The kinds of superhero stories you can tell in films are different to the ones you can tell in comics. Comic series consist of several arcs, usually lasting six or seven issues. This leaves a hero or team a lot of time to fight low-level villains, with the stakes building over months as the series progresses. This is a big part of why I prefer reading superhero comics to seeing them on the big screen. Superhero movies tend to have life or death stakes which, regardless of whether we know multiple sequels for the hero are already in the works, can become extremely tiresome. My favourite comic, Dan Slot’s 2004/5 She-Hulk series, sees her fighting injustice with her brain as well as her fists, as a lawyer dealing with extraordinary cases. The world won’t be as impacted by a single murder trial where the ghost of the victim can take the witness stand, but that doesn’t make the issue any less entertaining. The superhero movies that are produced are almost entirely under the control of massive companies, Warner Bros., Sony and Disney have plenty of money for special effects but also tend to produce stories that seem more and more like carbon copies of  one another. There’s only so many times I can re-watch Chronicle.

I don’t think that superheroes should  be confined to the page, however. I have found interesting superhero stories outside of comics, in the form of fiction podcasts. This serialised form of storytelling is similar to the ongoing nature of comics, but of course, there is one big difference – podcasts have no visuals, which is a big departure from the medium that created interest in the genre. Even so, I believe that having this limit has given rise to worthwhile stories.

Marvels is based on a comic that had a limited run of 4 issues. What makes it so interesting is that the main characters are regular people. The comic came out in the 90s and did well, but surprisingly the heroes that feature in it are the Fantastic Four. Though popular in the comics, they aren’t a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and their most recent film was universally panned. So far Marvel TV shows have held a strange position – Agents of Shield exists in the same world as the movies, but what happens in the movies does not take place in the same universe as the TV shows. I can understand the decision to stay away from these questions of canon. “The Fantastic Four have arrived and are fighting Galactus!” spoken by an excited news reporter in the opening of episode one is a strange moment for comics fans, as a line like that would usually lead into a page of action. Instead it leads into the opening credits, and the specifics of the Four’s battle with the titan are left mostly to the imagination. I found that hearing Galactus towering over New York City from the perspective of someone on the ground below to be genuinely scary in a way that I wouldn’t have had I been focused on those with any hope of stopping him. It’s also surprising, given the scale of the fight, when the story is revealed to be a mystery. Restoring the Fantastic Four’s reputation isn’t as important as defeating Thanos, but that doesn’t make it any less engaging as a story.

The Bright Sessions is an original podcast about people with extraordinary abilities receiving therapy. Though it is written by the same person as Marvels, Lauren Shippen, the two stories are completely different. For most of the series, any violence that happens is enacted off-mic. This is because the show is similar to many fiction podcasts in that the recording we are listening to exists in the fictional world we are listening to. Dr Bright records her therapy sessions for later use, and she doesn’t get into many brawls with her patients. This also serves to make the few moments of action that do play out incredibly tense – we can’t see what’s going on, and nobody’s in the mood to spell it out for us. Piecing together what happened in the aftermath is one of my favourite moments in the show. The story doesn’t shy away from classic superhero tropes such as teaming up, corrupt institutions, and good vs evil, but what it does with them is a breath of fresh air for those tired of being disappointed in the bloated cinematic universes we’ve been presented with.

Heroics, a super-powered sitcom, The Van, about an X-Men-like team on a road trip, and Super Ordinary, starring a villain trying to change that label, all give me hope for the kinds of stories we can tell with superheroes. You don’t need focus groups or military resources to get us to care about a world where superheroes exist. The people who started the genre in the first place didn’t have any of that. What they had was something new and exciting, new stories worth telling. And that’s all I really need from superhero stories now.