LogFAQs > #882313133

TigerTycoon posted...

Inconsistent portrayal of strength is a problem with American comics in general because they can't have the hero fighting the strongest villains all the time

Arguably a larger factor is the rotating cast of writers on any given comic title that isn't independent and runs for more than a few issues.

When Writer A establishes a character at a specific level of strength, but then Writer B comes along and ups their power level, only for Writer C to dramatically scale them back before Writer D turns them into a memetic god, it becomes really hard to have anything resembling a consistent view of just what a character is capable of.

Superman's actually a perfect example of this. In the 40s when he was first created, he was literally just a really strong guy (he didn't even FLY as much as he could leap really far, sort of the way the Hulk does), but into the 50s and 60s he kept getting stronger and stronger until the joke basically became that he'd invent new powers for himself every week. Then 1980s Superman was dramatically depowered to make him more believable, in the 90s they gave him a few more powers and made him a bit stronger again, and the current version of the character is one of the weaker versions.

Batman's the same way - is he a gritty tortured soul or a relatively light-hearted crusader? Someone who absolutely refuses to kill, someone who isn't necessarily against killing but simply refuses to use a GUN to do so, or someone who has absolutely no problem shooting a bad guy if he needs to? Is he a street-level hero beating up mostly normal people with various mental illnesses wearing funny costumes, or is he the sort of guy who builds his own Bat-Spaceship and occasionally fights cosmic god monsters on other planets? Depending on the writer and the era, he's been all of those things and more.

Marvel used to be a bit more consistent than DC, but they've kind of thrown that out the window lately as well.

Generally speaking, when we're talking about major characters who've existed longer than most people on this website have been alive, you're never really going to get a single, well-defined version of said character.

Manga tends to be slightly better about this, but only because nearly every manga (including ones that have run for decades) are written by a single author, and when they get tired of doing it the series ends. But even those have the occasional quirks where a writer changes their mind along the way about how powerful a given character should be/is and rebalance the power levels.


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