Cool Comic Concepts that No Longer Make Sense

[Schuimend Mormel]

Originally Posted by stelok

I believe the superhero code against taking a life is the result of the restrictions Comics Code Authority (CCA) has set on the comics. And it was also the legacy of Silver Age.

During the Golden Age, Captain America, Superman, Batman, Golden Age Flash, and etc have intentionally killed bad guys or let them die, even though it was hardly necessary. They don't even bother trying to save the bad guys who were in danger.

Then as the CCA was birthed to dictate the rules on comics at the start of the Silver Age, superheroes took the lengthy pains to not kill the bad guys until there is no more option left. They even risked their lives going to strenuous lengths to save the bad guys.

I did not know this. Never having read any 'Golden Age' comics, I always assumed that the pre-60s heroes were squeaky clean, and curteous toward the bad guys. You learn a little every day.

[Brad Curran]

I liked Busiek's explanation in Marvels of why people loved the FF and hated the X-Men, and that sort of logic has always washed for me, but I can see why it's a sticking point for some people. In a lot of ways, the X-Men would probably work a lot better if they literally were off in their own universe, lest these questions didn't pop up. One thing I really liked about Milligan and Allred's X-Force/X-Statix is that they achieved Xavier's dream not by doing good deads but by having great PR and using the cult of celebrity to their advantage. It may make the X-Men look even stupider by comparison, but it always amused me.

[stelok]

It no longer makes sense that the Blackhawks, a small group of aces have mangaed to fight and survive throughout the WWII against Luftwaffe. Many of the Luftwaffe pilots were greatest aces in the world. The world's greatest fighter ace was Erich Hartmann, who scored 352 kills and he made Baron Hans Von Hammer look an insignificant amateur. Judging by the list on Wiki, there are about 50 Luftwaffe pilots who made over 100+ kills. The greatest non-German ace was a Finnish man, named Ilmari Juutilainen who scored 94 kills. No non-German ace has reached a 100th kill.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ar_II_air_aces

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Hartmann

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_ace

[foxley]

Originally Posted by Schuimend Mormel

I did not know this. Never having read any 'Golden Age' comics, I always assumed that the pre-60s heroes were squeaky clean, and curteous toward the bad guys. You learn a little every day.

They mostly were. In the very early days of superhero comics, they inherited a lot of conventions from the pulp magazines and so the heroes were willing to play fast and loose with the lives of villains.

However, this passed within a few years (possibly as a result of realising they were writing for a younger result, possibly because keeping villains alive made it easier to establish a recurring Rogues Gallery). By 1941, Batman was epousing a philosphy of never taking a life (in "Blackbeard and the Yacht Society"), even going so far as to save the life of a convicted murderer (already sentenced to die in the electric chair) who had stumbled onto the location of the Batcave and could reveal Batman's secret identity if he lived (in "1001 Secrets of the Batcave").

[howyadoin]

Originally Posted by stelok

It no longer makes sense that the Blackhawks, a small group of aces have mangaed to fight and survive throughout the WWII against Luftwaffe.

Sure it does. It's called "fiction".

[mgs]

Originally Posted by Omar Karindu

The unbreakable metal Adamantium is a mainstay of the Marvel Universe, but it's almost never used intelligently at all.

On the one hand, there's the bizarre attitude that a blade made of the stuff can cut through anything regardless of the shape of the cutting edge or the real amount of force the wielder can put behind it; on the other, aside from a few throwaway bits in random comics you don't see it turning up in, say, military applications like shells, tank armor, bullets, etc. (I can think of one or two instances where we've seen Adamantium-jacketed bullets, but you'd think those'd be all over the place.)

</p>
actually, as others have noted, I also used to think that one was crap, but actually, it's handled quite well. the rarity of the material in itself & manufacturing it was a mistake and there have been other instances of the metal but apparently most other tiimes the metal comes up, it is not 'true' adamantium, but a secondary one that is the closest scientists have been able to come up with.

[Zahir]

This might seem a tad subtle, but consider--several characters are truly ancient. Vandal Savage and Apocalypse are two obvious examples. Each of them have millennia under their belt. Yet both have achieved what with all that time? Essentially, one is a greedy bully and the other a fanatic based on the philosophy of a long-vanished nomadic tribe. This is all they've gained after clusters of centuries' worth of experience?

The movie Groundhog Day frankly conveyed this idea much better. Yeah, you'd go wild at first. But then, boredom sets in. Followed by despair. Then, maybe some wisdom, some insight into what one can really do with gigantic amounts of time available. Anne Rice's vampire novels deal with this idea pretty well also (essential to the plot of Queen of the Damned is that the title character simply doesn't have the personal resources of character to handle immortality). Me, I suspect anyone whose age has a comma in it would be either barking mad or inhumanly wise.

Oh, and coming back from the dead. Please, oh please. One wonders why superheroes even bother to grieve for their (temporarily) dearly departed.

[howyadoin]

Originally Posted by Zahir

Oh, and coming back from the dead. Please, oh please. One wonders why superheroes even bother to grieve for their (temporarily) dearly departed.

"Oh Jean, you're dead again!"

[Shellhead]

Originally Posted by howyadoin

"Oh Jean, you're dead again!"

In terms of angst, that situation ranks somewhere between a break-up and saying goodbye when your girlfriend leaves to spend the summer in Europe.

[dancj]

Originally Posted by Zahir

Me, I suspect anyone whose age has a comma in it would be either barking mad or inhumanly wise.

Do you read Powers?

spoilers:

I like the take in that of Walker not remembering more than a hundred years back. That could do something to alleviate the boredom/madness

end of spoilers

[stelok]

Originally Posted by Zahir

This might seem a tad subtle, but consider--several characters are truly ancient. Vandal Savage and Apocalypse are two obvious examples. Each of them have millennia under their belt. Yet both have achieved what with all that time? Essentially, one is a greedy bully and the other a fanatic based on the philosophy of a long-vanished nomadic tribe. This is all they've gained after clusters of centuries' worth of experience?

You forgot Ra's Al Ghul.

Originally Posted by Zahir

Oh, and coming back from the dead. Please, oh please. One wonders why superheroes even bother to grieve for their (temporarily) dearly departed.

Yes, what is the point of holding funerals for deceased super-heroes who may return to the land of living someday?

[Omar Karindu]

I've got one that's always bugged me -- how do all the visibly disfigured villains manage to "escape into the crowd" or stay hidden so well? I mean, someone who looks like Two-Face or the Joker or Jigsaw is going to be IDed almost instantly if someone gets half a glance at them, yet we're endlessly treated to storylines in which they manage to set up headquarters and move through cities with ridiculous ease.

It's even worse when they have their "theme" hideouts on top of all of that, of course. Between the instant-identification problem and the surely somewhat limited number of abandoned or corrupt places named things like "Harlequin Bakery" or "Rara Avis Collectibles" these guys should be found and captured by ordinary policemen within hours; Batman, Spider-Man, et al. oughtn't be spending ages looking for absurdly thin clues to trace them.

[Sijo]

Heroes not killing isn't as absurd as it sounds. First of all, most human beings have trouble killing, even animals- we fear death, and don't want to be reminded of it if we can help it, especially in graphic detail. It's one thing to kill in self-defense, another to coldly take someone's life. It's a line most of us would never want to cross, because we would not want to think of ourselves as killers. It's one thing to say "I would kill the bastard!" and another to see his bloody corpse at your feet.

To that, add the fact that most superhumans DO have destructive powers, the equivalent of permanently affixed weapons. Killing for them is easier than for the rest of us. The issue of killing -including by accident- would be more present for them. So, the idea that most heroes would have an unwritten "code" against killing makes sense, for their sake and their society's.

All of which is not to say, that they would NEVER kill. There are situations were most of us would kill- if our lives or our loved ones' were in danger, especially if it was a sudden situation were we had little other choice i.e. if an armed criminal attacks and you happen to have a gun in your hand. And certainly, it depends on the individual; some heroes are more likely to kill than others. And certainly, letting someone like The Joker live knowing he WILL kill again is a hard choice to make. But killing has consequences, from emotional to legal to social; it's always a mess, and even people like The Punisher have to hide constantly as a result. So no, that most heroes won't kill isn't that farfetched, though it isn't due simply to a 'perfect' moral code in all cases.

[Zahir]

Not to denigrate all the hype and everything about Secret Invasion (which does look cool), why do so many friggin' alien races want to conquer this planet? And why can't polities that have managed to take over whole galaxies, grinding star-spanning civilizations into the dust, have so much trouble taking over a planet whose inhabitants only split the atom less than a century ago?+

[Chad]

Batman taking on a code against killing made sense back in 1941 when most of the criminals he faced seemed to have done the same. I don't think the Joker killed anyone between 1942 and Joker's Five Way Revenge over 30 years later for example. So Batman giving the old "If I kill you I'd be no better than you" speech makes sense when he's facing bank robbers and pranksters, but now that he's facing serial killers like the Joker whose victims must number at least in the hundreds, that line of reasoning makes no sense. It seems that today's writers figure that since Batman wasn't willing to kill a guy back in the 40s, 50s, or 60 for a string of pie thefts, then it means that this preceedent proves without a doubt that Batman would never be willing to kill a guy today whose greatest crime might be murdering dozens people in an afternoon. I understand that Batman's vow against killing has been around for over 60 years, but keep in mind that for most of that time he wasn't up against full time serial killers.