Fruit Cart Thread! aka comic book cliches

[Corrina]

Named after the scene in movie after movie where someone running always knocks over a fruit cart.

My least favorite:
"I love you but revealing my secret identity will put you in danger."

Because Lois was never in danger *before* Superman came into her life and Mary Jane and Aunt May are never, ever menanced in the Spider-Man movies *before* they learn Peter is Spider-Man. Right.

Most favorite:
I gotta go with the ripping the shirt open to reveal the Big Red S or whatever the costume is under the regular clothes. Puts a smile on my face every time.

[Josh S]

My least favorite:
"I love you but revealing my secret identity will put you in danger."

Because Lois was never in danger *before* Superman came into her life and Mary Jane and Aunt May are never, ever menanced in the Spider-Man movies *before* they learn Peter is Spider-Man. Right.


I think that's crazy, but for a different reason. Sure, they may have been faced dangers before but the hero's thinking is that such knowledge will place them in more, unnecessary danger. And that's what bothers me about it. Superman is telling Lois Lane he's Superman. He's not telling her and all his enemies. Sure, she might blab but if he thinks that's the case then it's a trust issue, not a safety issue.


Most favorite:
I gotta go with the ripping the shirt open to reveal the Big Red S or whatever the costume is under the regular clothes. Puts a smile on my face every time.

For me, that only works with Superman but it works everytime he does it.


I'll need to think some more to come up with my own.

[Gaz]

Named after the scene in movie after movie where someone running always knocks over a fruit cart.

My least favorite:
"I love you but revealing my secret identity will put you in danger."

Because Lois was never in danger *before* Superman came into her life and Mary Jane and Aunt May are never, ever menanced in the Spider-Man movies *before* they learn Peter is Spider-Man. Right.

To be fair, that's because they're both doofii. Peter is the only public figure connected to Spidey, thus bad guys think "Hmm, maybe he can be bait, or if not, his family..."

And Clark is stupider. He has a relationship, a public one, with Lois AS SUPERMAN. Thus, she is ALREADY IN DANGER BECAUSE SHE KNOWS SUPERMAN! Dumbass.

[Noah Johnson]

This is across all fiction, but I hate the popular notion that when doing good cop-bad cop, the suspect confesses to the bad cop. I see it a lot in comics, mostly in the form of the hero getting information out of someone by threatening them. Batman's a major offender.

Not only is it a cheap cliché and a lazy way of getting some information into the plot, but it's complete horseshit. In real life, nobody ever tells ANYTHING to the bad cop. Fear does not turn into cooperation, it turns into anger and resentment. If that crap worked, they'd just do bad cop-bad cop. People INVARIABLY confess to the good cop, because they like him and trust him.

But as usual, intelligent real-world solutions to problems aren't sufficiently simple and macho for fiction.

[Gaz]

This is across all fiction, but I hate the popular notion that when doing good cop-bad cop, the suspect confesses to the bad cop. I see it a lot in comics, mostly in the form of the hero getting information out of someone by threatening them. Batman's a major offender.

Not only is it a cheap cliché and a lazy way of getting some information into the plot, but it's complete horseshit. In real life, nobody ever tells ANYTHING to the bad cop. Fear does not turn into cooperation, it turns into anger and resentment. If that crap worked, they'd just do bad cop-bad cop. People INVARIABLY confess to the good cop, because they like him and trust him.

But as usual, intelligent real-world solutions to problems aren't sufficiently simple and macho for fiction.
Bad cop rarely dangles someone by their feet off a skyscraper though.:D

[Cam63]

The unarmed hero who dives headfirst into a room/warehouse/street of badguys all armed with automatic weapons and not one useless bastard can manage to shoot him.

[Sean Whitmore]

Bad cop rarely dangles someone by their feet off a skyscraper though.:D


That's why I've always thought Batman should take credit for the occasional criminal's death. Once you know Batman's not going to kill you (which many, many, many criminals have deduced and flat-out told him to his face over the years), then his spooky Dracula shtick is pointless.

But if you know a guy who knows a guy who swears that Batman killed his cousin Tony last year, then it becomes one of those things you just can't take the gamble on.


SEAN

[Cam63]

Hero uses laser gadget from his utility belt in a non life threatening situation that he could've used to get out of a life threatening fix on hundreds of occasions.

[Ian Boothby]

Everything you know about "fill in the blank" is wrong.
It worked with Swamp Thing when Alan Moore did it.
It worked with the Chief in Doom Patrol when Grant Morrison did it.
It's gotten hack.

Add into that slipping an event into retro-continuity that goes against what you know about a character. Dr. Light is a rapist, Gwen Stacy had sex with the Green Goblin, The Illuminati in Cival War. All take a more innocent time and show you the dark side. It's cheap, easy writing.

[Larry Dixon]

Kinda with Ian on that, yeah. To do a solid, heavy-impact reveal, you have to build in the setup and clues a LONG way in advance. Otherwise it's a joy-buzzer shock instead of a thunderbolt.
Check out the film The Usual Suspects for a great reveal.
Check out the Star Wars movies for just plain terrible reveals.
Check out Star Trek: Nemesis for...
...


..ah hell no, I like you all too much to want ANY of you to watch that. :P

[Corrina]

But if you know a guy who knows a guy who swears that Batman killed his cousin Tony last year, then it becomes one of those things you just can't take the gamble on.


SEAN

I think that's what Matches Malone was for, at least somewhat.

[Corrina]

The unarmed hero who dives headfirst into a room/warehouse/street of badguys all armed with automatic weapons and not one useless bastard can manage to shoot him.

Automatic weapons are notoriously inaccurate--especially if you're not aiming properly, which none of these thugs seem to be doing. (Stop holding the guns sideways, dumbass.)

Still, you'd think one of those guys would hit something. :)

[Evan Waters]

Narrative captions (usually first-person) clearly being used for the author to articulate his/her worship of a given hero and what that character really means to them.

[Cam63]

Heh !
.......

[blackcanary_416]

Or a hero dies and is either replaced with a character of another ethnicity or gender.

When a hero goes through a major change in their personal life sometimes their costume changes mysteriously.

or my favoirte...
The big bad threatens earth and its a royal rumble on earth and in space and then everybody is happy again and at the end you see the big bad plotting for his revenge.

[Larry Dixon]

...and addendum, when a character is destroyed/dead and then reborn, they have a new costume at the time of resurrection. I want a solid story that explains just who the hell are these mysterious afterlife costume designers and tailors?

There are a bunch of costume-related cliches.

I have to admit that when I heard about the new Spider-armor I thought, "Well about time! Pete gets his ass handed to him all the time, and he knows Tony Stark, why hasn't he thought of this before?" :) Then again I feel that way about... well, characters that have the time, know martial artists, but never bother to learn to fight well... or characters that know people who can fix their illnesses or trauma but no one seems to act on it... and so forth. I dig solutions.

[stealthwise]

There are a couple of lines I loathe to hear ever again:

"I'm turning bad, but a part of me liked it." Or any variation on that line, even All-Star Superman #4 had that, and it nearly dragged the Jimmy Olsen awesomeness down for me.

"THIS ENDS NOW." If anyone ever uses that again, I will... I don't know what I'll do, but I hate that line. So overused.

I also hate the really lazy "introduce a character at the beginning of an arc only to reveal him/her to be the mastermind villain." It sucked when they did it in Hush, and it sucks everywhere else.

I also dislike it when writers tie in nearly every single villain with the main hero and their secret identity. The first Spider-Man flick did this, but it made sense then. It made no sense whatsoever in the second movie, with Otto and Peter forming a short-lived friendship that added nothing to their hero/villain dynamic (not to mention the "tentacles controlling my mind and thus removing all of my personal agency," but that's another story).

[heystacy]

"All New, All Different, Change the status quo, etc." Those are my favvorite ones to hate. :(

[Larry Dixon]

How about the "it was cool the first time, it's not cool the 40,000th variation":

"I'm the best there is at what I do."

[heystacy]

Characters from the future/alternate timelines that will never happen.

[PatrickG]

I also dislike it when writers tie in nearly every single villain with the main hero and their secret identity. The first Spider-Man flick did this, but it made sense then. It made no sense whatsoever in the second movie, with Otto and Peter forming a short-lived friendship that added nothing to their hero/villain dynamic (not to mention the "tentacles controlling my mind and thus removing all of my personal agency," but that's another story).

Peter did have a friendship with Octavius in the comics too, though.

[Sean Whitmore]

Peter did have a friendship with Octavius in the comics too, though.


Retconned in muuuuuuch later. Likely because of the movie, unless any earlier stories that I'm unaware of depicted them as friends.


SEAN

[Larry Dixon]

Characters from the future/alternate timelines that will never happen.


Cheers to THAT!

[Screwtape]

Least favorite: "How alike I am to my arch-foe The Joker/Lex Luthor/The Red Bee. I must ruminate on this for an issue-length tale of me doing the generic things I usually do and come to the conclusion that, because I have saved a kitten on the last page, my sociopathy is somehow worth the costly and casualty-filled war I wage against it in my soul."

Worst Example: Any number of Batman and Daredevil comic books so crappy I can remember neither the issue numbers, the writers, nor the artists.

Most favorite: "Ah, Joker/Luthor/Red. You spent five months, untold resources, and countless millions of dollars working to lure me in an unutterably complex, intelligent, and foolproof trap but what you did not know was that I had infiltrated your ranks in disguise/invented that doomsday device years ago while we were at school together and thus have the means to dismantle it here in my pocket/hidden under your bed. You were defeated even before you began to fight."

Best Example: The last panel of Fantastic Four: 1234 #3. "What have YOU been doing, Reed?"

"Well, Victor... I've been thinking."

Hooray!

[Damo]

You know who rocked? Ted Kord rocked. The very first time in costume that he heard his girlfriend say "I'm worried about Ted" he took that mask right off. That's a real man right there, hides his identity to protect his gal, but the moment she seemed worried he trusted her without hesitation.

Everything you know about "fill in the blank" is wrong.
It worked with Swamp Thing when Alan Moore did it.
It worked with the Chief in Doom Patrol when Grant Morrison did it.
It's gotten hack.

Add into that slipping an event into retro-continuity that goes against what you know about a character. Dr. Light is a rapist, Gwen Stacy had sex with the Green Goblin, The Illuminati in Cival War. All take a more innocent time and show you the dark side. It's cheap, easy writing.

Ah yes, retconning away innocence. I'm personally amazed at how good Sue Dibney was at faking cheerfulness and innocence. Or perhaps she was just traumatized. The poor woman. :rolleyes: (Hmph. Unfortunately there's no frowning rolling eyes smiley)

The unarmed hero who dives headfirst into a room/warehouse/street of badguys all armed with automatic weapons and not one useless bastard can manage to shoot him.

Cassandra Cain dodged because she could tell where you were going to shoot from your body language.

But despite that she still got hit lots of times. And never even whimpered, because when she was a kid her dad played "two for flinching" with a gun. Badass.

Cliche?

An X-Man dying. Hon, just don't, okay? Don't even write the scene. They can't die. Doug freaking Ramsey came back kindasorta. They don't stay dead, don''t even bother killing them.

Manga (hey, still comics) cliche is the two swordsmen running right past one another then they stand perfectly still for a few panels, then one falls over dead. I love it though. That and the fact that there's always a convenient sakura tree around to drop its petals and show that samurai live short but beautiful lives. Oh, and convenient lilies where there's lesbians around. Someone must be working overtime to set up those flowers. Those cliches rule.

But a cliche that doesn't rule is Gail being good at everything. Dangit girl, knock it off, you're making people look bad! ^_~