@JonSmith said:
@sethysquare: Mainly because of their abilities. Regardless of background, if you don't have issues BECAUSE of those abilities, if they're almost entirely divorced from the hero or heroines actual life, then that drastically cuts down on their relatability. For example, if you, yes you, could shatter a planet in a few punches, or fly, or nothing on Earth could hurt you, I'd imagine you'd constantly be flying around, or breaking things by accident. Returning to regular life would seem pretty dull when you could be flying all over the world, seeing the sights. Superman, on the other hand, is perfectly happy doing EXACTLY the right thing, all the time. He never considers doing anything bad, because nothing is a challenge for him. Lois gets kidnapped? He's fast and strong enough to free her. Because there's no real challenge, there's no dilemma. For example, if a person puts a gun to your best friends head, and says that if you kill yourself, he'll let your friend go, THAT'S a moral dilemma. You'd be torn over it, you wouldn't know what to do. But if you're Superman, bang. Superspeed over to the bad guy, grab the gun out of his hand, push your friend aside, drop off bad guy at the jail on your way to get some burritos. No dilemma, no relatability.
You're basically talking almost half of the x-men. Tons of the popular x-men are alpha mutants with powers rivalling superman.
Well, you must not have read much DC comics. Superman have made mistakes, he has constant struggles with evil, he has been almost beaten and completely beaten tons of time. There are always challenges and there are always dilemma for him. Are the values taught to him by ma and pa kent right or are they outdated? Should he kill villains like what the elite is doing or should he not? What is his father's true purpose for him? To be their savior, one by one or lead them to build a better nation? All those were in the old universe, in the new 52 he is significantly depowered and more brash than before, even more distraught than before.
With regards to your problem, any writer can make that scenario of your friends life or your own work. Any hero can distract that person and save both the lives of his best friend and himself. Batman does that tons of times without killing either his friend or himself. Same goes to all the other superheroes. So that makes all the other heroes all without dilemma ergo not relatable.
@JonSmith said:
As for the others. Yeah, Wonder Woman is effectively a small town girl in a big city, except that small town girl is an Amazonian Princess who can knock bullets out of the air with her wrists. Not to mention she's an ambassador for her people. So she shows up and immediately starts living the good life. And she doesn't really have anyone she cares about, meaning that there's no one to use against her. And since she has a lot of similar, though weaker, powers to Superman, same issue as above.
Uhm...... again, you must not have read much ww comics. So I'm not even gonna bother replying that.
@JonSmith said:
Flash, from what I've read, I like him. He's a pretty cool dude. But even if the world is too slow for him, I don't think comics would be interesting if you were seeing all the comics from Flash's perspective of everyone almost standing still, each sentence taking an entire comic book to listen to. Thus his problem isn't really played into. And since it doesn't seem to bother him, it's not really displayed as well as it could be.
Aquaman is a King. Outsider my rear end, he is a dam KING of a COUNTRY. UNDERWATER. He controls the dam ocean. If his name wasn't Aquaman, it'd be POSEIDON. He rarely displays any problems we CAN relate to, because his life is so divorced from our own. Because he lives underwater in a society that isn't highly influenced by our own, he can't really relate to his problems in the most necessary sense.
Yups, you don't read DC comics. Nothing to be ashamed of, but that makes your points moot and I really am not going to even answer them with that.
@JonSmith said:
As for how Marvel characters are different?
All of them have more... realistic issues. As far as superheroes go.
Iron Man: He's an alcoholic. Recovering, whatever. He's an alcoholic who has way too much money. Outside of his suit, he's irresponsible, and does what pretty much any of us would do if we were him. We can relate to Tony Stark. So when he IS Iron Man, and he IS being responsible, we know that inside of that suit is a man with issues just trying to do what he can to make up for those issues.
Hulk: Anger problems. You REALLY want to go with just anger problems? Anger problems are when you have a bad day at work and start screaming at your family. Hulk has a bad day and he WRECKS CITIES. But beneath the Hulk, there's a haunted and hounded scared little man called Bruce Banner. Banner's been chased by the military since he became the Hulk. No matter how far he runs, no matter how hard he tries to hide, he can't escape the hunt for him. You want to talk about how all the DC characters are outsiders? If Banner were to walk up to pretty much ANYONE in the world, and say his name, every superhero in a thousand miles would come running, every super VILLAIN would START running, and every military official would wet their pants and start up their doomsday plans. And when Banner finally loses it, when he transforms, there aren't many, if any, who regret it more than him. People can relate to being scared and alone. They can relate to having an ugly side you don't want the world to see. The Banner/Hulk dynamic is essentially an avatar of all that anger people have that the world doesn't let them release, because it's illegal, because they'll go to jail for what they'd do. That's fine, that's great, but Hulk provides a superheroic avatar for exactly that.
Captain America - yeah, outsider.
Thor- eh, I was always more fond of the classic Norse Mythology.
Spider-Man: You're dam right he's relatable.
Need further explanation?
This isn't a who is more relatable contest, but I'm just putting across that DC heroes also are relatable, but your knowledge on DC heroes are farily limited and thus you come up with very weird conclusions regarding them. I'm not saying Marvel does not have relatable characters, but whatever you are applying I can say the same for a whole bunch of DC heroes as well. So yeah, don't need further explanation. Besides most of the stuff you said is extremely contradicting to your own statements. One minute you go
Regardless of background, if you don't have issues BECAUSE of those abilities, if they're almost entirely divorced from the hero or heroines actual life, then that drastically cuts down on their relatability.
Next minute you are saying
Outside of his suit, he's irresponsible, and does what pretty much any of us would do if we were him. We can relate to Tony Stark. So when he IS Iron Man, and he IS being responsible, we know that inside of that suit is a man with issues just trying to do what he can to make up for those issues.
Like uhm okay.
Hulk: Anger problems. You REALLY want to go with just anger problems? Anger problems are when you have a bad day at work and start screaming at your family. Hulk has a bad day and he WRECKS CITIES. But beneath the Hulk, there's a haunted and hounded scared little man called Bruce Banner. Banner's been chased by the military since he became the Hulk. No matter how far he runs, no matter how hard he tries to hide, he can't escape the hunt for him. You want to talk about how all the DC characters are outsiders? If Banner were to walk up to pretty much ANYONE in the world, and say his name, every superhero in a thousand miles would come running, every super VILLAIN would START running, and every military official would wet their pants and start up their doomsday plans. And when Banner finally loses it, when he transforms, there aren't many, if any, who regret it more than him. People can relate to being scared and alone. They can relate to having an ugly side you don't want the world to see. The Banner/Hulk dynamic is essentially an avatar of all that anger people have that the world doesn't let them release, because it's illegal, because they'll go to jail for what they'd do. That's fine, that's great, but Hulk provides a superheroic avatar for exactly that.
Oh sure. for hulk its an analogy, an analog. For Wonder Woman, Flash and Aquaman its oh nobody can relate to that.
Thor- eh, I was always more fond of the classic Norse Mythology.
So? What has this got to do with what we're talking about. I'm not asking you why you love your marvel heroes.
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