Top 4: Things That Ruin Superheroes

From the pages of comic books to popular television series to the big screen, superheroes are a bigger part of popular culture than ever. And who doesn't love a big mythic story with costumes and superpowers, damsels in distress and big scary explosions? But it's not all great, so here are the top four ways to derail a perfectly good superhero (or supervillain):

#4. Soap Opera Continuity - The angry looking gentleman with the big gun to the left is Cable, son of X-Men Jean Grey and Scott Summers (Cyclops), who was raised hundreds of years in the future by his sister Rachel. Except that Jean and Scott never had any kids, and Jean died. Cable was created with the help of a crazed 19th Century Darwinist and a clone of Jean. Rachel is from an alternate timeline. Rachel and Cable's grandfather died when Cyclops was just a kid, except that it turned out he didn't die, he had been abducted by aliens and joined a group of space pirates, who Cyclops conveniently met one time when tooling around in space with the X-Men. And their family tree is even more complicated than that.

That is all completely ridiculous, but that's not too out of the ordinary in the superhero genre. Comic books that have run for decades try in vain to keep up some degree of continuity while keeping the reader guessing with plot twists. When a new character appears, there's a 90% chance they turn out to be a family member, childhood friend, or former lover of an existing character. It seems exciting when they make a revelation, but if you take a second to look at the big picture, it all starts to feel silly.



#3. Multiverses - Both DC Comics and Marvel have idiotic concepts where they have alternate versions of their characters from alternate worlds, or timelines, or universes, and they occasionally cross over from one universe to another. DC has had several major storylines that have involved around the creation or deletion of alternate universes.

The problem I have with the multiverses is not that they exist, but that they weren't designed to exist. Comic publishers want to put out more than one Superman or Spider-man title per month, so they have separate storylines happening at the same time. They also don't want their characters to age, so they would reboot franchises so that the guy who fought Nazis when he was in his 30s doesn't have to be 60 years old in the '70s. But when inconsistencies start to arise, they invent the idea of all these alternate universes to explain it. True comic book fanboys eat this stuff up, but personally I think it's all bullshit.

#2. Overpowered Heroes and Villains - I grew up watching the X-Men Animated Series, which was generally awesome. And one of the fans' favorite villains, and the subject of amusing internet videos, was the Juggernaut. He was granted invulnerability by a magical ancient Egyptian gem, and has a helmet that makes him invulnerable to psychic attacks. Because he was so powerful, the X-Men couldn't scratch him, so every time he came on the scene, after a number of buildings got smashed, the X-Men would rip off his helmet and Professor X would work his mojo and make the Juggernaut wander off peacefully.

The same thing applies to Superman, especially in it's television adaptations. Either the writers have to keep coming up with reasons for Kryptonite to be as common as granite, or they have to give every new opponent a complicated backstory explaining how they got superpowers allowing them to hang with Superman. There's a reason Batman is the best superhero out there, and it's not just the extra cool costume.

#1. Death is Meaningless - In 1993, the big news was that Superman would be killed off. And he was, at the hands of Doomsday. The media made it sound like the end of an era, except that he ended up coming back to life after less than a year. At some point early in my comic reading days, I was told that nobody stays dead except for former Captain America sidekick Bucky, former Robin Jason Todd, and Spider-man's Uncle Ben, yet recently all three of those have been resurrected in one way or another, so it's safe to say that when someone dies, you'll probably end up seeing them again pretty soon.

Since most every long-running comic book story has at some point included clones, time travel, magic, or supremely advanced alien technology, it's pretty easy for a writer to come up with excuses for dead characters to show back up. And while that is a fun twist from time to time, it ruins the dramatic impact of the rest of the story. When a superhero is in a dangerous fight, it's not as exciting if the ultimate danger, death, is only a temporary problem.

Honorable Mentions: Crossover "events" (which seem to happen constantly, making them not very eventful), borderline pornography in lieu of story and character.

TV fans can just hope that Heroes' season nine doesn't feature Isaac and Candace from an alternate universe fighting an impossibly powered foe whose only weakness is mustard, and just happens to be Isaac's long lost brother.