For some reason I’ve just never liked Spider-Man. He comes off as a whiney, ignorant child that never seems to grow up or mature despite everything he goes through. I love a good coming of age story, but he just never seems to become an adult.
Tony Stark - oligarchic propagandist for normalizing the myth of exceptionalism
The thing about his movie is that he was like, almost okay. Iron Man I was about him learning that selling weapons = bad. He could have continued his moral development.
Instead, we got him fighting Captain America over a very stupid implementation of ‘oversight’ (coming from the guy who refuses to let gov. oversee his iron man development), being creepy to some random boy he just met (actually twice - first Peter and then some kid I don’t remember; in a better set of movies I don’t think Peter would be very thrilled to realize Iron Man was advocating for Peter to get outed in a national registry), and having a snit fit about how he doesn’t want to help Unsnap people who died because he personally is OK with his future with his daughter who may or may not be a robot he built to mime having humanity.
What makes him really insufferable for me is his fans who think Captain America is EVIL for daring to snub poor Tony, and that Tony should go date Loki (no I’m not kidding; while I am happy with Loki being queer, I really can’t see the Marvel Universe Tony being a good date for, well, anyone ever, nor Loki being a good date until he works out his genocidal tendency issues at which point he threatens to become alas a much less interesting character).
Eh, people only fawn over him because RDJ is just perfect in the role, and in a way marked his comeback from some really public struggles.
Chris Evans is great (and a huuunk!) but he’s was/is much younger and plays the role of Government-BrandedHeroWhoIsBasicallyJustSoldierWhoAteHisWheaties.
Chris does the job well, but I mean, RDJ kills, and IMHO is a massive reason marvel got to continue making movies.
I found that Tony’s slide to fascism following his PTSD and thinking he knew better than everyone else was a good character development in a show where he’s not the hero. What we’re missing is a 4th solo movie where he faces his fuck-ups and his selfishness, but no, he went out like a hero through sacrifice after causing it and blaming the rift on Cap (when returning from Titan).
I also found that early Steve really needed to get a better angry face, but that evolved well between Infinity War and Endgame.
his daughter who may or may not be a robot he built to mime having humanity
First time I’ve ever heard of this. It it alluded to in the film? My initial reaction is that it couldn’t be true, simply because Pepper wouldn’t be willing to play along.
Superman. He just does everything and wins. Unless you show him a green rock.
It’s stupid. I don’t understand how it ever interested anyone.
First, the appeal of Superman is his heart more than his strength. There’s one comic where he fights a giant robot and stops a runaway train, but the scene everyone remembers is when he talked someone down from the edge of a building.
Second, Superman may be invincible, but Lois Lane isn’t. It’s easy to defeat a villain, but much harder to defeat them while also keeping Lois safe. And she actively invites danger, so it’s always tricky keeping her safe.
Third, not every problem can be punched. Luthor’s greatest weapon against Superman isn’t kryptonite; it’s Public Relations. You can punch a monster, but that won’t help you stop a smear campaign.
I’m a big fan of Supes myself, but it depends on who’s writing him and what the goal is.
He is at his best when it’s a problem he can’t punch away, it’s about courage, and honor of defending others. Superman without powers is still the same stand up powerful character, that is crux of what makes him interesting.
I love the version of Superman where he growing up and is friends with Luthor and he’s like ‘I cannot tell him my secret because my dad would disapprove’ and it’s got accidental closeted queer vibes.
And there’s this comic book (not in the same continuity) where Luthor is this mad genius who escapes from prison easily and Clark interviews him and he’s like “I like you Clark, you’re so humble and down to Earth, but I hate Superman who is the opposite of that.”
and then Lois likes Superman more than Clark, at least to start with, in some versions I think.
And then with Brainiac there’s the possible storyline of ‘this computer has a lot of information stored on my lost culture but he is also an existential risk to all sapients everywhere in the galaxy ahhhhggg’.
And how will Clark deal with an environment where everyone is hostile to immigrants when he is one himself and also dedicated to upholding the law?
And the first comic where he interacts with Batman is actually fairly good: Batman threatens to bomb people if Superman unmasks him and Superman is like ‘oh shit, he is not lying, I can hear his heartbeat’, but Batman was actually threatening to explode himself. And the cartoon where Batman is fighting Brainiac and his costume gets ripped to reveal he was Superman all along was hilarious: “I did not predict this possibility.” The Justice League series in general (part of the same continuity) was pretty good actually.
I like the potential stories there. There’s so many emotional possibilities. Stories where he just punches stuff are indeed boring. He is, frankly, under-utilized as a character imo because many writers don’t understand that, or think the solution is to make a version of him that is evil which still involves him punching stuff, or because they’re scared to actually touch on political issues like immigration or queerness. (can you imagine how many people would explode if Luthor was an ex-boyfriend for both him and Lois and they bonded over how shitty Luthor was as a date lol.)
Yeah, I don’t think that it’s a fantastic recipe for a character. The powers restrict the plots.
I think that less-potent powers tend to make for better story.
A lot of fictional series in various formats – not just comic books – make characters or events more-important or more-powerful over the course of the series, to top each previous episode, and I think that the plots tend to become increasingly constrained late in a lot of series.
it’s his ideals make him interesting, his nemesis litterally is an evil billonaire
Jane Foster when she was the wielder of Mjolnir. Not for anything about her personally, but the fact that Thor was treated as a codename. It’s the dude’s actual name, it’d be like if Sam Wilson went around introducing himself as Steve Rogers when he took the Captain America mantle. It’s happened a few other times like with Eric Masterson, but at least he had the excuse that for most of the time he used the name he and the actual Thor were sharing a body.
I think it’s both, his name and his power. In Thor 1 when Odin sends Mjolnir to earth he whispers to it something like “May he who’s been worthy possess the power of Thor”.
Because the point was to show that he’s worthy without completely changing him. Same with vision.
Excuse me, but that’s always been the case. The first ever appearance of Thor is in Journey into Mistery #83, that’s before he had his own comic, in that comic a guy called Don Blake finds a cane, and when he grabs it this happens https://static1.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/journey-into-mystery-83-thor-debut-1.jpg
So Thor has always been the title of the person in possession of the Hammer, he converts himself into Thor by grabbing the hammer, the movies then changed that because in the Marvel Ultimate universe it’s different, but Jane Foster is from the original comics, where holding the hammer made you Thor, and she did exactly that in the 70s, just a couple of decades after Don Blake.
The thing is that, as you said, it’s happened several times before. Beta Ray Bill, Red Norvell, Eric Masterson… it’s been established for a long time that in the Marvel universe the title of Thor, God of Thunder, may be held by people who aren’t Thor Odinson (and that he might occasionally lose it, though so far only temporarily, at least in the main continuity).
The Flash.
Not because I don’t like the character but because he honestly should be one of the strongest characters in DC but they constantly nerf him in the writing because they realized just like superman he could literally just show up and fix everything before anyone else even realized there was a problem
Don’t hate spiderman. Hate the writers roughly since 2000 that only let him have a break from misery when he’s in an alternate universe where he never became spider man.
To be fair the comics do him much worse, he kills his first girlfriend trying to save her, he kills his wife with his radioactive sperm, he’s the ultimate tragic hero.
However I don’t think that’s what OP is talking about, I think he’s talking about how it keeps getting rebooted so Peter Parker never grows old, he’s forever a teenager. In the comics it took time, but he did eventually become an adult, during the Civil War he’s an adult for example.
