Can comics make new characters popular?
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- Опубліковано 8 вер 2024
- Why do comics have so much trouble getting new characters over?
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Almost every new character struggles because their writer/creator wants to skip building the character and just jump to, "This is the most interesting character you've ever read!" They almost all suffer from low confidence and insecurity. Everyone other character in the book assures them that they're "good enough." Then they make an obvious mistake, feel worse and almost give up. Their best friend gives a big speech and "I believe in you." New character saves the day when the more experienced heroes couldn't and everyone tells the new character how awesome they are.
Yes, that was interesting the first couple of times. Niw it's just lazy writing to make the character "relatable." There's no investment in an actual personality. The result? After that, no one has any idea of what to do with the character because nothing was invested. No hooks, no personality, no central theme or core beliefs that would lead to new stories.
And this has been the *new character method* for over 10 years now.
It's no wonder they never gain any traction.
Neurosis isn’t appealing to a mass audience for an action series, who knew?
YT actually banned me this time. If you never see me again, it’s been real🫡.
@@drewtheunspoken3988 Yes, that’s exactly it, spot on, that’s every single new character over the last decade. Modern writers haven’t got a clue how to make a compelling, interesting character, I wonder if it’s the writers or the editors that’s leading to this.
@@InfamyOrDeath-__- I think it's a mixture of the two. It probably depends on the character.
That's so true, they just want to make a character for the sake of having a new character. They are only starting to build up Bailey as this young inexperienced superhero trying to get his start, they don't need to add a new spider-person that basically overlaps with his theme. This new spider-girl is too redundant.
Slott has shown that he has no really ideas that aren't sales stunts
Remember him shilling for cgc? "this is the only cgc slabbed comic I own!!!" friggin Slug in human form.
Like i don’t get it why can’t marvel just bring back my girl mayday Parker spider girl because she’s right there use her, not create this imposter spider-girl who’s isn’t interesting in my opinion.
@TevyaSmolka "Because *you* demanded it... we're not doing it." -Modern Marvel probably.
@@drewtheunspoken3988 lol why am i not surprised modern marvel would pull this stupid stunt.
Because May Day Parker is cool. We can’t have cool characters anymore.
Just Tom De Falco your creator could bring her back now.
Flatline is a new character, and is popular. Needs to avoid being dumped on bad writers. Yara Flor was popular until she was stuck with unskilled writers. Duke is a new character, and is popular in the Webtoons character where he is handled by a good writer.
The problem is née characters land with inexperienced writers.
I would recommend pre reading the letters before hitting record; would help screen out the psychos.
I don't know, it's kind of funny to hear Perch try to make sense of some of these emails.
But then Perch wouldn't have any letters to talk about.
🤔
I think one of the problems new characters have is that creators will often attach them to established characters hoping that the existing popularity will rub off on the new character. However this usually winds up tangling up the new character. Some will wind up like Miles Morales or the Robins where they gain popularity and acceptance but are tangled up as being redundant so long as the older character is still active. If the creators do phase out the original, they will offend the fanbase who feel the old characters book is being hijacked, like what happened with Ironheart and Ironman.
On the flipside building up a new character from scratch takes time, and publishers aren't willing to invest in anything that isn't an instance homerun. The rotating creative teams also means that it is hard to keep the writers invested in developing the new characters. There is also the slippery slope where writers all start thinking they deserve their own original characters, and we wind up with a ton of redundant copycat characters trying to occupy the same roles in the continuity.
I visited an ole friend who runs the LCS. He said a lot of people are bailing on Marvel and DC.
Understandable, after all, Marvel & DC are also bailing on the „not so modern“ audience.
You make new characters great, by them having good long runs.
Wiccan and hulking are almost 20 years old at this point. They still feel like new characters because so little of merit has ever really happened with them.
The other issue is actually the flood of new characters we have had since I was a kid. Too many "classes" or "generations" of characters have been introduced and dropped over the past 20 or 30 years. They are all fighting for screen time and few ever get full development runs.
I think Spider-Girl could work if they just
You know
Make her Mayday like most people want?
Some new character that just makes you want the old one
@zangetsu134 the spider girl issue is a werid one. Mayday is the most successful of the 20 spider girls. She had a 100 issue running solo run. But she's also treated like she doesn't exist
I don’t know why they can’t create new characters now, they’re few & far between, with manga everyone is constantly looking for the next series with brand new characters.
I’m constantly buying new manga that I’ve never heard of before based solely on covers or a premise. Found lots of stories I like by doing this.
@@InfamyOrDeath-__- another key difference between manga and western comics. Manga readers enjoy new and novel experiences. Western comics readers are more about stability and, to a degree, predictability.
You're absolutely right about this one. The industry CAN recover. New Characters CAN succeed. But current leadership and most of the talent isnt' up to the job. They put forward obviously terrible ideas repeatedly and then wonder why there's only like four books above #20. It's one of those weird and frustrating situations because the answers are obvious to everyone and not terribly difficult to implement but the people in charge are complacent, prideful, and have no incentive to do better, so they just....don't.
Well, MARVEL leadership is that way. DC is at least trying, but I'm not sure they have the competency they need.
Some of us go back and proof read what we just wrote before we send it. Letter writers and comment writers need to do this. We all used to. Let’s go back to that.
This email was the very definition of the phrase "use your words!"
I am on a roll.
Here my list new characters. I put sidekicks are. Like “other” sidekicks
1.) Elixir
2.) Cammi who debut Drax’s Annihilation tie in(Dennis Hopeless Killed her)
3.) Hazmat
4.) Blindspot
5.) Goleta the Wizardslayer
6.) Aquagirl(Lorena Marquez) I say it counts no biological relationship with Aquaman and Lorena has life on surface.
7.) Gusten Glory. That’s for You Jim Zub.
8.) Bling
9.) Troll from Thunderbolts
10.) Simon Dark.
Mic drop.
You can reply what you think.
6:11 How am I all over the place? You just made a video about Star Wars and culture war a few days ago. That is why I brought up acolyte.
6:20 No is just you. I put at the period at end.
And I brought up Tim Sheridan because he was Angry and *Complains(I didn’t put compare)* tweeted about no likes his characters from teen titans academy. I read the whole comic and I don’t like any of those new characters from teen titans Academy.
Tim Sheridan would not look at the mirror and realize he is a bad writer.
I don’t regret what I say.
9:02 That is cheating. Iron Lad is still Kang. I said no thematic or biological relationship to older characters.
9:35 That is Speed. His is reincarnation of Wanda and Vision’s son. The new NYX reveal Prodigy broke up with Speed.
Hmm by analyzing it. I have to say Speed and Wiccan is also cheating. They maybe reincarnations of Wanda and Vision’s kids but Speed and Wiccan still call Wanda, mom.
I am still curious about your thoughts of Deniz Camps’ Ultimate issue 2. Do You think that comic is bad? Do you think Deniz Camp wrote Captain America well?
10:50 I was there. Good times
12:20 Yikes. I wound not call Somnus a good character.
12:47 I did mention “well written” because I know there are good writers. It always depends of the writer.
But it seems no matter how great those new characters are written. It obviously the bad written get more attention.
There are so many tweets of comic panels from Gabby Rivera’s America. I hate it.
12:50 Just like The writer, Tim Sheridan. A bad writer.
14:12 Didn’t Convergence brought back Pre New 52 Superman, Lois and Jon Kent.
15:02 It sounds like you are tired. Was it late when you recorded this?
I Hope you are well rested, Perch.
I’ve finally been taken off time out. UA-cam banned me from commenting for 23 hours because I might have used “h@te” speech.
You’re right about Miles being better in the movies in the comics. I think they can get more of these new characters better if they just went and did cool stuff.
BTW if I disappear like mumbles, you’ll know why.
23 hours is a weird amount of time
@@clonegeek3317I know. And they still deleted some of my comments on here. I also took a screenshot of the pop up because I couldn’t believe it at first.
I'm going to be a little gross here, but I hope you get the point. Marvel and DC's current strategy for new characters is just content diarrhea. It's basically half-formed concepts of characters with no real thought put into them. If they don't work, they flush them and churn out more.
The problem is while yes good change can happen if positive action is taken it doesn't matter if you still have bad habits like the big two have you can't become successful if your always going one foot forward and two steps back.
When you skipped ahead (around the 7:00 mark) I think the writer wanted you to list 10 DC & Marvel characters from the 2000s that you liked and were original in concept, not spin-offs (so no heroes with "spider," "super," "bat," etc. in their names).
Plenty of great new characters. The entire supporting cast of current Moon Knight is pretty great.
That email sounds like it was written by drunk AI.
Perch, did you generate that email from ChatGPT while drinking whiskey?
@@drewtheunspoken3988 No, I think it's written by that Common Sense guy who comments a lot here.
Perch read another one of his mails earlier this week
@clonegeek3317 I don't know who CommonSense is. I probably glance at his comments and probably even commented on a few, but I don't recognize the name.
I was actually being facetious while teasing Perch about his drinking. I thought it was funny.
@@drewtheunspoken3988 He is that guy who talks about Jimmy Hudson a lot
@clonegeek3317 That name doesn't mean anything, so I guess I skip his comments. Or I accidentally blocked him
Perch addresses a point if he FEELS it's GENUINE. That's the kind of scientific approach helping him recognize "the argument is serious".
i.e. if it's not within confirmation bias it will be double downed against as kneejerk reaction
Miles would be great if they’d actually do something with him, he’s just black Spider-Man instead of his own character
How dare you attack Gabby Rivera's America Chavez run. That is the single greatest comedic comic book ever written.
Whatever happened to Snowflake, Safespace, Trailblazer and B-Negative?
The problem facing new characters is the same problem facing comics in general: they are a niche product that is sold in inaccessible stores, patronized only by a shrinking group of collectors.
This market is rarely interested in new characters. They go to the comic store to see their old familiar heroes. This is especially true of DC and Marvel who have an existing stable of popular heroes. They don't want to see new characters, hence the failure of DC's New Age of Heroes and other attempts to launch new faces.
Look at how few new Marvel and DC characters have been successful in recent years. In the past, both publishers came out with weird concepts like Killraven, Swamp Thing, different versions of Star Man and so on. And there were enough young, new readers who would give them a chance. Today, not so much. They turn to the indies for their new concepts.
I think we can agree on the following corollary: there can be bad writers who don't carry an ideological Stormbreaker to grind, but writers can't write well if they have an ideological agenda. 🤔
Do a video on your top 10 underrated comics. It’d be nice to see some positivity.
The big 2 have successfully created a lot of characters, many of them completely underserved right now. Could it be that some part of the difficulty to create new characters is the desire to simply replace fan beloved characters as opposed to create something actually new? Could it also be that another new character like xyz, who never gets mentioned anymore, isn’t exactly cool and just gives the impression of an overcrowded superhero universe?
If we take i.e. Spider-Boy and new Spider-Girl: this has been done to death and beyond. At this point the Apocalypse could be done entirely by dead Spider-Man ripoffs rising from their graves. That’s not new, that’s not exciting and it’s definitely not needed nor sought after.
Comic Con has really been lackluster with comic book news so far
They can, but takes actual work and investment.
Saturday morning with Perch
When I think about new characters in comics, I now think about The New Warriors. I know that the concept of internet gas and pretty much everything about Safespace and Snowflake was cringy at best. But in some ways I think Marvel played it too safe by not following through on the comic. It takes time for new characters to be widely accepted and if you don’t try it won’t happen at all. I’m not saying every character could catch on or a single character as they start would become popular. But maybe one or some of those characters with time and growth could have become something decent or even great.
This was like that AVGN email...
I think people forget that due to the speed of comic publishing it often takes a while for a character to become popular. You potentially only see a character once a month or a few times a year. Deadpool didn't become popular immediately. Wolverine was probably 11-12 years old before he became a big deal. So even if you write a cool new minority character you have to realize they won't become the most popular comic character on year one. It will probably take over five years minimum.
DC burned me with New Age of heroes. I went all in and here we are those characters dont exist in the DC universe anywhere. Why care about new stuff if the company creating them is going to throw them away after 10 to 14 issues.
Another Common Sense email
That's how it's always been. In the early 20th century, they created hundreds of super heroes.. Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, etc are the ones that stuck. So we should expect that if they introduce hundreds of new superheroes in the early 21st centrury, only a few will still be around in 100 years.
Cecilia Reyes?
I’ll be honest. It is difficult these days to make a new name for a character that is not taken or sounds like another one.
Current day comics infatuation with creating new characters doesn’t really make any sense. Marvel and DC give lip service to this idea they want a new audience, but none of their actions actually tell you they’re interested in getting comics in front of new readers to create that new audience. They’re perfectly content with the audience and market they currently have despite what they might say. And what is that audience? It’s a niche audience of adults that got into comics when they were kids (or teens) sometime in the ‘60, ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, and maybe up to the mid 2000s. The Marvel and DC comics superhero audience doesn’t really want new characters, they want the classic characters they grew up with. It’s like MeTV, the people that love watching MeTV watch MeTV to watch old shows and movies, they aren’t there to see new original MeTV sitcoms and drama programming.
Given what Marvel and DC have allowed the comic industry to become, and given the quality of writing on most of their titles now, they’d actually be better off inducing new characters in other media like a cartoon or movie. Marvel actually would’ve probably been better off if the first time they introduced Khan Ms. Marvel was in some show as opposed to the comics. The biggest new Marvel and DC characters from the last 32 years probably all first appeared outside comic books anyways.
The funny thing is Marvel and DC have so many old characters already that they aren’t exactly wanting for characters to do things with.
How popular would the Runaways be if BKV had written it for 100+ issues? They were good characters with a lot of potential, but it does seem like no one else knew what to do with them.
I think it would be a top tier Marvel brand
I hate to criticize here, but the letter writer specifically asked for new characters that are not a blatant copy or mantle switch. So more or less all Young Avengers characters don’t qualify as they are just copy/mantle characters. If I remember correctly, the girl with the arms coat was about the only actually original character in that book … or at least I don’t know what she was supposed to copy.
It’s also why they don’t stick, because there is a much more liked original character. Hell, you yourself brought Kate Bishop as an example, who only worked as support for Hawkeye, because that’s the one book where nobody thought „we could have had Clint Barton instead of Kate Bishop“. Btw. I think Kate Bishop was the blandest of the Young Avengers, and the Young Avengers were in general outshined by the Young Masters imo in terms of being interesting in their debut.
Anyway, I think all the copy and mantle characters struggle with not really having their own thing. They are just there to replace way more liked characters and hence will face an uphill battle with fans. A proper new character should (a) not be done to replace another character and (b) should have its own story engine, something that drives stories and conflicts around the character.
Perch just received his first AI question.
Not many new characters besides Miles have popped off. Kamala I think most people find annoying (in the games, tv show, and movies). Jon Kent rose and then fell. Sideways, Silencer, Weapon H have all been ignored. Cosmic Ghost Rider I think got tanked when there was that 1 comic where a new black female replaced him (already?? lol) and hasn't done much since. Probably, other writers aren't sure what to do with him, besides maybe Donny Cates (pre-car accident). Peach Momoko's x-men comics has good art, or if you dislike it, I think you can at least agree that it's unique, and I think it's relatively successful... but ultimately, the characters are confined into their own universe and can't interact with fan faves.
I actually did check out the origin of America Chavez 1-2 years ago due to all the drama around that character. It didn’t really click with me, don’t know why and forgot most of what I read already. So sorry to tell you that your experiment already failed with me as I still don’t understand why I should like that character (but yes, America Chavez in that book was somebody utterly and completely different).
If they actually gave a damn I think so
What? We don't have a secret lets mock Perch area. Thats ridiculous.
Hes on to us.
It's going to take time for a new character to find an audience. Superman was around since the 1930s and he wasn't as big as he is today. It happened over time. Too many writers are impatient to have their character when Spider-Man or Green Lantern are today instead of where they were when those characters debuted. That's when the characters starts to suck.
Was the ai writing this letter drunk?
At this point Spider-mna have a Spider-family almost so big like Batman's family. Who asked for a Spider-boy or a Spider-girl. Slott needs take a break.
Skids? Are you thinking of Skids?
@@Lazarus1095 Skids is white. He was talking about Celia Reyes.
@@drewtheunspoken3988 Oh, I see. Yeah, I just looked her up.
"The comic industry is broken and can't be fixed "
No! Its so much worse! It could very easily be fixed and yet they simply choose not to for no good reason!
It happens every year
Good writers can get any character over??
Good writers cost money, which we don't have enough of to pay them.
Good writers also force us to do our job, and we're too lazy to want to do that.
No deal.
- Marvel & DC Editorial Staff
😑
I love America Chavez to death and I'm sick of hearing about Gabby Rivera, I know, it hurts me more than it hurts you 🙄 all that woman did was etch away at the character's damn tombstone. Too much potential stunted too soon. This shit happens in wrestling all the time...
Keep making new characters until it stick
Yes. Not us comics
Delete this email