Yeah I’d consider Expat/Parse more anti hero than Alpha. I fully agree that Alpha comes across as the Hulk of the Sentinels Universe.
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Darkstrife and Painstake have dark impulses due to their upbringings, but they both seem to be trying to do the right things, I wouldn’t call them anti-heroes. We have evidence of Painstake losing control, but that’s not the same thing as being an anti-hero.
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I mean, she started out as a clothing designer/model in a romance book, and the original superhero take on her sounded about as grim and gritty as the Archie gang in costumes and capes. Fashion killed some folks during the Bloodsworn stuff later on, but “darker than the original” still leaves a lot of room before you reach the Punisher/Parse/ExPat threshold.
Seems reasonable to hold out hope that she’s not an edgy traumatized dark vigilante type. If one of her cards has her decapitating Spite with weaponized lingerie I’m going be both surprised and disappointed - albeit probably less so than Spite in that case.
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Depends on your definition of anti-hero. Which has been a HUGE debate for most of the last century…
Personally, Parse and Expat I would classify as anti-heroes, though the latter gets better when on the team. Influence of Slim and Pete. The creepy twins I would classify as “dark” heroes, but that’s more a power source/nature not how they use it. Same with Alpha. I see her more as a cursed hero rather than an anti-hero.
Rambler feels more like an anti-villain. A David Xanatos type. The guy after his own thing, for his own reason, and occasionally is on the hero’s side, and sometimes against them.
One aspect of this point is, a character being interesting, complex, and capable of evolution does not require darkness! That’s one thing I love about a well-done Superman story, and I imagine good Haka or Legacy stories would fit a similar mold.
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Exactly! 
Once again, Trajector nails my intention better than I ever could. 
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I would argue to some degree you need that darkness, weirdness, or way out there stuff occasionally to remind you why those other stories are great and true to the character. And sometimes you find those oddities fit that character better than expected.
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It’s also the main reason, in inverse, that Superman is famously one of the hardest characters to write for in all of comics.
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Rambler I can’t speak to, as I’ve only listened to the American Folktales and Alpha team-up episdes, not these last two that feature him,* but the way I see DS&PS is that Paynstayke wants to be a good person, because that’s how she was raised, but she has an innate predilection towards evil. Darkstryfe, meanwhile, wants to do evil, but has too much of a conscience to really be much good at it. So I feel that they’re both morally superior to, say, the Punisher — then again, that’s not a very high bar to pass. ; )
Alpha . . . I don’t think I have a very good grasp on her morality. She’s eaten at least one person, and has probably killed a good few . . . but it does seem like a big part of her story is controlling the beast within . . . and it looks like she’s been genuinely horrified at some of the things she did while blacked out.
Fashion is serious, yes, but from the tone of the Cosmic Codex and Greazer team-up stories, she’s not overly harsh or punishing.
Expat and Parse have both grown out of their murder-phases, I think. Expat because of her interactions with lots of heroes (Legacy, Felicia, the FF, and Scholar, in addition to those mentioned by @OddballPaladin), and both of them because the tone of comics just changed.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say that Superman is hard to write because he lacks darkness, but rather because he’s simply so powerful. There are plenty of other heroes who are around the same level of goodness as Big Blue.
*That said, I do think that, despite him occasionally being a protagonist, I view him more like a neutral third party. I imagine that he’d have a role similar to the Phantom Stranger or the Spectre.
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Yeah, he’s pretty hard to challenge outside of re-using ideas that have been done nearly to death - and that’s led to some authors trying to throw him into realistic shades-of-gray no-good-option stories that just don’t work very well with his established character. He’s got weaknesses you can write into, but after all these decades it’s rare to see much innovation on that front that doesn’t wander into outright deconstruction.
The current Superman: Lost story is kind of noteworthy for finding a way to actually threaten him with something new - a lengthy exile from Earth and his supporting cast, followed by the trauma of time passing much more quickly for him than it did back home. Plays merry hell with a lot of established continuity of how spaceflight works in DC, and I’m not sure if they’ll nail the landing but so far it’s at least kept my attention.
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Superman is easy to write conflict for. It’s just not HIS conflict. The danger is in the collateral damage.
Or, put in a very odd piece of fanfiction from some time back (a crossover where kryptonite doesn’t appear until past the halfway point): “He can’t be killed, he CAN be HURT.”
But he’s also an exception, and was specifically designed to be that way (more than one person has pointed out, a Jewish artist in the 30s and 40s developing a perfect physical specimen that hates the nazi’s with every fiber of his being is probably not an accident). So he’s not the best hero to bring up when you’re designing stuff. There’s a reason Legacy and Haka both have the limits they do. Another example that comes to my mind is the “Atlas types” from the Wearing the Cape books, which are the typical “flying brick” types, but don’t have some of the more esoteric powers like Supes’ breath, eyes, and the like.
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The vastly underrated (although rarely updated) comic PS238 had a good take on that very common power set, where there are so many FISS (flight, invulnerability, strength, speed) heroes they’re treated like kind of second-class super-citizens. Up-and-coming young hero Julie Finster took the supranym 84 in part to emphasize the general disrespect they get and has become the de facto figurehead for the Infinite Vanguard, a FISS recognition movement.
At seven years old she could safely be called precocious, and despite her insecurities is arguably outdoing Kal-El’s performance at the same age. Really wish they’d wrap the current storyline and get back to what’s going on with her (and the rest of the cast). Tied with the Flea for my favorite character in that comic.
Sure, but also, Superman isn’t omnipotent. He’s really tough, not indestructible, and really strong, but not an unstoppable force. One simply needs to challenge him with threats of an appropriate tier — foes who can take a punch from him and dish them back. The same is true of all heroes (Batman, Green Lantern, Flash, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, etc.), not just Supes.
What’s more, physical conflict isn’t the only kind that exists; he’s certainly not overpowered when it comes to mental, social, or ethical dilemmas.
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They are doing a fantastic job putting him up against Threats He Can’t Punch on the CW’s Superman and Lois show. The plot going on right now is that Lois has cancer, which is not only something Superman can’t do anything about but also challenges Clark’s trademark optimism.
I also remember some standout episodes of the 90s animated Superman show where Lex Luthor was doing evil stuff as usual, but hidden beneath shell companies and political maneuvering. I recall Supes floating outside Lex’s C suite and challenging him, and Lex responds, “prove it.” It was a great reminder that Lex makes a good nemesis for Superman not because of matching Supes power (or Kryptonite) for power, but because the Clark Kent reporter identity is also trying to unravel corporate shenanigans. We don’t really have a good analog for that matchup in Sentinel Comics.
But there could easily be stories where Legacy finds himself standing up for American democracy alongside politicians whose policies he detests, or finds himself on international tours that put US interests in conflict with what locally seems like the right thing to do. There’s a huge amount of material to mine there for social commentary and internal character conflict.
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There’s a reason the 90s animated DC shows were some of the best examples of those heroes, until the CW stuff came along (and it’s still second place, as far as I’m concerned).
I imagine that a lot of conflict with the Organization is like that. Miss Information could have been like that, but she’s far too much of a diva. But, as C&A have pointed out, those kinds of things don’t make good gameplay. We don’t really have any kind of secret identity or day job involved in the gameplay, except with The Wraith and Alpha. The stories are probably there, but not in the cards. The whole “Matthew” story was not an Apostate vs Dark Watch card game, for instance.
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Another great example of Lex’s tricksyness is when he won the 2000 election and became U.S. President, which of course Supes couldn’t do anything about.
Or, better yet, Legacy and Senator Parsons teaming up to take down a crooked politician together. Or, more generally, both of them tackling a problem together; that seems like a great untapped source of stories.
Perhaps, but I feel like the heroes — esp. Fixer and Wraith — don’t really acknowledge the authority of the Rook City PD, as they know that they’re (mostly) all corrupt.
Actually, I think that she’s too subtle for that. Her M.O. is that the heroes never even knew that it was her — hiding behind regulation seems much less like her than just plain old hiding.
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Her reveal of the Evil Costume Switch as soon as Parse outed her would say otherwise…
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