I don’t hate teen superheroes. I grew up loving Spider-Man and Teen Titans, but I’m just tired of them. Comic characters never age, and every reboot resets them back to high school. Spider-Man’s been rebooted over a dozen times, yet he’s only been an adult in two animated shows. His best stories are when he’s in college or older, but studios keep him a teen to appeal to kids.
It’s not even just him — Ms. Marvel should be 28 by now, but she’s still 16. There’s no middle ground anymore. You’re either a teenage hero or in your 30s. What happened to heroes in their 20s?
This is even worse with anime! Back in the 90’s anime had men and women doing awesome shit. There was sex and violence. There were characters I could relate to.
Now it’s all teens. Spineless boys who piss themselves at the sight of a female. Everything is PG. No badasses or relatable characters (unless you’re 12 I guess).
I love the medium but I hate that 95% of the time the target audience is children.
Back in the 90’s anime had men and women doing awesome shit. There was sex and violence. There were characters I could relate to.
Can you suggest some 90s anime with sex and violence?
Cowboy Bebop and the Ghost in the Shell movies are great places to start.
Anyway, it’s not so much a change in what’s being produced as what’s being imported to the US. There was a good mix of shonen and seinen at first, but shonen sells more merch so we get a lot of it now. Just watch stuff tagged as seinen if you want more mature themes or more sex and gore.
Wolverines comics had some awesome brutal fights
Ah yes, the famous anime character, Wolverine
Oh yes, I miss mature characters in modern animes. I’m so tired of stupid Lolis 😭
80’s anime had believable characters that didn’t all look like they were 10-12 years old. Cyber City Oedo, Robot Carnival, Patlabor…great stuff.
Tbh I never got Anime or Mangas at all. So over the top and weird. The opposite of relatable, always
How are the 20s middle ground? I wanna see 50 year old spider-man! Give me a proper geriatric spider-man in his 70s or 80s! Okay maybe that’s going a little too far. Especially with spider-man I find it hard to imagine him older than 40.
Sliders don’t get arthritis!
The main audience is kids to teach them good morals, u reach a certain age you aren’t the demographic anymore and should already be a good person by then.
Is it still though? Also, weren’t early super heroes mostly adult like Superman and Batman? I feel like back in the day when the audience were mostly children they used adult superheroes the kids could aspire to, then they started aging them down with Spider-Man to make them more relatable. Nowerdays the audience is mostly adult, maybe yearning for simpler times, certainly with a lot of nostalgia for what they used to see.
But to be honest I don’t think the premise is actually true. There are certainly some eternally young superheroes, but there are still and always have been lots of older superheroes.
Get rich and buy cool vehicles
I disagree. Its in the spirit of the genre to keep a consistency in its identity and to explore themes around it. Having occasional runs with a different age is that very exploration but in those cases other parts of it’s character anchor it, but that can only happen if the character has fully been fully absorbed by audiences.
We can create an interesting batman story with his parents alive bc we’ve seen all the iterations of him with his dead parents. We would be able to explore the idea of whether that trauma was truly what changed him so dramatically or if that’s who he was always gonna be, perhaps with a different reason as motivation.
I could go in depth but I’ve got icecream to eat and its beginning to melt.
Edit. Even when i disagree I’d like to say thank you for starting an interesting conversation
The new Superman movie had mostly (all?) adult aged super heroes
I understand you. I’ve been asking for a The legend of Zelda game with a grown up and mature Link
That’s one reason why I really liked the PlayStation Spider-Man games. He’s already been Spider-Man for almost 10 years and has an established career and enemies. We don’t need to see all the stuff that came before because we’ve already seen it plenty of times, and that’s not the story they’re trying to tell.
But also more to your point, in DC they’ve artificially aged up Jon Kent and made him Superman II, while Damian is still a teenager and still Robin. Plus, apparently they’ve given a kid to Wonder Woman in order to round out the Big Three’s kids with Trinity (that’s her actual name) who’s yet another Wonder Girl alongside the other three or whatever that are already in existence.
Are you referring to the modern Spider-Man games? I seem to recall the first one going over the radioactive spider bit, no?
Yeah, the ones from 2018+
There aren’t any flashback sequences with Peter until Spider-Man 2, so the only radioactive spider bits we see are Miles’ transformation.
For some reason I can picture the sequence in my head when they go on the class trip… Unless I’m thinking of Spider Man 2.
Maybe I’m combining it in my head with Spiderverse or something.
lol, I thought you meant this game at first: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man_(2000_video_game)
Your original comment is accurate for that one, too.
How old is Invincible in the TV show? He might qualify as a 20s superhero.
he’s in high school in the first season
Not sure about the TV show but I’m pretty sure the comic spans over 100 years.
I posted this on your other thread in the rant community, but will add it again here in case others might be interested in some of the books:
———
Consider more mature / adult oriented series, and literature. Marvel and DC will always appeal to the status quo.
Try Image comics. Spawn started adult and things go on from there. Tons of shit goes down including the end and rebirth of the world. Savage Dragon has run on so long that characters who weren’t even born when the series started are grown adults with kids, and the main character is literally dead (not comic book dead, just dead and gone).
In books there’s stuff like Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman, Murs Lafferty’s Playing For Keeps, Paul Tobin’s Prepare to Die! (a somewhat vulgar example at times but also hilarious, the hero’s power is to take a year off someone’s life by punching them. Most villains just surrender when he shows up, and rarely want to fight him twice).
Also good is Marion G. Harmon’s Wearing the Cape series, wherein time passes, crazy shit goes down, heroes get hurt, die, retire, etc. Starts with the main character at 17 I think, but as of the current book she’s well into her 20s and married. This one is a mix of junior and adult capes, where superheroes are state and government sponsored as a legal requirement.
Ehhh, Hollywood is pretty obsessed with high school kids in general. I think it has something to do with certain people peaking in high school.
I personally think it’s to do with luck in life, when someone is very fortunate, they diverge from the masses around high school.
I don’t think it is about luck. People have more hopes and dreams when they are younger. And these movies and stories are also aspirational. You want to become a big-time politician, a federal judge, a tech star, a super hero. And people like to be reminded about that, about dreams and hopes they had for themselves when they were young. And what do you aspire to when you are 40? Not to get fired within twelve months? There is definitely something heroic about it in this economy, but can you make a blockbuster DC movie about that?
Edit: grammar
