Is Volume 3 tainted (retroactively) by Gerard Jones? - Page 2

Michael Heide · 10-23-2019, 09:30 AM

It's the same "we have to make the hero become a better person at the end of his origin story" problem that the Man of Steel and Shazam movies had. Conventional wisdom tells us that a character cannot be perfect from the start, even when 80 years of comic books tell a different story. So the characters like Hal, Clark and Billy Batson artficially get flaws (drunk driving, doesn't know that you shouldn't prove your enemies right by killing them, not being worthy of the power of Shazam) that they can then conveniently overcome over the course of the story (or stories, in the case of Superman).

It's lazy shorthand. Instead of trying to make the character better at the end of the story, they make them worse at the start, so the status quo they've always had is the new end point of their arc.

Trey Strain · 10-24-2019, 06:40 PM

In television show or a comic, you normally can't put a protagonist through a character arc, which is what you do in a movie. The only place you can do it in a television show or a comic is in the origin story. There it's a perfectly valid thing to do.

Michael Heide · 10-24-2019, 07:48 PM

Not if it has to lower down the character to scum in order to make way for improvement.

View Poll Results: Is Vol. 3 retroactively tainted by Gerard Jones?
Yes	2	28.57%
No	5	71.43%
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10-23-2019, 09:30 AM	#26
Michael Heide Heide Finition Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Cologne, Germany Posts: 11,951	It's the same "we have to make the hero become a better person at the end of his origin story" problem that the Man of Steel and Shazam movies had. Conventional wisdom tells us that a character cannot be perfect from the start, even when 80 years of comic books tell a different story. So the characters like Hal, Clark and Billy Batson artficially get flaws (drunk driving, doesn't know that you shouldn't prove your enemies right by killing them, not being worthy of the power of Shazam) that they can then conveniently overcome over the course of the story (or stories, in the case of Superman). It's lazy shorthand. Instead of trying to make the character better at the end of the story, they make them worse at the start, so the status quo they've always had is the new end point of their arc.

10-24-2019, 06:40 PM	#27
Trey Strain Guardian of the Universe Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 10,771	In television show or a comic, you normally can't put a protagonist through a character arc, which is what you do in a movie. The only place you can do it in a television show or a comic is in the origin story. There it's a perfectly valid thing to do.

10-24-2019, 07:48 PM	#28
Michael Heide Heide Finition Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Cologne, Germany Posts: 11,951	Not if it has to lower down the character to scum in order to make way for improvement.