Super Heroes Need To Evolve, Not Go Away
I have complicated feelings about the super hero genre. For one thing, a lot of my initial impressions of super heroes were back when I used to go to comic book shops in the 2010s. Generally, do to the way super heroes looked, I would move past their shelf and look at more interesting graphic novels. I still have 44 bullets on my to read list. Regardless of what cancel culture may bring months down the road. Additionally, my views of them were partially shaded by my general impression of the Real Life Superhero sub culture. Do not misunderstand, there are some nice people who are real life super hero cosplayers. But my general impression is that community is mildly psychotic.
Consider that I had largely grown up mostly reading Manga, so I new that super heroes could be down well, if you removed the stupid costume, and not stuck strictly to the formula of always make the MC a good guy, although these days it could be argued, based on what I have heard of current comics, is that they have even gotten to much of imperfect super hero characters. What I propose might not be a comfortable fact to those in the US that are largely used to the pure super hero genre, unadulterated by other genres in Science Fiction and Fantasy.
But Super Heroes as a concept needs to evolve. You can keep the super heroes, especially in vein of the way that Marvel had written their content in the past. I could see heroes like Spiderman continuing to be relevant in particular. However, a super hero is still a super hero even if they don’t wear the costume. The only thing that changes is that the characters identity is not concealed. But they need to blend more with other genres in speculative fiction, whether that be Epic Fantasy or Post Apocalyptic Science Fiction.
The best way to do it comes from the way Japan handles the Magical Girl genre, which has distant roots in character like Wonder Woman, but have evolved to become something of its own thing, with much of the time not only fighting villains more powerful than they are, but there is a specific variation, brought to by works like Battle Angel Alita, Elfen Lied, Saikano, and Ghost In The Shell, where the actual moral fabric of the main character is called into question. They also don’t wear a costume per say, with the exception of having their bodies augmented with the Cyborg characters.
However Lucy from Elfen Lied is an example where she is just born with these excessively powerful vectors, and isn’t actually what you’d call the good guy. Although certainly you feel sorry for her plight. But a common pattern in manga, with some exceptions like Sayanman from Dragonball Z, is that the entire work of fiction doesn’t necessarily revolve around the main characters “Saving The Day”.
Horror And Super Heroes, for example, is an extremely interesting variation of Super Hero content, and something I wish I saw more of, provided the creators were actually competent at their craft. It is true that in Manga what is considered good art is different from what they have in the west. But that is the other thing that turns me off with American style Super Heroes, the art is so realistic, that them having powers takes me out of the story.
But there is a way to make super hero content good and relevant into the 21st century, but it makes giving way to genres blends like Super Heroes and Cyberpunk, or Super Heroes and Post Apocalyptic to name a couple of examples. The issue to me, is that super heroes don’t necessarily need the costume to be such.