As I mentioned in that thread, I used to be a serious Batman fan; now I find any comic book with him in it painful to read, because. Partly it’s the insane dimensions of his anti-killing code. Partly it’s because he’s more over-exposed than even Wolverine, and doesn’t even have the excuse of a mutant healing factor to explain how he can work 23.9999 hours a day. And partly it’s because he’s the very worst offender of all the comic book polymaths. I mean, seriously, why must he be written as being better at absolutely every other person at doing absolutely everything.
It was not always thus. Once upon a time, for instance, it was clear that Batman was the world’s greatest detective; among the world’s greatest fighters; and a decent chemist. But he had people he HIRED to design and build his gadgets, and to run his company, because he was a mortal and didn’t know everything and didn’t aim to try; and he was also, for all his tactical brilliance, an absolutely sucky leader of a super-team. (A Titans-Outsiders crossover made it clear that Dick Grayson was much better at the last.)
Anyway, that’s me. What characters have you cooled on over the years?
JD in Scrubs. I used to think of him as a likable trying to do his best as a doctor. The more I watch the show, the more I realize he’s a self-centered egotist who doesn’t care about anyone else until he’s already screwed everything up. He’s immature and seems to wear his immaturity as a badge of honor.
Turk is nearly as bad, but he at least as Carly to straighten him out. But when it’s JD and Turk, they’re going to start acting like particularly bratty eight-year-olds until it catches up to them – and then the do it again in the next episode.
JD is only lovable because IITS.*
This wasn’t a change in the character, either. When I see reruns of the earlier seasons, he’s just the same.
Everyone on Heros
I have always liked Batman, because he isn’t a super human. T he last oh, say decade, has almost ruined him… Until Batman Begins. The returning of what Batman really is. Mostly
“Ward, we want Wally to marry a girl from a good family.” “Ward, do we even know her family?”
“Well Ward, my parents wanted me to marry a kind proper boy who would take care of me.”
“Does Wally really have to shave?”
“But Wally you just got your driver’s license a few hours ago, do you really want to take the car out by yourself?”
Wally) The girls parents want to look me over
Ward) I don’t know if I like the idea of my son being on display
June) Why Ward, her parents want to make sure her daughter is going out with the right kind of boy.
also
June) Ward, the Beaver came home with blood all over his hands a bag full of the foulest smelling body parts
Ward) Well what did he say
June) I didn’t ask him, I figured I’d just sit on my ass and wait for you to do all the disipline in this household.
I used to like June but she is such a social climbing, prissy little… What happens to her parents? She complains her mother made her get up in front of an assembly and tell everyone she told a lie, then the next episode she says “Aunt Martha raised me.” Then the next episode she’s at a boarding school.
Laurell Hamilton’s Anita Blake was always a wee bit Sue-ish, but in the early books she was relatable. (That’s not a real word, is it? It’s got the spell-check red underline that let’s you know you’re an idiot who either can’t spell or just goes around making up words, so “relatable” must be a made up word, even though I’m 97.4% confident that I’ve heard it before. May have even seen it in print. But then, you could say the same thing about “irregardless” and it’s pretty clear that’s not… wait. “Irregardless” doesn’t get a red-underline. What the fuck?)
Ahem. As I was saying, Blake’s no-nonsense attitude and lack of fashion sense were rel… characteristics to which I could relate. I could sympathize with her diffidence about relationships, and her abstinence. Her hostility was a nice touch, but I think the author overplayed her angsting about it, and Hamilton never did give us enough back-story to justify Blake’s anger. There were other flaws with the stories as well, and I would never class the writing as anything other than mediocre at best, but I did like Blake.
Then she dumped Richard for Jean-Claude.
It doesn’t seem like much, but you really have to understand the circumstances surrounding this. It marked her in my mind as an emotionally weak manipulator. Subsequent books shifted that opinion. She wasn’t just weak, she was a full-blown bitch as well. Anita Blake is what prompted me to learn so much about Mary Sues. Anita Blake is the ultimate Mary Sue.
I think I disagree but maybe I don’t. It is not that we were able to see another side of the character, it is that the character was replaced by someone else. The Blake in the early books could not logically have become the person in the later books. It invalidated the character. The books went from being good stories about a vampire hunter to pandering to the “Jean-Claude is so dreamy I wish I had a vampire boyfriend” crowd. And it turned into bad porn. I’m as perverted as the next guy wearing a raincoat at a peepshow but I started losing focus and skipping over the endless kinky sex scenes. That is saying something.
Along these lines - Jim on the Office. At first his role as the somewhat-jerkish voice of reason in the office was fun, and his teasing of Dwight was balanced out by his crippling crush on Pam.
Now he’s just a smarmy douchebag who’s really, really lucky that some of his really inappropriate moves (buying a house for him and Pam without consulting her at all) worked out when they would have destroyed most relationships.
I’ll second Batman, who Grant Morrison killed for me way back in his JLA run. Thankfully there are other media and Elseworlds in which he isn’t so awful.
I hated Batman until I read The Dark Knight Returns, then he was among my favorite characters for a few years, and now he’s back down to somewhere between those two extremes. Most guys just can’t write him. Funny that Frank Miller can, for some reason, because I’m generally not a big fan of Frank Miller.
Shadowcat and Nightcrawler from the X-Men. Liked Kitty just fine until Joss Whedon decided that she wasn’t friggin’ perfect enough and that everything needed to be just peachy between her and Peter, just like when he was reading the comics. Not to mention having to endure other characters moping over her death for months before and after the book with her actual death in it came out. Glad she’s gone now (until someone brings her back).
They made Nightcrawler the son of the devil. WTF, Marvel?
Easy answer: Darth Vader. Went from being a villain with a tragic past in the original trilogy to an angsty little bitch who got a second chance because some wrinkly, scheming, man-grandma gave him new limbs and a CPAP machine housed in a Nazi helmet in the prequels.
Hard answer: Vash the Stampede. It pisses me off how his moral code stays intact just because people who he might otherwise have no choice but to kill suddenly have a crisis of conscience at the last second or get killed by someone else (only fueling his righteous outrage).
Legato shouldn’t have been his only direct fatality. It could have had a similar impact if Vash had been forced to kill someone before and then decided to kill Legato BEFORE he had the chance to manipulate Vash to kill him.
I’ll raise you and go with both Pam and Jim from the office. What a couple of losers. She is a couple hours away to take a class and they can’t bear to be apart so she drops out to be a receptionist at the paper company until it goes under and she’s screwed. Plus, they wear ear pieces and spend all day on the phone together. Someone explain to me how they are any more well-adjusted than Michael or Dwight who can at least manage to go to the bath room without having to talk to mommy on the cell phone.