Plot Devices that Need to Go Away #11

Plot Devices that Need to Go Away #11

THE DYNASTY


Also known as: The ______ Family, the ____ Corps, League, etc.

What is it?

It's a group of of a characters based around a primary "Classic" character, with multiple versions of the same powerset/personality/narrative arcs with only moderate tweaks.

Why Do Comic Companies Do It?

Multiple reasons:

1) Nothing succeeds like success and excess.
2) It's easier to come up with a variation of an old character than to create a new character or to modify/retcon the old one to fit the new variation.

3) Because creators increasingly keep their most original ideas for their own projects.

Recent Offenders Include but are not limited to:

Superman - Superman, Superboy, Supergirl, Powergirl (yes she counts), Steel, The Eradicator.

Flash - Barry, Wally, Jay, NuImpulse, Jesse Quick, Max Mercury, Bart/Kid Flash

Green Lantern - Hal, Kyle, Guy, John, Alan (I don't count the non-Earth ones here).

Batman - Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Azrael, Red Robin, Robin, Batwoman, Batgirl, Spoiler, and I'm sure there's a couple more I'm missing.

Green Arrow: Oliver Queen, Connor Hawke, Arsenal, Speedy, Arrowette (sorta counts?)

Oh, and if you think this is just a DC thing...you're wrong, because Marvel is jumping on this bandwagon like it's going on out of style.

Captain America - Steve Rogers, Bucky, Patriot, Nomad, USAgent (sorta counts if you ask me) and I could make a case for Jack Flag

Iron Man - Iron Man, Rescue, War Machine

Hulk - Red Hulk, Green Hulk, the three She-Hulks, A-bomb, the other two Hulk kids...

Wolverine - Logan, Daken, X-23

Spider-Man - Peter Parker, Venom, Anti-Venom, Spider-Girl/Arana, Spider-Woman, Arachne/Julia Carpenter

Patient Zero

While the SHAZAM Marvel Family are certainly the first "family" of supercharacters, I don't count them as part of this particular phase.

No, I think Patient Zero is the 90s "Batfamily" and "Superfamily" of comics where most of these guys (Superboy, Azrael, Nightwing) really started spawning their own separate titles.

Why does it have to go away?

Redundancy, pure and simple - guys like Superman and Batman aren't unique if there are 9 other people in the same universe who can do almost the same thing.

Angles for Redemption of the Device:


OK, I admit that the Kon-El/Conner Kent clone Superboy is a guilty pleasure of mine, but that said? The best thing to do is to phase out a lot of these unnecessary variants or at least start making larger distinctions and differences - and keeping them apart from each other wouldn't hurt either.

A recruitment poster for "Batman Inc"

Something's...not quite right, is it?

Gamer Post On!

What if we lived in a comic book universe? Part 78

Your Moment of Funny

Words Fail

Pick the best...Poster Macro?

Alright people, I'm going to need your help on this one - I want your opinion as to how to prioritize my poster-making macros.

Most of you already know that my default has been DIY.DISPAIR.COM. However, recent changes means that they no longer scale down long titles, so now "GUNSLINGER WALK" is too long a title to use even in landscape for most font choices. These others though? I find the image quality and size too small for my tastes, and not nearly as versatile when it comes to cropping the images. Your thoughts are appreciated.

Sick Week Day 5

Sick Week Day 4

Sick Week Day 3

I think we can all agree that Marvel Adventures: Avengers was awesome, no?

Sick Week Day 2

Sick Week Day 1

Sick this week - so will just be putting up random posters until I'm better.

Your Moment of Funny

Pick the Best Caption

Dammit, what's wrong with me that it's been this long since I put some Kirby stuff up here?

Yeesh.

What if we lived in a comic book universe? Part 77

Admit it; that's what you first thought when you saw Jon's goatee.

Smallville Season 10 Thoughts

If it were up to me, this is how it would go;

A 22-episode Superman movie.

Yes. Like that. Start with the cape and tights in the first episode. Pull no punches.

Maybe bring back Millar and Gough with the stated objective of making Christopher Nolan weep with envy.

Back up a dumptruck full of money to Michael Rosenbaum's house to get him to shave his head and give us back the best live-action Lex Luthor of all (sorry Mr. Spacey).

Make it a 22 hour sweeping epic that's everything Superman should be with the effects and drama that Smallville has shown it can actually do when they are really trying.

I know that's not going to happen.

But it's nice to think about it.

Hal No!

As you can see above, I'm not exactly a Hal Jordan fan. Not that I hate him - I sort of get the character and the appeal, and he works fine...

But....

When you think about Guy Gardner, first thing that springs to mind?

Batman decking him. Him being a jerk in the JLI era. The University of Michigan logo sticker on his power battery. If you read Blackest Night, he gets a really cool moment where his own willpower actually fights the Green Lantern Ring itself. That's badass.

John Stewart?

Well, just about any story-arc with him on the "Justice League" cartoon. A planet dying on his watch due to his overconfidence.

Kyle Rayner?

Facing down an insane Parallax. Proving himself time and time again during Morrison's JLA run, which reaches its climax when Kyle contains a sun. During Blackest Night, he made a self-sacrifice play to save Oa that killed him (temporarily).

Where's Hal's moment? Is it punching Batman, as seen here? Is it something else? Both in "The Sinestro Corps War" and "The Blackest Night" he's been more spectator than active force.

I'm asking this honestly. If you're a Hal fan, shed some light on this for me.

Reading Recommendations

A follow-up of sorts to yesterday. With my birthday coming up, I'm looking at getting some new books of sorts. Now, most of my non-fiction and even my science-fiction/speculative fiction needs are being met (Still working on "The Essential Ellison"). However, when I was in Chapters I saw an interesting new book called Masked. Needless to say, I'm intrigued enough that I'm going to buy it. And of course, I'm very interested in MASKS once it is published, but I'm interested in what else is out there.

So, any thoughts or suggestions? I'm leaving it wide open here.

Chapters Thoughts

Sorry for the late post - just got back from Toronto. It was a nice trip, and I got to check out the local Chapters (The Canadian version of Borders or Barnes and Noble). A few quick observations:

-The floppies actually had some shelf space in the magazine section instead of being exiled to the spinner rack where they would never be seen or touched, and there was a fairly diverse selection of different publishers. Whether this is because comics are doing well or the magazine business is just that bad is more difficult to discern.

-The "graphic novel" section in where the adult books are sold is now almost the same size as the manga section, and it's starting to look like the books are all of a uniform size and shape, like the manga. There's still not much logical order, as I went through it alphabetically first by title then by creator and still found huge mismatches, but it's progress.

- Now, I didn't get the time to check out the younger readers sections of the store, so I'm going to assume (probably safely) that there is a seperate manga section for younger readers, while American/European publishers lack a solid presence there (with the possible exception of BOOM! and whoever else has some Disney material published).
-That said - is it just me or are the Marvel/DC collections ugly,? Most of them have black spines with barely readable titles and almost no logos. Looking at them from a distance, it would be hard to tell any one series apart from another.
-The exception to this? The DC Showcase Presents stuff - colorful enough to stand out, with a clear title and logo and even a little picture of the main character. Shining beakons in a black sea.

-This one's the store's fault, but just the same - if you're going to put one of the titles so that it's cover faces out to the general public, can I recommend that it's not one of the Marvel Zombies books? Thanks.

Your Moment of Funny

Pick the best Caption

What if we lived in a comicbook universe? Part 76

A thing I'll be happy to see

I think it'll be a good thing if they can start moving the Daredevil franchise beyond Frank Miller's stuff, or just ending the franchise altogether.

On one hand, Miller's stuff is definitive, both for Miller creatively, and for Daredevil as a concept. That isn't to say there aren't any other Daredevil stories, but that after Miller's work, there may not be any stories that work within the context that Miller so concretely delivered. Just about every other major run on the franchise has heavily borrowed, if not outright copied, Miller's work. Very few creators even want to TRY and expand the franchise beyond or apart from Miller's framework because they fear that the character will lose whatever it is that made it special to them.

That said, I've actually enjoyed some of the attempts to wildly depart from Miller's work - particularly Karl Kesel's early run where it was clear he was trying to create a new set of enemies that provided a good thematic balances with Matt Murdock, without being Bullseye, Kingpin, Gladiator, Nuke, Elektra and the Hand. I liked Mr. Hyde, and the Eel, and some of the more off-the-wall ideas that Kesel threw in there. No one was quite sure where he was going, or if it would be any good, but you had to respect his courage to TRY and move things beyond that tired old set of toys.

Prediction

Seeing as Dwayne Taylor/Night Thrasher and Microbe are the only New Warriors who were killed in Stamford (and at this point, it wouldn't be that hard to retcon it so NO ONE died at Stamford, with the added bonus of pissing off Mark Millar), how long do you figure before another New Warriors title is launched?

My prediction is that it'll be by December 2011, tops.


(And as a side note - man, 90s Nova had some truly, truly GODAWFUL shirts and fashion style)