mike7162

I suspect the Superhero genre will follow the path of the western - a period of unmatched popularity and creative brilliance, followed by cookie cutter entertainments, and a gradual, bland decline into indifference. Then, every few years or so, a film will appear that will "redefine" the comic book film. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the ride!

PhantomStranger

Probably. Hollywood will keep going to the well until it stops working.

dvd-4-life

Hasn't comic book sales gone down? Maybe because of too many superhero tv shows and movies? I though that it would increase in comic book interest.

I know back in the 1960s the Batman tv show increased comic book sales for Batman comics(Batman,Detective) but I don't know of the effect it had in overall comic book sales.

DaveCole

Comic sales have been going down for years. Convoluted continuity, constant partial reboots, & the inability to bring in new readers have been the cause. The price doesn't help either. $4-5 for a five minute read cannot compete with $10-13 for a 2 hour movie or $60 for a 20-100 hour video game. If anything, the current shows are introducing the characters to new readers who may pick up a trade or gn.

I am enjoying the shows so far. It is nice for once to have a choice of shows to watch each season rather than the one show coming out that you know will be cancelled before it airs.

Kdogg

Maybe but I disagree with you and Mr. Spielberg. Westerns lost popularity when kids who use to play cowboys and Indians grew up and then their kids grew up with something else. With Disney in the picture, little kids growing up will be exposed to superheroes from an early age but might never grow out of them. They start early with the cartoons, move on to PG/PG-13 movies/TV shows and then on to Deadpool/Dare Devil/Jessica Jones as adults. If Warner every got their house in order they could do the same.

I don't thing the volume will be as high in the future but I don't see a decrease in quality in aggregate.

Gunde

Absolutely, but not just on TV. I'm tired of Superheroes in general. I was never into them in the first place, but thought the first 3-5 MCH flicks were very good. Then it became too much and I lost interest.

I'm not gonna complain about though. Plenty of other stuff to watch instead

d2cheer

I just get burned out by people complaining about a show; saying they are giving it up but constantly show up in the thread for said show and stating how proud they are for still not watching it.

Kdogg

To be fair that applies to any genre of shows. It runs the gambit from 24 to Supernatural to True Blood to ER. With the expectation of Breaking Bad and The Wire you see that reaction on anything remotely popular eventually.

PhantomStranger

Comic book sales have mostly continued in a downward spiral due to the hideous pricing structure that continues to surpass the normal rate of entertainment inflation.

Comic books themselves became a secondary entertainment medium for children when videogames started offering a much more interactive experience requiring less imagination on the part of the user. The characters themselves are as popular as ever, Batman's videogames are still some of the biggest sellers in the video game industry.

Giantrobo

I keep hearing people complaining about there being too many Comic Book shows and films. Didn't some big time actor/director claim Hollywood was coming to an end because of this?

PhantomStranger

I think it's a common complaint in Hollywood. Remember that much of Hollywood is from continental Europe, a place that has virtually no tradition of superhero comics. It's a genre that is totally alien to them. I think it's a big reason why Hollywood took so long properly understanding superheroes and why it took outsiders like the Marvel people to finally deliver proper superheroes on the screen.

Eric F

So soon we forget...

DthRdrX

Hello no, as long as they are good I'll watch them. That goes for just about any show I find to be entertaining though.

morriscroy

Similar sentiments here. But I was into superheroes when I was kid/preteen. By the time I was a teenager, I lost interest in superheros and stopped collecting comic books. (I stopped collecting shortly after the Secret Wars II series ended).

Back in the day, I really like the first X-Men movie. (I went to see it several times at the theater). The next few marvel movies were ok at the time. By the time it was the mid-late 2000s, I was getting bored of marvel movies.

Xiroteus

Even as an adult I had to take a bit of a buying break (there was the library) for many series for awhile because cost vs benifit was much lower than other types of entertainment. And based on how I spent it was closer to like two dollars for movies, and under ten for PC games that could entertain for likely hours a day vs the same money and fifteen minutes or so.

Plus the format of comics does not work for someone that picks one up every so often as they would need a paperback or hardcover for that. If I was a kid today I likely would like comics yet could never justify the price when so many other options are available.

morriscroy

For kids that were not into video games during the 2000s, another option was to read book series like Harry Potter. As they got older, some moved on to books like Twilight, Hunger Games, etc ...

JeffTheAlpaca

At the moment NBC does not currently have a superhero so maybe it might slowly be going away after Heroes Reborn bombed.

majorjoe23

NBC is developing "Powerless," set in the DC universe. I suspect they won't be out of the superhero game for long.

morriscroy

If I never got into superhero comics/cartoons when I was a kid, I don't know how I would feel about superhero movies today.

My guess (hypothetically) is most superhero movies would probably be just another action movie to me, with some sci-fi/fantasy elements.

I first got burned out on action movies by the time it was the late 1980s. So I never really latched on to movies like Die Hard 1, The Abyss, etc ... nor anything with Steven Seagal, Jean Claude Van Damme, etc ...

starseed1981

In the movies, yes. In tv, no. That being said if Arrow doesn't significantly improve in the next three months I'm ditching my season pass on that one.

Kdogg

Also Universal Studios (their sister company) doesn't have any movie rights to any popular characters so there is less of an incentive for NBC to go out of their way. The CW has most of the DC Catalog in family. Fox has the X-Men under license. And ABC has most of the Marvel universe.

PhantomStranger

Remember that an X-Men show is coming to television on Fox. Only CBS has been dumb enough to directly pit one superhero show against another.

morriscroy

I don't know if Universal still has the rights to The Incredible Hulk.

Universal did a Hulk tv show for 5 seasons back in the late 1970s, and there were two Hulk movies during the 2000s.

morriscroy

To be more specific, I was getting burned out on superhero movies by the time it was around 2006-2007. Stuff like: Spider Man 3, Fantastic Four: Rise of The Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider 1, X-Men: The Last Stand, etc ... just weren't cutting it anymore for me.

On the DC side, I thought most of the superhero movies largely fell flat except for the Dark Knight trilogy. The mid-1990s era Batman films, Catwoman, Superman Returns, etc ... were rather awful or mediocre at best.

JuryDuty

I love Superhero shows but have stripped my watching down to Arrow, The Flash (my fav) and Legends of Tomorrow (which is currently backing up on my Tivo).

Red Dog's right that it's the best time for superhero shows on TV.

I think the key is to just pick your favorites and go with those. No way to keep up with them all, especially if you watch other TV shows, too.