You ever notice how comics in the 90s and 2000s kinda felt really ashamed to have supervillains that felt even slightly silly? Like if you had a villain introduced in the Silver Age named something like, I don't know, The Spooner, he'd be up there fighting Superman and Batman and all that without a single indication hat he's silly. He'd be robbing the world of their spoons so he and only he could eat ice cream. If a comic from the 2000s had the Spooner he'd be a joke character where everyone goes "man, the Spooner is STUPID!" and they beat his ass in like one page. Just off the top of my head Bendis tried portraying fucking KRAVEN as a joke in Ultimate Spider-Man despite how well regarded Kraven's Last Hunt is, and that of course bled into Spectacular Spider-Man in a way.They kinda just felt ashamed to even have these goofy little guys to me, which from the 2010s onwards more comics seem to be straying away from, which I personally do like.
Eternally relevant.
Kraven's Last Hunt was an anomaly. He just barely survived getting killed off when Marvel wanted to trim excessive minor villains from the world. But JDM saw he was Russian in his profile, his gears started spinning and he made Last Hunt. So I think it means that perceptions don't matter so much as how the writer approaches characters.
>>154326101There's a problem with this pic. As OP says, it's been a problem since some decades ago, it wasn't always like that. The Spooner could be a serious threat. >Silly Super Powers In (Modern) Western ComicsThere you go>>154325950Yeah it's a shame. The dialogue would address this with crap like>Ughhh Spooner you're so useless and a complete joke>Oh n-no, I'm not lame guys... I... I can do cool stuff like this! (Does something lame)If you think that cape characters are lame, why are you even writing for either Marvel or DC? Do your own indie comic or with another company where everyone is badass or another edgy miserable porn comic against your strawman OCs that are pathetic on purpose
>>154325950>despite how well regarded Kraven's Last Hunt isI generally agree with everything you're saying, and it's all a symptom of a wider problem of cape comics in the 2000s, and Marvel in particular being full of people who were embarrassed by the business they were working in, saw cape comics as beneath them, wanted to be doing something else, and desperately wanted a new audience that was't all those Goddamn fanboy nerds they were sneering at, but for what it's worth, Kraven's Last Hunt was a re-working of a story JMD had pitched two previous iterations of before with different characters each time (Wonderman vs Grim Reaper and then Batman vs Joker), and the story we got only really came to pass because Kraven was washed by 1987 and Marvel were willing to greenlight killing him for real. The big game hunter trope was an anachronism by then, and Kraven had already made a narrow escape from being killed by The Scourge, just being a potential Scourge victim signified what Marvel thought of him.I don't feel like this was as much of a problem in the 90s though. Back then a silly older villain was more likely to get a super serious revamp and Extreme! redesign that might have been misguided but was done with genuine intent to make readers thing this guy was cool.
>>154326101>Silly powers in mangaAnd then he gets punched out because someone thought of friendship. Read more, shitter.
>>154326314>I don't feel like this was as much of a problem in the 90s though. Back then a silly older villain was more likely to get a super serious revamp and Extreme! redesign that might have been misguided but was done with genuine intent to make readers thing this guy was cool.It ties into the same embarrassment to be silly thing. EXTREME! is cool, so you turn something not perceived as cool into something “cool.” Not caring about anything and thinking bubblegum powers are stupid is cool, so you try to make the comic cool by making fun of something that isn’t cool.Cousins, not brothers. Similar, yet different. Still within the same sphere of thought, just different branches of it.
>>154327631That sounded incestuous
>>154327730We’re talking about the comics industry, anon. The only thing more incestuous than their hiring practices are their top dogs’ IQs.
>>154327631It's more that the whole medium of superhero comics had changed significantly and nothing was really "silly" anymore outside of the occasional designated comedy book. It wasn't motivated by embarrassment the way things in the 2000s were, more by a desire to move with the times, keep this character around and make them 'relevant'. The thought process going into it usually wasn't really any different to trying to revamp heroes whose books were underperforming, and 1990s-ifying them to try and get the new generation of fans to take notice.For better or worse, this was a decade when everyone was too cool or too much of a pseud to let themselves enjoy stuff like 1966 Batman, and aggressively reacted against the idea of a new movie trying to recapture the spirit of that era long before anyone had a change to know if it would be any good or not.It just wasn't the kind of environment where a silly character from decades ago could persist in his original form, but trying to update them to the times just feels less motivated by malice and shame than the way the 2000s treated them. It feels like it's coming from more of a place of love, even if you think it's misguided.Related to all of this, while it happened a little in the 80s and 90s, the 2000s also had an awful tendency for writers to take both 'silly' villains, and sometimes higher-profile, 'important' villains, and make them into some kind of rapist or implied pedo just to be edgy. We don't hate that era enough.
>>154325950It's partially because some of it came from the influx of fans-turned-pro during the 60s and 70s, but took root in the 1980sLike >>154327934 said there were too many adult comic fans at the time aggressively reacting to the idea of bringing back anything similar to the 1966 show. In fact, that was why the announcement of Michael Keaton as Batman in 1988 drew so much negative attention at first from the comic book crowd, Keaton was primarily known as a comedy guyWizard reinforced the pushback against sillier characters, look back in the old issues from the 90s and they had a "Mort of the Month" sectionThe writers of the 2000s like Millar, Bendis, and such grew up reading 80s comics; not just Watchmen and DKR but Miracleman, Marshal Law, Claremont's X-Men, American Flagg, Chaykin's Shadow, and so on
>>154325950Could be worse. Could be Kite Man. That guy doesn't even get a gimmick anymore. All he is is "KITE MAN, HELL YEAH!" now. Fucking Tom King. I'm gonna get you.
>>154328095Wizard spent way too much time trying to get comics to be television.
>>154328321I hate tom king so much man.
>>154326101How many times to I need to leave your ass BTFO?Like, do you like it when you're humiliated and fucked publicly?
>>154325950Superhero comics have been ashamed of being superhero comics for ~25 years thanks to Planetary and The Authority. Good job letting an entire genre for a generation be defined by two shitty Brits who hate superheroes.
>>154326190Kraven was also more or less seen as kind of a loser. Not so much in universe but he was just kind of a lower tier character nobody cared about which is why DeMatteis had the freedom to do a story with him like Kraven's Last Hunt.
>>154329171The worst part is that they succeeded. In all the worst ways.
>>154329382It's depressing how they managed to reopen every old wound.
>>154329331The entire thesis of Planetary is "put weird fun shit back in our comics." You're an idiot.
>>154329331>thanks to Planetary and The Authority.It was already happening LONG before that
>>154325950>BendisBendis hates most of the villains, with a exception of a select few.
>>154329331Planetary is great fun.
