When are we getting material that's not
> All the supers are buttholes
> Supes is evil
> le joke who talks to fish
One subversion I can see having potential is having a strike at the successor shit, by portraying the new generation of heroes as a bunch of hacks who take the title of the guys before them more with little to no care for their legacy, while having none of their skills or principles, simply because they care about fame and can't be assed to build a name of their own.
>One subversion I can see having potential is having a strike at the successor shit, by portraying the new generation of heroes as a bunch of hacks who take the title of the guys before them more with little to no care for their legacy, while having none of their skills or principles, simply because they care about fame and can't be assed to build a name of their own.
I thought of this comic as I read OP.
Kingdom Come did this as well. My personal take on this kind of story is to portray a world where superheroes are influences and celebrities first and foremost and barely even bother with crime fighting. Then the aliens invade and the world is in real and present danger, and the only ones who can save it are not ready or willing.
so My Hero Academy?
>so My Hero Academy?
homie what part of my hero academia is even remotely a deconstruction? One punch man is more pf a deconstruction than boku no pico academia.
The pretty obvious satirical nature in Heroes being a cross section of celebrity and cops with quotas in an effort to standardize a world that can't be standardized. Schools inability to gauge student ability past the most superficial ways. Several of the villains are examples of pretending problems aren't problems until they literally blow up.
It's really bogged down by its best effort to be cliched shonenshit but the deconstruction is pretty fricking obvious.
Deconstruction is about making a statement on the thing that is being deconstructed rather than just making it realistic. My hero academia has some good world building but that's what it is, world building. To deconstruct something you need to play with the assumptions of the genre, which is why I consider "Watchmen" as the only true deconstruction of the superhero genre. The base assumption of superheroes is that two dudes with powers wearing spandex beating the crap out of each other decide the fate of the world. But what if the opposite was true? Superheroes exist but they don't matter.
But I don't consider Watchmen making a statement on what its deconstructing. I consider it using the assumptions of the deconstructed media to make a statement on larger concepts. The point isn't about superheroes, it's about humanity's use of loftier ideals and philosophy to cover up their vulnerability and fallibility. Similarly I think BnHA does similar thing, atleast when it's not being so basic. Also I don't find it realistic at all.
>But I don't consider Watchmen making a statement on what its deconstructing. I consider it using the assumptions of the deconstructed media to make a statement on larger concepts
I think it does both really.
>I think BnHA does similar thing, atleast when it's not being so basic. Also I don't find it realistic at all.
It's realistic in the sense that "realistic" means internally consistent or at least the state of the world makes sense within the logic of the story.
Didn't they kind of do that with Jupiter Ascending?
Almost everyone in The Just actually was an active superhero at some point, they just no long have anything to do.
>One subversion I can see having potential is having a strike at the successor shit, by portraying the new generation of heroes as a bunch of hacks who take the title of the guys before them more with little to no care for their legacy, while having none of their skills or principles, simply because they care about fame and can't be assed to build a name of their own.
That's the exact plot and premise of the Mark Millar netflix super hero show and it sucked.
Superheroes but they are actually upstanding citizens both in and out of costume and not reckless shitheads constantly making things worse
That's so crazy it just might work!
I like the whole PR thing The Boys does, but I'd rather it were filtered through real superheroes and not buttholes
I think it needs to be a balance really. Superheroes would be like athletes in the real world a few good fellows and the rests dumb meatheads and frickups.
Boko No Hero Academia
BNHA has a lot of potential. Shame it's a yearly high school shonen
even though it's not great it outsells American capeshit to kids because it captures the formula better than any current capeshit is doing.
It sure appeals to normies with terrible taste lmao
That shit practically disappeared as soon as the Overhaul arc was in development, what happened?
Overhaul and Mirio killed the hype and it sucks now. Bad writing. Still outsells capeship though lol
Eh, makes sense. It sounds like it went to entertaining, but stupid bullshit
Is the vigilante spinoff worth reading?
We already get that.
We already get that though.
> One subversion I can see having potential is having a strike at the successor shit, by portraying the new generation of heroes as a bunch of hacks who take the title of the guys before them more with little to no care for their legacy, while having none of their skills or principles, simply because they care about fame and can't be assed to build a name of their own.
That’s just "all supes are buttholes" as well
That's why you pit them against their predecessors and new heroes who actually want to do good, to show it's not so much about supes themselves but society, medias and generations evolve.
So what, you want DC to make a Kingdom Come animated movie?
Never read, so I wouldn't be able to tell.
That's literally just the plot of Kingdom Come
Unironically Invincible
Yes
isn't that one punch man?
>What capeshit deconstruction or parody would actually be clever or at least fresh?
No. It's time to stop.
An ironic subversion of the trope would be to tell a wholesome and sincere super hero story with clear heroes and villains that doesn't have the tension killing comedy quips of MCU films. A wholesome super hero film that told a sincere and positive story and wasn't full of pop culture references would really blow people's minds in 2022 as a breath of fresh air.
It has pretty standard superhero "comedy" but otherwise you're describing Shazam
No. Shazam is too dark. The parts where kid Billy almost gets drowned and where his mom straight up abandoned him are too dark for the tone we are looking for with this project. Also there are too many witty tension breaking quips from the Shazam family and cripple kid that makes things lean too MCU.
I feel like some serious darkness and hardship is what gives the hero's positivity value, or else they're just living in a fantasy that can't really be equated to the audiences' lives. It would come off just as insincere as any other super-schlock, just in a different way.
>I feel like some serious darkness and hardship is what gives the hero's positivity value, or else they're just living in a fantasy that can't really be equated to the audiences' lives. It would come off just as insincere as any other super-schlock, just in a different way.
1940s Superman cartoons are the tone I'm going for. Pure wholesome hero with no dark undertones or subversions fighting a baddy. It worked back then and it would work today.
>Perry tells Clark to help Lois instead of telling Clark to take the lead
SWJ shit was infecting comics even back then
The drowning works
You want some stakes for the hero
So basically what a Superman movie SHOULD be.
I saw a screencap with a Superman vs The Boys story that was pretty cool and wholesome
You happen to save it?
Do the opposite; legacy heroes who need to struggle with their mentors being incompetent or straight up buttholes.
>Do the opposite; legacy heroes who need to struggle with their mentors being incompetent or straight up buttholes.
that's every Disney movie of the clever snot nosed kids knowing more than their old mentors and parents, like Encanto for example.
Because it works: Adults are stupid and incompetent and kids are the ones who get things done. You are marketing primarily to kids and manchildren who don't see themselves as old even if they are.
Before Disney, stories of wise mentors teaching dumb kids lessons used to be the norm. It was that way for thousands of years and it worked. No one likes Disney snot nose protagonists who disrespect their elders.
>No one likes Disney snot nose protagonists who disrespect their elders.
Even if those elders are pigheaded, wrong, or straight up evil? You might love your homeroom teacher, but if she was a communist gulag guard you'd be questioning everything you'd ever been taught by her.
>Adults are stupid and incompetent and kids are the ones who get things done.
Somebody screencap this, holy shit
t.KND agent.
Absolutely based
>Because it works: Adults are stupid and incompetent and kids are the ones who get things done
Man, the sheer arrogance of zoomers it's going to kill us all one day.
Just remember, everyone was young and everyone thought their ways were better than the old ones.
>the supervillain is a major victim of circumstance
>his actions are still unjustifiable, and he makes no excuses for them
>incredibly insightful and not-so-secretly miserable
>actually likes the hero that opposes him
You just described both Megamind and the Joker.
Not really and jesus fricking christ no.
A comic that takes place in a dark and gritty world like Watchmen or Spawn, but the main character is an Adam West styled silver age hero who beats everyone's asses with the power of silver age logic.
You'd get scenes of other superheroes using guns and knives to fight badguys while he's using gadgets straight out of an 80s toy commercial.
This. I like this.
Bonus points in the Adam West Silver Age hero is a upstanding citizen while all the other dark and edgy heroes try and bring him down to their level ( but constantly fail)
There is a comic like that, the joke is that the Adam West and DKR batmans change places
Thanks for the rec, anon. I've read the first couple chapters and it's pretty good.
One Punch Man.
Everyone’s like
>What if Evil Superman
So
What if Evil Superman GOOD? Nazi Superman, genuinely believes in protecting the races by separating them and installing National Socialist governments in their societies, builds the Atlantropa dam, the big halls, sets up the israelites in Madagascar, etc.
>What if Evil Superman GOOD?
So Omni-Man?
>Nazi Superman, genuinely believes in protecting the races by separating them and installing National Socialist governments in their societies, builds the Atlantropa dam, the big halls, sets up the israelites in Madagascar, etc.
So Overman from Multiversity? Yeah however well meaning nazi supes was he still created a dystopia.
>So Overman from Multiversity?
In that story he's secretly supporting Uncle Sam and the freedom fighters by providing them with intel. Which allows them to drop the watchtower on Berlin, killing hundreds of innocent people. Sure they're Nazis. But still.
>In that story he's secretly supporting Uncle Sam and the freedom fighters by providing them with intel. Which allows them to drop the watchtower on Berlin, killing hundreds of innocent people. Sure they're Nazis. But still.
True but its the kind of story where everyone is some kind of evil at the same time nazi supes was a lot more sympathetic than you would expect.
>What if Evil Superman GOOD? Nazi Superman, genuinely believes in protecting the races by separating them and installing National Socialist governments in their societies, builds the Atlantropa dam, the big halls, sets up the israelites in Madagascar, etc.
Would be very based
Red Son Superman but Nazi?
I had an idea for a story where a group of regular people kill the heroes watching over their city and take their place. They do this because they think the heroes are incompetent buttholes but really they're just deranged buttholes who want to impose their own extremely specific ideology on the city. The old heroes, while prone to the same mistakes as any normal person, were doing just fine.
It's like a subversion of overdone superhero subversions.
Worm kinda I guess
None of the superheroes are evil minus Scion and even the most evil organization is ultimately trying to be good
Most of the subversion/deconstruction stuff comes from
>giant events happening regularly where supervillains and monsters destroy cities isn't something that anything easily bounces back from and humanity is slowing dying from it
>people with superpowers using their powers to fight/do crime instead of becoming rich off solving the world's problems would only happen if the power worm inside their brain was pushing them to fight and higher powers actively conspiring to create superhero/supervillains and plots for them deliberately to clash
>there is no reason why some hero hasn't fricking killed the Joker yet unless he's low-key got some sort of superpower that makes it so that they unconsciously spare him
There was actually a thread a while back that talked about this similar topic. We were brainstorming what a modern day version of Kingdom Come would look like in reaction to modern day 'superhero' comics.
And the conclusions you came to?
https://desuarchive.org/co/thread/126783001/#126783001
>if it followed the same idea as Kingdom Come, you'd have a plot where some the old generation of mostly-white, mostly-straight, mostly-male superheroes retire in disillusionment with the world, and are replaced by a new generation of gay brown diversity heroes, led by an obvious parody of one of the big modern heroes like Miles Morales. In Kingdom Come, the new generation were preoccupied with meaningless fighting and partying, now the new heroes would be focused on self-righteous outrage against ordinary people and thought-policing rather than being superheroes, kept making excuses for bad guys rather than fighting them, and let the world go to Hell, forcing the old generation to come out of retirement to save the world. The Shazam role would be taken by a classic hero, utterly subverted and corrupted by a modern revamp, so someone like Iceman, Carol Danvers or Alan Scott, and it would have a heavy handed message against identity politics and cancel culture, and that the people who fight crime should be dealing with actual violent crimes, not wrongthink and hurting people's feelings.
That's fricking moronic
Cope redditor
Are the classic heroes held accountable for their numerous self afflicting actions as vigilantes and pretty much being illegal cops?
Aside from no-costume TV shows about super powers, the Jupiter Ascending and Powers adaptations were both dead on arrival. Did anyone actually know a Powers show existed? Just figure out what went wrong I guess. Or wait until somebody grabs Top 10
Cape heroes are good at their jobs and good people, but the citizens are constantly suing them, forcing the rise of the superlawyer.
(the opening of Incredibles as a full movie)
If superheroes are nothing but good and benevolent creatures theyd be boring.
Superheroes if they were run like local Labour unions. the fight would be between the union and illegal aliens (but actually from outer space) who want to do the super jobs for free, leading to an all out super fight.
>Superheroes if they were run like local Labour unions
So Venture Bros
yeah except venture bros does it with villains.
https://parahumans.wordpress.com/
Worm, really. Still good shit. Just ignore the sequel.
I stopped reading Ward after they took down the backwater incest cult, what happen
Lots of shit. But Ward is kinda shit compared to Worm itself. But it ends with a big fight of them throwing the Simurgh into the Sleeper's reality warping field and fricks her up.
At least the Endbringers were fricking cool.
Like ol' Leviathan here.
And Behemoth was fun.
Extermination was a top 3 arc
Some highlights
>The evil super villain dictator from another world min controls everyone but she gets betrayed
>Rapist healer sister takes over another earth with shitty butthole kid that turns into monsters
>The stalker black girl was blackmailing/holding her parents hostage to pretend everything was ok with her. In the end she realizes that she was only ever happy when she was forcing other people to love her and almost does the same thing to her friends
>Rain's life suck
>Humans get tired of the supers' bullshit and start violent attacks against them
>The young members of understeers call b***h "aunt Rachel"
>Bonesaw did nothing wrong but got choke slammed by her phycologist and then exiles herself into another dimension
>Tattletale tells the main character that she deserved to get raped
>Multiple characters turn into giant monsters and reality starts falling apart
>Sveta was trans and the other freaks hate her because she didn't put revenge over saving the world
>A bunch of characters from worm come back to life but they forgot most of their lives outside of being superheroes
>They fix entropy somehow
>Tattletale tells the main character that she deserved to get raped
What?
If there is one thing Worm does do well, it has really awesome characters.
Also shows how bug control is an awesome power to have.
"Bug control" is not a correct descriptor of her powers though. It's not a presumably weak power used creatively, it's outright busted power that the story tells you is weak. Also the narrative has a bad habit of putting her up against foes that would be weak to the insects or otherwise giving her an out in order to win fights.
She is very dependent of her team thought, most of her fight are won because of the people he has with her, the problem is mostly on her solo fights
she's also dependant on her enemies acting like morons for no reason except jobbing
It's a long, sprawling story yet not one enemy ever brings a can of bug spray when expecting a bug controller.
Armsmaster does twice, bonesaw does, even kid wind later on
God, why does Wildbow hate his fans so much?
Ward has so many moments that are spiteful as hell
No fricking clue, man. Wibbles is a weird creator. But he made a fascinating world.
Reminds me of some of the more insane comic book authors/artists/writers.
>Reminds me of some of the more insane comic book authors/artists/writers.
name them
I imagine it's resentment for how Worm/Ward was the only thing that ever really got him on the map despite his other stories before and after. Bitterness over inability to get out of a work's shadow happens to a lot of writers: some get more prima-donna about it than others.
It was ok. Some arcs were pretty bad, the pacing gets too frantic and there's a lot of asspulls, but that's normal in this genre.
Great lore, characters and use of powers though.
I'd say the highs are really high but it was quite a few lows that are grating. It could use some editing and rewrite in some parts
>Just ignore the sequel
well I read the first chapters they don't seem too bad
since people like to compare "superheroes but bad" to the greek gods, why not just cut out the middle man and make something about the pettiness of the greek gods
or the norse gods
or the egyptian gods
or hell just make a fantasy world with a loosely inspired cast of original gods
rick riordan already claimed that idea
Neil Gaiman did that with American Gods, I believe. Though I’m not sure how well the story would translate to comics
A movie adaptation of The Metropolitan Man.
Evil Batman.
Every fricking superhero deconstruction has an evil Superman, but you almost never see evil Batman. So frick it, let's have evil Batman.
Yes, I know Batman: White Knight exists. I mean evil Batman but done well.
Better yet: evil Batman, and the Superman expy is the GOOD guy, who has to stop evil Batman.
evil batman is just fricking ridiculous
good joker then
Batman White Knight, or Last Knight on Earth. Both did it.
DC has an entire universe where the bad guys are good, and the good guys are bad. it's earth 3
Superman kind of shits all over the Evil Batman thing though, the issue with Evil Batman is he just becomes a normal ass supergenius villain. The only real subversion can come from if it's ACTUALLY Batman and examining him as a character in that scenario.
Evil Superman became the cliche it is because it's basically what if Superpowerful paragon of virtue WASN'T, What if Dark Broody Antihero was Dark Brood Villain, doesn't work.
Also the objective is flawed, the good "Subversive" Capeshit is usually born from wanting to tell an actual story using capeshit as an apt metaphor. Only Brainlets get stuck on the first level of this and just think "Ah it's about comic books". When you go at it from the angle of purely wanting to subvert expectations you end up with edgy trash that has nothing to say.
Think of something to say, then twist Superheroes into a metaphor for what you're trying to say, but since you're here asking for ideas I doubt you have the writing chops to do that in a compelling way.
You know why that's a bad idea
The power disparity between the two makes the conflict incredibly unjustifiable
When you make Superman evil you get the classic underdog storyline with Batman
Not the same thing with Batman
Look at BWL or Owlman
These are chaos crisis tier threats who don't even care let alone want to win half the time
That's because you're not approaching it the right way. Batman is a detective and scientist as well as a martial artists, so the conflict with evil Batman would revolve around his use of intelligence gathering, subterfuge, and misdirection rather than him putting on a suit of kryptonite and playing king of the mountain.
>Batman is a detective and scientist as well as a martial artists, so the conflict with evil Batman would revolve around his use of intelligence gathering, subterfuge, and misdirection rather than him putting on a suit of kryptonite and playing king of the mountain.
All that is still insignificant compares to the power of a god(Superman) who can out match that with his powets and his ability to comprehend more than Batman, if you were to write Superman logically instead of a moral weakling who gets tripped up underhanded basic schemes from Bats like kidnapping Lois or the Kents or something.
Batman goes bad? Superman can just heat vision him from orbit. Problem solved. Superman goes bad? Batman has to get creative and run and rally the troops to even have a sliver of a chance of beating him.
People like Underdogs succeeding despite the odds. Not onesided beatdowns.
Pretty much unless Batman kills Superman immediately/underhandedly it makes no sense unless you somehow think of a good dynamic/reason he doesn't. Like Superman gets nerfed to frick because he played by the typical playbook while Batman knew he'd do just that and stabbed him in the back.
That or Batman still has a soft spot for his old friend and just locks him away. I guess if you have restraint that's a good metaphor for what Evil Batman's underlying mentality....probably a really obvious one.
The heroes have their own union...which is owned by the mob..which is run by supervillains.
In Irredeemable. The first thing Plutonian (the superman of the irredeemable universe) does is kill the Batman and Robin of the universe, Inferno and Hornet. The only reason Injustice Superman didn't kill Bruce right away was because he hadn't gone completely evil until the end of year one.
Yea no, why the hell does this board constantly act like Batman isn’t the most overpowered character in comic books? Superman never heatbeams Lex Luthor to death but he can to someone much more stronger and faster who knows ALL of his tendencies and weaknesses? Batman would be the most horrifying villain ever, he completely mindfricks his opponents through gaslightning and manipulation, trap them, torture them, Batman would also hide the fact that he was evil for the first half of his run too which is overlooked, it isnt like he would just snap and become the antichrist like Supes, no, Batman would start off by slowly picking off all of his villains one by one and leaving no traces it was him doing it, he would lead a crusade trying to find this mystery murderer which would lead to deaths of some individual members of the justice league, and by the time Superman and the others figure out its him all along its too late, theyre caught in his web and now have to play by his rules
It would be a lot of hiding and cat and mouse with this homie basically
Evil Batman would snap months, probably YEARS before he actually turns “evil”, he would plan meticulously how he would take over the world, how he would prepare for the Jsutice League trying to stop him, who to get rid of, bribe, get to join him, etc, etc
The reality is Batman with prep time is the strongest fricking character in the dc universe because he has everything at his disposal and Evil Bats gives you an INFINITE sandbox to play with this dynamic
The problem with this is that Superman is so overpowered that you either have to nerf him DKR style or make him act like a moron in his use of his powers. And I mean, it's pretty easy to just do that from a writing standpoint, but you'll never fully get around people saying "why didn't Superman just do X?"
Evil Superman is more dangeroua at being unstoppable than evil Batman who needs resources and timing, Superman already breaks the lawa of time and space and represents a eldtrich level of superiorty to a human doing thinga that surpass said human in capability and capacity both mentally and physically even as a genius mastermind superman beats batman.
This is all negated by the fact that Superman has an obvious weakness that can be used against him and can be outsmarted, Batman is arguably the smartest being in the galaxy and his only real weakness is being a regular human and even thats not true, hes pretty much superhuman
All you have to do is shoot batman with a projectike and he dies. Superman weakness kyrptonite is rare and not a surefire way to stop him. Superman can outsmart batman if hes written as ruthless and sharp as Batman.
But Superman isn’t as smart or ruthless as Batman, thats my point, you’d have a hard time catching evil Batman off guard to just shoot him
DC did an Elseworld story like that in the 90s, where Catwoman was the hero and Batman was a villain.
There was also a Supergirl Elseworlds where Batgirl basically imprisoned everyone in Gotham City. The story didn't really treat her as a villain even though it should have.
I had an idea for what is basically a reverse Wanted. In that all the superheroes banded together and turned the world into something out of the Silver Age. So you'd get things like 90s edgy heroes going up against kooky bank robbers and mad scientists.
Isn't the second thing already in Astro City?
I had this kind of idea, but instead of Superman I'd use someone like Wildcat.
It's more of an underdog situation.
>Good Superman stoping Evil Batman
No it should be Good Batman stoppung evil Batman, because Supes is a god like figure who handles things on that scale which would put off people and accuse him of being a bully to the weak.
>Evil Batman.
Only Mark Millar would have the balls to make something so outrageous.
An alien superhero raised in a small Earth community fights crime and injustice across the globe. As time goes on, crime only seems to increase, and the world get worse no matter how many plots he stops or crooks he catches. Eventually he starts noticing that not only are the "main villains" the same, but the henchmen and supporters are too. After following one of his oldest villains in secret after his arrest, he finds out that the governments are letting criminals off the hook, and that average people in their communities consider them heroes. In fact, they're legally not criminals at all, as local laws consider their activities just and moral.
This culminates in the hero returning to his small community and finally looking critically on all his beliefs, seeing just how much of what he took to be true to be less clear than he thought. Torn between doing his duty and questioning it, he closes himself off to the world.
I'm not good enough of a writer to come up with a resolution, but it would at least be interesting.
This seems like the sort of thing that ends with a god emperor Superman situation. Like he snaps when he sees how futile everything is just kills everyone he thinks is a bad guy. The subversion would be him actually making a functioning society because of it.
I think more geopolitical exploration of capeshit would be fresh. The world has to deal with a rogue micro-nation of supers who does shit like creating supers in other countries, destabilizing them with insurgencies and wrestling influence away from the existing hegemony.
There could be resurgence of nazism with the ubermensch being real, christian neocons lobbying for direct intervention, false flag operations to justify micro-nation expansion, proxy wars with usage of supers on both sides, insurgencies and movements that install supers as head of state, all the edgy stuff like experimentation, trafficking, persecution.
It'd be an exercise in power backed by military and economic might vs power backed by individual physical might.
That's a whole lot of words to say "Evil Batman is just Lex Luthor."
Marvel is already a deconstruction of itself.
the only character that gets deconstructed is Superman because what if muh perfect superhero killed people I'm so edgy
There actually was a deconstruction of the fantastic four. It was in Venture Brothers with Professor Impossible.
Bad people honestly, earnestly and sincerely trying to be super heroes because they were taught "it's the right thing to do".
That's just Kelly's Deadpool
Its not a deconstruction of its played straight though. The deconstruction is they do good and the right thing yet they still act like theyre above everything because their powers and resoruces make them gods and they sometimes act accordinly to that notion.
That's Superior Spider-Man.
Supes are real and are integrated into society. Supe cops, governors, scientists, religious figures , etc. Some are criminals/villains/terrorists. Society on both sides has to deal with the supe/normal caste-like system that emerges and the conflicts and relationships that result.
Period piece supes. Roman, Golden Age of Piracy, Mesoamericans vs Conquistadors, ...
Capeshit is so boring and uninspired that there really isn't much to critique, deconstruct, or parody. Any attempt will stop being ironic and the creators will inevitably begin sniffing their own farts.
its all very boring
Again, critiquing media itself is always up its own ass and shallow. You use familiarity of the medium/genre to critique and parody something else. If Metal Gear was purely "oh you like abusing NPCs do you? What kind of butthole you must be." it'd be lame fricking shit.
>be most powerful superhero in world
>apart of hero organization or whatever team
>only morally good hero, while others are pieces of shit
>eventually tired of their disgusting behavior and reach a breaking point
>kills off every person in the world with super powers and returns the planet to just normal people
>destroys Israel
>retires permanently in peace and solitude never to be heard from again
I don't know, just something off the top of my head.
It's literally all been done before. Just do it well.
>robber trying to blast apart a vault figures out tungsten carbide sabots can beat steel, men of
>lose their monopoly on violence
>no longer needed to stop villains
>retire into hasbeen celeb debauchery
>some go on destructive benders
>get hunted by vigilantes
>someone wants their guts to synthesize ambrosia
>???
there was a better cover example I can't find, of guys with the same barrett sniper rifle and HK-baseball hats out to hunt
Frick, I love Empowered, what a fun comic
>someone uses their powers to kill people at a school
>some superhero specifically tarjets black people
>some superhero fight in wars representing their country
Sounds like hero academia crossed over with the boys
De
I had this concept of an idea I'm working on. It's a basic story of a normie getting superpowers, but the deconstruction is that it's from an alien parasite that kills the host. It goes like this:
>Space Parasite of pure energy finds host.
>Enters body and essentially shuts down their brain.
>Reads their memories to better fit into their host society.
>Puppet the dead corpse.
>Essentially, Devilman but it's superheroes.
One of the parasites fricks up and thinks it's host memories are its own. She finds out and is disgusted, not only at herself but at the fact that previous hosts personality and infected are not 1-to-1, and her friends and family like her new "personality..."
(Cont.)
Another twist is that it's not a typical alien invasion story. The parasites genuinely want to help their host species. They actively hunt out and infect outcasts, loners, depressed types, etc.
Essentially, people no one will miss or if they did have a "sudden personality change" then it's a change for the better. The conflict comes in when it's discovered there are other alien species in the galaxy that are incompatible with the parasites. From hive minds, anti-psychic races, or races that are literally cursed and haunted. When word gets out that the host planet is essentially an ancient galaxy destroying WMD, it becomes an all out rat race to get it. Some to destroy it, some to control it, few even try to activate it.
>One of the parasites fricks up and thinks it's host memories are its own. She finds out and is disgusted, not only at herself but at the fact that previous hosts personality and infected are not 1-to-1, and her friends and family like her new "personality..."
Pretty nice take on the Devilman concept.
Pic related
it kinda sucked
What would truly be fresh is not anything to do with capes.
>I think an intergenerational conflict would be hot, new and consumable
That sucks.
A deconstruction that explore the implication of super powered normies taking on crimes while basically doing it for free, with a little bit of exploration on why superhero (read illegal vigilantism but with super power) would be tolerated, then reconstruct it.
A story where superheroes give up on crimefighting because the citizens are little shits.
A comics exploring the uselessness of super powers, in a society where strenght is useless 90% of the time.
Here’s my deconstruction: supers are a bunch of weirdos… but lovable weirdos
Gloomy bullshit has become the norm so a deconstruction would be to go back to optimism, but if you want to deconstuct rather than simply reject the current paradigm, you'd do a bait and switch where the superhero seems like he's going to come off as a naive doof and some wisecracker who thinks he's stupid is supposed to be the audence stand-in, but then shit gets real and the superhero is genuinely heroic while the complainer is useless and the latter is struck by his moral inferiority, in tears realizing the superhero is by far the better man and his jibes have been meaningless. I imagine a scene where the hero tells the complainer what he's going to do and for him to run away, his pure intentions being what sets off the complainer's crisis of confidence. After all his sour attitude, the hero treats him as a life worth protecting.
and its the most obvious one
>guy gets superpower
>uses it to rape
>he's so good that no one ever finds out
>the show is just a man slowly escalating rape schemes and no one knows anything
Fresh would be harder than clever, but I wouldn't expect either of them. People have been playing around with parodying or deconstructing capeshit for half a century at this point, there's not much ground left to cover. Asking for original ways to do it isn't the right approach, instead you should look at what people have already done, ask yourself where it falls short, and then see if you can come up with a way of improving or building on that aspect.
An Injustice style story with Evil Batman actually could work with the right premise. For instance, Batman sets out to fix all the world's problems but realizes that first he has to eliminate all metahuman as they are the biggest threat to humanity. But instead of killing everyone he comes up with a way to depower every super on the planet. The conflict is Superman, Wonder Woman, etc try to stop Bruce's descent into tyranny while coping with their own powerlessness.
This has already been done in DC
Its called act of god or something
Wasn’t Act of God, Batman still a good guy. It was just everyone lost their powers so nothing changed for the bat family
I'd do a story about the opposite. Superheroes, by virtue of being superheroes, have somehow become immortal. Bruce Wayne is over 100 years old and still as spry as ever as Batman. Same with the rest of them. They're treated as icons of society, and while they generally decline to get directly involved in politics, governments nonetheless defer to their better judgment.
Superhero immortality is being caused by [insert extra-dimensional alien here] who's using superheroes to cause Earth to become stagnant, overly reliant not just on superheroes in general, but on the exact same superheroes, not allowing new ones to get established because they're not "the real ones." The end goal is to make humanity easily manipulated and easy to conquer once the power that be eliminates what's making the heroes immortal. The heroes discover this and act preemptively, training a new generation of heroes to replace them, preparing the world to progress in their absence, and defeat the villain, accepting they must die for the benefit of all.
If I had to write a superhero deconstruction story, for the most part, superheroes would be legitimately good people that want to do the right thing. However, they're beholden to laws and procedures, just like cops, feds, and soldiers, so they're ultimately unable to make any meaningful changes.
It'd be a critique on how corporations have perverted the idea of the superhero over the past century. Originally, they were people that fought societal ills such as corrupt authorities, and war profiteers. But these days, they're just defenders of the status quo.
>If I had to write a superhero deconstruction story, for the most part, superheroes would be legitimately good people that want to do the right thing. However, they're beholden to laws and procedures, just like cops, feds, and soldiers, so they're ultimately unable to make any meaningful changes.
Thats just your typical Superhero plot.
The Boys is a deconstruction of superheroes COMPANIES more so than superheroes themselves. Vought is basically a brutal takedown if Disney and Warner
Barely. There is a reason why Vought American is named as such.
It's deconstructing Japanese superhero tropes primarily, but it's also heavily skewing X-Men. An underlying tension in MHA is that only some of the student body will actually get to be superheroes, while the rest basically went through all of the training and fighting for nothing.
No bothers to fight her during a heavy rainfall either, which is all you'd need to massively gimp her powers.
>No bothers to fight her during a heavy rainfall either, which is all you'd need to massively gimp her powers.
pretty sure there were two fight during the rain, i think the autor jut ignored that woul frick with her bugs and just had her fighting normally still.
But poison and bug zapper like technology was used against her a couple of times.
TV Vought mocks big corporations so much. They even did a riff of that shit Pepsi ad
Most people don't really know what deconstruction even really is. It's one of techniques of post modernism that literally breaks apart a narrative or an idea. You need to take a narrative or an idea that you tear down to reveal that there is no narrative that's "right" for everyone. You would need to take the modern narrative and deconstruct this thing showing it's flaws.
I've deconstructed this idea of deconstruction and found it's not "right" for me so I'm going to stick with my own version of it.
Deconstruct deez nutz.
>When are we getting material that's not
>> All the supers are buttholes
>> Supes is evil
>> le joke who talks to fish
The first two are a lot more interesting than the reverse because there's a lot more excitement/tension in dealing with evil supes.
And Aquaman's super-power of being able to talk to fish is something that every kid found moronic.
Either way all good deconstructions are done in some capacity or another. The superhero hype is on its way out.
>One subversion I can see having potential is having a strike at the successor shit, by portraying the new generation of heroes as a bunch of hacks who take the title of the guys before them more with little to no care for their legacy, while having none of their skills or principles, simply because they care about fame and can't be assed to build a name of their own.
Already done, it's called Jupiter's Legacy.
What about an incredibly accident prone Superman? Like a comic book version of Tucker and Dale vs Evil.
>NotSuperman is just trying to use his gifts for the greater good but keeps fricking up.
>Creates untold destruction just trying to fly to a crime scene.
>Smears a supervillain by crashing into him
>Keeps failing upward until he becomes emperor of the planet.
>NotBatman keeps trying to place a motive and plan to the hero's antics and slowly goes mad when he can't find one.
Thats Splendid from Happy Tree Friends
Considering about everyone and their grandpa's written up stories where gaining superpowers turns people into jackasses, do the opposite. Show a world where gaining superpowers actually leads to turning people naturally turning good and have to actively fight against that inclination to still be evil. And that's because a lot of superpowers require the mind to outright expand its capacity in order to process the new super senses or intelligence or limits it has on its newfound strength, leading to a stronger understanding of the true makeup of the world and mankind's fragile standing within it. And someone of Superman's strength is practically viewing the makeup of the universe every day without thinking of it, so he naturally becomes an almost messianic figure because he would find it unconscionable to otherwise act aloof to the state the world is in.
From there, if you wanted to make it uplifting, you could show how this newfound sense of altruism is what helps keep most supers going despite how dark and vicious the world seems to be in turn, and how they can see their efforts very slowly but surely turning improving mankind even if it'll take a very long time. Or if you wanted to make it depressing, just focus on the frustration of those heroes who desperately want others to see and understand the world as they do, but struggle because it's like they're talking to children, having to use limited words to convey far grander ideas and concepts to underdeveloped beings. Maybe some snap under the pressure, maybe some outright give up and turn hermit. But most just keep on going, hoping that their efforts may one day be understood even as society shows no current day appreciation nor understanding for their altruistic actions.
>Considering about everyone and their grandpa's written up stories where gaining superpowers turns people into jackasses, do the opposite.
It wouldn't work because boring heroes aren't interesting.
>Considering about everyone and their grandpa's written up stories where gaining superpowers turns people into jackasses, do the opposite. Show a world where gaining superpowers actually leads to turning people naturally turning good and have to actively fight against that inclination to still be evil. And that's because a lot of superpowers require the mind to outright expand its capacity in order to process the new super senses or intelligence or limits it has on its newfound strength, leading to a stronger understanding of the true makeup of the world and mankind's fragile standing within it. And someone of Superman's strength is practically viewing the makeup of the universe every day without thinking of it, so he naturally becomes an almost messianic figure because he would find it unconscionable to otherwise act aloof to the state the world is in.
Sounds lame.
Dr. Manhattan is already an exploration of this idea
Person with superpowers Uses their powers to help humanity in non-superhero fashion.
Are there any Spidey buttholes?
would be too based and charismatic
Webweaver
This episode more or less
Basically
>Humanity relies on superman expy
>Superman expy gets captured by villains
>Villains underestimates humanity as weaklings without hero so doesn't curbstomp them immediately
>World wide panic
>Eventually, humanity puts their differences aside and works together to save superman expy through unconventional means
underestimates humanity as weaklings without hero so doesn't curbstomp them immediately
Never will happen since humans can become superheroes as powerful as the superman expy.
Do an average week in the life of Superman, but instead of just showing or focusing on the superheroics, focus more on the more mundane stuff in between, like the personal stuff that Clark enjoys doing or wants to do. Show him wanting to sit down on a Sunday afternoon and drink a beer while watching the game, or catching up on a series he likes. But also show how this might be interrupted by people who need Superman's help and how that can effect him. Like say he has a date night with Lois that they've been putting off for weeks, they get ready and head to the restaurant, but just as they do, Clark hears someone that needs help on the other side of Metropolis. Is it something he should go to, or can he leave it to the authorities? If he goes, what type of strain could that put on his and Lois' relationship? Obviously they'd work through it, but it would still be something that causes some issues.
Basically show Superman as someone who is, beneath the red cape and jocks, a normal decent person, who has to make choices as to what/how much of their life they're willing to sacrifice or give up to help people and do good and how that effects him and his friends.
>Ways to make Superman more boring
>this post
>One subversion I can see having potential is having a strike at the successor shit, by portraying the new generation of heroes as a bunch of hacks who take the title of the guys before them more with little to no care for their legacy, while having none of their skills or principles, simply because they care about fame and can't be assed to build a name of their own.
I wouldn't mind a slightly less-negative version of this, where a major superhero goes missing and a woman or minority decides to assume the role for the sake of glory/validation or whatever.
They do an OK job of it, but are incensed that they're not hailed and celebrated for their work, and claims, like they think the original hero was and put the difference down to their gender/minority status,.
Eventually, the original returns and meets their successor. When they talk, the original explains that a lot of the time they were hated and mistreated by people regardless of what they did, and that they carried on, because what mattered to them was helping people, rather than being celebrated.
The successor reluctantly takes this to heart, and slowly starts to grow into the role, worrying less about whether they're as popular as their predecessor, and more about trying to do the right thing.
You've just described the time when Wally West took over as the Flash when Barry Allen died in Crisis on Infinite Earths except Wally learns that lesson on his own.
What I would find interesting is superheroes feeling more kinship towards supervillains than civilians. They aren't actively malicious but very concerned about not letting regular people raisebabove their station and solve supervillain problem for good.
>supes are the WWE
>Everything is staged and special effects but somehow everyone thinks it's legit
>Main cast aren't all psychopaths, most are just famous people with a bit of an occasional juicing and cocaine problem
>Superman is a heel but otherwise played completely straight for comedy, regularly gets kicked in the shins by orphans he's saving
>Four issues in aliens show up thinking this was legit and the earth is home to insanely dangerous people
>Turns out they didn't even see the capeshit part, being light years away they just saw WrestleMania III and assumed there was no way to bodyslam Andre the Giant without superpowers
>BTFO the government
>Blow up half the planet
>Somehow our heroes manage to rig enough pyrotechnics to stop a small convoy from reaching Comic Con
>Now they must stop the invasion while also larping as superheroes or a horde of nerds will just kill them to make the aliens go away and finding increasinngly stupid names for every fight like "ultimate crisis of final crisis of crisis of destiny : breakpoint"
>Issue 11 introduces the aliens secret weapon : their own superhero team made of anime character parodies
>Not even appropriate ones, half of them are lifted from moeshit
>They're all wires and greenscreen too
>Final fight is in a parking lot and extremely disappointing
>Last page is a guy on YouTube saying the series was a 9/11 allegory and getting ratioed
>MY FICTIONAL DEPICTION OF THIS FICTIONAL THING IS MORE REALISTIC THAN X's FICTIONAL DEPICTION OF THING
Superheroes aren't real, so you can't say with any certainty that a person with superpowers would have moral alignment like some kind DnD race. It's like saying GRRM's dragons are more "realistic" than Tolkien's when dragons are fictional creature that can do and be anything the writer decides. Or somehow trying to convince me that aliens or sentient AI are going to end up enslaving humanity because cynical writers think that's more "realistic" when we literally have no evidence of aliens or sentient AI interacting with humans. It's all make believe.
Have a story with a very powerful superhero, but no supervillains, alien invasions, or other super-problems.
Some normal well meaning but kinda bland guy gains superman-tier powers in a cosmic accident, and sets out to save the world. But he isn't all that smart. He really wants to help people and to make the world a better place, but he doesn't know HOW. Yes, he can punch Mt Everest into gravel in under a minute, but thats not exactly helpful. He can take the entire nuclear arsenal of the Earth to the face and not suffer a scratch, but even if he wanted to strongarm the nations of the world... to what end?
Its a story about a guy trying to do the right thing, but realizing that the world is much more complex than he is prepared for and his attempts to use his vast power to solve even small problems cause suffering for others. After numerous setbacks, he decides to listen to the experts and puts together a team of smart people from various countries and disciplines whose sole job is to figure out what can he do, himself, right now to make things better. Its their job to explain to him the cultural and historical context before he involves himself in a civil war, or to explain that he can help fight climate change by moving these solar deflectors into place to reduce incoming sunlight, etc.
This goes on for a while, and while he IS doing good and some things are improving, there are a lot of problems he sees that he isn't allowed to solve. Not that he can't solve them, he's just told he can't do that. And eventually he realizes that the people he brought on to advise him have agendas of their own, and none of them are going to tell him anything that violates their own interests. And he decides to go back to doing what he thinks is right, a bit wiser than when he first started and with a more open perspective regarding his own biases and shortcomings.
Sounds like and
are the same story at different parts of the arc.
It will never happen but a WORM adaption would be kinda cool i think
While on the topic of Worm
A Superhero that realizes he isn't making the world a better place and instead just saves the status quo which is shit so he starts killing billionaires and Republicans
Basically the premise of The Authority, except being published by a major company meant they couldn’t be shown doing anything too based. Except for that time when they shoved the President through a portal into downtown Fallujah.
I kinda wanted to do the whole world with a shit ton of capes thing but set in a small midwest town. Its a whole "genuine threat to the world is in a small whatever town and these guys are the only people who can stop them" situation. I was thinking these would be guys with horrible superpowers. I was thinking of a kid who can convert matter into atomic level blast but he can't control when he absorbs matter or shoots out the blast leaving him unable to speak. Their leader is a wienery hothead that has a fire based power but he shoots these fire balls and etc because of a painful wart pimple looking thing that leaves him in constant pain. Thats so far the idea of the team's members.
Super heroes are aliens that have come to protect humans from themselves. The villains are humans that see alien meddling as disruptive to humans ability to self determine. Basically a reverse prime directive story.
Let's talk about the no-kill catch-and-release policy supers tend to have. Obviously, it's primarily a result of the format - we don't want superheroes to take supervillains out permanently by either killing, securely imprisoning or rehabilitating them because soon there would be nobody left.
But what would drive them to actually act like that, in-universe? What if they don't really care about non-empowered victims and basically see supervillains as kin. What if they think thousands deaths is a price worth paying to treat only people who matters humanely?
You know the parodies of spy/superhero fictions with supervillain guilds and rules and treating it as a hobby? What if we take it seriously?
What if most supervillains used to be heroes, but are suffering from some kind of mind control or other form of corruption that has turn them 'evil' in some mass event? These villains were friends and colleagues just a year ago. They are imprisoned rather than killed because the hope is that they can be cured, though no cure yet exists.
This makes sense as some kind of twist, but I think mind control is inherently lame. Characters are supposed to make decisions to further plot, not have plot dictate their decisions.
>But what would drive them to actually act like that, in-universe?
The government is perfectly capable of dealing with supervillains; the superheroes can simply get on scene faster, don't cost anything out of a government budget, and provide a convenient scapegoat in case things go south. The relationship between the superheroes and government is one of mutual benefit as long as no one fricks up. Tension comes from villains escaping government custody, which piss off the heroes, and the collateral from superfights, which piss off the government.
Heavy enough rain would leave her functionally powerless and negate her traps and armor.
Honestly, Astro City is some of the best deconstruction of superhero comics you'll ever read. At least, up until about 7-8 years ago. After that the stuff really drops off.
>One subversion I can see having potential is having a strike at the successor shit, by portraying the new generation of heroes as a bunch of hacks who take the title of the guys before them more with little to no care for their legacy, while having none of their skills or principles, simply because they care about fame and can't be assed to build a name of their own
Reminds me of this post. But it's more reconstruction than deconstruction I think.