Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Tonite/yesterday:

Also from Evanier:


http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2006_06_11.html#011622

I managed to catch it, and while it was very, very entertaining, the emphasis was mostly on Superman's history in the media - television shows, and so forth (they even had a piece on the radio show).

Mark Waid was on, and he's gone the way of Peter David, Steve Englehart, Alan Moore and Kurt Busiek, in that he has grown a mighty beard. Makes one appreciate the babyfaced Gerry Conway and Alan Davis all the more!

My old pal Dennis O'Neil was there, mostly in the section of the documentary that focused on Superman having an unreal power level at one point in the 1960s, giving examples like blowing out suns.

Elliot S! Maggin was also interviewed, and let me tell you, he's much younger than we all think. Hell, I think Mark Waid was actually older! He wowed the camera, and it was unfortunate that they didn't spend more time on him. He was the person that unsurprisingly had the best sense of what the character was all about. Plus, they let him bust into a few Rodney Dangerfield one-liners!

Stan Lee was interviewed, and he has nothing but love and enthusiasm for Superman and his creators. I don't believe for a second the Moore 1963 perspective that Stan Lee is secretly a sociopath that got rid of Ditko and Kirby and stole the credit for all their good ideas. He has a real love of superhero adventure characters, and he does nothing but gush about Superman's great ideas over the years.

Gail Simone was interviewed, and she was surprisingly cute and chubby. She had a lot of enthusiasm for the character.

Mike Carlin was there, talking about the Death of. No word though, on what exactly went wrong. Carlin reminds me a lot of all these unapologetic Hawks in the government during the Vietnam Era, like MacNamara: a somewhat tragic figure that remains unapologetic and can never admit he was wrong, but forever haunted by the bloody history they authored. Seriously, when they talked to him it was like Richard Nixon: the Later Years.

Miissed it but a pal tivo-ed in HD.  Will see tomorrow hopefully

Saw most of it myself rerun around 2 am.  Mostly a commercial for the new movie (and a history of the "video" Superman) but the first hour and a bit contained enough to entertain (and infuriate) the average member here.

A great general overview of the origin and early years with Siegel and Shuster.  Gerard Jones pitched in (he is a great speaker).  However, at a certain point (early 1940s), the doc implies that Superman "outgrew" his creators with a graphic of Jerry and Joe shrinking and Superman growing.  They are never mentioned again (meaning their many lawsuits and troubles are left out) and the creation of Superboy is basically credited to the early Superman novel (not written by Siegel).  The thing is produced in cooperation with/or even by DC, after all.

Fantastic to see Elliot S! Maggin (looking quite young, as Julian notes), as well as some other friends of Superman (the over-exposed Gene Simmons and various Iron Age writers/editors notwithstanding).  The actress who played Lana in Superman III and Ma Kent in Smallville was quite charming.  Other highlights include lots of behind the scenes from the first Christopher Reeves movie, the George Reeves tv show (with that Whitney Ellsworth footage), and footage from the pilots for the abortive 1950s Superpup, Jimmy Olsen, and Superboy shows.

Lowpoints: the aforementioned slighting of Siegel and Shuster, the Smallville producers claiming that the show somehow embodies the post 9-11 search for heroes, and not enough focus on the comics.  I think including Maggin's quote about smoking stogies with Mario Puzzo and Cary Bates at the expense of potentially more interesting anecdotes about his life as a writer of Superman for over a decade was also a mistake (I know --they went with the movie reference/glamour).  And all the stuff about the new movie.  Most people in the world will eventually see the thing anyway.

I saw the doc the night it was on.  Mostly I wanted to see it so I could decide if I wanted to buy it or not when it came out on DVD.  I decided "Not."
I did like it but there wasn't any new nugget of info in it for me at all.  In fact I told my wife I could even fill in some holes.  :|
I wish they had more with Maggin.  And where was Cary Bates?

Maybe we should make a dvd --a Superman fans' history of the the comics.  Or maybe that's what Supermanica2 should be.

Hey, at least Elliot was in it!  That's light years better than it would have been in the 80s or 90s, where he had been erased from history.

Last I heard Cary Bates was hiding out in the desert ignoring his phone calls and wanting to have nothing to do with comics.  Don't know how accurate that was, though.

:s:

I actually was wondering how long a proper dvd set on the history of Superman would be.  If this is two hours, and exceedingly sparse, would a 10hr documentary be appropriate?  There are just so many facets of Superman that anything less would be cutting out essential parts of the superman mythos, history, and role in American (global?) culture...

Here's my problem: if it happened after 1978 or so, I probably don't care anyway.  Yesterday I watched the doc online, thanks to the link Rao provided, and I found myself really interested right up to the first Chris Reeve film (with my interest at a peak during the discussion of the George Reeves show).  After that it was all downhill: three sequels of rapidly diminishing quality, the Superboy TV show, Lois and Clark, the marriage, the "death", Smallville and then about 8 minutes of advertisement for the new film.  Almost none of which interested me then or now. Okay, I am interested in the new film, but this sort of "documentary" always winds up feeling more like an infomercial when they tack on the sales pitch at the end.

I find I'm really not interested in recent Superman history (by which I mean anything from the late 80s on), so a comprehensive, multi-disc set would really be overkill for me.  I'd bail out with about three discs to go, I guess.

Anyway, as far as the criticism that a lot of history was left out, my impression was that this was an overview of Superman as he impacted popular culture, not a comprehensive history of his life in comics.  Ultimately, Superman only shows up on the cultural radar when he's on radio, TV or film, and recently when he's part of an engineered marketing campaign like the wedding and funeral.  This documentary was made for the average Joe and not the regular patrons of "The Android Dungeon."

"Sniff." :cry:

Worst documentary ever!

http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2006_06_13.html#011630

Back to Evanier:

Maybe he just needs a good director.

:s: