Fad Super: Difference between revisions

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{{trope}}
[[File:discodazzler_5063discodazzler 5063.jpg|link=X-Men|frame|Ah, [[Dazzler]]. [[Tempting Fate|Surely]] your appeal will [[Deader Than Disco|last forever!]]]]
A character is created as a direct response to an idea or fad that is currently popular. Naturally, this character might prove schlocky or out of place once that [[Popularity Polynomial|fad passes out of pop culture]], unless some writer is willing to take the character out of obscurity and build him or her up into something more.
 
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* Naturally, any Soviet-themed comic character [[The Great Politics Mess-Up|that is now hopelessly dated]]. Granted, the USSR was around more than seven decades, so it's a pretty long fad.
** Combining this with [[Comic Book Time]] gives nearly every one of these characters his or her own [[Continuity Snarl]].
*** The only aversions (or are they [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshade Hangings]]s?) are Omega Red, an ''intentional'' throwback who, in his first appearance, was explicitly [[Sealed Evil in a Can|kept in stasis]] since the Cold War until woken in the post-Soviet era, and "Cold Warrior", a similarly stored surplus-parts cyborg whose whole schtick is trying to bring back the People's Glory Days.
**** Ironically, Omega Red was created in 1992, early enough that stasis could not have been needed.
** Averted in the case of Nazi-themed villains, since Nazism is such an enduring symbol of evil, but played straight for any villain based on Japanese Imperialism.
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** [[Dwayne McDuffie]] ended up creating the ''[[Icon]]'' character Buck Wild as a parody of this trend.
* '''Adam X the X-Treme,''' from the early, well, [[Dark Age|guess which decade]], who was almost made a ''completely unignorable'' [[Old Shame]] by virtue of being ''the third Summers brother''. Fortunately, he vanished before the writers revealed that, and it ended up being someone completely different about a decade later. He hasn't disappeared completely, considering a few recent appearances - and it's still entirely possible he's the ''fourth'' Summers brother, if only a half-brother.
* Occasionally employed in a self-aware manner by ''[[Astro City]]'' -- for—for instance, flashbacks to [[The Fifties]] might feature an appearance by a hero called "The Bouncing Beatnik".
** [[Word of God]] is that the Bouncing Beatnik actually changes identities to social trends of the time. There's been three known (in-universe) incarnations of the Beatnik, though only two have appeared in stories to date.
** The "Dark Ages" story arc references the kung fu fad of the '70s with the Jade Dragons, and the space race with the Apollo Eleven.
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