What I Hate About Superheroes

DISCLAIMER

The following thoughts are my own. Generally speaking, I don't believe in right or wrong when it comes to someone's taste or creativity. I, in no way, mean to offend anyone with my opinion of the subject matter, or on anyone else's thoughts on the topic.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the superhero genre. I have been reading comic books since my mother found a stack of beat-up "Doctor Strange" in an antique store. Even though I wasn't even 10 years old, and the comics were the 70s, I was hooked. From there it was grabbing whatever I could, wherever I could, whenever I could. The publisher didn't matter and the content didn't matter, as I was just so sucked into the entire idea of it all. And the obsession only grew worse as the years went by, with my teenage years being filled with numerous subscriptions coming in each month, superhero trading cards, and any game remotely related. It might have been my first literary love.

That love last a long time, persisting all the way to the present, but, like many long romances, part of my passion has faded. Over the decades, I became more aware of certain recurring issues (no pun intended) in the genre, and it grew ever more difficult to write them off or ignore them. I watched my collecting start to dwindle, as the expense priority shifted further and further downward. Eventually, I only picked up a few issues here and there, and though I thoroughly enjoyed them, I couldn't muster the same enthusiasm I once did. After thinking about it for days, or maybe weeks, I decided that I should vent on what my problems with the genre are, so here we go...

1. Endless Story - I often refer to this as the "Soap Opera Effect", a little term I came up with which I personally felt pretty much summed up the whole issue. Most comic characters (not the individual books, which change names and numbering constantly) never really go away. What this amounts to is that ever character goes through everything, and is often linked to everyone. In a soap opera, nearly every character takes their turn at being a bad guy, only to inevitably be redeemed, and then sometimes repeating the cycle several times over. Romantic entanglements become just that, with everyone sleeping with everyone, or having some sort of forbidden love, or whatever nonsense they're selling that week. All of this comes back to not having a clear end point. Without a limited time to tell your story, you eventually come to the end, but still have to fill space. This is why so many comic book characters spend serious amounts of time as villains, because how many more heroic stories can you muster? How many times, and in how many different ways, can they save the world? You need endings. Even your favorite shows turn to absolute drivel if they go on for too long, for the exact same reasons.
2. No Consequences - The comic book world is so renowned for killing off characters, only to bring them back, it has become the biggest joke of the entire genre. This unfortunate trend is also, arguably, the biggest issue many people, both hardcore fans and casual readers, have with the genre as a whole. If nothing really affects the people in the story, then why get invested in it at all? If the characters can die, only to be brought back next month, or even next year, was it really a death? Wasn't it more of just an extended time off-camera? Look at the biggest example of this in modern history, "The Death of Superman". That happened way back in 1992, and if you read any of the Superman books now, you'd never knew it had happened. It changed him not a single whit, and it didn't change the story. It didn't change anything around him. No one he knew was affected in any lasting way. If the biggest consequence of all is, in theory, death, then it's absence makes any story with it as the core threat, a lie.
3. Nothing REALLY New - I know a lot of people would argue this one, and I would understand why. The comic book writers are constantly coming up with new villains, new heroes, and new stories. But, if you take a serious look, a great many of them are incredibly fleeting. Don't get me wrong, I understand why. We are talking about businesses after all, and keeping the spotlight on the characters the fans know and love is just smart money. But it also creates an atmosphere where new things pop up, usually just alongside the more popular ideas, then quickly fade away. The excuse is almost always "it didn't sell" or that "the fans didn't like it", but too many times the energy to promote these new things isn't even really there. They try to create hype for a few issues, then they just go back to focusing on the same old thing, the same old characters, the same types of stories. Then, when people (like me) get tired of the reruns, we phase out from the genre, which then provokes the next problem I have.
4. Excessive Social Pandering - In an effort to make themselves more relevant, comic publishers often overreact to current social issues, making sudden and sweeping changes to characters and story lines. And please, before you immediately judge me as some sort of privileged white male complaining about progressive inclusion, read on. I AM FOR DIVERSITY! The only time I have an issue with someone is based on their behavior. I don't care about their gender identity, ethnicity, political affiliation, or anything else. Behavior. How you treat me, and the people around you. Ok? That said, when you go out of your way to change an established character, turning them into something else just so you can point to how inclusive you are, you belittle the whole point. Don't make a young African-American girl the new Iron Man (yes, I get that she got named Iron Heart, but she was definitely billed as the new Iron Man), and rather just make a new, interesting character. Don't even compare Riri Williams to Tony Stark, because then, in so doing, you are already making her live in a white man's shadow. Don't go off about how progressive you are, turning Falcon into Captain America. Just give Falcon the shield, and let him be his own guy. Or, better yet, make a new super soldier. How about a Native American as the new Captain America? That would have been awesome, even though they would still be living under the banner of the old iteration. Don't even get me started on Jane Foster as "Thor", since that will be it's own post sometime in the future.

I don't claim to have the answers about how to "fix" the superhero genre. Obviously, simply reversing my above complaints could be a good start, but I'm not so sure that would even be a lasting fix. We, as comic fans, need to learn to let old characters go, and embrace new ideas. Many of these characters are older than we are, yet locked in time. The subject matter of them may have changed, but has the concept behind them? Are the changes we make for the better, or simply so we can say that the change occurred in the first place? I don't really know, but I'm not willing to give up on comics yet. I just have some issues.