JulianPerez
Council of Wisdom
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Posts: 1168
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« Reply #18 on: October 14, 2006, 08:33:00 AM » |
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As for more ideas that I like but that other people don't seem to...
I don't mind "The Master Mesmerizer of Metropolis."
Okay, their solution was a little cracked, but STILL, I can't blame Marty for trying here. I can understand the spirit of the story: why DO the glasses make an effective disguise, anyway?
Some people say that Superman is based on suspension of disbelief and no matter how far you go, you have to, at some level, accept that glasses can be a disguise. My response to this is that if an idea is any good it should be able to withstand obvious questions, and that suspension of disbelief works for some things and not others: in other words, believing a man can fly requires some imagination, but glasses tricking people is just plain gullibility.
The explanation the movies gave for why glasses could be a good disguise is interesting, too: there's no real "trick" to the glasses; Superman is just a really good actor.
I do like the idea of different colored Kryptonite, too.
Many people think that different colored kryptonite needlessly complicates what should be a very straightforward idea (a radioactive rock that can kill Superman) but Kryptonite is so...magical a substance, almost...that it seems unfair to just have it do one thing and serve only one purpose. It was interesting to see Alan Moore's "Supremium," from SUPREME, which was less like Kryptonite and more like LSD: unknowable, mysterious, and a little scary.
Plus, it was kind of cool when very rare types of Kryptonite popped up. One of the few Conway stories I liked featured Superman saving the day with White Kryptonite. The fact that somebody got use out of White Kryptonite had entertainment value and coolness in and of itself.
Finally, I like the Jeph Loeb Supergirl, a character that sells well but for some reason people don't seem to like. I think they made the right choice in having her be feisty and independent. The problem with bringing Supergirl back is, you can't bring her back with her original characterization, as a hero-worshipping and slightly ditzy blonde, because the thing is, like Kandor, her story already got resolved: we watched Supergirl change from being a girl to being an independent, adult woman. They skipped the middleman and brought her right to the "end" of her Bronze Age "cycle," and so we're pretty much guaranteed to see something new.
Plus, I don't mind the outfit, either. Supergirl's cute, and I'm not hypocritical enough to say to say I'm bothered by fun-spirited cheesecake.
I think the Loeb Supergirl is something to rejoyce over, because as much as I admire Peter David as a writer, Supergirl went from being a very straightforward concept - Superman's girl cousin - to being something else that's very strange and only tangentally connected to the Super-universe.
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