Game Informer Scanned Photos (reposted from Marvel Pinball forum)

[Verjigorm]

I pointedly referred to superhero comics as being primarily designed for adolescents. (And they are.)

Yes, the discussion was about superhero comics specifically. And again, I think the answer is not as simple as mentioned above.

If you look at Marvel's publishing strategy, you will see that many series have been relaunched, like the Ultimate Universe or are specifically recreated for a younger audience, like the Marvel Super Hero Squad shows.

And I think that need to recreate came from the fact that the series grew up with their readers and got more complex not only in scope, but also in depth.
Therefore I would agree with the fact that there are super hero series, which are primarily designed for a younger audience, but I would disagree on the point that all or the majority are only designed for this age group.

[E113]

I never pushed any such thing. I never said "comics are for adolescents".

I pointedly referred to superhero comics as being primarily designed for adolescents. (And they are.)

I can spend a cosy afternoon nestling up to American Vampire, the Dark Tower and The Stand adaptations, or even Hellboy and Frank Miller's Batman on occasion.

And I'd play any of these pinball tables. Instead, we've been getting lycra-clad, nite-glo heroes and villains spouting (awful) one-liners at each, in a fiesta of lurid colours. It's getting stale, IMO.

Time to move on, I think.

I apologize sir. I misunderstood what you were trying to convey.I thought you were generalizing all comics as designed for adolescents. My mistake.

[Dalek Nation]

... there is a tendency to over-read things in our society, or become obsessed with looking for depth and meaning...

I am training to be an English Teacher atm, and even I find it laughable how much depth we are supposed to draw from things when sometimes, it really isn't there.

I see comic books as similar to The Simpsons or South Park; as a younger watcher you enjoy the antics and stupidity of the show, then as you get older you start to understand some of the depth and references they make; but for the most part; you were drawn to them in a younger state of mind.

Just because there is some depth there (and I believe there is) does not change the fact that the main target audience is generally a younger crowd.

(I have a massive Dead pool collection just fyi; but I enjoy reading them because of the stupidity of some of them, rather than because of trying to draw depth from them)...

I agree strongly with the first part of this... I understand and agree that we try to apply depth to something when the author may have not intended that depth to be there. As a writer, I was often perturbed in higher level english courses which would insist on our discussing the author's meaning when it was clear to me when.. well, sometimes a fish is just a fish.

I would like to reiterate my point though that a lot of comics are written specifically for depth. ie. I can't imagine many adolescents got much out of Moon Knight's books from the past few years, and I think most younger audiences would find daredevil's stuff from the past year to be down-right boring (again, Eisner Award winning material); this is because neither title is written for the teen market. You mention deadpool... which does target the kids, that's not a title with depth [I am a fan as well, and agree with your point on sometimes wanting to read something light.] Others, much more so.

And Womble: I understand your point clearly, just because there is depth to some comics doesn't mean we've seen that depth translated to any of our "hero-beat-bad-guy" tables... to be fair though its rare to get that from any games.

[ShoryukenToTheChin]

Well I respect your opinions, hopefully by the end of 2012 will have a healthy variety for both sides of the coin.

[Womble]

Well said my friend, well written also.. I do hope the majority start realising that Comics have a wider audience then what they are lead to believe.

and...

I'm all for stating your opinion, but trying to push "comics are for adolescents" off as fact is just plain false.

I never pushed any such thing. I never said "comics are for adolescents".

I pointedly referred to superhero comics as being primarily designed for adolescents. (And they are.)

I can spend a cosy afternoon nestling up to American Vampire, the Dark Tower and The Stand adaptations, or even Hellboy and Frank Miller's Batman on occasion.

And I'd play any of these pinball tables. Instead, we've been getting lycra-clad, nite-glo heroes and villains spouting (awful) one-liners at each, in a fiesta of lurid colours. It's getting stale, IMO.

Time to move on, I think.

[Lepruk86]

I kind of sit between Womble and those making the point.

I recently re-watched 1994 Spider-man TAS (the good episodes most people remember) and whilst it diverts from the comics a little bit; some of the themes are quite mature.

However there is a tendency to over-read things in our society, or become obsessed with looking for depth and meaning; this probably stems from the rise in the disbelief of God that society as a whole is facing, but that's a whole different topic.

I am training to be an English Teacher atm, and even I find it laughable how much depth we are supposed to draw from things when sometimes, it really isn't there.

I see comic books as similar to The Simpsons or South Park; as a younger watcher you enjoy the antics and stupidity of the show, then as you get older you start to understand some of the depth and references they make; but for the most part; you were drawn to them in a younger state of mind.

Just because there is some depth there (and I believe there is) does not change the fact that the main target audience is generally a younger crowd.

(I have a massive Dead pool collection just fyi; but I enjoy reading them because of the stupidity of some of them, rather than because of trying to draw depth from them; I have to do enough of that with actual work, so I like to enjoy comics at face value a lot of the time).

[ShoryukenToTheChin]

snip

Well said my friend, well written also.. I do hope the majority start realising that Comics have a wider audience then what they are lead to believe.

[E113]

I'm going a bit off-topic here, but I thought this comment was quite interesting and as a long time Marvel fan I have a slightly different view of the whole superhero comic genre.

I think you refer mostly to the fighting scenes with laser beams, thrown cars and uppercuts punching people out of the atmosphere.
I agree that those scenes are more interesting at a younger age, but when you're grown up it's more and more interesting to see why they are fighting.

And Marvel does a bang-up job in focusing on some of the major issues of society since decades. I'd like to give a few examples here:

X-Men:

In X-Men one of the largest issues is the mutant vs. human theme. This is actually a simlie for racism. The humans are afraid of the mutants in the same way the white were of the black or the nazis of the jews.
X-Men shows these conflicts and always tries to root for a system, where people, no matter if they are human or mutant have equal rights and can live next to each other.

Cap. America:

Cap mainly deals with the concepts of patriotism and fashism. But not in a plump way. Often the story lines deal with issues to show the difficulty of the borderline between the two concepts.
In reaction to actual political events in the U.S. Cap sometimes even turns from the government, cause he disagrees with the general direction the country is headed in. Cap always fights xenophobia and people being overly patriotic, cause he knows first hand from his fight against the nazis how wrong a society can go, when patriotism is channeled the wrong way.

Spiderman:

The sentence always asociated with Spiderman will be: "With great power comes great responsibility."
This decades old sentence couldn't be more accurate today. If more bankers, hedge fund managers or self styled CEOs would have read and understood Spiderman, we might not have a 99% debate. If one bank transaction can decide the fate of millions of people, the one with the power to make the transaction needs to be aware of this responsibility.

Fantastic 4

F4 always had 2 main themes. The first being family. If you are out there doing your job, the job can become overly important and overwhelming, up to a point, where the job is your life. F4 always features this problem with family members struggling to have a private life, while saving the universe.
In our modern times, this also is a hot issue. Career seems to be everything. In school, kids are under pressure to perform to get the best grades, join additional activities and so on, just to have a shot at a good college. Afterwards it is expected to do unpaid internships, work 10-12 hours a day or even more and to juggle multiple jobs.
It's very difficult to also have a private life besides this. The F4 always show this aspect of modern days society.

The second major theme of F4 is the responsibility of science. Reed Richards often deals with questions of morality in science or fights villains, who don't seem to have morale concerns about their experiments.
This plays into many current debates, may it be animal testing, invitro fertilization, pre-birth diagnostics or genetic experiments.

The Hulk:

The Hulk deals with the basics of ourselves. The constant struggle between our instincts and our rationality.
The Hulk shows us, what would happen, if we let out our inner anger and our selfish desires without regard of our surroundings.
The physical distruction the huge green coloss is capable of is just a similie for the emotional damage we would cause, if we would let loose our inner Hulk. Many story lines within Hulk are actually about the consequences of letting your instincts rule and the damage caused.
Remorse, therefore, is a central theme within the series.

I could go on and on here, but if you really read all this, then I think you get why I'd like to disagree with the theory of superhero comics being just powerfulfillment fantasies for adolescent boys.

Well said my friend. I, for one, have never bought into the "comics being for young boys" angle. Maybe in the beginning, but certainly not in the past decade, especially current issues. While they do still have the basic element in them "good guy beats bad guy, gets girl", there are so many "life struggle" storylines going on as well. Wolverine's total loss of self after his wife was brutally murdered. Peter Parker forsaking both the Spider-Man persona and the city of New York after Goblin killed Gwen Stacy (his fiance). Batman's constant mental battle to "do the right thing" rather than slay these "super villains" that would do the city a world of good if they were just dead. I know this one was a cartoon but: Scott Summers going from the cool, collective, headstrong leader of the X-men to a total reckless hothead after Jean Grey died in Wolverine and the X-Men.

I can go on and on here but the point is, comics (and comic related media) have come a long way since the "I have super powers so let me throw on tights and save the city" ways of old. I'm all for stating your opinion, but trying to push "comics are for adolescents" off as fact is just plain false.

[Verjigorm]

But I do think that superhero comics are produced primarily to serve the power fantasies of adolescents, with themes, writing and characterisation to match.

I'm going a bit off-topic here, but I thought this comment was quite interesting and as a long time Marvel fan I have a slightly different view of the whole superhero comic genre.

I think you refer mostly to the fighting scenes with laser beams, thrown cars and uppercuts punching people out of the atmosphere.
I agree that those scenes are more interesting at a younger age, but when you're grown up it's more and more interesting to see why they are fighting.

And Marvel does a bang-up job in focusing on some of the major issues of society since decades. I'd like to give a few examples here:

X-Men:

In X-Men one of the largest issues is the mutant vs. human theme. This is actually a simlie for racism. The humans are afraid of the mutants in the same way the white were of the black or the nazis of the jews.
X-Men shows these conflicts and always tries to root for a system, where people, no matter if they are human or mutant have equal rights and can live next to each other.

Cap. America:

Cap mainly deals with the concepts of patriotism and fashism. But not in a plump way. Often the story lines deal with issues to show the difficulty of the borderline between the two concepts.
In reaction to actual political events in the U.S. Cap sometimes even turns from the government, cause he disagrees with the general direction the country is headed in. Cap always fights xenophobia and people being overly patriotic, cause he knows first hand from his fight against the nazis how wrong a society can go, when patriotism is channeled the wrong way.

Spiderman:

The sentence always asociated with Spiderman will be: "With great power comes great responsibility."
This decades old sentence couldn't be more accurate today. If more bankers, hedge fund managers or self styled CEOs would have read and understood Spiderman, we might not have a 99% debate. If one bank transaction can decide the fate of millions of people, the one with the power to make the transaction needs to be aware of this responsibility.

Fantastic 4

F4 always had 2 main themes. The first being family. If you are out there doing your job, the job can become overly important and overwhelming, up to a point, where the job is your life. F4 always features this problem with family members struggling to have a private life, while saving the universe.
In our modern times, this also is a hot issue. Career seems to be everything. In school, kids are under pressure to perform to get the best grades, join additional activities and so on, just to have a shot at a good college. Afterwards it is expected to do unpaid internships, work 10-12 hours a day or even more and to juggle multiple jobs.
It's very difficult to also have a private life besides this. The F4 always show this aspect of modern days society.

The second major theme of F4 is the responsibility of science. Reed Richards often deals with questions of morality in science or fights villains, who don't seem to have morale concerns about their experiments.
This plays into many current debates, may it be animal testing, invitro fertilization, pre-birth diagnostics or genetic experiments.

The Hulk:

The Hulk deals with the basics of ourselves. The constant struggle between our instincts and our rationality.
The Hulk shows us, what would happen, if we let out our inner anger and our selfish desires without regard of our surroundings.
The physical distruction the huge green coloss is capable of is just a similie for the emotional damage we would cause, if we would let loose our inner Hulk. Many story lines within Hulk are actually about the consequences of letting your instincts rule and the damage caused.
Remorse, therefore, is a central theme within the series.

I could go on and on here, but if you really read all this, then I think you get why I'd like to disagree with the theory of superhero comics being just powerfulfillment fantasies for adolescent boys.

[Dalek Nation]

I read the occasional comic too, whether it's a single issue or tarted up as a graphic novel.

But I do think that superhero comics are produced primarily to serve the power fantasies of adolescents, with themes, writing and characterisation to match.

I don't think this is a controversial argument, let alone a "condescending" one.

Super heroes have their place, but I prefer mine to have an Alan Moore bent to them. Or, a Brad Bird one.

Zen, how about an Incredibles table? Thanks!

Gotta put my two cents in as a self proclaimed Marvel fanatic. Marvel's come a long way from the turn of the century pap they used to try getting away with. While thier characters are whored out and spread thin (seriously, spider-man and wolverine on EVERY avenger team...), the writing by Bendis and others really breaks out of the whole "Hero beat up villain get girl" cliche.
In fact, last year's Dark Avengers and lead up to Seige was amazing storytelling, as Norman Osbourn put this old tired paradigm on its head by by pointing out to the public how ridiculous the whole "Avenger" thing was. The recruits of Avengers Academy are constantly pointing out how cliche and ridiculous the old ways of doing things are. The idea is that they are getting back to asking "What would you 'really' do if you had a superhuman ability... likely not just throw on a pair of tights and start punching people.
Meanwhile there's a good reason why Invincible Iron Man won the Eisner last year and Daredevil is in the running this year... it is genuinly good writing.
Of course, you can still find plenty of T & A and fighting, but there are titles geared more toward this fantasy style (ie. Anything Deadpool, anything Hulk, certain Spider-Man titles...), but no longer can you put the entire company into one pigeon-hole.
I can't do that, even with DC. Although generally pretty terrible and forgettable DC did bring us Watchmen. Just goes to show that you can't shotgun any comic company.

[PSKay]

I'm all for an Incredibles table. While we are delving into Pixar, I'll take a Wall-E table also.

[ShoryukenToTheChin]

All note worthy opinions, well we should all be pleased one way or another with Zen stating about 12 Non Marvel Tables are in dev.

[Womble]

I read the occasional comic too, whether it's a single issue or tarted up as a graphic novel.

But I do think that superhero comics are produced primarily to serve the power fantasies of adolescents, with themes, writing and characterisation to match.

I don't think this is a controversial argument, let alone a "condescending" one.

Super heroes have their place, but I prefer mine to have an Alan Moore bent to them. Or, a Brad Bird one.

Zen, how about an Incredibles table? Thanks!

[PSKay]

It's very unlikely I will buy the next Marvel pack, or any more Marvel tables. I'm just not interested in the themes (they are, after all, designed for young/adolescent boys)

I'm 29 and I enjoy the Marvel themes. I can't help but feel that remark was condescending. Initially, comics may have been intended for a young male audience but that's hardly the case nowadays. Comic book based movies are a huge market that all different people watch. The comics themselves are still enjoyed by more of a niche audience but they aren't designed solely for teen boys.

[Womble]

llabnip!

For me as long as the Table gives me enjoyment the Theme takes a back step.

For me, the theme is at least as important as the table layout and rules.

It could be the best designed table in the history of pinball, but if the theme is all about NASCAR or Justin Bieber or Twilight then I'm just not going to play it, let alone buy it.

I used to think any pinball was good pinball. But given the choices we now have, that's not really true. Just as I'm not going to waste my time playing Jive Time in PHOF, I'm not going to play Speed Machine or Spiderman or Buccaneer or Iron Man any more. Not when there are better things to play.

It's very unlikely I will buy the next Marvel pack, or any more Marvel tables. I'm just not interested in the themes (they are, after all, designed for young/adolescent boys). I bought the V&V pack, but only for Moon Knight. I've barely played the other 3 tables.

And, just my opinion, but Zen really needs to get PFX 2.5 out before it releases new tables. Fix what we've already got, fix the tournament system, replace the ranking systems, increase the overall difficulty levels, stamp out ridiculous grinding, update tables regularly, improve the audio of all tables, and then release new tables, after extensive testing.