Text 13382, 111 rader
Skriven 2007-04-07 12:49:01 av Carl (16827.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 OF  
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"Vorlonagent" <nojtspam@otfresno.com> wrote in message 
news:eRCRh.15004$Um6.39@newssvr12.news.prodigy.net...
>
> "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.
>

Why does "Good" have to equate to blind or innocent?

If comics evolved to an adult genre, then of course more sophisticated 
themes have to be reflected.  I assume Marvel didn't employ JMS to write 
fairy tales and children's books.  Still, if you're going to have a universe 
with immortal gods, aliens and super powered beings, why is that universe 
reduced to the the worst of the real world?  Can't a few be noble?  Does 
everyone have to be dragged down even in comics?

Is that why they killed Cap?

> 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.

So the Marvel universe is filled with super-powered, postmodern, everything 
is gray types.
A hero is a villian is a hero...it just depends on from the perspective 
you're looking at it from.

Give Paris Hilton a bra that shoots energy bolts and she's an Avenger?

> 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.

Well, Marvel apparently has enough readers that like this direction.
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