#Superhero Analysis

[ballinandcantgetup452]

Can we stop calling The Punisher a hero?

I'm sick and tired of the glorification of The Punisher. Frank Castle is a sick man whose happy place is being in a war and it doesn't really matter what or who he's warring against. He never started this crusade for revenge. If it was for revenge, then he would've gone home like 3 weeks in to Punishering it up.

Frank Castle is not a hero. He’s not some tough-as-nails, misunderstood anti-hero. He’s not some tough teeth gritting vigilante with a heart of gold. You're thinking of Wolverine. No, he’s a murderer. Plain and simple. That’s his whole thing. That’s what he does. That’s all he does. He doesn’t fight for justice, he doesn’t save people; he kills. And yet, people still put him on this twisted pedestal, like he’s the symbol of the moral gray and justification. And I’m so sick of it.

Yeah, sure, this is the Marvel Universe, where logic bends, where guys in tights throw buildings and teenagers can swing between skyscrapers like it’s no big deal. Ethics get fuzzy when you have gods and mutants and billionaire playboys. But what Frank does goes beyond all of that. Because Frank Castle is a bad man. A sick man. A man whose entire life is wrapped up in a never-ending war he never really wanted to end.

He lives in a van or warehouse full of guns and weapons, and he’s still out there, free, because he's too violent, too ruthless for anyone to deal with. Nobody stops him. Nobody can truly stop him. Not because he's some anti-hero with a tragic backstory. Once again, you're thinking of Wolverine. It's because he's a walking, talking, killing machine who’ll unload a clip in your face before you even think about it. People think he’s a badass. They think he’s cool. No. He’s a psychopath. A man who is only happy and defines himself by being in the middle of a war.

Don’t get me wrong; I like the character. I really do. But, I read his comics the way you might watch a true crime documentary about Jeffrey Dahmer. You’re not rooting for Dahmer. You’re horrified by him. But you’re fascinated. You’re trying to understand what makes a person tick when their clock is so broken. That’s The Punisher. There’s something raw, something almost cathartic about watching one man wage his own war against crime with no empathy, no mercy, just a hell of a lot of ultraviolence. And yeah, everyone gets in that mood every once in a while.

But here’s what gets me: people out there, actual people, glorify this. They paint his skull on their cars, their jackets, their walls. They act like he’s some kind of symbol of tough love or real justice. But Frank Castle would hate that. He’s said it himself — "Captain America would love to have you. I would not." He despises anyone who sees him as a role model because he knows what he is. He’s not confused. He’s not conflicted. He’s not trying to be a better person. One more time, you're thinking of Wolverine. Frank Castle is a monster.

And he knows it.

So let’s call it out. Call out the people who put Frank Castle on a pedestal like he’s something to aspire to. You wanna read a tough teeth gritting vigilante? Go read Frank Miller’s Batman or Daredevil. You want someone morally gray, someone who actually grapples with the weight of what they do? Check out Moon Knight. But if you want to peer into the mind of a deeply broken, deeply dangerous man, then yeah, read The Punisher. Just don’t fool yourself into thinking he’s anything other than what he is: a guy who likes to kill people, who lives to kill people, and who’s damn good at it.

Frank Castle is not a hero. And he never will be.

[artbyblastweave]

A few years ago, there was a thread on r/asksciencefiction where someone was fishing for a superhero story with an inverted Omni-Man dynamic, or a setting where Homelander's initial presentation is played straight- a setting where the Superman figure actually is the paragon of morality he's initially presented as, but no other superhero is- a situation where you've got one really competent true-blue hero standing head-and-shoulders in power above what's otherwise a complete nest of vipers.

Someone in the thread floated My Hero Academia; while I haven't read it, my understanding is that that's not really an accurate read of what's going on with Stain's neurosis about All-Might being the only "real hero," that the point of that arc is that Stain's got an insane and unreasonable standard and that taking an endorsement deal, while bad, isn't actually grounds for execution. My own contribution to the thread was Gail Simone's Welcome to Tranquility, where a major part of the backstory involved the faux Justice-League's Superman analogue having a little accident because he's the only one who thought they were morally obligated to go public with the secret life-extending macguffin that the rest of the team is using to enforce comic-book time on themselves and their loved ones; while only a couple members of the team are directly in on it, the rest are conveniently incurious. And Jupiter's Legacy gets tantalizingly close to this- The Utopian, a well-meaning stick-in-the-mud, ultimately gets blindsided and couped by his scheming brother who creates a superhero junta staffed by a Kingdom-Come-style glut of third-gen superheroes, who are framed as fundamentally self-interested because only came onto the scene after most of the situations you legitimately need a superhero to handle have been neutralized. (The rub, of course, is that the comic is also highly critical of the Utopian's intellectually incurious self-righteously 'apolitical' approach to superheroism- if for no other reason than that it left him in a position to get blindsided by a coup!) While Jupiter's Legacy gets the closest, all three of these are only loosely orbiting around the spirit of the original idea, and there's something really interesting there- particularly if the Superman figure isn't hopelessly naive in the same way as Utopian. Because first of all, if you're Metaman or Amazingman or whatever brand-name alias the writer goes with, and you really earnestly mean it, and you put together a team of all the other most powerful heroes on earth in order to pool your resources, and then with dawning horror you gradually begin to realize that everyone in the room besides yourself is a fascist or a con artist or abuser or any other variant of a kid with a magnifying glass eyeing that anthill called Earth- What the hell is your next move?

Do you just call the whole thing off? Can you trust that they'll actually go home if you call the whole thing off? I mean you've put the idea in their heads, are you sure that they aren't going to, like, start the Crime Syndicate in your absence? Do you stick around to try and enact containment, see if getting all of these people on a team makes them easier to keep on a leash? But that's functionally going to make you their enabler pretty quickly, right? Overlooking "should you kill them-" can you kill them? You're stronger than any individual one of them- are you stronger than all of them? The first time one of them really crosses a line in a way you can't ignore- will that be a one-on-one fight? Are they the kind of people capable of putting two-and-two together and pre-emptively ganging up on you if you push back too hard? Do you just start trying to get them killed, or keep them at each other's throats so they can't coordinate anything really nasty? Can you squeeze any positive moral utility out of them, or is that just a way to justify not doing the hard work of taking them down? There've been works where the conceit is to question the default assumption that Superman in specific would be a good person, and there've been works where the conceit is to question the default assumption that superheroes in general would be good people. Something to be done, I think, with questioning the default assumption that everyone Superman becomes professionally close to would be good, and to explore how he'd handle it if they weren't.

[gojosbf]

i know many people are complaining about megumi '"living for someone else" instead of himself part but you've got to understand that there is no right or wrong way to get over depression, it effects different people differently. while i would've loved seeing megumi get his revenge and be a total badass but i also understand this plot choice. one doesn't cure their mental health and go on to conquer it's cause immediately, so i get it.

this is his first step towards himself because while he phrased the choice as "to live for someone else" he did have to choose to not give up on himself to get here. this is only the beginning, he will get there, he is still recovering from all the trauma but slowly and surely he will learn to live for himself, give it time.

[gayofthefae]

I just realized something so sweet and personal about Will's painting.

Their DnD characters don't look like that. We saw him draw them plenty in season 1. Will the Wise has a long beard and Mike's character I think has straight blond hair.

Will didn't just draw their characters per usual, he drew them as their characters. He's drawn Mike's knight character a hundred times. But he's never drawn Mike as a knight. He was understanding that Mike's character is a projection of who he aims to be, like all of them, so he drew MIke as the knight this time. For the first time.

That's what this smile is. Mike has played a hero for years. But he's never been one. He saw a dragon and probably expected his character, overjoyed with more of Will's familiar art, but instead, he was met with a glorious knight in shining armor with black, wavy hair. He was the hero this time. *(you can even see his facial expression change from happy excitement to this broad smile)

In season 1, Mike initiates the search party because of Will's heroics in DnD meaning that he would do it for them. He acknowledges that Will's actions in character are still his own. This is the same. This is Will saying "To play a hero, you have to be one yourself. And you are. I see through your character disguise. I see you. This is just the hero you've always been without the mask."

THAT is why it's different. THAT is why it's so much more personal than all the others, not just the heart, MIKE. THAT is why it hurts so bad (Will too but I'm referring to me/us).

I've said in a previous post that it wasn't about the heart, the heart was kind of for us, it was more-so about the heroism. And that's exactly what I standby. The heart isn't the only new thing about this painting. The hero has never actually been Mike before. And Will responded "Yes it has been. It always has been."

[cyanidespideycup]

I think a lot of people conflate superheroes as a whole to specifically Batman when it comes to the importance of a life. It makes sense, supers are meant to be put on pedestals and represent what we should all aspire to be. But it's weird when this gets applied to Spidey.

Just like everything else with Peter, he is a regular guy. Other superheros represent what we should aspire to be, but Spidey represents what we can be. He cares for every life. He hopes to give everybody a second chance. But if someone asks for it, Pete will beat their fucking skull in.

When his cop/detective friend Jean DeWolff was murdered, he hunted the man down and physically fought his way past Daredevil to kill the guy and ended up beating him within an inch of his life. When Kingpin got May shot, Peter broke into his prison, effortlessly beat him to a smear, and then promised that when May died, not if, he'd come back and finish the job- violently. There are just countless instances of him deciding "I'm actually going to kill him now totally" with Norman. Most notably of course is the glider incident, which Peter didn't actually go to with the intent to kill (weirdly enough despite Gobby killing his fiance). However, he took pleasure in beating him senseless and wasn't exactly broken up by the final thud.

Peter's a guy who meets every situation with the intent to help someone. He tries to find every opportunity to help another person, even someone who's trying to kill him, even if it's at his own detriment. He's not a perfect manifestation of morals and purity. He's just some guy. Some guy who cares a whole lot for people. And that makes it all the more special when he does help someone. When he talks a girl off a roof, or inspires a kid to be better than the system set him up for, or befriends his own rogues. It all feels so much more personal. This is just a person, one of us. Someone who fails more often than not, who makes bad jokes and gets angry and feels hate and love and pain all at once and most of all, someone who tries his best no matter what.

[kacievvbbbb]

I need someone that believes in magic to get ahold of Batman again. He is an overly serious man that runs around in an admitted bat suit fighting a gimmick rouge gallery. And he is doing it because he sincerely believes in a better tomorrow and somewhere along the way we have lost the plot. Batman wasn’t created to punish the guilty that is actually completely antithetical to his beliefs he is not the fucking punisher.

Batman just like wonder woman and Superman primarily wants to save people! sure he doesn’t do it in a sunny way but that is still what drives him. Hell he even goes a step further and actually builds a case he’s not just waiting for criminals to commit the crime he is shutting down smuggling and trafficking rings foiling plots he is a detective! For Christs sake it’s what made him so unique and fun as a superhero.

Also His desire to save people is literally what compels him to adopt Dick, Jason, Stephanie. Cass because he wanted to give these kids a chance, to save them in ways 8year old him wasn’t. Someone who just wants to punish the guilty wouldn’t do that, And now they have turned him into a borderline physically and emotionally abusive absentee parent all in the name of making him an edge lord. Where is the heart! Where is the fucking heart in it all! Where are the kids and the bright colors and the zaniness. Let Batman and Gotham be FANTASTICAL! I’m tired of the greys and the browns.

I’m tired of “grounding a story” meaning sucking all the joy and color out if it. Also superhero stories don’t need to be grounded in your fucking abysmal reality they are literally superheroes they exist outside of reality, let them!

A story does not have to be joyless to have depth and it does not have to be nihilist to be compelling.

I am sick and I am tired of it. 😔

[youryurigoddess]

The Small Back Room — Hour of Glory (1949)

Good Omens 2 begins with the visit to The Small Back Room not because it was meant to serve as an exposition scene for Maggie and her record shop. It’s a substantial foreshadowing of the main plot and the relationship changes between Aziraphale and Crowley.

As all the other classics referenced throughout the show, this 1949 Powell and Pressburger production is easily available online — whenever you have 100 minutes to spare, I highly encourage you to watch it.

Our story begins with the arrival of Stuart, a British military captain, who makes his way through a labyrinth of offices towards a small building — the research section led by an eccentric, queer-coded, bow tie wearing professor Mair — to ask for help with a secret Nazi weapon.

That’s when the professor calls our hero, Sammy Rice — an engineer and bomb disposal expert in the service of Her Majesty’s government and, not accidentally, the most brooding, wounded man in Powell and Pressburger’s impressive canon of dysfunctional and alienated characters.

Due to a prosthetic foot keeping him from active service and confining to work in the titular back room instead, Rice is dramatically slipping into alcoholism. Haunted by self-loathing and disappointment with the internal politics, he can’t see the point of his research anymore.

Sammy is also conducting a clandestine affair with the secretary of his research unit, Susan. They live in the same building and meet regularly, but can’t openly enjoy their company or even dance due to his injury, which makes him even more bitter and pathologically determined to wear her angelic patience down.

Susan puts up with it until the minister is forced to resign. She knows that if non-scientists take over, their section will become useless, Rice even more difficult, and the war possibly lost. She urges him to take action and when he dramatically refuses to make a difference, she leaves him.

Seemingly at his lowest now, Rice becomes a sudden chance to redeem himself. Captain Stuart calls him about two unexploded booby traps found in Wales, but left to himself, he dies during a heroic attempt to dismantle one of the thermos-like devices before our engineer arrives at the scene.

In a nerve-jangling finale, Stuart’s notes help Rice dismantle the second device. He becomes a hero, gets an officer commission as head of the new scientific unit, and discovers that Susan not only came back in the meantime, but repaired everything he drunkenly destroyed in the apartment after their breakup.

The parallels seem straightforward enough for me to add that in this context the role of Maggie through most of S2 may particularly reflect Crowley’s stagnancy in both work and love life. And if you’re unsure why the demon identifies with the heroic roles and characters, you might want to read this post on the subject.

Now, The Small Back Room was distributed in the US under another title — Hour of Glory. Which happens to be a specific Bible term referring to Christ’s “hour”, the period supposed to consummate all of his work on Earth and reveal God’s ultimate plan of salvation: the Son’s death.

John 12:20-36 Jesus replied, ��The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me. Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him. Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine. Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

Christ’s hour began in the garden — this time the garden of Gethsemane — as he prayed passionately for the cup to be passed from him, similarly to Aziraphale declining Metatron’s offers on screen, both regarding the hot drink and his reinstatement as part of the Heavenly Host:

Luke 22:42 “Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”

All throughout the Old Testament, we see God’s wrath being described as a cup poured out on sin and those guilty of it. By accepting it, Jesus took the toll of all the sins — from Eden up until the last one to be committed right before his Second Coming — on himself, for the sake of his beloved humanity.

The passion of Christ continued as Judas betrayed him with a kiss, his disciples abandoned him, and the high priest accused him of crimes he was not guilty of. Even Pilate, the prefect of Rome, pretended to uphold the law; and remember we already expect a S3 trial based on another Archers movie.

All in all, it’s an hour of great injustice and pain, but also glory of God. We’re led to believe that the Ineffable Plan will similarly triumph over the great one (or whatever Metatron tries to implement at the moment), as it did in S1. And its ending will be a good one, back in a garden.

[alvie-pines]

some people defend captain america with "he fought nazis in ww2" and im like. good for him, but i need more than that. i mean thats a good thing to do, but also the bare fucking minimum.

and it also doesnt contradict his role as American Propaganda Personified either, because guess what the US did? fought nazis! it doesnt make the US not a horrible imperialistic death machine... because again: bare fucking minimum. you cant just punch a nazi (pure evil & most people agree on that) and call it a day, youre a good person (or country) now and forever! not how that works.

i love some good ol' nazi-punching when its accompanied by other acts of goodness. this isnt a diss on nazi-punching. this is a diss on thinking it absolves you of doing wrong... or absolves your favorite superhero of representing an imperialist death machine.

ending this with a final note: its okay to like cap. i dont really care what you, or my anyone else, likes. i just dont like him myself, and i wont like him no matter how many nazis he punches. here, i am explaining why. i think he represents something awful, and that unequivocally ruins the experience for me, but it may not ruin someone else's media experience, and thats not really a moral judgement. everyone has different limits in fiction. i love gloriously violent gore and cannibalism, but graphic child abuse shuts me down. so does too much usamerican propaganda. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[swolesome]

Hi, I did a big queer comic nerd video essay.

Batman, Masculinity, and Gayness: Decoding the Dark Knight

[mannyrojas20-blog]

Quick thing, I haven't seen anyone else say a thing about this one thing. So I'm gonna throw my hat in the ring.

Hal is an incel and an absolute jerk by all means. However, Megamind is partially responsible for his downward spiral. I'm not just talking about him giving superpowers; I'm talking about the horrible judgment and advice that he gave Hal.

When he first met Hal, he thought he was the perfect choice for a hero and dismissed any evidence to the contrary. Much like a parent/authority figure dismissing a person of bad behavior when they eventually turn for the worse.

Later on, he gives Hal advice on how to woo Roxanne. Said advice, 'Just save her, dude'. Advice that is based on a vague idea on how to get with a woman and without much context. Ultimately, it was setting Hal up to fail and have him turn for the worse.

Though I'm not saying Hal is in the clear, he isn't. Megamind just encouraged a lot of his behavior, and it backfired. Thankfully, in the end, Megamind stopped him from doing anything worse and made up for his mistakes.

In short, incels don't come out of the ether (they can be created very easily), and people should monitor how others behave and call them out on it.

If anyone wants to add anything. Feel free to share.

[fruitydemogorgon]

HOW TO TREAT YOUR GIRLFRIEND WITH POWERS NO BORAX NO GLUE:

(with cleo and lewis from h20 just add water)

with borax and glue:

result:

[theomenmedia]

Deadpool And Wolverine Digital Debut Date Revealed

Get ready to bring home the chaos! #DeadpoolAndWolverine hits digital on Oct 1st and Blu-ray Oct 22nd.

Link to the full story: https://www.theomenmedia.com/post/deadpool-wolverine-slashes-its-way-to-home-release-here-s-when-you-can-watch

[gayofthefae]

Thinking again about "you're my superhero" and how powers use anger and sadness, not love, and how there were two words used with spite in that note, not one

"Dear Mike,

I have gone to become a superhero again.

From,

El"

She put "superhero" on the same plane as *"From"*. OH, She did not like that shit at all.

[asm5129]

ITS OUT NOW: MAN OF STEEL v SUPERMAN

TW: Mentions of Violence, Death, 9/11

MY PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=10398701

Hello to all of my Queers and Dears, and welcome back to my Adam Writes an Essay series! Today, in celebration of the new season of My Adventures with Superman Season 2 Finale and the increasingly more detailed information we’ve been getting around James Gunn’s upcoming Superman feature film, we’re going to be digging into an essay I wrote a few years back comparing and contrasting the approaches the Christopher Reeve-led and Henry Cavill-led respective Superman origin films have to the Superman mythos.

I’m excited to adapt it into a video essay for you all!

[betterthanbatman1]

Sigh *adds a line to my tally of how many times Bruce hurts Jason and Jason forgives him*

[classyruinsbarbarian]

I cannot stop thinking about how wordgirl canonically picks up traits from her villains like how she started saying 'wham' in that one episode i forgot the name of.

Like she and the Learnerer make the same 'Gah!' sound

Okay I actually have no more examples of her picking up traits/having same/similar traits to her villains

If yall got anymore examples please give I love these.