Yep, you're quite right there! Much as I've rather been enjoying Marvel's Supreme Power series, it's actually just Superman, the Flash, Batman, the Green Lantern and Aquaman in a different setting. Oh, and Wonder Woman off her trolley. Maybe there isn't that much more you can do with the genre.
I've mulled long and hard over the morality of a comic like SUPREME which creates worlds by taking the formula created by other comics and following them to the letter, just plugging new numbers in it; a giant Orchid that's the catalyst for the formation of a great superteam instead of a giant starfish, and so forth. I *love* SUPREME; it was wildly imaginative and FUNNY (Alan Moore could be a stand up comedian if he wasn't so publicity shy). It feels sort of like those people that download music: yeah, it's wrong, but hey! Free music! I suppose one can perform the "paint by the numbers" approach to superhero worldbuilding if - and only IF - no distinctive, unmistakeable concepts are directly lifted, if concepts that are JUST AS INTERESTING are put in their place to replace them. It is true that the Fisherman is clearly based on the blueprint of Green Arrow, however, it is not plagiarism because the Fisherman's concept (involving fishing puns, flyfishing, and net gadgets) is distinctive and interesting enough to stand on its own.
To an extent, all the Silver Age DC heroes are based on formula: Lois Lane equivalent girlfriend (one neatly handed out to each hero), "authority figure" profession in secret identity, kid sidekick, etc. Nonetheless, they manage to be distinctive to one another.
I bought 'em, on occasion -- anytime Chuck Dixon and John Romita Jr. are doing tough-guy comics, they're worth having. Or if Joe Kubert's drawing any sort of exotic-locale adventure stories. I expect it isn't that people used to buy them but now deny it, but that the people you talk to these days weren't the crowd that bought them in the first place.
Heck, I buy the Ennis PUNISHER now, in TPB form. I have no problem with the Punisher -- the obsessed lethal vigilante's a workable concept, whether it's Bronson in DEATH WISH, Mack Bolan in THE EXECUTIONER novels, or the army of imitators that followed. [The Lone Wolf novels, written by Barry Malzberg under a pseudonym I don't recall at the moment, were particularly good, and not just because he took the concept to its logical conclusion, with the lead character getting crazier and crazier until his friends had to gun him down in the street like a dog.]
It's as true of comics as it is true of media: it's possible to be annoyed by someone that's overexposed. A backlash against MC Hammer was inevitable when commercials for his dolls were shown on his Saturday Morning cartoon.
The reason the Punisher gets under my skin is threefold:
1) He was a big deal at the time and his comics oversaturated everything. The same is true of the X-books, however, the X-Men fit in better in the context of the Marvel Universe. Wasn't there a Punisher annual that he fought in the Evolutionary War?
The Punisher doesn't fight in Evolutionary Wars. 2) Political. Not to get too deeply into my own views, but sufficed to say, what the Punisher - NOT a progressive figure - represents: immediate personal satisfaction through violence, the macho aggressive vibe...it disturbs me. Mr. Busiek, you're supposed to (by all accounts) be a person on the progressive side of things; how do you reconcile your liberal political convictions with liking the Punisher?
3) The Punisher were pointed to as an example of a "new" variety of character, to cast into irrelevancy the established Silver Age characters we love. Perhaps the Punisher wouldn't rankle me quite as much if his book was published and bought by its own audience, if it wasn't for the fans (and creators) who pointed to the Punisher confrontationally as being, instead of being a distinctive character type (one that, admittedly, has potential) but as being "the next step in superhero evolution."
