A new superhero universe

As I said before about the challenges of making a new superhero world is since both DC and Marvel have such a major stranglehold on the superhero genre, sometimes by buying existing imprints and properties from other publishers and authors that it’s going to be this tough coming up with a distinctive hook without being either heavily influenced by those two or another superhero work like Heroes. This is what befell the Wildstorm stories because even if that imprint lasted long enough to produce a substantial body of work, they’re generally not distinctive enough to stand out on their own.

Small wonder why it got bought by DC as well as attempts at assimilating those characters into the wider DC world, Supposing if somebody were to do a superhero story for a video game, one with original characters made for said video game in question, I still think it has to have an interesting hook to make it stand out from a dozen DC and Marvel adaptations. There’s a mobile game that’s based on the Invincible comics and animation, but it does prove my point in a way that most superhero games are adapted from preexisting comics properties and brands.

A superhero universe made for a video game would still have to stand out from its contemporaries and precursors to avoid being made redundant by those, so I propose a video game premise where the closest thing to a superhero is really a superpowered police officer or detective, there are dozens of them around with their own abilities and skills. There are also superpowered characters who are neither involved in law enforcement/criminal investigation nor criminal activity, along with stronger mystery and crime fiction leanings is enough to give itself its own character and flavour.

To further differentiate it from both DC and Marvel as well as Invincible is to take in more disparate influences and approaches to the superhero school, like say some of the characters are based on their Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure counterparts. Fabian Tientcheu is based on both Trish Una and her stand Spice Girl in a way because he disguises himself as a janitor to catch a thief, that he has the ability to soften things as to render them elastic and undo it is telling. His girlfriend Patricia Kyenge is based on the Diamond is Unbreakable version of Josuke Higashikata, however only in ability and appearance but one who also works in nursing.

Then we get to even more unusual influences where we have a Cameroonian musician named Mink who admits to being afraid of dogs, Fabian’s father is afraid of dogs and is the reason why he never had dogs growing up. So they raise and own cats instead, mind you Spice Girl’s based on cats which makes itself evident whenever it leaves claw marks on something. Jemima Szary (who’s based on both Nancy Drew and Jemima Shore, the latter is her namesake) had a dog named Teddy Bear, which is a reference to a Norwegian ship dog named Bamse (which also means Teddy Bear). That dog would show up in a prequel, if this game gets one at all.

There might be more influences that would be put into it, if it ever gets into production at all and gets published for real. But I’m outlining things that inspired me to create those characters, including some stemming from the real world.

Some things to consider

While it seems apparent that Japan seems more sexist than the Western countries are, at least in some regards but when it comes to comics and video games it’s pretty ahead of its time. Not only does Japan has a continuous tradition of publishing comics for girls and women, it has done the same thing with video games and why I feel the Japanese comics and video game industries don’t seem that masculinised in comparison to its Western counterparts and especially the American counterpart. Countries like Britain used to have a tradition of publishing girls’ comics, but that has faded over time even though it could easily be a parallel counterpart to Japan’s own.

While I do believe sexism does exist in Japan’s own video game and comics industries, particularly regarding moe characters, it’s kind of interesting to think that Japan is ahead of its Western counterparts when it comes to creating video games aimed at female players. It’s quite possible there are Japanese female gamers who have issues with objectification, again when it comes to moe characters but it’s also true that Japan has a solid tradition of creating games aimed at women. It’s probably getting caught up elsewhere, though who knows if a homegrown Philippine version of the otome games genre/phenomenon will ever become a thing in the future. It might have a chance to, if America’s no longer a superpower.

That could be a blessing in disguise that if America does cease to be a superpower, thus effectively ending or undoing American influence in the Philippines, the Philippines will learn to look up to other Asian countries far more. That might be my preference chiming in and I’m getting off-topic but the thing is that Japan has been something of an influence to some people for feminist reasons, not necessarily because Japan is feminist but that it’s ahead of the West in some regards. Most importantly when it comes to Japan having a substantial industry and tradition of creating video games and comics aimed at girls and women, that it’s actually worth emulating and catching up in any way.

The loss of America as a superpower would inevitably necessitate both Japan and China becoming bigger influences to other markets and countries, especially regarding their own video game and comics industries that many more of their products will come to closely resemble their Chinese and Japanese counterparts in the future. Not just in appearance and function, but also how many more of them will emulate Japan and China when it comes to marketing video games and comics to women.

Not really that popular among the youth

I remember reading somewhere on Morning Consult that not a lot of young people at this point are into Marvel, which means the Marvel fan demographic is ageing and perhaps the odd possibility that GenZers are into other things. Most notably Minions among other things, though this could also involve anime. Some of my own younger relatives aren’t that big into superheroes themselves, so it seems superheroes and especially the Marvel school isn’t so popular among them as it should be. Either that some of them outgrew Marvel for other things, or that Marvel really isn’t that popular with young adults in this time and age.

It might be possible to have superheroes and especially Marvel superheroes appeal to the youth in this generation, if Spider-Man’s any indication but that character and his accompanying body of lore might turn out to be the exception to the rule. There are certainly other media properties that are popular with Generation Z that Marvel should be attentive to, at least trend and business wise if it wants to remain relevant to this day. If Gen Z has the audacity to describe anything popular with Millennials as cheugy, then given Marvel’s popularity with Millennials it would have to find a way to keep itself from getting too cheugy if it wants to get new fans.

It might be possible for an entirely new superhero franchise to be popular with the youth, if something like that ever starts out in video games (which is popular with this generation). But that would mean the whole comic book superhero thing has been done to death, there are already adaptations of comics stories (including superhero ones) so video games are the new frontier in this regard. We’re getting close to cultivating this many good adaptations of video games like how League of Legends begat the well-acclaimed Arcane series, they have existed before but it’s going to mushroom in the following years if this continues.

Therefore, superhero companies would have to act fast to take advantage of it. Supposing if somebody created a successful superhero video game series, albeit ones where the characters are already made for the game, where it garners not only a lot of fans but also a webtoon/webcomics adaptation among other things. It could work but that would mean Marvel has been relying too much on its comics stable for too long that it better has to change with the times, maybe it is trying to but not in a way it likes. It would have to do market research on what Generation Z is truly into, if it doesn’t want to be relegated to obsolescence. It already is at this point, but also not there yet with them.

Video games have been adapted for other media but good adaptations are starting to come around, which makes them as lucrative as they’re critically acclaimed in almost any other medium. It’s unknown territory for film companies and possibly traditional publishers, if it were possible for video games to be adapted into critically acclaimed comics and prose fiction as well. The latter likely has already happened to an extent, but I think there’s an argument to be made for video games being adapted into critically acclaimed literary works. That would mean video games do have real artistic merit by then, which might already be the case.

That these adaptations also have artistic merit is something that they’ve finally achieved to a degree, which is something Disney would have to be attentive to now that it bought a share in the makers of Fortnite. If video games and adaptations of video games have finally achieved any real critical acclaim, that video games are popular with younger generations then it’s a sign that traditional media companies would have to be attentive to. They probably already are at this point, but let’s not forget that the video game industry is far bigger than it appears to be.

Much more mainstream at this point than ever before due to the popularity of casual games like Stardoll and the like, one with far more clout and influence than is given credit for.

The Rob Liefeld of writing

When it comes to bad comics art, the go-for whipping boy is Rob Liefeld. That’s not to say that I like him and his art, but that his name often gets singled out for badness. But as what somebody on Escher Girls said, he might not be the only one who does badly proportioned figures a lot. Somebody like Ragnell also pointed out that Liefeld gets a lot of flack for drawing men poorly, something that escaped his Image contemporaries for a long while. As to who would be the Rob Liefeld of comics writing, it’s harder to quantify and find somebody who qualifies. Let alone be as relevant as Liefeld is and has been, not to mention somebody else pointed out that comics readers might have a lower standard for writing.

If this is true then this would explain why it’s hard coming up with a Rob Liefeld of writing, if because the standards for writing are really low at times. There’s something peculiar about geek culture in how it evaluates storytelling in which there’s a stronger emphasis on lore, but not on actually deconstructing the underlying flaws in a story. Even if there are geeks who do the latter, at times they’ll be countered by contrary figures. This has happened to me before and there’s something about geek culture that seems wary of any deeper analysis of a story, especially regarding its problems though that doesn’t mean the authors in question are evil. At times I feel this would reveal a more human side to them.

They could be prone to anger, guilt, shame, sorrow and regret, they do things when they don’t feel good and sometimes they mess up all the time. They mess up often, get things wrong, so they’re human. But I don’t think large swathes of geek culture are willing to recognise this, in the sense that they’d rather wallow in database/moe elements, lore and worldbuilding than allow a forum to discuss about the author’s and story’s shortcomings even if this leads to a better understanding of why the story turned out the way it did. I could go on saying that X-Men stories and writers do a poor job at portraying ethnic minorities, because even if you confine it to white characters the metaphor still wouldn’t work well because almost none of them speak a minority language.

That’s one elephant in the room that’s barely ever discussed online, even if languages are important to nearly every cultural identity. They could ever wet somebody’s appetite for learning a new language, if it’s something they’re curious about and willing to try out. That’s what happened to me with Scottish and Irish folk music, an X-Men comic featuring a Scottish Gaelic speaking character would do the same for others. But since that’s rarely if ever attempted in X-Men stories, so the metaphor is going to fall apart anyways. Even if X-Men writers use the stories to further their activism, it’s never going to be really deep if they don’t raise awareness for minority languages.

That they don’t bother learning any minority language forever undermines their efforts at activism when using Marvel characters at all, so this is one area of writing that a good number of geeks ignore is that authors’ efforts at getting the point across are often undermined or hamstrung by their own shortcomings. They could come off as well-meaning but ultimately ignorant and lacking self-awareness in how they come across to other people, it’s not just an X-Men problem in this regard but how it effects other authors to varying degrees despite their best efforts. But this is also likely another reason why geeks’ standard for good writing is lower, if they don’t spend their time understanding why things don’t end up the way they intend to be.

A writer might have a good point but is unable to comprehensively address it in a way they like, if it’s always undermined by a recurring fault of theirs. It’s not just an X-Men only problem, but common to a good number of authors. Regardless of the points they’re trying to address, it’s often undermined or hamstrung by their own faults that rubs off the wrong way in some people.

The Manhattan Men Members (and additional characters)

As I said before, all of them are based on the Backstreet Boys. Both their actual selves and their fictionalised presentations in The Backstreet Project, even if it’s not an exacting copy the similarities are there for those who know.

Howard Docherty

Born to a Puerto Rican mother and a Scots-Irish father (his ancestors came from Antrim), Howard Docherty has the ability to create and manipulate illusions which he uses to make an escape and distract people with. But because he’s also classically trained in music that later on in his vigilante career, he decided to focus on music more and became a very successful one at that. He has many successful concerts and tours over the years, that for other people it’s hard to believe that he was once one of America’s premier vigilantes.

No wonder why The Manhattan Men continued as a foursome or quartet, Howard realised that his power can accompany his singing career and it worked the way he wanted. At this point he’s finishing the North American tour of his career, having sang in Toronto, Ontario and will eventually perform in Montreal, Quebec. Jemima Szary knows him secondhand because her friend, Patricia Kyenge, is into him since she was a teenager. Unfortunately as she accompanied her dear friend, she got distracted by his ability to cast illusions that she found herself really immersed in it despite trying to write a report on one of his colleagues’ crimes.

She had to put herself together again upon realising that Howard is guarding a terrible secret from her, the one that she feels might ruin the Manhattan Men’s reputation regarding one member’s habit of killing women. So it was something that she had to uncover, well with the police’s help, that there must be something wrong with the Manhattan Men that Howard tried his hardest not to disclose. Unsurprisingly, people like Akosamesew Kanewopasikot and John Zelensky had to interrogate him, with the feeling that he’s hiding one member’s secret from the whole world even if the clues are there for others to see and uncover.

To further enhance his illusion casting, he regularly takes psychedelic or entheogenic drugs like DMT, LSA, peyote, psilocybe mushrooms and nutmeg. To any cartoonist and game illustrator who’re going to depict any comic or artwork featuring him at all, take cues from artists who actually partook in tripping on any of these hallucinogens. You could get an idea of how hallucinogenic the Legion of Super-Heroes actually were, especially in the 1960s which would’ve coincided directly with the rise of the hippie movement. One of them is Princess Projectra, who even has the same ability as he does.

Michael ‘Mick’ Carmen

Trained in ninjutsu, assassination and kendo Michael Carmen is a formidable swordsman and the team’s go-for hitman when dispatching criminals, unfortunately he’s been suspected of raping and killing women over the years. His latest victim is none other than his own wife, since he doesn’t want his affair with a younger woman to be found out. It was something Jemima Szary knew, judging from the smell and what else with others eventually confirming her suspicions. She knew his wife was probably dead due to the smell, even if she sometimes doubted it herself. But the fact that she assumed there was a corpse somewhere had her conclude that Mick could’ve killed his wife.

He was hardly with his wife over the past few days since she investigated it, she wanted to know what happened to her and no matter how hard Mick lied to her, she knew his wife was probably dead due to the smell and her being missing for a few days. With the help of the Canadian super police, especially with Jean-Louis Lumiere finding her corpse in a box, that her suspicions were confirmed. They’d eventually arrest him for killing his wife, something he tried very hard to hide. But even when he tried, there’s little he can do about it when Jean-Louis intervened and caught him in the act. Michael Carmen really is a notorious murderer of women.

He murdered an autistic woman by stabbing her to death, the day she accused him of raping her when she was younger and when she tried to file a lawsuit against him. This is what prompted Jemima’s investigations of him, his whereabouts and his victims as well as finding ways of stopping him. Both she and Patricia could’ve been victims if it weren’t for the Canadian police’s interventions, good thing they got saved in time just so they can do the work. The time Michael threatened to stab her with a sword, her boyfriend Maurice Lu got her out in time. He and his team had to personally confront him, with Hector Yang raising the temperature to the point where Michael got a serious nosebleed.

(He also did this to both his sword and James McQueen’s guns.)

David Richardson

He’s as strong as a gorilla just as Alvin Kwame Boateng’s as fast as a car, he’s another one of the Manhattan Men and the one who helps Mick Carmen hide any evidence of the victims he’s killed. But that would mean he’s just as responsible for them as he is, especially when it comes to his habit of destroying not just physical evidence of the crime but also the victims themselves. Get this: he rips them in half and pieces. He also does this to living people whenever they question what both he and Mick are doing, which isn’t good and something that both Patricia and Jemima were spared from in time.

His cousin is Jack North, a man with the ability to generate balls out of nowhere, both of them have been close since childhood and both have an equally bad habit of defending Mick Carmen from any detective and police officer wary of his habits, if because they enable him themselves to varying degrees. From the outset, he seems like a loving father to two sons. But given his habit of using super-strength to destroy victims as a way to minimise any evidence of Mick killing them, that it’s not just that he’s his henchman but that the Manhattan Men don’t want any dark secrets to be found. They have this public image that makes everybody trust them a lot.

Regardless of the bad things they’ve been doing behind the scenes, since they know or feel might ruin their public image and relationship with the public if it gets revealed at all. Pardon if this is going to offend any lifelong Backstreet Boys fan but if somebody in that band were to get outed for beating up his wife a lot after his affair’s been discovered, then you should really know who the Manhattan Men were really based on. That and another one being outed for sex trafficking into porn and prostitution, something that will really tarnish the band’s public image when this comes out along with martial abuse.

James McQueen

The group’s resident marksman who has a preference for pistols and revolvers, he even kind of dresses like a cowboy himself to top it all off. He has two daughters and had been divorced from his wife over the past few weeks, like Mick he also hides a very dark secret that clashes with the team’s public image. He actually traffics women into prostitution rings, pornographic videos and sexual slavery, which goes against his team’s popularity with women. Which is really about the same as Mick’s habit of killing any woman who accuses him of rape, as if the team’s been hiding serious misogynists in its ranks.

That’s not to say there aren’t any characters who don’t use firearms, but in Canada those who do tend to be criminals like Zachariah Campbell. It can also serve as a dig at America’s love of guns, not that there aren’t any other nationalities that use firearms. But Americans have a habit of glorifying and even deifying firearms in a way other nationalities don’t do to the same extent, which gives you an idea of how ridiculous they come across to other people. That Americans are secretly in love with outlaw heroes is one possible reason why the superhero genre began in the United States, even if antecedents exist elsewhere.

Especially when it comes to the glorification and mythologisation of vigilantes as superhuman figures, sometimes literally so that they get to have preternatural abilities says a lot about how they’ve embraced vigilantes in a way both European countries and western British Commonwealth countries don’t get to. That the Manhattan Men house a gun-toting cowboy-dressing vigilante says a lot about how other nationalities view Americans and American culture as at times, since I’m a Filipina and I really don’t get the American love for guns.

Jack North

He has the ability to generate balls from his hands and has aspirations of becoming a basketball player, but he got sidetracked into a life of vigilantism when he joined the Manhattan Men. He has very clever ways of using balls, including hitting balls with the aim of taking advantage of people’s weak spots and to distract them with. He’s done this to distract people from finding out Mick Carmen’s murder spree, because if his secret were revealed to many people it would tarnish the group’s female-friendly image. Given John Zelensky’s electrical telepathy and Akosamesew’s body-reading skills, they found out a way to foil his plans and interrogate him.

Despite his outspoken faith in God, he and his colleagues have the audacity to dress up as demons for somebody’s birthday party. As he’s based on Brian Littrell, though it’s not obvious based on the name, I have this foreboding premonition that the Backstreet Boys will show up as demons in a concert in Mexico. Quite contrary to Brian’s outspoken Christianity, one would only wonder where his deepest loyalty lies speaking as a Christian. It would be super-disappointing if he himself has the audacity to appear as a demon onstage next month, because that would mean he’s not loyal to God and the Backstreet Boys will face more scandals in the coming weeks.

Whether if one member gets outed for cheating on his wife and then beating her up a lot or another for sex trafficking, that will really ruin the Backstreet Boys’ public image despite some fans’ possible attempts at denying this. What one reaps is what one sows, so it is true for Brian Littrell’s inability to stop his fans from making an idol out of his band. Not to mention it would be shocking for him and his band to realise that they are the inspiration behind this two-faced vigilante group hiding a group member’s misogynistic murderous secret, something that will ruin its public image if revealed at all.

Some additional characters who are part of the police force and more female characters in general:

Rose Marie Gaultier

Her overall appearance is inspired by a young Kate Bush as she appeared in the music video ‘Wuthering Heights’, she has the ability to talk to the dead which she uses to investigate murder cases a lot. She tends to be rather sarcastic and biting, at other times very hot-tempered, but she’s not without a tender heart towards animals. She’s even adopted rez dogs and stray cats before, though she’s not particularly fond of children in any way. This character kind of floated in my head before, but I had to bring her out since I feel the superhero police force of the game’s too much of a sausage fest.

So I have to add more female members to it, with Rose with one of the first to be brought up. Actually there were two female members of the police force in some way, most notably Christina Skroce and Erin Tohlakwang, but a third one’s not that bad given there were far too many men in the earlier post. She’s also kind of harsh to some of her male colleagues, most especially somebody like Jean-Louis whom she sometimes sees as a rival. Whereas Erin has something of a crush on him, Rose can’t stand him given his habit of hunting animals. (His attitude to Jemima Szary tends to be brotherly.)

She knows some unarmed combat herself, maybe not to the level that both Jean-Louis and Akosamesew enjoy, but enough to keep up with them as much as she can. Realising that she’s not always the best at unarmed combat, she will do anything to get better at it even if this involves asking help from them. She’s on good terms with Jemima Szary, often offering her advice when it comes to investigating crime scenes as the latter works as an investigative journalist herself. She’s not that close to Erin but she does help out from time to time, doing the same as she does with Jemima.

Macy Thaws

The newest recruit to the police force, she’s in her late teens/early twenties. She has the ability to generate and manipulate strings, which she uses in very creative and inventive ways. She even dates the Chinese-Canadian Andrew Sui, so both of them are two more Jojo references. I could bring her up more often if the company I’ll be working for will bring up a Jemima-Szary centric game, but she could have her use and role beforehand. As I said, she has a way with strings that she uses to trap criminals with and protect the innocent. She even uses them to retrieve belongings, as a way to further investigate them.

Macy Thaws isn’t just based on Jolyne Kujo in terms of powers, but also resembles her sartorially as well. She has a marine biologist for a father and she looks up to Jemima Szary as an older sister figure because of that and Jemima took up biology in university, so it’s easy for her to befriend her and they often talk about ocean animals together. She tends to be something of an outsider in school, given she doesn’t share her classmates’ interests and she tends to befriend older people more. I also think the way she’s written and portrayed would make her something of a role model to young black women.

When you think about it this way, while there are black women in medicine and law enforcement they don’t seem to show up often in fiction. Most likely due to the criminal stereotype, where characters like Monica Rambeau (who’s into law enforcement herself) and Marcy from Jumpstart are all the more remarkable in the comics world. The latter even works in healthcare, any black woman aspiring to work in medicine would see herself in her as well as Patricia Kyenge. Macy Thaws would be relatable to any black woman who don’t fit in easily, since there’s almost no other character like her in fiction.

Andrew Sui

Macy Thaws’s boyfriend who’s a repairman and has the ability to restructure things from the inside out, going so far to change it into something else when doing so. Yep, another Jojo reference. But he uses Diver Down’s powers for repairing and changing something, so he’s another example of a superpowered civilian since he’s a character type we don’t see often in fiction. It’s like how in the world of superhero comics where any character who gains superpowers automatically becomes either a do-gooder or a criminal, but not somebody who channels their powers in something else altogether.

It could be something low-key like repair work in his case, but we also don’t see that much working-class Asian-Western characters that often in fiction. While working-class Asian characters do exist in fiction, they don’t exist outside of Asian fictions and media in detectable numbers. It’s due to the model minority stereotype where the East Asian diaspora in the west is supposed to be economically successful enough to integrate into western society, despite the disparities that exist between each ethnicity. In Andrew’s case, he has a power convenient for repair work.

Some superpowered characters really aren’t cut out for either superheroics or a life of crime, so they could always parlay their abilities into something else altogether. Sort of like how Legion of Super-Heroes have or perhaps had Yera, a shapeshifter who works as an actress. It’s really not that bad an ability since she’ll always use it to either impersonate well-known figures (she did this to Shrinking Violet, but against her will) or literally become somebody else altogether, she’s also a character we don’t see often in the world of superhero fiction due to the genre conventions.

Beatrice Lumiere

Jean-Louis’s cousin, who’s something of a sister to him, since they were raised together at times and have grown much closer since the passing of both his parents. She’s bipolar and pretty much jobless for a long time, she studied linguistics before but due to stress and the like that she has slid into a more vulnerable situation. Admittedly I could be describing one of my siblings, so Beatrice is based on her in a way due to my experiences with the latter. She even accused him of rape before, which caused him to blast something into oblivion out of anger.

Though he does his best to be kind to her, he’s also uneasy around her especially whenever she mentions him as she rambles on and on. She still lives with her father (and his uncle), Gaston Lumiere, whereas Jean-Louis has the decency to live in the suburbs to relax and hunt when he feels like it. It also helps that this suburb’s right next to the woods, enough for him to carry out his hunting trips with his friend Akosamesew when he has the time to. As Jean-Louis lived with Gaston in his late teens and early twenties when he got orphaned, he spent a lot of time with her in urban Quebec.

This meant that by the time he moved back into the suburbs, he’d wake up early to get to work as soon as possible. Beatrice briefly had a job as a translator and worked for a publisher before on translating some stories, but her mental health got the better of her and she has been jobless ever since. Jean-Louis would do anything to make her work as much as she can, though who knows if she’s really ever going to work again due to the severity of her illness. She’s also been on conservatorship ever since, especially under the thumb of her father that Jean-Louis will do anything to make her more independent.

Due to his own experience with Beatrice and that both of them have blond hair, so Jean-Louis often sees Jemima in a more sibling like manner. Jemima is stronger than her, but he tends to treat her as if she’s his sister or something.

The theme of the story

Worldbuilding is pretty much creating a world for characters to inhabit and stories to take place in, I’m usually not that big into worldbuilding. But the story that characters like Jean-Louis Lumiere and John Zelensky will inhabit is one where all the superheroes are actually involved in law enforcement, also one where the other superpowered characters who aren’t involved in criminality themselves remain civilians for long. It’s pretty strange to think that in the world of DC and Marvel, there’s not a lot of superpowered civilians who remain civilians for the rest of their lives. Especially if they have no inclination towards heroic deeds nor villainous acts that they could at least be made useful in something else, such as nursing if they have healing powers for instance. That’s where Patricia Kyenge comes in with her restorative power, then we have Mary Stilfox who has the ability to generate implants and works as a surgeon.

I admit being on the fence of giving Jemima Szary superpowers because if I did, it would be really subtle but useful for investigative journalism like a radar sense for instance. No showy telepath fingers whatsoever, basically Jojo’s Yasuho Hirose if she’s into investigative journalism herself. But you should get my point where even if it’s technically a superhero story it’s one where all the superheroes are actual police officers, with the superpowered civilians being actual civilians. Also none of the characters have codenames in any way, especially the police officers and criminals in here. They have superpowers and flashy outfits, but that’s just it in addition to the Jojo influence being all over the place.

I remember the creator of Misfits admitting somewhere in an interview that they found it strange why in American superhero comics, characters who get superpowers almost always become superheroes right off the bat. That’s something they tried to counteract with their own programme or story, but it does make one wonder why whenever you have superpowered characters around in fiction they have to get into fights or something. That’s without realising the endless possibilities of them using their powers outside of fighting, not necessarily in a pornographic way but more in the lines of where you have a silk-making character parlaying their ability into weaving, or a pyrokinetic getting involved in cooking.

It’s something not many writers have considered nor bothered portraying, perhaps because they really don’t know or learn anything else to come up with such characters like that. It does happen though not very often because of what I suspected, which involves having to read or do something else to come up with characters who have other uses for those abilities. I remember this sermon about one’s skills where one who’s skilled in mathematics could easily have a career in finance, so logically somebody who has the ability to create silk would inevitably be drawn to weaving as a career. People have been harvesting silk from silkworms since time immemorial, so it’s only realistic for a silk-making character to be drawn to textiles.

It’s something that almost none of the Spider-Man writers have considered in any way, even if it’s something a Spider character could easily do if they are neither into crimefighting nor criminal activity themselves. At least to my knowledge but that involves having any real idea of the silk textile industry, it’s a thing in some parts of the world and silk does get made into clothing by the way. One would only wonder why almost nobody at Marvel ever bothered making Cindy Moon weave silk and then create silk garments in her spare time, since it’s something those at the textile industry would do most of the time with silk. Let alone somebody who’d dedicate themselves to weaving for a living, due to this ability.

Anyways this game, if it does get made into a game at all, is another example where even if you have superpowered characters who get into criminality and law enforcement, there are those who are neither into those just as you have non-superpowered characters who get into crime-fighting and criminality. Among the superpowered characters who get into law enforcement are Nootaikok Alakannuark, Hector Yang, Jean-Louis Lumiere, Fabrice Tientcheu, Alvin Boateng, John Zelensky and Maurice Lu; among those who are neither superhero nor villain would be Mary Stilfox, Patricia Kyenge, Alice Buquid, Mamadou Mbodj and if I’m willing to include Jemima here, since I don’t think she ought to be showy at all.

In all honesty, a superpowered police department is nothing new if Alan Moore’s own Top Ten is any indication, though what’s new is that there are more crime fiction influences and an additional Jojo influence. Especially in the characters themselves and the way they use their powers, as to warrant a more distinct identity from Top Ten. I think Alan Moore does have a way with superheroes, often pushing genre boundaries to see how they fit a British milieu to paraphrase something from Speculating Canada. This isn’t unique to him though as it’s shared by other British writers like Grant Morrison, the now disgraced Warren Ellis and possibly a couple more.

So I gave a general idea of the world the characters inhabit, one where not everybody who has superpowers either becomes a superhero or a supervillain. Rather they parlay their abilities into something else that’s just as useful, something like nursing and journalism if I’m willing to give Jemima Szary superpowers at all. It’s also a world that’s more heavily influenced by both crime fiction and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, much moreso than it would normally be for many superhero stories. I would also add in more nonfiction influences there, in that one of Jemima Szary’s girlhood dogs was the Canadian Navy’s dog named Teddy Bear, as in the real life Norwegian dog Bamse.

That’s not to say superhero writers like Alan Moore never incorporated any nonfiction influences, but I feel most superhero writers don’t seem to read anything else. Not that they’re autistic or something but they don’t seem to read anything else as to create genuinely new stories, characters and takes on familiar ones, it could be that I don’t always read comics let alone superhero ones at that until recently. But it is telling that when it comes to constructing superhero stories, it’s very easy to fall back on the DC and Marvel school of storytelling without doing anything new and different with it. The British have the advantage of coming from a different culture, so they’re able to look at something American with a different lens.

But I also think it matters to be interested in something else to do something else, Greg Rucka seemed to have read a lot of crime fiction and anything relating to criminology enough to come up with Gotham Central. Likewise the creator of Miraculous seemed to be really influenced by magical girl anime cartoons to create a story that’s as much as a homage to the former as it does with superheroes, especially with the akumatisations and stuff. Well, mine is a little closer to Top Ten but also its own entity to be sufficiently differentiated from it.

Appearances

As I said before about the way superhero cartoonists associate hair colour with certain powers before that while I think this was discussed on Livejournal before (somebody saying that comic book redheads are either dangerous or dangerously fun with Barbara Gordon being neither of those), I don’t think not a lot of them brought up how a good number of superhero redheads are given the ability to manipulate flame and the like. One character that I came up with is Jean-Louis Lumiere and the way he’s presented pretty much pushes this meme to an extent, while he doesn’t outright manipulate flame but with his dyed red hair, red clothing and ability to manipulate light he does teeter on it.

The logic as presented in a number of stories like Stormwatch, X-Men, Young Heroes in Love and the like seems to show that if you have a flame-haired character, they could as well manipulate actual fire themselves. Not all redheaded superheroes do this, but it’s one association that shows up fairly often enough to make itself obvious in some regards. Within the X-Men comics where in addition to Angelica Jones, you have Rachel Summers and her mum Jean Grey who are both given a fiery aura. While there’s a blonde character who manipulates volcanism and eventually fire, whose name is Amara Aquila, but another is Emma Frost who wears white and is subtextually linked to the cold.

That she’s an ice queen makes you wonder the way she’s depicted and designed as if it exists to oppose Jean Grey’s fiery association, Emma Frost may not manipulate ice herself but she has possessed an actual ice-making character named Bobby Drake, AKA Iceman. So her association with ice is there in some form or another, a good number of white-haired characters like Tora Olafsdotter and Captain Cold are depicted manipulating ice themselves. Snow is white, water is wet. This may not always be the case for other ice-based characters, whether in appearance or in personality (Jojo’s Ghiaccio has a hot temper).

But the way the characters are presented play into our semantic understanding of colours and their elemental associations, sort of like how the Chinese word for fire also doubles as the word for temper. The French language kicks back in a way when it comes to the word colère froide or cold anger, as in the anger is there but has gotten kind of spiteful. Funny enough, Ghiaccio personifies this idiom very well where he not only manipulates the cold but also has hissy fits every now and then. Also blue is the hottest colour, so his temper is appropriately hot as well. Then we have Touhou Project’s Mokou no Fujiwara, who has white hair and manipulates fire that she could literally be considered white-hot.

But on the other hand a character like Mokou no Fujiwara is pretty rare in the greater scheme of superpowered character design, even if she personifies the idiom white-hot very well she’s also not a character that’s commonly encountered. Likewise Teen Titans’ very own Kid Kold is a rare example of a redhead that manipulates ice, while red is actually a colder colour than blue in the world of light and fire because it’s less energetic it’s also commonly considered to be a warm colour. Ditto Santa Claus wearing red every winter season, ditto the odd fact that red hair evolved in colder climates. Ditto that blond hair among Europeans evolved in darker environs.

If it looks light, it must be linked to light in some way. This may not always be the case with all light-manipulating characters, but a good number of those who manipulate light such as Starlight from The Boys, Marvel’s Dagger, Dazzler, Karla Sofen and Carolina Dean or DC’s Halo and Stargirl have light hair and manipulate light themselves. Again this isn’t always the case for all of them and Jean-Louis Lumiere fits this, well covertly because he has natural blond hair himself, but Touhou Project has a blonde girl who manipulates darkness and her name is Rumia. So it would be fun to have another darkness-manipulating blond named Cyril Darkholme.

The more the merrier I suppose, but it’s not hard to see how the semantic association of colours matter when it comes to superpowers. This may not always be the case, not even consistently so, but it does play into the way characters and their powers are conceived. If they manipulate fire, they ought to have a bad temper or something like that. The association of light features with light itself is there in Tagalog, where the word for somebody with albinism is anak-araw. Despite the ironic fact that somebody with albinism will be at the short end of the stick when it comes to the perils of solar radiation.

Even if a character like Jojo’s Ghiaccio personifies the French idiom of colère froide/cold anger very well, he’s also a character not commonly encountered in fiction due to the expected semantic associations. Same goes for Rumia in another regard, when it comes to European blond hair evolving in low-light conditions. (Makes sense that if the place is so dark that somebody with this little melanin would be spared from sunburns, well at night and during the spring and autumn months of the year.) Semantic associations will override biological fact in most cases, that’s why the characters are depicted the way they are.

The way the characters are designed hinge on semantic associations in one way or another, sometimes it’s pretty accidental as it would be with Ghiaccio when it comes to the French language. More often than not it’s unconsciously deliberate in some way, so a light-manipulating character ought to have blond hair and a flame-creating character ought to have red hair. It’s unconscious but also not that coincidental.

Who is the real comics lover?

I think I tried bringing this up before, but it bears repeating when it comes to who actually likes comics as a medium. In the world of comics fandom, it’s easier to be fans of brands than it is to be fans of what comics as a medium can do. If because these kinds of fans seem to be more common, the brands they’re into seem more ubiquitous due to their popularity. I was this kind of fan at some point, but even then I read different kinds of comics in 2011 (more than a decade ago). People who’re into comics as a medium aren’t entirely unheard, but for every DEBTor, there’s a Marvel fanboy/fangirl. Fandom is the predominant school of thought and approach to comics, especially when it comes to serious brand loyalty.

As for those who like comics as a medium, they’re not entirely unheard of since The Comics Journal is there for those people. But from my experience, it’s far more common to find fangirls and fanboys who are more passionate about following brands and fandoms than those who care about comics as a medium. For all the advocacy of seeing comics as a legitimate artistic medium, this is hampered by the fandom mentality so persistent in geek culture. Brand loyalty above exploring what else comics could be and do, perhaps this might explain why so many alternative comics don’t have that big a fandom compared to DC and Marvel. It’s brand loyalty all the way, sometimes at the expense of exploring comics beyond the stereotypes.

I feel these fandoms reinforce stereotypes about comics, especially when they’re not newspaper cartoons. These stereotypes seem to centre on how common and prevalent the fandom approach to comics is, even though they want comics to be taken seriously it’s hard to do it when the prevailing school of thought is based around fannish brand loyalty rather than exploring what else the medium can do and be. Fandom this, fandom that. It’s almost always the fandom mentality one encounters in nearly every comics blog around, as far as I know from experience. Advocating comics as a legitimate medium is there, but it gets obstructed by people who have fannish brand loyalty rather than exploring what else comics can do and be.

For every John Coulthart (seriously he’s cool), there’s going to be another fan turned professional. When I mean by fan, that person is almost always going to be a fan of the character they liked and still like. For as long as brand loyalty’s around, the fandom mentality will stick around to the detriment of those who take comics’ artistic potential seriously.