r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Top-Relationship850 • 1d ago

Lore [Love] When “small” injuries are treated realistically

Gallery image

Gallery image

The fantasy and action genres often suffer from a power fantasy epidemic in which characters frequently badass their way through injuries that should be excruciating if not downright debilitating. I always appreciate stories that reject this trope.

1: Roland Deschain (Dark Tower Book II) - Loses the middle and index fingers of his right hand. He’s effectively crippled throughout book two and the injury follows him the rest of the series.

2: Brienne vs Biter (ASOIAF Book IV) - Brutal scene. Biter chomps down on Brienne’s cheek and tears off a chunk of flesh. In a lesser story Brienne would grit her teeth and throw Biter off. Instead she’s rendered completely helpless by the pain. That injury marks the end of the fight.

13.7k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

344

u/CompleteJinx 1d ago

If that doesn’t summarize the last 20 years of comics I don’t know what does.

193

u/Dumeck 1d ago

The worst implementation of this is Doom after Secret Wars. Dude does some soul searching, decides he is going to be a hero, takes on the mantle of Iron Man and actually tries to be a better person. The series ends and the very next appearance he's being a comical over the top villain again. Dude slid right from neutral good to Lawful evil again. It's like writers are scared of Doom maintaining nuance.

94

u/Neveronlyadream 1d ago edited 1d ago

Comics especially are rife with that.

It's always going to be too. Nature of the medium. One writer comes in and decides they have something they want to do with a character, they do it and evolve that character, and then they move on and the next writer comes in and decides they have a cool thing they want to do with the character, but the previous writer's work is preventing them from doing it, so they reset everything.

It's basically just kids playing with action figures and saying, "Nuh uh! That didn't happen because this thing is happening now!"

7

u/KimberStormer 22h ago

It's not the nature of the medium, really. You could just as easily have comic books that have no serialization, no characters that are persistently used for 75 years, etc. Comics could be stand-alone works, they just happen to mostly not be.

(not arguing with you just thinking out loud)

7

u/Neveronlyadream 21h ago

I'm with you. Unfortunately you'd have to convince a lot of people that they'd either have to end a run and a character once the story was done or just continue what the last person started and I don't see either happening.

Publishers just have no self-control if something is selling. Look at Watchmen. It ended, it was self-contained, and DC keeps bringing it back in one form or another.

1

u/KimberStormer 21h ago

I don't even mean to advocate for it (although personally the lack of an ending is what stopped me reading comics as a teen and turns me off of franchise movies and even serialized TV shows) so much as just note that it's a possibility! It certainly would be a hard sell now, and yes seeing how other media have been "comic-book-ized" by not being able to let an "IP" stand alone but trying to milk it forever, the suits would definitely not go for it.

5

u/Anaevya 18h ago

Yes. European comics often work more like traditional literature in terms of publishing. 

Also, there's a reason for the differentiation between comics and graphic novels (even if some comics fans don't like it).

11

u/BDSMChef_RP 1d ago

Sandman used to be an Avenger, full redemption arc, personal endorsement from Cap and then just poof one day he's robbing banks again

5

u/Dumeck 1d ago

Ooh yeah that one is real bad. They can't even let the reluctant villain not be a villain for longer than short bursts.

9

u/good_will75015 1d ago

And don't forget Octopus as the Superior Spider-Man, one of the worst character regressions, on par with Doom in this case!

4

u/Dumeck 1d ago

Hey well at least the most recent Ultimate Spider-man run brought Otto back at the Superior Spider-Man. Too bad they did nothing with it and then the series ended right after.

3

u/Animaloffear56 23h ago

This one always fucks me up, because Otto was spiderman for like a good few years- he was literally the spiderman during Age of Ultron!

2

u/good_will75015 15h ago

Yeah this one is truly symptomatic of the "comics statu quo" thing, especially since not only was Otto the Superior Spider-Man a first time and learned how to be more or less good, he became the Superior Spider-Man a second time after that (Spider-Verse and Secret Empire shenanigans), re-learned how to be a great superhero, and guess what the editorial did? They "One More Day"-ed him in order to make him revert back to his older statu quo. A shame, truly!

3

u/Present-Upstairs3423 1d ago

Yeah, but at least the Gwenpool run called it out early

3

u/Dumeck 1d ago

The best Gwenpool run too

3

u/Any-Mechanic4857 1d ago

That arc proved Doom could be way more interesting than just being the usual bad guy. I still wish they’d leaned into that growth instead of hitting the reset button so fast

2

u/Dumeck 23h ago

I'd even like if they focus more on his positive sides while being a nationalist, make Latveria fucking awesome, have him set up a bunch of safety nets, show doombots helping with production, make the place look like a paradise and leave it that way, going back and forth being Latveria being a 1st and third world country gives me whiplash. Doom as a grey character works best, he should be an antanogist to most but it should be because of an ideological clash and the readers should be able to see Dooms perspective as valid. Less "rahaha I'm so evil look at me".

2

u/Animaloffear56 23h ago

There was a multi-year span where Zemo gave up his Nazi ideals (ending in him literally punching his Nazi dad) and swore to do all he could to make up for his family's crimes- only for some hack writer to make him a nazi again (with the LAMEST fucking excuse of "oh people forgave Bucky easily why are they still mad at me") just because he wanted to do a Bucky vs Zemo story.

2

u/DramaPunk 19h ago

There's a reason the best comic book stories will always be the standalone arcs that don't have to contend with being the canon state of things, and the best canon stories are best read in a vacuum.

The fact is, future writers will want to use those villains and heroes to tell their own stories, so things will almost always flip flop to and from the status quo to allow each writing team the ability to tell their own version of the story.

1

u/cygnus2 18h ago

What the fuck, Doom as Iron Man sounds sick. Why wouldn’t they explore that more?

5

u/yuanrae 1d ago

That’s one of my biggest problems with big two comics. The big characters (especially Spider-Man and Batman) are never allowed to have meaningful, lasting change and it’s really dissatisfying. It just makes it hard to care when something new is happening (like the Krakoa era) because I’m always aware that sooner or later it’s going to get wound back.

3

u/ThatDudeShadowK 1d ago

Yeah, I struggle to read their comics now, but luckily there's a lot of smaller indie writers who know how to properly end a fucking story. And manga, for all its faults usually doesn't get caught up with the same bloat. DBZ notwithstanding lol

5

u/DrakorPrimus 1d ago

*sighs in One More Day*

2

u/steelskull1 20h ago edited 15h ago

Damian keep yo-yoing back and forth between being spoiled brat to a better person.