On Supehero Media And Tone

Netflix recently dropped the first of five superhero series for its subscribers to enjoy.  Daredevil is quite good, though to be honest as of this typing I’ve only seen the first five or so episodes.  Charlie Cox makes a good superhero.  Vincent D’Onofrio is an excellent Kingpin.  There was much rejoicing.

Now, I’m not here to review the series.  Better reviewers than I have or will do so, and I have other things to do.  Instead, I want to discuss tone and how it applies to superheroes on TV and to a lesser extent in the movies.

The Problem With Superman

I’ve never regularly collected Superman comics.  As you can probably guess by what I tend to write about, I’ve always been more of a Spider-Man fan with Batman a very, very close second.

Nothing against the big blue boy scout, and I’m not even sure why he ranks so low on my interest level.  Maybe he is too powerful and I relate more to the hero that is more worried about getting home with a cake for his Aunt May’s dinner party than how to beat the Shocker this go round.