DC's attitude adjustment and long live the Classic Superman!

[The Starchild]

I recently bought the Birthright hardcover.  It contains some bonus material, including excerpts from Mark Waid's original series proposal.  I think he's got it spot on when he talks about the relationship between Superman and Clark.  This is an edited and trimmed down selection of excerpts from the Clark Kent section of the article.  I highly recommend getting a copy of the book and reading the whole thing - including the story.

"...who, disguised as Clark Kent..."

Don't look at me.  I didn't make it up.  Siegel and Shuster did.  Superman's the real guy, Clark's the disguise, and that's one of the masterstrokes that made Superman unique and brilliant for so long.  One crucial key to Superman is that when he's wearing the suit, when he's flying around, he's not playing a role.  He's not "playing" at being a super-hero.  This is who he is and who the Kents raised him to be -- an angelic, unselfish champion who uses his gifts for the betterment of mankind.  Wearing the suit simply means that he can act openly without fear of alienating others.  "Metropolis Clark," on the other hand, is a fabrication that serves a critical purpose -- no matter how old, how mature Superman gets, he'll never lose that basic human need to be accepted by his peers.  Moreover, one of the fundaments of the world's leading religions all throughout history is that despite our individuality, there exists on some level a connection between all the things in the universe, and one cannot exist meaningfully while denying that connection.  Superman's a smart and worldy man.  He knows this.

Clark allows Superman to immerse himself in humanity and thus never loose sight of his calling.

The drawback of being Clark, of course, is that it's during those times Kal-El has to be most careful.  Above all, he wants to go unnoticed, to be one of those unremarkable, almost faceless guys in the office who no one thinks ill of but who can never remember for sure whether or not he was at the office Christmas party.  He has to be on-guard 24/7 against making any sort of physical slip-up.  He can't play pick-up basketball.  He can't volunteer to help you move next weekend.  Most of all, he can never, ever be confrontational, and that's the behavior that so easily gets misunderstood by the insensitive.  Clark's not really a wimp; he's just mild-mannered, slightly aloof, and VERY tightly wrapped.  Clark brings Kal-El so close to being human, so tantalizingly close... but never are we more "human" than when we make mistakes, and mistakes are the things that Clark can least afford.

There's also another said irony to Clark, and it's one that reaches right to the heart of every adolescent out there:  in order to have any sort of genuine relationship with people, Superman has to be someone he's not.

As much as I love Christoper Reeve's Clark, he was a cartoon and is too over-the-top for the purposes of this series.  Clark doesn't have to be an overblown drama queen, but neither can he be so super-successful he has the world in his pocket.  We must not forget why he was created in the first place -- to be a touchstone.  To be the half of Superman which readers can actually relate to because we all want to believe that even though we may be put upon and bullied by the world from time to time, we know what those who pick on us or look down on us don't -- that if they could see behind our glasses, they'd see a Superman.

Reading the entire article makes it very clear that Waid had many more ideas than those that made it into those original 12 issues and was planning or hoping or had been told that he was to write many more.  I hope we see them soon.

[jmr72777]

TELLE,

Welcome to the debate.  My intent was not to paint anyone between George Washington to George Bush or anyone in between necessarily as inspirations or heroes.  I probably should have thought out my wording better. My point was simply that to call SUPERMAN a murderer would be to call them ones as well.  Not so much because they are supposed to be as inspiring or heroic as he, but simply because they technically have as much moral authority as SUPERMAN does.  Again, I wouldn't say that SUPERMAN was right to kill, but simply that branding him a murderer is a bit too harsh.

Now I know I'm going to get rapped in the mouth for this (so to speak) but Starchild, you've just brought up something that actually irked me a while back.  I too read Mark Waid's bit in the BIRTHRIGHT TP.  It affected me so that I was forced to write about it.  Rather than trying to recreate the feelings that it gave me, I will simply leave links below:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/kal_el77/39720.html

http://www.livejournal.com/users/kal_el77/39995.html

The rants above do retread on some of the old themes that I've discussed on this site before, as well as in other places and earlier posts in my blog.[/url]

[nightwing]

Wow, I'm falling behind in this debate but it's great to see it anyway. And I note others have pretty much explained where I was going.

But just to clarify: no, it's not the fact that he's from another planet that made the old Superman unique (after all, even in the new continuity he's still from outer space).  It's that he's from a place that no longer exists, one he feels some loyalty to and longing for.  The bottle city of Kandor, the Fortress and various other plot elements kept this theme coming up again and again...Superman was a man displaced, torn between making a new life for himself on Earth and honoring his heritage on Krypton.  As writers more scholarly than I have pointed out, this is a very American attitude, one that consciously or not reflected the dilemma of Superman's creators, two Jewish kids with parents who came to America from a world that was destroyed behind them.  This is the crux of the immigrant's dillemma...assimilate or honor your heritage?

I just feel that in the old continuity, things happened for a reason.  Superman was an alien on purpose; it mattered to the mythos.  Now he's an alien, but so what?  It's just a means to an end, a way to explain why he's got superpowers (and not even a good reason..."Why's he so powerful?"  "Oh, he's from another planet!" "Okay, got it").  Whether he sees himself as an Earth man is irrelevant...he isn't one!  At least in the old days he was honest enough with himself to acknowledge and attempt to deal with his unearthly origins.  Now he just ignores them.  Whatever else that might say about his mental character, or lack of same, it is at the very least a waste of story potential.  Suppose you had a story about a "love child" who never knew his father's name.  Maybe he never once wonders who that man was or how he came to be his father, and maybe he'd be happy that way.  But it would sure make for a dull story, wouldn't it?  Or as the saying goes, the unexamined life isn't worth living.

On a more personal level, everyone feels like an alien at some point or other, especially kids.  Maybe you can't identify with someone from another planet, but odds are you have felt like an outsider before, and that's where Superman is identifiable.  Again, this strikes me as a deliberate twist to the mythos, and a smart one.  How do you make the most powerful man on Earth sympathetic without taking away his powers?  Give him psychological depth.  The "alien thing" was their way of doing it, and it worked for me and millions of others.  (And frankly, if Byrne was interested in making Clark Kent "identifiable," he wouldn't have made him a football star and Pulitzer-winning columnist.  Heck, why not go all the way and just make him Tom Cruise?)

My point is that every character needs something to set him apart from the crowd.  The poor, put-upon sad sack gimmick has been done: it's called Peter Parker.

[Daybreaker]

What I like about the post-Byrne character is that Superman is effectively made up of three identities:  Kal-El, Clark Kent and Superman.

Kal-El, rarely seen because he isn't very heroic, is a rational being.  No emotions but a great intellect and great power.  He's the Last Son of Krypton, and he operates on the most basic function simply to continue the existence of his people.  Kal-El is essentially a completely detached God to whom the problems of mere human beings are nothing more than the melodrama of ants.

Clark Kent, on the other hand, is pretty powerless.  No, he's not literally powerless, since he has all the muscle in the world, but he doesn't know where to put it.  He's very emotional, just like any other human being, but also like any other human being, Americans in particulars, he can do much more than he knows and he knows much less than he understands.  Where Kal-El cares about nothing, Clark Kent cares about everything and so ends up directionless, a bumbler, awkwardly chasing after butterflies.

Superman is where these two "halves" overlap, cancelling out the negative traits and augmenting the positive traits.

The thing is, for that to work, Krypton had to be cold and ultimately worthless place.  Which then necessitated further changes, and on, and on.

Which doesn't necessarily make it better than the pre-Byrne versions of Superman.  Personally, my favorite is the Golden Age Superman, who was pretty simple:  "Well, now that I've figured out the right thing to do, I'll do it.  Because I can."

[Defender]

That's what I think we need; a mixture of Clark the decent man who was raised among humans by a loving family, and Kal-El, the starchild forever enthralled with humanity and devoted to their protection, but feeling the dull ache of knowing he'll never truly be one of them, that he is the last of his kind in all the universe.

 -Def.

[TELLE]

jmr72777, I think that we have to call him a murderer (or would killer be more accurate?) and that we are just kidding ourselves when we say that our political leaders are not guilty of murder when they order soldiers to kill others, especially noncombatants or "innocents".  I realize that this is how the world operates (and I would probably do the same thing if I ever had the misfortune to be a political leader), I'm just opposed to the wordplay we engage in that allows us to gloss over these facts (and allows most of us to sleep at night/remain sane).

Regardless, I think the analogy equating the "Superpowers" and Superman is very useful and I find myself thinking of it all the time these days --something many comics writers have been doing for years (the examples I'm most familiar with are Moore's Watchmen, Miller's Dark Knight and the Authority).  Maybe it's proof of my arrested development, but I thought about superheroes on 9-11 and now almost everyday since the invasion of Afghanistan.  I saw a short news doc about Bush's Texas ranch/hometown and all I could think of was Superboy and Smallville --(the version from the Crime Syndicate's Earth, of course -- I also think of Canada as Earth Prime and the US as Earth I. ).

But just to clarify: no, it's not the fact that he's from another planet that made the old Superman unique (after all, even in the new continuity he's still from outer space).  It's that he's from a place that no longer exists, one he feels some loyalty to and longing for.  The bottle city of Kandor, the Fortress and various other plot elements kept this theme coming up again and again

Nightwing, I feel the same way about the Silver Age and feel that this website provides the same function vis Superman's Fortress (will I feel this way if Morrison's "All-Star" Superman triumphs and becomes the norm?).  I love the loneliness of Superman while feeling it is sustainable despite the existence of Kandor, Supergirl, etc.  

One of my favorite writers on this theme is Michael E. Grost whose Classic Comics website is chock-a-block full of interesting observations on the Superman mythos:

Classic Comics Home-Page:
http://members.aol.com/MG4273/comics.htm
Superman:
http://members.aol.com/MG4273/superman.htm
The Mourning Stories:
http://members.aol.com/MG4273/superman.htm#Mourning

[jmr72777]

Telle,

I think my problem comes with the negative connotation that this site (which I enjoy very much, regardless) places upon SUPERMAN: The Murderer.  I've spent countless posts here (I think most of the ones in my message count, in fact) in some way or another defending his actions.  This is not because I agree with murder.  I don't.  However, circumstances dictate actions and consequences.  I could re-open the argument all over again, but for now I won't.  What I will say is that if you (the royal "you," not necessarily you in particular) think the Iron Age SUPERMAN is any less heroic than the Silver Age, fine (although I wouldn't necessarily agree if you said the same about the Golden Age.)

What I would say, is what this particular thread has touched upon already.  Be it Golden, Silver, Bronze or Iron, the essential core of the character is still SUPERMAN.  Not because he was rocketed to Earth from the planet Krypton (although that DOES help), but because in his core, he's the same character.  The same man.  The same (if you will) soul.

The rest, is minutae.  It's not important whether or not he embrace his Kryptonian heritage.  That's not who he is.  How long did it take for the ORIGINAL SUPERMAN to come to that point?  How many years?  Not the 30's.  Not the 40's.  Maybe there was a genesis in the 50's.  Maybe it came into it's own in the 60's.  And maybe it really became an important part of his character in the 70's.  So really, how important is it to his character?  If it was that important, SUPERMAN would not have been the iconic character he was for all those years before.

I'm sure that someone here may find evidence to dispute me.  Of course SUPERMAN thought about and talked about Krypton before the 60's.  I wouldn't dispute that.  I would just say that it became an overriding part of him in the 60's-70's, almost 30 years after he was created.  Before then, it was a small part of him.

As for powering him down?  I was never happier then when he was powered down.  It was the same as making Kryptonite scarce.  It always urked me that any dime-store hood could buy Kryptonite and manufacture it into whatever they wanted.  And as for a guy who can "juggle planets?"  What sort of threat do half the people on this planet pose to him?  There can only be so many super sci-fi/technical gadgets or magical potions that any person can read about before they all blur together.  Besides which, if SUPERMAN could travel fast enough to break the time barrier, doesn't it stand to reason that if he didn't travel quite that fast, but perhaps a little slower, he would never be late to anything?  He'd always arrive on time, with time to spare.  He could almost be literally everywhere at once.  How much drama does THAT create?  I'm generalizing, but I don't think the point is any less valid.

[SteamTeck]

Telle,



As for powering him down?  I was never happier then when he was powered down.  It was the same as making Kryptonite scarce.  It always urked me that any dime-store hood could buy Kryptonite and manufacture it into whatever they wanted.  And as for a guy who can "juggle planets?"  What sort of threat do half the people on this planet pose to him?  There can only be so many super sci-fi/technical gadgets or magical potions that any person can read about before they all blur together.  Besides which, if SUPERMAN could travel fast enough to break the time barrier, doesn't it stand to reason that if he didn't travel quite that fast, but perhaps a little slower, he would never be late to anything?  He'd always arrive on time, with time to spare.  He could almost be literally everywhere at once.  How much drama does THAT create?  I'm generalizing, but I don't think the point is any less valid.

       I agree completely. Superman can still be the most powerful hero on Earth and should be the physically strongest probably but that should not mean his strength is limitless and all the world is one second away. Frankly the current Supes has creeped a little power high for me.  The silver age Superman was great not because of his extreme power level but because of the man he was, the example he set and the upbeat wildly, imaginative stories we saw.