peanutbutter321

January 7, 2009 6:01 am 52 picks and not once did I see an Archie comic get the honor, jerks! :P

June 25, 2008 4:35 pm

That would be no to both questions. I’m basing myself in decades old writing principles; ask any educated writer or professor, or look at every fiction work available in any format and those who are considered classic works and keep being retold and resold through the years. The more alike the characters are to us as human beings the more we respond to them. There’s a reason even aliens don’t look that alien in these stories, no matter where they’re from they always have some human trait that allows us to connect with them.

Like I said before, I’m a Superman guy but I’m not blind to the fact that solely on writing principles, Spider-Man is a better-developed character than the Man of Steel. And let me clear things by saying that the Spider-Man comparison is just for the sake of argument; there are lots of other comic book characters better developed than Superman which is a shame because I love the guy but I’m convinced that if Warner or DC weren’t so scared about shaking their big franchise status quo a bit, things would get better character-wise for Superman.

June 25, 2008 3:59 pm

My point was that there’s a lot of data to prove those statements and I’m not just pulling them out of nowhere. Try to write a story where the main character is a spoon and see how many people can relate to that. Also, just because I may not include myself in the “more readers” doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

June 25, 2008 2:42 pm

I fail to see where I made any “sweeping statements about readers.” I didn’t even say there was no character development but “true character development.”

However, I did forget to mention than I’m a Superman guy. I own more Superman (and DC) comic books than I do Spider-Man (and Marvel) but I constantly find myself wishing Superman had more of a personality than the politically correct image that he is often portrayed as having.

June 25, 2008 1:46 pm

All of this is really nice and in a perfect world people would relate or at least enjoy as much reading about Superman as they do reading about Spider-Man but if we take into account all the current scientific information about how our brain works (every person’s favorite word is their own name and we respond more to songs with the pronoun “I” in them) then all of Superman’s sacrifice and altruism is not enough to draw our attention as compellingly as other, more mortal, characters. This isn’t selfishness, it’s human instinct.

 

Another factor that works against Superman is the lack of true character development. This can be proven because unless you’re fairly new to the world of fiction or completely naïve, you know even Spider-Man or Batman are not going to die no matter what, not ever. So the reason more readers respond to their stories isn’t necessarily that they’re mortal human beings and could, in theory, die at any moment from a number of causes. More readers relate to these types of characters because their stories and personalities are more realistic. They face every day problems and struggle to make decisions, balance a heroic persona with their personal relationships or even try to make next month’s rent. I’ve never found the character of Superman more interesting than in an episode of its incarnation in Smallville where in a split of five seconds they show a young Clark Kent holding a couple of hundred dollars he had been saving to buy a class ring, even despite the fact his mother asked him to save the money for more important things, you can see the conflict and material want in his eyes and the way his hand holds the bills. It’s a trivial moment that could possibly never be recreated in a comic book but man, did he seem human and boy, could I relate to that guy.