Fad Super: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

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.

 

* 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]].

**** 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.

** [[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.

** [[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.