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Underground > Comic Books >

The Problem with Superman?

  
  

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Mario
14:56 / 18.05.04
There is something, well, boring about a guy that is nigh invunerable, I mean where's the dramatic conflict with such a powerful character?

In how he _uses_ his power, and what he does when he's put in a position where his power doesn't help.

The mistake a _lot_ of comicbook fans make, especially with regards to Supes, is in equating "conflict" with "combat".

Remember, given the proper circumstances, any given comicbook character can defeat any other. The question is not "Who'll win?" but "Why are they fighting?"

Or even "Should they be fighting at all?"

Superman shows us the best of the human spirit. The fact that he can punch a hole in a mountain is, when you get down to it, irrelevant.
 
 
Axolotl
15:35 / 18.05.04
Well it's not a mistake I make, it's a mistake comic writers make, I like the idea of Superman, and he can be interesting, however using the character for the normal comic book fights in tights doesn't work, due to his power, which was the point I was trying to make.
 
 
EvskiG
15:36 / 18.05.04
Superman is a combination of Jesus and the American Dream as filtered through two Jewish Depression-era kids.

He's the guy with a foreign name who immigrates to the U.S., changes his name, and makes good. He's Moses in a basket found by Pharaoh's daughter. He's the American Dream wearing the American Flag. He's a circus strongman, complete with costume. He's the kid who gets picked on but is secretly cooler than everyone else. He's near-infinite good combined with near-infinite power and just enough wisdom. As Jules Feiffer and Kill Bill noted, Superman IS his real identity. He's a mensch. Even if he didn't have super powers, he'd still be a hero.

I think he's been written perfectly three times: by Siegel and Shuster in the first year or so, by Elliot S. Maggin in his two Superman novels (Miracle Monday and Last Son of Krypton), and by Alan Moore in "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow." I think he was written very well in the Silver Age by Hamilton, Binder, and Siegel, and in the Bronze Age by Maggin and Bates. I think that Miller never understood him, that the Byrne stories were a disaster, and that the character is only slowly recovering even now.

(As far as the art, Joe Shuster, Wayne Boring, and Curt Swan. Neal Adams on a good day, and maybe George Perez on a great day. No one else has ever come close.)

I'm heartened by Red Son and Birthright, which both clearly owe a big debt to Maggin's work on the character. We'll see what the next few months have to offer . . .
 
 
EvskiG
17:40 / 18.05.04
One more thought:

I live in NYC. Shortly after 9/11, just as the Christmas shopping season was getting started, I went to Forbidden Planet. The store was filled with shoppers: fanboys, mothers, kids, anime fans, random people from off the street.

The first Superman movie was playing on TV screens scattered throughout the store.

Lois Lane got into a helicopter accident, hanging from the side of the Daily Planet building, screaming for help.

Every eye in the store turned to the video screens.

Clark Kent ran to a revolving door, turned into Superman, and took off. Lois dropped. There was a streak of red and blue. Saved! "You've got me? Who's got you?"

People in the store exchanged smiles and glances. Some even had tears in their eyes. I imagine everyone was thinking the same thing: where's Superman when you need him?

I suspect that the best versions of Superman find a way to tap into that feeling. Battling crooked congressmen, evil mine owners, wife beaters, and war profiteers. Grabbing generals off the battlefield and making them see the futility of their actions.

Fighting for Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
 
 
Aertho
18:28 / 18.05.04
But isn't the problem with Superman EXACTLY that?

What IS "the American way" anymore? I think the whole point of this discourse has been: How does Superman, the mensch, the myth, the icon, WORK in a universe that has a deconstructed and hybridized "Postmodern Truth, Relative Justice, and Globalized Way"?

It's not a bastardization of the theme, it's the evolution. How does a character maintain its integrity AFTER all those things are found to not be cultural absolutes? We can't go backwards.
 
 
eddie thirteen
19:14 / 18.05.04
I think the fundamental flaw in what's been discussed here so far stems from an unspoken idea that there was at some point in American history a time when these ideals went unexamined. There wasn't, and if there were, 1938 -- the tail end of the Modernist movement, and a time when the US hemmed and hawed over whether what was starting to happen in Germany was really our problem (or even all that bad) -- certainly wasn't it. Superman was not the product of a more naive, innocent age; far from it. What was different then was what readers (even adult readers) expected from adventure stories in general. Subtext stayed subtext, and you find a marked lack of philosophizing, introspection, etc. in the pulp magazines and adventure movie serials of the day. Possibly because many people were poor and/or starving, escapism wasn't subjected to the often torturous search for symbolism and deeper meanings it is today, probably because escape was held in much higher value in its own right.

I bah at the entire premise of this article.
 
 
Aertho
19:31 / 18.05.04
While all that's historically true, what are you saying? That times haven't changed? That Superman is fine the way he's presently conveyed?
 
 
grant
20:32 / 18.05.04
Hmm.

My first reaction is to big up Rose when he says:
Clark Kent is a dork who gets put up quite often in the early issues of the series (kind of like Peter Parker), and says quite often "If they only knew who I really was..."



Because that's the core of what makes the icon work. I'm not talking character, I'm talking Embodiment of the American Dream. He's out of place, and has to be to get along... even though he's got a brilliant secret life that no one knows about.

I think one of the big ideas chucked around in Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay was that Golden Age comics were in some way allegories for the Jewish immigrant experience in America in the 1930s. It's important to understand that Superman was born at a time when America was pretty sure it was the Greatest Power on Earth (in part, because it accepted immigrants from everywhere), but was divided between its isolationist Clark Kent self (stay out of trouble, report and observe from the sidelines) and its lurid, carnival-strongman self (let's get hip deep into the conflict and show those Japs and Jerries who's the *real* Master Race!).

It might not be an accident that the late 50s and 60s saw Superman leaving the planet more and more. By the time Vietnam started boiling, he was spending time in the future (with the Legion of Superheroes) and way out in space, wasn't he? He was the American ideal way out of touch with everyday life.

In American society, Clark Kent and Superman weren't really talking to one another - the one was marching against the other. I don't know if this was paralleled in the comics, but I do remember reading a few early 70s stories where there was no mention of Clark at all. He was just this alien in a blue suit, dealing with other aliens.

So if Superman's gonna make it as an icon, there's going to have to be a move toward capturing/encapsulating whatever tension there is in society underpinning that conceit of the double character -- the ordinary guy with with spectacular secret.

I never watch Smallville. How does that show (which seems pretty successful) match up against America's political self-image? Isn't Superman sort of young and not-entirely-in-control of his powers? Comparisons with the Abu Ghraib thing might be apt, but there might be something closer to the idea of political power as proxy for corporate power or something. Hmm. America's power is slipping out of its direct control, see.

I also think that, in a more direct, less oblique way, people might be more into Lex Luthor, capitalist rogue, as an easy-to-identify corporate villain. I wonder if making Superman a cypher for a whistleblower/outlaw/activist might work. That's really Batman's job, though. To work for society by appearing to counter society. Superman has to be bound to optimism.
 
 
gridley
20:41 / 18.05.04
Dear DC Comics,

I would like to see a Superman romance series, where it's just Superman going on dates with lots of different people. Some of the dates could be on other planets.

Thank you,
Gridley
 
 
EvskiG
20:59 / 18.05.04
Dear Gridley,

Lana, Lois, Lori, Lyla, Sally -- Superman gets around. Plenty of dates over the years, and some of them have been on other planets. Just look through the classic collections. The 50s were a classic period for Superman on a date.

Don't know what that has to do with the subject we've been discussing, though.

Yrs. etc.,

evskig
 
 
eddie thirteen
21:05 / 18.05.04
Chad --

I guess what I'm saying is that there never was a time when Superman was really "in touch" with the American zeitgeist or whatever, as far as I can tell. The character was always a larger than life paragon. If the story spoke to people in 1938, it'll speak to people now, I think, because I don't see anything about it that's dated...it's always been a story about a figure that doesn't exist, embodying virtues that real flesh and blood people can only aspire to.

I don't see the point in trying to make him change with the times beyond the superficial (lame pun not intended)...i.e., the minor costume redesigns that have taken place over the decades...when he doesn't seem especially bound to the era in which he was created. I don't think, for instance, that Beowulf only speaks to an audience from thousands of years ago, and I don't think the story or the character requires anything more than the facelift of modern English to speak to contemporary readers. To make Superman "cool and dark and tragic" might have interesting results (might not, too), but it's also not really Superman anymore, and those results probably wouldn't be lasting. Eventually, it'll revert to the archetype, because that's where the stories are. So I think it's kinda pointless to worry about why Superman isn't the biggest-selling comic in the world, when it's something that really can't be new or sensational. In the short run, sure, newer, flashier characters that speak directly to their era will gain a bigger audience, but most of those won't speak to people ten years down the road (witness Spawn), but the iconic characters that speak to any era will stick around.
 
 
Mario
21:52 / 18.05.04
Some years ago, back when I still bothered reading Usenet, I came across a theory that all heroes of Western literature were primarily based on one of two archetypes, the Cowboy & the White Knight. Robin Hood & King Arthur. Batman & Superman.

*googles* Here's the post.

Superman as knight-errant...could work....
 
 
D Terminator XXXIII
23:40 / 18.05.04
That sounds incredibly boring to me, though.

Does a large part of the problem not stem from the fact that after the Byrne relaunch, one had to have (limited!) ugly Mignola art about the lives of Jor-El and Kara, aside from the main title, the action title and the adventures title? And that right before - and after - Byrne left the Superman-concept, the titles suffered from less-inventive treatments? And one still had to follow every title to get the full story? Which weren't very exciting?

Perhaps the flirtatious nature of the self-contained story suits Superman better.
 
 
Mario
00:17 / 19.05.04
There's something to be said for that, but I've found that, for a lot of titles, the actual content has less to do with public perception of the book than popular preconceptions.

(For example, I wonder hom many people, when they heard about the Keaton Batman film, assumed it would be a campy comedy a la Messrs West & Ward? )

Once Superman became ensconced in the zeitgeist as "The Big Blue Boy Scout", it became necessary to overcome that image, before setting a new model.
 
 
TroyJ15
01:23 / 19.05.04
I definitely come from the camp that SuperMan is boring because he is not flawed or identifiable. He really is only interesting when he is forced to interact with those less powerful than him (Most notably other members of the Justice League).

The Man of Steel concept has been ran it's course, I think. I do believe there are some characters that need to be taken to pasture and I'm sorry but SupeRMan is one of them. If not now, at least another decade from now. I just don't see any interesting ideas coming out of a character who is perfect. But then again I grew up on Marvel stuff mostly and the only DC characters I have enjoyed or found interesting have been Yorick, BatMan, Jesse Custer, Hal Jordan, Kyle Rayner, Clone Superboy, and to some extent, Wonder Woman.

Now Mario said this earlier:
"Great power balanced by great compassion. A man who shows us the potential within ourselves to be better people, simply by example.
Should Superman be limited? Certainly...so he can rise above them, just as we can rise above our own weaknesses (physical, intellectual, or emotional). He may be bloodied in the attempt, but he'll keep fighting "the never-ending battle". Until he wins."

Honestly I think more of Peter Parker/Spider-Man than SuperMan when I hear this.
 
 
Mario
01:35 / 19.05.04
The two characters are similar in a lot of ways, from their humble beginnings to their choice of color schemes.

But Peter uses the concepts differently. He's a "friendly, neighborhood" hero, not an archetype. If Supes is King Arthur, Peter is the Connecticut Yankee. A different kind of hero entirely.
 
 
D Terminator XXXIII
10:59 / 19.05.04
Interesting point about the popular preconception, Mario.

One thing occurred to me during the night - and this is coming from someone who has recently hunted down late-70s/early80s Superman comics in the second hand market - that DC, as a company, has sought to preserve the icon for far too long, Every. Fucking. Time. The Curt Swan period ran its course a handful of years before the Byrne relaunch, for example. Prior to that, the less powerful version of Supes relaunch should have happened earlier, perhaps.

An icon can only survive if hungry storytellers are presented with the means to evolve what there is to say about the icon. If you know what I mean. This is what's lacking, I feel. Adventorous creators and the backing of the company to do what's necessary without ruining the character, Spidey Clone style.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
11:48 / 19.05.04
Dear DC Comics,

I like Gridley's idea, and would like to see Superman date Imra Ardeen (aka Saturn Girl.) Perhaps Superman could take her out to dinner on the planet Bismol.

Yours,

M. Fluxington
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
12:52 / 19.05.04
Superman, like Captain America, seem to work best when they have the slight distance of being in a team book like JLA or Avengers than when they're in their own title. Don't know why that is.
 
 
Mario
13:03 / 19.05.04
Possibly because, in a team book, we have characters (usually young, often irreverent) that can bridge the gap between the heroic ideal and ordinary life.

Perhaps that's the difference between Superman and characters like Spider-Man. While Spidey shows us the path we can take to heroism, Supes is already there....
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
13:32 / 19.05.04
How does that show (which seems pretty successful) match up against America's political self-image?

Nine out of ten of the people he gets into fights with end up dead, even when it's clear that they're more victim than villain. This is never presented as being Clark's fault, or in any way particularly a bad thing - characters look appropriately pained at the tragic demise of the latest Kryptonite-powered freak, for about 5 seconds every time, then never mention it again, and certainly don't blame him. These opponents tend to find out that he has a secret, so they kinda have to die.

Heh, it's not applicable at all, is it...?
 
 
grant
15:58 / 19.05.04
That's fucking terrifying.

I'm processing that White Knight thing, and the idea of "no limitations" as a character problem, and I think it might be necessary, to make Superman function as an Icon of All That is Right and Good, to give him a code of conduct outside which he cannot go.

I mean, yeah, he's already kind of got one, but maybe if writers were to introduce one more explicitly or self-consciously....

In other words, Superman *does* have limitations that someone like Batman doesn't have. They're behavioral & internal. So, from an iconic standpoint (and probably from a narrative standpoint), it might make sense to have Superman stories be, on one level, about what is right - about what "right" is. Batman was never above slugging out a cop to get to a bad guy. Superman, I think, would have some serious problems with that -- he couldn't do it.

I dunno. I kinda prefer Capt. Marvel anyways.
 
 
grant
16:40 / 19.05.04
Hmm - and the Time article says, of Azzarello's first story:

While Superman's back was turned, a million people vanished from earth, including Lois Lane, and he's powerless to do anything about it. He's a brooding, angry, heavily shadowed Superman, riddled with self-doubt. "For the first time, I was really afraid," he says. "Lost, without my rhythm." You get through the entire issue before you realize not a single punch has been thrown.

I wonder if I just got to where they already were.
 
 
The Falcon
18:23 / 19.05.04
The present theory is that this ('The Vanishing') may be somehow connected to Mr. Majestic's appearance in the DCU; like Optimus Prime when Galvatron came through the time portal*, the duelling chronal spaces have to counterbalance. Majestic is the WildStorm 'mature', contemporised Superman (the DC covers highlighting his arrival have directly homaged iconic Superman images) - I suspect their ideologies may come into conflict at some point. Possibly written by Abnett/Lanning.

*Furman/Senior/etc.'s classic Transformers epic 'Target: 2006'
 
 
lukabeast
04:39 / 20.05.04
Is there really a problem? The popular media, and average Joe Schmoe aren't really commenting on the various comic books that "Supes" appears in, but more on the (perhaps outdated) concept of having The Big Blue Boy Scout as a symbol of America in these times (Post 9/11)? Currently, these people are being exposed to Supes via the Seinfeld American Express commercials, which purposefully make him out to be kind of a naive "duh", and Smallville, somewhat rich in that "small town local boy grows up and makes good" vein. (Perhaps some of them may have gone "lowbrow" and read "It's A Bird"). I don't think (and I may be wrong)any non-comic fan would know any difference between a Superman who is being written as a throwback to the Silver Age, or the Kryptonion Eradicator. In the collective unconcious, Supes will always be the Big Blue Boy Scout. Right now, every super-hero movie coming out is based more on (to use a sample from Mario's above post) the cowboy archtype, whearas Supes is the white knight. The white knight figure in general may not be the in thing for the run of the mill movie go-er, etc, and that is fine. There is not really a lot that could be done to change the image that Superman has impressed upon the public, without doing something "BIG" (i.e. Death Of Superman). All any Superman writers should do is, well, keep on doing what they are doing. There will be hits and misses as with any other title. If things do need to be changed, then break up the continuity between the various Superman titles. Make one "for the kids", the above mentioned "starter's comic", make a line of comics that feature Silver Age versions of Current DC charectors (the Earth 1 line or some such), keep it out of continuity with the 1 or 2 remaining Superman books (and the rest of the non Earth 1 books). Something for everybody. And in a couple years when the next Time article comes out decrying the overload of dark, gloomy, "realistic" comic book charectors, there Supes will be..in Joycore glory. (Or this whole post may be a bunch of poop..but I'm bored).
 
 
D Terminator XXXIII
18:41 / 20.05.04
Supes will always be the Big Blue Boy Scout

Just as Bats would forever be associated with camp until Miller's version came along?
 
 
lukabeast
19:19 / 20.05.04
"Just as Bats would forever be associated with camp until Miller's version came along?"

Exactly. Even though in the comic book world, Dennis O'Neal blew the campiness away in the 70's (perhaps earlier). Until something "big" came along (Frank Miller's tale was so different, well written and received, and therefore reported on by the media), Batman was seen as camp until the mid 80's. (I think Bat-Mite was still appearing in the Saturday morning cartoons a few years before Dark Knight, this kind of stuff does not really help public perception, yikes).
 
 
lukabeast
19:26 / 20.05.04
Ya know, looking back, maybe Dark Knight should have been used as an oppertunity to retool or reintroduce Superman, as much as it did Batman?
 
 
Mario
20:34 / 20.05.04
I think it'd be more accurate to say that Superman needs a project as paradigm-breaking as DKR was for Bats. Not necessarily a story of the same style (because, as I've been arguing since the beginning, Grim&Gritty does NOT work for him) but something with similar impact.

Unfortunately, the best Superman story in years (Kingdom Come) isn't SEEN as one, and Birthright (which could have done it) is saddled by the burden of being the "new origin".
 
 
LDones
21:25 / 20.05.04
This is from Grant Morrison's latest interview at X-Fan, and sums up some things I've put in much less concise form on these boards in the past:

"...with the best will in the world, who really wants to watch Superman suffering agonies of doubt, for instance, when he could be wrestling Phantom Zone giants back into the 10th dimension ? If Superman felt any doubt at all, he’d know it was Luthor’s Doubt-O-Ray to blame and smash it up fine style."

Superman should be out reversing the magnetic polarity of the moon with his temporary electro-magnetic powers, wrestling angels, and transforming himself into volcanic energy beings to blow up Warworld. The same way that Batman should make his way out into space - regularly.

Self-doubt-ridden Superman's been done before, and it isn't particularly well remembered. That having been said, I'm still interested in what Azzarello's doing with his Superman run, but I long for the not-too-far-gone days when the bastard would rebuild the entire universe in a day, or emerge from the sun after thousands of years of rest, solid-gold and wearing the Green Lantern ring. Superman having insecurity complexes on the job and being too much of a coward to talk to his wife properly is ridiculous in a very bad way.

And I'm really curious about Joe Kelly's Justice League Elite and it's relation to Action Comics #775. I loved Joe Kelly's Superman work.

Has anybody picked up Steven Seagle's It's a Bird... It's largely on this same subject, why anyone should give a damn about Superman in this day and age. I haven't been able to grab a copy yet.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
21:26 / 20.05.04
I was thinking the other day that Kingdom Come was probably the best post-Crisis Superman story. That story really did get Superman exactly right.
 
 
Mario
22:07 / 20.05.04
I'm not sure I would treat Batman the same way. He and Superman are complimentary opposites. He belongs down in the trenches, fighting the good fight.

That being said, _nothing_ says he can't enjoy himself on occasion.
 
 
LDones
23:41 / 20.05.04
Kingdom Come is a fantastic Superman story, and I have to admit I wasn't thinking about it when posting the above - it is definitely self-doubt Superman, all the way, but I think the key there is that he (along with Waid, and Ross) specifically knows he's NOT a man, and there are no pretenses to the contrary.

I guess Super-Conflict on that level, coming to grips with his alien-ness and the relation to men beyond that, works for me (Superman: Birthright is one of this past year's best reads, in my opinion, and much if it is on that level, but never in an angsty way).
 
 
The Falcon
13:49 / 21.05.04
The same way that Batman should make his way out into space - regularly.


I can totally get behind this. All superheroes should go into space, except - possibly - Daredevil.
 
 
SiliconDream
14:13 / 21.05.04
Daredevil should so go into space! And he should pilot his own spaceship!

"Fly toward that planet over there!"
"Where?"
"The big planet! Right in front of you! With all the rings!"
"Where?"
"Dammit, just roll down the window, stick your arm out and fly forward until you start to feel atmosphere, all right?"

It'd be beautiful.
 
  

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