Superhero naming conventions and why they suck today...

With a title like that I'm sure I've already alienated most of my admittedly tiny audience. But for those that tough it out I promise I'm going somewhere with this one...maybe.

I've been on a rather large superhero kick lately, mostly because I've decided to try to catch myself up with the world of comic books. For those of you who have never picked one up, or haven't read any in some time this may not seem like such a hard task but I can assure it is much more difficult than one would initially imagine.

While comic crossovers and mega events have existed throughout most of the comic book era (coming into its own in the Silver Age generally) they really do seem to be the order of the day anymore. You cannot expect just to follow one arc to completion and be satisfied without at least picking up one or two of the parallel (and perpendicular) accompanying arcs that help flesh out the over all story. Its a rather convoluted deal, driven by an urge to increase sales for multiple books as much as possible by piggybacking on a shared event. Recent examples (within the last four to five years) would be the House of M, Civil War, World War Hulk, Secret Invasion, Dark Reign, etc and those are just Marvel comics brand. These are all huge, epic events that span a fair majority of all current Marvel publications and characters.

So what does this have to do with the supposed topic of this post? Well to jump into one of these events without having a primer or (like myself) being out of the comics loop for a while it can be fairly confusing to figure out who the hell all the characters you're reading about are, and how they figure into the action.

Comics do a fairly good job of summarizing the very key points so you can sort of pick up and go (since, as the saying goes, "every comic is someone's first") but it can be sort of overwhelming to all but the most devout reader.

One of the main problems lies within the fact that (for the big two at least; Marvel and DC) the writers really have 60+ years of storylines and characters to pluck from when creating the tales we have today. And that is a conservative estimate. And of course not counting the numerous retcons that have been performed throughout the years.

So when we see a costumed character upon the page, how do we get a feel for who this character is if we are not already familiar with him/her? Well, flashy entrances help, and character design can give us a hint, but what once was truly the best way to get an instant handle on a character was the name.

Names are powerful. This stands as true in everyday, real world society as it does in the the realm of fiction. The sound of a name is just as important for a character as any power set or flashy costume can hope to be.

The traditional naming of a hero signified either one of two things: Power/ability (Superman, Human Torch, Iceman) or Persona (Batman, Captain America, Doctor Strange). When you see any of these names, even if you would not be intimately familiar with the character, you sort of instantly get a feel for what to expect.

The problem is that over these 60+ years of comics (again conservatively) there have been a slew of characters created. Some last, many do not, but unless you want to really alienate your fans you are forced to keep coming up with new names for the constant birth of new characters...and more often than not these names either end up being incredibly hokey, misleading, or just plain dumb.

I place a fair amount of the blame for today's terrible character names on Marvel and the explosion of popularity that was the X-men. There was a time that there were so many mutants running around that there was no conceivable way of putting any legitimate thought into their names. Especially when characters are used in a very disposable nature it becomes almost pointless to think up a good name when it'll just end up in the garbage heap two or three issues later.

And this is why, in today's comic landscape, for every truly good character name (like, oh, say Deadpool) you have to suffer through a dozen Boom Booms and Shortpacks. Even if the character was the most bad-ass mofo on the planet...could you ever be emotionally invested in what happened to him/her?

And thus, my rant comes to a close. Have I actually stumbled on anything worthwhile? No. Where comic names ever really actually that good, or have I just romanticized the past while being overly cynical on the present? Probably.

But writing this all killed a good amount of time, and when you're supposed to be doing work, what more can you ask for?