How the heroes may have evolved, but today devolve instead
Big Think spoke with Sean Howe, who authored Marvel: The Untold Story a dozen years ago, about how superhero fare evolved over past decades, but unsurprisingly, won't get very deep into why it's all now failing. In fact, if the beginning is any suggestion, they're taking a sugarcoated view of stuff that brought everything down:
These aforementioned non-problems are not what Marvel is facing. On the contrary, what they're suffering from is wokeness, and a refusal to deal with serious issues like Islamic terrorism. Just look at how even now, after the Hamas bloodbath on October 7 this year, it doesn't look like any mainstream publisher wants to deal with the issue. But look what they say about the short-lived attempt to portray Captain America battling communists in the early 1950s:
And then, what do they say about reimagining certain characters:
Howe may have offered some interesting insight into Marvel's history when he first published his history book in the past decade. But I've got a sad feeling that, if the above is any suggestion, he'd be far less likely to say anything meaty about what went wrong with Marvel if he published it today. This is quite simply a disappointment, and makes it doubtful Howe's really a Marvel fan, or he would've stated that the direction taken by Bendis was superfluous and uncalled for. It's entirely possible to jettison any allegedly over-powerful abilities without resorting to the shoddy cliche of turning a character into a villainess. That Howe wouldn't take any objective view of storylines like that is hugely disappointing. And how come no mention of Mary Jane Watson? Guess Howe can't care enough about the Spider-marriage to make any kind of comment on that. Which has got to be equally telling. This too is part of how superhero fare's devolved instead of evolved, and it certainly hasn't evolved for the better.
When creatives have a hugely successful, decades-long hit, they face a problem: How do they age their characters? For long-running soap operas, the answer involves killing the characters off or having them walk into an ambiguous and off-camera sunset.It sure has, much of the time too, in fact. What's the big idea telling us, devoid of objectivity, how the answer to anything in superhero comicdom is to kill off characters, and I doubt they mean by natural causes and car accidents? Come to think of it, what's wrong with not aging? I guess the Peanuts gang should've all aged to toothless old occupants of an elderly care center too, right? Even Dick Tracy should've grown a beard longer than Rip Van Winkle and retired from being a plainclothes police detective. And reimagining and reinventing haven't worked either since the turn of the century, mainly because it all culminated in identity politics, and even if the original white protagonists weren't kicked to the curb, as still seems to be the case at DC, it resulted in situations that weren't merit-based when it came to the replacement characters whose very being oscillated about their being POC or LGBT. And despite what's told, in the past 2 decades, it certainly seemed like Marvel/DC were more interested in killing off or humiliating some of the white protagonists than in simply having them retire respectfully. Exactly why anybody who believes the Big Two's book output should've seen a curtain call than continue into the woke quicksand it's become since would have a valid argument to make.
What can creatives do, though, when their characters are irreplaceable? How can they maintain the spirit of the story when it and all of its characters have 80 years of history behind them? This is a problem facing Marvel Comics.
For instance, in 1962 Spider-Man made his first appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15. One of the reasons Spider-Man proved so popular was that, like his readership, he was a naïve, idealistic teenager. He’s a nerdy high school kid who suddenly gets great power. But if Marvel were obeying the laws of nature, Spider-Man should now be 77 years old. He’d spend less time web-slinging criminals and more time web-crocheting mittens, and he’d be wall-crawling into bed by 9 p.m. with a warm mug of cocoa.
To stay fresh and true to the spirit of its comics, Marvel has had to reinvent, reimagine, and redraw some of its biggest names. Often, that has been a seamless and enjoyable success. Sometimes, though, it’s been a Hulk-smashing mess.
These aforementioned non-problems are not what Marvel is facing. On the contrary, what they're suffering from is wokeness, and a refusal to deal with serious issues like Islamic terrorism. Just look at how even now, after the Hamas bloodbath on October 7 this year, it doesn't look like any mainstream publisher wants to deal with the issue. But look what they say about the short-lived attempt to portray Captain America battling communists in the early 1950s:
But there came a backlash. In the 1970s, many Marvel comic artists, such as Steve Englehart, were fairly left-leaning. How could they glorify a socialist-hating “rabid right-winger”? Well, they said he was an imposter. This 1950s Cap was actually a villain named William Burnside, aka Commie Smasher or Bad Cap. Burnside took his own variation of Captain America’s superhero serum, but it went wrong and left him psychotic.The irony is that, after Stan Lee established Steve Rogers as having been cryogenically frozen in an iceberg since the mid-40s and only thawing in 1964 when the Avengers found him in issue 4, he'd go on to battle commie-style villains regardless, including the Crimson Dynamo. In any event, what I don't understand is why, if men like Englehart really had such a problem with depicting Cap as anti-commie, they had to keep even the 50s material solidly in continuity in some way or other. That kind of bizarre approach only led to situations far worse in coming decades. If certain distinctions can't be made, is it any wonder it'll all eventually collapse?
And then, what do they say about reimagining certain characters:
Even if heroes don’t die very often, Marvel may still decide to drastically reimagine the essence of that character. They might not be written out of the story, but they are changed so much that they become, for all intents and purposes, different. Howe told us that few heroes have their powers or abilities fundamentally changed, but it is quite common for a character’s strength to be downgraded subtly and quietly.And this is by far a distortion, to say nothing of a pathetic inability to objectively criticize past writers like Brian Bendis, who made her ultra-powerful through contrived circumstances, all for the sake of Avengers: Disassembled, where she was turned into a culprit for the sake of setting in motion a change of cast members, tossing out some of the more common co-stars in the Avengers for the sake of replacing them with such obvious choices as Spider-Man and Wolverine. And then Wanda was turned into a bizarre superpower in House of M, for the sake of "no more mutants". Because for some reason, they supposedly can't just quietly move away from a supply of mutants that's allegedly too big for the MCU. Howe and columnist tell us this without any objectivity, and that's the problem here. Up to the early 2000s, I can't recall reading any stories where Wanda Maximoff was depicted with near god-like powers, and she definitely wasn't invincible or impervious to pain and injury.
This is what happened with the Scarlet Witch. Over many years and a series of comics, her powers grew such that no one else could realistically take her on. She could one-punch or one-spell any villain that popped along, which doesn’t make for a fun read.
So, Marvel turned Scarlet Witch into a villain. “They decided, ‘Oh, this much power would warp her mind, and so she’ll die from this or she’ll go insane,” Howe tells us. All that unbridled, unmatched power would “turn her evil and create all this chaos and destruction so that then she’ll become undone and they’ll start over again.”
Howe may have offered some interesting insight into Marvel's history when he first published his history book in the past decade. But I've got a sad feeling that, if the above is any suggestion, he'd be far less likely to say anything meaty about what went wrong with Marvel if he published it today. This is quite simply a disappointment, and makes it doubtful Howe's really a Marvel fan, or he would've stated that the direction taken by Bendis was superfluous and uncalled for. It's entirely possible to jettison any allegedly over-powerful abilities without resorting to the shoddy cliche of turning a character into a villainess. That Howe wouldn't take any objective view of storylines like that is hugely disappointing. And how come no mention of Mary Jane Watson? Guess Howe can't care enough about the Spider-marriage to make any kind of comment on that. Which has got to be equally telling. This too is part of how superhero fare's devolved instead of evolved, and it certainly hasn't evolved for the better.
Labels: Avengers, Captain America, history, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, msm propaganda, politics, Spider-Man, women of marvel
