Remember the comic book anti hero - Ghost Rider?

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   ptosisposted 13 years ago

   Remember the comic book anti hero - Ghost Rider?
   
   The flaming skull-face hero-demon on a flaming spirit bike? Why are anti-heros so popular?

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   ptosisposted 13 years ago

   I like the classic comic Ghost rider because even though he had a LOT of anger and vengence inside - he still did good  when an innocent needed help. - he just didn't stick around for all that mushy kissy-face stuff after-wards...
   
   Ghost Rider was tricked by Mephistopheles who said that for his soul -  will save his friend from cancer - but that friend died quickly after-wards by a motorcycle accident. Ghost rider then escaped from Hell somehow.
   
   Unlike Hellboy - who vacations in Hell such as fishing in the river Styxx, etc....

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   Richard Stephenposted 13 years ago

   Sure, I remember Ghost Rider.  Didn't they make it into a movie starring Nicholas Cage a few years back?  I think anti-heroes are so popular because people are tired of 'perfect' heroes like Superman.  The average person can relate to anti-heroes with all their anger and flaws more readily.

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   wingedcentaurposted 13 years ago

   Ghost Rider was cool! I think he evoked the image of the old cowboy hero, ridng off into the sunset without sticking around for all the mushy kissy face stuff afterwards, as you say. He reminds me a lot of Spawn.
   
   But as to your question about why anti-heroes are so popular, I'll echo Richard Stephen, by saying that perhaps, deep down, people may have idolized 'Superman,' but they could never quite believe him. The whole 'too good to be true' thing.
   
   Good question.

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   philmaguireposted 13 years ago

   I would not have called him an anti-hero so much as a reluctant hero. He did not go out patrolling for wrongs to right. He just found himself fighting against Evil with a capital "E". But having found himself fighting evil, he did not back down. It was an interesting theme that has been visted many times (Dr Strange, the Demon Etrigan, Ghost Rider and the Son of Satan, then Hellboy and Spawn and even Buffy the Vampire Hunter and Angel) but none really successfully. I think the most successful was Bufy the Movie where she re-evaluated her previous shallow life in the light that there really was a supernatural evil out there. I suppose they think that the issues raised are not appropriate for children's comics.
   
   As to why they are so popular, that is easy. It is because they are more like us. That means that when they act heroically, so could we. We think "Hey they are just like us so we could be just like them, given the same circumstances."

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