But doesn't a hero need to have that one specific weakness?
With Superman it's obviously kryptonite...but with Batman, he's a regular guy, with no specific weakness.
And for that matter batman is too human, he's not even a "SUPER hero"
Yeah, but what kind of pansy is able to do pretty much anything, but is scared of rocks?
Batman is way cooler than Superman
because of the fact that ihe isn't a"super" hero. He's a badass through hard work and determination, not because of the color of the sun.
Spidey is the coolest because, although he has super powers, he is usually still physically weaker than his opponents. Half of his skill is derived from his natural super-smarts (soemthing they totally screwed the pooch on in the movies was making his webbing a superpower instead of his own brilliant creation as was done in the comics)
Aside from some characters like Batman, DC heros are usually just physically imposing without any brains. Batman is the exception. But even Batman can only exist becaue of he has gobs of money.
Marvel rocks because they understand their target demographic: Geeks. They made many of their most popular characters be nerds as well. Reed Richards, Peter Parker, and Bruce Banner are all great examples of super-nerds becoming superheros.
These nerds often get their superpowers
because of their nerd status. They got their powers form science experiments gone wrong and ****.
They have intelligence to go along with their powers.
It makes the comic book nerd feel as though every nerd can bang a supermodel like Peter Parker, or a hot blonde like Reed Richards, or can have extreme power hidden deep within themselves as Bruce Banner did.
Marvel didn't simply focus on being "super" like DC did, they added character devolpment designed to appeals specifically to the people who consumed their product.
DC, on the other hand, creates a super-dude who only
pretends to be a nerd (Superman) because being a nerd is a great way to hide how cool you really are. That basically makes fun of nerds, as though they are so inconsequential and so unoticable that if only they took off their glasses and removed the pocket protector, they'd be a whole new super-cool guy that nobody would recognize because the nerd persona was so irrelevant.
In essence, Superman stopped being a nerd when he was being super.
Whereas, for Spidey et al the "secret" identity was that of the
hero, and the REAL identity was that of the
nerd (except Reed Richards who had no secret identiy. He was a full-time nerd).
And with Banner, the super-badass persona was a negative, not a positive. He would always have preffered to remain a nerd, and the super creature was a dumb brute and that made the cool, tough character into a monster, while the nerdy weak character was prefferable. (until later issues when the Gray hulk/Joe Fixit character had banners smart, but very little morality and the combination banner/hulk that combined banners brains and portions of his personality with the two separate hulk identities in order to resolve some serious daddy-issues he had. I stopped colecting comics around that time, so I don't know **** about what happens later)
But the original take on the Hulk was a very interesting aproach to super-heros, if you ask me.
Anyway, I always preffered Marvel because of the character devolpment and science-based powers. Batman was one of the few DC titles I also collected because he was by far and away the best DC character.
Superman is "teh suck" as far as superheros go. He was afraid of rocks, he faked at being a nerd because nerds are so inconsequential in everyday life that nobody noticed him simply because he wore glasses, his worst enemy was a ***** bald guy who had some of those rocks supes was so scared of, and he had no personality whatsoever.
