May 17 2009
Five superhero plots that need to die
1. Shrinking. First, this is a horribly cliche type of story. Second, it is pretty much impossible to do anything fresh with it. The characters get shrunk, deal with some tiny obstacles (usually including a cat or some other suddenly dangerous animal), and then get their size back. What else could you do with it?
How can I do it right? Have the character stays shrunken for longer than just an issue. It’ll push you to develop the formula in a fresh direction, and hopefully one more fertile than “and then they discover a microscopic civilization!”
2. Body-swapping. One character switches bodies with another, usually involuntarily. The drama usually comes from the characters having to survive despite having different powers or having to play different roles than they’re used to.
How can I do it right? This isn’t necessarily bad, but it has been done extensively. It tends to work best if the characters have to keep their identities secret. If Jim and Luke can just tell everyone that their bodies have been swapped, it’s not really an interesting obstacle. But if Jim and Luke can’t talk about magic or the supernatural hijinks they’re involved in, then body-swapping makes it that much harder for them to keep up the masquerade. Give them difficult situations they can’t duck. For example, “Luke” suddenly has a piano concert and “Jim” is now the starting quarterback. The only way for them to protect the secret is to learn (or feign competence in) something totally new. Good luck!
Also, I strongly recommend against switching characters of different genders or species. It’s got a lot of potential for creepiness.
3. Age change. The villain or an accident causes a character to get drastically younger or older (usually younger). This is even worse than shrinking because a hero turned into a baby is no longer a character so much as a prop. Also, these episodes/issues tend to be overwhelmingly cute. Ick.
How can I do it right? I’d recommend trying it like Big or Thirteen Going on Thirty or Seventeen Again. The story follows the character as he enters another stage of life. How does he handle his new predicament? That’s an interesting situation. In contrast, babies can’t do anything but cry.
4. World War II time travel. Time travel is not a problem in series that have been built around it, but “let’s do an issue set in World War II!” is shoot-me-in-the-face bad. The villains are two-dimensional, there’s no chance the writers will let the heroes win, and it’s cliche.
How can I do it right? Realistically, you can’t and I wouldn’t recommend it. However, if you’re dead-set on trying anyway, maybe pursue some angle other than the villain going back in time to help the Nazis. One alternative would be having the heroes try to stop a well-intentioned antagonist from going back in time to kill Hitler (because Germany might win the war with a competent leader). This is stronger because the villain is more morally complex and because sneaking in to guard a hostile target is inherently more dramatic than an all-out assault.
5. Underwater adventures, particularly with Atlantis. It’s very hard to do an interesting aquatic tangent. Have you ever heard anyone say that he really wished Aquaman or Namor would show up? Me neither.
How can I do it right? I think your best bet is to set most of the story in a sealab or a sealed city under the waters. The less time the characters spend in submarines or swimming, the better. Also, this kind of story might work better as a series focus than as a tangent. It’s not that aquatic stories necessarily suck (see Finding Nemo or The Little Mermaid), just that an aquatic setting is usually a waste of time for land-bound heroes. Additionally, few land-bound heroes have powers well-suited to interesting underwater fight scenes, so it might help to have the climactic battle in a sealed environment like a domed city or in a coastal city above the water.
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Wow, you’ve missed so many off this list.
I’d like to submit more:
6. A variation on swapping bodies: swapping powers. Slight distinction. Same problems.
7. Negative universe. Firstly, there’s inherent fridge logic. (wait, if this universe is the polar opposite of mine, why isn’t everything made of antimatter and therefore liable to explode if I touch it) Secondly, IT MAKES NO SENSE. Usually it’s a way to introduce an ‘evil counterpart’ to your hero. Really, it’s just incredibly illogical.
8. By extension, parallel universes. Like the kind where the bad guy won. Similar problems to negative universes, but with MORE. Firstly, fridge logic. If there’s a parallel universe, no one can die since there will always be a universe where they didn’t die. Also there’s the inherent issues with how the system works.
I’m sure there’s more but I’ve forgotten them.
On an unrelated note: B. Mac, I think TVtropes is muscling in on your territory.
I think parallel universes can be handled competently, though admittedly not too often. I think Doctor Who has had some good parallel universe stories. “Father’s Day” (okay, that’s pseudo-parallel; it counts in my mind), “Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel” and “Turn Left” spring to mind in the new series.
I agree that it needs a capable writer, though. (Or alternatively, good actors. Chris Eccleston and David Tennant are very good.)
I’m not too worried or annoyed about the competition from TV Tropes. I really appreciate what they do for storytellers, which is why I link to them so often.
I’m more annoyed when people package a summary of my content as their own unique work, particularly if they sell ads. At least sometimes they link to me. That helps contribute to my success.
I had a list of 9 candidates, but I was already at around 400 words before I got to #4. Some of the other ones I left off…
–The obligatory trip to Japan, Western Europe or Egypt. Usually banal filler. I liked Kim Possible’s Japan episode, though.
–Animal transformation… creepy. It worked for Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Homer’s Odyssey, but in the modern era it usually feels like that kind of fan-service. Tigra’s not fooling anyone.
–Clones. Fortunately, Marvel has (mostly) grown out of these.
–Talking apes. Astonishingly, DC dug out talking apes for an animal transformation episode in Justice League. Eww.
Fortunately, most of these don’t come up very often.
Those are among the many I forgot. Seriously, you’ve stumbled onto something huge here.
Oh, and the TVTropes thing was purely tongue-in-cheek. Forgot the
smiley.
At least in Justice League they punished Grodd for turning everyone into apes in the form of Luthor pulling a Starscream on him, specifically for that reason. I think the quote went:
Lex: Alright I can’t take much more of this. Turning everyone into apes? That’s your plan? I was going to wait until later but you’ve forced my hand. *pulls out a gun*
You know what? I never knew what the expression “tongue-in-cheek” meant. Could you elaborate, Tom.
Oh, and how’s production on Psykid (if that’s the name of the show) going? You haven’t posted much in your forum lately.
I doubt I was the only viewer to applaud when Grodd got thrown out of the airlock. Now, if only Lex Luthor hadn’t had to use a magical artifact to do it.
Also, “tongue-in-cheek” usually means something that isn’t meant to be taken seriously, but is more subtle than a parody. For example, Agent Orange is a parody of the Matrix, but Marty Stull is a tongue-in-cheek take on Marty Stu/Mary Sue characters.
Psykid’s in a position that can only be described as quantum. It exists and doesn’t exist at the same time.
It exists for the following reasons:
1. I have a script written and I’m (theoretically) working on another.
2. I actually have a meeting with a production company in London soon. Not a pitch, but they might be interested.
It doesn’t exist for these reasons:
1. I’m currently in the middle of an exam season, and a big one at that. Really I shouldn’t even be here. That’s the reason for the ‘theoretically’, it’s on hold until the mid-exam-season-break.
2. The meeting isn’t until after exams, so I can’t progress until then.
But I digress… Seriously, I think this issue merits more than five plots. There’s loads you can mention.
–Convenient amnesia.
–The Christmas/holidays episode. Not even Star Wars could make it work.
Feel free to offer your own, but mainly I’m interested in ones that are so consistently hopeless that they will scare away readers. For example, WWII time-travel always sucks because the villains are weak and there’s no way you can let the heroes lose and because the premise reveals 95% of what will happen. Maybe you could make it work with a bizarre twist like “we’ve got to save Hitler from a well-meaning assassin or the Nazis will win the war,” but even then I’m not hopeful.
Christmas episodes work as breather episodes. As long as no one takes them seriously they can be accepted… no, not accepted… forgiven.
Don’t forget the classic:
- Hero gets sick/injured and (usually) has to use less competent teammates to fight for them.
This isn’t usually a problem for superhero stories, but a lot of cartoon shows do a throwaway superhero-themed episode. For example, the new TMNT did “The Unconvincing Turtle Titan” and Kim Possible did one with Adam West. I think that just exchanging one kind of action with another (say, superpowered brawling instead of martial arts) is usually banal. But it was freakishly funny on Futurama. (Two lines from the New Justice Team’s theme song: “Citizens, never fear. Crazy do-good freaks are here!”)
Tom, if you have one episode scripted to presentation-quality, I suspect you might want to think about doing a page or two to describe the progression of the first season. Even something as simple as a sentence or two for each episode will help establish that you have some direction in mind.
Good luck with your pitch. Or non-pitch or whatever it is.
I’d also recommend asking your contact there what he’d like you to have on-hand. You might want to ask about time constraints as well. Unless you’ve been told otherwise, I suspect it won’t get close to 15 minutes.
“If there’s a parallel universe, no one can die since there will always be a universe where they didn’t die.”
Well, the alternate universe version is technically a different person. If Sonic dies, you can’t say, “we still have Scourge!”
I do like DC’s Earth-Three, I got a few chuckles out of some of the events:
- President John Wilkes Booth was assassinated by actor Abraham Lincoln.
- Christopher Columbus was an American that accidently discovered Europe.
- Instead of the Salem Witch Hunt, they hunted regular humans.
Also good luck with your exams, Tom. If you’re 16 you’re probably doing the same ones (roughly) as me, right?
another one is the hero makes one mistake bad guy gets away and he loses his confidince
i dont really like this plot but thats jusst me
Plus a hell of a lot of sidekicks and even a S.H.I.E.L.D like organisation in Torchwood (but with more bisexuals).
I use a parallel universe, but it’s not a “everyone has a clone who lives there” place. It’s where the human race as a whole evolved slightly differently, and it’s where Isaac and Tristram are from. There are no duplicates of anyone there.
I don’t plan on anyone visiting it, though. I would give it some consideration if I knew I could pull it off.
“I use a parallel universe, but it’s not a “everyone has a clone who lives there” place”.
Whoops, that should be:
“I use a parallel universe, but it’s not AN “everyone has a clone who lives there” place”.
I really suck at editing lately.
Actually, WWII storys about time travel can kick-ass.
Don’t believe me? Read this (it’s not mine, it’s excellent, it’s short).
http://www.abyssandapex.com/200710-wikihistory.html
I also remember greatly enjoying the Silver/Golden Age styled superhero computer game; Freedom Force versus the Third Reich. It was fun, and it made a lot of fun of the classical silver and golden age clichés while also allowing you to fight against stuff like flying robots with Nazi brains in them; like Nazi Daleks! And a villain named Blitzkrieg who could control minds. It was very fun in a very cheesy way.
I technically wrote a scene that used an aspect of a parallell universe. The original Specials (excluding Connor) fought copies of themselves created by Fantasma (temporary name, written for the sequel), who created them after reading Connor’s memories and bringing them to “life”. I actually rather liked it, what about you guys?
- Wings
Scribblar, I love Wikihistory, but it’s definitely not a superhero story.
Also, I think that time-travel generally works better when it is a central part of the story rather than just a throwaway tangent. For example, time-travel worked in Back to the Future but it was a sign that Seaquest had jumped the shark.
…
Daniel and Mr. Brit, although there is an argument for Dr. Who as a superhero story, I don’t think that Dr. Who is generally regarded as one. For example, Dr. Who’s Wikipedia entry uses no variations on the word “superhero.” In contrast, the entries for Superman and Batman and Spiderman each use it around 20 times.
I think Star Trek might be a better analogue than the superhero genre.
The reasons Dr. Who’s WWII episodes worked was because a) time travel is integral to the entire show’s plot and b) he was in blitz-era London, and not on the front lines fighting Nazis. Basically he was living the experience most British people had during the war as blitz victims, as opposed to the experience of most Americans during the war of fighting the Nazis.
Although having said all of this, the Justice League cartoon pulled off several of these ideas quite nicely, notably WWII time travel, parallel universe (Justice Lords), in fact, the Justice Lords episode was one of the best in the show, since it deconstructed to heck the idea of superheroes being shining beacons of justice. They also did the underwater thing several times with Aquaman, though admittedly it had the qualities of an Eigen plot. They did the people->animals thing, though lampshaded it, and they did the turning into kids thing, which was unbearably cute. And the mind-swap episode lead to some great comedy with these lines of dialogue:
Dr. Polaris: Aren’t you going to wash your hands?
Flash in Luthor’s body: No, because I’m evil!
and
Luthor in Flash’s body: Well at least I can find out his secret identity. *takes off mask* *pause* I have no idea who this is.
Christmas episodes have always annoyed me, except in the case of Doctor Who. A lot of the time Christmas isn’t a huge theme, it’s sort of in the background. I particularly loved The Christmas Invasion.
Jackie: “I’m gonna get killed by a Christmas tree!”
Err, yeah. It makes sense in context.
I love how they’ve lampshaded it now. Everyone deserts London on Christmas because they’re so Genre Savvy they know that Christmas=alien invasion. It actually comes dangerously close to breaking the Fourth Wall.
Yeah, they really need to stop setting every Christmas special at Christmas, or else it’ll seem like aliens are invading because it’s Christmas.
Actually, that’s not a bad idea. What day of the year is a vast chunk of the Earth’s population not doing anything? Christmas Day! It’s the perfect time to invade!
Haha. Not to mention a lot of them are in large groups and very drunk. Aliens could easily wipe out most of us because almost everyone is in a group.
I think that every now and then comic book series should have a special issue without dialogue. Those would be cool to write.
“I think that every now and then comic book series should have a special issue without dialogue. Those would be cool to write.”
I agree, Stefan, that sounds pretty fun. Especially if you have really expressive characters. I doubt I will ever do one any time soon, but it’d be a fun project.
I have read a comic like that at the convenion i was at a while back
it was rather gd.
Anways i coudnt find the open writen form, but i have found this synipsies thing you get on the back of books what do you guys think?
He always knew he was different.
First there were the dreams.
Then the deaths began.
When Matt Freeman gets into trouble with the police, he’s sent to be fostered in Yorkshire.
It’s not long before he senses there’s something wrong with his guardian: with the whole village.
Then Matt learns about the Old Ones and begins to understand just how different he is.
But no one will believe him; no one can help.
There is no proof.
There is no logic.
There is just the Gate.
Also heres the front cover http://www.powerof5.co.uk/ravensgate/story/
So basicly i just want thoughts on the cover titel and the synipisies.
The reson ask is alot of folk said a titel should tell us something about the book but this titel tells us very littel “what is a Ravens gate why should we care whats it about” my best B.mac inpression there lol anyways plese do tell ur thoughts
You can get to the writing forum here. Alternately, you can just type Open Writing Forum into our search bar at the top-left side of the page.
One thing you’re forgetting, David: Raven’s Gate is by Anthony Horowitz. If I were as popular (and as good) a writer as Anthony Horowitz, I probably wouldn’t bother with the perfect title.
Those books are awesome, by the way.
“Basically, I just want thoughts on the cover title and the synopsis.”
I don’t have much a strong opinion on the blurb (synopsis on the back). I presume it will be effective enough to catch a reader, then again, I’m not exactly sure of what a blurb entails. The cover goes well with the theme and feel of the other four covers. I’m guessing it’s a dark fantasy story.
“Then Matt learns about the Old Ones and begins to understand just how different he is.”
- I don’t really like this sentence, it feels akward. I recommend somehting like “When Matt learns of The Old Ones, he begins to understand just how different he is.”
Thats fair enough nevermind then.
I do type in open wrighting form
I hate all of them but especially 1, 2, and 5. I hate underwater adventures cause they have a tame feeling, specifically the Batman-Aquaman crossover on Batman:The Brave and the Bold.
Yeah. Popular authors can get away with crappy titles because readers will look at their books anyway. I think that’s how Michael Crichton got away with a slew of one-word titles like Disclosure and Next and Prey and Airframe. Definitely not as interesting as Jurassic Park or even the Andromeda Strain…
I’m not very impressed by the title for Raven’s Gate, but Raven is one of those generically dark-and-brooding words that tends to sell pretty well. In any given week, the fiction best-seller’s list will usually include at least one book with “dead” in the title. In manga, the equivalent codeword is “vampire.”
The backcover blurb does not seem very intriguing. For one, it starts out by introducing the character as a pronoun. That annoyed me. It all sounds pretty banal. I don’t feel like I know anything about the plot or the characters that would actually make me want to keep reading. Also, the phrase “It’s not long before he senses there’s something wrong with his guardian: with the whole village” is punctuated quite badly. Before this, I don’t think I had ever seen a published work misuse a colon before.
The blurb doesn’t introduce us at all to what the Raven’s Gate is. I feel like that’s a mistake. Nor does it drop any specific information about what goes on in the plot. For example, compare this to something like City of Thieves. Here’s an excerpt…
City of Thieves has a cooler title and the blurb strikes me as much more effective. It gives us some concrete details about the characters and what they’re trying to accomplish.
The word “death” crops up a bit in manga too. Death Note is reigning king of awesomeness in my books.
Hmm. Here’s another potential superhero plot that needs to die: the heroes have to save a Mary Sue utopia. (For example… Wakanda, Atlantis, the city of the apes, Switzerland, Krypton, anywhere else where everyone’s needs are effortlessly provided for, etc).
This is one aspect of Invincible that worked particularly well. The obnoxiously advanced planet that is the stand-in for Krypton is actually (issue ~10 spoiler) a brutal empire that’s a slightly sympathetic take on the Spartans. That’s far more interesting than “this is how we learned to achieve universal peace and understanding!” Spare me the lecture; pass the ammo.
Demolition Man also does a really good job playing with the idea of a Mary Sue utopia. Its advancement has come at a major price; the people are more or less helpless when a criminal attacks.
I feel the need to mention that the blurb does not do Raven’s Gate justice, as the book, and the series in general, is very good.
For me, the highlight of Raven’s Gate has to be the backwards Lord’s Prayer played through the radio. I thought that scene was very creepy. And I liked that police officer!
In short, what Tom says is true.
“Second, it is pretty much impossible to do anything fresh with it. The characters get shrunk, deal with some tiny obstacles, and then get their size back. What else could you do with it?”
B. Mac, what you have done is set me a challenge. I will think of a fresh, interesting idea for the shrinking episode!
Here’s a thought, Tom. What if it’s the villain that gets shrunk?
Wow, I think one of us is psychic, I was thinking the exact same thing. Kinda. I thought maybe an episode where the villain shrinks himself to sneak into somewhere to steal something, then the heroes have to shrink themselves to fight him since they can’t find him because he’s so small.
Whaddaythink?
Hmm. I’m not feeling it, Tom. If it were a cartoon show, I think the only notable difference would be the first few minutes (the lead-up to the characters getting shrunken). I don’t think that’s enough to revitalize a concept that’s so cliche.
In contrast, I think that a concept like a WWII episode to save Hitler from a well-meaning assassin is fundamentally different from the cliche WWII episode. A mission to save Hitler will be stealthy, more interesting, and more morally complex. Also, the antagonist (the would-be assassin) would be more likable than the typical guy that time-travels to help Hitler… The ending is harder to predict… It’s obvious that Randal Savage can’t make Hitler win WWII in the end because the writer can’t let the Nazis win. But it’s not so clear that the writer has to let the heroes save Hitler. Maybe assassinating Hitler wouldn’t affect the time-stream all that much? Maybe the heroes only manage to cover up Hitler’s assassination. Historical records say that he died in 1945, but in fact it was a few years before that…*
Also, I think it would be a bit less dramatic if the heroes had their own way of unshrinking themselves. One of the advantages of the typical setup is that the shrunken heroes have no choice but to go after the villain because that’s the only way to unshrink themselves.
*Later on, I’m planning on doing a throwaway scene like this. Agent Black enters the room and finds Agent Orange standing over Hitler’s clawed-up body. BLACK: “What the hell happened? We were supposed to save him.” ORANGE: “Umm, suicide?”
*Fires a party missile straight into the awesome-atisphere*
(partygoers)
I’m back, babies! Got a (relatively) fresh and (somewhat) new keyboard. Now I can be regular again. Not only can I stay up with what’s going down, can move into steady production of the abridged Showtime. I’m ready to start reviewin’.
How about instead of the villain or the hero shrinking, the villain shrinks the Earth and the hero has to get it renormed to normal within a certain time. With the lack of mass, the Earth’s gravitational pull would weaken and this would cause countless things to go wrong. (Including the loss of the moon, because the Earth’s too weak to keep it in orbit).
People would become stronger due to low gravity and then float away.
What do you think?
Hmm… sounds like fun! But there are a few inherent problems with the whole Earth shrinking that I really don’t want to get into.
Well its a new idea if u wanna give it a try the smaller (no pun indendded) problems are your conrern lol i just put the ideas out there lol.
I’ve just thought of another one. ‘Trapped in a video game’. This one’s a problem because it’s very gimmicky.
Off the top of my head I can list quite a few times I’ve seen this:
-Fairly Odd Parents
-Danny Phantom (incidentally both made by Butch Hartman)
-Yu-Gi-Oh
-I think Batman The Animated Series but I’m not sure
-Kim Possible
-Heck even Alex Rider has fallen victim to this, but in a slightly more sophisticated way
I think the MAIN problem with this is it’s overused. Yeah, they’re trapped in a video game, they’re probably wearing some sort of virtual reality helmet that (conveniently) can’t be removed until the game is won, they can talk to each other and walk and move normally despite the obvious issues that presents. But so what? It’s not particularly interesting.
the video game idea was also for a teen titans episode and video game
and ben 10
Ah, I knew I was forgetting some.
It’s also been used in Red Dwarf.
In two different games. But one of those was just creepy. A game so good that nobody wants to leave it because it creates the perfect life for you – so people have these headsets on and are completely oblivious to the real world and if you remove them, they die. And to get out of it, you have to want to leave. But nobody ever does because it’s a perfect world.
*shudders* Um, yeah, that particular idea freaked me out a lot.
I’d classify that as a Lotus Eater Machine rather than a video game.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LotusEaterMachine
On the subject of Lotus Eater Machines, although overused, they definitely do not fall under ‘plots that need to die’. Lotus Eaters (when done well) are a way to show a character’s innermost desires, and sometimes they can be quite intriguing. For example, in Supernatural, Dean’s Lotus Eater induced dream had him leading a quaint, idyllic life, which is a surprise considering the hard-hitting nature of his character.
So yeah…
I don’t think the “trapped in a virtual reality/video game” plot needs to die. It’s cliche, but it could be executed well. In contrast, I don’t think there’s any way to do a shrinking story or a WWII time-travel story that feel fresh.
The parameters of a shrinking story are so tight. As soon as the audience sees the title (something like “The Incredible Shrinking Noun”), they already know 90% of what’s going to happen. First act: the characters fight the villain, lose, get shrunken and escape. Second act: the characters overcome a variety of mundane obstacles that are suddenly serious, almost always including animals. Then the characters reach the villain, unshrink themselves, and beat the villain. The only question is which animal the heroes face in Act II. Usually it’s a cat.
In contrast, the video game episode sounds more promising because there are so many kinds of video games that you can draw on. Also, some series might have a natural video game tie-in. For example, the SN universe makes use of Hegemon (the Pokemon parody), so it probably wouldn’t feel too much out of place if we did an issue where the characters got stuck in a Hegemon game. I’m pretty sure The Simpsons did something similar with Itchy and Scratchy. Drawing on your universe’s past material will help keep the story feel continuous and coherent. Usually, when a story goes for a shrink-ray episode/issue, it’s usually out of place. Most stories can’t justify the shrink-ray, so it comes out of nowhere and disappears just as quickly.
You know, I always liked the idea of the characters fighting copies of themselves, and I managed to work a scene into book 2.
Since Maya’s power is to bring memories to life, by digging into the memory of one of the old Specials (Connor, most likely) she could create copies of Meg, Ian, Pierce, Darren, and Jazz as well as Connor himself (Personally, a Meg and Pierce versus Meg and Pierce just…sounds…EPIC. Ditto to Connor versus Connor). The memories react in the exact same ways the characters would (However, they are voiceless) which means the original heroes would have to get creative and improvise while fighting (How do you attack someone who technically created the attack, knows how to use it, and can easily block it?).
Well, I thought it was fun.
- Wings
That happened in the latest TMNT series. Robots copied the fight style of each turtle. The turtles eventually won by swapping weapons and mixing things up. It felt clever and believable at the time even though there are some minor logic issues. (If a robot has stolen the hero’s ability in his primary weapon, presumably he should be able to steal the secondary skills, too).
It’s probably a more popular trope in video games, though. After you’ve done the character-design for the hero and his moves, it takes a bit less visual design to work in a villain that has exactly the same moves. Fighting Polygons, attack!
…In Secret of Mana, the fight with the clones was easily the most difficult one in the game for me.
The whole ‘fighting clones of self’ has been used a billion times, as has the solution to the problem of switching to fight someone else’s clone. I’m sure there’s a trope for this… Happened in Teen Titans, IIRC.
I first saw it on the original American Power Rangers show, they cloned the various rangers and made new, I think ninja-y versions.
It’s not really a plot I mind, I think that it has a lot of potential to be entertaining and if used with the appropriate level of coyness, useful character development. I’ve noticed a lot of examples recently, even in relatively mature works,
T.N.T’s Leverage recently had the leads (a group of criminals that fight injustice by committing crimes.) go up against an evil group with a counterpart for each of them, it played with the expectations that go along with it by giving it several relatively new twists, such as one member having sex with themselves. 24′s most recent season turned Tony Almeda into an evil version of Jack Bauer, and gave him without the character’s knowledge, an evil (more misguided then evil) version of Chloe in Jeanane Garofalo’s character.
Okay, so maybe not a lot of examples, but still, more then zero.
Actually, going through the scene in my head, the copies ended up fighting the real heroes as a group – enabling them to take down the copy of the other person.
Hopefully that cleared something up?
- Wings
Evil Twins are a very similar concept, I think.
Yeah, they are pretty similar if the copies are evil. On a different note, what about Good Twins? If you get the polar opposite of a villain, a rather evil person, or me, you get a saintly copy devoted to niceness.
- Wings
I think Futurama made a good-twin version of Bender. I think it would work better in a comedy than a more serious story.
I read this article, and as much as some of the 5 storylines are used, I do have to add a few comments to each of them.
1: Shrinking: It would be tough bringing about a good shrinking story without it sounding like “Honey I shrunk the kids”. Only once has it really been done right. and honestly… it wasnt an action series. Magic School bus is meant to be educational.
Not to say having the power of Shrinking for the hero, to focus more on espionnage. but it is often coupled with a superpower that follows a certain theme. (Wasp with her stinger blasters, Giant Man with the ability to do the opposite, etc)
2:Mind Swap: yeah, these episodes tend to be more humourous… and we have seen the villain and hero swap already. But there is a storyline still open. If we have the super genius supervillain who is really irritated with the hero foiling their plans, then to really hurt the hero, if the villain decides to put his mind in the hero’s body, and even if this option is coupled over with number 3, you have the hero in a now helpless kid body, having to see the villain terrorise the world and ruin the hero’s life… and nothing stops the writer from making this change permanent…
3: Age Change: Yeah, most of these episodes are cute yes. But there is one anime series that has done it well, and focuses on the drama of the change: Detective Conan/Case Closed. The main character is shrunk for the duration of the series… and yes, it does have its comedic moments… but it also shows that the main character has to see his girlfriend cry herself to sleep every night. It’s rare to see this as a permenant change… and it doesnt have to be a baby.
4:WWII time travel: I agree… we know the result most of the time. Justice League approached this, but I liked what they did with Green Lantern. John Steward ran out of juice for his powers… so he has to do things in a guerrilla warfare situation. The only ways I can see this happen, is to make the hero fight with the Nazis for survival, or to show a young idealist sarcastic hero the horrors of wars, which can be very traumatic. They have seen a couple of bank robbers with guns… but have they seen someone help them and befriend them get their head blown off? Other than that… I have to agree with you
5: Underwater adventures (Atlantis): We havent seen a real storyline recently with Atlantis and underwater adventures. Sure it sounds interesting to have heroes dropped out of their elements… But in most parts, I agree with your argument here.
Regarding age-changing… far too often, the characters are turned into babies or bratty children. Very little dramatic potential there. However, I think there is more potential with a teen–>adult or adult–>teen transformation. However, this sort of episode or issue is still fairly cliche… if you’ve seen one version of this, you pretty much know how any other version would turn out.
Regarding shrinking… Mirage’s TMNT series took this in another direction and had the shrinking last quite a bit longer than usual. (As of ~4 issues later, I think Donatello is still shrunken). I suppose it’s a bit less cheesy if it’s not just an obvious filler issue/episode.
LOL, between the ages of 10 and 13, I was working on a story series called “The Silver War”. Believe it or not, I think I had every single one of those “Plots That Need to Die” in there, haha. They didn’t literally go to World War II, though. In the “time travelling” installment, the main characters went to different influential points in history to stop people like past presidents from getting their brains sucked out by aliens. Otherwise, yes, they did get shrunk to lego-man size, they went to Atlantis, they were turned into children, and did a seven-character-body-swap.
Ah, childhood.
the teen to adult and adult to teen is too cliche in superhero titles… and far too cheezy. its the typical argument between the hero and the sidekick about who has it rougher… Been there. Done that.
Now… the child aspect has a few things someone could do that has been rarely done in the dramatics. If you have a thirty year old hero, with a fiancee and with a life that nothing goes wrong… he turns into a kid, loses 20 years off his life, and welll… If he takes up his same old name, he is in his own shadow, and not to mention his personal life would take the biggest blow. If he stays with his lady love, well… she would be robbing the cradle. And that would put some psychological pressure on the character. If he sees her from afar, he will see her broken hearted from a distance. it would be almost like the character is dead…
There are a few cards left to play that has a lot of potential…
And then there is the fact that if he was the big hero in the world, the villains would think he would be dead… And well… they would go out of control.
And lets not forget the limits of being a kid… pain going to the brain faster, tripping over their own two feet…
There is tons of drama one can pull. Just read Detective Conan/Case Closed, and you will see that there is potential in the drama. first time you see the permanent regression for more than the cheery episode. you notice in the series that the characters are seriously affected by the dissapearance.
Yeah, I agree. That’s why some cartoons are so boring now– they use the same plots every year…
But I hope my plot isn’t played out yet– it’s a guy retrieving a powerful item to impress a girl. But it’s tougher than he thinks. (I won’t say too much yet).
Just a note on the whole “cloning heroes is a cliche” thing…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worm_(Kamen_Rider)
Kamen Rider Kabuto, a tokusatsu series that aired a few years back in Japan, basically took the concept of cloning and made it the basis for the first 75% of their story. There are several moments where heroes discover that they are not human, but instead, are the enemy taken human form and completely convinced of their false identity. It is actually fairly well done.
And yes, these guys are superheroes. XD
I think that most of these “must be killed” plots could work in stories that were built around them. For example, clones in Kamen Rider Kabuto or time travel in Back to the Future or Doctor Who. I think it’s most bothersome when a series tries using one of these cliches as a throwaway episode/issue. Did the writers really bring a shrink-ray into this particular story because it really fit the story’s universe or because they couldn’t think of anything better?
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Incidentally, I may set up readers for a cliche plotline in SN and use it as a red herring to play them silly. Maybe introduce a MacGuffin device like a bodyswapping device, but never actually use it.
Alternately, I might just show these sorts of weird things happening in the background. My protagonists work at a superagency where life is very unusual, so maybe they see a minor character doing something that seems entirely out of character. (Like one of the security guards sitting with the scientists at lunch). The “security guard” sheepishly mentions that he’s actually a bodyswapped scientist. “That’s the LAST TIME I get within 50 feet of Darpa’s lab. She can get her own damn coffee.”
Hello again, B. Mac.
I was curious about the age change and parallel universes clauses….
What if they’re a part of a specific character’s nature but used in a more creative way?
I’m asking because I have two villians that result from a time manipulation experiment that get hit with that kind of effect… with the powers that come about having that as one of their abilities. And one villian whose whole ability is set around parallel worlds in a sense.
Both time manipulators were older scientists, but one was changed into a kid while the other was altered back into his twenties. They do more than age change people though; it’s just an application of their own time manipulation abilities.
The older of the two ends up becoming the worst of the two because he’s realized how much of his life he’s spent worried about doing the right thing. He ends up forming his own company that develops technology used to empower other people into villains, uses his powers more lethally (turning people to dust, aging their internal organs to such a degree they can’t sustain the body, etc) though he tends to use them less frequently than the other and is far more willing to let minions take care of things. That makes it easier to deny he has any abilities…
The younger is focusing more on what went wrong. He’s still breaking laws, but he’s much more likely to give you asthma through the aging of internal organs or the obvious age change. He has his own secret lab and tends to still be dangerous because of his creative applications of time manipulation on the environment, like generating poisonous gas by reverting the air, etc. If anything, his more open use of his powers and ‘visual’ presence as a ‘villain’ tends to lead people to mistake the elder’s doings for his.
The parallel Earth guy is kind of a reverse of the spectrum to the main character. He’s this punk-ass kid that worships the supervillians of the world because they can take what they want and he thinks they have much more control over their own lives than most people. After several attempts to gain his own superpowers, he develops this ability to summon forth ‘quantum divergences’ of himself as well as an immunity to any of these attempts. In a way, they’re all alternate world equivalents of himself, like… everytime he tries to give himself superpowers, he just adds to the roster of powered folks he can pull from. I figured it was enough of a divergence because he’s not really putting people in parallel Earths, it’s more like he’s summoning equivalents of himself.
I think that turning people older rather than younger isn’t nearly as much of a problem. The problem with turning characters into kids or (worse) babies is that kids/babies rarely have much of a personality and have trouble affecting the plot in any way other than being a MacGuffin that gets kidnapped. In contrast, getting aged might present a protagonist with an interesting challenge: how does he beat the villain without his youthly energy and strength?
As long as the younger one doesn’t get his romance on, I don’t think that the age-change stuff will raise any problems.
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I’m having more trouble with the parallel Earth guy. After doing a quick read-through (20 seconds), I still don’t clearly understand what his powers are. If the editor evaluating your submission has a similar reaction (“huh?”), I think that it could make him a bit less receptive to the submission as a whole. When you explain this in your submission, I’d recommend trying to get it down to 1-2 sentences, something like “he can summon versions of himself with different superpowers from alternate dimensions.” I’d recommend keeping the mumbo-jumbo (like “quantum divergences”) to a minimum in the submission. You can use that lingo in-story to make the story sound more scientifically plausible, but I don’t think it would help the editor figure out whether the submission is worth publishing.
Ahh, thanks B. Mac!
Yeah, basically that sentence hits exactly what he does really. He summons versions of himself with different super powers from alternate dimensions he creates by purposely trying to get super powers himself.
And nah, the younger one doesn’t get his romance groove on… lol. There was consideration of a ‘sidekick’/'mother’/resources needing an adult like home he smuggled out of a retirement home with a deal, but he’s not exactly the romancing type. It’s funny because Ally considers him his greatest villian because he doesn’t know about the elder of the two having powers.
So much for Sea Devils!
I can’t stand time travel because of the paradoxes it creates, but I do have a few characters that go on one way trips, and some God-level interference with the time stream. I know, it’s an hypocrisy i’m working on. But I think it is also an integral part of making your own comic book universe, unfortunate as it may be.
I do think time-travel stories work when it takes place on a small scale or on the edges of a large event, with effects that scale up or effect things much much later. If you avoid a mistake like Hawkman being 60 years old when he joins the JLA, it should be possible.
As for parallel universes, wouldn’t it be better to have universes that are 90 degrees away from your main storyline? For example, my superhero universe (that has almost zero magic) butts up against a world where magic is an everyday thing. Only a few characters are duplicated. Most superheroes are nobodies in the magic world, and vice versa. Tempest, a lightning storm wielding superhero, meets his alter ego Marc Embers, a high level mage who associates with deities on a regular basis. There is a 10 year age difference, and they bicker about life choices the other one made/didn’t make.
Shrinking? Once in a while you need a guy to get in there and fix the circuits by hand. Plus, if he can get small enough, have him push some atoms around and blow some crap up!
And then someone mistakes him for a bug and squashes him.
hehee! for some reason, I like bugs, so there are a number of bug themed characters in my universe. I even have a cross-over miniseries style event outlined, with just those characters.
my miniaturizing character was inspired (stolen?) from that Tarzan & the Super 7 show
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstretch_and_Microwoman
His name was, when I was 14 and thought it was totally awesome at the time, “Mikeroid Mikerochip”. Now, it’s simply Micron. As I typed that, I realized (20 years later) the alliterative association with my name. Duh.
He’s still part of a teen supergroup in the mid 22c, but he cares more about looking for subatomic life than being a hero.
ok, I know the chaotic tv show doesn’t invole mind swapping, but that show has some good gender swapping and species and so does h.e.r.o ( 2003 revamp of dial h for h.e.r.o) in this last few issues.