Sadly for them

I kind of admit regarding Tim Drake as something like Marquis de Sade or rather having to model him after Marquis de Sade as I feel he’s kind of corny (and so is Stephanie Brown to some degree). As for Marquis de Sade, there has to be a reason why he’s called the Divine Marquis. He’s really a debauched criminal who not only harrassed women but also killed youngsters.

(Him kidnapping and killing children in his care whilst his wife tolerating it until later in life makes me wonder whether if 120 Days of Sodom is partly based on it by the way of exaggeration*.)

Him being brought up in a bad household, beating up his cousin and military experience at a young age would’ve shaped him for the worst. Yet for some people like Guillame Apollonaire, Sade’s got that neat macho air to his antics. His wife Renee was generally complacent until the very end.

Even if he toned down his atheism after befriending a short priest, he still molested youngsters like Madeleine and a boy. Definitely not somebody to be messed within his vicinity but an interesting enough character to not only have his works adapted in the mid to late 20th century (Playboy and sexual revolution) but be a muse to films like Quills and Marquis.

He even had his own comic books, ahead of Tim Drake. If Tim Drake is Marquis de Sade (wealthy and highly trained), then Stephanie Brown is Renee Pelagie (relatively not bright and recent but complacent). There’s even a precedent for Tim Drake giving into evil, perhaps helped by the DCAU.

Him being the Marquis de Sade takes this to a logical conclusion but would also make him much worse than Jason Todd on a bad day. Jason Todd being irritable and violent’s one thing. Tim willingly killing people and then passing it off as a joke’s another.

Him being host to the Joker in DCAU hints at it as well as being host to OMAC. Perhaps with Tim Drake being intended to likable, you feel tempted to be wary of him. Marquis de Sade isn’t any less dubious but is increasingly regarded as a misunderstood muse and storyteller hence the epithet Divine Marquis.

*Duc de Blangis has a bishop for a brother and Donatien Alphonse Francois’s own father was a debauched aristocrat with an abbot for a brother (and DAF’s in-law was a judge) so there’s that.

Derivative Characters

In superhero comics, it’s easier to make a variation on the same thing than it is to create something else. It’s probably even harder to make that derivative character actually stand out and even become his/her own person.

 

But it’s not impossible. Sometime in the late 1980s when Superman was allowed to be the only Kryptonian, Supergirl and Superboy were remade into rather different characters.

 

Eventually Kryptonian elements went back in style even though that made them really redundant. But supposing this time around it’s much more successful.

 

Bart Allen, who’s derivative of Barry Allen, loses his speed powers and gains darkness powers instead when he calls himself Phantom Lad. Barry Allen, who’s derivative of Jay Garrick, permanently loses his powers and becomes a fox masked detective.

 

Supergirl turns out to be an Earthling human all along, becomes a detective and then becomes The Hag. This is a change so drastic that it defines them for years to come. Just take a look at what happened to Dick Grayson.

 

He’s the only derivative character that I can think of who successfully became his own hero. Whatever attempts to make Supergirl, Barry, Bart and Superboy distinct are temporary and arbitrary not to mention superficial.

 

But it can be done to save their lives as fiction’s a different entity from clothing and toys. At least when it’s allowed, they become their own characters and be more interesting this way.

 

A somewhat unpopular opinion

I don’t like the third Robin or rather the appeal behind him. Robin is Batman’s sidekick but there have been so many Robins that look similar it’s hard to find which one bugs me the most.

 

For several readers, it’s Jason Todd. But for me, it’s Tim Drake. I really don’t get the appeal. Probably because I don’t really relate to him much. Not to mention that he specifically appeals to a very narrow audience.

 

Robin is supposed to be an audience insert and that’s fine as long as he targets a wide audience. But when he’s used to target a very narrow audience, it feels like you’re excluded.

 

It’s like the problem with cheesecake in superhero media. Not all people like cheesecake, especially when it’s that ubiquitous and cheesecake has its time and place.

 

Replace cheesecake with fan inserts and you get something similar. Perhaps the only time when Tim Drake worked was on the DCAU Batman cartoon.

 

Maybe that’s because instead of being a fanboy, he’s a wayward youth who becomes the second Joker. But most of the time, especially in comics he sucks.

Frederic Wertham

Frederic Wertham is infamous for his scathing criticism of content being published in American comics. No doubt he contributed to that but eventually his opinion softened when he discovered fanzines.

Oddly enough, if it weren’t for his influence we wouldn’t have gotten Batgirl, Hal Jordan, Legion of Super-Heroes, Barry Allen, Doom Patrol, 1960s Marvel Comics and Teen Titans in the first place.

When Batman and Robin were accused of being gay, writers have to create a female counterpart to deflect this beginning with the first Batgirl (technically Batwoman) Kathy Kane and Bette Kane, the first Batgirl proper.

Then we get to the most popular Batgirl of all time, Barbara Gordon. Despite all the Batgirls that came before and after her, she’s the go-for Batgirl as she’s seen in the 1966 Batman programme.

Once Wertham faded away in influence we get regrettable stuff like The Killing Joke, Rob Liefeld’s comics and other forgetable 80s and 90s artefacts.

So we shouldn’t judge Wertham too harshly when people like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were making comics in their peak when the CCA was active.

Underground comics emerged as a reaction to CCA, paving way for publishers like Dark Horse, Fantagraphics and Image Comics.

In short no Wertham, no Batgirl, no Barry Allen, no Hal Jordan and no Fantastic Four. Without him, we wouldn’t have gotten these characters in the first place even if they could be introduced without his influence but it still says a lot about the odd side effects of his criticisms.

A disturbingly familiar future

According to one graph, superhero movies (and television to some extent) peaked in the years 2011-2012 which is coincidentally around the time when Marvel and DC began rebooting their comics lines and when Smallville ended.

That didn’t stop them from making more superhero productions but there is the odd possibility where they begin to resemble their comics counterpart more in the sense of going from appealing to the masses to heavy niche pandering.

This is something that Arrow ended up doing. In the case with Supergirl, the Woman of Steel’s ratings are dropping so low that writers and producers are going to shock people by revealing Kon-El to be James’s younger brother.

Arrow’s going to introduce Faplicity Smoak while The Flash has a depowered protagonist. After getting a brief spike in ratings, they continue to getting lower until they get cancelled. Or if not, upstaged by more successful franchises and webcomics adaptations.

It’s like where superhero comics were at since the 70s and 80s. They begin pandering to a narrow readership and shock people with gimmicks like killing off Robin and Superman. They keep on doing this until there’s almost nobody left to read those stories.

Now we’re seeing something similar on television and cinema. There were superhero programmes before, especially those aimed at adults but they were in the minority. For every Spawn, Stripperella, Adventures of Lois and Clark, Mutant X, Birds of Prey, Misfits and Heroes, you have Wildcats, Danny Phantom, Teamo Supremo, the DCAU cartoons, Young Justice, Electro Woman and Dyna Girl, Teen Titans, X-Men Evolution, Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes, the Marvel Universe cartoons, Duck Dodgers, the Green Lantern and Aquaman cartoons, Plastic Man, Isis, Captain Marvel, DC Nation, Krypto the Superdog, Captain Carlos and many more.

Similarly in film, for every Blade, Constantine, Hancock, Unbreakable, Crow, Mystery Men and My Ex-Girlfriend’s Super, there’s a Caped Capers, Shark Boy and Lava Girl, Batman, Sky High, Spider-Man, MCU, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Incredibles, Superman, Megamind and Hulk.

There was even a Wonder Woman film which had a blonde protagonist, the 1984 Supergirl film followed up by Elektra, Catwoman, Green Lantern, The Punisher (twice), Howard the Duck, Ghost Rider, the Captain Marvel serials, Steel and Spawn.

There were already a number of superhero programmes and films before so the idea that there’s superhero fatigue isn’t entirely wrong. I can count several Batman cartoons including The Batman, Beware the Batman, Batman Beyond, Batman: The Brave and The Bold, The New Adventures of Batman, Batman: The Animated Series and the FIlmation Batman.

Then you add in Birds of Prey, the 1960s Batman programme, Super Friends, the 80s and 90s Batman films, the 2000s Batman films and the Batman serials. Superman has had multiple programmes and films, including old serials, the Salkind/Donner productions, three televised versions of Superboy (four if you count Smallville), the 1988 Ruby Spears Superman cartoon, the Superman radio, Superman: The Animated Series and the Fleischer Superman cartoons.

It gets crowded if you bring up the direct to video productions and of course, The Super Hero Squad Show. Not to mention the Power Ranges/tokusatsu school as well. It wouldn’t be surprising that at this point, producers and writers are going to target adults who grew up with superheroes whether if they know it or not.

Then we end up with a new generation of viewers who have no fond memories of superheroes because they weren’t exposed to them in the first place. I already brought this up before but it’s going to be painfully true in the future and one that brings us back to what plagued superhero comics in the later decades.

Batgirl

Batgirl is practically and essentially a female counterpart to Batman, who is some bloke who lives in a cave and dresses like a bat to fight crime. The Batman comics were accused of having homosexual characters simply because he lived together with his sidekick Robin. This prompted later writers to give him girlfriends such as Vicki Vale, Catwoman and a female counterpart called Batwoman.

Kathy Kane is practically the first Batgirl and she used very feminine accessories. She wore yellow and red and was later given a niece called Batgirl. She’s called Bette Kane and had blonde hair. In hindsight, a dark-haired or blonde Batgirl might be nothing new. The actress who played Barbara Gordon wasn’t a natural redhead and Alicia Silverstone portrayed a blonde Batgirl.

Those were years before Stephanie Brown became Batgirl herself. A Batwoman character was looming around before Kate Kane officially showed up. One of them was a reformed Catwoman which makes some rhyming sense and that she became a more sympathetic, even heroic character as of late.

Interestingly with Stephanie Brown, she had numerous precedents. She wasn’t the first blonde Batgirl as Bette Kane was the first. She wasn’t the first female Robin as Carrie Kelly got there first. She ended up being a very successful combination of both in a way.

Barbara Gordon is probably the most iconic Batgirl, making multiple televised and merchandised appearances in a row. But she’s not the only red-haired Batgirl as Kate Kane shows. In this case the latter is known as ‘Batwoman’ but the design is oddly reminiscent of an earlier proposal for Barbara when she was supposed to get out of her wheelchair and resume that title.

Then that happened in the New 52 which was ultimately undone in Convergence. Someone on Mindlessones pointed out that Barbara Gordon is something of a second tier character. She often gets outclassed by other characters and nobody can write a good Batgirl story.

Much less a Batgirl story that doesn’t hinge on a tragedy thanks in part due to the Killing Joke and even Alan Moore, who wrote it, regretted it. Batgirl isn’t a bad character but there has to be something done with her or otherwise. She might as well be redundant.

I don’t get it

Many nerds believe that superheroes have gone mainstream. It should be noted that they were mainstream before. But they were mainstream in that they were made by people who weren’t fans of superheroes targeting casual audiences. The cultish, nerd fanbase came a little later and while some of them go on in the professional industry they usually leave behind fandom for good.

Until the nerds came to constitute the largest audience for that. Even if that’s not always the case since Power Rangers and the like still appeal to children outside of nerdy circles. Teen Titans Go and Marvel superheroes are going strong with the kids. It’s the DC heroes at large that have stopped appealing to actual kids.

Before you can say that the Flash has been co-opted by ugly fangirls, the Flash used to be for kids. Most of them didn’t remain lifelong Flash fans and that’s a good thing. But when the Flash came to appeal to adults, you have a problem. The adults watching the Flash could have grown up with him in the DCAU cartoons and the Flash’s first televised appearance was Super Friends, the very cartoon that influenced Bruce Timm.

The cartoon was accompanied by the live action specials ‘Legends of the Super-Heroes’ which also brought us the first live action appearance of the Flash as well as the first televised appearances of Huntress and Black Canary. The Flash would appear in his own programme in the 1990s though I don’t think the 2010s version could last long either if half of the audience gets tired of him or find him as a detective offputting.

Anime historically appealed to children and some of them still do. Much like what happened to superheroes, anime and manga comics have come to cater to an ageing audience since back home in Japan the youthful population has been declining sharply. Not a lot of Japanese bother to get married and start families so manga editors began lengthening storylines to hold on the remaining readers. Both markets bifurcated, one for the kids and the other for adults.

Eventually the market for adults won out leading up to a growth in raunchy, regrettable material that makes bad kids’ anime look decent in comparison. I think superhero media are like this, ditto your tokusatsu rangers. But they’re not the only ones that end up catering heavily to adults. Someone in the Kiwifar.ms thread on ‘My Little Brony’ said that even the US animation industry is getting more niche oriented, helped by two factors: nostalgia and web animation.

Nerds in those industries tend to wear their influences on their sleeves and sometimes they can be blatant themselves. Steven Universe took the fusion dance from Dragon Ball and some say that it even copied scenes from Revolutionary Girl Utena. My Little Pony has come to heavily pander to the Brony fanbase to the point where later installments bear a resemblance to fan fiction most notably ‘Equestria Girls’ and the newer episodes.

Equestria Girls is a sort of alternate universe with the ponies as humanoids, which has been attempted before in fanfiction and similar things can be said of its later episodes. The comics pander heavily to the Bronies. Many nerds think these are mature and good but if you compare that to stuff that really aimed at adults, they pale in comparison.

Historically in American comics, there were comics for adults but these were specialty publications. You have the Tijuana Bibles but also the underground comics of the 60s and 70s, giving birth to contemporary indie comics and webcomics. DC had two imprints for adults before, namely Piranha Press and Vertigo Comics. These days it’s almost the reverse with Vertigo being the place for non-superhero comics and DC churning out kiddie imprints, never mind that the same characters still show up in kiddie merchandise.

There is nothing wrong with good storytelling for adults but it has to be other than what we’re seeing in most anime and Flash these days. Adult has to be something other than shocking storylines, plot devices and esoteric references. Adult would be like giving Barry Allen real character development and having him finally get over his relative’s death, stop obsessing over Iris and become a detective if his old job doesn’t do him any favours.

But the problem with nerd subculture and fiction is that it’s childish. They want their comics and cartoons to be adult but never realise that it doesn’t need to be full of esoteric references, sex, gore and shock value to be mature. There is little nuance in them to be grown-up. And I think a number of novels and non-speculative dramas are more restrained than that. I think that’s why nerds miss the point about mature storytelling.

Superhero is the new disco

I’ve said many times that superheroes will suffer due to oversaturation especially these days. The new Flash series came not too long after Arrow, Smallville and Young Justice as the character made prior appearances in three of them. That and there are too many superhero programmes and movies around.

Which brings me to an astonishing musical parallel: disco music. Disco music was an outgrowth of funk, early electronica and rhythm and blues (your grandmother’s RnB) that was very popular in the 70s. It was so popular it even inspired a backlash after so many disco covers of pop songs and forgettable disco records.

The meme ‘disco sucks’ should have killed the genre but the genre’s influence didn’t entirely go away. The remnants of disco lived on in today’s electronic dance music as well as house music, electrofunk and early hip hop, Italo disco, Eurodance, Breakbeat and contemporary music like with Daft Punk’s records.

I can see the superhero genre entering a similar phase which I’d like to call post-superhero. Much like what became of disco in the late 70s and early 80s, superhero suffered from a very bad backlash (likely due to the CW and Disney’s mishandling) that this led to ‘superheroes suck’. But due to the immortality of icons like the Flash, this led to characters appearing in entirely different genres like mystery (Flash) and horror (Fantastic Four).

To sum it up, history is going to repeat itself as superheroes become the new disco music.

On Being a Superhero Mesomorph

While many other superheroes didn’t start out this buff either in cinema or in the comics themselves, there is a strong connection between bodybuilding and superhero comics. Some of the people involved in the superhero comics business were either bodybuilding fans or have done bodybuilding themselves.

Bodybuilding did have its roots in weightlifting and oddly enough the ideal bodybuilder is a mesomorph or somebody with excellent muscle tone , broad shoulders and bone structure to be able to get ripped insanely easy. So are wrestlers. Then again a lot of footballers/soccer players and sprinters are mesomorphs do, however with fast twitch fibres aimed more at moving real quickly and not without bubble butts to boot.

To be fair, while a lot of actors work out to play the characters they’re assigned to but due to genetic randomness not a lot of them can get ripped easily if constant working out and diets are any indication. Especially with the later when you add that to protein supplements and dubious hormone drugs.

Currently drug abuse is also a problem in superhero productions though one might say that not a lot of actors playing superheroes are athletically gifted and experienced either. Mind you, a number of actors who played superheroes before were athletes. Some of them only have modelling and acting experience, which makes acting as a superhero (who is essentially a super-athlete or martial artist) really hard if they don’t play sports as a hobby.

Being a superhero actor is a challenging role not just because of having to play as the character but also the degree of athletic training needed to become one. Anne Hathaway took up jumping classes to play the acrobatic Catwoman. Likewise Tom Hiddleston took up capoeira while working on the Avengers. I don’t know if it’s true for Stephen Amell and Grant Gustin but it wouldn’t hurt if a certain soccer player or martial artist got to play as the Flash.

That would be more convincing in terms of getting the character’s trademark super speed and agility right. But then again there aren’t that many martial artists and athletes turned actors playing superheroes these days. It’s still hard to play as a superhero if you don’t have the experience and body to become one yourself.

Superhero Redesigns and Actual Clothing

I can get the logic behind superhero redesigns not just in unofficial illustrations but also in live action adaptations and the comics themselves. It’s just that with some characters, you either have to study real life clothing to make a redesign costume work or surprisingly some of them shouldn’t be that hard to redesign ever so slightly.

Characters like Zatanna and Black Canary shouldn’t be that hard to redesign. If the DCAU and Young Justice cartoons are any indication, you can swap fishnets for opaque/translucent tights and it wouldn’t change a thing. At other times BC’s own fishnet tights didn’t reveal much skin either. In a sense that BC’s costume isn’t that flamboyant to begin with, therefore it should be easy to redesign it slightly.

You could say similar things about Power Girl where at other times her classic leotard had a scoop neckline in place of her familiar chest hole. You could turn it into a turtleneck leotard and it wouldn’t change a thing either. It’s surprising that characters like PG and BC shouldn’t be this hard to redesign as it only involves minute changes.

When it comes to practical costumes, they more often than not look interchangeable, bland and even about as impractical as the characters’ original body paint costumes are. Funny enough with characters like the Flash, some people’s idea of making his costume practical is make it busy and leather never mind that real life footballers/soccer players, runners and sprinters wear less than he does.

Actually a lot of other athletes wear less than what most male superheroes do. Actual fighters wear much less on the ring and not too many people have a problem with it. I can get why so many superhero costumes would look silly in real life but in order to create a truly practical superhero costume, you’d only have to study what real outdoorspeople, dancers and athletes wear.

It’s weird that superhero media has a strong need to be taken seriously, which boils down to the costumes never mind that most people don’t have an issue with certain actual athletes wearing much less than they do and some musicians and fashion models can dress more flamboyantly than that.

The logic ultimately feels misguided as in the superhero world, people would’ve been that desensitised to such costumes. Weirder still is that actual runners, boxers, tennis players, badminton players, mixed martial artists, capoeiristas, gymnasts, skateboarders, rollerskaters, soccer players and wrestlers wear less than what most superheroes do.

Ice skaters and skiers wear tight, flamboyant costumes expected of in superhero comics and most people don’t mind it. There were even sledders who braved the cold by wearing much less. One could say that truth is stranger than fiction but in this case, a practical costume can sometimes need to be tighter or even skimpier.

Most people who watch these kinds of sports don’t have a problem with that. There were even newsreports of police officers wearing short shorts and some men going to work wearing skirts. Even the music industry is desensitised by the presence of musicians wearing weird, ridiculous outfits though you’re more likely to see it among women for some reason.

I feel as if many designers working on superhero productions miss the point about practical costumes: if they really wanted an outfit that a highly athletic person would actually wear, they would have to base it in real life. Be it outdoorspeople, athletes or dancers with varying degrees of modesty. Surprisingly, that’s how it works in actual sports.