Why Marvel and DC Superheros are selfish greedy bastards.

[Lester C.]

The Fantastic Four have everything from flying cars to teleporting devices. Their headquarters looks like something out of Star Trek. And yet the technology for the Marvel Universe normal citizens is on par with ours.

Over in the JLA they again have teleportation devices, Amazonian healing rays that can cure cancer and Martain and Kryptonian technology. Their Moon Base looks like Star Wars meets Star Trek. And again the DCU universe normal citizen technology is on par with us. It's obvious the heroes are greedy bastards in both universe who haven't learned to share as both Marvel and DCU Earth landscape should look like Coruscant on Star Wars. I don't know what's so heroic about holding the little man down while you are living in a technological enabled Utopian Paradise.:mad: And yes I have nothing better to do until as the stores aren't open yet, and I need to do some shopping.

[Agent Helix]

What, have you not read Planetary?

[Lester C.]

What, have you not read Planetary?

Years ago, but that like Earth 31 or 15 or something like that. It's not the standard mainstream DCU.

[Alan Lynch]

I thought superheroes were dicks because it constitutes satisfying character development, and presents a gritty realism we all want in stories about people with super powers and brightly coloured tights. At least that's what Marvel told me.

[Solaris]

Gotta hand it to Star Trek for this:

It's implied before in the old series, but in STNG we get to see that, for the average citizen in the Federation, societal ills like starvation and homelessness are no more, and everyone receives good health care.

That shows up in various places, but in particular in the time-travel episode where Deanna is talking with Mark Twain.

[Alan Lynch]

Yeah, Gene Rodenberry sure was optimistic.

[Lester C.]

Gotta hand it to Star Trek for this:

It's implied before in the old series, but in STNG we get to see that, for the average citizen in the Federation, societal ills like starvation and homelessness are no more, and everyone receives good health care.

That shows up in various places, but in particular in the time-travel episode where Deanna is talking with Mark Twain.

The Federation are Dicks too. Even though they can build materials from nothing they refuse to waste their unlimited resources developing primitive worlds. The Prime Directive was written by a Superhero elitist to keep the common man alien thing down! Power to the people, alien, sentient robot, things!

[Lester C.]

Yeah, Gene Rodenberry sure was optimistic.

And yet many people have stated that he was an asshole including his wife. It seems Gene was a very complex person.

[Cam63]

*In Irish accent*.... JOOSTICE AT ENNY COHHST, YER BARRRSTEDS !

[Alan Lynch]

The Federation are Dicks too. Even though they can build materials from nothing they refuse to waste their unlimited resources developing primitive worlds. The Prime Directive was written by a Superhero elitist to keep the common man alien thing down! Power to the people, alien, sentient robot, things!
Hey, they let aliens work onboard starships. That counts, right?
And yet many people have stated that he was an asshole including his wife. It seems Gene was a very complex person.
I have no idea one way or the other. But his vision of the future is still about as optimistic as they come. Everyone else is all apes, death machines and general apocalypse.

[KevinTBrown]

*In Irish accent*.... JOOSTICE AT ENNY COHHST, YER BARRRSTEDS !
Strange.... I still "heard" that in Australian. :redface:

[Lester C.]

*In Irish accent*.... JOOSTICE AT ENNY COHHST, YER BARRRSTEDS !

Thanks to my misspent youth watching Star Trek reruns I can translate this without The Master's assistance.

*In Irish accent*.... JUSTICE AT ANY COST, YOU BASTARDS !

[Agent Helix]

Years ago, but that like Earth 31 or 15 or something like that. It's not the standard mainstream DCU.

God, are they trying to say that's part of some new multiverse now? Fuck DC so fucking hard.

[Lester C.]

Hey, they let aliens work onboard starships. That counts, right?

I have no idea one way or the other. But his vision of the future is still about as optimistic as they come. Everyone else is all apes, death machines and general apocalypse.

The real kicker was that the show was all that and entertaining.

[Lester C.]

God, are they trying to say that's part of some new multiverse now? Fuck DC so fucking hard.

That's exactly what they are saying. I forget which number it is, but the Wildstorm universe is one of the 52 Earths in the multiverse. That really had the posters going in the Countdown section of the forum, which is how I know about it.

[Agent Helix]

That's so stupid. I hate comics.

[DaeJi]

Wouldn't all of the hero's super tech cost trillions upon trillions to produce en mass, bankrupting the world economy?

[Lester C.]

Wouldn't all of the hero's super tech cost trillions upon trillions to produce en mass, bankrupting the world economy?

Not really. Said technology would completely change the manufacturing and shipping process so it actually be cheaper in the final analysis. Think Industrial revolution as it pertained to building train tracks and factories.

[Cam63]

Strange.... I still "heard" that in Australian. :redface:

Oirish Arrstralyan, yer barsted !

[Lester C.]

Oirish Arrstralyan, yer barsted !

Translation: Orcish Australian you bastards !
So, Australians are Orcs. Well that certainly explains a few things.

[4PointOh]

According to a recent issue of SUPERGIRL, the Amazons' Purple Healing Ray cannot, in fact, cure cancer.

[Michael P]

The Federation are Dicks too. Even though they can build materials from nothing they refuse to waste their unlimited resources developing primitive worlds. The Prime Directive was written by a Superhero elitist to keep the common man alien thing down! Power to the people, alien, sentient robot, things!
They can't make stuff out of nothing. The replicators only reconstitute matter, they don't create it.
And yet many people have stated that he was an asshole including his wife. It seems Gene was a very complex person.
He was notably a douche about religion, which is why so many TOS episodes involve the Enterprise going to a planet and killing its god(s).

[Lester C.]

They can't make stuff out of nothing. The replicators only reconstitute matter, they don't create it.

He was notably a douche about religion, which is why so many TOS episodes involve the Enterprise going to a planet and killing its god(s).

Okay so they take dirt from a planet and reconstitute it into a utopia. They are still being dicks about not sharing the technology.

[stealthwise]

I'd like see a DC or Marvel universe more like Alan Moore's Top Ten. The world is irrevocably influenced by the existence of magic, science, and superpowers. Done.

You can still have diseases (STDs like STORMS) and still have genuine human emotion and conflict, just without the window dressings of our world, because it doesn't fit any more, especially not with long-existing continuity of characters like Spider-Man, Superman, etc. The sliding time-line is crap.

[Agent Helix]

I'd like see a DC or Marvel universe more like Alan Moore's Top Ten. The world is irrevocably influenced by the existence of magic, science, and superpowers. Done.

You can still have diseases (STDs like STORMS) and still have genuine human emotion and conflict, just without the window dressings of our world, because it doesn't fit any more, especially not with long-existing continuity of characters like Spider-Man, Superman, etc. The sliding time-line is crap.

The simple answer is, it's a more interesting dichotomy to have these superheroes set against the real world, for the most part. The elements of the fantastic are balanced by the mundane. It makes them seem more super.

[Cam63]

So, Australians are Orcs. Well that certainly explains a few things.

'Lucky I'm allergic to Assyrian Hobbits.

[stealthwise]

The simple answer is, it's a more interesting dichotomy to have these superheroes set against the real world, for the most part. The elements of the fantastic are balanced by the mundane. It makes them seem more super.

Really? I just don't see it working much anymore. We've seen it all, it's old hat to have Spidey dealing with "real world" problems like a job, bills, family matt... oops, scratch that last one, apparently.

Superman doesn't really focus on his job as a journalist much, and most of the character interactions can be done in other, more fantastic settings. I find I'm hard-pressed to think of any recent instances where having a superhero story set in the "real world" is advantageous.

Superheroes are metaphors for things in our everyday lives but that doesn't mean that they have to be set in our world. The only title where this actually seems to work (and it's an illusion here too, as the mileau is really just a toned-down B-action movie, for the most part) is Ennis's Punisher, which has the requirement of being kept separate from other superheroes for it to work. I'd give a pass to Daredevil as well, as they keep much of the technological stuff to a minimum, minus crossovers.

[Agent Helix]

Then it sort of becomes a different genre altogether, doesn't it?

[Gail Simone]

Most HMO's don't pay for Purple Ray treatment.

[Cam63]

Whenever I'm dealin' with narky visitors, I get a Punisher vibe goin'... Then I wake up and be polite to 'em.

[Cam63]

Most HMO's don't pay for Purple Ray treatment.

Purplist bastards....

[stealthwise]

Then it sort of becomes a different genre altogether, doesn't it?

Arguably yes, arguably no. Superheroes are pretty much a hybrid genre of sci-fi, fantasy, pulp detective, even western or horror, at times. It really depends on the focus of the story, and in the case of Marvel or DC, where they have shared universes that incorporate everything from real angels and demons to stuff like the Fourth World or the Negative Zone, you get the best of all worlds.

Or at least you should. But when your universe always has to have one foot firmly planted in "our world," with our own economic and political systems as the background, it really limits how far you can take it.

One option is Top Ten. Another is The Authority. I'm not suggesting that they have to go with either, but having a world where you're actually reflecting the changes in society that would go with having all of these insane heroes, villains and creatures would be a good start.

[Agent Helix]

Arguably yes, arguably no. Superheroes are pretty much a hybrid genre of sci-fi, fantasy, pulp detective, even western or horror, at times. It really depends on the focus of the story, and in the case of Marvel or DC, where they have shared universes that incorporate everything from real angels and demons to stuff like the Fourth World or the Negative Zone, you get the best of all worlds.

Or at least you should. But when your universe always has to have one foot firmly planted in "our world," with our own economic and political systems as the background, it really limits how far you can take it.

One option is Top Ten. Another is The Authority. I'm not suggesting that they have to go with either, but having a world where you're actually reflecting the changes in society that would go with having all of these insane heroes, villains and creatures would be a good start.

The problem is that long-term change is impossible with company owned titles. Top 10 and Planetary (since I think it's a much better example than Authority, being that Authority has been carried on and run into the ground like any other factory comic) can function like this because they operate on the short term. But Spider-Man and Superman don't. There has to be a status quo, and the best way to do that is having the status quo reflect what the reader knows and sees.

And I'd honestly argue that setting things in the real world is only a limitation for sorry writers. I find most sci-fi trappings, at least large scale, to be a crutch to mask poor writing. All of them? Of course not. But mostly, unless they're integral to the story (and is what you're talking about integral, or is it just background?) is just a way of saying gee-whiz without doing any of the work.

[Agent Helix]

Also, now that I think about it, the idea has been pretty well-explored by this point. So I'm not sure exactly why it needs to happen again in ongoing titles.

[DoctorDoom]

I have no idea one way or the other. But his vision of the future is still about as optimistic as they come. Everyone else is all apes, death machines and general apocalypse.

That should be quoted.

[PatrickG]

The Fantastic Four have everything from flying cars to teleporting devices. Their headquarters looks like something out of Star Trek. And yet the technology for the Marvel Universe normal citizens is on par with ours.

Over in the JLA they again have teleportation devices, Amazonian healing rays that can cure cancer and Martain and Kryptonian technology. Their Moon Base looks like Star Wars meets Star Trek. And again the DCU universe normal citizen technology is on par with us. It's obvious the heroes are greedy bastards in both universe who haven't learned to share as both Marvel and DCU Earth landscape should look like Coruscant on Star Wars. I don't know what's so heroic about holding the little man down while you are living in a technological enabled Utopian Paradise.:mad: And yes I have nothing better to do until as the stores aren't open yet, and I need to do some shopping.

As a kid, I always assumed Superman housed all the homeless and virtually eliminated petty crime in Metropolis.

I mean, NYC has what? 150 murders a year? You telling me Superman doesn't stop almost that many?

Grant Morrison seems to hint at average people having access to a higher level of tech, as do various writers.

But a contingent of writers, backed by editorial, seems to always come down against anything that severs the fictional universe too profoundly from ours.

Even if Topeka and Monte Video and San Diego are gone in the DCU...

[Chris Hansbrough]

Strange.... I still "heard" that in Australian. :redface:

My ears started bleeding from the Claremontism of the statement.....Kinda like a disease or symptom....I can picture the episode of House now....guy comes in speaking ungodly horrid fake accents.

Ok Differential Diagnosis people. What Causes tumor in the pelvis, Bloody Urine, Seizures, And Claremontism....

oy could be Lupus

It's not Lupus, that can't explain the Clarmontism.

[PatrickG]

The problem is that long-term change is impossible with company owned titles. Top 10 and Planetary (since I think it's a much better example than Authority, being that Authority has been carried on and run into the ground like any other factory comic) can function like this because they operate on the short term. But Spider-Man and Superman don't. There has to be a status quo, and the best way to do that is having the status quo reflect what the reader knows and sees.

And I'd honestly argue that setting things in the real world is only a limitation for sorry writers. I find most sci-fi trappings, at least large scale, to be a crutch to mask poor writing. All of them? Of course not. But mostly, unless they're integral to the story (and is what you're talking about integral, or is it just background?) is just a way of saying gee-whiz without doing any of the work.

See though, making the world constantly reflect ours makes the stories dated by the time they're printed.

And then you have sliding timelines and nonsense like that.

BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES had it (like most things) right, setting its hero in a fictional era where it picked and chose the technologies that existed. It was an era of sleek cars, giant mobile phones, pastel zoot suits, artificial intelligence, killer robots, nano-viruses, B&W TV and giant radios, an era when police in zeppelins patrolled the skies and advanced computers were smaller than your fingernail.

[Alex L]

That's exactly what they are saying. I forget which number it is, but the Wildstorm universe is one of the 52 Earths in the multiverse. That really had the posters going in the Countdown section of the forum, which is how I know about it.

Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_DC_Multiverse_worlds#The_52) to the rescue!

Wildstorm is Earth-50.

Earth-15 seems to be the near-utopia.

Metropolis benefitted the most out of any city from DCU tech -- they used Brainiac-15 technology for a while (before it recovered its sentience and turned evil or some such thing) and their police have better weapons.

In a shared universe, why doesn't Batman have a Steel suit, a Starman rod, or use modified versions of the Rogues' Gallery weapons? Mirror Master's gadgets, in particular, would make the Bat-family's life much easier.

[Lester C.]

Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_DC_Multiverse_worlds#The_52) to the rescue!

Wildstorm is Earth-50.

Earth-15 seems to be the near-utopia.

Metropolis benefitted the most out of any city from DCU tech -- they used Brainiac-15 technology for a while (before it recovered its sentience and turned evil or some such thing) and their police have better weapons.

In a shared universe, why doesn't Batman have a Steel suit, a Starman rod, or use modified versions of the Rogues' Gallery weapons? Mirror Master's gadgets, in particular, would make the Bat-family's life much easier.

My memory is groggy but Metropolis did use Brainiac tech to become a city of the future, but then a 12 issue mini By Chuck Austen, which no one read, wiped all that out. Now Metropolis looks like a cleaner version of New York, unlike Gotham which looks like a dirtier version of New York.

[Charles RB]

What, have you not read Planetary?

It's really fun reading the Four in Planetary - "you're not all good enough to come along" - and then reading Marvel & DC and wondering how much that's true...

Also, note JLA/Planetary, the "Four" there have actually brought more advanced tech and medical advances to DC-Earth even when holding things back than the DCU heroes on their own did.

in STNG we get to see that... everyone receives good health care.


Oh no, not universal health care! It must be some freakish tax-hoovering dystopia! :eek:

Really? I just don't see it working much anymore. We've seen it all, it's old hat to have Spidey dealing with "real world" problems like a job, bills, family matt... oops, scratch that last one, apparently.


He'd still need a job and have bills in a more fantastic super-teched New York though.

Which means we can't easily argue "we can't change the world because we need to show real-world issues"...

[Charles RB]

Even if Topeka and Monte Video and San Diego are gone in the DCU...

They probably figure "hardly any of our readers live in/know about Topeka and Montevideo".

San Diego, on the other hand... actually, where's the DCU version of Comic-Con held now? :confused:

[Justin D.]

They can't make stuff out of nothing. The replicators only reconstitute matter, they don't create it.

Ok, as a fellow Star Trek: Next Gen nerdfan, explain how the hell the food replicators work then.

[section 8]

ok i alredy know no good can come if this, but it needs to be said.....

FICTIONAL

..FIC...ION...AL

F I C I O N A motherf****in L

not real not even supposed to be realistic

...Fictional

[Charles RB]

ok i alredy know no good can come if this, but it needs to be said.....

FICTIONAL


Yes, that is the argument people use to avoid having to face glaring inconsistencies in serial fiction, thanks for reminding us. :wink:

[Michael P]

Ok, as a fellow Star Trek: Next Gen nerdfan, explain how the hell the food replicators work then.

They're programmed with the molecular characteristics of various foodstuffs, and can reconstitute the matter available to them into those configurations (although there are some esoteric things they can't get precisely right.)

If you're asking where they get the raw material, any waste on the ship is fed into the matter recycling units. Also, they can pick it up from space debris (as Voyager did on several occasions), or get restocked with raw matter at starbases. (The bases also get it from waste material, or just matter no one's using, like dirt).

[Tyr]

Most HMO's don't pay for Purple Ray treatment.

Really? well now I'm curious, I think I'll call my insurance company and ask them if they cover a PHR treatment.

I have no idea one way or the other. But his vision of the future is still about as optimistic as they come. Everyone else is all apes, death machines and general apocalypse.

Unless you count Space Saga's like Babylon 5, or Firefly, which is basically Star Trek with poor people.

[section 8]

Yes, that is the argument people use to avoid having to face glaring inconsistencies in serial fiction, thanks for reminding us. :wink:

noticing inconsistencies is one thing, but disection seems a bit extreme

[Charles RB]

Ok, as a fellow Star Trek: Next Gen nerdfan, explain how the hell the food replicators work then.

I personally like the Red Dwarf approach - they had food supplies in storage. Which starts running low, so by Series 6 they're eating the Starbug's vermin and drinking urine recyc.

I think I'd have watched Enterprise if the leads had to drink their own wee.

[CutterMike]

God, are they trying to say that's part of some new multiverse now? Fuck DC so fucking hard.

What, you never read the Batman/Planetary crossover? They're following a guy who jumps between universes and they meet the Batman.

... several times.

Once it's the Frank Miller "Dark Knight", another time, it's the Adam West Batman.

...Fookin' brilliant...!

[CutterMike]

(...)
One option is Top Ten. Another is The Authority. I'm not suggesting that they have to go with either, but having a world where you're actually reflecting the changes in society that would go with having all of these insane heroes, villains and creatures would be a good start.

Top 10, while I love it, is something of a cop-out.

If you read "The Forty-Niners", you find out that Neopolis is, essentially, the world's biggest ghetto. People with powers are "welcomed" to relocate to the new city after the war when their services are no longer needed and "normals" are afraid of them. Thus, while it APPEARS to be a "real" version of what would happen, we have no way of knowing what the world is like outside of the city.

[CutterMike]

I personally like the Red Dwarf approach - they had food supplies in storage. Which starts running low, so by Series 6 they're eating the Starbug's vermin and drinking urine recyc.

I think I'd have watched Enterprise if the leads had to drink their own wee.

See, now, if you HAD watched, you would have known that Archer and Trip actually admitted -- in a Q & A that they were recording for some elementary school or other -- that their water supply WAS, in fact, recycled from their... uh... wastes... Like,,, *ALL* of their wastes... And thank you, Jimmy, for the ...interesting... question...!

(Dear god... three major geek-answers in a row... That's so sad... just so, SO sad...!)

[Justin D.]

They're programmed with the molecular characteristics of various foodstuffs, and can reconstitute the matter available to them into those configurations (although there are some esoteric things they can't get precisely right.)

If you're asking where they get the raw material, any waste on the ship is fed into the matter recycling units. Also, they can pick it up from space debris (as Voyager did on several occasions), or get restocked with raw matter at starbases. (The bases also get it from waste material, or just matter no one's using, like dirt).

So.... food made from waste products.

Maybe the future isn't so bright.

[CutterMike]

So.... food made from waste products.

Maybe the future isn't so bright.

...and are you claiming that there is a food that ISN'T...?

Whether the shit is going in through a plant's roots, or is broken down to its constituent elements via tech, the result is the same – the elements are broken down and recombined into something that we consider edible, but it all comes from shit.

Everything you have ever eaten was made of shit. And the water that you drank today has been peed out a few billion times by everything from trilobytes to man.

Deal with it.

[Charles RB]

Everything you have ever eaten was made of shit. And the water that you drank today has been peed out a few billion times by everything from trilobytes to man.


You've just found a foolproof way of convincing people to eat less.

[CutterMike]

You've just found a foolproof way of convincing people to eat less.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have worked for me...

But then again, I freelanced AND worked retail for a lot of years, so maybe I'm just USED to eating more shit than the average person!

[Justin D.]

...and are you claiming that there is a food that ISN'T...?

Whether the shit is going in through a plant's roots, or is broken down to its constituent elements via tech, the result is the same – the elements are broken down and recombined into something that we consider edible, but it all comes from shit.

Everything you have ever eaten was made of shit. And the water that you drank today has been peed out a few billion times by everything from trilobytes to man.

Deal with it.

That was an appropriately angry response to a one-off joke post by me.

Yep.