Superman, C/D?

xpost

uh, this kinda ain't true, I believe.

SO, is it possible that Warners made a bad Superman movie a few years ago on purpose?
http://www.newsarama.com/film/090917-superman-movie-no-plans.html

The Chronological Superman http://thechronologicalsuperman.tumblr.com/ KINDA rips off http://polmanning.tumblr.com/ but has real (good) analysis

booming: http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/that_superman_thing/

Superman's sheepish grin and shrug in the last panel later became the subject of a 1958 Jules Feiffer essay in Holiday called "Stop Smiling, Superman," which itself was appropriated by Quentin Tarantino for an elevator speech given by priest/hitman Lawrence Hilton Jacobs in the director's little-seen 2009 Norm MacDonald-starring remake of Charley Varrick.

wait waht

man do I wish that had really happened

The points made in this article aren't necessarily new or original, but I think it's a nice summation of what Superman is and why he keeps coming back:

http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/06/07/dont-mess-with-superman/

The last point is interesting, but I'm not sure if it's entirely true? Has Superman ever had a grim & gritty reimagining, besides Elseworlds type of stories (like Red Son), where the change of premise is the whole point? Even in Superman: Earth One, though it started with an emo Superman, he was pretty much the classic Superman by the end of the story.

I haven't read that many DC comics of the 90s, did they ever try to revamp him to be 90s style gritty hero back then?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3a/Justice_Society_of_America_v3_10_art.jpg

The previous, Brandon Routh, Superman film as well I suppose.

Where is that pic from?

That's the older Earth-Two Superman, right? I don't know what comic you're talking about, but what I meant was whether the "official" Superman has ever been grittified? I know it's been done to various alternate Supermen, but what about the main guy? (And yeah, I know the Earth-Two dude is canonically the original Superman of the Golden Age, but whatever has been done to him to make him "dark" must be after the Earth-One dude became the official Superman, and he became an alternate version.)

i don't know where that image is from either, but it looks like it's by alex ross, who i thought was pretty philisophically opposed to grim-and-gritty

That is a hell of an impression to have, particularly since he's the original source of Kingdom Come, the Superman from which is above.

well as tuomas sez, the image is a variant on the old earth 2 superman (with a bit of george reeves thrown in for good measure.) my definition of a grim and gritty superman would be one where he's holding a big gun and acting in a morally dubious fashion - not something i get from that particular image, where he just looks a bit broody (i haven't read the comic.) And in general. ross' work deliberately represents a return to old school values of heroic, noble characters rendered in a realist style, and usually framed as an overt repudiation of the post-dark knight school of superheroics (dark night being the ur-text for all things grim and gritty)

A fine and noble view, unburdened as it is by dull facts!

That is a hell of an impression to have, particularly since he's the original source of Kingdom Come, the Superman from which is above.

It's been while since I read it, but isn't Kingdome Come pretty much against grim and gritty. Isn't the story of KC that older superheroes have been replaced by new, 90s-style gritty heroes, but they turn out not to so heroic, and in the end Superman (who represents the ideals of the pre-grim era) returns, and a new era more idealistic heroes begins again?

"they turn out to be not so heroic"

A fine and noble view, unburdened as it is by dull facts!

― Andrew Farrell, Wednesday, 12 June 2013 12:31 (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

enlighten me o all-knowing one

Okay, I read the synopsis of KC, and I guess the story is a bit more complicated than what I remembered... But my point still stands that Superman is used in it as an antithesis to the gritty 90s style heroes. (And KC is an Elseworlds story anyway.)

That's probably the intent, but there is an awful lot of having your cake and eating it in Kingdom Come - the Superman is grim, authoritarian, with a lot of blood on his hands by the end. It's a very deliberate contrast with the regular Superman (who I think may have still been available in Electric Red and Electric Blue)

I think I might have to refer you to Wikipedia, Ward - I can't in good conscience recommend that anyone read the story :)

i'm happy to accept yr word that kingdom come offers us a grim and gritty superman, fucked if i'm reading a mark waid comic

i know that ross and waid fell out over it, possibly because of the way it depicts the classic DC superheroes, and i think my larger point still stands - that alex ross' imagery is ANTI-grim and gritty (which is not, to my way of thinking, a realist-romantic vision of superheroics of the kind that - kingdom come possibly apart - ross trades in.)

Fair enough - I know that Ross brought 'the story' in some form to DC and they got Waid to write it, I am perfectly happy to believe that Waid is responsible for the worst of it.

As to whether it's Elseworld, I'm not sure that would have an effect on the quote Tuomas is addressing, that dark and brooding Superman wouldn't work - this was that, and was hailed as the most significant DC work in a decade, press coverage out the wazoo etc.

The line I really take exception to is "These choices are rarely simple or easy, and he always makes the right choice because that's who he is" - he doesn't Find Moral Fortitude to save the child over the puppy, he outthinks or outpowers the problem to save both. The only notable case I can think of where he actually has a hard choice is Whatever Happened To... where he makes the hard choice and then quits being Superman.

Personally I prefer the bright and bouncy Grant Morrison/Triangle-era Superman rather the than the emo Elsewords versions or the ersatz Peter Parker of the nu-52.

But really the problem isn't Superman the character, as he's ace (underrated, even!) and has a classic supporting cast, but that he's had an incredibly bum set of writers for a while.

I mean, theoretically the in-continuity Superman book should be a coathanger for different one-off genre stories, with the Metropolis characters in the background for more long-form soap opera stories - like Doctor Who or X-Files etc.

^^^ superman should be combo of smug alien and corny all-american boy scout; the 'lo a god walks amongst us' stuff that the recent movies focus on (apparently; haven't seen the new one but i hear it's pretty humorless supes) should be at most color for the climax. if yr superman isn't smiling, making quips, more likable and approachable than batman then you're doing it wrong.

wld def prefer to see a movie derived from all the nutty 60s weisinger stuff - bottle city of kandor, bizarro, the works - than yet more hohum mythic seriousness, although i don't think of superman as being a 'quipster', esp - that's more like a stan lee character trait.

Quips are for last panel laughter freeze frames.

yeah quipster's the wrong phrase, more bemused, reeves had this down.

Basically he should be Christopher Reeve.

Matt Bomer for Superman?

wld def prefer to see a movie derived from all the nutty 60s weisinger stuff - bottle city of kandor, bizarro, the works - than yet more hohum mythic seriousness

agree %1000

always felt John Hamm would've been a great Superman but he's a few years too old now

Martian hammhunter

Jon Hamm should be Deadshot

Spider-Hamm, naturally

Matt Bomer for Superman?

― they are either militarists (ugh) or kangaroos (?) (DJP), Wednesday, June 12, 2013 12:00 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark

he looks exactly like cavill!

"did they ever try to revamp him to be 90s style gritty hero back then?"

Does giving him a mullet count?

http://www.unwinnable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/SuperPowers.jpg

was the mullet dan jurgens' fault? i feel like it was

i would be down with asshole supes but never gonna happen

It's already happened!

http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x5/MacGizmo/Animated/drunk_superman.gif

what's that from? i managed to avoid the last supes movie but that looks hella older

superman 3, which was terrifying to me as a kid

the robot lady gave me nightmares

wow, that does not look like christopher reeve

Anyway, it's a perfect example of how well superhero writers/artists are keeping up with the current trends, that when they wanted to make Superman more "cool" in the 90s, they gave him an 80s hair.

Anyone seen the movie and/or read Superman Unchained, then?

Unchained read like a Roger Stern/Dan Jurgens story gone widescreen -- actually, that's not a bad thing -- but was more like a solid issue #341 rather than a BIG FIRST ISSUE. It's a lot more trad than Snyder's work on Batman, but again, that's not actually a bad thing.

The costume is still dreadful though - much worse than the mullet! And Jim Lee's back doing those horrible diagonal frayed panels that are his wont.

They gave Superman the "mullet" because Dean Cain had long hair at the time he won the job to play Superman. By the time Lois and Clark aired he cut of the hair to look more like Superman. So a long story short DC didn't want new fans to get confused, so they jumped the gun. When the studio was planning on having Dean cut his hair to begin with.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/06/14/alan-moore-addresses-the-criminality-behind-superman-and-the-comic-book-industry/

can anybody else get that to load/summarize it

bleeding cool seems to be down

Yeah, absolutely. Reeve is really, really great as Asshole Superman.

― bizarro gazzara, Thursday, June 13, 2013 11:57 AM (

he was also for the first and last time sexy as fuck

sorry, don't know why that isn't loading

seems to be an excerpt from a larger esay by alan that links the shady nature of pulp publishing w/ the theft of rights etc from creators like siegel and shuster.

i wonder if it will contain an ambivalent screed about his role in the Marvelman saga

Wasn't dead Superman In Space a bit g&g? He had a beard, at least.

Oh, and a few years ago (just before Johnsiverse) didn't he fuck off to Kandor for like a year or something because he'd had enough of humans? (From memory this led to Silver Age shenanigans instead though, so is probably not a god example.)

are you thinking of when he thought he was out of touch with the common man, so walked across America for a year?

(in a story that JMS originated and bailed out on after six issues, but collected half the royalties on replacement Chris Roberson's scripts out of sheer dickishness iirc)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg1yUMqJMcw

Wasn't dead Superman In Space a bit g&g? He had a beard, at least.

This was before the Death, I think? He had to execute some Kryptonian criminals, because otherwise they would've killed more people, but breaking his "thou shall not kill" code caused a moral crisis, so he flew off to space to think about stuff. At least that's what I remember about those stories, it's been 20 years since I read them... Yeah, I guess that could be seen as an attempt to grittify Supes, but IIRC the storyline didn't end up changing him that much, and when he came back he was just as ethical as he was before.

I'm not really a huge Supes fan tbh, but I like this article:
http://comicsalliance.com/superman-a-celebration-of-75-years-review-dc/?trackback=twitter_top

hmmm 2/3rds of those stories are exactly the same ones printed in my Best Superman Stories collection from the late 80s (Byrne issue being the final entry in that one)

dunno if that undercuts his argument or not

nah, that actually makes sense, the late 80s was when the dark, "realistic" edgy superhero themes took off. it's more surprising now that the wheel has turned back around

yeah that occurred to me too

altho I didn't think my collection was about failure/sadness - there is that, but it also has the first appearance of Mxtylplyk, Superman's bday/Fortress of Solitude introduction, what if Krypton hadn't blown up etc. it has its share of fun.

Martha Kent fanfic. Someone, get this woman a job at DC.
http://archiveofourown.org/works/6447187

heh, that's a fun read

introduced 80 years ago today