Thursday, July 8, 2010

Where are all the Super Heroes?

When was the last time you saw a new super hero title on the stands? Chances are it's been a while. The Big Two will occasionally introduce new characters into the mix, and rarely give those characters a book. Indy companies avoid super hero comics too, again with a few exceptions. Super heroes started the genre, and even if you hate every single comic written by them, it's just common sense to want more titles out there to broaden a very narrow section of the industry. And yet it doesn't happen, why?
One reason could be in the difficulty of finding something that stands out. Pretty much every super hero is a derivative of some other character or archetype. You've got the noble paragon of a hero, the dark street smart hero, the misunderstood hero, and so on and so forth. There's also the problem of powers. Most of the good ones have pretty much been taken. You can extrapolate and get creative, but for the most part it's hard to come by a unique powerset these days. When you add in the fact that super hero books rarely vary in the plot structure, it leaves you with very little wiggle room in terms of concept.
For some reason in the comic book industry concept is everything. There actually are reasons but that's a whole different bag of peanuts. Essentially you're selling a concept to the audience though. Which is odd because media doesn't usually work solely in that one field. Sure the basic premise is always important, but certainly as much as the characters and their relationships, or the tone, or writing style. I mean there are a million and one legal shows whose concepts are pretty much the same, and there are just as many fantasy stories who share that same fault, but they each have their own unique qualities.
Just because two super heroes have the same powers, backgrounds, or methods, it doesn't necessarily mean that they have the same personality. Exploring who these people are behind the mask is probably the biggest draw to any single super hero story. Still the fact that a hero might resemble another one too closely hinders a lot of potentially good stories from being told.
It's become a common theme in these posts, but it is my firm belief that you can't overflood the comic book market with material. Even if the greater portion of that isn't great, you always want to have new voices telling stories. We should have more super heroes, new super heroes, and new people writing them.

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