was planned from the beginning. I don't think it be a better story because it was done.

THE DARK KNIGHT. Batman beats the crap out of Joker in an interrogation room.

Again why are we using other media to argue something in the comic forum? The dark Knight Batman is different version of Batman. If I can bring in random versions of a character from media, I can say Batman is worse then DD because of Batman and Robin. When you start just picking and choosing different versions of character in argue, it makes the argument convoluted.

I liked the Screwball and Paper Doll.

But your 95% thing isn't new. It's always been like that. The villains that survived the last 70 years of comic history are the top 5%. Yes, we get 9 crappy Batman villains like Film Freak and Angle Man, but one of them will be Bane.

Slott's average was pretty damn high!

But even when we get a new villain, they seem less than brilliant because they lack nostalgia, which is a huge force in favour of the old villains who routinely have stories that are just as bad as the new villain's story but survive due to that nostalgia.

Screwball was fine considering people stack her up against 50 years of Green Goblin comics.

I gotta admit I forget Screwball and didn't the story with that character. But the fact that article noted there several bad conventions that are followed when villains are created, resulting in way more failures now, then in say the 60s, where they just threw a bunch of stuff at the wall and saw what stuck.

Exactly. How are they different?

That's what I was talking about. What are the substantive differences between Batman and Daredevil and how do writers use them to tell different stories? The answer is what you mentioned earlier, but most of the time, Daredevil's chief difference is that he is blind and a lawyer and that is why, no matter how much you love him, he is a cult figure..

Do you really want to me explain why all those things different in great detail? I'm not doing that, it would take forever and would be completely off topic.

The point is any genre and super heroes are a genre, there will always be common tropes, common story line types, but there will also often be there will differences.

So if you are offend that too many super heroes are similar too each other, why not apply that to all fiction? And if I think all those things I mentioned are too similar, then I can apply your reductionist arguments to all fiction, because fiction fits into certain genre and genres have conventions. So if we apply this reductionist thinking to all fiction and discover that if you try hard you can say any one story is too similar to another, then what's the point of enjoying fiction at all? If this is the case, what's the point of reading new fictional books or watching new TV shows and movies? If this is the case, shouldn't we not bother with any that and just limit our reading and viewing to news and documentaries?

I think to enjoy fiction you have realize its naturally limitations, which isn't the case just with comics, but all fiction. Within almost any story where will be similarities to other stories, its the smaller details and twists that will make. I have seen a ton of gangster movies, I can still watch another if it was similar to another, but was still well done. Yeah you can say Sopranos and Godfather are the same, but that's a complete generalization and if you are not going to watch Sopranos just because its about a crime family like the Godfather is, I think you are denying yourself a good TV show for silly reasons.

That's why I disagree with you so throughly, I'm disagreeing with the logic, because I think spending too much time thinking about how one story might be similar to another is less fun then searching for the differences in a story and seeing what makes it unique. Your logic is far too generalized for me agree with.

Considering the only thing I think Green Arrow and Cap have common is their title deals with politics, I think your definition of what is too similar doesn't hold much water. Its like saying Star Trek and Star Wars are same because they both take place in space.

Batman does Daredevil better than Daredevil does.

Does Batman do stories about the legal system or religion better then DD?

Hi, I'm Bass. I've been saying that for years.

You're making this mistake: you are confusing continuity with character.

They are not, and have never been, the same.

When a writer takes on these characters, they're suppose to keep the character the same, but they can more or less choose what continuity they want. Generally this means stories for the last five years, but often times it will mean the last five years plus whatever run they liked in their childhood.

A great example is Grant Morrison's NEW X-MEN run where he just showed up and started telling wild X-Men stories in a completely different X-world than before and he didn't do much explaining, he just dived into it and people didn't mind because it was good.

Continuity is a fan-made nonsense that the editors have to continually dispose of every 5-10 years because it is completely subjective. One writers thinks that what "makes" Spidey is him being a loser, so all of a sudden, he's no longer married. CONTINUITY! People yell in protest. The stories patter on the surface because the writer lacks authorship of the fictional world he's writing in. Fans writing stories of their favourite characters for other fans.

Continuity is the hallmark of fan-fiction.

Except you are talking about changing Bullseye personality with no explanation and personally Bullseye and Joker both being psychopaths doesn't offend me, why would I want?

 

[Bass]

Overlord, let's just call it quits.

You fundamentally think every superficial detail about a character is of the utmost importance, and I consider the character holistically in regards to their entire genre to be more important.

You read a comic in which one scene involves Daredevil's radar sense and go, "That's Daredevil." Whereas I look at the entire story arc which involves a superhero fighting a circus-themed supervillain with a femme fatale hanging in the balance and I go, "That's a Batman story. I've seen this in this way before." You go, "Kingpin wants money and Ra's wants to destroy the world" and I go, "If I had this script and hit ctrl+H and replace the word 'money' with 'destroy civilisation', nothing in this comic would change."

 

[The Overlord]

Overlord, let's just call it quits.

You fundamentally think every superficial detail about a character is of the utmost importance, and I consider the character holistically in regards to their entire genre to be more important.

You read a comic in which one scene involves Daredevil's radar sense and go, "That's Daredevil." Whereas I look at the entire story arc which involves a superhero fighting a circus-themed supervillain with a femme fatale hanging in the balance and I go, "That's a Batman story. I've seen this in this way before." You go, "Kingpin wants money and Ra's wants to destroy the world" and I go, "If I had this script and hit ctrl+H and replace the word 'money' with 'destroy civilisation', nothing in this comic would change."

Well we can call it quits, but come on I think you are giving my arguments enough credit if you ignore exactly what I have outlined what is different about DD and Batman, maybe not all writers highlight these differences, but there are there. Calling it quits, but then ignoring all my arguments and saying you win is not a good way to call something quits.

My ultimate point that I would like to leave on, I can see why people can argue DD and Batman are similar and I think there's valid argument you can make about that, but if you saying that Green arrow and Captain America are too similar because they both deal with politics, its the definition of similar rather arbitrary? Who decides what's too similar to something else, what are qualifications whether something is too similar or not ?

And if you are unhappy with super heroes being too similar, for even the same vague as Cap and GA both involve politics, why not apply those reductionist arguments to all fiction? Is Star Trek too similar to Star Wars because they both take place space? That makes as much sense as saying Green Arrow and Cap are similar because they both involve politics.

I just completely disagree with your train thought on this matter.

 

[Bass]

Well we can call it quits, but come on I think you are giving my arguments enough credit if you ignore exactly what I have outlined what is different about DD and Batman, maybe not all writers highlight these differences, but there are there. Calling it quits, but then ignoring all my arguments and saying you win is not a good way to call something quits.

I didn't say "I win" or anything like that. It was just a matter of this; I think that if Batman were a blind lawyer, he'd be identical to Daredevil. He'd be the same blind lawyer. That's pretty much the only differences in the characters. I don't consider that to be particularly interesting or substantive difference. You, on the other hand, do. You reckon that when the blind/lawyer elements are used, they're used in a way that really differentiates the two characters.

We get each other's points, we just don't agree/ascribe different levels of importance on different aspects of the discussion.

Who decides what's too similar to something else, what are qualifications whether something is too similar or not ?

For me it's just about originality. Cap and GA both use politics in the same way for the same reasons, filling the same hole in the group dynamic of their fictional universes. The differences are there, but they're small and easily replaced without any substantial changes to the events, motivations, or any other element of the story being needed.

And if you are unhappy with super heroes being too similar, for even the same vague as Cap and GA both involve politics, why not apply those reductionist arguments to all fiction? Is Star Trek too similar to Star Wars because they both take place space?

Because the argument isn't based on superficial elements of story design like setting, but on more substantive and important elements, and I do apply those principles to anything.

In the world of the master detective, there are countless detectives, but three really stand above the rest; Columbo, Poirot, and Sherlock Holmes. They're all master detectives, all cut from the same cloth, but the types of mysteries they encounter, and the methods in which they solve them, and the worlds in which they inhabit, are different in such a way that you couldn't just take a Columbo story, set it in the 1930s and give it to Poirot. If you did that, it would still needing major rewriting.

The same is true for STAR TREK and STAR WARS. The new Trek film essentially did STAR WARS with the Trek franchise (and not as well) but it required some substantive changes. While the plot is strikingly similar, Kirk is nothing like Luke. Nero is nothing like Darth Vader. They didn't just go, "Okay, Klingons are Wookies, and Tatooine is Vulcan", and so on. It's a similar plot and theme, but the characters are different not only in the choices they make but the way in which they carry out those choices.

But I could take Frank Miller's Daredevil run and give it to Batman, and it would just require some name changes, the occasional tweak here, but it would be the same character making the same choices for the same reasons and carrying out those choices in the same way. And you could do it the other way round, and you'd realise that you'd replaced a bunch of awesome Batman characters with subpar, less interesting Daredevil ones.

Sure, there are exceptions, like BORN AGAIN, but I look back on Daredevil comics I've read and it's just a blind Batman with a law degree and no money.

I'm not saying there are no differences, I'm saying that the differences are inconsequential. You disagree, you think him being a lawyer is very important and used fully by his writing staff. I don't. We're just repeating it back and forth with no advancement any more.

 

[The Overlord]

Fair enough I suppose we will to agree to disagree, but I found it fun to debate anyway.

 

[Bass]

Yeah, we're just going round in circles.