Superman Through the Ages! Forum

I haven't put all my thoughts to paper yet, but I maybe it might be good to talk about WHY Superman of different times is appealing or not, not just because of content, but because of the time and where the reader was at that time...

First off, I don't think its "relevence" per se, there are plenty of stories and story-telling methods that are still relevant when it comes to heroes that go back thousands of years...

I wrote a paper last year that began to discuss that very matter. It also dealt with how Superman's story is allegorical to the story of Christ, discussed how his story corresponds to Joseph Campbell's heroic pattern, and discussed how Superman in general appeals to people's subconscious psychological desires. It was 25 pages long (double space) so obviously I did not have the room necessary to truly do the thorough job with it that I some day hope to do.

Holy Crap!  :shock:

I myself wrote a 25-page paper on Dietrich Bonhoeffer...I'm not too interested in writing another one anytime soon.

The really sad thing is that I think that the current Superman is an accurate reflection of our times. God help us all.

But he wasn't in the atomic age, he was partially sci fi but hanging with Jimmy Olsen and Snapper Carr in the JLA...I guess, to me, above, and beyond the times...roles models are not realistic and we all abandon them, but its not there to start, now...

I hope not.

Things have always been bad, the difference now is that the Media is trying to profit off of it and exploited it as much as possible. Therefore, making things look a lot worse than they really are.


To keep things on topic, I wasn't even born yet during the 1950's, or 1960's, I was born during the late 1970's but I was too young to read yet. I grew up during the 1980's. I rarely got to read the actual comics (just some early 80's stuff and some of the big Vs books), my Superman growing up as a kid was the Movies, old TV show, Superfriends and Superpowers. I did read the Man of Steel series when it 1st came out as they were released, and I decided right there never to read another Superman comic again, since he wasn't really Superman anymore.

It was only years later, during the freaking Superman-Blue era of all things, that I got my 1st true taste of the classic Superman. I have been reading about the classic Superman, doing research, and it all sounded so darn cool, but DC REFUSE to publish those old stories other than a few TPBs and I couldn't afford them at the time. Anyway, DC made this super crappy Superman Blue Superman Red 3D comic that was pure crap, but I brought it anyway, since it included a reprint of the old 3D Superman comic. As soon as I read the story with Lex Luther trying to steal the sun, I was hooked for life and rediscovered Classic Superman. As I got to read more and more classic stories, I just was blown away by just how much better they were than the current terrible Superman comics.

I am SO sad you started in a way in the Superman Blue era...LOL... :D

But I guess one point might be that Superman does not HAVE to be a product of his time, he wasn't in the 60s when I grew up either...

LOL, well that was the only issue that I brought, and I sold it.



I just got it for the superman comic it came with, which I still have. I still have the glasses too, BTW. That comic is crazy cool with three stories.



anyway, Here is the story that made me a fan all over again:



http://superman.nu/tales4/stolethesun/

ME Lad -what about those darn hippies in the 70s that Dig,Dig,Dig? (dat water)!!



Im glad Beppo discovered the real SupermanBlue/Red HERE!

http://superman.nu/tales2/redblue/

(http://superman.nu/tales2/redblue/banner.jpg)



And as for me --I offically became a silverager myself this years which means I got to grok these goodies when they first hit!:s: :D

here it is:

(http://www.rollanet.org/~vbeydler/van/3dreview/3d-comic-superman.jpg)

Others stories included "The Origin of Superman!" from Superman No. 76, May/June 1952

and

"The Man who Bossed Superman!" from Superman No. 51 March,
1948


Note that none of them were Sliver Age tales.

That was only 8 years ago!  :shock:

Time is relatively you supersimian. Geez U should know THAT!;)

He didn't start to reflect current sensibilities until they did the first revamp in the seventies. I was born in the early sixties. My first exposure to Supes was issue #199, the race with the Flash. I was five and was out somewhere with my mom. I was acting like most five year olds do and she was desperate for something to distract me. She went to a newspaper stand (sigh) and bought copies of Superman, Batman and Justice League of America. We then went to Woolworths to shop. While she was looking at items, a guy came up and told her how well behaved I was. She turned around and there I was reading quietly. I was hooked. We actually shared comics for awhile. She liked the soap opera feel of Spider-man. Those were the days I tell ya...

The seriousness started to bother me in the 70s, we all know Supes was an unrealistic paragon of virtue, I liked him that way, he didn't need to be the "greatest unrealized Green Lantern" etc...I liked the Green Lanterns in their own right...

And the creation of way too many alternate Earths (I liked Earth 2, thought it was clever), to the point where Earth 1 wasn't Earth, but then people still don't like the TRS 80 comic (fun, and it involved Supes with KIDS, as it should be) -- "canon masters" can just call it an Earth 1 story that's not from our Earth...

But what world is the Hostess Twinkie world where heroes and villain can be controlled by sugary goodness?

Sugary goodness (amplified by the rays of a yellow sun) may trump heat vision...

I'm sure we could find many examples of Superman stories that reflected aspects of popular opinion and experience, for better or worse, throughout the canon.  After all, something made him popular.  

On the other hand, a top ten list of specific topical Superman stories would be fun.

My own experience of classic Superman?  I watched the Adventures of Superman in reruns in the early 70s as well as the Superfriends TV show --huge fan.  I saw the Superman movie at an impressionable age and around the same time was given Maggin's Last Son of Krypton (and later Miracle Monday).  I became obsessed with that book and plagiarized parts of Superman's near-death experience for a speech in grade-school.  I was unimpressed with the comics at that time, being mostly a Marvel kid until I branched out in the 80s.  I was fascinated by my friend's collection of Silver & Golden Age DC comics which I never got to really read.  I can't remember the first Superman comic I owned.  

In the 80s I read the Fleisher encyclopedias in my local library (my formative Superman experiences were mostly prose and video based, I guess) and would pick up the occasional DC book, although I tended to follow artists (like George Perez & John Byrne) more than characters.  Intrigued by the most arcane aspects of DC mythology: multiverse, Mr and Mrs Superman, Private Life of Clark Kent. It all seemed deliciously weird to an intimate of the Marvel universe.  Amazing Heroes issue devoted to Superman at 50 with Bill  Sienkiewicz cover laid it all out for me.  The good and the bad of Superman.  I ate it up.  Interest in superheroes culminated in late-80s with Crisis, and the usual suspects: Alan Moore and Frank Miller, and their disparate takes on the Man of Steel.  Fantastic figure of Charm and Innocence vs Fascistic Government Stooge.

Began collecting 70s Superman in early 90s.  Nowadays the Silver Age Superman universe holds a special place in my pantheon of great world art.  Relevance of Superman?  A touchstone of quality and inventiveness covering a 40-year period of western culture and children's literature.

As much as I admire Campbell's work, I think an analysis of Superman exclusively through Campbell would be incomplete because it would look at the story in terms of psychology and Jung and symbology, and so forth, while a character like Superman is the product of several writers working at a specific time, place, medium, and situation, and consequently looking at the time, place, situation, and medium may be more accountable for explaining why Superman is the way he is.

The danger of a "Hero's Journey" essay is that it makes analyzing works out to be a sort of Easter Egg hunt, cherry-picking details to fit the pattern. Campbell creates a formula, and with archetypes that are by definition vague, all you have to do is plug new numbers into it.

I think it might be too much of a stretch as well, but its also true that many myths and religious texts are the result of many different perspectives (in effect, writers or story tellers) over time, see the Bible or the Iliad (written long after the fact and actually mixing in heroes from before and after the time in question)...

I didn't exclusively use Campbell's hero work. I also compared Superman directly to Achilles and Jesus, and once again that was only just one part of the paper that I admitted was pretty shallow to be able to fit on just 25 pages and appeal to a broad audience who would not have been familiar with the Superman story and mythology.

the original costume?

http://iconcreationsart.homestead.com/files/Golden_Age_Statue_sketch_full_size.jpg



ultimate superman?

http://superman.nu/ultimate/usuperman.jpg

I don't know about the current supes being a times reflection but....
Notice how many people are getting married due to the spread of hiv and aids among the swingers. So more people are getting married and going MOnogamous.  clark kent finally married Lois Lane after a long courtship!
There are other reasons too why monogamy has come back into fashion.