Just why are hero vs hero crossover fights so popular??

[Jeivar]

I don't get it. This may actually be THE biggest cliché in superhero media: Two goodies, generally well known to be goodies, meet and the first thing they do is get into a brutal fight over some combination of paranoia, delicate egos and incredibly short tempers, before moving on to dealing with the main villain.

Why do people enjoy seeing their heroes portrayed this way? As people whose first reaction to any obstacle, disagreement or slightly suspicious situation is violence? And quite aside from canon incidents it feels like about 5% of the internet is made up of versus threads, which at times feel a lot like "My daddy can beat up your daddy!"

Why spend so much time wondering which hero would brutalise another one, or arranging a situation in a way that gives Batman a win?

I don't watch the DC TV stuff, but I saw the scene where Supergirl and the Flash meet, and it was strange just how fresh it felt for two superheroes to meet and actually act like functioning, civilised adults.

I mean, THIS is the kind of crossover I would like to see; one with humour and/or two characters different in some ways but alike in others just having a conversation.

http://www.ho-lo.co.il/comics2/comic/holo_strip_doctor_superman.jpg

[Kantaki]

Because people want to know who would win?
I have no other explanation for this kind of sillyness.
Not that I mind that much as long as there's some reasonable justification.

Like that comic.:smallbiggrin:

[Aotrs Commander]

I don't get it.

That makes the both of us, dude.

I'd much rather see them team up any day of the week.


And quite aside from canon incidents it feels like about 5% of the internet is made up of versus threads, which at times feel a lot like "My daddy can beat up your daddy!"

Because, a lot of the time, for a fair number of people who participate, concsiously or not... That's sort of what is IS.

[Velaryon]

One possibility occurred to me, though I could be completely off-base.

Think of professional wrestling for a moment (I know, I know, just bear with me). In order for different wrestlers to reach and maintain the desired place for them on the card (main eventer, midcard act, curtain-jerker, etc.) they have to win or lose so many matches. This is why fans who are somewhat savvy to the nature of how wrestling works will complain when someone they perceive is a talented worker loses a lot, because they believe those losses are harmful to that wrestler's personal brand.

Now look at comics. Though it isn't as black-and-white, good guys always win as it used to be by any means, that's still fundamentally the nature of superhero comics. The heroes usually do win in the end, because that's the default type of story for our civilization. As a result, when comics do Hero vs. Villain, readers will expect the villain to be defeated eventually because that's their role, unless this story is a (relatively) rare exception to the rule.

When you have Hero vs. Hero, you therefore have two characters (or teams, like in Avengers vs. X-Men) who typically win their battles. Also, it's a fresh matchup. How many dozens if not hundreds of times have we seen Spider Man vs. Doctor Octopus? But Spider-Man vs. ...I dunno, let's say Cable, just to pick someone at random, is probably much less common if it's happened before at all. Sure, you can have one of them "heel turn" and become a villain, but that changes the readers' expectations. Either that hero is being mind controlled, has been replaced by a doppelganger, or some other thing will happen that results in the status quo being restored, because that's the nature of serialized characters.

It's happened enough at this point that it's become kind of cliche, but I think the point of Hero vs. Hero fights is to give readers something different where they don't actually know who's going to win. But again, the serialized nature of comics kind of undermines this. Everyone has to be back to normal at the end, so usually it ends up that they were fighting over a misunderstanding, or end their fight to team up against a villain and then reach some kind of understanding. So a lot of the time, after the fact they seem unsatisfying, but I can certainly see why writers would try to do them and why readers would hope for something new and different.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I figure a superhero fan liking a vs story is like a heterosexual guy liking two girls making out. It has twice the normal amount of the thing you wanted to see in the first place.

[Knaight]

The superhero fanbase is made mostly of people who want to see explosions, fights, and pretty colors with little interest in things like narrative and characterization, beyond having characters they love for entirely aesthetic reasons. Crossover fights bring in the fanbases for both characters, both of which are made mostly of people who don't care about the numerous reasons the whole thing is stupid.

[Nerd-o-rama]

There was one financially successful comic that ended with a fight between Batman and Superman and people keep trying to make money off of riffs on the concept.

That said, ideological conflict between heroes has the potential to be interesting (POTENTIAL; most superhero comic writers don't seem to be up to the task) and that will inevitably end in fisticuffs because that's the only way things are EVER resolved in American superhero comics.

Underlying all of that, though, is this really atavistic tendency of audiences, especially the male nerd with power fantasies audiences that dictate superhero comic sales, where character "worth" and "quality" are measured entirely by who would win in a fight, i.e. "power". People pick a favorite character and then insist that since they are the best they are the most powerful and therefore will kick anyone's ass in a fight, because that's how worth as a superhero is detemined. It's a pretty grim outlook, honestly.

[Traab]

Its because the heroes win. We dont need to wonder about who can beat the joker, everyone in dc has punched him in the nose at least once. On the other hand, who beats batman? The list is much smaller. So they have their winning rep and their fans want to see them fight (and beat) another strong hero to prove their favorite is the best.

[Legato Endless]

Underlying all of that, though, is this really atavistic tendency of audiences, especially the male nerd with power fantasies audiences that dictate superhero comic sales, where character "worth" and "quality" are measured entirely by who would win in a fight, i.e. "power". People pick a favorite character and then insist that since they are the best they are the most powerful and therefore will kick anyone's ass in a fight, because that's how worth as a superhero is detemined. It's a pretty grim outlook, honestly.

This essentially. Superheroes longstanding reliance on using physical violence as the most overt driver and resolver of conflict extenuates that desire. Past the power fantasy, it's just another intersection of tribalism and the narcissism of small differences.

[danzibr]

I figure a superhero fan liking a vs story is like a heterosexual guy liking two girls making out. It has twice the normal amount of the thing you wanted to see in the first place.
lulz. Nice one.

Seems pretty natural to me. Have 2 bamf fighters, want to see who’s more bamf.

[Nerd-o-rama]

This essentially. Superheroes longstanding reliance on using physical violence as the most overt driver and resolver of conflict extenuates that desire. Past the power fantasy, it's just another intersection of tribalism and the narcissism of small differences.

It's also the same reason people say Superman is a boring character. Superman is a very interesting character, but he's nigh unstoppable with physical violence. Since physical violence resolves almost all conflicts in superhero stories, people behave like Superman cannot have a believable conflict that he doesn't automatically resolve by being invincible. This is in spite of a slew of excellent if by now rather old stories that are great Superman stories because he's challenged in his beliefs and relatiinships, rather than his skill at punching.

It's also why people go absolutely apecrap to the tune of a nine digit feature film to see Batman beat him up - not outsmart or outthink or outdetective or outcrimesolve him, but find a way to physically take him in a 1v1 cage match for no real particular reason.

[Lord Raziere]

see this is something shonen anime gets right: in those series, the good guys just make each other rivals and have honorable duels to get it out of their system, then be all like "we still bros?" "we bros" then go kill the bad guy anyways. much less of a question when heroes duel each other as a fun past time to keep up their skills.

[Kitten Champion]

Superhero comics are fundamentally melodrama -- larger-than-life characters, epics conflicts, seething emotions which burst from the seams whenever possible.

The industry - that was largely redefined by Marvel's success in it - which started off as very simplistic white-hat v black-hat battles with cardboard interchangeable characters, veered into the direction of filling the space of the horror, romance, weird fiction, and SF comics they put out of business with their own chimera genre that uses all of them in some fashion. Producing a convoluted and multi-faceted soap opera for boys, with horror and science fiction elements, using the colourful superhero chassis as its base.

It's sort of like modern American mystery shows, they've long since stopped caring about mysteries and use that as a rote formula to sell the drama, comedy, and/or romance between the central protagonists that goes on around it. The mystery formula still happens, in its own simplified way, but that's not where they're getting their ratings and they know it.

Point being, hero v. hero fighting is hella melodramatic. Putting aside everything else, it's just a conflict designed to raise the emotional stakes in as straightforward a manner possible with the characters they've available. They have been doing these sorts of things off and on for decades with the characters using any number of justifications. The only difference now is the writing has evolved to be less cumbersome, flowery, and unnatural while the stories are more serialized. They've also got them even more hyperbolic through the use of the now far more common and highly marketed Event format.

You can say it's trite at this point, but that's melodrama.

As to why fans enjoy arguing their own hypothetical scenarios, I would add to what's been said with - it's an innocuous reinforcement exercise within one's subculture. No one really cares who wins a versus fight, it's in the steps in the argument which is built upon one's shared interests and the lexicon intrinsic to it that some gratification can be found.

For a simple and straightforward comparison, it's not dissimilar from the discourse fans can have over team sports. Only the numbers comic fans use are significantly more subjective - they are critiquing art after all - than the hyper-detailed math surrounding professional athletics, otherwise it gratifies the same basic needs of a belonging ritual.

[Ramza00]

Part of human nature, whether this is right or wrong in the effective results, is that we like to establish hierarchies such as figuring out who has authority in case conflict arises, and one way we like to establish hierarchy is the concept of physical power if people are not rough equal.

It is stupid, and not all humans instinctually think like this, but enough humans do that it will always be part of our culture.

[-D-]

I don't get it. This may actually be THE biggest cliché in superhero media: Two goodies, generally well known to be goodies, meet and the first thing they do is get into a brutal fight over some combination of paranoia, delicate egos and incredibly short tempers, before moving on to dealing with the main villain.
The answer is simple - FAN WANK! Or more precisely fans of both franchises want to see who would win.

Does it make sense? No.
Does it contradict established character? Why, yes!
Does it make money? Yes.

This is purest, non-titillating fanservice available.

[Knaight]

Underlying all of that, though, is this really atavistic tendency of audiences, especially the male nerd with power fantasies audiences that dictate superhero comic sales, where character "worth" and "quality" are measured entirely by who would win in a fight, i.e. "power". People pick a favorite character and then insist that since they are the best they are the most powerful and therefore will kick anyone's ass in a fight, because that's how worth as a superhero is detemined. It's a pretty grim outlook, honestly.

It's also bizarre - the idea that character power and the extent to which a character are interesting are more than tangentially related regarding a handful of themes is just weird. This is particularly true given how spectacularly bland superheroes tend to be even by comparison to numerous characters that are supposed to be real people in the real world, including numerous peaceful civilians. They're clearly less powerful, and yet, every bit as interesting.

[Nerd-o-rama]

It's also bizarre - the idea that character power and the extent to which a character are interesting are more than tangentially related regarding a handful of themes is just weird. This is particularly true given how spectacularly bland superheroes tend to be even by comparison to numerous characters that are supposed to be real people in the real world, including numerous peaceful civilians. They're clearly less powerful, and yet, every bit as interesting.

Don't forget, Superman can't date Lois Lane either. She's Insufficiently Powerful, and he should clearly go for Wonder Woman instead. Personalities and histories don't matter, only capacity to commit and withstand violence.

Man comic fans (and the fans who become writers) are weird about power levels.

[Velaryon]

Its because the heroes win. We dont need to wonder about who can beat the joker, everyone in dc has punched him in the nose at least once. On the other hand, who beats batman? The list is much smaller. So they have their winning rep and their fans want to see them fight (and beat) another strong hero to prove their favorite is the best.

This is basically a more concise version of what I was trying to say.

[Lord Raziere]

Don't forget, Superman can't date Lois Lane either. She's Insufficiently Powerful, and he should clearly go for Wonder Woman instead. Personalities and histories don't matter, only capacity to commit and withstand violence.

Man comic fans (and the fans who become writers) are weird about power levels.

Again, shonen anime does this sort of thing right: the violence ****-measuring contests are turned into honorable duels that everyone agrees upon the rules in character, the heroes know exactly what they are doing and to hold back enough to not kill each other, they both get to learn more so that they become better fighters, the people often fall in love because of the peoples personalities, sure they have powers as well simply because they often are in the same profession, but one tends to be stronger than the other, so its not a power thing, and yet Chi-Chi still has power over Goku, Hinata still is Naruto's wife, and Sakura......has a relationship with Sasuke that you can technically call a marriage, at least more so than Chi-Chi and Goku.

I mean say what you will about anime nonsense, but there are methods to its madness. by making the powers thing about honing your skill, you turn fights that would be stupid into duels that improve both parties, with no hard feelings from either side and a constant motivation to improve to be better so that they will win more. all the while giving people multiple motivations, sure all the heroes like to protect people and what they care about, but its ok to have other motivations to wield their power as long as they don't abuse it, and who knows? those goals might empower them in ways you don't expect.

[Traab]

It also helps that shounen is all about the journey to superman power levels. Goku didnt start off day 1 as super sayan god super sayain 4th gear mauve taupe to the 3rd power of plaid. He had to work his butt off to get those skills. Same for naruto, luffy, ichigo, yo asakura, whatever other characters you can name in that genre. Most of the time the romantic interest grows with the main character, even if not close to the same level. Hinata grew a pair downstairs to match the ones up top, nami is a weather witch of not insignificant power, orihime/rukia/i forget who gets married both developed or started displaying skills of their own. The list goes on.

[tensai_oni]

Raziere's talking about self contained stories though, not crossovers.

However this is where I can't help but notice Japan's tendency to have good guys cooperate during crossovers with minimal problems anyway. This is not always the case but usually is - to such extent that if we have a crossover movie titled "Sentai Gundam vs Kamen Robo", you can be 95% sure that no "vs" will in fact take place. It just means both Sentai Gundam and Kamen Robo are in the same feature, fighting either a teamup of their own specific antagonists or a new, crossover-only bad guy.

For me, the obligatory parts of the movie where heroes are fighting against each other before finally getting their act together to team up against the villain is both annoying and unnecessary, exactly like the obligatory superhero origin stories. I suspect the reason why we have both is the same too - laziness and complacency of writers. The first movie of a superhero's reboot will be about their origin story. A crossover movie will have the heroes fight each other before teaming up. Don't question it, it's how things are done in the industry, and the movies make big bucks so it obviously works. Besides, it saves your creative energies because you don't have to worry about what to fill the first XX minutes of the movie with, or how to present the villain as a credible threat that wouldn't be defeated instantly if the heroes just cooperated from the start. Everyone's a winner, right?

[Nerd-o-rama]

Honestly most superhero crossovers are also about teaming up. There are entire long-running series about superhero teams made up of individuals with their own books teaming up to deal with bigger threats. They just aren't hyped up as "unique" events the way "hero vs. hero" is, unless they happen in an adaptation, and even those have become commonplace, with DC pioneering it in radio and TV and Marvel making their entire film business model out of it.

Also for some reason, EVERY anime or tokusatsu crossover is titled with "vs." or "tai" regardless of whether there is even an implication they're going to fight. It's one of those idiomatic translations I guess.

[danzibr]

Oh yeah. On the topic of vs actually being colab, that works really well. Can’t beat this super bamf thing alone? Team up!

[Prime32]

Also for some reason, EVERY anime or tokusatsu crossover is titled with "vs." or "tai" regardless of whether there is even an implication they're going to fight. It's one of those idiomatic translations I guess.Akibaranger (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/HikoninSentaiAkibaranger) parodies that when the team needs to get rid of another superhero (because reasons), so they invite him to appear in a versus movie with them. As soon as the movie starts, they open fire on him while mocking him for not knowing what "versus" means.

[Sapphire Guard]

There is another meaning for 'V'in a title that is just 'and', without the 'against' implication. It's not as well known.

[Psyren]

I figure a superhero fan liking a vs story is like a heterosexual guy liking two girls making out. It has twice the normal amount of the thing you wanted to see in the first place.


Its because the heroes win. We dont need to wonder about who can beat the joker, everyone in dc has punched him in the nose at least once. On the other hand, who beats batman? The list is much smaller. So they have their winning rep and their fans want to see them fight (and beat) another strong hero to prove their favorite is the best.

I prefer these explanations to the bleaker assessments of intersection between nerddom and traditionally masculine views of worth/dominance. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure such machismo plays a factor (Most Writers Are Male, after all), but these kinds of fights can come from a positive place as well.

For the first: hero vs. hero gives you more of the hero stuff. This is particularly useful for heroes whose abilities are unique, you get to see how they would deal with another hero. If Reed Richards absolutely had to take down The Thing or Sue Storm, how would he do it? Bonus points if he doesn't get access to any of his toys, or has to use an unlikely one creatively.

For the second: hero vs. hero is not a foregone conclusion, so it's more exciting. When Flash goes up against Reverse Flash, sure he might lose initially, but we know he'll triumph in the end, even if he does so in a contrived way. But when he goes up against Superman, the stakes are not life-or-death (well, outside Injustice anyway) so anything can happen.


TL;DR hero vs. hero is exciting because you don't get to see the same old hero vs. villain narratives that have been done before.

[Nerd-o-rama]

TL;DR hero vs. hero is exciting because you don't get to see the same old hero vs. villain narratives that have been done before.

The problem with that analysis is that hero vs. hero has now also been done to actual death. I think the shark jumped on that one some time during Marvel's first Civil War (the fact that they made two and a movie that made DC compete by simultaneously developing a film based on their own, better-received, throwdown between Batman and Superman from the 80's is really telling). I don't read comics but I can tell you for a fact that they get enough press that I know there's been at least one major "heroes fight each other" event from one of the two main brands every year this decade, either in a comic or an adaptation. It's old, it's predictable (either no one wins or whoever the author personally likes more wins only for the event to get swept under the rug and ignored later), and it's actually more boring than seeing a hero fight a villain who actually has a plan and a goal. At least there's conflict of motivation there.

[Lord Raziere]

It's old, it's predictable (either no one wins or whoever the author personally likes more wins only for the event to get swept under the rug and ignored later), and it's actually more boring than seeing a hero fight a villain who actually has a plan and a goal. At least there's conflict of motivation there.

Again, a thing that anime does well: the heroes often have specific rivals whose are goals are specifically "be number one" or "beat my rival" which has a conflict of motivation no matter what, because there can't be two winners for that kind of thing. Its trying to do that for heroes like Superman or Batman is where people screw up, because those kinds of heroes are above such things, they are people who do this For All The Right Reasons, they SHOULD be above doing that. It actually ruins my enjoyment when you try to do the Vs thing with heroes that wouldn't like doing that, because its like going against the character's spirit for the sake of the letter. Some heroes just aren't suited to these kinds of plots, thats ok! You don't bring Superman to a Grey Vs. Grey shootout. Thats bringing a morality nuke to a grey pistol fight, all your going to get is Superman winning and teaching everyone to be good.

[Darth Ultron]

It is a bit of human nature to think whatever you personally like is better then what someone else likes. This is true with just about everything. You can see it everywhere with everything. Some of it is in good spirits, and some is not. Of course, nothing is really ''better'', but it's not like that logic will stop people from being human...

And some fans just want to see the fight. This is most often done in comics, wrestling and sports....but you do see it everywhere (seriously, the drama folks do have Shakespeare offs where Shakespeare characters try to out Shakespeare each other.....).

Of course a fight is a huge way to make money....lots of fans pay to see it. After all when character one has 10 million fans, and character two has 10 million fans....well, that is 20 million people that will want to buy the fight story!

[Sapphire Guard]

When it's done well, it works, but I'd agree it's getting a bit routine at this stage.

The thing about Bat man v Superman is, if they're both going all out, the fight doesn't happen. TDKR worked because they both were holding back. Batman going all out is him in a soundproof bunker launching missiles. And the Avengers are turning on each other at the drop of a hat.

[Jay R]

This goes all the way back to the Greek trope of thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Two approaches start off as opposite, but are brought together to produce something greater than either.

And don't think it's super-hero focused.

The first known heroic saga is Gilgamesh, and he and Enkidu fight before they become friends. Enkidu represents wildness, Gilgamesh is the cultured warrior-king, and they come together to combine both.

D'Artagnan is challenged by the three musketeers, and is about to duel them when the come together to fight the Cardinal's Guard.

Many romances start with the two eventual lovers disliking each other.

Robin Hood and Little John meet by fighting with quarterstaffs over a bridge.

Legolas and Gimli were rivals, personifying the elf/dwarf dislike, until they grew to be the closest of friends.

Edmund and Susan Pevensie had competitions with Trumpkin before they all started working together.

Richard Sharpe and Pat Harper have a big fist fight before Harper became Sharpe's most loyal supporter.

Buzz and Woody start off as rivals.

Spock and McCoy were on opposites sides through about half of the first season, and always represented opposite sides of many issues.

To show the story of two worthy characters coming together, learning to respect each other, and becoming friends, they have to start off apart, disrespectful, and not friends.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Which is probably why I liked the first Batman vs. Superman thing I ever saw, the "World's Finest" crossover episode of Batman the Animated Series/New Adventures of Superman back in the 90's. It never exactly develops into a fight, but they start off antagonistic and competitive until they figure out how to work together and are consistently friends in that continuity thereafter (barring Red Kryptonite or whatever). The goal isn't "who would win in a fight", as hilarious as Batman judo-flipping a careless Supes is. It's showing two very different heroes having a gradual process of becoming friends and allies.

I consider that very different to just having a crossover fight for melodrama, myself.

[Psyren]

The problem with that analysis is that hero vs. hero has now also been done to actual death. I think the shark jumped on that one some time during Marvel's first Civil War (the fact that they made two and a movie that made DC compete by simultaneously developing a film based on their own, better-received, throwdown between Batman and Superman from the 80's is really telling). I don't read comics but I can tell you for a fact that they get enough press that I know there's been at least one major "heroes fight each other" event from one of the two main brands every year this decade, either in a comic or an adaptation. It's old, it's predictable (either no one wins or whoever the author personally likes more wins only for the event to get swept under the rug and ignored later), and it's actually more boring than seeing a hero fight a villain who actually has a plan and a goal. At least there's conflict of motivation there.

I agree they've all been done to death, which is part of the reason comics don't interest me that much to begin with. But I think they're still marginally fresher than their straightforward counterparts.

What I do still find interesting are villain or hero swaps - when one hero has to take on the villain of another franchise. For example, could Lex Luthor stymie the Flash, or how would Vision take on Magneto?

Many of these have been done too, but I think there are fewer examples.

[Rater202]

At this point, I think the fight is just kind of grandfathered into the concept of Superhero comics.

Some of the more recent ones have been playing with it--In Spider-Man/Deadpool, sociopathic murderer Itsy Bitsy legitimately believes that she's the good guy and asks, while fighting Wade and Spidey, "Can we skip the 'heroes fight becuase of misunderstandings' thing and skip right to the three way team-up?"(from memory.)

(The storyline later plays Spider-Man and Deadpool fighting for drama rather than fanboyism, but it lasts less than a chapter unless you count the spar in an earliar chapter and there's a build up to it.)

[Rogar Demonblud]

The only 'heroes fight' thing I find tolerable is when they're explicitly doing it as training, to push themselves into becoming better. The Big Two won't do that any more, but most of their heroes are such only for narrative convenience these days.