Sparky Prime wrote:How is Green Lantern second tier?
I just asked my girlfriend to name 5 DC superheroes. My girlfriend is not a Comics Person.
She could name Batman, Superman and--with some coaxing--Wonder Woman. And that's it. She couldn't even name Flash and Green Lantern. That shows that people who don't have any interest in comics don't have any idea who these guys even are. And she 'saw' Green Lantern!
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.
Onslaught Six wrote:I just asked my girlfriend to name 5 DC superheroes. My girlfriend is not a Comics Person.
She could name Batman, Superman and--with some coaxing--Wonder Woman. And that's it. She couldn't even name Flash and Green Lantern. That shows that people who don't have any interest in comics don't have any idea who these guys even are. And she 'saw' Green Lantern!
... I'm pretty sure one person doesn't make for a public consensus. Green Lantern has raised up in popularity in recent years, even among comic book fans.
Onslaught Six wrote:I just asked my girlfriend to name 5 DC superheroes. My girlfriend is not a Comics Person.
She could name Batman, Superman and--with some coaxing--Wonder Woman. And that's it. She couldn't even name Flash and Green Lantern. That shows that people who don't have any interest in comics don't have any idea who these guys even are. And she 'saw' Green Lantern!
... I'm pretty sure one person doesn't make for a public consensus. Green Lantern has raised up in popularity in recent years, even among comic book fans.
Recognizeable among comic fans still does =/= iconic. And yes, while there is a certain symbolic nature to the term "iconic" that aspect of it is not what's being debated here. And I think you mentioned before that most people use the term in this way, but that doesn't make them right and the dictionary wrong. It's just like the word ironic. People most commonly misuse that term but that still doesn't make them right. Without the recognizability aspect, something is not iconic. And being recognizable to a small insular group of fans is not recognizable enough for something to be iconic. It has to go beyond that. Green Lantern apparently doesn't, in spite of the popularity of the recent movie and how many non comic fans would even know that there have been multiple Green Lanterns over the years?
Want me to use my coworkers as a control group, too? When my bosses get back from smoking, I'll ask if they know how many Green Lanterns there've been. (Don't worry, I'll clarify "human" Green Lanterns.)
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.
Onslaught Six wrote:Want me to use my coworkers as a control group, too? When my bosses get back from smoking, I'll ask if they know how many Green Lanterns there've been. (Don't worry, I'll clarify "human" Green Lanterns.)
Oh, yeah, and I'll ask my coworkers too, and my parents as well! That should be like, 20 people right there.
Onslaught Six wrote:Want me to use my coworkers as a control group, too? When my bosses get back from smoking, I'll ask if they know how many Green Lanterns there've been. (Don't worry, I'll clarify "human" Green Lanterns.)
Ten bucks says one of them says something to the effect of 'I heard Green Lantern was gay now.'
Onslaught Six wrote:Want me to use my coworkers as a control group, too? When my bosses get back from smoking, I'll ask if they know how many Green Lanterns there've been. (Don't worry, I'll clarify "human" Green Lanterns.)
I'd be surprised if many people knew there are more than one or two human Green Lanterns actually. But I do think a lot of people have at least heard of the character, especially with the recent movie or as BWprowl pointed out with the recent news.
Well, I've been asking my coworkers and I've gotten three responses so far. I asked the question "How many human Green Lanterns have there been?"
Response 1: "Two, the original Superfriends cartoon and the movie."
Response 2: "1. Ben Affleck."
Response 3: "Ummm... I dunno... 5? Wait, was it Spiderman?"
And neither of the three could even remember what Green Lantern looks like. All three of them were familiar with Superman/Clark Kent and knew exactly what he looks like. So I've got one person who misremembers a cartoon from 30 years ago (GL wasn't in Superfriends) and two others that had to be told that the characters they were thinking of were not only not GL but were in fact characters from an entirely different comic book company (I had to clarify for my supervisor that it was Ryan Reynolds and not Ben Affleck that was GL and that Ben Affleck was Daredevil).
