Text 13379, 120 rader
Skriven 2007-04-07 01:54:18 av Vorlonagent (16824.babylon5)
     Kommentar till en text av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Ärende: Re: Attn JMS: The five stages of grief and  "FALLEN SON: THE     DEATH 
===============================================================================

"Carl" <cengman7@hotmail.com> wrote in message 
news:E-Cdndz_TI7k2IvbnZ2dnUVZ_o6gnZ2d@comcast.com...

>> Comics explore more adult themes and have a more adult outlook.  But 
>> Marvel still thinks they're core audience is 14-college.
>>
>> We don't count.
>
> Interesting that Marvel would seem to ignore a target it had previously
> spent years cultivating, particularly since they shifted to more adult
> themes.

It's about the money.  Comics, like animae, RPGs, computer games, etc. are 
enjoyed by widely differing age groups but first and foremost by teens to 
twenties because they have the time to pursue them.  The more adult themes 
occur in part because society has seen fit to strip away the veils about the 
seemier sides of the world in general.  There are politically moitvated 
exceptions, but I'd rather not go there.  The price of reaching for 20-20 
vision is our innocence.  We can't blind ourselves to the harsher side of 
life and it's very hard to shield kids from it either.

The result is that many kids are impatient to be adults (foolish to most 
adults because once the kid-days are gone, they're gone forever) and the 
adult comics themes mirror what's out there.


>> From what little I know Masterson was an attempt to give Thor a modern 
>> street-tough angle.  Keep the butt-kicking and lose all that 
>> shakespere-sounding morality.
>
> How odd.  Reduce Thor to every other powered up wnna be?
>
> I would think that one of the things that separated Thor from others was
> his morality; the manner in which he assumed the responsibilities of
> being the son of Odin and a god of Asgard.
>
> I would think that the longevity of the a god and the context that would
> give him should be exploited rather than discarded. Otherwise just make
> him some guy with a high tech mallet forget about Odin, Asgard, etc.

It puts him in the same bind as Superman.  They're both anachronisms, 
throwbacks to a less-harsh way of looking at the world.  In postmodern 
thinking, especially the cynical stuff, nobility is an illusion of 
appearance, not a character attribute.  Innocence is equated to blindness 
and is not highly valued.  The comics companies naturally think that a 
postmodern Thor or Superman would sell better and look for ways to update 
the characters, none of which have worked that well.

Comics used to belive in Santa Claus but somewhere drifted over the line and 
kept going.  Put another way, the Punisher today has the same attitudes and 
methods as when he was a Spider-man villain.  He didn't change but the world 
did, making him a hero now.

If you haven't read DC's "Kindom Come", I highly recommend it.  One of its 
subtexts is a discussion of exactly this tendency in comics.


>>> I heard that now Iron Man has become an egomaniacal control freak?
>>
>> I'm hoping it will turn out to be the alternate-universe Tony Stark but 
>> yes. He was the driving force behind the registration law that triggered 
>> the civil war.
>>
>> Pity too.  I liked Iron Man too.
>>
>>
>>> Are there any good guys left?
>>
>> I'm afraid you'll have to define that.
>
> Cap's dead.  Iron Man seems to have lost some of the shine on his
> armor.  Thor had been reduced to a powerful butt-kicker before
> his rest.  I don't think they'd make Spiderman a bad guy (way too
> popular and making money in movies), but if Marvel decided that
> Thor couldn't even be noble (or did you say "Moral") then who
> in the Marvel universe stands for anything?    Is there any character 
> that's
> looked on as anything more someone in a costume with powers?

I don't know.

Spider-man's probably as close as you get.

Everybody else seems as lost in the postmodern world as the readers of 
comics often are.


>>> My 11 year old son was asking about comics recently. I think I will 
>>> discourage this;
>>> the Marvel universe is too depressing a place and apparently not written 
>>> for kids anyway.
>>
>> Not 12-year olds, no
>
> Then my son has lost an opportnity to enjoy some of the things that
> I did as a kid.  How sad.

Not at all.  There's still those same issues out there.  Start him off at 
X-Men #102, or wherever around there where the modern team is premired.  If 
you can't show him the present, mine the past.  Much of the best are in book 
form.

Carefully screen some indy stuff.  You may find something.


-- 
John Trauger,
Vorlonagent

"Methane martini.
Shaken, not stirred."

"Spirituality without science has no mind.

Science without spirituality has no heart."

-Methuselah Jones
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32
 * Origin: Time Warp of the Future BBS - Home of League 10 (1:14/400)