What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

[Blue]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

Except that Lee has expressly stated this in interviews about the X-Men many times. He has even characterized himself as "copping out" on their origins. Check out his interviews in the X-Men DVDs and you'll see what I mean.

Yes, yes... it seems I'm uninformed in the lackadaisical ways of Stan Lee. I should have paid more attention in school.

[assault]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

Is there a comics industry (even a small one) in Brazil?

There's a small one in Australia, which had a brief revival way back in the '80s. (I'm so old - I remember the '80s like they were just yesterday!)

 

Anyway, once you get local creators, you start getting source material that's not "typically American".

 

Other good material can be found in British publications like 2000 AD. I don't know if it's available in Brazil, but it's relatively widespread here. While most of it isn't about superheroes, it does occasionally have some relevant material. Zenith, alas, was a long time ago, but it was one of the finest superhero strips anybody did ever. It won my heart when the title character was woken up on the kitchen floor, where he had fallen asleep after flying home from a night's partying... Superman goes nightclubbing.

 

"I'm nineteen, I can fly, I can flatten ballbearings between my fingers and I'm practically invulnerable to damage. What can possibly go wrong?"

 

http://www.2000adonline.com/?zone=thrill&page=profiles&choice=ZENITH

 

Other good stuff can be found at

http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/

[Vondy]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

Is there a comics industry (even a small one) in Brazil?

There's a small one in Australia, which had a brief revival way back in the '80s. (I'm so old - I remember the '80s like they were just yesterday!)

Studio 3 is in Brazil.

 

Al Rio and John Bosco are Studio 3 artists, among others.

[John Desmarais]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

What I am tired of is Mutants. Everyone besides my character in that game (and all previous games that I had heard about being run locally) had mutant PCs and a registration act. Give it a rest. I love the X-Men but the whole mutant threat/registration thing has been done to death.

 

Amen...

 

John D

[Rene]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

Brazil don't has much of a native superhero comic book industry. Science fiction, fantasy, horror, all that stuff is very marginal here too. Brazilian editorial market basically has two extremes: high-brow ("respectable" mainstream literature, kinda boring) and low-brow (self-help/new age books, mostly). Sadly, there is a big desert in between, with the rare oasis.

 

Superhero comics you find here are some American and British ones, translated. There were some native superheroes in the 60s and 70s, I gather. I don't know much about this period. Extremelly hard to find today.

 

There were some almost-superhero Brazilian comics in the 90s too, influenced by a big boom in the RPG industry, but the guys behind it were mostly deeply into the anime/x-files/white wolf/fantasy thing. It's not really "Brazilian", it's not really superheroes, and it never raised much above imitation of said fads.

 

Yep, Al Rio and several other hot artists are Brazilians. But I gather they mostly work for American publishers. I'm not aware of any famous Brazilian comic book writers who work with supers, unfortunately.

[lapsedgamer]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

I'm going to talk about a concept that I found kind of fresh as a way of making what I hope is a point. Mark Millar is doing this thing for Top Cow called Wanted. He has taken what appears to be a thinly disquised DC universe, and turned it on its head. He has allowed the villians to unite and eliminate all the heroes. They rule the world unopposed and do as they will. Their only conflicts are among themselves (sort of like a superpowered Sopranos). It is very entertaining in an Iron Age way, but I wouldn't want to play in that universe. Well, OK, it might be fun for a few sessions.

 

I think you get kind of stuck with world concepts because the genre demand it. Especially when you want to get five to six players together and keep them that way for a campaign. I remeber playing D&D, and we spent all this time trying to get together through tavern brawls, NPC interaction and damsels in distress. I don't know if it was any more tired than having the UN or the government hand you a base and a plane and tell you to go to work. You are sort of forced to have that false structure just to get on with the game.

[Vondy]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

 

Yep, Al Rio and several other hot artists are Brazilians. But I gather they mostly work for American publishers. I'm not aware of any famous Brazilian comic book writers who work with supers, unfortunately.

Time for you to get cracking!

[Rene]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

Time for you to get cracking!

 

Heh, can't say I never thought about it.

 

Now I remember, there was one genuine Brazilian superhero comic story I once read. The writing was kinda good, a pity the art was in the dreadful Image style.

 

We had a right-wing military dictatorship here in Brazil from 1964-1985. So this story dealt with a 60s supergroup having to deal with it. Some heroes supported the government, others didn't. Kind of "Dark Night Returns" situation, only here it had true historical basis.

 

I remember that the protagonist was a energy projector with left-wing sympathies who had spent almost 3 decades in a kind of a limbo, after being betrayed by one of his teammates, and had recently been let loose in modern times.

[Siberian Tiger]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

The whole American-centredness of most comic universes is the one thing that gets tiring very quickly.

 

Is it realistic that every Green Lantern from Earth has been American? I know about the marketing issues but imagine how interesting a storyline would be if a GL ring fell into the hands of an Iraqui or a Chinese person. Thankfully the Champions Universe has a Spaniard as their Starguard.

 

Why does every Alien who crashes on Earth land in the USA (not even other parts of the North American landmass such as Mexico or Canada). Superman, Martian Manhunter, Abin Sur, Starfire are all examples from the DC universe that I can quickly think of. What about an alien landing in Bosnia or Rwanda. How would that play out?

 

Why are all foreign superhumans only from major nations (Britain, Japan, Russia, France etc). Let's see some heroes from Surinam, Mauritious, Bangladesh, Fiji, Poland, Malta, Nigeria, Syria etc

[assault]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

Why does every Alien who crashes on Earth land in the USA (not even other parts of the North American landmass such as Mexico or Canada).

...

Why are all foreign superhumans only from major nations (Britain, Japan, Russia, France etc). Let's see some heroes from Surinam, Mauritious, Bangladesh, Fiji, Poland, Malta, Nigeria, Syria etc

 

Frankly, I'm not too hugely stressed by all this.

 

The following site provides you with all the international superheroes you can eat.

http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/

 

Apart from anything else, the whole superhero thing was initially derived from the US. It isn't universal.

 

Then again, there are plenty of local equivalents. I've been told, for example, that a lot of martial arts type "pulp" material gets produced in Indonesia. That is, apparently, the relevant local source material.

 

I've lived in Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea). I've seen "superheroic" images in ads on their TV stations. The only superhero comics I saw there were Australia reprints of The Phantom, plus a whole stack of copies of a very old issue of Batman And The Outsiders that had presumably wound up there by accident. Not surprisingly, the superhero images that popped up there were mostly based on The Phantom.

 

So, in my campaign, guess who the only superhero based in PNG resembles?

 

Oh, with one exception. Assault was based there for a while.

 

The Australian comics industry has had plenty of alien characters, by the way. It looks like we have had more than our fair share.

 

I was always a bit put off by aliens from the Zotian Empire, until I realised how "Zotian" is actually pronounced. It's not half as bad as it looks on paper. Yeah, "Zoesha"!

[Siberian Tiger]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

Maybe I didn't make myself clear but there's a big difference between other nations publishing their own comics with or withour superheroes, and the way that the Marvel and DC universes are so US-centric.

 

DC and Marvel's approach to other nations' superhumans within their universe just isn't realistic in my opinion (and yes I know that flying men, aliens and men who dress as winged rodents aren't realistic either).

[Guest WhammeWhamme]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

Maybe I didn't make myself clear but there's a big difference between other nations publishing their own comics with or withour superheroes, and the way that the Marvel and DC universes are so US-centric.

 

DC and Marvel's approach to other nations' superhumans within their universe just isn't realistic in my opinion (and yes I know that flying men, aliens and men who dress as winged rodents aren't realistic either).

 

I think it's not so much 'plausible' as 'they haven't given a reason for why a logical outcome has not occured, given the changes to physics etc that HAVE been explained', right?

[assault]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

Maybe I didn't make myself clear but there's a big difference between other nations publishing their own comics with or withour superheroes' date=' and the way that the Marvel and DC universes are so US-centric. [/quote']

 

No, I understood perfectly.

 

Marvel and DC's approach to non-US supers suck.

 

The point is, however, that the easiest way to correct it in your own universe is to lift material from other nations' comics.

 

That way, at least, you can reflect their cliches, rather than imposing your own cliches upon them!

 

Personally, my Australian superteam presently consists of: Flying Fox (Batman/Hawkman homage), Marino (Aquaman homage), and... well, I'm still working on the others. I'm considering Redback (a Spiderman homage), but that's mixing DC and Marvel influences, plus I've traditionally used Redback as a villain.

 

Of course, all this is a result of me deciding to Embrace The Cliche...

 

I'm wondering exactly what the Yowie is. He's most likely to be a homage to the Beast from the X-Men. But that means I've got two Marvel homages and two DC ones... Maybe they are rivals!

 

Funnily enough, all three of the four are demi-bricks, and the other is a martial artist! Hmm...

 

See, there is a point sitting up late and writing gibberish on the Hero Games boards. It can really, err, "enrich" your games.

[austenandrews]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

Oddly enough, I once had an NPC hero from Rwanda. He was a "dreamwalker" (Mental Illusions) which gave me the opportunity to insert lots of cool African motifs into the game. The genocide started after I had already introduced the character, which gave him another layer of pathos. He was cool.

 

-AA

[Reynard]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

Marvel and DC's approach to non-US supers suck.

 

I disagree, and wonder whether you are currently reading titles from those companies. The porblem is not that international supers don't exist in those universes, or that they are treated as stereotypes and cliches. DC introduced a whole world of supers a few years ago, and they writers all made a concerted effort to create dynamic, non-stereotyped characters. A lot of them were cool. Marvel has always ahad a strong international character roster, from Sunfire to Alpha Flight. The problem is that they don't sell, so you don't see them much.

 

In fact, new heroes in general don't sell. Ho many times does a new hero or team title appear from either company and disappear, while the Batman and X-Men book keep multiplying. It takes a lot to get a new character enmeshed in one of the existing universes.

 

On topic in general: (in gaming) I am tired of seeing dystopian supers worlds. BNW did it best, but even then pretty much 90% of all published super hero rpg worlds are places where supers have wrecked civilization. The alternative, of course, is pretty much the illegitimate child of Marvel and DC dressed up with a new timeline.

 

What I would like to see is a super hero setting with a unique origin for powers -- say, mystical -- without the requisite crumbling of society that those settings tend to bring.

 

I am sure such a setting exists. Point me to it.

 

Reynard

[Storm Shadow]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

I'm tired to see the mega-nacionalist superheroe.

[ZootSoot]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

I hate mutant titles because it is a really poor example of pseudo-science. With the opening up of genetic knowledge that has occured recently something much better could be done. The mutant origin was better pseudo-science when Stan came up with it; each mutation was unique and unrelated to the others (Hank McCoy was a mutant because his father risked his life shutting down a nuclear reation). Mutant hatred because mutants are a new species is incredibly stupid. Mutants freely interbreed with non-mutants and they do not breed true, they are not a species and within a few generations will be entirely reabsorbed by the general populace (though if you get the Mutant Registration Act passed and ghettoized them sufficiently you could go a fair way to making it a self-fulfilling prophecy). The really foul-smelling stuff is the vast misreading of evolution being spewed by mutant titles and such marvelous stupidities as "extinction" genes. Even if mutants did represent humanity's evolutionary future, logically that would be preferable to the likeliest real world outcome which is human extinction (or displacement by a non-human species).

 

For me sponsored teams only work when the sponsors and the team members have incompatible goals. That's what makes the story worth reading. The worst thing that ever happened with team books was "The New Defenders" when everything that made "The Defenders" cool was ejected in order to make a nostalgic homage to the original X-Men.

 

I like dark stories and dark heroes. I can't stand heroes who kill because they set out to kill or who kill in order to punish a villain. I think the defining moment of making Spawn suck was when he murdered the child-molester Ice-Cream man. Both because it was a blatant appeal to popular prejudice which wants to kill pedophiles in grotesque ways because they are "safe" targets for hate, and because it was filled with stupidly inexplicable stuff (how do you stab someone with an ice-cream scooper?) and was supposed to have been done without the use of demonic powers. I don't have a problem with a hero who is willing to kill a foe in the course of a fight, vindictive killing is what is truly unheroic.

 

Vaguely defined powers on the part of both heroes and villains in order to make it easier for the writers to have anything happen they want is a pet peeve. Admittedly this has to be done from an editorial viwpoint, and has always been done to an extent, but it has gotten worse. Marvel first serious descent into this field (that I caught, at least) was Apocalypse who was initially introduced with no specific power except the ability to counter any strategy the X-men would use against him. DC has fallen much deeper into this rabbit hole with story conventions being elevated to the level of physical law, while most of the independents are drowning in it (The Authority in particular doesn't really define what any of the characters can do).

[Metaphysician]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

Heh, if you do other nations superhuman presence based on their own local real-world analogue to superhero comics, then Japan is gonna end up having more supers per square mile than New York City. . .

[Doug McCrae]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

The whole American-centredness of most comic universes is the one thing that gets tiring very quickly.

 

...

 

Let's see some heroes from Surinam, Mauritious, Bangladesh, Fiji, Poland, Malta, Nigeria, Syria etc

I have almost the exact opposite view. I'm really sick of the trend for internationalist superteams that started with the New X-Men and has continued for some 30 years now. Much of the superhero roleplaying down my way is infested with it. IMO it's politically correct left-wing bullshit.

[assault]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

I have almost the exact opposite view. I'm really sick of the trend for internationalist superteams that started with the New X-Men and has continued for some 30 years now. Much of the superhero roleplaying down my way is infested with it. IMO it's politically correct left-wing bullshit.

 

No, don't hold back. Tell us what you really think.

 

...

 

Whatever. Personally, I don't care. My teams are quite happily parochial, and will fight any US based team that treads on their turf.

 

And then team up with them to fight the real villain, of course.

 

These are standard crossover rules.

[Siberian Tiger]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

I have almost the exact opposite view. I'm really sick of the trend for internationalist superteams that started with the New X-Men and has continued for some 30 years now. Much of the superhero roleplaying down my way is infested with it. IMO it's politically correct left-wing bullshit.

 

Are you saying superteams should only consist of heroes from one nation and that they should limit their activities to their homeland? Or that only Americans should have superpowers?

[Southern Cross]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

I don't agree with either of those ideas,but the idea that "Only Americans should have superheroes" is the worst of the lot.Just think of all the bragging they would do...

[Storm Shadow]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

IMO he didn't say "only americans".

I remember it's funny in DC world at the time of the Cold War there were a lack of superheores in russia and high percent of the bad guys had a red star somewhere in his equipment or clothes

[Mentor]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

I don't agree with either of those ideas' date='but the idea that "Only Americans should have superheroes" is the worst of the lot.Just think of all the bragging they would do...[/quote']

It would just be boring if the Superheroes on a team were only American. Our team has a French detictive/Wizard, an Italian geologist demi Brick/Energy protector, a Russian gymnast Martial Artist, a Mescalero Apache shaman Energy Projector, an Atlantean Psychic (born in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Outremer), A Bhutanese/Apache Martial Artist, a Filipino Martial Artist, an three Americans. The are Headquartered out of Norway.

 

Lots of languages and lots of plot hooks.

[Trebuchet]

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing?

 

It would just be boring if the Superheroes on a team were only American. Our team has a French detictive/Wizard, an Italian geologist demi Brick/Energy protector, a Russian gymnast Martial Artist, a Mescalero Apache shaman Energy Projector, an Atlantean Psychic (born in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Outremer), A Bhutanese/Apache Martial Artist, a Filipino Martial Artist, an three Americans. The are Headquartered out of Norway.

 

Lots of languages and lots of plot hooks.

You forgot our brilliant Canadian physicist and team brick.