Gotham

[MikeandRaph87]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Hello, what about the 10 issue "Bane: Conquest" maxi-series written and drawn by his creators that just came out? It served to yank him out of that funk.

And who cares what Tom King can do?

I have not read it, probably not heard of it either. Seeing Bane sitting on a throne of bones with Joker, Riddler, and these assorted others did not make him intimidating. I just wondered what he had on the two mentioned above in Batman#50. So maybe he can be redeemed, but Gotham does not help his case.

[Leo656]

Bane forever disappoints me. He's like the only new-ish villain to show up in the Bat-books in the last 25 years who doesn't suck (give or take a Hush, and Dr. Hurt is technically a Very Old Character from some story published in the 1950s), and he's forever botched and mis-written by people who never actually READ "Vengeance of Bane" or "Knightfall". They just assume, "Well he's Big, so OBVIOUSLY he's also Dumb."

The one guy who should never, EVER be a lackey is Bane. And yet that's all he ever is. For f*ck's sake, in the TellTale video game they stuck him as HARLEY's f*cking lackey. HARLEY!

It's like Jesus, just don't f*cking use Bane. I hate it.

[snake]

The problem with Bane in the hands of retarded comic book writers is that they don’t know what stories to do with him beyond “IT’S BANE, AND HE’S BACK AND ALL HE DOES IS TALK ABOUT HOW HE BROKE BATMAN’S BACK!” and maybe throws rocks at Batman.

That last part actually happened. I’m not kidding.

[Leo656]

I know, it's pretty funny.

The problem with the Great (and new-ish) villains is the temptation to over-use them. And then it's a short ride to "They're just another Bad Guy".

The Superman comics in the mid-90s had this problem with Cyborg Superman. He was a great choice for a brand-new A+ Bad Guy, but then he showed up two or three times a year until he was teaming up with f*cking TOYMAN.

The only real solution - which they did in Cyborg Superman's case, eventually - is to just not use the character for 5 years or so, and then have them only show up as an Alpha-level threat. But in the meantime, they've got action figures to sell, so it's really, REALLY hard for them to keep those great toys (characters) in the box for that long. But it's the only way to let them keep any credibility.

Whenever I see Bane in the Suicide Squad or whatever I just shake my damn head. Nobody gets it. He's about as credible as Killer Croc, at this point. Same damn character except one has a skin problem and the other has a luchador fetish.

[snake]

It's really a look at the futility of the comic book industry when Batman and Superman- the most popular, money-generating DC characters- can't get new villains. If they do get a new villain introduced, they're usually either forgotten in a month (Mr. Bloom) or too dumb to ever be used again (H'el).

Seriously, I think the last Batman story that had any impact on the general, accepted Batman canon of "this is an essential story" was the Court of Owls- which wasn't even that good in the first place, and secondly was almost a goddamned decade ago.

[Leo656]

Yeah, it's tough.

Part of the problem is rights and payment, too. The whole "Work-For-Hire" thing. Most writers don't want to bother creating a Great New Character when they're just gonna be forced to sell it to the publisher for peanuts, and never get proper credit or compensation. Might as well save it for the novel or screenplay they'll never end up writing, y'know?

Kinda like how Matt Groening only created The Simpsons because he realized Fox was gonna (theoretically) make billions off of "Life In Hell" and he'd be left with, comparatively, a few sheckles. It all worked out for the best in the end, but his original logic was nonetheless sound.

In a commercial medium like comic books and cartoons where everything is owned by The Corporation, it simply doesn't even pay to put the work in on a Great New Character. So that doesn't help anything.

[snake]

Wow, that's a take I never even thought of. I get where they're coming from, but at the same time I just can't believe that everyone's okay with stagnant characters from the f*cking 40s and 60s that never age and status-quo's that never change.

Even legacy characters aren't really a thing anymore.

[Leo656]

Well I mean, what choice do they have? Over at Archie, the Sonic editors let One Jagoff (Ken Penders) basically create their entire "universe" of characters - Heroes, Villains, NPCs, etc. - and then one day after they had a tiff, he decided that HE owned all of it, sued them... and won (nobody's sure exactly HOW). So they had to reboot the entire series multiple times in a 5-year span to get around the fact that Every Single Thing that had happened in the comic for like 20 real-life years now Didn't Happen, and finally they just threw in the towel and cancelled it.

That's pretty much WHY they can't let the writers have too much control, because it'll inevitably come back to bite them. BUT, since the writers know they're creatively handcuffed, they're not gonna come up with a Great Idea that they're not gonna get compensation or recognition for.

It's a complicated issue with no easy answer.

[snake]

Yeah, the Penders thing was rough. I was invested in Archie Sonic until that happened and the comic slowly turned into nothing-ness.

I think there just needs to be less selfishness on writers parts. You're writing for a brand, yes, but if your stories are good then you'll get recognition for them. Look at Moore, Grant Morison, or (to a MUCH lesser extent) Geoff Johns. Yeah, DC owns their sh*t, but they're still revered for it. Adopt the attitude of furthering the history of legendary characters by creating new and interesting stories rather than writing comics as a side-gig and having zero respect for anything that came before you.

To be fair, this is more of a Marvel problem than a DC problem, but DC still has it's fair share of issues (pun intended?).

[Leo656]

I agree, that can be a factor. Like Dan Jurgens is probably the most ego-absent person to ever write for a major company, and he's created tons of great and memorable characters. He's not a "name" but he's the type of guy who serious fans and people working in the industry all admire for his workmanship. If everyone were like him, there'd be no problem.

As a creative person who's dabbled in some writing myself, though, I fully understand how feelings of "ownership" can come into play. Your characters can feel like your children, and you start to worry about what might happen to them in someone else's hands. It's hard to reconcile that you can work hard to create something, give it very specific characteristics for very specific reasons, craft it just so, and then someone else can totally come along and do whatever they want with it, even if what they do could rightly be considered blasphemous by the standards you originally set forth.

It's like the guys who created the Anarky character; they said that they partly wished they could have kept it creator-owned, because it was a very personal character, but were shot down, and they simply never read any of the stories other people wrote about him because they knew that they'd be totally off the mark from what the character was created to be, and they didn't want to feel obligated to publicly cry "Foul".

It's like watching someone molest your children. So I get it. "Less ego", sure. But that's honestly asking a lot.

[sdp]

Finally watched the final season, with only 12 episodes and being the last one I thought it'd be faster paced but it starts off very slow, generally I did like some of the things that happened but not as good as previous seasons, the No Mans Land and Dark Knight Rises vibes it had didn't work too well bu it's alright. No way people wouldn't know that Bruce Wayne is Batman after all this happened.

I do love the world Gotham made and how it created the batman villains, it did a good job even if it had their own spin. Sure it doesn't work as a prequel to Batman since so much has happened already but it works as its own Batman series.

I'm still missing the last episode but I'll comment on that later, in general I liked the series a lot, it took a way different approach than I thought it should but it worked, even young Bruce since we did see him grow.