Spider-Man is another character that has yet to receive a "definitive" movie treatment, I think.
SPIDER-MAN and DAREDEVIL came out soon after one another, but most people universally loved SPIDER-MAN (it made tons of dough) and despised DAREDEVIL...but my reaction was flipped: I found DAREDEVIL a watchable and unpretentious action flick with many fantastic moments, on the level of the popcorn-munching Soderbergh MUMMY movies...and I found SPIDER-MAN a badly edited waste of time.
They just didn't get the character. They had Spider-Man silent as a ninja during battles. This may not sound like much, but it really is. Having Spider-Man be silent and not wisecrack shows a major lack of understanding of the character's personality. Spider-Man is a character that spends his whole existence as Peter Parker biting a hole through his tongue: he has to keep still when that old goat, his boss, J. Jonah, makes money off Spider-Man's gloom. But being Spider-Man is a release for Parker, it's when he can say what he's thinking and escape a frustrating, boring existence. More than anything, Parker enjoys being Spider-Man because of this escapist element.
In the movie, they didn't have gadget web-shooters. Again, this may sound like a minor, cosmetic change, but it really isn't. Spider-Man needs gadget web shooters to show that he has BRAINS - he's a scientific wunderkind. Also...there's a REASON Lee and Ditko back in the day had the webs emerged from a gadget: they wanted Spider-Man to be as likeable as possible despite the fact spiders are icky, a "friendly neighborhood Spider-Man," and webs being produced by a person is rather grotesque.
CGI Spider-Man is the worst excess of the entire phenomenon. The reason JURASSIC PARK still looks good today is because the CGI there was their last choice, not their first. Even the Harryhausen claymation epics still look better than CGI films made as little as a few years ago, because no matter how good CGI gets, it still can't give you a sense of a real object.
Christ almighty, was Mary Jane boring. How can a character as vivacious and sexy and full of life as MJ get watered down into a generic high school dream girl?
This is just scratching the surface here. The only character they got spot-on was the wonderful J. Jonah Jameson...who worked for that very reason.
Worst of all, the movies are edited and paced all wrong. If we had to take out every scene of Spider-Man buying an ice cream cone and looking up at the sky, the movie would be 15 minutes shorter. And there are some scenes that just contribute nothing - Spider-Man having cake with his landlord's daughter, for instance. Aunt May's voiceover monologue going ON and ON and ON...
When Spider-Man gets another movie series maybe 10-15 years down the road, I predict we'll all look back on the Toby MacGuire movies the same way we look at the Keaton Batman films: their flaws will be made more apparent by much better and truer versions like BEGINS and PHANTASM.
He was part of that weird magical imp craze at DC at the time, even Aquaman had one!
Adam Strange had one as well, if I recall.
The most obvious one we're forgetting is the FF's Impossible Man.
In an interview, Roy Thomas said his greatest contribution to the Fantastic Four was the return of the Impossible Man. Gee,
thanks, Roy.
I mean, first Roy the Boy replaced the Thing with Luke Cage, and then he returned the only character in the initial twenty issues of FF that was deservedly not seen again for a decade. I have a question, Roy: you're a legend and all, but with your FF run...did you do
anything right?Seriously, people, just think about that: a villain that was in the first 25 issues of Fantastic Four, yet was not seen again for more than a decade. There was a joke in a Gerber HOWARD THE DUCK, that just about any comics fan can name the villains in the first 25 issues of FF by heart. It's like a soothing mantra and it rolls off the tongue without any thought at all.
It's like being able to list the tracks in Sgt. Pepper or the Joshua Tree. If you're white, you can probably do it. In fact, if I had to prevent the Children of the Corn from reading my thoughts, remembering the first 25 villains is what I'd use to distract their telepathy.
I'm most surprised Hate-Monger was seen after his appearance. I mean, where do you
go with a character, after the ending where you reveal they're really Hitler?
Even minor villains that appear in the first few issues of X-Men, like Unus and the Vanisher, were a consistent presence in the X-Books for years. And even the early, lame Daredevil villains, like the Purple Man and Stilt-Man, appeared with some regularity. Yet, Impossible Man was not seen again (and probably wouldn't have been, ever, if not for Roy).
The only other character I can even begin to compare this slight to is the forgettable "living robot" character from AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #7, who was only seen again in the late eighties.
Getting back to your comment...this is the 'cookie jar' defense, "everybody ELSE was doing it!" is no excuse for Bat-Mite.
The fact that other superheroes have villains like Bat-Mite is a weak defense because it doesn't do any credit to Batman's uniqueness as a character. Bat-Mite doesn't belong in Batman's nocturnal, pulp fiction world.
While Mxyzptlk is a humorous character with a great personality and a niche in Superman's rogues gallery (my personal favorite Mxy stories are by Martin Pasko, who played up personality elements of his character like his vanity), other characters of ths type are considerably less successful not just because they're copying the formula, but because their Robin Williams on crack antics aren't funny.
Sidekicks
Female counterparts
Hero pets
Evil Version of him/herself
Magical Imps
Cartoon Animal counterparts
The only creatively successful examples of character types you mention that I can think of... are characters that have so thoroughly established their uniqueness apart from the hero that birthed them.
In fact, I'd argue the reason the Valkyrie was so interesting was that nobody thinks of her as "She-Thor."
This too, is why Ms. Marvel needs the Avengers just as much as Hawkeye or the Scarlet Witch does; it gives her a history and identity apart from Captain Marvel.
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