I agree with you, smiling bandit. Changes to the movie version of a character has no effect on the old comics sitting in your closet. However, instead of staking out a position, you were rude.
–Cliffy
It’s an interesting artifact of the history of DC’s comics. As you know, there were several heroes of the Golden Age, of which Superman, Green Arrow, Hawkman, and Hour-Man were just a few. When the war ended and the boys came home, people stopped buying superhero comics and most of those heroes disappeared. However, Superman (and Superboy), Batman, and Wonder Woman maintained a good chunk of their popularity and so continued to survive through the 50’s and into DC’s Silver Age, when several GA heroes (Flash, Green Lantern, Atom and Hawkman) were revived and revamped with new origins and several new heroes created.
Although the big three were the only ones who could maintain their books through the dry period, they weren’t the only ones to survive. Specifically, Aquaman and Green Arrow continued through the dry period – not because they were such popular characters, but because they were back-up features in the big three’s books. (Specifically, Aquaman backed up Superboy in Adventure Comics, and Green Arrow appeared both there and behind the Superman+Batman team-ups in World’s Finest.) When the Silver Age began, there was a new Flash and a new Green Lantern, but Green Arrow (as well as Wonder Woman and Superman) hadn’t ever had that nearly 10-year interruption like the other revamped heroes did. That’s why, when later in the Silver Age the heroes of the Golden Age were retconned into existing on a parallel earth (Earth-2), the Earth-2 versions of Aquaman, Green Arrown, Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were essentially indistinguishable from their Earth-1 (Silver Age) counterparts, unlike the GL or Atom, whose GA versions hadn’t survived the late 40’s. (Fenris is right that the origins were different – this is probably a combination of both an effort to introduce marks of distinction between the GA and SA versions and the fact that throughout this period creators were less careful with continuity and would revise origins when they felt it served the story.)
When Crisis came in the mid-80’s and DC decided to streamline its continuity, this presented a problem. While it made some sense to put the Golden Age and modern Flashes on the same planet since they were obviously different folks, two essentially identical Supermen or Green Arrows running around was thought to be too confusing, so the Earth-2 versions of those who had survived the interregnum were retconned out of existence, unlike their Earth-2 colleagues who had two distinct versions.
–Cliffy
Actually, in New Teen Titans #2, his son Grant was the first costumed villain the took on.
I hope you’re not talking about the James Jesse version of the Trickster. He’s a gret character who has come into his own through Underworld Unleashed and his recent appearances in The Flash.
Now the new Trickster… okay. He seems pointless to me.
Superman’s rogue’s gallery has gotten largely pointless and forgettable. With the exceptions of Luthor, Bizzaro, Mxyzptlyk, Metallo and the Parasite, I’d wipe out the lot of them.
Yeah, even Doomsday. OUT!
A Robin villain. At least that is where I have seen him, he may have been a Batman villain originally. Not a great loss.
Does Superman have any other rogues?
Lok
Alright, howzabout, he was the first costumed villain to appear in the Teen Titans and he became their first serious threat?
Parasite’s dead, BTW (unless he’s come back in the last year since I stopped reading Superman).
–Cliffy
Superman has other rogues, but as I said, they’re not very memorable (thus answering Lok’s question). I’m thinking of the Atomic Skull or Hellgrammite or that purple guy who can split into duplicates of himself.
The new General Zod isn’t bad, but they’ve been stretching out the mystery of who he is for so long that I really don’t care anymore.
Then we have a fundimental difference of opinion: I think there’s objective good and bad. I can’t stand (say) Black Panther, but I can see that it objectively has good qualities, they’re just not to my liking. On the other hand, other than camp value, I defy anyone to say anything positive about Street Poet Ray. It objectively does suck.
And besides, if all art is opinion, why don’t I have a right to my opinion and say that such-and-such is crap?
Fenris
Didn’t he start to say it was a lie, he wasn’t Matt, he CERTAINLY wasn’t blind, start to turn away, then do a double-take and visibly shaken, say
“it’s true.”
The picture was of his father.
(How radar sense “saw” that…)
Urich burned those notes later that issue in front of DD.
Since Superman’s eyes can emit both X-rays (which is high end EM radiation) and infrared heat (which is low end EM radiation) can his eyes also emit visible light which has frequencies that fall in between those extremes?
Of course, you have a right to your opinion. But the opinion that came across in your first post on the subject was, “This is crap because it differs from my vision of who the character is.” That is quite different from, “This is crap because it is poor storytelling.”
In my book, it’s perfectly acceptable to dislike a movie adaptation because they twist a character so much that it’s no longer what you loved in the first place. That doesn’t make it “crap,” however.
So, did you dislike the movie because they changed your Daredevil or because their own Daredevil failed somehow?
Personally _ and I’m speaking as someone who has had a soft spot for Daredevil for 25 years _ I liked the darker version who grew from a vigilante to a hero.
Yeah, but it’s NOT Fenris’ version of Daredevil. It’s Marvel’s version of DD that wasn’t shown in the movie. Since when did DD kill those who beat him in a trial? That wasn’t the essence of Daredevil ever.
Thats true and I apoligize.
I think thats the point. DD in the movie is a lot more troubled and grey at the beginning. Rather than play a static character, he finds redemption. In any event, he didn’t kill anyone in the movie. he simply allowed the bad guy at the start to face his own consequences. (Trynig not to spoil.)
Again… his son Grant was a serious threat until his fight with the Titans made his power consume him. That is what sent the Terminator after them.
A) I’ve stated over and over and over in previous threads that I hate the idiotic idea that (IIRC) started with John Byrne’s Superman that a hero has to commit a crime to realize that it’s wrong. It’s crap when Byrne does it, it’s crap when Tim Truman does it, it’s crap when (someone on Batman in the mid-'90s) does it and it’s (IMO) crap when Daredevil does it in the film. And I’ve been bitching about this for years.
At least I’m consistant! 
Clark:
There are tons of versions of Daredevil. I like most of 'em (Nocenti’s being the notable exception :yuk: ), but they all, (even Nocenti’s irriating Daredevil) share a common bond that the movie lacks and if there’s no connection between the original character and the movie version other than the name and the costume, what’s the point?
There are a myriad of valid ways to interpret Daredevil from Stan Lee’s goofy character, to Conway’s soap-opera-ish one to Gerber’s thoughtful one to Miller’s dark one to Smith’s soul-searching one to Bendis’s intense one. But every version of the character…every! single! one! has had, at the core, a love and respect for the law. Even as intensely disparate as Stan Lee’s and Frank Miller’s take on the character, they shared the one basic thing that makes Daredevil Daredevil and not, say, Spider-Man or the Punisher or Arms-Fall-Off Boy or Batman. A love and respect for the law.
And the filmmaker threw away the one crucial element that defines the character.
Superman: there are a billion takes on Superman, but they all come down to “Rocketed from dying world, fights for truth, justice and the American Way.” (Let’s not quibble about “American”. You know what it means in context, even if he was raised on Apokolypse) What would be the point of doing a movie featuring a character who acts like the Punisher but is wearing Superman’s costume?
Batman-Saw his parents killed, will do whaterver it takes, short of killing, to prevent others from suffering the same fate. That’s the core of the character. Everything else is gravy. Would a film that shows Bruce raised by abusive parents, causing him to be insane and he goes out each night killing young women while dressed in a Batsuit be a legit interpretation of Batman regardless of how good the film was?
Characters can grow from the initial premise. Milgrom’s idea (expanded by David) that Bruce Banner suffers from mutiple personality disorder is a wonderful addition to the basic premise.
Swamp Thing discovering that he’s never been human, he’s just a plant that thinks it was a man was stunningly good.
Daredevil murdering a man found innocent in a court of law? No. Sorry. I can’t accept it. I could buy Daredevil killing to save a life…barely. But cold blooded murder of an aquitted person? Nope.
Fenris
If this has been asked before, I apologize.
Fenris, BrightEyes – Marvel or DC?
Personally, I was Marvel early on. Captain America and TransFormers, chiefly. Then, I got sucked into Excalibur (not with that Mojoworld graphic novel, but with issue 1. Knew NOTHING about the Fall of the Mutants). Stopped reading Excalibur when the art started to SUCK ASS (during the Cross-Time Caper), and discovered Batman and Superman. Now, of course, I see the value in both.
But, do you two have a preference? I’ll still Make Marvel Mine, for the record.
#1) The Amazing Fenris Predicts: Your question will prompt someone in the next 5 posts to say “Neither. I read independents! Marvel and DC both suk.” In advance of that, I read a ton of indies, but that’s not what the question was about.
#2) For me it changes from year to year, decade to decade:
DC (overall) has the cooler, more iconic characters, Marvel has the better universe: I’ve never, in 30 years of reading comics, gotten the feeling that DC has a coherent universe the same way Marvel does (even following Crisis). It makes sense, of course: Marvel started as a coherent universe. In DC it “jes’ happened” (and even the attempt to make it coherent in Crisis was foiled by the fact that some books rebooted (Superman), some books sorta rebooted (Batman…what ever happened to the real Jason Todd?), some books ignored other reboots (the real Jason Todd was running around in Titans when he’d been Crisised and replaced with the street punk in Batman at the same time) rebooted years too late and undermined what other books had done (Hawkman) or were screwed by other’s reboots (Legion)).
Which one I like better varies as the good creators go from one company to the other and the editorial direction waxes and wanes. When one is “up” the other is often “down”.
DC and Marvel were equally good from '61 to say…'66 or so. when DC began a LONG downward slide and Marvel just got better and better, bringing in new talent, new ideas and just exploding with goodness, while DC flailed helplessly trying to do something to recover. “Relevancy” was one such desperate attempt. While Marvel characters dealt with current events in a natural, story-driven way (“Crisis on Campus”, the fantastic and risky (for Lee and Marvel) three part drug story in Spider-Man), DC ham-handedly bludgeoned the readers with badly written “Very Special Issues” driven by message. (The entire O’Neil/Adams Green Lantern/Green Arrow run, the now-camp “I Am Curious, Black” period of Lois Lane, etc.)
In the mid '70s, both companies were in a slump. Marvel had most of the talent (Gerber, Englehart, Starlin, Colan, etc), but absolutely no editorial direction and books were coming out late or not at all. It’s unthinkable today, but because of the “Dread Deadline Doom”, Marvel readers would regularly find that the new issue of a Marvel comic (which was already several weeks late) would contain a reprint of an older issue with a new cover. (This was in the days before comic stores, remember and collectors often subscribed to make sure that they weren’t subject to the vagraties of the whims of their local 7-11, so they couldn’t just return the issue ). DC? Very little new talent, what new talent they had was being screwed (I don’t know the details, but Michael Golden, last I heard, was still pretty bitter about his treatment) and no editorial direction to speak of either. (that doesn’t mean that there weren’t some good books, of course: Warlock, Tomb of Dracula and other classics came out during this period, but as a whole, things were pretty dismal)
Things picked up in the late '70s for Marvel ('77-ish) when (IIRC) Jim Shooter was made editor-in-chief. Regardless of his later baggage, he got Marvel back on track (when’s the last time that you’ve seen a reprint, or even a fill-in issue in a Marvel comic?), and hired a lot of new talent to help revitalized the company. DC got Jenette Kahn (sp), who cut DC’s line back (the “implosion”) and got most of the books back to producing at least competent and much material that was really good, but there was nothing groundbreaking. While Marvel was doing the Byrne-Claremont X-Men and revitalizing comics, DC’s best try was Firestorm.
In the early '80s, however, (IMO) Shooter’s success went to his head and that, coupled with the threat of a lawsuit by Kirby (who was demanding his art back and there were rumors that he was gonna sue for partial ownership in characters he co-created) forced Marvel to make a bunch of decisions that were dumb in the short term: Captain America became “the Captain”, Tony Stark stopped being Iron Man, etc. Plus they started copying DC: Crisis had been planned for years (the first reference to it in a story was in Teen Titans 22 or so. Crisis happened concurrent with about Teen Titans 60. ) As industry buzz exploded about Crisis,
Marvel tried to swipe the idea: Secret Wars was rushed out as a desperate attempt to come out before Crisis and it succeeded: Secret Wars came out one or two months earlier, IIRC…however Crisis is still talked about, referenced, debated, and for good or bad, the effects still linger. Secret Wars? Outside of being indirectly responsible for Venom, nothing happened that had any lasting effect. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Meanwhile, DC had 1) Launched the New Teen Titans, which proved that DC could attract the same audience that the New X-Men had. Legion of Super Heroes was also beginning a renissance under Levitz and Giffen. 2) Planned a stunningly huge crossover to revitalize their entire line, 3) Invented the mini-series (“World of Krypton”,) and maxi-series (“Camelot 3000”) 4) hired a bunch of Brits: Dave Gibbons, Alan Davis(?), and Alan Moore, who would go on to revitalize Swamp Thing and, like Marvel had done 20 years earlier, raise the average age of comics readers by attracting an older audience.
By the mid-80s, Marvel was in a slump (again, they had some good books, but…) while DC was exploding with ideas: DC invented what’s now called “Prestige” format books to showcase Dark Knight, they did Watchmen (which won a Hugo), and so forth. Marvel? They had the New Universe (remember that? Actually DP7 was damned good) which was another reaction to the possible Kirby lawsuit).
Early '90s, not much was happening from either company: DC had Sandman and a few other great books, but overall? Eh. Superman was being killed by Doomsday, Batman was being broken by Bane, Green Lantern was being screwed by Kevin Dooley, but overall…not much groundbreaking stuff.
In Marvel, we had on the good side, Peter David’s Hulk and a few others, but X-Men turned to incoherent gibberish with like 20 X-related titles a month, Spider-man had the Spider Clones, Daredevil got armor, etc.
Currently, for me, we’re in a period much like the late '70s. Marvel is revitalizing it’s line and DC is muddling along producing competent stuff but not groundbreaking stuff.
Marvel’s “Ultimate” experiment is proving to be a huge success, Thor, Daredevil, Spider-Man and X-Men are all creator-driven books by creators with clear visions of what the characters should be and all four are experiencing a renissance. Marvel has gone out of their way to get people from either outside the industry (Kevin Smith, J. Michael Strwytzpltk…(the Babylon 5 guy who’s name I can’t spell) or talent from other countries (the Manga artist who’s doing one of the X-Books) or people not known for super-heroes (IIRC, Bendis was a true-crime writer)
DC is producing some good solid stuff too (JSA, Legion, Flash etc) but…while it’s good and solid, it’s not…groundbreaking or as intensely personal as the Marvel books. Their stuff is good but again…Marvel (IMO) currently has the torch while DC’s coasting.
However, I’m willing to bet that this’ll change in time.
Three caveats, before I end this:
A) This was off the top of my head, so the years may be off.
B) I realize that “the Golden Age of Comics” was 13, so if you started reading Marvel during the “New Universe” period, you’re gonna think I’m on crack for dismissing Marvel during that period. That’s cool. Tastes differ.
C) Note that even during the periods I feel are bad, some great books were being produced. There’s never been a time when everything DC or Marvel did sucked.
Fenris
Fenris , I guess I just don’t see respect for the law as the defining characteristic of Daredevil. To each his own.
The movie version was a shade or two darker than I would have made it, but that seemed to make it a shade or two more realistic. I don’t mean that violence=realism, but it’s hard to imagine that someone nutty enough to put on a costume and hunt down criminals would have a set-in-stone moral code against violence that leads to someone’s death. Likewise, the scenes of him taking painkillers and terrifying the little boy struck me as things that might really happen.