Olantern

Funny, I was just considering the possibility of a Big Comic Publisher-style rebooting of the CoH continuity earlier today. I'm thinking something of that scale would be required to reconcile the content inconsistencies you mention.

The issue of zones and their usefulness (or lack thereof) is really a separate issue from this, though, as you imply, a revamp of zones or the whole "zone" concept could help with the content issue.

I see a potential problem, though, aside from people's disliking such a huge change: can the game system support a zoneless world? Or is that something better saved for Paragon Studios' next MMO? (Personally, I have no idea.)

And the beatings will continue until morale improves!

To be fair, I hadn't realized that the level of blaster-related angst was as high as it is until last week, when I chanced to visit the Archetypes and Powers subsection. From my reading there, it was obvious it'd been building up to a high level, high enough for developer attention, for a long time. (Having been around for quite a few years now, I know it's always been there; it ebbs and flows.)

Put more simply, if you don't frequent the archetype boards, it's easy to miss this sort of thing.

I recall seeing a lot of posts to that effect a couple of years ago. ("A lot" here means perhaps five to ten; it isn't like the subject comes up that often. And keep in mind the inherent vagueness of "I recall.")

I listed the in-game lore that people suggested implied such a relationship. Personally, though, I agree with your statement that it's a huge, improbable leap from "handing her Excalibur" to "he's her father." All in all, I'm inclined to agree with you that people were seeing things. Sorry if I didn't make that clear in my first post.

It always turns around to Batman, doesn't it? There was an interesting thread about exactly the subject of this paragraph a year or two ago, including a discussion of how the Joker's legal defense might work; I recommend searching for it.

I should mention that despite having serious problems with Batman Morality, I came down on the side of, "Holding Batman responsible for murders committed by the Joker? That's nuts." I'm not bothered by Batman not hunting down and slaughtering the Joker.

I am bothered by the implication that anyone risking killing the Joker in trying to apprehend him is being immoral, a position sometimes explicitly taken by Batman and routinely implicitly taken by his writers. In my view, there are two problems with that position.

The first, simpler one is that I just plain disagree with it. It seems irrational to me that the police can't tell the Joker, "Stop, or I'll shoot" simply because it might kill him if he doesn't stop and they do shoot. This objection to Batman Morality is easy to overcome, though, in that many people simply don't agree with the objection, and I can't honestly claim there are any logical problems with it aside from my disagreeing with it. Put more simply, if your position is "It's wrong even to risk killing," then you can't be criticized for the Joker's running away when you threaten him with "Stop, or I'll tell you to stop again."

My second objection to the Bat-position is based on what I consider a fundamental inconsistency in it. That is that while Batman doesn't use firearms or other deadly weapons, he still does things to criminals that could inflict death or crippling bodily injury on them, such as striking them with unarmed blows sufficient to render them unconscious, throwing edged Batarangs at them, or dropping them off buildings to break their legs (see Batman Begins). (This becomes even more of a problem for Superman, who is flinging superhuman crushing forces and beams of heat around in combat situations.) How does Batman know that the corrupt cop will land on his legs and not his neck? How does he know he won't inflict brain damage on the guard of the corporate facility whom he just knocked out? Either he just plain doesn't, or he does "because he's Batman, and Batman doesn't make mistakes." Does no one else see the problem there? Essentially, Batman's moral code relies on his writer protecting him from ever making a mistake. To me, this takes away much of its moral force. It ends up coming off as the writer preaching at me.

Finally, to drag things back toward DC heroes in general, if not Superman in particular, I have a bit of a problem with speeches in which heroes declare themselves to be more-than-human symbols of hope. This afflicts a lot of recent works about Superman and Batman, notably Christopher Nolan's Bat-series and quite a few recent Superman one-offs. Again, it's a situation where the writers seem to get the wires between the story's message and its internal structure crossed. I have no problem with the general concept of the DC superheroes, which has been stated over the past couple decades by writers and editors to be, "They are ideals for ordinary readers." That is fine, healthy, even. While "wish fulfillment" has become an inexplicably dirty phrase in the past few decades, I think it's fine to create a story about a protagonist who represents your ideals, or to read one who embodies the writer's.

Where this breaks down is when writers feel the need to have the superhero justify himself within the story itself by explaining how he's a more-than-human ideal to be admired. (Sometimes, a secondary character will do this for him.) What about all the other characters in the story? The implication is that they can never reach that level. It's fine for Superman to be a superhuman inspiration to me as a reader because to me, he is a fictional character. But if he proclaims himself as some unattainable ideal to, say, Jimmy Olsen, I find it hard to imagine Olsen not being resentful. The situation is a paradigm of paternalism, which I'm pretty sure isn't the message the writers want to send. (If it is, there are bigger problems with comics than are generally being considered out there.)

Back on topic, despite everything I wrote above, I don't much care for the "edgy" cynicism about the superheroic ideal displayed by works like The Authority, and I enjoy Superman, when he isn't boasting about how moral he is, so I like the concept of this movie.