In my travels around the magical world of the innernets, I have discovered something interesting: Folks these days seem to be a little too eager to deem something as a “rip-off”. There are dozens of characters in our favorite fictional worlds who are homages, Captain Ersatzes and yes, blatant copies of what is or was successful, many of whom are considered classics these days. The practice of “swiping” is a venerable and sizeable part of our comics history, Faithful Spoilerites, and some examples are more noticeable than others… Welcome to Ten Things!
Browsing: Ten Things
When I was a kid, I was totally into cars, especially the weird concept cars of Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth, and spent a great deal of time reading about and identifying vehicles of all stripes and origins. Now that I’ve grown up to become the world’s biggest comic nerd (by volume), I tend to do the same thing with superheroes, but that doesn’t mean that the earlier knowledge has just gone away… Welcome to Ten Things!
The wonderful thing about comics is that, if you feel like it, you can discuss the depths of human feeling, the universality of heroes and heroic tropes, and the greater questions of individuality versus the greater good. And other times, you can just go “Dude! That’s guy’s entire dome is, like, totally en fuego, maaaan!” Welcome to Ten Things!
Lately, I’ve been thinking (and talking and writing and tweeting) a lot about the names chosen for our favorite superheroes. I firmly believe that Superman-ripoff-Victor is superior to Superman-ripoff-Supreme conceptually, simply because of his more successful name. But what happens when two separate super-dupers each manage to make a name work for them? Welcome to Ten Things!
There are a lot of power-conveying weapons, accessories and trinkets in the various fictional universes we love, but more than a few of them seem to have things in common… Some fictional heroes are about the head, some heroes are about the fist, but for a special few, the gimmick is all in the wrist! Welcome to Ten Things!
My grandma used to say “There are a lot of fish in the sea.” The sheer variety of tuna, tripe and coelacanths, however, pales in comparison with the sheer number of students and affiliates of Xavier’s School for Gifted Children. Buckle up, Faithful Spoilerites. These X-Men stories get complicated… Welcome to Ten Things!
It’s always tough when things from your youth change inexplicably. Spider-Man stops being married, Superman starts snapping necks, nobody remembers how to pronounce Constantine… Sometimes it’s about the creators, sometimes it’s about the fans, other times, it’s the external forces of law and intellectual property that alter the fabric of the pop culture that we all love… Welcome to Ten Things!
Anyone who has ever tried to nail down start and end dates for the various ages of comics knows, it’s difficult to achieve consensus. And even though most of us mark June 1938 as the debut of the superhero, that doesn’t mean that there weren’t antecedents to Superman’s brand of derring-do. Welcome to Ten Things!
Certain characters are recognized by everyone as representing a sea-change. Superman inspired the creation of the entire superhero genre, Batman is the source of an abundance of recurring hero tropes, Spider-Man inspired a realm of characters with human failings and personalities. But what of those characters who DON’T get the same recognition for their place in history? Welcome to Ten Things!
Last time ’round, we talked about the ways that super-types get named, this time we have a related topic. Since the dawn of superhero history, nearly 9 decades ago, we’ve seen a lot of heroes come and go, many of whom shared names. There are a lot of Spiders, a lot of Sentries, a lot of Protectors littering the halls of hero history, but a few names get used more often than others… Welcome to Ten Things!
If you’re a follower of the Compleat Major Spoilers Experience™, you follow the Major Spoilers crew on social media, and you know that lately I’ve been amusing myself with various mixing and matching super-heroes into themed collections, illuminating even the darkest corners of super-fiction with the light of nerdery… Welcome to Ten Things!