Ask Lemmy

Flip side of the question: I don't want to see multiverse/alternate universe/alternate timelines. At best they cheapen the stakes, at worst they remove them entirely. Oh noes, Wolverine has died but no matter we have a gazillion spare Wolverines, we'll just use one of them. Oh noes, Earth #2471893 might be destroyed but no matter there's an infinite number of other Earths. Etc.

Things not meant to tie into an overarching universe.

One offs and limited runs are the best in comic form, and it's the same in other media too.

Content wise, stuff that challenges rather than acquieses to the status quo. Give me a Luther Arkwright miniseries or better yet, something new and modern about current social and political ills.

Writing that doesn't suck. Narratives that aren't "plot by stupid".

OK, if I had to actually get creative, i like the intersection of normal problems and super powers. I loved Wandavision, all of it. My favorite part of Falcon and Winter Soldier is when Sam is trying to get a loan. Iron man 3, Tony dealing with PTSD from the invasion of New York. Quicksilver in Days of Future Past doing stupid stuff with his powers like stealing a wall full of twinkies.

1. The Earth itself doesn't have to be hanging in the balance. Smaller plots are just fine.

2. I don't need a month-long plot broken into 2hrs; I'd really rather have a more limited duration being represented.

More on that point: I recently watched the Director's Cut of Napoleon, and found myself wishing it didn't have such a "biopic" feel, where 20 years of events was condensed down to 3.5hrs. Quite frankly I'd rather have a vibe more like "The Raid: Redemption" where it doesn't have to be Real Time, but closer to that serves a better narrative.

I keep thinking back to Rogue One, at the end of Act 2 where our Team Of Heroes has been assembled and they're traveling towards the epic showdown that is Act 3. They've got a few days to spend in hyperspace, and we get one brief scene establishing that fact, quick banter between a few people, and off to the big showdown.

It felt so rushed to me that I wondered what I was missing over those days spent in travel; how characters were preparing themselves for what was next, how they were reconciling the events that led them to this; there is an utter wealth of joy that can be found by just slowing down and letting characters exist in time, instead of just minimal exposition followed by action.

If you're talking about what sort of content (rather than what type of media):

I haven't really been into traditional superhero stuff for a while, but I did really very much enjoy the Parahumans novels (which some may know as Worm and Ward).

Those are dark, don't shy away from taboo content, and tend to focus on using powers together in complex ways to pull off larger goals. The main character is an antiheroine.

I enjoyed the series more early-on, when it was "lower power". I think that there's a strong tendency with magic or superpowers or...honestly, many genres of fiction to always want to top the previous book or story in scope. This usually tends towards trying to save the world or universe or something like that. I feel like that gets to be a bit clichéd. It also limits the story and forms of antagonist that can come up, and makes it hard to continue the story effectively after a "save the universe" one. I'd like more authors who have discipline to hold the "power level" in their worlds down down. If Sherlock Holmes had been fighting cosmic brings by the end of story 10, I think it would have been hard to have a good story 11.

So I'd rather have characters with strongly-constrained, limited abilities that they have to use in creative ways, rather than doing the constant uncovering of new powers.

A few characters in the superhero genre have some form of ability that changes without their power, which helps to let the author explore other possibilities and then dial down the power later. Resurrection Man, for example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_Man_%28character%29

Due to sub-atomic technology in his bloodstream, Shelley cannot be permanently killed. No matter how he is killed or how much damage is done, he always resurrects fully healed. With each resurrection he has a new super-power (while whatever super-power he had previously disappears). In some cases, there is a physical transformation element to his resurrection (in one case, he resurrected as a living shadow, while another time his body altered into a woman's form).

I'm not sure that that's actually a fantastic solution

maybe too random

but as a mechanic, it helps keep characters with superpowers from becoming stale or written into a corner after being extra-powerful in one story. Maybe it'd be nice to have a world where characters have some character-defining fixed powers, but there's also some mechanic that can cause others to shift from time to time.

It can't really be strictly-called "superhero", but probably my favorite graphic novel series was Sandman. That is the dead opposite of "low power", but the protagonist also typically faces a lot of serious restrictions on what he can do, for one reason or another. It's conflict, challenges for the protagonist that make for an interesting story, and having a constrained and limited set of powers, I think, helps permit for a wider range of interesting conflicts.

If you're talking about the type of media, superheroes evolved around for comic books and graphic novels, and I think that that's still the best place for them.

As I mentioned above, I do like the Parahumans series, and that's an illustration-free novel series, so that can definitely work, and the lower cost of production maybe opens the doors to some interesting niches. I've read very few superhero books, though, so I don't knownif I have a feel for it.

For movies...they're okay, but certainly not my favorite type of media for superhero stuff. There was a long run of bad superhero movies. After 2000, some better ones have come out, but while I enjoyed some, I don't watch many movies in general. I also tend to feel that movies are shorter than I'd like for a good plot. and that a lot of the fantastic stuff that superpowers involve requires expensive computer graphics, where movies tend to do better if a lot of what's going to be done can be acted out by ordinary humans on more-or-less real sets. Also, actors and actresses age, which I don't think works well with very long-running characters...and a lot of superheroes are pretty long-running.

Video games...I've played some video games with superheroes. Generally not that enthusiastic about them. Some superpowers of existing characters were designed around being fun to look at and read about rather than being fun to play with. Many superhero games are action games, which I've been decreasingly interested in. For RPG games, I tend to prefer more CRPG-style conventions, which don't work as well with already-fleshed-out protagonists. I suppose that there's nothing really prohibiting making a video game in any genre with superheroes, but the track record for me just hasn't been that great. I do enjoy roguelike games, where the main character may get superhero-like abilities, but I don't think that one would really call such things thematically "superhero".

The Freedom Force series was fun, but not amazing.

The "Heroes Rise" multiple-choice adventure series from Choice of Games isn't bad, is one of their better games, but it also never left me really super amazed. I don't like the tendency of many Choice of Games games to try to make a winning strategy just consistently playing a particular type of character. Don't remember if those did that.

Variety. I want it all: dark, family-friendly, mainstream powers, niche ones, short one-shots, long compelling series. I want quality writing, casting, directing, filming, and editing. I want it to be good. Then I'll watch it...

More anti-hero stuff.

We know the good guy will make the sacrifice to save the day because that is their nature. But will the anti-hero make the sacrifice to not be a dick.

More interesting superpowers. I want stuff like the powers in Sagrada Reset. Not stereotypical stuff like strength, speed, invisibility, etc.

I also want to see a shapeshifter character as one of the good guys! Why are they always the bad guys?

Give people some superpowers with interesting limitations and make them work together in clever ways to accomplish amazing feats that would never be possible on their own.

Adaptations of three superhero books that make you feel good about reading superhero books:

James Robinson's Starman:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starman_(Jack_Knight)

Starman, Ted Knight, is a legacy Golden Age character who invented a device called the Gravity Rod, later refined into a Cosmic Staff, which collects energy from the universe, granting the weilder the ability to fly and project force fields and force beams. Similar to a Green Lantern ring, but not as detailed.

Roll forward to the present day, Ted has retired, his son David has taken over for him as Starman, and his son Jack wants nothing to do with any of it, he's happy running an antiques and collectibles store.

An old villain from Starmans past, the Mist, comes back for one last gasp as he's terminally ill. Assisted by his two children, they kill David and attempt to kill Ted and Jack. Jack has an old Cosmic Rod stuffed in a closet and uses it to escape. He agrees to take up the Starman name if his dad promises to use his science to make the world a better place.

Very strong father/son dynamic, the power of inheritance, the power of what a legacy means. 81 issues plus assorted crossovers. Just a great run of comics.

Alan Moore's Tom Strong:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Strong

Kind of cheating here because Tom TECHNICALLY isn't a superhero, he's a SCIENCE hero... but really, what's the difference? ;)

Around 100 or so years ago, Tom's parents treated him like a science experiment. They raised him in a high pressure chamber to simulate a higher gravity, and fed him an elixir which gives him good health and an extraordinarily long lifespan.

Tom and his family use science and advanced technology to advance human causes and fight other science threats.

It's a Doc Savage pastiche in the same way that Fantastic Four is. So you have Monk and Ham in Doc Savage portrayed as Ben and Johnny in FF or King Solomon and Pneuman in Tom Strong.

Kurt Busiek's Astro City:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astro_City

There's no singular character or storyline here, it's a retro futuristic city FULL of super characters, but the differentiator is you witness the world from the perspective of the humans living in Astro City.

Radio dramas.

Wait, "want to see". Forget what I said.

More scarecrow. He's always in the background, doing his strange little fear experiments. I'd like to see something like the Year One comic, going into his unhinged actions as a professor, his weird shit with grandma, and Batman tracking him down like a serial killer.