Showing posts with label superman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label superman. Show all posts

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Supermarathon: Superman II - Theatrical Cut

Common wisdom states that Superman II is the better of the first two Superman movies starring Christopher Reeve, and I'd posit that wisdom is based mostly upon half-remembered screenings by kids who last saw the movies sometime during the Reagan administration.  It's not that I don't like the movie, but I think from a storytelling and filmmaking perspective, the first of the two is vastly stronger.

Yes, Superman II is the Superman film where he fights Zod, Ursa and Non.  Yes, it is exciting, and a decent movie, but it back-pedals the Superman films into campy territory and gave the producers license to engage in the slow decline of the Superman franchise that would ultimately end in the half-assed Superboy TV show that was the capstone on the Salkind era of Superman filmed media.

I like Superman II, but knowing the history of the film explains so much about the uneven texture of the movie that watching the original theatrical cut - the post-Donner version - that you sort of want to cringe during many parts of the movie, and watching them in quick succession very much highlights the weaknesses in the sequel.

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Supermarathon! Superman: Unbound

I watched the new DC Animation feature release, Superman: Unbound - roughly based on the pretty good Superman comic run by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank, Superman: Brainiac.



The movie is unbound* by post-Crisis continuity and can do as it likes with the story.  Truthfully, I couldn't really recall the comics too much as the original story folded in on itself into the New Krypton comics that kind of, frankly ruined the good vibe left by Brainiac, which I recall really liking.  Now, that series pulled the various post-Crisis versions of Brainiac into a single version in an elegant and narrative driven manner, merging the ideas into a worthy version of the 1950's version of Brainiac that suddenly became Superman's deadliest enemy.  It was pretty keen.

In fact, one of the few "action" statues I have from DC Direct is the one where Superman is pulling apart Brainiac robots.

Jamie decided this was too action-packed and made me put it in my office
The story brings to the surface Superman's desire to protect Lois and a newly arrived Supergirl, and tries to be a bit grown-up storytelling rather than just focusing on retelling a story from the comics or leaning completely on the intricacies of superheroing.  There's a full cast at the Daily Planet, with Steve Lombard, Cat Grant, Jimmy Olsen, Ron Troupe and Perry, and it makes me long for the days when it seemed like DC was on the cusp of reinstating the human element to Superman comics, pre-JMS catastrophe and Nu-52 relaunch.

Saturday, May 4, 2013

Supermarathon! Superman: The Movie (with Paul and Valerie)

Paul does not like any movies.

I've been to movies many, many times with Paul, and every time, the following happens:

The movie ends, the lights come up, we exit the theater, and stand around talking.  I ask "So, what'd you think?" and Paul sort of ponders for a second, then says "I don't think I liked it."

I can only recall Paul saying he liked one major release movie, but I wasn't there for it.

This evening he and Valerie (Paul's steady lady friend) came over and we all watched Superman: The Movie.

No, I have no idea how many times I've seen the movie, but I'd guess I've seen it a few dozen times.  I know I've seen it theatrically at least 3.3 times.

RHPT, Steanso, Lucy, Adriana, Peabo and Jamie in Beaumont - no longer watching Superman: The Movie, circa 2005
JimD once brought the film to Beaumont, Texas when he was working there, and I met RHPT, met up with Peabo and his wife (and his wife's sister) and went to see the flick.  And then the projector broke.  Well, these things happen.

Tonight, nothing broke.  I have no idea what Paul thought of the film, but he did tweet that he'd seen it, so he was at least willing to acknowledge the experience.

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Some toys from the movie "Man of Steel"

Well, today I found what I guess are the three "Movie Masters" action figures from the film Man of Steel.

Walmart has on this promotion where they released some items early.  They were supposed to arrive on Sunday at Walmarts all across the land, but I visited three Walmarts in my area (all within a short distance of each other, and, I am fairly convinced, connected by a series of subterranean tubes that keep their management from ever having to deal with the surface dwellers) and did not find the displays at any of the three stores.  

I even asked at the Walmart closest to my house and got a pretty snippy response to my query about the toys from the manager, and an eye roll from her pal who informed her - as if I wasn't there - that "that movie isn't even coming out til June, so don't even bother".  I considered letting them know that many popular Superman fan sites had re-published the Walmart press release announcing the promotion, and that I had, indeed, seen photos on facebook of the items at other Walmarts on the extremely well run Man of Steel facebook page.  But then I briefly examined my life and what choices I was making and I left.

Well, I chose to give up.  My OCD did not.

Monday, April 29, 2013

Supermarathon: Superman - The Animated Series! ("Last Son of Krypton" and "Blasts from the Past")

I started developing an interest for Superman in high school, and just after I'd picked up a couple of issues, DC launched the whole "Death of Superman" business, which I knew was a gimmick, of course, and so I didn't bother with it.   And this sounds perhaps a bit trite, but when Superman "returned" with a mullet and entered into what I consider to be one of the weakest eras of Superman writing and development, there wasn't much to grasp onto.*

In 1996, Warner Bros. responded to Fox Kids Network's complaints that Batman was too "dark" by trying their hand at a Superman series.  Superman was a lot spunkier, in theory.  Of course, it's a story that depends on killing an entire planet of people just to get started, but let's not split hairs.


Saturday, April 27, 2013

Supermarathon! Pilot: Lois & Clark

I wasn't watching much TV when Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman debuted.  I was a freshman at UT and the only TV I really watched was:

  • Animaniacs
  • Batman
  • 90210 (it's a long story)
  • Melrose Place (an addendum to the long story)
  • X-Files
  • Brisco County Jr.

Of course, the only channels we had good reception for in the dorm were Fox and PBS.

As I recall, the show aired on Sundays, which was homework night.

the show more or less promised Lois and Clark would eventually "do it" from the first promo pic

I did watch the pilot with some buddies, no doubt our iffy reception riddled with static.  And it aired at the same time as the pilot of SeaQuest DSV, and we couldn't figure out which to watch.  In the end we decided to try to pass our courses (barely) and didn't watch either on an ongoing basis, really.

Stars Dean Cain (Superman/ Clark) and Teri Hatcher (Lois Lane) became household names immediately.  A nation embraced the phrase "Great Shades of Elvis!" from our erstwhile Perry White.

Friday, April 26, 2013

Supermarathon: The Serials!

In 1948 Columbia rolled out a weekly Superman serial.  10 years after the Man of Steel had first appeared on a comic book cover, America knew Superman from comics, radio, the Fleischer cartoons, the newspaper strip and games and toys.

Special effects weren't exactly rudimentary in 1948, if you had a budget, but as the serials rolled out as part of kid-friendly Saturday afternoon matinee fodder, this was not a $200 million set-up.  The serials are probably best remembered for the use of animation to show Superman flying (which becomes rarer and rarer as the series progresses).   Basically, our live-action Superman poses, and then is switched to cartoon form for the flying scenes (and that's not to mention the death of Krypton, that seems inspired by your typical Betty Boop cartoon explosion).



Kirk Alyn is our pre-George Reeves Superman, and he actually looks not unlike the Superman of the comics of the time.  Alyn's a lot more "gee-whiz" than the "Yup, I'm three steps ahead and I got this situation handled" aspect of Reeves' Superman.  Lois is played by Noel Neill, who would return to the role in the TV series, The Adventures of Superman in seasons 2-6.    She's extremely young and perky here, but not the sloe-eyed adventuress of the Fleischer cartoons.  Jimmy is played by Tommy Bond in full huckster, vaudevillian mode in a goofy hat and making faces.

Friday, April 19, 2013

Supermarathon Update: The Fleischer Cartoons

On Wednesday night I watched some of the Fleischer Studios Superman cartoons from 1941 and 1942.

TitleRelease dateNote
Superman (a.k.a. The Mad Scientist)September 26, 1941The short film Superman is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
The Mechanical MonstersNovember 28, 1941The short film The Mechanical Monsters is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
Billion Dollar LimitedJanuary 9, 1942The short film Billion Dollar Limited is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
The Arctic GiantFebruary 27, 1942The short film The Arctic Giant is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
The BulleteersMarch 27, 1942The short film The Bulleteers is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
-lifted straight from Wikipedia


There's a lot more to go, and I'll watch a few more before I'm done with the Fleischer/ Famous Studios Superman cartoons.

If you're a Superman fan in any capacity, these early Superman cartoons are must viewing.  You have to remember these played in movie houses that might have seen Superman in a comic book, but had never really seen stuff quite like this animated - and it's so amazingly well crafted, it's hard to imagine something like this being made again even today.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

On the Event of Superman's 75th Anniversary

Today is, reportedly, the 75th anniversary of the debut of Action Comics #1.  75 years ago, Superman appeared on the cover of a comic book and, within a couple of months, had already risen to pop-culture superstardom.  By World War II, he had become a staple of Americana and - while Superman didn't invent the idea of the costumed hero, the science-fiction hero, or the altruistic do-gooder, he managed to put a distinct stamp on all of those ideas in one place - and has been endlessly imitated ever since.


In his first issue, all we knew was that Superman was a refugee of a doomed planet who arrived here as a baby.  There was no Jonathan and Martha Kent.  No Jor-El or Lara.  No Daily Planet (Clark landed a job at the Daily Star working for "Editor", I believe).  Just Lois, Clark, Superman and a whole lot of action.  And, man, Lois is a tough dame in that first issue.  No wonder Superman fell hard for her.

There are too many good books out there that talk about Superman's origins as a product of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster for me to try to recreate the story here.  But they were down on their luck 20-somethings (not the teen-agers that are described to have just had Superman pop into their heads one night) when they sold the property to a struggling publisher who was soon outmaneuvered by some smooth operators.  I don't want to dwell too much on the fate of Siegel and Shuster, that's been fought out in the courts for five decades.  But their creation was not just one of the moment, but one of the past, the present and a limitless future, the likes of which we'd only ever seen in a few American fictional characters, from Ichabod Crane to Huckleberry Finn.  And this one arrived in a splash of color, crude drawings and an insurmountable flash of power.

Superman is an amalgamation of a dozen or so pulp literature ideas, some stolen outright from big names like Doc Savage, some from lesser known sources like the novel Gladiator.  Many find biblical aspects in his origins or in the perceived saintly selflessness of his actions (an interesting idea given Superman's varying presentations over the years).

I would argue that most people* don't really know anything about Superman, but everyone believes they know all you need to know.  A lot of folks can dismiss what they don't know as unimportant, thanks to the character's comic book roots, while ignoring the fact that Superman has been a huge part of every major media revolution.  You see people ascribe characteristics and virtues to the character based on a glance and some half-remembered bits from a movie they haven't seen in decades.  Others demonize those same virtues as old fashioned or out of touch, without ever deconstructing what it means to declare a desire for a more just world, to protect those who can't protect themselves as irrelevant in the modern context.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Planning The Super-Marathon - a list of things we'll be watching!

Leading up to the release of Warner Bros. Man of Steel, expect this blog to become all the more Super-Centric.

If I could watch all of the Harry Potter movies again before catching the final installment, and watch all the Avengers movies leading up to Whedon's Avengers, I think I owe it to myself, to you, and to the world to watch just a whole ton of Superman media leading up to the film's release.

I am going to go chronological, and if you want to play along at home, I'll try to keep you up to speed with what I'm watching.

Also, I am not averse to having screenings where folks can come over and join me if they're in the Austin area, but time is of the essence.  We can't really dilly-dally while you try to find a date that works for you.  We've got, like, 100 hours of media to watch before the movie kicks off.*

The Fleischer cartoons



I figure three or four ought to do it.  These cartoons are groundbreaking for the era and hold up remarkably well today.  Superman still can't fly in most of them, but he's a heck of a lot of fun as the squinty-eyed, devil-may-care action ace who is always two steps behind Lois's nose for news.

Superman (aka: The Mad Scientist)
The Mechanical Monsters
Terror on the Midway 
The Underground World

We'll see, I'll probably watch all of them peppered in with other items.

The Serials

Live action (except for flying scenes), these serials are good, clean fun with a very young Noel Neill and the affable Kirk Alyn playing a less lantern-jawed Superman.



At minimum, it seems necessary to catch the first two episodes
Superman Comes to Earth (in which his parents are Eben and Sarah, I believe)
Depths of the Earth

New Man of Steel Trailer Arrives



It seems that the DNA of Richard Donner's Superman is stronger than you'd think.  For a movie that was to be bringing a new Superman to the world, there's certainly no small amount of the epic, world spanning vision Donner's Superman brought to the screen for the first time.  Not to mention that it was really Donner and Co. who brought Zod to prominence (he'd not even been the primary Kryptonian villain in the comics, that was Jax-Ur).  And there's definitely no small amount of what I recall from the Johns/ Donner penned issues of Action Comics from 2006-ish to what I'm picking up to be the plot.

All that said, I'm pleased.  I may miss the red trunks, but I think Cavill seems to have this down.  The footage looks spectacular, and (sigh) Amy Adams seems to be a new twist on Lois Lane.

I've heard say folks suggest that Superman doesn't need his origin retold for a new Superman movie, and I tend to disagree.  The origin has to work for modern audiences, and, more than anything, I think kids need to see the origin in a language they work in already - these days, that's big, loud, epic movies.

Well, no joke, I'm in.  Still looking at this with one squinted, skeptical eye as I remember whose name is attached as director, but you never know.

Oh, and, by the way, if that's Hans Zimmer's score, I approve.

Monday, April 15, 2013

A Pretty Nice Birthday

It was a pretty decent birthday.

Friday evening, Jamie and I had dinner with KareBear and The Admiral before they head off for Kenya for over a week.  Once again, they're travelling with a Lutheran outreach group that assists with eye exams an giving out glasses to folks in need.

Dinner was nice, but we had an odd moment when, around when we were ordering, a pair of young women walked past the open window we were near, did a double take and came back.  Then they stood there sort of smiling at us, then took out their phone and took a picture.  As near as I can tell, they thought we were someone else, and, I think, someone famous.  It kind of had to be us they were looking at, because there wasn't anyone behind us.  I have no idea who they thought we were, but when they show the photos to their friends, they're going to feel real disappointed.

Saturday we had a few folks over for drinks.  Thanks, if you dropped by.

your birthday boy, and pal-Sherry back there
You can't really tell, but Jamie made a Superman "S" on the cake with frosting.  And, yes, I was wearing a tie. What am I, a farmer?  Try cleaning yourself up every once in a while.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Your Daily Dose of Good Cheer (fictional human edition): Lois Lane

Over the past 75 years, a lot of women have played Superman's love interest, Lois Lane.  Yes, I have my favorites, but all of them brought something to the character.  Traditionally, Lois was the grounding wire from Superman to some semblance of a normal human, his romance and interaction with Lois gave him both someone he cared about individually and especially, but also alienated him with his dual roles as meek Clark Kent and the alien powerhouse, Superman.  But what kind of person would be interesting enough to draw the attention of a Superman?

You can't be a wallflower.  You've got to have spunk, speak your mind, be a risk-taker, and not because you're a dope, but because you're smart and you've got backbone...  and Lois did all that in spades, whether she was flying off to investigate a mad scientist and his death ray or clinging to the bottom of an elevator going up to the top of the Eiffel Tower where terrorists had an atomic bomb.  She didn't count on Superman to be there to save her skin, and she still flung herself headlong into trouble.

Of course, it's hard to remain forever between your mid-20's and late 30's, and so we've had a lot of women fill Lois's shoes over the years.

Let's take a walk through them, shall we?


Joan Alexander: Superman serial cartoons, radio show


Noel Neill:  Superman serials, Adventures of Superman, seasons 2-6

Friday, April 5, 2013

Oh, Did You Just Figure Out That Maybe Disney Buying Star Wars Means Everything You Liked About Star Wars is Going to Getting Demolished?

Shoemaker sent me this article from i09.  It's basically about how, the afterglow of Disney's purchase of Star Wars and the sudden lay-offs, etc... start to settle in, someone realized that Disney probably doesn't give two Jawa farts about the Star Wars Expanded Universe.

As I said in my email response to Shoemaker: no kidding

once again, your avatar for what will happen to everything you once loved

Even when the first Expanded Universe stuff hit the shelf when I was in high school, I didn't read it.  I guess by the time those books arrived, I was pretty well aware that studio executives weren't going to care that some sci-fi authors wanted to write Star Wars books when it came time to make new movies, and those studio execs were going to include George Lucas and his associates.  When movies that moved past the conclusion of Return of the Jedi did happen, they'd be so much bigger than a series of fantasy books, that the books would just sort of disappear into the ether as non-canonical, leaving a herd of nerds wondering how to reconcile the irreconcilable, narratively speaking, in their minds.

Of course, for two decades we had Uncle George backing up the books - which I doubted he ever read, but he knew that without his stamp, those books wouldn't be taken seriously nor purchased by Star Wars fans.  And that meant less dough, so best to just approve them and worry on it later.

Thursday, April 4, 2013

No Post Thursday - what I've been doing (class, books, end of the yearly cycle)

This evening I went to the gym, watched an episode of Mad Men Season 5, did some pre-ordering of comics, and got pretty far along with the first unit of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) I've started through Canvas.

When I get through the first week, I'll post some personal and professional observations as someone who (a) has read comics for a long, long time - including a good chunk of the assigned reading, (b) who actually does care about gender representations in media - but maybe not in a particularly prescribed way, and (c) who worked in distance education for a decade before moving on to digital libraries.  As bonus featurea (d) I already went through five years of undergraduate education in narrative media studies, and (d) I sort of have my opinions regarding scholarly writing when it comes to social criticism, so...  it's turning out to be an interesting experience already.

It's going to be a long post, and only, likely, I will care about it, so...  look for THAT.

Speaking of gender in comics and pop-culture, yesterdays post on why it's okay for Power Girl to have a "boob window" got a fair number of hits.  By that, I mean, we were around 95 last I checked, which is, like, HUGE for this site.  I never know what's going to get traffic.  I fully expected upwards of 18 clicks.

I am making a commitment to just admit I am going to just read all the Richard Stark novels and nothing else that is not a comic until I finish the Parker and Grofield series.  And then I have, literally, ten books to get through.


  • I'm about a quarter way through the Larry Tye Superman book Nathan gave me, so that might get read while I work through the Stark novels.
  • Dark City Dames by Eddie Muller - a book with bios of a handful of noir sirens, including sections on Audrey Totter and Marie Windsor
  • Altered Carbon - as recommended by Steven
  • the next three Barsoom novels starting with Thuvia, Maid of Mars
  • Doc Savage, Man of Bronze - personally recommended by no less than Chris Roberson
  • The Big Screen  - a non-fiction book on the history of cinema
  • The Killer Inside Me and After Dark, My Sweet, that I've been putting off for, literally, almost twenty years
  • the new Glenn Wheldon Superman book  
  • a Dashiell Hammett collection


As I said on the Facebooks today, I need more time to read.

So, no recommendations for a bit.  My plate is full.

Jamie's birthday is passed, and mine is next Friday, so if you're around and want a cocktail, email me.  We may be doing something about drinks on the 13th.

We have a yearly cycle that starts at Halloween and ends with my birthday.  Really, from Halloween, it's something every few weeks, including Valentine's Day, then March - the months of birthdays, etc...  And, of course, Easter and Mother's Day take us into May.  At this point I'm used to it, but it does seem like it compresses time into the various observances.  Summer has become my holiday from holidays, except for July 4th, which includes explosions and hamburgers and is thus becoming one of my favorite holidays.

My folks are headed back to Kenya for missionary work/ putting eyeglasses on Kenyans.  Always proud of them in their volunteer efforts.

Mad Men Season 6 starts Sunday night, so, leave a brother alone while he does his thing.


Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Put some clothes on: The complications of female superhero costumes

One of our own posted a link to Twitter to a page showing redesigns of popular female characters in comics (in particular, DC Comics characters) in outfits that are not the white one-piece peek-a-book of Power Girl or the familiar star spangled corset and shorts of the Wonder Woman costume.

I'll take a poke at the Power Girl costume because the original is one of the most discussed costumes in comics and, short of Vampira, the one most likely to raise questions and hackles.

example of redesign

and original formula

In comparison to Power Girl's traditional costume, he redesign certainly seems less aimed at appealing to the male gaze and creating a look that still honors the original.  It appears functional and...  well, I think this design is actually pretty bad, but we can talk about that later.

Sunday, March 31, 2013

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's Superman: The Musical!

Holy cow.

I've known about It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman! for around 10-12 years, but I had never seen it in any form.  Originally produced as a campy Broadway spectacular  in 1966 (it debuted the same year as the Adam West TV show), the show ran for about four months before closing.  I think that, these days, the show has mostly been forgotten.

In 1975, because nobody was paying attention, ABC broadcast a version of the musical.  Reportedly the program aired a single time, fairly late at night and in a dead zone where networks were often trying to figure out how to fill the airwaves*.  To the best of my knowledge, there is no legally obtainable copy of the broadcast available.  For Superman fans, the musical is about as close to an intentionally obscure artifact as I can think of to that king of pop cultural ephemera, the Star Wars Holiday Special.  Superman fans have all seen clips or stills, but we haven't seen the actual full program.

Can you read my mind?


This week, I did obtain a copy.  We'll keep it a little shrouded in mystery, but my source knows who he is, and knows how awesome he or she is.  As the existence of this video may not be entirely on the up and up (and so offended am I that I have immediately burned the DVD so that NONE may find yourself tainted by the sheer audacity of it's illegality), I'm keeping the gifter's name out of it.

But, thanks, man.  That was SUPER of you!**

The video itself is a transfer from tape.  Tape from 1975.  So, it's got some rough edges and the sound is occasionally wobbly because: aging analog media.  It's not the drug-fueled nightmare that the Star Wars Holiday Special devolves into within minutes of the opening, and, frankly, the Star Wars Special had about 20 times the budget of this show.  It's also an oddball bit of nerd media, and would fit nicely on your shelf next to the shelved low-budget, very 90's Justice League pilot, the Legends of the Superheroes, the Captain America TV movies, etc... etc...   But the musical is pure hammy schmaltz, but intentionally so, and it's oddly charming, even if it's not much of a musical.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

DC Comics Leadership - Still Finding it's Way 18 Months into DCNu

These days I'm only reading a few DC Comics, so it's a bit harder to see what's going on in the halls at the company.  Certainly looking at the release of the monthly solicits is an excellent indicator.

The Beat already did a nice breakdown of some things that really stand out.  Todd Allen points out:

  • The $2.99 line seems to be getting crossed
  • We may not be looking at 52 titles anymore

Batman: One More Time, With Feeling (by Scott Snyder)


This news came on the same day DC announced a storyline called "Batman: Year Zero" to fill in all those gaps you had (right?) about what happened after Batman: Year One.   The story shall be about The Bat-Man, who he is and how he came to be!  Snyder's promise that the series will tell us all the things we've never seen before, like Batman's first run in with a super-villain, is true if you're 20 and just got into comics, abut less true if you dropped all the Batman books but Morrison's because you realized that maybe, in his current comics form, the Bat-fellow is getting pretty repetitive (for first super-villain meetings, we recommend the superlative Batman: Snow by Dan Curtis, JH WIlliams III and the late, terrific Seth Fisher).

I don't know what's more surprising: that Snyder's modus operandi with Batman has been to largely keep digging up the bones of well-loved, well-worn storylines done by some of the name-iest names in comics, or that this seems to be a real draw for the Bat-audience.  I'm old, so I was good with Batman: Year One, A Death in the Family, and every story that wanted to goof on Thomas and Martha Wayne from Hush to Death and the Maidens and was thinking maybe we were ready to move on.  But, short of another gang-war or serial killer story, it seems that all DC has to offer re: Batman these days is another whack at the same worn out Batman origin stuff and tilling about in the same soil of Batman's family history and early years.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Your Questions Answered: What if I Had Creative Control of Superman?

Jake asks:

Since this is Superman heavy blog, if you were the publisher or editor in chief over at DC, or even just a writer on a Superman title, what would you do, creatively, with Superman? Assuming you could flush the whole reboot, what would you do (or not do) with the character? Just focus on good, solid storytelling? Make Superman more socially/politically conscious? Introduce him to a wider audience, i.e. kids, women, etc.?

Believe it or not, this isn't something I think about all that much, and maybe that's wrong-headed, but I'm never comfortable with reviews of something that start with "what they should have done was..." or "what they should really do".  It seems like an endgame with little satisfaction.

Usually the question I find myself asking is: why didn't that work?

But rather than dodge the question, let me give it a whirl.



1. Re-Establish a Supporting Cast of Humans

If you've been picking up Superman comics for a while, or, in fact, most superhero comics of the last decade, one of the primary problems I detect is that there is no status quo.  There's no "home base" for the characters to point to and have in mind as they go about their adventures.  Spider-Man lost his with the dissolution of the Mary Jane marriage, Batman is almost never seen as billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne with his youthful ward, and the only writer who seemed to want to put Clark Kent in the Daily Planet for more than two panels every six issues was Geoff Johns, who left the book before his creative imprint could really take hold.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

New Series coming: Superman Unchained! (nice title, DC...)

Sigh.

I wonder if DC even realizes that they're also publishing a comic of Django Unchained at the moment.  And that comic's title has a meaning to it that's a lot less steeped in DC's insecurities about their flagship character.

This, from an article at Newsarama:
"We're all fans and we've all known this character for a long time," Jim Lee tells USA Today. "You have to fight your natural tendency to do what you know or what you've always thought the character to be.

"We've been pushing the creators to not be beholden to the past conceits and understandings of Superman. So we will speak to a new generation of readers."

You can more or less read that as "we're really uncomfortable with Superman as a character who isn't as straightforward as Batman, and as guys who grew up thinking Batman rules and Superman drools, we're not sure what a Superman comic looks like, and we really aren't going to do any research to find out.  But we have a corporate imperative to make Superman work in the comics, so we're doing what everyone else has said they're doing since Mike Carlin left the editor's post."

I'm not sure the comic will be bad, necessarily, but the one drumbeat DC has had around Superman for at least 13 years has been "we think we know Superman, but we're going to try something new for a new group of readers".

At this point, the only thing left new to try is to actually go back to whatever that model was that they think Superman has been living by until the new writer (who has never read Superman before) took the paycheck. Only, the character hasn't had an opportunity for 13 years of comics to even have a status quo.  He's been rebooted five times in the past 8 years or so, and I think only writer Geoff Johns managed to get Clark Kent in a Daily Planet newsroom with Perry in more than one issue of his run.

Frankly, I'm tired of DC's shame of their own very lucrative bit of IP.  Nobody buying those t-shirts or stickers for their cars (all of which bring in way, way more than this comic ever will) are looking for a new, edgy Superman.  Dumping 75 years of the character doesn't automatically equate to speaking to ANYONE.  In fact, I'd argue that a lot of people would like to pick up a Superman comic and see what they're expecting as per Superman's status quo, not whatever the writer of the week and Jim Lee (no master storyteller, he) have as a way of reimagining the character.

DC, you are the disappointing sibling who we all think has the tools to get his life together, but who keeps somehow making bad decisions that he can only see as strokes of bad luck.  We're getting tired of bailing you out so you can keep the electricity on in the apartment you can't afford.