I'd wager there's a decently large sub-set of comic fans who only buy books featuring characters they liked when they were children, or characters they have ALWAYS liked.

So I can sort of see that.

On the other hand; Having a personal vendetta against a fictional character is pretty fuckin' stupid.

Even NFL superpro.

Some of the people who are voting on hating certain characters are saying so because they hate what's been done (or some of the basic character "types" that they would fall into; ie; mystical, sword/sorcery, vengeance-shoot-em-ups, IMAGE-taint).

Would those "haters" be interested in that reviled character if it were handled like a character that they DO LIKE?

Take some things about your FAVORITE character and infuse THOSE concepts into your MOST HATED character. Would you like that "hated" character a little now?

SPAWN is a lame-duck due to his '90's IMAGE stink.
Let's use him for an example.

I don't care one way or another about him.
I bought the book for the first 30 some-odd issues and then dropped it.

The overall CONCEPT, while not ORIGINAL, really, being a bit of a mash-up of FAUST (the opera - not the comic), Ghost Rider (original Johnny Blaze version), FAUST (the comic, not the opera haha) and any "bad-guy dies and comes back wanting to do some good" story, is alright.
It's not Shakespeare, but it's OK.

Now, what if the origin was revamped?
Or a similar character were created with enough similarities, so as to be an understandable "nod" to SPAWN, but with a different angle/ origin / M.O.

Would THAT make a character palateable?

I'm TRULY trying to understand how someone who reads comics (and can see so many similarites even between vastly divergent characters) can state emphatically that they would "NEVER" like "Character Q" because they have never liked "Character Q" before and can't see any way to make "Character Q" work for them.

If someone HATES DC's "Captain Marvel", but LOVED MIRACLEMAN, isn't that just them saying, "I hate the way DC does CAPT. MARVEL, but Alan Moore/Neil Gaiman did it RIGHT"?

Or do they not see that it's the SAME character (at least in TEMPLATE)? Just taken along a new path?

It's the "same" character, but infused with a new life and direction and ANGLE.

If there were a way for DC to have made the transition, in some weird revamp, to make Capt. MARVEL into MIRACLEMAN (BEFORE MIRACLEMAN existed, if need be), wouldn't that "hater" then LOVE Capt. Marvel?

So, WHAT would it take for "Character Q" that you HATE, to be turned into "Character Q++" that you love?

Or is it that you hate a certain TYPE of character / storyline?

"I hate Western heroes"

Do you like Space heroes?

Star Trek was pitched as a Space Western.

So, therefore you might LIKE a WESTERN if it wasn't set in the old west.

"I hate sword & sorcery stuff"

Did you like Star Wars?
That's pretty much all Star Wars WAS (at least the original trilogy).

It may be the TRAPPINGS of a story/genre/hero that you hate.

But remove or tweak a bit of that, and it's NEW, FRESH and DIFFERENT, while STILL being somewhat similar.

Am I missing the point to this?
Or just seeing too deeply into the creative process, since I am a creator (writer/artist) and know that there's always a way to salvage a "bad" idea.

Of course, as I wrote earlier, it might be robbing the rich to give to the poor.

Changing a character so his detractors will love it, but might lose the hard-core fan.

Unless a creator whipped up a similar, but different version of the same character (as an ongoing elseworlds-type) or "creates" a different, yet similar character and placed him/her into the market.

LMK.

ThanX!
~P~
P-TOR

I would have said Nightwing, but I did enjoy bits of Dixon's run

I wavered back and forth on whether to get Wildcats last week. I thought Morrison would have an uphill battle in getting me to care about the characters, and I don't think he quite made it up the hill yet. I'll be wavering just the same when #2 comes out. None of those characters interest me at all. I was hoping Morrison would break out some good concepts, but he didn't quite do it. Like I said, maybe I'll read #2, maybe not.

Shadowhawk. Zero interest. I suppose a writer or artist could perk my interest, but I doubt it. Same with Ghost Rider. Cable is close, and I've never actually read his book, but the Soldier X concept seemed slightly interesting, and X-Man also was kind of interesting (especially when Warren Ellis was writing it), so I don't think he is irredeemable.

There's quite a few others that I am not interested in, but with the right writer and artist, I might be able to get interested. Like Blue Beetle, Hawkman, Aquaman, and probably plenty of other characters that seem boring. Although Hawkman would be a long shot. I guess the thing for me is, I tend to be more interested in writers and artists than characters. If my favorite character was being written by a terrible writer, I would not buy it, and even my most hated characters will make me think twice if my favorite creators work on them.

Forgot to mention Storm. Hate just doesn't do it justice....

Wasn't OZYMANDIAS supposed to be the "WATCHMANIZATION" of JUDOMASTER?

I read that... somewhere...in the late 1980's.
I can't recall where.

But, if I recall, Moore had given OZY a superior body (like Judomaster) but also had him delvelop a superior MIND, as well, since the harmonious workings and development of mind and body are tennets in martial arts training.

But since punching things coudn't truly solve anything, OZY focused him MIND on the problems instead.

I could be remembering wrong, but I really seem to remember that being the story.

Oh, and Glenn Simpson, you made Man-THING (and me) cry.

Oh, and I'd watch out for Mike Sterling on that Swamp-Thing bash, if I were you. He'll cut you. He'll cut you baaaad.)

~P~

And I'd love to write Judomaster.

I must respectfully disagree. The entire character concept is lame, from his generic powers, to his apropos of nothing name, to his multiple-choice origin(s). There's just not enough creative bleach in the world to mask the smell of Liefield that clings to Cable.

Rouge. She might have been good if she had stayed a villain, but now...and what is the explaination for the white in her hair? It was supposed to show she was old, but she isn't old, so what's the explaination?

You're going to wake up with a horse's head in your bed tomorrow.

Joe Casey, Darco Macan, Robert Kirkman? Its been done.

Just can't find myself caring.

-- At Marvel, Skull the Slayer, the crummy "castaway and aliens" protagonist who represents the lamest of the 1970s popular film-inspired characters. Arguably anticipating "Lost," he's a falsely-accused soldier who crashlands on a mysterious isalnd full of aliens and dinosaurs and has to lead a hostile supporting cast. He also gets a generic strength-boosting power belt, and his real name is Jim Scully. And despite all the trappings, he has never, ever been cool and probably never will be. Despite being reinvented by Gruenwald and later by Nicieza, the basic blandness of the character and the dated elements of the origin story just keep bleeding right through the fresh paint. And the repaints were ugly, too.

-- I might get some flak for this one, but...Judomaster. The name is bad. The costumes have been bad. But mostly, it's the name. It locks him in to another of those sort of dated fads -- the 60s and 70s judo craze -- and badly, badly limits what a writer can do with him. It's no accident that of the major Charlton heroes DC acquired, he's been the least used and least seen. (Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt, is a special case, and even so he got a short-lived series in the 1980s.) But Judomaster? Guy didn't even get a Watchmen analogue, for Pete's sake.

Even lame-os like the Stilt-Man can at leas turn up for comedy purposes. These guys, though...they're just fundamentally boring and limited in some fashion.