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yeah, Swamp Thing is basically a superhero, but is also a magic plant monster who can telepathically communicate with plants and is kinda an Eco-terrorist
Seconding Watchmen. Alan Moore's Miracleman is supposed to be good too (haven't read it tho) and I think I read something about it being republished soon.
You might enjoy All Star Superman by Grant Morrison, too.
Any super hero comic can be good, but the swing from good to trash is wild and entirely contingent upon the writer in a given arc. Even arguably some of the most fascist super heros could be good, written in the right way, but of course that's going to be rare, and it's going to be limited to the run of that given arc.
No
The ideal of a superhero is inherently a liberal one. It's pure great man theory
Engaging with a premise doesn't mean you're endorsing it. I don't think William Golding is pro small-child tribalism just because he wrote Lord of the Flies. And of course, writers also engage with superhero tropes to repudiate them and real life implications people might draw from them. For instance, Robert Kirkman's Invincible, while not perfect, spends a lot of time reckoning with the fact that individuals, despite how much power they might have, can't make change on a larger scale by themselves.
Even beyond that, it's fiction. If people draw the conclusion that "hey, super heroes would be cool and a force for good" that doesn't mean that much because they're not real, and fantasy doesn't have to obey our rules. Nobody complains about the unrealistic nature of Rip van Winkle time travelIing because it's a story and if Irving wanted to that shit to happen in his story then that's what happened. I suppose you could argue that they condition people to view real life figures as Great Men (e.g. "Zelensky is Captain America!"), but you could say the same about any kind of larger-than-life character, AKA a substantial portion of all literature and stories throughout human history, and at that point we've got bigger fish to fry.
^ this
Superhero stories only tell you that individuals are important and chosen ones will fix everything irl if you are going in on bad faith or the writer is trash. Superman was fucking made by two Jewish guys from NY in the late 30s who felt powerless and wanted to make someone who could beat up cops and abusers and war profiteers. That seems like a pretty natural proletarian reaction to helplessness. I get that we like being cynical and assign hope itself as a liberal idea for drama, but there is a pretty good impulse inherent in Superheroes, that we want to create someone stronger than us who will help us. People feel powerless and so create powerful people who do good. It becomes skewed based on the persons own flaws or shortcomings or the industry itself.
Morrison said something about Superman that always sticks with me
In the end, I saw Superman not as a superhero or even a science fiction character, but as a story of Everyman. We’re all Superman in our own adventures. We have our own Fortresses of Solitude we retreat to, with our own special collections of valued stuff, our own super–pets, our own “Bottle Cities” that we feel guilty for neglecting. We have our own peers and rivals and bizarre emotional or moral tangles to deal with.
I felt I’d really grasped the concept when I saw him as Everyman, or rather as the dreamself of Everyman. That “S” is the radiant emblem of divinity we reveal when we rip off our stuffy shirts, our social masks, our neuroses, our constructed selves, and become who we truly are. Batman is obviously much cooler, but that’s because he’s a very energetic and adolescent fantasy character: a handsome billionaire playboy in black leather with a butler at this beck and call, better cars and gadgetry than James Bond, a horde of fetish femme fatales baying around his heels and no boss. That guy’s Superman day and night.
Superman grew up baling hay on a farm. He goes to work, for a boss, in an office. He pines after a hard–working gal. Only when he tears off his shirt does that heroic, ideal inner self come to life. That’s actually a much more adult fantasy than the one Batman’s peddling but it also makes Superman a little harder to sell. He’s much more of a working class superhero.
American writers often say they find it difficult to write Superman. They say he’s too powerful; you can’t give him problems. But Superman is a metaphor. For me, Superman has the same problems we do, but on a Paul Bunyan scale. If Superman walks the dog, he walks it around the asteroid belt because it can fly in space. When Superman’s relatives visit, they come from the 31st century and bring some hellish monster conqueror from the future. But it’s still a story about your relatives visiting.
But more specifically
“We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.”
“Because it all derived from Superman. I mean, I love all the characters, but Superman is just this perfect human pop-culture distillation of a really basic idea. He's a good guy. He loves us. He will not stop in defending us. How beautiful is that? He's like a sci-fi Jesus. He'll never let you down. And only in fiction can that guy actually exist, because real guys will always let you down one way or another. We actually made up an idea that beautiful. That's just cool to me. We made a little paper universe where all of the above is true.”
“Somewhere, in our darkest night, we made up the story of a man who will never let us down...”
Fiction can be an outlet for something we wish was real, and fiction needs protagonists. Superheroes are just a part of that
A lot of proletarian literature focuses on the exploits of individual characters/heroes though. If you can make a great movie about Shchors or Lenin, you can tell a superhero story that's not just great man theory.
I think the superhero myth is ingrained enough into the collective consciousness that it can be used to support deeper political/psychological analysis. Namely, the kinds of fucked-up people who'd want to be superheroes.
Warren Ellis' Nextwave, Black Summer, and Supergod. The first is just a joke on Marvel continuity, the second is about fallout from a US government superhero program, and the third is the aftermath of a superhuman arms race which ends up creating inhuman monsters. Ellis also did No Hero and considers it part of a trilogy with the latter two, but I've never read it.
Well, the Marvel continuity has been running continuously for more than 50 years, and it's all still technically "canon." More recent writers have taken this into account, but needless to say, there's a lot of absurdity and nonsense that's popped up over the years, and Nextwave went out of its way to dig it up and showcase it, in all its bizarre glory.
"The series frequently uses flashback scenes in which existing Marvel characters such as Captain America, Ulysses Bloodstone and the Celestials act grossly out of character for comedic purposes."
Nextwave is amazing. Total slapstick deconstruction of the stupidest tropes in comic books. It has a theme song.
It's like Shakespeare, but with lots more punching
It's like Goethe, but with lots more crunching
Like Titanic, but the boat's still floating
No, it’s not! The motherfucking boat is exploding!
Plenty of superhero comics that fall into those traps are GREAT. It's a matter of what you want to get out of the story. Morrison's batman run is brilliant and a fantastic psychological story about Batman as a premise and becomes super meta and continuity based. I don't think at any point Bruce punches down. Similar case with Tom King's run which is all about depression and the will to live.
For another King story, one that is very superhero based but all about gods and suicide is his Mister Miracle, if you liked his Vision work, I highly recommend Mister Miracle. Trigger warning though, like seriously HUGE one. Wonderfully handled though.
I don't get what you mean by super villains seeming post hoc, they are like 90% of what superheroes fight. Shockingly most spider-man comics focus on Electro and not Peter beating up some father trying to make money through petty crime. Superheroes can be pretty lib, or radlib which can actually be more annoying cause they almost get it like most Green Arrow stuff.
I'd say find goofy superhero stuff and dont expect a story to take on society or be a marxist text, sometimes it is just gonna be the Flash punching a Gorilla with telekinetic powers, embrace it dont run from it.
Read Fantastic Four or New Gods for crazy sci fi stuff, they fight interdimensional threats, not street crime. And FF is family drama first and foremost. Or if you want street level stuff that deals with that stuff pretty well because it is about a hero who has a lib view but is always wrong and tries to uphold the law despite its contradictions and is broken by it, read most any Daredevil. Miller, pre crazy, was incredible with that stuff. I know Brubaker is legendary as well. Waid's is fantastic if you want something fun and uplifting about the most depressing marvel hero.
Spider-man has a lot of lib shit when it comes to cops, but you can find some classic stuff like the Hobgoblin saga from Defalco's run, in fact buy the black and white trades of most 70s spider-man for a good time even if flawed.
Nightwing both the Higgins run and the incredible Tim Seeley run are fantastic. In fact Seeley deals heavily with rehabilitation.
One of the best masterpieces out there that is very focused on personal drama is Robinson's Starman work. If you want something finished and practically perfect, pick that up
i was about to comment morrison’s batman run, fantastic four, daredevil, and new gods until i read your comment, great taste
So I don't know about piracy, but others have given some links here that should certainly have them. This link should work and collects all of it in one. https://getcomics.info/dc/batman-by-grant-morrison-omnibus-vol-1-3-2018-2020-fan-made/
Try the immortal hulk series, a video I watched basically sold it to me on the premise of "hulk smashes capitalism". I'm like 25 issues in and it's soo good.
I'll second Immortal Hulk. Best run of his comics since World War Hulk.
Invincible, or as I like to call it "coping with ur dad being a genocidal space fascist superman " is the only one I've actually totally read. I liked it even with the lib shit thats just kinda in everything.
Invincible is the only long-running comic series I've read that wasn't an incredible pain in the ass to follow, because the main story is fully contained within its own series, and you don't have to jump to like 49 other titles just to have some idea of what the fuck is happening. And it's pretty good on its own, I enjoyed it a lot even in spite of my overwhelming boredom with overpowered, Superman/DBZ-level characters.
The Batman shit by dark horse I remember being good as in batman is a genocidal fascist and is crazy.
https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/Mister-Miracle-2017
This is a very good 12 issue run on Mister Miracle. The art style is great and it's kind of mind fucky. This is what comes to mind to me as a suggestion for somebody who doesn't like comic book superheroes.
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Is it true that everything Tom King writes is about feeling bad about being a CIA agent
I hope so, cause if not I kinda feel bad for how fucking much I love his work
I pirate 99% of the comics I read anyways, so I have no guilty reading his comics.
I didn't know that, but it's definitely more present in Batman than Mister Miracle. But also yes, his Mister Miracle is about bad feels.
All-Star Superman is the best representation of that character, and one of the best comics ever. The premise is that Supes has a year to live, and has to figure out the best way to spend that time. Some of the sci fi stuff is pretty off the wall, but the important elements of each issue's story are clearly set up, dealt with, and paid off. One story even addresses the question of why Superman doesn't just smash human society and replace it with the Kryptonian FALC.
Basically, think of Batman for example. Literal billionaire who spends his wealth and skills punching down and the supervillains feel like they are added post hoc to justify it.
I don’t like superhero comic books for these reasons.
This is why Catwoman is theoretically so cool, if she would ever get an actually good story. The premise is great, though. She does nothing but steal from rich assholes and help people in need. She's not trying to be a hero, but she's a legit good person. Kind of the inverse of Batman who is trying to be a hero and is kinda not a good person at all. She also adds some depth to Batman because you have to think about why he doesn't stop her. Supposedly he believes the law is just and she's going around breaking the law all the time, and he totally could stop her any time he likes. But he doesn't because she's not evil and he likes her, and it's just interesting how it kind of lays out the contradiction of Batman so plainly. Not evil but constantly breaking the law, what? It's almost like the law isn't just :surprised-pika:
Also funny to see nerds miss the point and think she is evil lol
Edit: But to be clear, she's never had a good story and probably never will, because she mostly exists as softcore pornography as far as I can tell
I remember really liking the static shock cartoon as a kid, I don't know if the comics are that good. But I know they also deal with heavy themes like homophobia and anti-Semitism.
