A shared universe in western comic books is causing more problems than good. It's because characters from completely different settings and completely different powers interact with each other. You don't need to be a powerscaler to think that Thor, who can fight inside a star core, and Hulk, who can shake the universe with a single punch, fighting alongside Captain America, who would shit himself when hit by a car, as equals doesn't make sense. That's because, in the minds of comic book writers, every character has their own role. Rock, paper, scissors. The problem is, this doesn't work if characters have different stats. In *JoJo's Bizarre Adventure*, this works because everyone has similar stats. For example, in the *Blood Hunt* event, Vision was ragdolled by Varnae's vampire sidekick, and the same vampire was ragdolled by Captain America (Sam Wilson). The desire to make characters from different settings and scales of power fight side by side creates enormous inconsistency for everyone who remembers the feats of each character. In DC, there is a very powerful hero named Captain Atom. He can control matter. His powers are enormous, yet, since main events are mostly focused on Superman or the Flash, lesser-known heroes like Captain Atom are degraded and underused. Those problems are stemming from combining settings that are incompatible with each other.
>>154173387Shut up, DBshitter
A running trend I've noticed is that it really gets damaging when certain characters get too popular and get derailed.The only character who seems to be immune to this is Jonah Hex because there's so little way for any of the mainlines to jump in on his story. They just have him time travel to the future for whatever event, and his solo runs go completely unchanged.
>>154173387Chuddulk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4_zFYnnn2Y
>>154173387>A shared universe in western comic books is causing more problems than good.FACT
>>154173387while extreme levels of powerlevel inconsistency are bad I am more concerned with the tonal clash it creates
>>154173582Fraud Lee
>>154173387Powerlevels aren't about internal logic but popularity. Publishers will try to sell comicbooks so they will bring forward the popular characters no matter how strong and weak they are, and they will put them in a team because more popular characters together should in theory bring more profits. This internal logic isn't just about strenght but morality too, Harley Quinn is a good example her popularity not only give her the plot armor to take on Batman, Superman and WonderWoman but people will conviently forget all the stories were she was murdering innocent people.
>>154173582Old man gibbarish. According to him, Captain America, who died from sniper shot would fight equally against Galactus, who even in weak and hungry form, destroyed entire solar system.
>>154173643Yes. Captain America knows a lot of people, so he could easily pull something out of his ass or impress Galactus with his spirit so Galactus surrenders.
>>154173609>Powerlevels aren't about internal logic but popularitythat's the problem, there's nothing worse than seeing Batman beat up Darksied
>>154173591No
>>154173681It gets funnier in cases where it is explicit, like the results are from a poll.
>>154173598Shut up, retard
>>154173705>t. fraud enthusiast
>>154173715Fuck off, you limp wrist
During the Jemas years of the early 00s every Marvel character existed in their own universe separate from the others, and the fans wouldn't stop bitching about how the universe didn't feel connected anymore.
>>154173736Stan Lee won't let you suck his dick bro
>>154173659>it would make no sense if they fought head-on>oh yeah, but what if [abnormal scenario where they don't fight head-on] HAHA TAKE THAT POWER-SCALERS
>>154173387there can also be an opposite problem however, a street level hero like spiderman becoming the lone ubermensch of humanity.
>>154173794Why do you assume everyone can only fight with their fists or beams?
>>154173681Batman dodging omega beam in the cartoon finale made child me realize that plot armor is a thing.
>>154173792Cope
>>154173387Hulkposter, for every vaguely decent take you have you end up ruining them with the most absolutely retarded takes and spamming
>>154174279AI Hologram Stan Lee thanks you for your support
>>154174416Cope, tranny
>>154173387>CHADulk imposter againI sleep.
There's absolute no reason why the X-Men, The Avengers and The Fantastic Four should share the same universe
>>154174510there are plenty of independent superhero comic books out there starving for readers if that's what you want.
>>154174435Jack Kirby mogs your idol
>>154173387Just say Batman>Batman in Gotham>I need to be careful theres 4 goons down there and bane could be a problem>Batman in Justice League>Let me just go running into this army of demons that overwhelmed wonder woman before fist fighting DarkseidSure its BatwankBut these two versions of the character are supposed to be treated as the same personEasy solutionBatman in GothamThats BruceBatman in Justice LeagueThats Dick or Damien or his successorHe was given all the cool shit to keep up that Bruce needed over the yearsNow Bruce is the old guy funding everything
>>154174575Nope
You couldn't really be a comic book fan if you can't handle the fact that these characters aren't meant to be realistic and consistent throughout their entire history, just as you're not expected to believe in any realism about getting superpowers from accidents with radiation.Timescaling, several interpretations of the same character within the same universe/timeline, changes made for TV or cinema sinergy and other things are just as part of "ignore it because its fiction" as the obvious impossibilities such as getting spider powers from a bite or having hot red headed girlfriends. God, I wish hot women were real.Yet you chose to defend the weakest point, which is powerscaling.
>>154173387>A shared universe in western comic books is causing more problems than good.>It's because characters from completely different settings and completely different powers interact with each other.Yeah that's just like in real life. Minus the powers.
>>154174628Yeah buddy
>>154173387They internally have different stats. The real reason is the writers are so an enamored with their work they're unable to kill their darlings and corporate mandates shifted stories in to suit demands that tarnish the writers' stories.
>>154174673Nuh uh
>>154173840Why don't you? That is a fact of the matter 90% of the time, and exceptions that cannot be measured by definition are simply not
>>154174884The stats are post-hoc and incredibly subjective.
>>154173387Facts.
>>154174649Uh...
>>154173450DB and powerscalers benefit from shared universe since they can use it to chainscale characters that would be weaker if the had their own universe. Really it's world builders and lore enjoyers who dislike shared universes so your are throwing flak at the wrong fans
Every superhero universe should be brutally tiered by editorial, meaning street levels stay with street levels, mid-tier stay with mid-tier, cosmic with cosmic etc. And almost no overlap. So bye bye to Batman fighting Darkseid.
>>154177282Agreed.
>>154174510The only reason that matters, idiot, because it's fun.
>>154174609>I need to be careful theres 4 goons down there and bane could be a problem>Let me just go running into this army of demons that overwhelmed wonder woman before fist fighting DarkseidAll I see is evidence that Bane chainscales to cosmic level
>>154177282>>154178995Nope.
>>154179026I don't think anyone on this website remembers what fun is
>>154179026>because it's fun.no it's not they ruin each others stories just by existing
>>154177280'Powerscaling' isnt a real way to analyze media, its something you do when you have depression and dont feel like playing video games or jerking off, and you dont do drugs, so you need to make up some bullshit to argue online about so you can feel something besides crushing ennui
>>154179026>because it's fun.No.>>154180156I know what fun is. People who "like" this stuff do not.
>>154177282That obliterates more stories already told, like most crisis or cosmic events
>>154182092Well obviously it's impossible to do NOW but in a new original universe or a reboot, it should be done
>>154173387It's adorable that you think the problems with shared universes are because of muh power levels and not because of writers having to work together like adults and like professionals, and not because someone writing something in one book doing things with one character can have effects on other characters they weren't even thinking about, because they got connected by the shared universe. Or one book's writer making characters from another book look bad.Eventually a shared universe means that character you like is stuck in a setting with other characters you don't care about, and the writer of some other book you don't care about may just hate /yourguy/.
>>154182092good
>>154173582>Read the comments on this video >Powerscalers STILL SEETHING about Goku losing to Superman Has a fan community ever been demolished as bad as DBFags
>>154174510The only time the x-men even interact is when the b listers of marvel butt into their storylines because the x-men are more popular, or they steal their characters for their discount rack books for a few years.
>>154173387dont bother man. the slop writers and slop fans want this trash. so they can be all yeah tony stark tell a god another qup and pretend and self insert they wouldnt die if a non comic divine showed up. its why you have that other thread with superbitch and bat toddler seething at a god he took care of it and superbitch all you solved the problem and we had jsut about lost you're not a hero youre a something weepy;. yeah yeah writers gotta force winning without selling a ton of comics is bad wrong and bad hero work.the slops in this thread seething at you prove they dont wnat good comics just their ineffective favorites winning. its why batman sells the most its everyones self insert. billions, stud, do it all, smartest, bestest. things no slop fan is nor writer.
>>154184926Sorry bro, I couldn't understand what you're trying to say. How about throwing "slop" in there a few more times.
>>154184542Plenty. As bad as DB is, the fact they don't have something as dumb as anti vs proshipper debates they aren't the worst.
>>154173387When do they fight as equals? Thor fights guys at his level, Cap fights guys at his level. Fuck I hate Death Battle
>>154184680>because the x-men are more popularWhat year do you think it is? It's not the 90s anymore grandpa.Interaction between the X-Men and other Marvel characters for the last 25 years has been mainly X-book writers trying to make other heroes look bad for not solving all the X-Men's problems for them or for trying to stop them having a "mostly peaceful" chimpout.
>>154173387>muh power levelsAaaaaaaaaaaaand post ignored
>>154173387I'm glad someone finally brought this up, because actually the issue is far bigger than you think.Imagine for a moment, that Spongebob merged universes with Breaking Bad. Not a one-time crossover, a merge. They now completely and canonically exist in the same multiverse and can interact with eachother.Beyond any nonsense about power scaling, just consider how utterly ridiculous it would be. A total disconnect in terms of tone, art style, story, etc. There is no part of Spongebob that can mix well with Breaking Bad and vice versa. They are wholly separate IP's
>>154186632contBecause that's exactly what comics do.What does Batman have todo with Superman? They're tonally opposite and cannot exist in the same universe, not just because of power levels, but because of tone. They're not as different as Spongebob and Breaking Bad, but they're not far off.However both these series have been merged for decades, and this has been bad for both of them. Batman is physically impotent because of Superman, and so the comics make him impossibly strong to try to fix this. They make him able to survive falls from orbit like it's nothing.And for Superman, he's too powerful for Batman and could solve all of Gotham's problems... so they make him stupid to cope with it.
>>154186660But that is merely the smallest part of the problemThe real issue with the custom of shared universes... is that in actuality it's only one universe, or rather, one IP.Breaking Bad exists in the real world, there are no magic superheroes in it. This is a hard rule. In the Breaking Bad universe you can write stories about drug dealers, marriage troubles, etc all manner of real-world stories. But you cannot write stories about aliens, or flying superheroes, or magic wizards, or zombie apocalypses, etc.The list of stories that you cannot write is larger than the amount you can.In comics, there is only the singular superhero universe. You can call it a multiverse, but all those universes in it are the same, that is, they're part of the same thing. There is no Spongebob universe in the multiverse.What does this mono-verse look like? Well it takes place in the modern world that's mostly accurate to real life, there's New York but maybe it's called Gotham or Metropolis, but it's New York, modern day New York. Superheroes exist in this world and they have powers such as flying, laser hands, invisibility, transformation, etc.And typically they wear costumes and fight crime, and there are supervillains who are the same as the heroes but they commit crime instead, or occasionally they try to take over the universe.
>>154186707And so what CAN'T this mono-verse do?It can't write a story where superheroes don't exist. Because they do exist.It can't write a story where there are superheroes but those superheroes work differently, ie they cannot be superheroes via a unique magic system, or a unique science system. The magic or technology that makes Superman works is the same that makes Batman work. Because they exist in the same reality with the same rules, there cannot be a contradiction.If a concept of the afterlife is mentioned, for example, when you die you go to the Christian heaven or hell, both are eternal, and those are the only options. If you go with this option, you cannot have any other afterlives. You cannot have buddhist reincarnation or Bleach soul society afterlife, etc. you cannot do these things, you're locked in to the one you choose.And the same goes for literally everything else. Once you choose one option, you are locked out of all other options.In terms of being an entertainment medium... this is comically stagnating. They've restricted their possibility for innovation and unique stories by like 99%
>>154186908OP, kill yourself and end this schizo behaviour.
>>154186131>too stupid to understand the importance of internal consistency embarrassing
>>154186966>dimwit too retarded to understand that a guy talking about power levels exclusively and a guy talking about genre and setting clashes are two different anonsfollow your own advice
>>154186908It's pretty common for people to say>I don't like comicsand mean>I don't like superhero comicsand it's pretty valid because superhero comics are like 99% of comics. Everything else is just breadcrumbs falling off the tableBut nobody says>I don't like moviesand mean>I don't like horror moviesThat would be ridiculous, you'd say to them to go watch a different genre. In movies there is more than just horror, but in comics there isn't really much outside of superheroes, and even within those superheroes, it's only one monoverse of superhero, you don't even get any of the variety that say Japan has within its battle shonen genre, or even similiar style genres like magical girls or super sentai.If you don't like one comic, you won't like any comics.
>>154187319There no real variety in battle shonen. It's all interchangable set dressing for hype aura moments.
>>154179026>>154180156ZERE VILL BE ORDER IN MEIN COMICS.
>assBLASTED SHITnimefag LARPing as me>AGAINKWAB!!
>>154173387>A shared universe in western comic books is causing more problems than good.People have literally been complaining about this for at least 40 years.
>>154187455fuck off back to your containment thread
>>154187455Stay here Hulkbro.
>>154173387I have been saying this for a while.It has nothing to do with powerlevels but rather with the ability to tell stories involving these characters.Marvel and DC characters have transcended into being modern mythology, like Sherlock Holmes and Frankenstein.Rather than trying to rehash old conflicts or inflict character regression in order to maintain an impossible continuity, just let go of continuity.Then a Justice League story doesn't have to make considerations for the current Superman run nor does Infernal Hulk need to upend the work of other authors.I don't know if there is a term for it in specific, but I would call it a Curated Domain/Walled Domain. Obviously these companies won't release characters into the public domain if they can help it, but maintaining a suite of characters within a shared ecosystem that allowed writers can create official works in would help a lot of characters.
>>154173818I honestly find this issue weirder, like in movies before the MCU era where superheroes would be the only one in there universe, so the whole concept of superpowered beings or superheroes and supervillains is isolated to a single American city.
>>154187419You don't know understand. Even if one battle shonen is similiar to another, it's still fundamentally a different series. That difference is a million miles from the distance between Batman and Superman.Batman and Superman live in the same world, there is NO difference between their series, they are the SAME series.It doesn't matter how similiar Bleach is to Naruto or whatever other show, the characters of Bleach will never in a million years ever meet the characters of Naruto. That is the difference.
>>154187462Why didn't they complain for 80 years? Shared universes must have been good for the first decades then.
>>154187765People didn't know they were being fed shit for 80 years. Comics basically stopped being cool immediately after the war. They've been the loser nerd's hobby since the 50's.It took Japan to show that actually this medium can be good, and now manga (comics) are mainstream again. But western comics aren't.
>>154187795Modern popular manga is shit though.
>>154187807Disliking popular things doesn't make you tasteful
>>154187765>Why didn't they complain for 80 years?For all I know they might have. It probably started at least as far back as Barry Allen was introduced. The only difference I know for certain there were people who were sick of it even when Crisis on Infinite Earths came out.
You faggots just can't help but turn any goddamn discussion into another west vs east shitflinging fest
>>154187837Do we have any of-the-time discussions on Secret Wars and Crisis?
>>154187966Whether you like it or not, manga are comics. What country they come from doesn't really mean anything. We don't say Franco-Belgian comics are not comics because they're from France and Belgium.If a British person made a comic it'd still be a comic. If a German person made a comic it'd be a comic.The only reason manga is distinguished from the others is because it's the only school of comics that is actually good. It's like if there was pottery all around the world, you would call it pottery, but if one country just happened to make pottery better than the rest, theirs would get special attention and maybe a unique name.But it's still comics, and rather than shitting on it, maybe you should try learning from it, because it's so obviously better than anything the west is capable of making.
>>154173387This argument is retarded and it has always been retarded. The shared universe, while flawed, is the best thing about cape comics. Go back to /a/.
>>154188032I, personally, have nothing against manga, anime and whatever you call cartoons and comics that come out of other countries, and don't care where my entertainment comes from if it brings me joyBut you and I both know that mentioning eastern media on /co/ will almost inevitably degenerate into a shitfest between retards screaming that all manga is shit on one side and retards screaming that all comics are shit on the other other and indulging in numberfaggotry and other idiocy. Productive discussion just ain't gonna happen
>>154188065Realistically it is a miracle that /dbg/ didn't flee here when they hit bump of their latest.