SMAX... that blue guy in TOP 10, right?

[Sigma]

He can never be her equal, or even near-peer, so that exacerbates the problems with that approach.

Well, again, equal how? Certainly not physically or even mentally for that matter, but a relationship where the two partners can't acknowledge one another on equal footing is a really unstable and unsatisfying one.

[Buster's Uncle]

Equal as a human being?  I should certainly hope so. 

I was talking about old attempts to build him up as a macho hero-type and involve him in the adventures, which I find to be a mistake.

[Sigma]

Equal as a human being?  I should certainly hope so. 

I was talking about old attempts to build him up as a macho hero-type and involve him in the adventures, which I find to be a mistake.

Oh definitely. That's why I think the politician angle would work. Since when does a politician need to be super strong or supersmart? His attitude, charisma, ideology and decision making determine his success in that field.

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm going to mention the politician angle to Sis.

[Doc Nebula]

Steve Trevor as a JFK type politician... yes.  Brilliant idea.

I know 'give WW a girlfriend' keeps being proposed and shot down, but that time has passed and the time for a major mainstream character to represent the LGBT community has come round at last.  You wouldn't have to sell it very hard.  My 'reveal that Superman has always been black, and so were all the other Kryptonians" story would be much tougher... but that time is coming, too.

I'm not dissing what you're doing.  I am saying, though, that you're not understanding what I mean by an essence, a core concept, or a theme.  You keep going to powers.  Powers are not what a book is about. 

The essential center of Spider-man is Peter Parker's unhappiness.  (You could go deeper and say it's about loneliness... something Sam Raimi understood and brought to the screen beautifully, and as he took that more and more away from Parker with each succeeding movie, each succeeding movie lost more and more of the essential concept.)  But it's enough to understand that Peter can never forgive himself for failing Uncle Ben. That is what drives him, and that is what makes the concept work.  If he ever gets therapy and forgives himself, he will stop being Spider-man, because being Spider-man is the source and center of all his unhappiness.

Ditko understood this, and so did Stan Lee.

Roger Stern, sadly, did not really grasp it.

Batman is very similar, with the key difference being that Batman is driven by rage and an obsession with NEVER BEING HELPLESS AGAIN.  He doesn't feel guilty that he didn't stop Joe Chill, he's too coldly rational for that.  He was a kid.  He gets that.   But he will NEVER be in that position again.

But this is all the difference.  Where being Spider-man makes Peter Parker miserable and keeps him from ever being  happy (which is why marrying him off to Mary Jane was such a bad idea), being Batman is all that keeps Batman sane and relatively happy.  Bruce Wayne is his daytime mask.    What is very nearly unique about Batman is that he's Batman ALL THE TIME.  Batman is the real guy.  Wayne is a mask he puts on. 

But you have to understand your character.  If you understand your character, you know how to write it so it resonates.  And there is no such thing to understand with WW.

Now, yes, you could make her "the Woman of Wonder".  Strongest, fastest, most awesome chick in the world!  Steve Englehart had Wonder Man get over his insecurity in WEST COAST AVENGERS and start acting like "a young Superman".  And, astonishingly, Wonder Man became boring and shallow.  Not one of Englehart's better ideas.

How does making her be all about being 'the strongest/fastest/best woman in the world' drive her?  How does that motivate her?  Well, it sounds to me like it makes her hypercompetitive, insecure, and shallow.  You go ahead and pitch that. I won't buy the book, though.

[Buster's Uncle]

We're misunderstanding each other, and I've articulated my point very badly.  The whole pitch, which I haven't even finished yet(having another very busy morning with forum business), is the concept, and I don't have it boiled down to a sentence yet.  Let me think over that part...

I do still maintain that it's as much concept as Superman has.  There's nothing wrong with him that good writing can't work with effectively.  He has the overwhelming advantage of being Superman, after all; her advantage is similar.

[Sigma]

Steve Trevor as a JFK type politician... yes.  Brilliant idea.

I know 'give WW a girlfriend' keeps being proposed and shot down, but that time has passed and the time for a major mainstream character to represent the LGBT community has come round at last.  You wouldn't have to sell it very hard.  My 'reveal that Superman has always been black, and so were all the other Kryptonians" story would be much tougher... but that time is coming, too.

I'm not dissing what you're doing.  I am saying, though, that you're not understanding what I mean by an essence, a core concept, or a theme.  You keep going to powers.  Powers are not what a book is about. 

The essential center of Spider-man is Peter Parker's unhappiness.  (You could go deeper and say it's about loneliness... something Sam Raimi understood and brought to the screen beautifully, and as he took that more and more away from Parker with each succeeding movie, each succeeding movie lost more and more of the essential concept.)  But it's enough to understand that Peter can never forgive himself for failing Uncle Ben. That is what drives him, and that is what makes the concept work.  If he ever gets therapy and forgives himself, he will stop being Spider-man, because being Spider-man is the source and center of all his unhappiness.

Ditko understood this, and so did Stan Lee.

Roger Stern, sadly, did not really grasp it.

Batman is very similar, with the key difference being that Batman is driven by rage and an obsession with NEVER BEING HELPLESS AGAIN.  He doesn't feel guilty that he didn't stop Joe Chill, he's too coldly rational for that.  He was a kid.  He gets that.   But he will NEVER be in that position again.

But this is all the difference.  Where being Spider-man makes Peter Parker miserable and keeps him from ever being  happy (which is why marrying him off to Mary Jane was such a bad idea), being Batman is all that keeps Batman sane and relatively happy.  Bruce Wayne is his daytime mask.    What is very nearly unique about Batman is that he's Batman ALL THE TIME.  Batman is the real guy.  Wayne is a mask he puts on. 

But you have to understand your character.  If you understand your character, you know how to write it so it resonates.  And there is no such thing to understand with WW.

Now, yes, you could make her "the Woman of Wonder".  Strongest, fastest, most awesome chick in the world!  Steve Englehart had Wonder Man get over his insecurity in WEST COAST AVENGERS and start acting like "a young Superman".  And, astonishingly, Wonder Man became boring and shallow.  Not one of Englehart's better ideas.

How does making her be all about being 'the strongest/fastest/best woman in the world' drive her?  How does that motivate her?  Well, it sounds to me like it makes her hypercompetitive, insecure, and shallow.  You go ahead and pitch that. I won't buy the book, though.

I see exactly where you're coming from and I really appreciate that angle because it vocalizes the real problem with Wonder Woman. Is it possible that she doesn't really have a purpose in this age? It's not as if there aren't any female superheros at all like when the character was created, so she doesn't need to be the sole voice for a voiceless minority of comic book readers; but there's still virtue in the idea of her due to gender politics in comics (and nerd media in general) being so screwed up.

[Buster's Uncle]

Good point about Wonder Man in WCA, btw.  I followed/have that run, and Englehart really wasn't doing his best work during that period.

Doc, do this for me, please: give Captain America's concept briefly as possible.  Bonus points if you don't mention Bucky.

[Doc Nebula]

Cap, like all Marvel characters, has been handled badly since the Silver Age ended. 

Obviously, as a product of the two dimensional Golden Age, he had no concept.  There was nothing that drove the character, no essential character element or engine that, if you took it away, he would stop being Captain America.  In the Golden Age, there is no 'why'.  There's just, hey, look at these goofy guys beating hell out of each other!  Give us a dime.  Thank you.

Or, if he had a concept in the Golden Age, it was a simple one... here's Every American Man, fighting the enemy.  He could be any of us, juiced up with super steroids, given a magic weapon, and sent forth into battle.

Stan and Jack were working intuitively when they constructed the first three dimensional superhero universe.  They did not do a lot of what they did on purpose or with intent.  There were links and bonds and common continuity between all the Marvel titles because Stan was writing pretty much all of them, and it was a great way to cross promote a book that wasn't doing well, by having that character show up briefly in a book that was doing better.

But all that became much more than the sum of its parts.

And another element that I don't think either Stan or Jack or Steve Ditko knew was an essential part of the three dimensional universe, was that these characters were not perfect.  They had flaws.  Physical and, more importantly, emotional flaws.  In the DC Universe, the only way to tell the characters apart is by costume, hair color, and powers.  Otherwise, these characters are all alike.  They talk alike and behave alike; they project what I have elsewhere described as a uniform Caucasian civility at all times.  Even the ones who have solid, unique heroic motivations... like Batman... never mention them.  They are heroes because they are heroes, they do the right thing (which in those days was always defined as, fighting to protect private property from thieves, because murder and rape and other violent crime against mere humans did not exist) because that's what they do.

But in the Marvel Universe, omigod, these people are freaks!  Everyone of them is driven by something, afraid of something, needs something, can't get something... and it was amazing.

But Stan never intended it, it just happened.  He didn't understand it... if he had, he would have given some kind of intrinsic flaw to Hank Pym, and Hank Pym's series might have succeeded.  (Jim Shooter came along decades later and tried to retroactively give Hank an inherent flaw -- he's unstable and borderline crazy, and was never all that effective in action, anyway -- but Shooter had to ignore years of continuity to do it, and it came off as just wrong headed and kind of mean.)(Also, Hank might have succeeded if Stan had written his series instead of turning it over to brother Larry, but, also, Hank needed a flaw and didn't have one.)

Anyway, so, when Stan wanted to bring Cap into the Silver Age, and into the first three dimensional superhero universe, he knew he needed to give Cap a flaw of some sort... but honestly, he really couldn't come up with one.  He made him all guilty and angsty over Bucky, and gave him some self pity trips about being 'a man out of time', but, ****, we weren't buying that... Wanda clearly would have ****ed his brains out had he merely beckoned, not to mention he was pretty much covered up with hotties everywhere else he went, too, so, jesus, Rogers, snap out of THAT ****.

No, the simple truth is, for much of the Silver Age, Cap had no concept.  No real driving force, nothing that, if you took it away from him, he would stop being Cap.  He had no existential purpose.  Without World War II, he was a hollow shell of a man. 

He did best in AVENGERS, where Lee was wise enough to get rid of all the characters who overshadowed him and let him  have a great deal of comparative gravitas and charisma by leading Quicksilver, the Witch, and Hawkeye.  That worked... but "Avengers Leader!" was still not enough.  You could take it away and he'd still be Cap.  But... what made him Cap? God knows.  He was going on sheer inertia.

And it showed; if any comic other than Daredevil more clearly operated on sheer inertia, simply going through the standard superhero motions for years in the sixties and seventies, it was Cap's title.

Even Steve E. didn't know what to do with him... at first.  When  Steve took over, Gerry Conway had Cap being a cop in his secret identity, which did nothing for him.  Steve did that wonderful "50's Cap" storyline which was thought up by Roy Thomas, but that just clarified continuity without giving Cap an essence. 

But Englehart finally got it, and with the Secret Empire storyline, culminating in the White House suicide (originally, Number One was meant to be Nixon, but as Marvel time keeps collapsing behind itself, who is it now?  George W. Bush?  Dick Cheney seems more likely...) he found the one thing that Cap could lose and not be Cap any more... his belief in America.  His patriotism.  If he no longer believes in America... how can he be Captain America?

The problem is, this should really have been the end of Steve Rogers as Captain America.  Eventually he took the role and costume back, because Englehart contrived a situation where lesser men kept trying to be Captain America and failing, and finally, the Red Skull tortured one of those lesser Caps to death by mistake... but that was a contrivance.  Cap has stated that he represents the American dream, not the cynical reality... and I can see that... but it's delusional and I don't respect it.  It's why I no longer really like Cap.

But, as I understand it, Steve Rogers is no longer Cap, anyway. It took a very long time... he should never have stopped being Nomad, the Man Without A Country... he should have been Everyman, Without Ties To A Corrupt State... the guy who could be any of us, sickened by all the darkness and compromise and evil being done in our names every day, rejecting all the trappings of nationalism, proclaiming ourselves Humans First. 

So, what's Cap's essence, his core, his whatever?  He doesn't have one.  He did have one, briefly, when he was Nomad. 

Okay?

[Buster's Uncle]

So Cap is not great?  Because he's hard to get a handle on?

I agree that purely good characters are difficult to write, and I agree with your characterization of the smiling friends DC guys up to about 30 years ago.  Stan was about 20 years out in front with an added layer of sophistication, which was pitiful of DC.  But I also think that there's room/a role/a need for a few purely noble characters as long as they are rare.

I followed Cap the entire ten years Gruenwald was writing it (from about a year before, in fact, and until Leifield) and mostly loved it, so I dunno, there was something in there really speaking to me.

So I'd state his concept, sans any reference to his abilities, as "A truly good man who believes in the American way." 

You mentioned Bucky, so no points, but only once, so none subtracted.  I do think you made my point that a good character can be hard to put a finger on, and still be a good character.  He's Cap - that's something extra special, and you know it, even if his book is not always good. 

Talk to me about Superman in the same vein, if you like...

[Vishniac]

...give Captain America's concept briefly as possible.  Bonus points if you don't mention Bucky.

The concept of Captain America is fully comprised in his name:
he is a soldier fighting for the values of America, not as a nation but as an ideal.

If you want more explanations, call me back! (Star Trek VI on tv and I never watched it).

[Buster's Uncle]

That's better-put than my sentence; the soldier thing is crucial, and I left it off, like a dummy.  I'm going to gift you 50 EC, and also like you even better than before, by way of points.

Do Superman, please, and not too much about Krypton and the powers...


VI sucks.  I may be the only one who thinks so, but I really, really do.

[Buster's Uncle]

Interesting point that didn't hit me when I was talking about following Captain America throughout Mark Gruenwald's 10-year run - he played with doing reflections of aspects of Cap a good deal, with villains like the anti-nationalist Flag Smasher and with the Ultimate Cap-like before Ultimate Cap replacement Cap, John Walker - who was all the negative things somebody who didn't know Cap might expect a soldier from the 40s to be, all hard-butt and conservative.  There were a number of others who were deliberate thematic reflections of Captain America.

And that's an inspiration, but oddly enough, when I talked about doing the same with Wonder Woman's villains yesterday, (especially Dr. Psycho) it was Mylochka's idea.  She was thinking of Calisto on Xena: Warrior Princess and other characters who reflected aspects of Xena.  (Calisto as the anti-Xena, Joxer as wannabe adventurer and Xena's opposite in skill, Autolycus as skill without ethics and maturity, even Aries as what Xena used to be, and is often tempted to backslide into.)  Xena was an often painfully bad show, but the overarching theme of a once-bad person trying to mature and be good was compelling, and the recurring charters reinforced the theme beautifully.  When Sis proposed the same idea of reflections/contrasts/opposites for Wonder Woman, I immediately told her about Gruenwald (who faked his death 17 years ago yesterday, by coincidence) and when he did the same in Cap's book.

I think there's lots of wonderful stuff to be done with putting Dianna in the room with her opposites, and reflections getting it wrong, and so on - it helps define her, and it's a solid thematic writing tactic that just plain makes for good stories. 

Thank you, Mark.  Thank you, semi-competent Xena writers.

[JarlWolf]

Often using foils in writing will portray a character more strongly, as it sets the difference in personality quite starkly. As I stated my knowledge of Wonder Woman and a lot of comic book heroes is worth jack [poop], I didn't really grow up with any of the ones you guys are familiar with as they weren't really big over in my sector of the world. But what I do know is that a character's actions in a situation, even if subtle, can determine a lot about their character's personality. With Wonder Woman I think she needs something to starkly contrast her: With any form of art and literature, contrast is an element that can really bring out parts of a work. Wonder Woman needs contrasting elements to herself in order to be a more stunning and interesting character, and maybe even an equivalent who had the same situation, the same path even but went down an entirely different road then her. In comparison, it'd be like if Superman had a brother: But that brother became disillusioned and decided that his strength would be better used to rule Earth rather then just protect it. It may even be in noble interests that this character has, again with this theoretical brother of Superman, maybe he thinks his rule is what humanity needs. Give Wonder Woman a foil like that and you'll starkly differentiate her character and make her more prominent. 

[Buster's Uncle]

I think something somewhat along those lines was done with an Amazon named Artemis, who replaced Dianna as Wonder Woman for a while - I gather she was a lot meaner - and thus my previous mention of maybe bringing her back (she's currently dead) as an anti-wondy.