From an IP-building standpoint, a team book with a rotating cast of character is counter-productive and (presumably) alienating to the audience’s character attachments, but it might focus the reader’s attention and empathy upon the broader ideology of the group. #xmen 1/9
In literature, the protagonist is simply the main character of the story - the person who must resolve the conflict that they are confronted with - and usually (but not always) the character whose perspective the reader is meant to embody to a certain degree. 2/9
Comics scholarship has placed an enormous focus on the concept of relatability for the superhero in light of the superhero’s position as a power fantasy weighed against the challenges of (essentially) making a God-like being relatable to a human reader. 3/9
When a superhero team book has plural protagonists, a challenge comes in dispersing both identification and embodiment across multiple characters with varying personalities and attributes. For Avengers fans, some identify with Cap, some with Tony. 4/9
This challenge is exacerbated even further, however, when characters leave the team and get replaced. If you’re a Nightcrawler person, for example, what do you do when he’s not in your book anymore: jump to your next favorite character? Quit reading altogether? 5/9
So when the characters are plural, and the individual members transient, then identification can become entirely abstract. With X-Men, we might actually identify with the overarching mission – the dream - as it encompasses the defining ideology of the book. 6/9
A good comparison might be to something like Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” series, where characters age out and die too rapidly to really stick with the reader. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars series is in the same boat. 7/9
Under this type of reading, you identify with an abstract concept (as well as whichever characters you like) – the purpose of a minority group achieving peaceful acceptance within their society. How this effects your perception of that concept is anyone’s guess. 8/9
It’s a very delicate thread to even approach, but might be a cool way to drive the reader to identify more with the values that a book espouses, rather than simply the characters who struggle for the sake of more immediate personal gain. 9/9
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