Things I Have Learnt From Comic Books

Cafe Society
21

Older. They’ve all been active since at least the early days of American involvement in World War II - so, that’ll put us to around 67 years ago. Jay was a college student, so that makes him 18 at the least. So that puts Jay (the youngest of the three*) at 85 (at least) this year. Although, due to various methods, they all appear to be in their 50s or early 60s, at the very oldest. How Joan Garrick (Jay’s wife) only looks to be in her 50s as well, I don’t know.

  • Based on the fact that Alan was an established engineer, and Ted was a relatively famous boxing champion.

(And super-powered people who don’t want to be heroes or villains… Off the top of my head:

Most of Marvel’s mutants who just want to be left alone. Specific examples include Kida Nixon, Dazzler (who, at least in the Ultimate version, just wants to be a singer), various other mutant entertainers…

Sersi, of the Eternals, currently wants to avoid any responsibilities from her powers. (She also refuses to believe she is what she is.)

Gehenna, in Firestorm, who keeps getting caught up in Jason’s adventures, but has no particular intention of using her powers for anything but self defence, and helping Jason.

There are super-powered law enforcement officers in both DC and Marvel - I would consider a payed position as a cop or federal (or UN) agent to be different than being a superhero. Soldiers, too.

Welcome to Tranquility involves a town full of super-powered people, and while most of the older residents used to be superheroes and supervillains (they are, however, retired - and, BTW, are another lot of elderly supers), there are a number who never have been, at least as far as has been indicated so far. The town’s doctor, for instance.

The ‘just leave us alone, please!’ archetype extends to groups other than Marvel’s mutants, too. The New Universe’s DP7, the current run of Gen13, and so forth. It’s not unusual for these groups to be pushed into heroism by circumstances, but it’s also not unusual for their adventures to remain a matter of personal survival and maintaining their independence.)

22

No matter how powerful you are, a hero with no powers can find a way to beat you.

No matter how superhuman your intelligence, the normal intelligence heros and villains can still fool you.

Possessing trivial powers, even in a world full of superhuman types, still turns some people into egomaniacs who think they are invincible. Even after they get their faces repeatedly smashed.

Even the most pathetic power or gimmick renders the cops and even the military unable to deal with you.

The greater the power, the more likely that it will be clumsily used or forgotten at a vital moment, resulting in the heros/villains losing to a much weaker opponent.

Even the most brutal, psychotic villains, after capturing scantily clad superheroines won’t rape them, or even grope them. *

  • One explanation for this, from some fanfic I read years ago, talked about how that happened once - and the male heros who showed up to rescue her forgot the no killing rules, slaughtered the villains, and sent parts to various other villain groups. Which is why now the heros don’t kill, and the villain’s don’t rape; a gentleman’s agreement.
23

The original version of Dazzler did as well for a long time.

Also, I just recalled the fellow in a Spider Man comic, a big, macho construction worker who developed rabbit based powers like Spidey has spider based ones, and was too embarassed to even admit he had them, much less use them. “You think I should do something like put on a rabbit costume and call myself Thumper ?!”

24

No-one with super powers simply uses them for commercial advantage: if you can fly and lift mountains, you can try to rule the world, or you can try to stop someone else from ruling the world, but you can’t simply hire out to put commercial payloads into orbit cheaper than NASA. That would be too easy.

Supervillains don’t have time to bother with teenage sidekicks or secret identities: to be really evil, you gotta be dedicated to your villainy 24/7 - and forget villainy for commercial advantage. That would be too easy.

Heroes miss the good old days: they were giving Hitler wedgies and spruiking War Bonds with big cheesy grins, but what with the brooding and the melancholy and the violence - the darkness, if you will - no superhero has smiled since about 1974. No wonder their wards do drugs.

25

The most efficient dress for climbing buildings,hand to hand fighting etc. is to wear a long ,baggy ,functionless cloak.
Also dressing up like a giant bat allows you to blend into the shadows and not get spotted a mile off.

It is quite easy to install millions of dollars worth of equipment in your cave hideout if the butler helps you ditto routine maintenance.

Having your special car,plane ,speedboat,helicopter and motorbike designed ,regular progress reports from the manufacturer and delivery without the secret lair being found out
is not a problem either.

You carry on your secret identitys life during the day and evening,fight crime mostly at night and if its a quiet evening super criminalwise do the maintenance on your kit.

Luckily for us you never actually have to get any shuteye.

26

Rule #1–All Meteorites, but especially Green, Glowing Meteorites, are very bad news.

By the way, re: kids with powers go to school. They go to P.S. 238 (LINK). Which I recommend in print format very highly.

27

Rob Liefeld sux.

28

This was pretty popular for awhile.

29

It doesn’t matter how unusual your superpower is, you will constantly be running into situations where it is critical. If your only power is the ability to turn people’s hair different colors, you will always be encountering situations where that exact ability is the only possible means to prevent a disaster.

30

Major Bummer would rather sit on the couch, playing video games.

31

Granted, if I did assault Wonder Woman or Zatanna in that way, I’d be lucky if the male heroes got to me first.

Read, or at least wiki, DC’s Identity Crisis. It deals with pretty much the exact situation you’re bringing up.

32

You will also get only four possible choices of name: Stonehead, Captain Stonehead, The Black Stonehead or Stonehead Man.

Not only is mythology true, all mythologies are true: thus the Gods of Asgard get to whale on the Greek pantheon, and Maui gets to duke it out with King Arthur.

33

Sounds relatively mild, actually. What I think that a bunch of superheroines would really do is the sort of thing unlikely to get published in a mainstream comic book.

34

In time, you will discover that everything you know about your own personal history, including how you’ve received your superpowers, is wrong - likely due to false memories implanted by your supervillain nemesis. But don’t bother spending a lot of time in psychoanalysis trying to adjust to the surprising revelation - because in still more time you will discover that everything you’ve learned about your ‘true’ history is wrong, and that everything you originally knew about your own personal history is right!

Over the course of years & decades, you may go through momentuous changes - people close to you will die, you may reveal your secret identity to others, marry, have children, divorce, relocate to different cities, take new civilian jobs, adopt new costumes, have your powers changed, what have you. But if you live long enough, a nefarious entity known as ‘John Byrne’ will come along & reshape your world so that everything is back exactly as it was when you initially began your career.

If you’re African-American, you must incorporate the word ‘Black’ into your superhero name. The only exemption for this rule is if you have taken the name & basic costume of a dead/retired white superhero and are replacing them. You must also have had a small-time criminal career (petty thief, most likely) and have served time in jail.

If you’re of Asian descent, you must possess advanced martial arts skills and expound sage confucian statements at every turn.

35

Of course. Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird teamed up to parody the classic conventions of superhero comics. Unfortunately, their parody took on a life of its own.

This led to the formulation of the Shannara Law of Popular Culture: “No parody of an element of popular culture whatsoever is sufficiently outrageous that it cannot itself become a pop culture fad.”

36

Or maybe one of comicdom’s dirty little secrets is that it happens all the time, “off camera”. OTOH, male superheros don’t get tortured or mutilated very often either.

37

In a recent issue of Stormwatch, one of the female characters says that she’s been lucky but that a number of other superheroines have been raped after being captured.

38

That, despite all the costumed vigilantes (many of whom with superpowers) running around, the world’s crime rate doesn’t actually seem to be any lower than on the “real” world.

In all of the whole human race, there are two kinds of men (and only two)…there’s the one staying put in his proper place, and the one with his foot in the other one’s face.

Guns are bad.

Almost no super-tech EVER finds it’s way into the open civilian market.

It’s more ethical to keep dragging deranged, superpowered mass murderers to a revolving door hospital/prison than it is to kill or cripple them, and take the karmic penalty yourself to protect innocent lives.

Mental hospitals and asylums don’t actually seem to help anyone. Or even provide treatment.

The principle of “It doesn’t matter if you win or lose, it’s how you play the game” seems to dominate the universe. In some really twisted, perverse fashion.

39

You should however count your blessings that you don’t hail from the Sandwich Islands.

40

Or the Canary Islands…OH, WAIT…