The Pastiche Problem

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Ares
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The Pastiche Problem

Post by Ares »

This is something I've thought about recently, especially with regards to my own setting and world building. Basically, it boils down to the notion of character pastiches, the kind of problems they cause, and the kind of issues you can have run into when creating a character.

First and foremost, when I say a pastiche character, I mean a character that is effectively acting as a stand in for another character, usually one owned by another company. Superman is basically the most patiched hero in fiction, given the numerous Superman clones that exist in various comic universes, from Hyperion and Gladiator in Marvel, to Supreme and Omni-Man over at Image, to Majestic and Apollo over at Wildstorm, and any of the other numerous examples from across comics.

Over in Astro City, Samaritan is an interesting example of the trope because he's clearly meant to evoke that kind of character. He's a flying powerhouse that spends his time saving the world, is considered "The World's Greatest Hero", etc. But outside of some superficial similarities, Samaritan and Superman have very little in common. Samaritan is a human from an alternate future that no longer exists, not an alien from another world. While he is a superstrong, invulnerable, fast, flying powerhouse with super senses, his powers ultimately have more in common with someone like the Silver Surfer, as it involves the manipulation of vast cosmic energies. Even his overall design is different, being a single colored bodysuit with a single white symbol and a uniquely designed cape. Yet when people look at Samaritan, everyone immediately thinks "Astro City's Superman".

With Astro City it definitely works, as it's meant to be basically a setting full of pastiches and unique twists on existing heroes. Winged Victory is Wonder Woman. The Confessor is Batman. The Gentleman is Captain Marvel. The Furst Family is the Fantastic Four with a little Doc Savage/Jonny Quest thrown in. The Hanged Man is the Spectre. So on and so forth.

But it can also be kind of a detriment to characters that aren't really a pastiche of another character. Moon Knight is frequently considered a pastiche of Batman, but beyond being masked, caped crimefighters that employ intimidation and gadgets, they really aren't similar at all. In terms of origin, methodology, even in look, the two are very different. But because Moon Knight is a (usually normal human) with a cape that fights crime at night with some throwing weapons, people think of him as a Batman knock off.

And it's not unique to Superman and Batman. Any patriotic hero or a hero that uses a shield automatically gets compared to Captain America. Any hero that gets around via swing is often compared to Spider-Man. Almost any strong female character gets compared to Wonder Woman, especially if she's any kind of role model or feminist.

Creators can definitely make pastiches work for them. The Invincible creative team specifically made the Guardians of the Globe into obvious Justice League pastiches specifically to make you feel bad when Omni-Man killed them. They knew they didn't have enough time to really establish who they were, so making them obvious analogies to existing heroes let their deaths have impact. And the setting Love and Capes is basically one big love letter to DC and Marvel Comics with obvious pastiche and homage heroes everywhere.

But if someone wants to create a flying brick hero with a cape, not deconstruct the idea of being a superhero and just tell stories with them, they might run into an issue where someone looks at said hero and thinks "Oh joy, Superman knock off #578" and ignore them, even if the stories, origin, tone and villains are well done and bear little resemblance to most Superman stories.

I guess I'm curious what everyone else might think of this. If you think it's really an issue at all, if it is a problem, and if so, how to overcome it. If someone creates a character called The Guardian who fights crime with a shield, will the creator have to accept people will think he's just a Captain America knock off and have to work extra harder to prove them wrong? Is there a way to do it where those parallels aren't as visible? Or should the fact that people will make those connections just be embraced and seen as free publicity?
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FuzzyBoots
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Re: The Pastiche Problem

Post by FuzzyBoots »

PS 238 actually kind of leaned into that with FISS (Flying, Invulnerability, Strength, Speed) being such a common powerset that they're numbered (one of the main characters is #83), and one of the plotlines is them unionizing so that people realize they have unique talents to offer.
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Ken
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Re: The Pastiche Problem

Post by Ken »

Ares wrote: Wed Aug 26, 2020 8:01 pmI guess I'm curious what everyone else might think of this. If you think it's really an issue at all, if it is a problem, and if so, how to overcome it. If someone creates a character called The Guardian who fights crime with a shield, will the creator have to accept people will think he's just a Captain America knock off and have to work extra harder to prove them wrong?
Like Joe Simon and Jack Kirby who created both Steve Rogers and Jim Harper? (And was Steve Rogers a pastiche of Joe Higgins, the SHIELD?)

I think it's impossible to predict how people will react. Plus, even now, it's hard to tell when a character is a pastiche of another character and when a character is just someone with similar powers? Are Hank Pym and Pietro Maximoff pastiches of Ray Palmer and Barry Allen? Quicksilver's first costume was basically the Flash is green with no mask. And before Hank Pym decided to become Giant Man?

DC and Fawcett fought for years over whether Captain Marvel was an imitation Superman. The flying & super-strong Sub-Mariner was arguably the first of the "what if Superman were an asshole" characters. Thor flies, is super-strong, and has a bright red cape; is he a supermanalogue? (How about a Captain-Marvel analogue, back when he resumed the Don Blake ID?)

And what about Mar-Vell? He was an alien with great strength in Earth's gravity, who eventually learned to fly. Why is he NOT considered a supermanalogue?

The Squadron Supreme, the Guardians of the Globe, the Shi'ar Imperial Guard, the Heroes of Angor... These are all, clearly, pastiches of entire teams. And the Pultonian from "Irredeemable" is clearly a "What if Superman went nuts and became a villain." But was the pre-Alan Moore Supreme a Superman pastiche? The Alan Moore version, unquestioningly.

She-Hulk is the cousin of the strongest hero in her universe; is she a Supergirl-analogue?

In the late 1950s-early 1960s, Aquaman started ripping off Namor's backstory while Namor was in comic-book limbo.

Or that archer who was associated by that woman in fishnets... the one with the wig... "Black... " something.

I think a pastiche of a character takes more than just imitating powers. Reed Richards isn't a pastiche of Eel O'Brien OR Ralph Dibny or Jimmy Olsen. But an argument could be made that Simon Williams began as a Superman pastiche.
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Re: The Pastiche Problem

Post by Woodclaw »

The big question about a pastiche is: what are you (the author) trying to accomplish with it?
The superhero genre lives and thrives on tropes and archetypes, so a level of pastiching is inevitable and some authors even came to expect it and use it to their own advantage.
For example, the original Squadron Supreme limited series was built around the idea of putting the Justice League through a story DC would never approve. Mark Gruenwald played with the idea of a full cast of pastiche heroes. Each member of the Squadron was deliberately designed to ape a Leaguer.
The same is true of Astro City. Characters are built to evoke someone specifically and provoke a specific reaction from the reader.
In a way these pastiche are akin to What Ifs and Elseworlds.
It's a generally good design principle, if you work with a limited scope story (like Squadron Supreme) or you can push your character beyond the initial similarity.

In principle, even characters like Supreme or the Plutonian might work, but not if you can't move them past the initial idea and characterization. Supreme premise is "what if an egotistical steroid-head had the powers of Superman", but this idea never goes anywhere.
Why?
Because there is simply no meat to it. Supreme is a stale power fantasy without context. He's a pastiche done wrong.
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NoOneofConsequence
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Re: The Pastiche Problem

Post by NoOneofConsequence »

Woodclaw wrote: Mon Aug 31, 2020 5:52 pm The big question about a pastiche is: what are you (the author) trying to accomplish with it?
I think this is the main thing, yes. In the case of Astro City, I always had the impression that Kurt Busiek was using these pastiches to examine specific aspects of certain existing characters, and because of that he tailored them to further emphasize what he was examining. In the case of Winged Victory, for example, she was clearly meant to be used to examine the idea of Wonder Woman as a "feminist superhero"/champion of women, and when we finally get the story arc that explains her origins and where her powers come from, it's clearly designed with this in mind. In the case of Samaritan, I think he was designed to be a summary of what Astro City was going to be all about. It's why he's the very first story, and why a fair amount of that first issue's story is a lot of world building regarding the book's setting, its tone, the role superhumans play here, and so forth. And he's also there just to tell a story about how a guy who can fly but has to spend almost every second of the day racing from one crisis to the next might, in his dreams, enjoy the thrill of flying just for the sheer joy of it. And I think one of the reasons it works so well is that, in addition to setting the stage for this entire series in which we look at the very human side of a super hero world, it also may make the reader pause and consider that perhaps Superman, the character Samaritan is an obvious pastiche of, may also have a similar desire to simply fly for the pure enjoyment of doing so. A lot of the pastiche characters I most remember - Supreme, Squadron Supreme, The Elite, Captain Kurtz from Frank Miller's Martha Washington series, most of Astro City, among others - were all ones that made me look at the characters they were based on in a new way.
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