#superhero thoughts

I really think it's just an issue of visual communication. Concussive force doesn't look like a red beam. It looks like a boxing glove. Green Lantern does that shit all the time. Nobody's ever confused when he launches a giant green boxing glove at somebody, thinking it should be hot or something.

But there's a schism in the community, about whether a Superman-Sona should be you as a Kryptonian, or whether it should just be the best possible version of yourself, after overcoming all your moral vices and such. Basically a power fantasy or a super introspective examination of the kind of person you want to become.

Like, when Deathstroke started getting rebranded as a Batman villain, a common talking point is that he really has more history with Nightwing. Which is just true.

But somehow that's morphed into some new sect of people claiming that Deathstroke is a Nightwing rogue primarily, and getting mad at Robin for "Stealing" his rogues by having run-ins with Deathstroke.

But that's just plain incorrect. Deathstroke was always a Teen Titans villain first and foremost. Nightwing inherited Deathstroke from his time on the Teen Titans, much of which he was Robin for.

I get that it's the intended theme. It's a story about trust.

But like, they all fight eachother so much, why would you not just assume that everybody has something in mind for the next time somebody's brainwashed or some shit.

"Wow, Batman! How'd you know what to do when the Pied Pieper turned me against you?" That's not a conversation that's happened in the last seventy years? It's a complete shock that this man has spent any amount of time meditating on this issue.

I don't believe for a second that Wonder Woman doesn't know what she's gonna do if Batman ever turns on her. She just hasn't written it down in some insecure location where villains can find and exploit it.

Like, obviously some characters like Batman, crime is a central motivator of their character, and theme of their stories.

But other characters just kind of get assumed to be on some crusade against crime by nature of being a costumed do-gooder.

Like right now this thought process is prompted by a sarcastic remark about Ant-Man. “I am Ant-Man! My power is to shrink down to ant-size, which is a totally useful crime-fighting power, right?”

Pulling the “This rhetoric is only ever said by people who’ve never read a Batman comic in their lives” card, like a couple lines every dozen issues referencing his charity work are all you need to smooth over that he’s orders of magnitude richer than even the real life richest men in the world and lives in a city with hungry people while he builds hideouts on the moon to stash all his high tech gadgets. Clearly only somebody who’s never read a batman comic in their life would think he could still do more!

Pulling the “He’s not real, you know.” line as if it’s never occurred to them before now that people will discuss the real world through the lens of fiction. That maybe the dude’s trying to make a point about the wealth disparity in the world around them rather than literally proposing we tax Batman to solve all our social ills.

Doing the “This is so tired. How many times do we have to have this conversation?” bit as if there’s not some inherent repetition in discussing a pop culture icon that’s been endlessly reiterating on the same themes since the forties.

The thing is, the story almost immediately turns around tand takes the attitude that overwritng somebody’s mind doesn’t change their immortal soul. Peter’s soul is still in fact in his original body, struggling against a brain that thinks it’s Otto Octavius.

Like, he’s a great hunter. He’s hunted all sorts of crazy beasts. He decides that Spider-Man is the most dangerous game and starts hunting him.

Which, like, I can buy that early on in Spider-Man’s career, but they introduced so many more dangerous characters than him over the years.

When Kraven successfully killed Spider-Man he decided he had nothing left to live for. When his daughter brought him back from the dead he was pissed.