Monday, June 21, 2004
Wonder Woman: Gods and Mortals...
You know, I was reading Greg McElhatton's review of Perez's run on Wonder Woman, and I was struck by how interesting it sounded to me, which surprised me a bit. Then I realized what it is...
The dual fact that Perez was very involved in both the writing and drawing and that the story itself sounds very self-contained, in its own world. The concept of an ancient race of Amazonian women who've been apart from the world where one of them gets thrust into the modern world while fighting against other creatures and gods of Greek myth sounds really interesting.
I think that once this is proving that the shared world concept is something I have a hard time with in general. When I think of the times I really got involved with a lot of superhero stories, it was mostly in animation. I loved Batman: TAS, with the noirish Gotham city and villains unique to Batman. The same goes for the old Fleicher Superman cartoons where Superman was an anomoly, a powerful character (strong but not able to move planets) who fights thugs and the occational mad scientist. X-Men was fun with the mutant concept and themes of tolarance and militarism, the Xavier vs. Magneto dynamic...
In comics, I enjoyed the first volume of Ultimate Spider-man, with Peter and his friends and villians spawned out of his surroundings. I get the feeling I'd probably be less interested if tons of others from the MU started to show up...
Obviously, interesting things can come out of a shared world, but I think for a lot of series, I'd really rather they were just their own thing. IMO, it waters down the uniqueness of any one thing, and makes comparisons to our own world more difficult. I mean the concept in X-men of people around the world getting mutant powers over time is very interesting. There's enough to work for all kinds of things, without needing people bitten by radioactive spiders or cold-war supersoldiers or beings from other planets to be in the same universe...
Having a family go into space (the first ones) and be mutated by radiation, then go fight creatures on other worlds. That is pretty interesting...
A guy who gets super-speed from a lab experiment? There's many possibilities in that. The Flash tv series may not have been the most amazing show ever, but it is certainly something that can be taken in different directions...
It just seems to me that so many of these concepts are interesting in and of themselves, and it is too easy for someone to go grab another character from the world in order to cause some temporary excitement, instead of developing something along the lines that story has already established. I mean a lot of the series do manage to be relatively self-contained at times, but then why not go all the way with it? You can still re-invent the concept as time goes on (how many versions of Astro Boy have there been?). You could still have cross-overs in some alternate world...
I guess I just wonder what would have happened if all these great concepts from Marvel and DC had stayed in their own worlds and developed along their own lines. We might have had some real changes as time went on, and I think more interesting new series as each one couldn't rely on past series..
Just some thoughts...
The dual fact that Perez was very involved in both the writing and drawing and that the story itself sounds very self-contained, in its own world. The concept of an ancient race of Amazonian women who've been apart from the world where one of them gets thrust into the modern world while fighting against other creatures and gods of Greek myth sounds really interesting.
I think that once this is proving that the shared world concept is something I have a hard time with in general. When I think of the times I really got involved with a lot of superhero stories, it was mostly in animation. I loved Batman: TAS, with the noirish Gotham city and villains unique to Batman. The same goes for the old Fleicher Superman cartoons where Superman was an anomoly, a powerful character (strong but not able to move planets) who fights thugs and the occational mad scientist. X-Men was fun with the mutant concept and themes of tolarance and militarism, the Xavier vs. Magneto dynamic...
In comics, I enjoyed the first volume of Ultimate Spider-man, with Peter and his friends and villians spawned out of his surroundings. I get the feeling I'd probably be less interested if tons of others from the MU started to show up...
Obviously, interesting things can come out of a shared world, but I think for a lot of series, I'd really rather they were just their own thing. IMO, it waters down the uniqueness of any one thing, and makes comparisons to our own world more difficult. I mean the concept in X-men of people around the world getting mutant powers over time is very interesting. There's enough to work for all kinds of things, without needing people bitten by radioactive spiders or cold-war supersoldiers or beings from other planets to be in the same universe...
Having a family go into space (the first ones) and be mutated by radiation, then go fight creatures on other worlds. That is pretty interesting...
A guy who gets super-speed from a lab experiment? There's many possibilities in that. The Flash tv series may not have been the most amazing show ever, but it is certainly something that can be taken in different directions...
It just seems to me that so many of these concepts are interesting in and of themselves, and it is too easy for someone to go grab another character from the world in order to cause some temporary excitement, instead of developing something along the lines that story has already established. I mean a lot of the series do manage to be relatively self-contained at times, but then why not go all the way with it? You can still re-invent the concept as time goes on (how many versions of Astro Boy have there been?). You could still have cross-overs in some alternate world...
I guess I just wonder what would have happened if all these great concepts from Marvel and DC had stayed in their own worlds and developed along their own lines. We might have had some real changes as time went on, and I think more interesting new series as each one couldn't rely on past series..
Just some thoughts...
