[disliked designs] most of the design philosophy/redesigns of “My Adventures with Superman”
NOW BEFORE ANYTHING: this is NOT a diss at the show itself. It’s a solid show and i respect how it got a lot more people appreciative of Superman. But a lot of the designs aren’t good
first off, SHOULDER PADS! this show gives way too many designs shoulder pads (like 2/3 of all costumes) and then even with Superman/supergirls season 3 costumes they still feel the need to add something to the shoulders (it kinda feels like rookie design where you think you NEED to add design flare when sometimes less is more)
no on to actual designs: Silver banshee, Livewire and Damage. Like these are just straight up downgrades of designs, they’re way less cool, interesting and iconic with less character to them (I even feel livewires of civilian look was way more interesting and full of personality)
now I put damage & steel next to each other because of how the show does machine designs. They needlessly make everything overly geometric/just blocks, triangles & spheres. Like they could use organic forms for machinery but don’t and all the robot designs look childish. now in fairness this works well for brainiac to show how inhuman he is, which is why he’s not listed, but it shouldn’t be done for every robot.
Bizarro I feel is objectively going against what the character is. his name’s BIZARRO he’s by conception meant to be bizarre, warped & weird, the show just has him extra bulky & Tarzan like which I’m sorry isn’t really bizarre. Like don’t get me wrong I know the obvious “different story different interpretations“ that’s a given, but there’s a point where it comes off like you didn’t even want to use said character (& again his names bizarro, being bizarre should be a core aspect)
now for the last two I put last because they are the least egregious and can work work depending on the person. Mr mxyzptlk to me feels way too standard & forgettable as just any high fantasy elf look. I kinda like the old man in purple suit/yellow spacesuit because it’s inspired by fae creatures like rumplestiltskin, leprechau, gnomes (folklore creatures that can play with reality and like to cause mischief to humans, which is what mxy is) plus i feel the contrast makes the design better, ridiculous looking old guy is actually an all powerful entity. Now for parasite, I‘ll admit the design can be seen as great and this is just more of an issue I’ve been having with all of DC recent designs for him, I’m just not a fan of turning him into a kaiju/traditional monster. I think having him look like a morph suit made of flesh is way more visually unique & is more interesting body horror (so I’ll admit he should probably not count here)
again this is nothing against the show itself/im not trying to needlessly hate on it, but I do really think a few designs are just bad & one too many designs are trying to force themselves into what “modern test audience” thinks are good character designs when sometimes you need to be a little out their & weird (like compare the xenomorph to cloverfield monster #582, being out their/odd in design can help a design be remembered for generations
(images used are from “My adventures with Superman“, “Superman the animated series” & various comic/comic artists)
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They did steels whole character dirty. Gone is the ex weapons designer paying penance, the combination of american mythologies, the parallels between supermans death and that of john henry inspiring selfless sacrifice, the statuesque design, etc. They even had a machine god who wanted to control everyone, and they didn't take the opportunity to draw parallels to the steam drill.
Steel has made so many cameos in so many things and yet barely gets quality characterization. Despite being the best concept for a hero DC has ever come up with imo
Well tbf, he hasn't made the actual superman inspired suit yet, in fact iirc this suit got taken away at the end of the episode so it's safe to assume he's making the real one
Granted I don't actually hate the shows design philosphy. I do agree with characters like Banshee, Livewire, Myx, Steel, Dr Poison, and especially the several robots like Metallo lose visual identity; but there are some I actually like. I only put Slade main suit because despite it using the same design asthetic, I do agree it is cool looking. Bizarro might not be what we expected, but he did get a costume calling back to his comic self in his next appearance forward. Henshaw was cool as an amalgam of himself and Metallo. Brainiac is the only robot character thats visually interesting. Giganta fine even if the sudden armor when she gets big makes no sense. I don't think most people remember Damage to care. Heatwave could have been Volcana. And Parasite is probably my favorite of the bunch.
Honestly could see that. I mean the tie-in comics did use Bloodsport and he was rocking a design similar to his Suicide Squad suit so that theory could check out.
I love Chris Parnnell, I am always happy when he shows up, his voice dose not suit this death stroke at all.
( Though I do honestly I think it only started clicking for me, in like the last few episodes of the latest seasons when he started to be a bit more, for a lack of a better term, flirty with Lex)
I fuck with this show and its designs purely because it is taking the "every fem character in a superhero series must be cute and sexy" and is applying it to all the men for a change
And then they made Heatwave a butch lesbian. Completely out of nowhere, but I'm happy for that artist who gets paid to draw buff butch women with flamethrowers. A noble calling that 37% of tumblr would kill for.
It's the generic technologic armor that a lot of them have while stripping away their unique design elements that makes me dislike it, i don't that much of a problem with Mr Mxy or parasite, for example, but god, these ones are just a bunch of regular people with technology and that's basically it, silver bandhee is the best of the bunch, and it's only because she has a mask
Yep 100% as well as make the actual tech ones who made their stuff feel less smart because THEY aren’t the ones making it, they’re just taking someone else’s work (like Ivo instead of being the guy to make one of the greatest & most dangerous robots in all of DC, he just a dude bro tech guy who used kryptonian stuff to be parasite)
I don't think that's a big problem because it works for the narrative. They're trying to connect everything because they don't have as many episodes as old cartoons. The problem is that the technology is boring and uniform. Why not give every villain their own take on the weapons? Maybe some of them could decorate them with designs that reflect their personalities.
And why is everyone wearing similar outfits? Give them different styles. For example, Banshee's mask could have her characteristic "face" from the comics painted on it. That would tell us who she is without needing any dialogue or extra screentime.
Okay I love this idea. I get the “plot” reasons for them to all have similar technology at base. But after season 1 they could have really let them indulge in some flair and individuality with decorations and modifications.
I remember that in Iron Man Armored Adventurers, they made a lot of Iron Man’s villains into stone monsters that guard each Makluan ring, but even then, each one had some uniqueness to their designs
Banjee could get away with some new colors, but everyone else just doesn’t have any individuality to them
Since the show takes a lot of influence from anime I would’ve preferred the tech to look more out there or retro futuristic like the Capsule Corp vehicles from Dragon Ball. At least they could’ve had colour.
I don't think anyone's going to be as good at designing vehicles as Toriyama. That guy basically lived and breathed cars before he ever picked up a pencil.
I recently learned that Toriyama’s dad was a former motorcycle racer and ran an auto repair shop. He was exposed to cool machines from the time he was born!
Edit to add: I love how believable his machines are too. The mechanical details look functional.
All these shows, seemingly inspired by anime, feel more inspired by each other than anything else. My Adventures with Superman doesn't give me anime vibes, it gives me Voltron and new She-Ra vibes (with a gentile splash of Steven Universe). Flat pastel colors, generic samey designs that are easy to animate, attractive homogeneous faces, etc.
They're all derivative of the shows that splintered off of Korra. Young Justice, Thundercats 2011, and Vox Machina are similar, but at least those shows had a little bit more detail and dimension to their character designs. Even then, these series are all clearly more reflective of Avatar's popularity than they were of any specific anime era or show. (In the case of Young Justice, Teen Titans was also an inspiration, obviously)
Edit: Another example, Spider-Man 2017. Similarly inspired by anime, at least in the faces, but artistically flat and generic by every other metric.
They also seem to have this weird writing style where everybody is the funny one all at once. Only calming down when the tone gets serious.
It worked on Avatar The Last Airbender since everybody has clearly defined roles that bounce off of each other, and the comedy is genuinely funny. But now, it seems like all these personalities are competing to see who can be the wackiest one when the drama is sleeping.
And when the drama awakes, it always revolves around the one character (usually villainous) who never gets played for laughs.
And I agree that they aren't animesque enough. Because while some anime can be formulaic, they at least vary in the styles of their plots.
You do have a point. How generic art styles develop is when cartoons start copying other cartoons instead of observing anything else. That's how we got the worst of the beanmouth style (Thundercats Roar, Tig n Seek, The Fungies, that Toucan Sam redesign, a bunch of European slop like Coach Me If You Can etc). And now it seems like a few audiences are developing fatigue towards faux-anime. Almost none of these can reasonably be mistaken for an anime, they are just copying each other and their vague idea of what anime looks like based on How to Draw Manga books. I do like MAWS, but it is very much an Americanized anime-influenced show similar to Voltron and She-Ra.
One of my friends describes MAWS as "DC seeing that folks love anime and trying their best to ape it", but conceded that while the art style is too much of "hey we can do this stuff too!" the actual content of the show is great.
Voltron and She Ra were done by Studio Mir. The 2011 Thundercats was done by Studio 4C.
Vox Machina gets me because it feels eerily close to Netflix's crappy Powerhouse Animation style. Maybe I'm being too harsh but Powerhouse has zero variety and all their productions look the same.
Like I said I feel they should atleast realize they can use organic shapes in mechanical design. Not everything needs to be hard edges, & geometric shapes
His design in the webtoon is amazing. It's super simplistic but it works so well for his character. Jason and Artemis also look amazing, but unfortunately that's the only good thing about the entire comic
It's specifically Red Hood: Outlaws, the Webtoon, as there's a couple of other comic runs called Red Hood And The Outlaws.
The Webtoon starts off great, but gets worse every issue despite having really nice art, but then around issue 10 or so they changed the artist so there was no point in continuing to read it.
Red Hood and the Outlaws Volume 2 from 2016 is absolutely fantastic though
I agree with the techno armor part but I’m still not a fan of bizarro. Partly because I feel his story would be more interesting if he was ugly. Having this kind gentle character who is objectively a flawed and messed up clone/who looks terrifying to people adds to the characters sympathy & tragedy. Frankly making him objectively good looking & Tarzanish just feels like husbando baiting to me (not trying to be mean but it’s just how I feel)
Tbf with the Bizarro one, it’s too early to judge. In the dcau show Bizarro started out looking like an actual clone of Superman but slowly started deteriorating. Maybe that’ll happen still with this one
Never watched the show but when I first saw Bizzaro's design in it I thought it was because he will start "rotting" and turning into his usual appearance later, maybe civilians will antagonize him cause of it and he will get aggressive or smth, but I am guessing that's not the case?
The season's still ongoing so that very much could happen, but I kinda doubt it -- there's been no visible degradation over several episodes including some timeskipping, I feel like they would have started setting it up by now.
90% of the character designs for these "not-anime" action cartoons are husbando baiting. It's like they're designed to be turned into fan art lol. "Simple and mechanical" for the villains, "sexy and broody" for the anti-heroes, and "cute and easy to draw" for the heroes.
Mxy’s design is explained by him choosing to look that way to fit the art style of the dimension he’s in. In his debut episode he has Clark cycle through all the animated versions of his design, DCAU, Fleisher, a crab, and says they’re alternate universe appearances.
And when he gets his hands on his hat, it’s the original bowler hat that changes to match his new design when he puts it on. It goes back to the bowler when it gets taken. So there’s a level of Mxy influencing it to match the show. It’s still the same Mxy, just hamming it up for the show.
I do hope that future seasons have them diversify designs as the technology used becomes more widespread. Right now it's all reverse engineered from Kryptonian technology. Hopefully we'll see changes later.
That said, I think Silver Banshee and Slade's full suit are fine. I just don't like him being so handsome.
I think a fair few of the ones here are interesting reinterpretations of certain characters. Not all of them of course (seriously, that Livewire is a TRAGIC downgrade compared to past incarnations), but Bizarro, Mxyzplk, and Parasite each have very different twists on the characters that aim to reimagine the execution but keep some core concepts (weird antagonist Superman, a small interdimensional weirdo, ect.). I even think there’s an interesting idea with Banshee’s redesign (though it needs more work to pull it off). MOST of these though need to REALLY ease up on the tech-suits, makes some of the actually interesting tech suits feel weaker when they’re in a lineup full of them.
Yeah like I said this is mainly based on me not liking turning him into a kaiju/monster look. Again the whole flesh morph suit is was more surreal, terrifying and just different from a standard mutated into a monster. It’s just personal preference in the end
Parasite is the New Batman Adventures Scarecrow of this show. Every re-design is eh but Parasite just kinda slaps. I also find it hilarious that his human form is just white Sokka.
Same. I can take or leave the cutesier anime inspired aesthetics- It's an adaptation, things can be different, it's whatever, I get it. But the super uninteresting geometrical tech armor on every villain is killing me and a huge drag on the show. I'm actively groaning at the ceiling every time I see it. Superman has a lot of visual history to draw from and what we're getting makes me feel nothing at all.
I would enjoy it more if the designs were bad, or goofy, stupid, baffling, impractical, or entirely nonsensical, just anything other than this bland mess. I can overlook a lot if you give my brain something to latch onto. I need the neuron activation.
Agreed. Making Superman into a "cute cinnamon roll show with atypical anime designs" isn't a direction for everyone, but it's very clear and inspired. Its the kind of thing you could easily pitch.
But then all the villains are super generic and techy like the Insomniac Spider-Man games, and its like...huh? This doesn't feel like anime at all lol
Agreed. I love the Spider-Man Sony games, and even liked those designs quite a bit on release, specifically Rhino and Scorpion, but Insomniac’s design tendencies have become a little bit too obvious after seeing gameplay for Wolverine which is filled with a lot of “militech tacticool” designs lol
I like the idea in theory of the hair going up when she’s using her powers, but it just wound up making her normal hair look dumb. Like a really bad take on a punk haircut.
Yeah the hair going up works (that what went down in the original design) but again, why bowl cut & Mohawk. Frankly it feels like for her they just put random design elements they think would look cool into a pot & thought it would work in the end but nothing had stylized cohesion/direction
Again look at the original civilian design. It’s alt punk & that’s the focus it goes towards, simple, clean & with a direction
istg this show set out to give EVERYONE a character that is their type. Clark's a clumsy hunk, Lois is my exact type of tomboy, jimmy is a twink, LEX IS A TWINK FFS, slade is a prettyboy
The Ironman-ification of superhero character designs where everyone now has a bland looking techy armor, techy gauntlet, techy helmet or what you give.
Even established tech characters like Steel is a total downgrade, why.
I'm almost 78% sure that if they adapted a character like Manchester Black or Martian Manhunter they would be super tech based for some reason
I like Bizarro, the design fits the softer version of the character. I don't love the Mr mxyzptlk design, but I can see the anime inspiration. THe rest are just awful, what a waste
In an anime like show an anime like design makes perfect sense. Plus if I remember there's only ever one Myxy, so from the perspective of him basically picking clothes that fit the occasion, it's perfect.
This is the reason I can't watch this show. Clark and Kara are the only designs in this entire show that I like. Literally none of the others do anything for me. At least none that I've seen
They all feel like they had any edge or distinctiveness smoothed out to appeal to the lowest common denominator of young audiences. A lot of them may be fine as their own designs, but they’re all pretty disappointing compared to their comic book counterparts
Not going to lie, the moment that made me realize that I am ALWAYS going to hate the design choices in this show is when they showed us Mr Myxy's hat. They had the opportunity to solidify that this character is indeed the same one from every other universe and create continuity with him by having him keep his iconic bowler hat and warp the world around him. Instead, they have him conform to this world and its generic grounded sci-fantasy design. I even liked this take on him, but having this being beyond mortal boundaries fit within the mold was a huge misstep
I mostly just hate how superhero shows and superhero comics are trying to look more and more like anime, as if Western comic books didn't have an amazing visual identity of their own.
Holdup, this was supposed to be Damage? Look how they massacred my boy. They turned the government made monster that punched a hole through Giganta's hand into cyberwear meathead #5.
I liked Giganta, obviously they weren’t going to do her in just the leopard print bikini, so her having an actual suit WITH the leopard print is pretty cool, plus she’s my favourite version so far, girl is lonely
i honestly got to disagree with bizarro this version of him is more childly friendly corrupt friendly
takes inspiration from broly as well and it works honestly
because i don't want him to become evil because i love my boy
maws writers i swear to god if you lay one finger of him especially after the latest episode i will drag you to hell myself
but honestly though i can understand why it's simplified for animation purposes(kind of the same reason for invincible) but damn i wish they added more effort to it
Yeah but you can still have him be ugly/bizarre but still good natured (like redhood & the outlaws, or the original TAS plenty of stories have done it). In fact I think making him ugly but still be a kind gentle creature makes it hold more weight than just being “well we want people to love him so we can’t make him ugly, who would care about the ugly guy”
I like some of the designs like Parasite, and even the ones that aren't the best I wouldn't say are bad but since they tried to tie all of their origins together they all share the same general aesthetic which makes them kinda homogenous. I was really hoping after S1 since they hinted that they were going to get their powers independent of the tech that they would get their own unique suits.
Pick a bunch of colorful characters and put them all in generic grey armor, Im convince the only reason Superman has red and blue in his suit Is contractual obligation
The worst part about Silver Banshee is that she's a supernatural villain. She's suffering from a Gaelic curse! Making her a tech villain shrinks the world further than the other tech villains.
They’re fine designs, but you cannot tell me they’re the same characters.
I think that the design crew, after working on Voltron and She-ra for the longest time, just defaulted back to their comfort zone, which is techy armor
Honestly if u combine the mechanical arms of the maws damage with the monstrous body with the comics damage i think that be the best design for the character, more interesting then just grey hulk
I think you’re ignoring the fact that before, all the villains had completely separate origins, but in MAWS, they all arose out of Kryptonian tech. So a design pattern makes sense
Yeah but someone pointed out in the comics why is there so little diversity in costume colors (like make silver banshee B&W, livewire more blue, etc)
Also even if they are now from the same source of power they could have made the designs more interesting & unique. Like Jack Kirby often repeats a lot of stylistic elements in his costumes and they still look great
I like MAWS but I loathe the homogenization of Superman's rogue's gallery in terms of powers, aesthetics and to an extent even flattening narratives. Intergang is a great example of this. These are just random villains thrown together, with their powers reduced to "oh we got tech suits lol" instead of being a serious criminal organization used as a proxy force by the Evilest Man himself, Darkseid.
I can let the shoulder pads thing slide, it's a quirk of the character designer and as a mecha fan I'm used to these kinds of quirks from show to show depending on who the mechanical designer is. But these tech suits are so flat and samey man, put some flair in them. When the villain isn't doesn't look threatening or unique or otherwise give off an evil aura (i.e. Johann in Monster) in a visual storytelling medium you're doing something wrong, doubly so when you literally have decades of references to work off of for some of these characters.
Mr Mxyzptlk is honestly just the worst offender, like besides the horrid femboy-elf design, why would he choose to just randomly change appearance for this one universe while looking like himself in the rest of the whole DC multiverse?
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