Apples, Oranges and Spiked Ball Mines: “Comic Book Characters” Is Not A Category

I was recently linked to this list on Empire Online of the “fifty greatest comic book characters.” This isn’t all that different from many of the lists I’ve seen go around, where they throw together characters from every subgenre to create this fucked-up chimera of superheroes, everymen, Warren Ellis-style “yeah he is on a heroic mission and has special powers and people who help him but he is NOT A SUPERHERO”s, and real people.

You know, because you can compare a corporate franchise like Superman, a creator-owned property like Jesse Custer whose influence is limited to Preacher, and motherfucking ART SPIEGELMAN’S DAD.

Entertainment media, please, for the love of God, “comic book characters” are not a remotely useful classification. Top fifty comic book *franchises*? That I could buy. But to compare a corporate-owned superhero, a character in a creator-owned book and a real person is like a Top 50 Film Characters list with Luke Skywalker, Lloyd Dobler and Oskar Schindler. The narrative goals, origins and purposes of all of these characters are so wildly divergent it’s unbelievable, and no self-respecting film mag would build such a list, because they’d recognize the numerous issues with grouping numerous genres together and judging aspects of them on such an abstract and fucked-up metric. “Comic Books” are not a genre, and Superman and Art Spiegelman’s dad aren’t comparable on any reasonable level other than “I’ve got to come up with a dumb list to get my paycheck.” Come on.

I can’t help but feel lists like this are built off of the assumption that all comic book characters should be longrunning franchises, like that’s an unspoken and implicit rule. While the majority of the superhero genre has had the plot dictated by the characters, throwing them into the same hat with characters whose roles and functions are dictated by the plots and aims of a single work (rather than worldbuilding) is such a completely retarded comparison my mind is pretty much blown.

Sorry, this was rantier than usual for me, but… damn.