JimB said:
Lightknight said:
Also, you seem to be listed a lot of female heroes as though they are not superheroes.
Yep. I took Ihateregistering1's line between superheroes and normal people as meaning one group has powers and one doesn't.
Even if you do not quantify them as superheroes, you can't classify them as normal. The debate is generally whether or not the "super" requires powers or the benefit provided to humanity. If it's just super powers then something mundane like Cypher's ability to learn languages somehow places him in the category of superhero whereas someone like Tony Stark is just a hero in a suit since his powers are not "super". If it's the influence on society, as in someone who saves people multiple times as a crusader of sorts, then that includes all other varieties of heroes. I'd argue that someone who risks their lives once is a hero. Someone who makes a successful routine of it is a superhero.
Also, even though people like to claim that people like Batman are normal people, I'd like to point out that Batman routinely outsmarts and outplans super intelligent beings. While some would dismiss that as craftiness, it should be noted that ingenuity is a component of intelligence so I would actually posit that Batman's superpower is not only his money but his intelligence. We can see this trait born out in a lot of other "non-powered" superheroes. There's the super powers people claim they have or don't have and then there's the powers they regularly display but the writers pretend even a peak human could convey.
Lightknight said:
It's also strange that in the same breath you list Tony Stark, who is a regular human in super-powered equipment, but dismiss Kate Bishop (Hawkeye) who uses special hardware and is on the same team.
The Kate Bishop dating Miles Morales is from the Ultimate universe, and to the best of my knowledge, has no powers nor hardware nor place on a superhero team.
She is a powerless incarnation of a superhero. That she is normal in that universe is somewhat irrelevant. This is the nature of the multiverse at times. These people are usually still the embodiment of a hero even if they lack the means of one.
Lightknight said:
You also list the Black Widow who actually has super human abilities albeit mundane ones (slowed aging, rapid healing, mind control resistance, enhanced immune system, etc) so maybe you're having a bit of trouble seeing female heroes as being heroes?
No, I just plain didn't know that. Last time I looked into the character, she was just an assassin.
Writers can't help themselves with the former spy characters like Wolverine and Black Widow. They always want to try and get them into stuff like the cold war and all of that requires some sort of "slowed aging" back story.
Lightknight said:
From your list, Thor, Iron Man, Daredevil, and Spider-Man were all created by [Stan Lee].
Ehh...partially. He did not create all of those characters alone.
Either way, they stink of him to put it bluntly and their in-story cast also reeks of him from name alliteration to everything else.
Lightknight said:
So you could more reasonably ask why Stan Lee likes the contrast of superpowered men with regular women.
I'm not interested in making excuses or defending anyone, particularly when the accusations I've leveled have nothing at stake behind them. You can knock yourself out with that, if you want.
What I mean is that a disproportionate number of heroes that had long-term relationships with non-hero characters were directly touched by the same man. Ergo, a simple answer to the question is that a lot of these scenarios were produced by the most influential and prolific comic professional of all time.
Also, I'm not sure why he would need defending. As stated in this thread, there is also an exhaustive list of females superheroes who date regular joes. Even if not, we all know that comic books were written for boys just as romance novels are still written for women. It only becomes an issue now when comics are mainstream and comics have evolved along with their audience. That's what matters. The thought of having defending someone catering to their customer base is ridiculous. There is nothing wrong with having a hero date a regular person. It makes them more relatable and as always it provides the hero's weakness. It is more offensive to have a powerful love interest always getting conked on the head and carried off than it is to have a regular person being kidnapped by a super-powered villain. The former would appear careless or weak on the superhero girl/boyfriend's part whereas the latter makes since due to a clear power disparity.
Leon Royce said:
It's simple: Women require men to be superior to them in order to find them attractive.
Eh, it's moreso that women have evolved in such a way as to be much more selective of their mate and so the ones that stand out to them have a much better shot. This is the natural effect of having one sex that can reproduce multiple times a day and another that requires a 9-month cooldown between procreation activities. It's a pretty simple naturalistic explanation for the apparent differences of males and females sexual reproductive behaviors in society. That is somewhat changed or changing due to reproductive technology now but the evolution of women being more choosey on average is still going to remain with us. Especially now that reproductive technology only increases the ability to be choosey but casual relationships are now far less costly.
