George R.R. Martin's Wild Cards #2

[superboyprime]

"If you lined up two dozen random aces next to two dozen denizens of the Marvel or DC universes, you would be instantly struck by how ordinary the aces appear. No matter how awesome their abilities, they're still just regular people. The ability to fly does not necessarily mean you won't be bald or pot-bellied; being able to shoot energy beams from your hands won't give you a bodybuilder's physique or gigantic watermelon breasts. But however ordinary they are on the outside, our characters have an internal depth..." - George R.R. Martin

Comments

[kjn]

I think that quote suffers badly from taking out of its context and from the way it's shortened.

One thing that sets Wild Cards apart from all these other “gritty, realistic” universes is our medium. While we have had some comics adaptations, The Hard Call being the latest, Wild Cards was born as a series of books, not comics, and the overwhelming majority of our stories have been told in prose. Every medium has its own strengths and weaknesses, of course. Comics, as a visual medium, lends itself to colorful costumes, flamboyant action sequences, and larger than life characters who look very cool in those skin-tight costumes. Prose allows greater depth of characterization, internal monologue, action that is just as vivid but more visceral and real. Very few of our characters wear costumes. If you lined up two dozen random aces next to two dozen denizens of the Marvel or DC universes, you would be instantly struck by how ordinary the aces appear. No matter how awesome their abilities, they're still just regular people. The ability to fly does not necessarily mean you won't be bald or pot-bellied; being able to shoot energy beams from your hands won't give you a bodybuilder's physique or gigantic watermelon breasts. But however ordinary they are on the outside, our characters have an internal depth that you can only get from prose.

[superboyprime]

How so? I actually shortened it so that it wouldn't come off inflammatory, since Martin's original statement, if read with an uncharitable mindset, could be (mis)construed as claiming one medium is inherently less deep than the other.

[kjn]

Everything can be made inflammatory given an uncharitable mindset. Your selective quoting here removed the external reason why Wild Cards gained something good compared to other types of superhero tales, but also the acknowledgement that Wild Cards lost something. By stripping Martin's words from its context, you reduced it to simply "Wild Cards is better".

When the reality is that I think Martin is much more into "Wild Cards was made using different tools and from a different set of priorities".

[superboyprime]

The part I quoted says the Wild Cards characters look more ordinary, and that’s it. Your longer version comes off as saying the characters are deeper in a way the entire comics medium can never equal.