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Cliches you can't stand

You can find superhero stories about just about anything, so sure, there are some stories where superheroes have those problems. But as a general rule, they're pretty rare. And the point is that this sort of thing takes on a very different tone if the story has a superhero "actually fix things beyond the latest super villain plot or a monster attack". That's why superheroes who "fix things" are treated as extremists--you can plot device away the bad things that superheroes do if they're fighting Doctor Doom, but you can't do that if the superhero is "fixing things".
 
Valmond said:
Why do you keep coming back to violence? How about having major heroes attending pride parades, speak up in favor of social justice policies, against police brutality, for transparency in government.
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Astro City tends to have their superheroes do just that, albeit usually as a side point mentioned when their public opinion is brought up. The Wonder Woman type superhero is known to go to feminist rallies, for instance, and is "controversial" due to that.

I don't actually know if this social activism ever becomes a main plot point in a story, because trying to make sense of comics canon requires far more time and effort than I believe is ever worthwhile.
 
Adloquium said:
Astro City tends to have their superheroes do just that, albeit usually as a side point mentioned when their public opinion is brought up. The Wonder Woman type superhero is known to go to feminist rallies, for instance, and is "controversial" due to that.

I don't actually know if this social activism ever becomes a main plot point in a story, because trying to make sense of comics canon requires far more time and effort than I believe is ever worthwhile.
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Astro City is fucking awesome, or atleast was, haven't read it in a while, hope it remains as i remember it.

I'm not expecting, or asking, or even wanting, social activism to be The major thing in superhero comics, or media general, but having them appear as sideplots, occasional offhand comments, as things that happen between major events and in the background, would be great.
 
The reason Superheroes ignore social and structural issues and tend to be status quo warriors simply because of cultural inertia and because that's the stance that boomer/gen-xer comic book editors and media corporations are comfortable with. And because of the cultural inertia of the past half century that framed the status quo as morally righteous.

But there's literally nothing inherent to superheroes that says they have to be that way. Mainstream superhero media could easily start doing shit like fucking up the military industrial complex if there was creative and political will behind it. But as long as the biggest superhero movies are partially bankrolled by the Department of Defense that's not likely.
 
Civil War II: I'm with the white woman who wants to imprison or kill a black teenager for a crime he might commit in the future.
 
Well there was the civil war where Ironman started imprisoning people without due process (and forcing children into becomming soldiers).
Then there was the civil war where Captain Marvel started imprisoning people for crimes they had not commited yet without due process.
And then Captain America went damn near literally Nazi. :jackiechan:

It would be refreshing to see the "heroes" go after blacksite prisons, instead of running them. :V
 
Valmond said:
Well there was the civil war where Ironman started imprisoning people without due process (and forcing children into becomming soldiers).
Then there was the civil war where Captain Marvel started imprisoning people for crimes they had not commited yet without due process.
And then Captain America went damn near literally Nazi. :jackiechan:

It would be refreshing to see the "heroes" go after blacksite prisons, instead of running them. :V
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It's pretty much agreed upon that those stories are terribly written and a disservice to characters in them. Even to this day, Captain Marvel gets a lot shit thrown her way for
Civil War 2, though there are other factors involved.
 
Captain Hydra is a meme to this day, I'm pretty sure everyone thought that ""twist"" was goofy and dumb and the page layout didn't help. It was even spoofed to a degree in Avengers Endgame.

It's possible people don't want superhero activism in their comics because it usually turns out terrible.
 
Reveen said:
The reason Superheroes ignore social and structural issues and tend to be status quo warriors simply because of cultural inertia and because that's the stance that boomer/gen-xer comic book editors and media corporations are comfortable with. And because of the cultural inertia of the past half century that framed the status quo as morally righteous.

But there's literally nothing inherent to superheroes that says they have to be that way. Mainstream superhero media could easily start doing shit like fucking up the military industrial complex if there was creative and political will behind it. But as long as the biggest superhero movies are partially bankrolled by the Department of Defense that's not likely.
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I've seen some old Superman comics where he rages against poor working conditions for miners by using super strength to cause a controlled mine collapse that trapped a bunch of wealthy mine owners inside the mine and let them run around panicking at the complete lack of safety equipment and protocols that would have let them get through the situation without issue if they hadn't been to stingy to provide it and after railing them out for all their fuckups and letting them think they were going to die because they were to greedy to provide basic safety nets for their work places he digs them out, with the lesson hopefully learned.


So yeah. You absolutely can write superhero stories that tackles social issues without punching but still uses super powers. In more creative ways than just fighting even.


And if punching is a requirement:
Highly recommend this story btw.
 
As I recall outside of all the free clinics and schools Bruce Wayne funds as well as his other philosophic activities or for that matter his offering of jobs to convicts to help them not fall back into a life of crime tand Superman as Clark Kent is a reporter which has gotten corrupt interests trying to kill his civilian identity because of his investigative reporting at least once that I recall which while things that aren't flashy superhero fights are things that super hero characters can have done to change things without anyone even throwing a single punch.

Though on the superhero front I do recall that batman has fought literal slavers before from a businessman who was enslaving the homeless to work in his mines to the sewer king, a man who controlled a gang of orphans he often starved, tortured and it was implied fed to his pet alligators if he was too displeased with them though I suppose that would be more upholding the status quo but in a way that is a very good thing.

Batman also as I recall fought businessmen who tried to destroy poor neighborhoods and take the land for profit.
 
Alane1 said:
As I recall outside of all the free clinics and schools Bruce Wayne funds as well as his other philosophic activities or for that matter his offering of jobs to convicts to help them not fall back into a life of crime tand Superman as Clark Kent is a reporter which has gotten corrupt interests trying to kill his civilian identity because of his investigative reporting at least once that I recall which while things that aren't flashy superhero fights are things that super hero characters can have done to change things without anyone even throwing a single punch.

Though on the superhero front I do recall that batman has fought literal slavers before from a businessman who was enslaving the homeless to work in his mines to the sewer king, a man who controlled a gang of orphans he often starved, tortured and it was implied fed to his pet alligators if he was too displeased with them though I suppose that would be more upholding the status quo but in a way that is a very good thing.

Batman also as I recall fought businessmen who tried to destroy poor neighborhoods and take the land for profit.
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There's an excellent mini-series written by Paul Dini and drawn by Alex Ross which showcases Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and Captain Marvel/Shazam tackling issues outside the normal 'punch the bad guy' that is well worth a look.
 
FortePlus said:
It's possible people don't want superhero activism in their comics because it usually turns out terrible.
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But that's basically like 90% of comics out there, even the ones from 1940. That's just nobody usually noticed the activism itself because the stories were cleverly written in such a way that nobody objected to it while making them think about it at the same time. The thing is-- current activism in comics tends to be too in your face about it, instead of teaching a lesson in an interesting, entertaining way.

1950's to 1980's comics--everything was an allegory. The superheroes' activism was there, but it was subtle and not so preachy. so nobody felt like they were being preached to, even if they might be. Even if a few people still complained at the time that the superheroes' political viewpoints didn't aligin up with their own, because you can't please everyone.

Modern comics: Blatantly preachy hell. Straight up tells you that if you don't think and act a certain way, then you're a sexist and racist bigot, etc. Hell, Marvel just literally made two new superhero characters called Snowflake and Safe space in an attempt to appeal to the young SJW crowds. It was done in such a way that it was like an old man going "How you doing, fellow kids?" But those characters just ended up being hated by literally everyone, even the SJWs themselves.
It's truly impressive when something is so bad that all the comic neckbeards, anti-sjws and sjws alike unite together on the internet to vocalize how utterly terrible the characters were... I'd like to think that this was secretly Marvel's goal all along, but.... eh?

Edit: noticed that there was a word filter in place for a certain internet term. interesting. eh, whatever. let's just say the "wonderful" person was of a far-leaning liberal persuasion and that the other people were far-leaning right-wings. that leaves it at that.
 
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FortePlus said:
So it's not activism then.
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Kids didn't notice all the gay rights activism in Star Trek TNG and DS9, but it was still there. just disguised as an allegory.
Of course, the irony is then that some fans grow up thinking that there was nothing political in Star trek at all and start complaining about all the gay people in Discovery and Picard... while forgetting that people like Dax once had a snogfest with her ex-wife on screen, for all to see...

Just because you didn't notice it at first doesn't mean it wasn't there to start with.
 
Aurora Moon said:
Kids didn't notice all the gay rights activism in Star Trek TNG and DS9, but it was still there.
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Adults didn't often notice it in TNG either because it was half-hearted and just outright weak compared to the anti-racism messages of TOS. (Aside from the Big Kiss, there's several other high-profile shots at it, like the famous "He's black on the wrong side!" rant.) Like, DS9, okay, the one scene, sure, but not too much either, nothing else as high-profile. But TNG? Their big stab at gay representation subverted its own message by having them explicitly start to identify as female since they were in relationship with a male.
 
Night said:
Adults didn't often notice it in TNG either because it was half-hearted and just outright weak compared to the anti-racism messages of TOS. (Aside from the Big Kiss, there's several other high-profile shots at it, like the famous "He's black on the wrong side!" rant.) Like, DS9, okay, the one scene, sure, but not too much either, nothing else as high-profile. But TNG? Their big stab at gay representation subverted its own message by having them explicitly start to identify as female since they were in relationship with a male.
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That's true. But at the same time, Racism itself was somewhat easy to argue against at the time during the 50's. Segregation was starting to fall out of favor thanks to some activists, and almost nobody wanted slavery to make a comeback. Not even most of the racists thought slavery was a good idea anymore, except for the more hardcore cases like the KKK.
So it'd be pretty easy for the 50's to instantly portray somebody as a bad guy if they were a slaveowner. That way even the bigots were like: "Yep, owning slaves is bad. Just keep the blacks on the far side of the town away from me and we have no problems. Keep whites and blacks separate, that's the way, yessiree."

Well, in most cases.... there were still those Orion slave girls. I guess as long as they were green, nobody cared.

with things like the AIDs Scare, etc, it's harder to justify gay rights when literally everyone who was a cis person tended to see gay people as purely sexual beings who were nothing but dirty man-wh*res and the like. so that's why they had to be so lukewarm about representing gay rights, otherwise the censors at the time would've gone crazy.
 
Here's a bugbear of mine: "strong independent woman who always sounds like they are about to burst into tears!" With gears 5 being an example.
 
Two friends getting transported to a new world, get separated and one of them ends up in Villain HQ (with corresponding architecture), gets told what's going on from SirLooksEvil and for some inexplicable reason just believes them resulting in them working for the villains and eventually facing off against their friend who got the correct information.

Sure, you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, and people don't look evil in reality but still, there are other massive clues that things aren't adding up.
In Kingdom Hearts, IIRC, Maleficent tells Riku they need the Princesses to stop the Heartless so he should go kidnap them and also here is the power to control the Heartless to help you.
 
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Aurora Moon said:
Kids didn't notice all the gay rights activism in Star Trek TNG and DS9, but it was still there. just disguised as an allegory.
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[Laughs in Queer Star Trek Fan]

Oh, friend, you don't want to get into this. Star Trek as a 90s franchise has self admittedly NOT DONE WELL in this category outside of one (1) Episode that was extraordinarily controversial. (No comment on everything past DISCO)
 
I got pet peeve, you using Dark Fantasy wrong... Dark Fantasy is Gothic/Horror-adjacent fantasy. Please don't use dark fantasy for song of ice and fire....
 
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