I was thinking about this theory of mine the other day and wondering what everyone thought of it. We all know that comics aren't being made for children or "all ages". To me, it goes deeper than that.
Comics will never be as mainstream as we like. However I have noticed that, in general, there is a certain type of kid who picks up comics. Most often that kid is highly intelligent and sensitive. Someone who is very aware of injustice in the world and feels powerless about it. Sometimes, they are not as popular as they would like. This type of kid would find the old style comics very appealing. Heroic figures (not arrogant bastards), doing the right thing for the right reasons, despite the odds against him. Even when their personal life does not make it easy for them.
This type of kid would have zero interest in the "kewl" comics being published today. They see enough supercool jerks in their own life, they don't need to escape with a comic that has them in it as well. They don't want to read about heroes like the ones NuMarvel is producing.
Its funny but reading my description of the kid I realized that I was describing Peter Parker (the original version). Stan Lee and Steve Ditko knew exactly what they were doing. Which is probably why kids today loved the movie, have no interest in the comic version that's married to a supermodel, and if they do pick up a book, pick up Ultimate Spiderman.
What are your thoughts? Ami I crazy or just over generalizing?
This message has been edited by aberrebbi on Mar 5, 2004 9:40 AM
The simple genius of Stan Lee was his understanding that the readers must be able to identify with the characters at some level. Sure, Superman and Batman were popular (tho slipping fast in the latter case, circa 1961), but there was no way a reader could identify with them.*
But the early Marvel books always found a way to make the heroes -- in their civilian guises -- someone we, the readers, could connect with. That was the purpose of Johnny Storm in the FF. That was why so many of the early characters were damaged goods in some way, physically (Don Blake) or emotionally (Peter Parker). As Roger Stern has noted, he enjoyed reading AMAZING SPIDER-MAN because he knew that no matter how bad his day had been, Peter Parker's had been worse!
As more and more fans crossed the line and became pros, this important element began to be lost. The characters the fans thought were "cool" became cool when those fans started writing and drawing their adventures.
Plus, most sadly, the real sophistication that Stan Lee brought to the writing was replaced by a false veneer of sophistication -- a pretense of sophistication, which has reached it zenith -- or nadir, more like -- in current books.
*In his book "The Great Comicbook Heroes" Jules Feiffer points out that this was something all the companies kept getting wrong for years and years. Robin was introduced to give the kids who read BATMAN someone they could identify with -- but no one did, since he was effectively "the smartest kid in the class" and everyone hated the smartest kid in the class. Billy Batson was a kid like the readers, but there the mistake was giving him a "magic word" with which to work his transformation into Captain Marvel. As Feiffer notes, kids of his generation shouted themselves hoarse yelling SHAZAM to no avail.
Pretense is a perfect word to describe what's going on now.
While I don't neccesarily agree with Jules Feiffer about Billy and Captain Marvel (I feel the Shazam family has enormous potential with childre..think Hary Potter), I can see what he says about Robin.
Another thing that current creators get wrong is the heroes of early Marvel were "damaged goods" but they were still decent people. Now they are damaged mentally.
I think this thread is helping to crystallise something which has puzzled me for years. It has always seemed to me that comic book readers end up being either Marvel people or DC people, and I've seen nothing to persuade me otherwise, even in this Forum (this is not to say that the two sets are mutually exclusive: I enjoy Marvel material, and have a tolerable grip on much Marvel history, but I'm still a DC person at heart, and DC forms my main monthly budget. I'm aware that the opposite holds true for others).
So why this dichotomy? After all, both companies publish superhero comics, don't they? Perhaps it comes down to the issue of identification.
In the Marvel universe, identification seems to have been predicated on identifying with problems of the civilian characters when they're not being superheroes, problems which remain a concern even when they are in costume, problems which are the everyday problems we all meet - isolation, rejection, family, work pressure, money pressure etc., which is why it is Peter Parker who is our friend, not necessarily Spider-Man.
In the DCU, I think identification is still often the key, but it's identification within the fantasy world rather than within the real world, predicated on wish fulfilment. Much as we have a soft spot for Clark Kent, we don't want to be Clark, we want to be Superman. We want to fly, we want to have a power ring, we want to be able to leap from rooftop to gargoyle under cover of darkness (without being blind:)), we want to be able to run around the world and be back before anyone realises we've moved.
So perhaps Marvel readers are those who are more firmly rooted in the real world, and DC readers are those who more easily slip into a complete world of fantasy. Or am I oversimplifying?
Well I feel that DC still has that pattern pretty well down.
But i disagree entirely about Ultimate spiderman. I am a big fan of old spidey and I found that title to be near unreadable and cancelled after 5 issues.
I dont see the problem with amazing spiderman. I think its cool he got a supermodel wife. Why not? He deserves it. He is a good guy who worked hard to do the right thing forever. I dont see where that makes him less accessible.
I dont see the problem with amazing spiderman. I think its cool he got a supermodel wife. Why not? He deserves it. He is a good guy who worked hard to do the right thing forever. I dont see where that makes him less accessible.
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How many people do you know who are married to supermodels?
Thank you JB. Could not have said it better myself. People have to remember that you might want your favorite superhero to growp up and finally experience coolness but that is a selfish desire. You are depriving all the new fans of the same pleasures you had as a kid.
As for Ultimate Spiderman, no where did I say I liked it or even feel its neccessary. A big no to both. But the character of Peter in Ultimate Spiderman is, in some ways, more identifiable to kids than the current Spiderman.
Very cool thread.
You may have something there Allen, though I tend to think that the 'jerk-hero' prevalent in comics nowadays was born in the Image era of the dark 90's.
One small aside, can anybody remember when, exactly, MJ became a 'supermodel'?
Ultimate Spiderman captures the spirit of the character
better than the main title does. This "reboot" should
have happened in the main book rather as an "Ultimate"
title. Oh, wait-- it did happen in CHAPTER ONE...
...never mind!
"How many people do you know who are married to supermodels?"
Define supermodel? in fact MJ became a "super" model after they were married.
I in fact know a few people who married models. Myself in cluded. Maybe thats why i can understand the character. I think its cool that a "geek" like Peter gets the ultra hot babe.
Most fans are not married to supermodels. We have to think of the majority, not just ourselves. Also, there is more inherent drama in longing and suffering for someone than to be happily married.
It doesn't but if you want the fan to relate to the person inside the superhero, it helps to keep him down to earth. If Peter Parker was cool and dating the hot chicks from day one, I doubt Spiderman would have been anywhere near as popular.
Who is this Spiderman that everyone keeps talking about? I thought Peter Parker was Spider-Man.
Look ... Peter Parker is the hard-luck hero. When things seem to be going his way, he is blindsided by something else that he had not anticipated or had been ignoring. His life does not have to be a laundry list of horrible tragedies -- these setbacks don't need to be blockbusters every time -- but resolving his lovelife by marrying him off to Mary Jane effectively destroyed the character for me. Since then, I have occasionally peeked in on Spidey, but he's no longer the superhero who I admired and pitied all at the same time.
Mary Jane becoming a world-famous supermodel was the end of the line for me. What happened to Peter being a normal guy? Who is Spider-Man unless he has money problems? Arrrgh.
A part of me wishes that the Shaper of Worlds plotline that JB once mentioned had gotten the green light. If we could rewind Peter back to college or grad school and keep him there forever, I would be in heaven.
my point is he is a NERD that got to date a hot chick.
That is WAY cooler than if he was with some lame chick.
I mean if you can relate to him to begin with why wouldnt you want him to get the good stuff?
I honestly can not comprehend where you are coming frmo on this.
He is still not cool and was FAR from cool when him and MJ orignally hooked up. He was teh same nerdy kid who became a man and hooked up witha babe. It happens and I am pretty sure most nerdy kids would like it to happen to them. So I see this as fitting in better than him not being with her by far.
Another thing Stan Lee did well that has been lost was his way of showing his readers heroic traits in the context of their lives. I doubt he was preaching or even conciously thinking about it, but consider this:
By reading Lee's Spider Man you learned that -
Helping get rid of small evils keeps larger evils from happening.
Even superheroes get bullied.
You sometimes need to work hard and sacrifice to help those you love.
You will have to deal with people you do not like in order to earn your living.
Those who have need to help those who don't. (With great power comes great responisbility)
It takes a certain light touch to be able to teach a lesson through example without turning it into a Movie of the Week or the dreaded After-School Special.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Good Judgement comes from Experience
And Experience comes from... Bad Judgement
Your post, and JB's above, state perfectly the contribution Stan Lee made. This is why his stories were fun and engaging, and sometimes silly, but never stupid, never talked down to the reader, and always kept the entertainment in good taste. And the stories that he wrote some, what, thirty-five or forty years ago have not dated one bit and hold up beautifully! They remain, in reprint, some of the best comic book stories avaialble now in 2004.
I wonder how many of the current Marvel regime have ever read any of Stan's stories, or know who he is and what he contributed, beyond "Oh, didn't he co-create Spider-Man and the Hulk?"
"It happens and I am pretty sure most nerdy kids would like it to happen to them. (underline mine)
But it doesn't. I think you answered your own question."
But it does and can. The problem most of them dont think they can have that so they never try. When in fact its rather easy and they are more accessible than what most people consider to be "average" women.
not arguing I just think it is way cooler that he got MJ than if he would not have had her. in reality the fact the got married made me think back in high school , that HEY! why can I do that. And it worked and did help me. So I figure why cant it do the same for others.
my point is he is a NERD that got to date a hot chick.
That is WAY cooler than if he was with some lame chick.
I don't want Peter to be with some lame chick, I want him to try, and try, and try again to find happiness in romance. He will usually fail but sometimes he will succeed, and I can be pleased for him. I don't want him to become a success in romance, because Peter's never a complete success at ANYTHING. I don't want Peter Parker to stray so far from what made him interesting in the first place, and I don't want the character to change so much that later generation of readers can't see why Spider-Man is unique and wonderful.
This goes back to your argument about growth and change -- what makes you think that you, as a reader, are so special that you deserve to see all this growth and change happen before your eyes, forever changing the character for future generations? Did you ever think that kids being born today would like to pick up a comic book and see a young, tortured hero who saves the world from bad guys but can't get a date and can't pay the bills?
I mean if you can relate to him to begin with why wouldnt you want him to get the good stuff?
I honestly can not comprehend where you are coming frmo on this.
Have you heard a funny thing called dramatic tension?
"I wish I could get a girl." That's a dramatic situation. It lends itself to stories. It's appealing.
"I got a girl." That's bragging. It just lies there. It's boring.
He is still not cool and was FAR from cool when him and MJ orignally hooked up. He was teh same nerdy kid who became a man and hooked up witha babe. It happens and I am pretty sure most nerdy kids would like it to happen to them. So I see this as fitting in better than him not being with her by far.
Seriously, is this what appeals to you about Spider-Man?
Peter is not a nerd, he's a genius. He's a good-looking guy with friends and a good sense of humor, but he also knows that he has a responsibility to help those who can't help themselves, so his life will never be a bed of roses. His attention will always be pulled away from the people he loves.
Which is a LOT more interesting than "I'm married to a supermodel and I never get to see her."
everythign you said was your opnion. which is fine. I find him very interesting this way personally.
in reponse to this:
"what makes you think that you, as a reader, are so special that you deserve to see all this growth and change happen before your eyes, forever changing the character for future generations? "
the fact i buy the comic maybe?
I dont change the character a writer does. I either like the change or I dont. I have the power to display my sentiment by buying or not buying the title.
The question can be turned around the other way as well. What makes some kid so special that the character can never change just in case he may have liked him better the way he was.
We are talking personal preference now and that really can be argued either way. You like one thing while someone else will like another.
I stick by that i think it was really cool to see him finally succeed at something. It was great for me. Why would I want to take that away from myself?
The question can be turned around the other way as well. What makes some kid so special that the character can never change just in case he may have liked him better the way he was.
Not SOME kid. ALL THE KIDS. And the adults, for that matter. Everyone who ever encounters the character again until the end of time. The caretakers of the character should have enough respect for its legacy to prevent such damaging changes from taking place.
We are talking personal preference now and that really can be argued either way. You like one thing while someone else will like another.
Yes, we are talking about personal preference. I prefer Spider-Man, the character created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. You prefer something else entirely. I would be a much happier person if Marvel had invented a new character called MarriedToASuperModel-Man back in 1987 for fans like you who seem to think that the current status quo is so much more interesting than the icon that made the company so successful. I'd love to see the sales figures on MarriedToASuperModel-Man compared to Spider-Man.
Am I correct in guessing that you became a fan after Peter and MJ were already married? That this has ALWAYS been the status quo for you?
Some people don't get it. If you only create comics that cater to aging fanboys, the industry prevents new blood from coming in. There is a reason why Spider-man was such a hit. When you change the character too much, his appeal diminishes.
The whole thing that makes Spider-Man and other "hard-luck" heroes great is the constant struggle. The struggle to save innocent people from crime (in hise life as Spider-Man), and the struggle to find happiness as Peter Parker. When the struggle is over, the saga is over.
Having Peter get what he wants out of life is a great ending, but if the book is going to continue being published and the saga of his life continue to unfold, you can't end the major conflicts.
The premise of Jim's arguement is, "I think it was really cool to see him finally succeed at something. It was great for me. Why would I want to take that away from myself?"
Bringing new readers, or any other readers besides Jim himself into the arguement isn't going to change his mind.
Me, I'm more of a Marvel girl. I buy a half-dozen or so DC titles each month, but by far the bulk (like, 30ish books) is Marvel. Even though DC was what I read initially (the reprints my father brought home)
Dunno why really, never thought about it too much. Maybe my first exposure to 'real' comics - coloured original books rather than B&W reprints - was a bunch of Marvel books I picked up on a family trip. Those titles included Avengers, X-Men, Iron Man and some others that escape me now, and I've pretty much stuck with them since.
Maybe it is the identification thing. Marvel strikes me as more realistic (rightly or wrongly) and I like that. Maybe it's all that simple?
Anyway, great thread Allen, with some really good comments by people. Thanks for posting!
____________________________________________
You are a god among insects. Never let anyone tell you different.
I think I fit that description as a kid. "Powerless" certainly rings true for me! My parents divorced when I was 10 and my mom was in and out of alcoholism treatment in my early adolescence. I'm perfectly willing to admit that superheroes were a great escape as well as a personal inspiration for me, especially Spider-Man and Captain America.
Most of my superhero-loving friends had a rough time growing up -- an absent or abusive parent, money problems, health issues, etc. Without going into details (unless you want to) does that fit the bill for anyone here?
I realize that what I'm about to write seems to be a bad rehash of the aims of writing but this is how I see the forces behind comics divided up. Please bear in mind that it's only a theory and that I am not a rocket surgeon or a brain scientist.
Revolution/stirring the pot.
Some comic fans see comics as a clique-ish psuedo revolutionary literature(The British bullies) aimed at making the "sheep" think. They tend to keep trying to make the "sheep" think astaoundingly similar things which implies that the "sophisticated post 2000 AD" crowd might be just another variety of sheep. I think these "alternative sheep" tend to see their own brand of comics primarily as a tool for discrimination between those who "get it" and those who "don't get it." Thus they have a sort of marker that tells them which coffee house to go to and who it's safe to rant to. They separate out into layers according to how radical they want to appear. They tend to insert elements into their books to purely to piss off "the squares".
Teaching/preparing the reader for some real world role.
Some see comics as a "maintaining literature". These are the forces of "the man" whether he is the "leftist man" or the "corporate western civ man". They hate horror comics and tend to dislike gratuitous displays of "originality" or themes that exist for shock value. These are the people who were always hacking away at Eerie, EC comics, and all the weird/strange/occult books Marvel was doing in the 70's. They hate Heavy metal and Epic magazine and such. They tend to put either morals or preachy messages into their stories and they can come from any point on the political spectrum. Some will write comics about saving the Earth from pollution and others will write comics about standing by your grandparents through hard times. The key is to understand that these comics fans tend to want to preserve(or in some cases promote) some good in society that they see as being under attack or in a state of degradation. They are forever commenting on racism, sexism, corporate felony, government corruption, agressive behavior, etc. Super heroes and teen charcaters are there to show our young people how to be good people. Another angle of this branch of comics readers are the instructive comics that actually teach you abrreviated snippets of hisory or how to build a complex piece of lawn furniture.
Purley market driven comics/Bread and circus!
There are the bubble gum/porno people who put out pure humor or poetry or whatever that is entirely aimed at entertaining it's chosen audience. This is where the rough ass anti-heroes come from and the silly humor books and the defining characteristic is that anything goes as long as people come back again. This is the pandering stuff, the cheap stuff, the sugary guilty pleasure narcissism feeding stuff. This can range from cute stuff to licensed stuff to actual smut. The difference is that goal for this kind of book is not to offend but to feed the base desires of it's audience. There is no desire to teach or to shock and disrupt. It's there to hit the spot and tickle the fancy. The short term trend-driven nature of this comics branch makes it very prone to sudden and highly incosistent change. It is subject to any and every fickle desire the mass of moic book fans might have.
Art for art's sake/ The off beat stuff/PBS comics.
Finally there are the experimentalists who view comics as a tool that can serve as almost any kind of literature or expression of thought. These guys churn out tiny comics made out of glow in the dark plastic with Quimby mouse and do episodes of Gilligan's island backwards in wood cuts or maybe give us some highly conceptual thing that out weirds the Larry Marder's Bean world. A few of these guys do deconstructionist comics though most of those writers are in the revolution camp. This deconstructionism is not in any pursuit of an agenda but rather to see thwat would happen. But this is where seriously odd stuff that is not aimed at teaching, revolting, or pleasing the reader comes in. These comics seem to often be either stunts or evidence of psychosis.
Anyway I think these are the four major forces that inform today's comics. Sorry about the long time it took me to edit this. I'm a mediocre speller and a poor typist.
This message has been edited by Palaeomerus on Mar 5, 2004 9:01 PM This message has been edited by Palaeomerus on Mar 5, 2004 8:53 PM
I wonder how many of you long time fans fit the description I posted originally?
******************************************
Ah, really not me. Always pretty fortunate in that regard. Parents still deliriously happy and together after 40 years, wonderful older brother and younger sister, always a good group of friends and always pretty popular at school. I think I read comics originally out of hero worship for my father, who had given them to me - this made them special.
It wasn't until my early teenage years that certain things began to alienate me from some of the less-enlightened crowd, and make me feel somewhat out of place with 'mainstream society'. But even that, with a supportive family and close friends was not so bad. And of course now I'm mighty and independent so it doesn't matter.
Nah, I just like the escapism of a good story, and some good characters I can care about!
____________________________________________
You are a god among insects. Never let anyone tell you different.
For the record. Spidey was the first comic I started reading regularly. Sometime in 1980. So you assumption was way off. And I thought it was the greatest thing when he married MJ.
I still stick by it. There is no point in whining about it. The characters change either buy it or dont. Most of you dont seem to buy any of the current comics anyway so I dont understand why you are complaining.
And the argument still goes either way. If you never cahnged or progressed you would alienate readers jsut as you alienate them by always changing.
The point here is not the fact that the characters change, but the question of why. For half the existance of superhero comics the changes in characters ranged from microscopic to nonexistant. One could argue, in fact, that the very reason Superman and Batman became iconic and Spider-Man has not is that they went for so many years without any great changes. For many "generations" of comic readers Superman was the same Superman, Batman the same Batman. Yet Spider-Man today is barely recognizable as the character Stan Lee and Steve Ditko created. He has no litany a civilian can learn (a laClark Kent, Lois Lane, Daily Planet, Metropolis, kryptonite). The fact that the "Spider-Man" movie could introduce Mary Jane as the love interest from the get-go demonstrates this. Spider-Man has no "Lois Lane".
Many factors have contributed to the decline in sales over the past couple of decades, not the least of which is the decline that has hit the print medium as a whole. But no small part of the decline of comics, I am certain, is that they are no longer reliable . Not simply in terms of production schedules, but in terms of content . Every new writer seems to feel he has to reboot and "grow" the characters. You may have started reading Spider-Man's adventures in 1980, and think that represents who Spider-Man is -- but, in fact, the character currently appearing in the Spider-Books has only the most superficial elements in common with who he was in 1980. New readers will not "meet" the character you met, as you did not meet the character I met.
Seems to me something important is being lost here. almost every day.
For the record. Spidey was the first comic I started reading regularly. Sometime in 1980. So you assumption was way off. And I thought it was the greatest thing when he married MJ.
I still stick by it. There is no point in whining about it. The characters change either buy it or dont. Most of you dont seem to buy any of the current comics anyway so I dont understand why you are complaining.
And the argument still goes either way. If you never cahnged or progressed you would alienate readers jsut as you alienate them by always changing.
I didn't make an assumption, I made a GUESS. I was wrong, as guessers sometimes are.
Those of us who don't buy the books are expressing our feelings because because WE WOULD LIKE TO BE BUYING THE BOOKS. And we probably would if the character we loved could be found within those pages.
You DO know that comicbook characters did not "change or progress" all that much for the better part of three decades, right? And that was an era when a huge variety of comics sold ten times today's numbers to a much smaller population? Have people abandoned THE SIMPSONS because the characters are not progressing? Did the circulation of PEANUTS crash because readers wanted Charlie Brown and Lucy to reach puberty and get it on? Were those readers and viewers alienated?
I wonder if you recognize how selfish and short-sighted some of your comments appear. You don't think the Spider-Man you met in 1980 deserves to be experienced by future generations of readers. You marginalize the opinions of fans who bemoan the deconstruction of Spider-Man: "Hey, I like it, so you guys should stop your whining."
I am becoming aware that I am yelling at a brick wall here, so I'll bow out gracefully at this point.
Reliable! In a nutshell, JB has described what is missing in comics. They are just not ...reliable. What an excellent way to sum up the state of comics for many of us old fogies. We seem to linger around the fringe of the comics world looking for some slight glimpse of the heroes of yesterday in the pretenders of today.
One major difference in the publishing world, considering the recent passing of Julius Schwartz, is the lack of editorial integrity among the group of potentates that are supposed to nursemaid new creators through their respective universes without allowing them to leave destruction in their wake.
One-upmanship thrives whenever each new "team" takes the easy route of rebooting an older storyline rather that producing a new work that can stand on it's own.
One major difference in the publishing world, considering the recent passing of Julius Schwartz, is the lack of editorial integrity among the group of potentates that are supposed to nursemaid new creators through their respective universes without allowing them to leave destruction in their wake.
One-upmanship thrives whenever each new "team" takes the easy route of rebooting an older storyline rather that producing a new work that can stand on it's own.
********
The lack of professionalism in the industry today is truly staggering. In the days when DC was still National Periodicals, and each editor operated his own little feifdom that rarely interacted with the editorial office down the hall, it was to be expected that every once in a while a story would appear that contradicted something in another editor's title. Thus, in one example that I recal so vividly from my childhood, we would see the Blackhawks battle purple, tentacled "Martians" at the same time J'Onn J'Onzz was appearing in every issue of JUSTICE LEAGUE.
The difference was, these things did not happen deliberately, and they did not happen with malice. Yet in the past few years I have seen many of my stories (and the stories of others) deliberately undermined -- sometimes while they were still coming out! -- by "fellow professionals" with axes to grind. And editors who allowed it. (In one truly staggering instance, an editor I was working "with" allowed another writer to take a potshot at one of my stories in another title he edited! The word "unprofessional" cannot begin to encompass that kind of behavior!)
The Age of the Rock Star has given us a lot of people working in comics who have Something To Prove. People who see the characters and the titles as nothing more than vehicles for their own egos -- ways of saying "Looka me! Looka meee!!" instead of "Look at the characters ."
["an" not "and"]
This message has been edited by johnbyrne on Mar 8, 2004 11:17 AM
how can i be selfish when you are asking the same thing.
by that standard i would never have met teh spiderman i "met" in 1980. i would have met teh same one from the 60s.
I happen to enjoy comics frmo all eras. After completing reading the entire flash series starting from archives 1 and reading every issue last year i realized there was alot of growth and progression. Even frmo the first issue of 105 many things grew for barry from my perspective.
So the first meeting of Barry and Jay was great. Now due to continuity they only met for the first time once. So by this we, the selfish readers that enjoyed "flash of two worlds" stole that first meeting epxerience from all future readers.
how does that make any sense at all? anyone can still read the old story an experience it the same way. As I did. I did not read that flash story when it came out but enjoyed it all the same.
So i fail to see how enjoying a new story is being selfish in anyway.
JB that would be a "bad" thing because of all the stories I enjoyed after that.
Why is it "wrong" for me to enjoy old and new stories? this is what baffles me.
I enjoyed old superman. Then I also enoyed JB's superman. By the standards presented above this should also be condsidered bad and "wrong"
This makes no sense. If you entirely change teh character into another being that is one thing. That did not happen to spiderman. He still upholds the basic diea of what he was.
JB that would be a "bad" thing because of all the stories I enjoyed after that.
Why is it "wrong" for me to enjoy old and new stories? this is what baffles me.
*********
You're arguing two totally different points. This is not about "old and new" stories. This is about keeping the character recognizably the same for all readers.
I can read a Batman story from 1948, and I can then read a Batman story from 1968, and he will be effectively the same character. He will not have aged, married, had children, been widowed, changed his job, etc. etc. All the important points will be the same -- as they were in Superman's stories after MAN OF STEEL. He was still Clark Kent. He still worked for the Daily Planet. He still lived in Metropolis. His love interest was still Lois Lane. His boss was still Perry White. He still came from Krypton. Despite all the "terrible things Byrne did to Superman" a reader new to the character could sample an issue from 1940 or 1985, and find the same character.
You are "selfish" because you want the characters as you want the characters -- you have aged 24 years since you first read Spider-Man's adventures in 1980, so you want the character to show some indication of having passed thru those same years.* The fact that this makes him a different character that he was in 1980 is of no concern to you. As long as you get what you want, that's all that matters. That a new reader might not like this middle-aged married guy with a dead kid -- well, what do you care? You enjoyed the stories that got him to that place, so your needs are taken care of.
*And this does not even factor in that if you were the reader for whom the characters were originally invented and intended you would have stopped reading circa 1985, moving on to other interests, as had generations of fans before you. You would not need the characters to "grow".
I am sorry you do not have the ability to see that you are wrong ever.
you cant poke holes. But you could do what you do everytime and jsut ignore logic and not understand any of what was said.
Oh, I'm wrong now? We're not having a philosophical disagreement? I'm not expressing my perspective and hoping you yourself can "grow" from the experience, even if you don't agree with me? I'm WRONG?
"You are "selfish" because you want the characters as you want the characters -- you have aged 24 years since you first read Spider-Man's adventures in 1980, so you want the character to show some indication of having passed thru those same years.* The fact that this makes him a different character that he was in 1980 is of no concern to you. As long as you get what you want, that's all that matters. That a new reader might not like this middle-aged married guy with a dead kid -- well, what do you care? You enjoyed the stories that got him to that place, so your needs are taken care of."
That is where you are wrong about what i want. Its not that I "want" it. Its that I dont care that it happened. I happen to enjoy some of the changes made. others i did not. But I dont care either way.
Now if there was Zero continuity I would not bother to read comics at all. i.e. (everytime batman met joker it was the first time) But that is a different sotry altogether.
I am not saying it should be one way or the other, All I am saying is that it is NOT selfish to enjoy the stories that are modern. I dont mandate they be written that way.
Some titles have "progressed/changed" so much that I no longer recognize the characters and I stoppped reading them. But I dont fault others for enjoying those stories. Many here enjoy several titles I cant stand, but again I dont fault them for that.
I fail to see how I am a "bad" person for liking both old and new spiderman and the changes he went through.
