Grrl Power #1489 – Target audience
Ahhhh! Done with the fight scenes for a few pages at least, and back to the characters being goobers. The meat and potatoes of this comic. Feels good. Also not having to draw a bunch of speed lines feels good too. I mean, obviously I have some huge speed line templates that I cut and paste, because there’s usually no point to doing a unique radial burst for each panel, but still. There’s more to good speedlining that just laying lines over or under some action, as I’m realizing, but hey, that’s the job. Still, I wouldn’t say no to 3 or 4 Japanese interns who put in 16 hour days doing mind-numbing background work. Man if I could get that for a single page… well, that page would probably just be an establishing shot of a massive city, because that shit is tedious. That or a lot of rubble.
There was some debate on the previous page about whether Max qualifies as a “Mary Sue,” which in its current common usage, is a term I generally don’t like. Because the original Mary Sue was specifically a female character who is great at everything, but most importantly, also an author self-insert. Unfortunately, the current common usage seems to have become “any competent female character.” Without the author self-insert part, it almost always feels like the person complaining about a female character being good at stuff is really zeroing in on the female part of the equation, and that becomes extremely evident when you ask them, “Is Batman a Mary-Sue?” Because Batman is a billionaire playboy who is better at literally every single physical activity than Olympic equivalents, is also the world’s greatest detective, can outfight like 20 ninjas at a time (dudes who have spent their entire lives training only to be deadly fighters and don’t waste any time on that detective stuff or solving riddles) has all the gadgets, up to and including his own fighter jet armed with a variety of missiles, which is probably illegal for a private citizen in a much bigger way than vigilante justicing some thugs in an alley, has his own space station with orbital strike capabilities, which, again, probably illegal in a way that the entire U.N. might care about, etc, etc. The Mary Sue-accusers usually say, “No, because Batman loses fights all the time.” Right, he loses fights, (usually so he can get thrown in a deathtrap only to quickly escape) but never the war. If a female billionaire playgirl gadgeteer, etc got her back fucking broken rather famously, then recovered and was basically completely fine afterward and proceeded to beat up Bane, I feel like they would get “Mary Sue” lobbed at them. What about James Bond? What about Iron Man? Riddick? John Wick? Mary Sue or just the main character of a franchise who necessarily has to win in the end so the franchise can continue?
But here’s a serious question. If Maxima is a Mary Sue (the non-author insert kind, obviously) because she’s powerful and wins fights… is Saitama? (From One Punch Man if you didn’t know his name.) Saitama is probably exempt because his strength and battle record are almost entirely played for laughs. Also he’s male. I guess the real question is if Maxima was Maximus, would anyone even think of accusing him of being a non-author-insert Mary Sue? Cause I’ve never seen anyone accuse Batman of being a Mary Sue out of the blue, it only ever happens when someone asks the guy who’s accused a female character of being one if Batman is also one, and accuser guy suddenly feels defensive about getting called out for being sexist.
If you think seeing Maxima win a bunch of high-level fights with relative ease is a little boring, that’s fine. That’s a totally valid criticism – even taking into account that she entered specifically because she analyzed previous tournaments and was fairly certain she could probably win with relative ease. That’s still a valid criticism, because it’s on me to relay an entertaining version of those events.
Oh, look who it is in the vote incentive. And a not-quite-yet-but-it’s-coming NSFW version over at Patreon.
Vote incentive and Patreon updated with some shading. Not finished yet, but progress.
I think she would get in trouble for doing this. She’d mess up the… floor of the waterfall? Is that what it’s called? The receiving pool? No, probably not that. Anyway, she’d churn things up and cause a ton of weird erosion.
Since you might be wondering, Niagara Falls is about 165 feet high, so Babezilla obviously doesn’t have to be full sized. I’d say she’s about 175-180 feet tall here?
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Bringing gender into your Mary Sue argument isn’t going to help when we know that Harry Stu exists.
Almost no-one knows/uses Gary Stu (Not Harry, thank you for making my point, LOL).
The problem isn’t so much people pointing out Mary Sues (A character that’s great at EVERYTHING and has no flaws) but that some people label any (hyper) competent female character (For example Max) as a Mary Sue, and won’t do the same for a (hyper) competent male character. The reason? Usually sexism.
I thought his name was Marty Stu. Yes, he exists.
There is more to the definition of a Sue/Stu. I hear about the following criteria:
* A Sue/Stu is excelling at everything and knowing everything, since they are so perfect. ( –> To avoid this trait, writers have begun to add little flaws to their Sues/Stus, and like pointing at these flaws . It rarely helps with the critics.)
* A Sue/Stu appears ONLY in fan-fiction. ( –> A lot of writers say that their perfect characters cannot ever be called a Stu/Sue because they are original. It rarely helps with the critics: The original Mary Sue was indeed a fanfiction character, but in a time where there was no indy creatorspace, unlike today where “mainstream fiction” is increasingly rare)
* A Stu/Sue must be a self-insert or wish-fulfillment. ( –> Again, it doesn’t help when writers point out that they are very different persons from their character – this criteria is happening in the interpretation of readers)
* A Sue/Stu also has by definition no flaws in their psyche (per word of the writer), and yet they react condescendingly towards most others: Because only this specific MC holds the value in the writer’s mind, everyone else holds little value. ( –> This is one of the rarest arguments I find in these debates, but it is in my opinion an important trait, and the one that most people despise most about Stus/Sues.)
The original Mary Sue had 4/4 of these traits, as far as I am aware; but I would characterize anyone as a Stu/Sue if they meet 3/4 of the criteria. 2/4 meanwhile is borderline Sue-ish, and one could argue, that’s what is the case with Maxima. One can also argue that Maxima only has the first trait, which only made her a suspect in the first place.
With that pre-amble, I am confident in saying that Gandalf and Holmes are no Stus, only suspects. However, most modern versions of Bat- and Superman are at least borderline Stus, yes Dave.
Holmes is by far the worst offender out of the ones you’re listing here, because the main thing it takes is to be the thing the author uses to short circuit the narrative tension in the story. Several of the original Sherlock stories and a huge number of emulators have written him to solve mysteries and resolve the plot without any narrative tension at all. Sure, his drug addiction and rivalry with Moriarty are good tensions that avoid that, but they don’t show up in every story.
Batman and Superman never fail to be challenged by events in one way or another. Neither does Maxima, in other arcs of this comic (although this one is the exception).
I was gonna guess that gameshow hostess was actually Dabbler. She looks like a potential Dabbler disguise and if you told me Dabbler has the capability to either travel instantaneously across space or project or control a hologram or illusion from that far away I would believe it. But this is almost as funny as that would’ve been.
There are no male “Mary Sue’s” because they are called “Gary Stu”. Also, I find that characters are only ever truly a MS when they achieve things without what I as a reader feel is effort. If Maxima could effortlessly out-duel that assassin thanks to only her raw power, then it would kind of apply. As it is we know she trained specifically for this and needed a super powerful sword to pull it off. Batman also definitely isn’t a MS(or GS) in his normal comics, but in some of the animated stuff like Brave and the Bold he’s definitely a Gary Stu, but those are made for a much younger audience.
A decade or so ago there was another webcomic that I was reading where the the male main character/author was called a “Marty Stu”.
@Dave, I think one of the key issues that comes from the author-insert portion of it (in contrast to Batman for example) is if it’s one person running the whole show and it’s of their own creation. where Batman is basically run by committee, with a rotating lead writer, and has had SO many decades of stories that by happenstance he has had to become great at everything (which was the easy way out, versus maintaining a network of connections he could lean on for things he wasn’t good at).
I am not saying you are doing a self-insert here. I am pointing out that I personally haven’t heard/read the Mary/Marty comment about any large-scale commercial endeavor, it’s always with individual creators like yourself that get seem to contend with this issue.
I had only ever heard the team in context of the self-insert, the rest of the time I thought it would fall under the Trope of “The Ace” (or in some cases “The Broken Ace”), versus a Mary/Marty.
Thought they were ‘Marty Stu’
Guess there are many male versions of Mary Sue…
And… no, Batsie is most certainly the male version, even in his own comics: again, “World’s Greatest Detective” without any sort of training; expert in all forms of martial arts (armed and unarmed); more gadgets than Inspector Gadget (and always has the one that will get him out of his predicament one hand)
What do you mean without any forms of training? His whole deal is that he spent years learning from the greatest minds on the planet and honing his skills before becoming Batman. He also still fails and gets outmaneuvered or overpowered despite all his abilities.
I think the male version is Gary Stu.
I believe winning all fights is no problem as long as the character is somewhat resourceful about it. If Max could automatically win every time by using her super-speed and clobbering her opponents on the head (or bisecting them with the indestructible über-sword), it would get very tedious watching her do just that over and over for 20 pages. Here, the tension is created not by the audience wondering whether she’ll survive the fight but how she’ll win this time when the tried and true methods are unavailable to her.
I think the male term is “Marty Stu”? And, yeah, Batman approaches being that. One of my complaints about regular comics, and why I gave up on them, was the lack of irreversible plot progression. The characters keep getting reset instead of aging out and passing the baton to the next generation.
Anyway, Maxima is not a Mary Sue because, among other things, she has a largely defined power set and doesn’t pull impossible competencies out of a hat. She even occasionally gets a bloody nose, or needs somebody else to pull her fat out of the fire.
Rather, she’s just a demonstration that, setting aside rock-paper-scissors, somebody just has to be the best *fighter* around. A Mary Sue is the best at *everything*.
Yeah, I kind of miss the days of Earth 1 and 2 and S…. (and they probably wouldn’t’ve gotten up to 52 yet….)
For a while it looked as if Marvel was going to do something along those lines (when _The Ultimates_ came out) — but it looks as if the MCU has taken up that mantle, and the aging out of characters is being forced by the aging of actors and actresses.
Sydney has lost a few times and does not do great on her own.
Against the elder god like kaiju she was scrambling to survive while seeking a solution.
Or when Concretia (I think that is the right name) isolated her orbs. Sydney needed rescuing and came close to death.
Also she is not always right.
Let’s not forget Sciona would have killed her (did kill her?) if not for the temporal reset (aka the checkpoint) Krona set up just in case feldercarp went South.
That was some next-level trolling.
Who wants to bet 5 qatloos that Xuriel was the one who installed that feature?
That’s a sucker bet. She is our local imp of mischief when it’s not Sydney’s turn (Mostly when Sydney isn’t present, in other words, though sometimes also when Sydney is present, even SHE can’t be an imp of mischief 24/7).
Obviously she’s not an imp of mischief 24/7. In space, many planets have less or more than 24 hours in a day. :)
Folks have already chimed in with the gendered name, so there’s no need for me to add. Personally, I use “Mary Sue” for either gender, but I do admit the term has lost the self-insert aspect.
Batman, as originally conceived, was not a Mary Sue, but recent depictions of the character certainly qualify for the title.
TBH, if I was going to apply the term to anyone in this comic, I’d choose Sydney. Change my mind.
> Change my mind
No I don’t think I will
I don’t think Sydney qualifies as a Mary Sue. The closest thing that I could her imagine being is “author wants so isekai himself into a world where he’s a woman that’s weak but gets to live with a bunch of supers because of OP artifacts”. I mean, who hasn’t fantasized about being part of a super team, really?
But she’s not competent enough by far to enter the Mary Sue realm.
Concretia and those weirdos controlling her had Sydney locked down tight. If it wasn’t for her special glasses and Cora’s intervention she would likely be dead.
Also, her physical training especially in the early arcs. A true Mary Sue would be keeping pace with Maxima on the track.
Oh, and that spider lady who got the drop on her and paralyzed her. If spider lady had gone in for the kill instead of concentrating on the succubus girl (Tamatha) she had captured Sydney would once again be dead.
Plus Sydney’s glasses were not some sort of Deus Ex Machina or a**pull either. They were cleverly added in significantly beforehand ot lead up to how she got out of her predicament.
I always thought that a Mary Sue was a character with no real discernible flaws – things like, “love his/her friends too much.” Don’t count as flaws, unless they get to ‘clingy’ or irrepressible flirt levels.
No. Mary Sues can have flaws, but those flaws are always either consequence-free flaws, surface-level flaws, or both. Flaws where if they DO mess up, it’s done in such a way that it winds up saving the day. She’s impulsive, but it’s a good thing she was impulsive, or the bad guy would have won. She’s arrogant, but it’s a good thing she was arrogant because she was fully able to back up that arrogance, so it wasnt ACTUALLY arrogant – it was being justifiably confident about what she could do, and was correct in the end. Those are consequence-free flaws. They are flaws which never really ‘bite them in the butt’, or if they do, it’s an EXTREMELY minor ‘biting of the butt’ that’s quickly and easily overcome.
That’s why someone like Captain Marvel is a Mary Sue, while Maxima is not. Both are arrogant. Captain Marvel’s arrogance winds up helping her. Maxima’s arrogance has nearly gotten her killed more than once (the Super Mannekiller, Vehemence)
The arguments for Saitama not being a Gary Stu, are that 1: He doesn’t constantly invent new powers to overcome every situation, he’s just always crazy strong in the same way. And 2: His powers don’t even help overcome his challenges, which aren’t about winning fights (which he couldn’t care less about) but about wanting to become a hero.
And his path to heroism is constantly foiled by his lack of social competence and epically bad luck. If anything, his physical power is a detriment, because nobody believes that he could actually be that strong and thinks he must be cheating somehow, which just makes it harder for him to achieve his goals.
I wonder whether that epically bad luck might be down to the ‘god’ of the setting.
And if he were really a Gary Stu, he’d be able to successfully punch a mosquito.
The fact that he feels so unhappy with his overwhelming strength also stops him from being a Gary Stu, I think. More than anything, Saitama wants to be challenged, to have to struggle for a meaningful victory. His unlimited power is an OBSTACLE to that. The happiest I’ve seen Saitama was when he was dreaming of a fight with creatures that could actually take his punches and hit him back.
A Gary Stu would simply breeze through life, unbothered.
Less than it being about her being a Mary Sue, I think a bigger issue is that this whole sequence seems kinda… pointless. The characters barely want to be here, it’s all just exercise for Maxima and literally “gain some money” scheme for the rest, and she can just take a second and pop to earth to fix whatever issue the team can’t handle, since apparently she’s the only reliable heavy hitter. And what’s worse is it seems like YOU barely want to write this sequence, since your own commentary seems to kinda lean towards “I *could* make this a whole thing bigger and do a cool battle tournament like a manga but it’s a lot of effort and time so I won’t”, at which point I wonder why we’re here when there’s so many balls in the air for the story already. It feels like you started the battle tournament with the primary intention of doing as little as possible with it
And, funnily, I personally find this a breath of fresh air? Sooooooo many comics and shows do the super-duper-uber-epic tournament that takes months to literal years to wrap up without actually having any point. I am pretty sure we are going to have multiple new plot points (a lot of people definitely spotted Ixah disappearing and Maxima appearing, hacked satellite or not, they get new tech for the winning money, so the scope and available tools can extend, etc)
Except for the “Have I gone insane?” concern, it would be nice if the TV would say “This next story will be of particular interest to {Name}.”
Coming to AI soon.
And now a bunch of viewers who happen to be named ‘Sidney’ are going “Wha?”
I think people claiming Max is a Mary Sue or more likely that she’s won the fights to easily haven’t been paying attention. For one I think a major flaw Max has had upon entering this brawl has been overconfidence. She has been pitched and is sort of treating this like a vacation but I think the stakes are a little higher than that at least if she loses which she’s already come closer to than probably comfortable.
She got significantly injured in the very first round. That’s before being nearly trapped in another dimension which would’ve been very bad. Then upon realizing magic weakness was a big hole in her skill set, she went and obtained a super magic cheat sword. A sword without which I doubt she would’ve as easily beaten Kaboomoid (RIP) or even Eat Chicken and she definitely would’ve lost if not died to Ryzyl’s super obvious mega magic kill anything back stab.
To me the most Mary Sue thing she did was go back to Earth mid fight to solve Earth problems in under 30 seconds and I liked that she did that. Just my personal opinion here but risking yourself and the safety of the people you protect to compete and win a space cock fight for big space bucks isn’t very heroic which is a trait I value in Max. So like if she wasn’t still prioritizing her job and friends I wouldn’t like her very much here. Especially since this hasn’t been the cake walk that was pitched. But maybe round 3 will be easier. I bet it will be easier!
Yeah, I noticed that Mary Sue thing too
That rant about Mary Sue characters implies that there must’ve been a huge debate about it that I don’t want to bother reading through. :-) So here’s just my 2 cents:
A Mary Sue character in my opinion is like the original one you mentioned from Star Trek who is just perfect at everything and everybody else just praises and adores her. I don’t view Maxima or Batman as Mary Sue / Gary Stu because both have weaknesses and faults and thus room for character growth. Maxima lost to Vehemence (because she gave him chances to surrender) and had to be saved by bouncing hypnotic boobs. Also her feminist views do get in the way of letting her enjoy herself, but looking at the rest of the cast she has plenty of reasons to have them, so her inner conflicts are understandable.
Saitama lives an impoverished lifestyle and gets barely any recognition despite his overwhelming strength and one of the reasons is that King accidentally gets credit for all his wins. Not a Gary Stu in my opinion either.
I only find characters problematic if they have terrible personalities in combination with being flawless or alternatively their flaws are everybody else’s fault and they’re just misunderstood in every way. That is something that has been happening more and more often recently, specifically with female characters. Take for example Mandy from the “I am not Starfire” comic. If you look at the author of that comic, she looks almost exactly like Mandy.
So, I only hate it when middle-aged women trauma-dump into established franchises and then blame the audience for not liking their dump. Maxima is fine. Sorry if you’re catching some flak from the counter-movement that is currently on the rise because of people like Asmongold. Independent artists who create their own franchises should be able to do whatever they want with their own characters. The counter-movement is meant to just fight against invaders who want to change established franchises to fit their own narratives and politics for “the modern audience”, like LoTR, D&D, WoW, Mulan, Arielle, The Odyssey, Cleopatra and others.
Agreed especially about the live-action Mulan. A big aspect of the animated movie was Mulan learning and growing in her abilities. In the live-action remake, they open with her doing crazy super-coordinated flips as a kid. Plus the part where she didn’t want to hide being a woman any more and then tossed off all the armor before going back into battle. WTF why would you toss the armor? The main purpose was to protect you, not hide your identity!
So it’s okay for middle-aged men to trauma-dump? Between that and the comment about Max’s feminism being a flaw, you might want to get that misogyny looked at
“Lacks meaningful flaws” is the line I draw on Mary Sues (and Gary Stus, or whichever of the male derivatives you choose)
Flaws can be mental or emotional. I like Batman best when he fails to understand people care about him as a person. I like Maxima best when she face palms because Sidney outwitted her.
I dabble in writing and recently have been working on how to make the next character “not” a Mary Sue. There are of course pieces of me in every character I write. (Anyone who says “self insert” has never seriously written anything on their own.) But a character who sweeps into an existing story and overcomes every obstacle (physical, mental, and emotional) then “fixes” the plot so that no one else is ever in physical, emotional, or mental difficulty again with only a hand wave of “because they are special,” that is a Mary Sue. Maxima is not, because of her mental growth and maturity, as well as the ability levels of surrounding characters (supporting and opponents). Batman is a lot closer, but mental flaws, and the superhuman nature of his own opponents can keep him relatable. Superman the same problem. Badly written Batman and Superman become Gary Stus so easily.
It is a dance. You do it well.
Batman is a Marty Stu when he is the main character. Maxima is a supporting character.
No, Batsie is Marty when he’s not the main character, because when he is, he is facing normal-level threats, not planet-smashing inter-dimensional ‘Gods’
On Mary Sues that are not author self-inserts, TVtropes brought up that a common feature is that the world itself warps around the character to ensure that they are always right or awesome in some way, or that they de-protagonist-ize other character in order to show how awesome that character is.
So in Maxima’s case you might argue that the thing that might bring her close to Mary Suedom is less about how powerful she is and more about the cases where everything just happens to work out for her because the plot demands that it do rather than because it comes from her previously established powers.
The closest thing we’ve seen so far I think is the portal the fairy sent her through – where the portal just happened to be made in such a way that it opened back up when the power source got destroyed instead of staying very shut because portals don’t often intuitively open when they lose power. That’s an instance where Maxima got incredibly lucky (the world warped around her to make her succeed) rather than succeeded on mostly her own merits. A single such instance is usually fine, but if it happens regularly people might start looking at her funny.
In this same veneer, I would indeed say that Batman is indeed a far stronger example of a non-author Marty Sue, because he survives almost exclusively on the world bending to make him seem awesome and of course keep him alive when he really shouldn’t have if the world didn’t go out of its way to ensure his survival and badassery in spite of his poorly considered low-safety-margin crimefighting habits.
I think whether Batman counts varies heavily by author, like, yeah, there’s definitely some instances like when he dodged Darkseid’s canonically undodgable omega beams that even Superman and Flash couldn’t dodge by backflipping real good. But some other storylines also treat him almost like a buttmonkey, which is about the opposite of a mary sue, and by and large a lot of the time he *does* win in ways that make sense within the rules of the universe. Plus he has some fairly consistent flaws that do cause him significant trouble in a lot of storylines.
Remember, the “world warping around them” thing isn’t just about winning, it’s also about being abnormally well liked in-universe. Batman is usually portrayed as one of the least-liked members of the Justice League, including by fellow league members, and pretty regularly has fairly significant interpersonal issues with various members of his various teams, including the BatFamily. He is incredibly controling, has severe trust issues, and as such does a bad job at effective communication when collaborating with anyone not already incredibly familiar with him, and these traits are fairly regularly used to make his life harder.
So, in short, Batman may or may not be a mary sue depending on the writer, and given how long the character has been around and how many different writers he’s had, it’s a little silly to try and assign a trope that is inherently critical of the writing of the character to the character as a while rather than to particular depictions or storylines.
Actually, Flash HAS dodged Darkseid’s Omega beams before. And Batman has been hit by the Omega Beam a couple of times, although once it sent him back in time and once it killed him (he got better). If you’re talking about Justice League Unlimited where he dodged it by letting it hit a parademon instead, then I should also mention in the Superman/Batman Apocalypse animated movie, where Supergirl not only tanked a couple of the Omega beams, she also dodged several, and ALSO redirected 3 to HIT DARKSEID.
So there have been multiple people who have dodged his Omega Beams before. Oh also Wonder Woman, in the comic, deflected his Omega beams with her bracelets, and several have not dodged it but tanked it, such as Doomsday.
Frix went along with the “mess with Sydney”!
I kind of assumed that image only showed up in Sydney’s new space technology glasses. Hidden features and all that.
Absolutely absurd to call Maxima a Mary Sue. Clearly Dabbler is the Mary Sue in this comic. Anyone could see that. Nah, I actually agree with your assessment on Mary Sues in general.
But in all seriousness, I think you’re absolutely right, Maxima diligently prepared for this tournament, she checked to make sure it was something she could be confident in winning and now she is winning confidently. That seems satisfyingly cause-and-effect to me. Me, I’m always thrilled when this comic does action. You do great action scenes in my opinion.
I was sorry to read you were having second thoughts about committing to the tournament arc but I’m glad you’re going through with it and hope it’s a mostly painless experience for you. I’ve been loving seeing all the absurd ultra-powered space gladiators you come up with.
Batman is definitely a Gary Stu, a mere mortal with no powers who can take down the entire JLA with contingency plans to do so and has used them along with the other stuff outlined about him, Every Hanna-Barbera superhero of the 60s (most if not all cancelled for violence by blue haired fossils) always won by pulling a super trick out of their arsenal that’s never used again. I love Space Ghost for that but still need to throw him under the starship for it. ;P
Rey from Di$ney Wars is the very definition of a Mary Sue. She somehow pulls flying a starship for the first time out of her ass, flies it through a star destroyer and wins somehow, is drawn to the owner of said starship without it being explained as the Farce err Force, Has full mastery of the farce and lightsabres despite having held one for 5 minutes. Remember, Luke took years of pre-movie training to become a pilot, getting ready for the Imperial Acandemy that never happened, and two movies to master the Force and Lightsabres.
I do not know what other shenanigans Rey got up to because I refuse to see any other movies with her in it. If she was a lovable derp like Luke had been and took 2 movies to get her feet under her, I would be fine with her.
Now Maxima is not and never will be a Mary Sue. First, she is NOT THE MAIN CHARACTER, She is the FOIL for the main character, the comic straight-“man” The Abbot to Sydney’s Costello. Her powers are not the main source of the comic’s existance, she exists as a comparison to Sydney, who is already formulating ways to take Maxima down if she has to. I think she can do it too.If you catch Maxima flat-footed with the wrong powers charged up she loses, the end. I have grave doubts she could take Darkseid. A rey would go “No Sweat!” and take him down in 5 minutes or less.
Batman is totally a Mary Sue and Superman more so, see also Harry Potter. Although I never thought “author self inset” as much as “character that the Author likes/needs too much”. Maxima, like Saitama has significant challenges that come from areas that her super powers either do not help with or actively hinder. Her dating life is complicated and she has to manage a bunch of super weirdos both on and off work. Her competency as a hero pushes focus back on the parts of her life that are messy and funny.
Saitama is a deconstruction of the Mary Sue concept, a hero with extroordinary might, that win every fight easily … and is really bored by it. Immagine an athlete that run the 100mts in 5 seconds, what would be the point in partecipate?It is too easy. Also, the more powerful hero in the world, but noone (or very few)seems to notice or care.
The original Mary Sue wasn’t just a fan insert character who was good at everything. It was also they were inherantly liked by everyone and the best at everything for no good reason, and had no flaws (or if they did they were actually good things that made everyone love them more -blech-)
I think the term “Mary/Gary Sue” gets thrown around more for when a character has no depth.
“You are good at this, why? What in your history did you do to learn this, or where did you struggle?”
“You are loved by everyone, why? What makes you appealing or loveable?”
Often Mary/Gary Sue are lobbed at things that are poorly written (or for lazier people, just things they don’t like with no justification).
Maxima is not a Mary Sue. She struggles, she has flaws, doubts, insecurities. She also has moments where she is confident, calm, and driven. She is very human character and relatable. She is strong but that strength is well considered and rationally put where people can understand how she is where she is.
The whole debate is silly, because we already know who your OP self-insert OC is, Dynotaku.
I stand by my previous comment, if anyone in this comic comes close to being a Mary Sue / Gary Stu, it’s Deus.
A couple folks this morning mentioned Dabbler as a potential Mary Sue, and I guess I could see it to some degree, but she has definitely had her share of “I wasn’t prepared for this!” moments, and doesn’t tend to steal the stage from the other major characters.
The two of them (Deus and Dabbler) are also both used to disclose universe lore and backstory context for the readers, which is not exactly the same as an author self-insert, but it leans in that general direction. They are also both canonically very talented in carnal matters. Hmm…
Deus is also not a Mary Sue (or more specifically a Gary Stu, or a Villain Stu, although I firmly hold that he is not a villain either). He has very obvious flaws and CAN be beaten by something as easy as a gun, if he didn’t have his bodyguards and preparations around. And he does get caught off guard occasionally, as we’ve seen a few times. He just picks his fights intelligently, and usually only when he very clearly has EVERY ADVANTAGE ON HIS SIDE POSSIBLE before starting engaging in the fight, Another thing about him is he definitely follows Sun Tzu’s advice and only attacks someone where they are weak, not where they are strong (psychological attacks, monetary attacks, manipulation, etc). The only thing at all that has not really been explained is how he knows certain things, although I suspect this will eventually be explained as well.
He has also been occasionally outsmarted before, at least temporarily, such as by Sciona in the Black Reliquiry, forcing him to speed up his plans, which he apparently did not foresee her doing.
Lotta male equivalents, “Barry Lou”, “Gary Stu”, “Marty Stu”, etc. That said, I don’t think it’s applicable to Max. She’s just bad ass with her multiple, variable powers. Max has a lot of issues. She also got her ass kicked by the Vehemence guy and got saved by Sydney and the gang So, not a Mary Sue. The V arc was great BTW.
Saitama is not a Mary Sue (or the male equivalent, a Gary Stu) – he is a deconstruction of the superhero genre and of Mary Sue tropes in general. It’s the entire point of the anime/manga.
Batman is not a Gary Stu – he has actual flaws and gets beaten regularly (including his back being broken, and him dying) – he just then learns from what happened, uses prep time, and then wins.
Maxima is also not a Mary Sue – she has been beaten several times (or would have been beaten, if not for others saving her – Sydney, Hiro, Stalwart). She has also not won every fight – in addition to Darude and Vehemence and Dabbler, there has also been Sciona and Hench Wench and Death Toll and SuperMassive and the Super Mannekiller. That’s eight different people who she has NOT been able to beat (or was only able to beat with help/being saved by another team member). And she has multiple flaws, mostly dealing with her being arrogant where it bites her in the butt afterwards.
Mary Sue/Gary Stu just tends to be used incorrectly VERY often, when they actually mean ‘This character is OP so the fights are boring.’ (ie, the Superman problem, which is why Superman had weaknesses installed – red solar energy, magic, and of course, kryptonite). That being said, Maxima has never actually been a Mary Sue, even if she does not have any ‘kryptonite’ weakness, much like Wonder Woman does not have any kryptonite weakness (who is a lot closer to a Mary Sue than any of the other people mentioned in this post, at leat the modern day version of Wonder Woman, as opposed to the more classic Wonder Woman who was NOT bulletproof and had the ‘bound by man’ weakness.
Don’t forget Superman has another weakness…
He has to restrain himself at all times from using his full abilities.
Self-imposed restraint, which he can stop doing any time he wants, like his variant did in the Injustice universe, is not really a weakness.
I think what prevents max from being a Mary sue is the fact she does get shit from other characters, she’s shown as being uptight a kill joy a party pooper and ruffled by people who aren’t a bummer. Which is a big part of the story, the fighting and action are just like a side thing that sometimes pops up longer than you’d want. So showing her being the butt of the joke and getting clowned on prevents her from being a Mary sue. If this was just straight up a battle style story with the action and fights being front and center the meat and potatoes of the story then you’d have more of an argument, even these fights aren’t oh wow look maxima has a challenge it’s more goofy stuff like look at these fighters being goobers or here’s a gag of them being like well that just ain’t fair.
That and note the bit with her love life. Sure, she’s powerful, rich, famous, etc.
She’s also incredibly LONELY because anyone like her is her subordinate or enemy, and she’s literally shiny and gold, so she stands out like a sore thumb. Which is why she was so touched when the entire team chipped in to make her disguise work so she could actually date normally. And even then she has to lie to her boyfriend, which is likely really weighing on her, since she can’t be herself in the relationship. It’s pretty damn likely she’s eventually going to have to let him know, or he’ll figure it out himself. After all, her ears aren’t exactly human anymore.
I may please you to know that I don’t consider Maxima to be a Mary Sue. One of the key characteristics for the latter is “unearned”.
Thank you kindly.
Next panel: Sydney “Can… i get one of those?”
FWIW, I’ll say no.
You concocted a plotline where Maxima can genuinely cut loose and use her full power, because you spend a lot of time alluding to it, but the stories never really give her a chance to cut loose. This story is designed to showcase just how powerful she truly is, and use her full strngth/speed/durability, in addition to the plot device sword backing her up and shoring up her weak points.
While I’ll definitely be one to throw that tag when I see it, in this case I have to say that is definitely NOT the case.
While the arena battles aren’t my favorite sequences (I too come for the characters being goobers more than anything else), they are serving a very specific purpose, and accomplishing it. Maxima is extremely powerful, and this story is here to showcase that, and maybe move the overall plot along a little bit.
So, FWIW- NOT GUILTY.
So many things could set Sydney off I doubt she would need a bespoke button to get the same effect.
I would say that my own personal interpretation of the term Mary/Gary Sue is a character thats soo perfect as to be a detriment to the plot, in as they make the story more boring just by existing
lets get two male examples, one that is a gary stue and one that isnt
the first one is Tstsuya Yoshiba from irregular at high school, despite the story painting him as the usual underdog having no magic and being put in the classroom of the pathetic little babies he inmediately becomes one of the strongest in the school because he is super strong and smart and perfect and it wouldnt be a problem if it werent for the fact that I have seen planks of wood with more personality than him and despite that everyone loves him
on the powerful but not a Gary Stue side we have Saitama, he is powerful to the point of comedy but the story makes sure to point out that his conflict comes from somewhere else and while can easily solve any physical confrontation there are things he cant solve just with brute strength
Currently, I still think Maxima is in Mary Sue territory, but only in the aspect of being undefeated. Mary Sues can have many traits that I won’t get into here.
Someone else said Maxima’s main conflict is more so with managing Sydney—making her fight record okay—than the threat of villain characters, and that’s a very good assessment, but I would argue that enough of this comic focuses on fighting and world ending threats that… it’s fair to want to see some real steaks. Stakes? Whatever.
However, Dave also just said the meat (steak?) and potatoes of the comic are the gags, and I also agree on that. I do really want this comic and its villains and threats to be the focus, or at least of consequence, but it’s a huge mistake on my part or anyone else’s to criticize the direction a story goes or its focus, rather than something concrete like consistent details. I’m a firm believer that if a story starts going somewhere you don’t want it to then you need to leave that story and find another.
I’ll just re-iterate that I would like to see Maxima in a fight where there’s a real threat to her. It’s just a personal desire. I’ve seen her kick butt a lot. Like, a lot, and I like watching Max kick butt, but… well, I like stories and comics where the hero struggles mightily against a threat and comes out on top against all odds most of all. DBZ and Bolo are two examples that come to mind. (If you haven’t read Bolo it’s great if you like tanks). Though I will admit DBZ is pretty lazy about how the Z fighters (let’s not kid ourselves, it’s always Goku) overcome their opponents. There’s thousands of examples of heroes in our media losing inch by inch against their opponents—building suspense—opponents that they have no way imaginable of defeating, and I really hope that one day we’ll get that for Max. ^^
It’d be character defining.
But, hey, after all, take any snapshot of a hero in their story history at one point and they’re likely trouncing the bad guys. We got to remember that Grrlpower isn’t finished, hopefully for a long time yet. So, guys and gals, maybe Dave’s just saving the biggest fight that even Max can’t overcome for the finale!
And if not, that’s fine, too. ^^
She’s not, due to actually coming close to be defeated several times, and only making it due to quick thinking *from her teammates*. A Mary Sue would never need help. Also gonna point out Max EARNED her title as a hero. A Mary Sue instantly just has something without earning it (think Rey’s Force Powers in the Star Wars Sequels)
Maxima isn’t even close to Mary Sue Territory.
It’s fine for a character to be hyper competent or whatever, as long as they also have weaknesses – e.g. they’re sometimes up against people who are even more competent, and/or the competence is only in certain areas and doesn’t solve every problem.
(It also helps the character feel more likeable if we see them earn that competence – it stems from training and effort, rather than just being handed to them.)
That and while Max is powerful as a hero, her social life is notably, you know, basically non-existent. One of the things she actually liked the most about Sydney is the fact that Max is a closet nerd, and actually had someone she could talk to about it without being made fun of for it. Not to mention the lack of love life, which is why she was so touched by the team working so hard on her Choker disguise to let her actually date normally. And even then it’s probably killing her she has to lie to her boyfriend, who’s a genuinely decent guy, and is probably going to be EXTREMELY hurt that she’s been lying to him their entire relationship. Even if he understands why she did it. Which is also going to hurt her a lot emotionally too.
A Mary Sue is literally perfect at EVERYTHING. Not just powers. Friends, Love Life, lack of faults. You are NOT a Mary Sue if you have any imperfections AT ALL.
She definitely put some extra hidden features into Sydney’s glasses…
I would not worry about the Mary Sue stuff… some people just don´t understand that the term is to criticize comically bad characters or blatant obvious self inserts and had therefore a quite narrow use. In recent years by the inflation of real Mary Sues especially in the main stream media (looking at you Star Wars) with characters devoid of any other quality instead of perfection had the main stream muddle the term for every female character that is in some kind competent. When the definition becomes so broad it does not define anything anymore it is however useless. By the real definition Max is a perfectly fine character but with the need for balance as the power she has could become boring if everything can be solved by it. I don´t see that in this comic. Girlgeniuses Agatha Heterodyne would by that inflated definition also be a Mary Sue since she is competent… ignoring her problems and many people who dislike her…
Neither Maxima or Batman are Mary sues, and it has nothing to do with authorial self insert. It has to do with unearned power (or unexplained power). You’ve done a good job establishing that Maxima has had growing pains with her power, that not only is she super powered but she’s also a special forces colonel and that it was earned by studying tactics, operational success, and grit. She has a long backstory of established milestones where she fails and works to overcome those failures. Batman is similar we know that he spend 20ish years training, and yes he has to be exceptional for that training to coalesce into a “normal” man who can give superman (when pulling his punches) a run for his money, but he does fail, and yes batman wins the war, that’s generally what being the main character means.
Mary sues are characters that have immense unearned power, for example Ray Palpatine, she’s somehow just magically better with the force than everyone despite being a completely untrained force sensetive, despite not being a prophesized chosen one, with zero explanation she’s just amazing, able to completely overpower Kylo Ren, who was a descendent of several of the most powerful jedi in recent history, who was trained in the use of the force and lightsaber combat by Luke, and oh yeah Ray just schools him with a lightsaber she just picked up. She’s not a self insert of JJ abrams, but she’s still the quintessential mary sue in recent memory.
Rey and maxima are definitely at the same level on the scale of Mary sue, which side of the scale you think that is is up to you. Personally the big difference between the two is Rey is a main character while maxima is just a side character.
She’s a Self-Insert of Kathleen Kennedy, the president of Lucasfilm.
I don’t think a Mary Sue can exist outside of fan fiction. It’s one thing to have a character that can beat all of the obstacles in front of them, (and I would argue every action movie or TV show has that) it’s another when an existing dynamic is screwed up by an author’s self-insert. There are so many examples of poorly written, hyper-capable people in fanzines that it became a source of mockery. The only reason it became associated with women is that early sci-fi didn’t have women characters. (Tell me one fact about Uhrua in TOS except her rank and role. I said Uhura, not Michelle Nichols.)
There is an unfortunate tendency in our patriarchal society to have anything with gender attached to it become gender specific. Now we have lingual drift brought on by misogyny. Dipshits who are threatened by any time a lowly woman is better than them in any way. Don’t let the bastards bring you down! Fight against those who would attack any strong woman! Let Maxima be awesome and keep writing the best you can.
By design Maxima serves as your Superman analogue. She has a versatile power set that lets her go toe to toe with the strongest characters you’ve introduced in the setting, often with little risk to herself or apparent difficulty. However, unlike Superman, she’s not a moral paragon. Max occasionally makes mistakes, but the narrative rarely treats these as consequential.
For example, Max has gun range rules that she does not, herself, follow. Max has made troublingly broad arguments about her own authority. Max once used an energy attack that she didn’t need to which resulted in the destruction of a passenger laden bridge and then blamed the incident on Sciona (who had deflected Max’s attack). She suffered no apparent consequences for any of this. Seemingly, no one calls her out. She’s not without flaw… the story just treats her as if she is.
To your broader question – is watching Maxima defeat a bunch of tournament opponents with little difficulty interesting? Not really. There’s no tension in the fights so far. When something happens which might logically cause Max trouble, like being sucked into the time dilation fae realm, …it just doesn’t.
You point out that Max wouldn’t have joined the tournament if she didn’t think she could win with relative ease. But just because that’s realistic, it doesn’t make it interesting. Worse, every new feat Max shows off here, every tier of threat that she defeats with relative ease makes it progressively harder for future threats to generate tension while Maxima is available.
One Punch Man solves these problems by making Saitama’s strength his main source of angst and thus a punchline, and then focuses on other characters when it wants drama or interesting fights. Can Mumen Rider survive until Saitama shows up? Can the team survive Boros’ foot soliders while Saitama fights Boros?
Uh… worth pointing out she got her ribs broken in the first round. She actually HAS had difficulty. “Relative ease” doesn’t mean “there was no challenge.” She hasn’t been curbstomping some of them. Also gonna point out if she didn’t have Manavore, it’s pretty likely that dagger woulda killed her with the amount of Mana build up it eventually woulda had. Especially since it’s also mentioned it would’ve continually worked its way after her to kill her. The ONLY reason it didn’t is because Manavore happened to be the perfect counter to it. Which’d actually make the SWORD the Mary Sue. XD
Uh.. No… No I’m sorry Maxima is in no way a Mary Sue. Not even a little bit. She’s potentially one of the most powerful supers, intelligent, and well trained by the military. But.. So? Thats how characters work. Even if you try really hard to ignore the fact that half the crap she’s been in has needed Sydney’s help to get through cleanly, suggesting she’s a Mary Sue because she’s powerful and winning is really stupid. The entire point of this ark was to show how strong supers are compared to the wider universe… Cora straight up told the readers how this was probably going to go… ‘mary sue’ ..the fuck yall smoking?
Yeah a thing people are mixing up is a Mary sue with a boring character, there is a big difference. It’s just often people find Mary sue characters boring.
Yep. They think it’s just a catch all term for “Character I find boring/badly written.” It’s not. It’s a pretty clearly defined *specific* kind of badly written character. Which Maxima notably isn’t even close to being in any way. She’s got flaws. Also, while she’s awesome at superpowers and fighting, her Social Life is basically non-existent. A real Mary Sue would literally be needing to beat potential suitors off with a stick, and have a ton of friends. Max has… Anvil and Sydney? MAYBE Hiro, Dabbler and Cora? And her boyfriend whom she has to lie about her identity to? Everyone else is either enemies or just thinks she’s entirely unapproachable. Or Deus, who just annoys her.