Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Who are the big villains that Superman faces off against, in "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?"

We've got Lex Luthor and Brainiac, sure. That's to be expected.

But the other people? Mxyzptlk. Toyman. Metallo. No surprises so far.

But wait!

Moore throws in the Legion of Super-Villains. But not even the big-ass Legion of Super-Villains that Paul Levitz used barely a few years before in the first issue of his baxter paper series that had Sun Emperor, Chameleon Chief, Spider Girl and Micro Lad. It was the classic, Siegel Legion of Super-Villains:  Chemical King, Saturn Queen, and Lightning Lord.

And the Kryptonite Man. Nice of Alan Moore to give a big role to somebody like that, but  it's very odd he'd be such a big shot in this story.

This is my big problem with Alan Moore's Superman: his vision of the character is time-locked in the sixties. And this wouldn't be so bad, ordinarily: sometimes ideas are fresher if you put them on the shelf for a little while and take them off. I really love how Busiek was going for capturing the spirit of the Satellite Years in his recent JLA, for instance.

But there's a difference between digging up old ideas and trying to recapture a certain age's spirit...and xeroxing that period pointlessly to the point where it ignores everything that happened in the interim.

Yes, yes, I know Vartox and Kristen Wells had cameos (where incidentally, they didn't even deliver dialogue), and Moore also briefly mentioned Perry White's marital problems, but still. Krypto? Jimmy Olsen becoming Elastic Lad? There's much more of the Weisenger era in this story than any other. In fact, with the exception of little details like the preence of Jason Todd, nearly all of Moore's stories could be set in the Silver Age with a minimum of details being changed about.

I can only thank the God of Comics that John Byrne never got an opportunity to publish his mutant massacre story, which would involve hundreds of X-Men dying except (coincidentally) more or less the original five X-Men. It's also a good thing that Byrne was pulled off AVENGERS WEST COAST before he could have the Scarlet Witch rejoin the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Characters are more than just what they are in their first appearance, and it's tragic Byrne had to ignore everything done with the Vision, where he gradually gained and learned emotions and a wife and family...only to remove it all from the character.

I never thought I'd ever compare Alan Moore to John Byrne, but there you have it. It was the wrong choice for John Byrne to ignore all the Roy Thomas stories where the Vision discovers his humanity just to get the Avenger back to where he was at his first appearance, and it's wrong for Moore to pretend the seventies and eighties never happened in SUPREME and his Super-Tales.

There's a difference between trying to envoke the spirit of a specific period (as Morrison does) and to diss by omission, which Moore does. In SUPREME, Alan Moore's wish-fulfillment fanfic about sixties DC Comics, except for a Neal Adams/Dave Cockrum style flashback sequence, Supreme is absent for the entire 1970s and 1980s "lost in outer space." Even the characters in the STORY say "Nah, those decades were pretty forgettable."

As a fan of the Bronze Age as well as the Silver Age, a period that has Englehart, Bates and Gerber, all writers that at their peak were arguably more talented than Moore is, I find this chilling absence to be irrational.

Nothing pisses me off more than some punk Kyle Rayner fan slamming Hal Jordan by saying that "the REAL Golden Age is when you are twelve." In other words, trying to make your real, meaningful preference as being nothing more than nostalgia...and thus an emotional and irrational choice. It's like saying "oh, you're just saying that because you're a (fill in the blank)."

But still, I can't help but wonder if this argument is appropriate at least when applied to Alan Moore. Why should sixties Supreme be King of all Supremes everywhere, anyway? When Batman daydreams about the woman he's married to in SUPERMAN ANNUAL #11, it's to Kathy-freakin'-Kane. Screw all the women that have popped up in Batman's life since the sixties: Silver St. Cloud, the Daughter of the Demon, his on-again, off-again heat with the Catwoman...after the incredible heat Bats has had with all these dames, having his dream life be with KK is not only inappropriately regressive, but also pretty STRANGE, too.

Suprema, the Supergirl analogue, is the worst example of what I'm talking about. Astoundingly, she has such a regressive characterization that she bears almost no resemblance to the character she's patterned after, because the point of divergence between Supergirl and Suprema is so early. Think of it as if the Vision never fell in love with the Scarlet Witch...and so was never really accepted by others nor achieved love or a desire to be human. The departure happens so early on that this Vision is almost a totally different character.Likewise, Supergirl became independent and well-adjusted enough to be okay with occasionally being openly sexy. Suprema is a frightening prude.

And finally, while I'm turning this sacred cow into hamburger, Moore's Superman stories are hardly airtight or perfect, and have really terrible holes in them. It would require a post this size to talk about them all, but it's enough to point out that the guy wasn't perfect. For instance, in ANNUAL #11, he had Superman be the cynic about a beloved planet he always idealized, and he had Batman be dewy-eyed and optimistic. He got their characterizations reversed, there. Also, there was the appalling ending to that issue of SUPREME where Supreme is facing Gorrl the Living Galaxy.

As far as awful, barely understood endings go, this one ranks up there with SUPERMAN II.

GORRL: I will destroyeth thee!
SUPREME: Your people are out there, Gorrl. You are beautiful and must run with them.
GORRL: Okay!

And it was over. JUST. LIKE. THAT.

Don't get me wrong, I like the guy, but Alan Moore wasn't perfect by any means.

Hmm...interesting perspective.  You may be right that Moore's too reverential of the 60s stories, but then I am too, so it doesn't bother me so much.  ;)

I think "Whatever Happened" gets off the hook, though.  The point of that story was to provide a coda to the whole pre-Crisis mythos and like it or not, almost everything of any lasting importance to that mythos came from the Weisinger era.  The 70s gave us the elimination of Kryptonite (soon reversed), the dimunition of powers (quickly ignored), Clark's move to TV (a pretty cosmetic change, and one reflected in the story anyway) and not a whole heck of a lot else.  Julie Schwartz may have downplayed a lot of the Weisinger era baggage, but it didn't eliminate it.  Kandor, Krypto, the Zone, etc were all there, always waiting to be used in some way should the need arise. So when Moore set out to "wrap up" the mythos, he was bound to bring up that stuff that happened to be invented in the 60s, because that was the stuff that mattered, the stuff that was still around and in play and unresolved. 

On the other hand, I agree it makes no sense that Batman would dream about marrying Kathy Kane, since Batman's best days were NOT in the early 60s, and he'd moved on in ways Superman never did.  I guess it MIGHT work if you believe Bruce felt some responsibility for Kathy's death.  That way, paradise to him would be a world where not only his parents but also Kathy were still alive and happy...and marrying Bruce would definitely have made her happy.

Nobody as to be perfect Julian, but i always thinked that"Wathever happened to the man of tomorrow" was the last goodbye to the Superman version that,like it or not,as worked better and added so much to is mythos than any other,so when Moore was asked to write this last respect he choose to work with,and this is still my opinion, the best part of the fictional life of the character. 

I applaud Moore's selection of villians for "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow" and I thought it clever that the "annoyance" villians were used early as more deadly than they used to be.

I was especially glad he left out Terra-Man, the Purple Pile Driver, and the Whirlicane... ;D

I'm sure I once said I thought the "Sand-Superman Saga" was far superior to "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?"

And I'm also sure Super Monkey had the temerity to argue with me.  :o

I don't think Moore's brief in "Whatever Happened..." and "Supreme" was to encapsulate Superman's entire history up to 1986. As Nightwing notes, "Whatever Happened" was a tribute to the Weisinger era more than anything; "Supreme", as I see it, is a commentary on the revamp of comics characters, Superman in particular.

Obviously, Moore preferred the Weisinger comics, and probably knew more about them, too; he was born in the 50s, after all, and I don't suppose he read that much Superman from the 70s on. If he'd been ordered by the editors to cram in a lot of stuff he didn't know about or have any feelings for, the stories would have suffered as a result. It's a reflection of his personal taste, and that doesn't mean he misunderstands the character. You can say what you like about "Whatever Happened", but at no point does Moore make fun of the mythos: he even gives Jimmy and Lana their powers back, and plays it straight. The story works best if you place it in its context (i.e., Moore saying goodbye to the old character before Byrne's act of rape), but in my view, it works perfectly well on its own, provided you know a bit about the history of the character.

In fact, Moore's understanding of Superman as a character is better shown in his DCCP Superman/Swamp Thing story, in which Superman is lethally infected by a Kryptonian virus for which there is no cure. His powers fluctuating, he crawls off to die, neither as Superman or Clark, but hiring a car under the name "Cal Ellis", as if he was finally allowing himself the possibility just to be himself in death.

Moore's written plenty of stuff I don't like, but on the other hand he's written enough stuff I do like that it more than makes up for it; his Superman stories aren't among his best writing, but they're pretty durn strong. Yes, they're about his personal take on the character, and yes, that take is basically rooted in the 60s, but I don't think it's fair to criticise his Superman stories because they don't include everything you like in them, any more than it would be for me to criticise a baker for putting nuts in a cake on the grounds that I'm allergic to them.

That was a good debate, hope its still archived here somewhere... :)

nightwing:

If, as you say, you're reverential towards the Weisinger era, then you already had your "coda" from Dorfman, Swan, and Klein, viz. "The Amazing Story of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue".

Yes, but you are not insane and going to start a new thread next month about how Alan Moore was the best Superman writer ever.  ;)

I still haven't read WHTMOT :'(

It is part of the TPB DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore which goes for $13.59 at Amazon, it also includes the rest of his Superman stories.

I love Superman in the sixties too. This is why this topic is such a thorny one for me: 1) I do love the period Moore likes and I feel somewhat guilty attacking him for using elements from a period I enjoy, 2) Moore as a writer can write about whatever he wants,  and 3) I really do like Moore as a writer (mostly - which is what this thread is about, anyway).

Essentially my problem with Moore is, he is elevating a period of the character of Superman that was in many ways, very atypical...as being the entirety of who Superman is, both in his true-blue Superman stories and in Supreme, and that strikes me as being dishonest.


For the sake of argument let's say that statement is true (though I'd dispute it - so much of the Weisenger era stayed in the Weisenger era, and furthermore there's a difference between great ideas and not knowing when there's too much of a good thing).

If Alan Moore wanted to do as you say and bring to a close things of lasting importance to the mythos, instead of an exercise in sixties fetishization like I say... why the hell would he make the Kryptonite Man such a big player?

This also doesn't account for why Moore used the Legion of Super-Villains as they were in their first appearance instead of any of the subsequent rosters. Hey, he didn't even use any piece of LSV characterization post-sixties: like for instance, the fact that Saturn Queen was one of Prince Evilo's ex-wives. It is THAT that is unprofessional and regressive.

If Moore wants to use the LSV as they were in their first appearance, bully for him, I say. In fact, considering the LSV's time travel powers, their Silver Age-era characterization may be the only truly regressive element that truly makes sense. The LSV can pop to the end of Superman's battle anytime, maybe even after that fake kangaroo court the villains hold for him. But combine that original roster of the LSV with appearances by Silver Age Legionnaires (what, he couldn't get permission from Levitz to use Wildfire and Blok or something?) and Jimmy Olsen being Elastic Lad and you get something that disses by omission.

I honestly want to sit Moore down with some Len Wein tales with Chemo, or that Cary Bates story where Superman fights Weather Wizard, and say, "Look, you limey beardo, just read these. And if you don't like them...I promise, I'll get ketchup and eat them right in front of you."


This exact same argument could be made of the Weisenger period as well. In fact, much more of the Weisenger Age stayed in the Weisenger Age, than Schwartz-era stuff stayed in the Schwartz era. Some of the stuff Uncle Morty and his boys threw out stuck (different colored Kryptonite, Kandor, Brainiac) but an overwhelming amount of it didn't and just was never mentioned after a certain point: when was the last time anyone used the Phanty-Cats after 1970, for instance? Zha-Vam? The Flame Dragon? Hercules and Sampson? Mynah the Super-Bird? The Kryptoniad? The Jimmy Olsen Fan Club? King Krypton? The duplicate world of Krypton filled with robots? The asteroid that resembles Lara and Jor-El? Lois and Lana getting powers? Jimmy Olsen transforming in a non-ironic way?


Moore brought in sixties stuff for his stories because Moore loves the sixties.

I'd agree with you here if not for the fact that Moore really DIDN'T resolve the plot elements that mattered with his "Whatever Happened..." He didn't talk about Kandor or the Phantom Zone. He gave closure to the story of the Kryptonite Man, Elastic Lad, and Lana Lang getting powers - in other words, the epitome of jettisoned Weisenger baggage, instead of a lot of the stuff that Uncle Morty brought in that stuck, like the Phantom Zone.

Incidentally, if you read that "Tomorrow Stories" issue where the First American fights Dozier D. Daze, the evil nostalgist, and then read his SUPREME - the bitter, unintentional irony becomes almost physically painful.

I don't have a quote handy or anything, but Moore has certainly gone on record in interviews as being slightly regretful of his participation in the revamping of comics in the 80s, and a lot of his more recent work often appears to express a wistful nostalgia for the comics of earlier eras (his porn stuff with Melinda Gebbie notwithstanding) - look at Tom Strong, for instance. He clearly reveres the innocent and wonderful world depicted in pre-70s comics, and nowhere did this come through more clearly than in Miracleman, where the superhero, who is the only beacon of hope in the drab, pessimistic days of Thatcherite Britain, ultimately reshapes the world into a bright, four-colour reality.

Far be it for me, of all people, to criticize a man for changing his mind about something important!

Though Allen Moore is successful at capturing one element of the pre-1970s comics world when he puts his mind to it: the creepy vibe that permeates even "innocent" stories.

The SUPREME story for instance, where "Radar the Hound Supreme" (ha!) looks like a cute story about flying puppies taking dinosaur bones from Museums...but it's really about a dog discovering sex.

Then there is his 1963 Horus tale, where he tells a swinging, Lee-Kirby type tale all the while doing jokes about how Horus's mother and father are also brother and sister...

Speaking of ABC, he has remade a Bronze Age Superman story, "The Man who Murdered Metropolis!". So it's not like he is completely avoiding that age, but he could if he wanted too. There is nothing that says that he must deal with that age.

about "Whatever Happened..." :

Originally presented in Superman# 423 and Action Comics #583, September 1986

http://superman.nu/a/History/whatever.php

Maybe because the "saintly" Bates and Maggin did the same thing...

http://superman.nu/tales2/whotook/4/

Very intersting take on Alan Moore's Superman stories. I think it's not only a thing of personal tastes, but of personal believes e worldview as well. After all, he's the writer of Watchmen, the deconstruction of the american superhero mythology. As I understand it, Alan Moore sees the 1960's Superman as a kid stuff that he likes to play with, but not what he believes in. That's because, even when he is doing "retro superhero" stuff, he still can be considered a cynical. He certainly knows about Elliot S! Maggin and Cary Bates Superman... he just doesn't agree with them on how to make Superman relevant. He woudn't have written "Must there be a Superman", or "Superman 2001". So, the Weisinger Era, yes, he loves it and like to pay homage, as a cool superhero of the past, but the Maggin/Bates is on the opposite direction of what he thinks of getting serious with his superheroes.

Instead of putting thoughts (as if anyone could really knows what goes on in there) in Alan Moore's head and words in his mouth, I rather let him tell it:

Alan Moore, writer of Supreme and Tom Strong, on DC's 1986 Superman re-boot:

"Superman himself seems to have been a bit lost for a number of years, it's not the character I remember. What made the character appealing to me has been stripped away in a tide of revisionism. Given that I was somebody who sort of helped bring in the trend of revisionism in comics, I've got to take some of the blame for that. But it seems to me that there might have been a case of the baby being thrown out with the bathwater with the original Superman."

"What it was with Superman was the incredible range of imagination on display with that original character. A lot of those concepts that were attached to Superman were wonderful. The idea of the Bottled City of Kandor, Krypto the Superdog, Bizarro, all of it. These are fantastic ideas, and it was that which kept me going back each month to Superman when I was ten. I wanted to find out more about this incredible world with all of these fascinating details."

http://superman.nu/a/moore.php


From a great interview nearly all about Watchmen from TwoMorrows:

CBA: You're writing super-hero comics again.
Alan: My super-hero comics are very different, I think. After I finished doing Watchmen, I said that I had gotten a bit tired of super-heroes, and I didn't have the same nostalgic interest in them, and that's still very true to a certain degree. Even if I was actually writing for DC Comics again (and I often read Superman), I haven't got any interest in Superman now. I'd gotten interested in the character when I wrote it, but it wouldn't work for me now—the characters are different, the whole world is different. [laughs]

CBA: But you were able to purge yourself pretty quick, right? You didn't write that many, maybe four or five Superman stories?
Alan: And that was enough. Those were ones I wanted to write, but since then, most characters have changed so much that they no longer feel to me like the characters I knew. So, I wouldn't have that kind of nostalgic interest in those sort of characters anymore. At the time, I was also saying I didn't feel that if there was some strong political message I wanted to get over, probably super-hero comics were not the best place to do it. If I wanted to do stuff about the environment, that there didn't need to be a swamp monster there, for instance. When I did Brought to Light, about the CIA activities in World War II, that story would not have been greatly enhanced by a guy with his underwear outside his trousers, you know. And also, there did seem to be a rash of quite heavy, frankly depressing and overtly pretentious super-hero comics that came out in the wake of Watchmen, and I felt to some degree responsible for bringing in a fairly morbid Dark Age. Perhaps I over-burdened the super-hero, made it carry a lot more meaning than the form was ever designed for. So, for a while, I went off to do stuff that was very non-super-hero, and going into other areas I was interested in.

The super-heroes I'm doing now are not carrying strong political messages, and that's intentional. They're entertainment, and I think there are very few genres actually as entertaining as the super-hero genre. And entertainment can be emotionally affecting and intelligent, but I don't really want to lecture in the same away I did when I was younger. I'm not trying to break or transcend the boundaries of mainstream comics, because mainstream comics is in pieces, you know?

CBA: Well, you're about the only one left standing, I would think. [laughs]
Alan: There's no point in trying to transcend the boundaries of something that's already shattered, you know? [laughter] The thing to try and do is to surely try and come up with a strong form of mainstream comics, with some occasionally transcendent elements, but not, "Let's smash the envelope!" Perhaps I have more of a constructive approach than deconstructive.

full interview here: http://twomorrows.com/comicbookartist/articles/09moore.html

The CIA did not exist during World War II.

This may be a transcription error in the interview; Brought to Light isn't about the Second World War at all, but concerns the CIA's involvement in Vietnam, Iran-Contra, etc. Odd.

Ah, but that's what they want you to think!

Alan Moore
knows the score...

According to Wikipedia, the CIA was founded shortly after the end of WWII.  Many former Nazi operational agents were granted exemption from any future prosecution in exchange for them becoming the first CIA agents.  So in a sense, what later became the CIA did exist in WWII - just not in the United States.

The creation of the CIA was opposed by the U.S. Military, the State Department, and the FBI.

Well, yeah, but Brought to Light still isn't about WW2!

"What later became"?  "Not in the United States"?  That doesn't make any sense to me, Rao. The CIA was not formed until after WWII, and I stand by my original statement.

On an unrelated note, much of the "Wikipedia" ought to be taken with a boulder-sized grain of salt.

Permanus:

Noted already!  ;D

The WWII predecessor of the CIA was the OSS, or Office of Strategic Services.  It was founded in 1942, and disbanded a month and a half after the war ended.  But almost immediately thereafter President Truman established the Central Intelligence Group, the immediate predecessor to the CIA.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Services

By the way, while the Golden Age/Earth-2 Superman might not have worked with the OSS, I believe Wonder Woman did in the first seasons of the Lynda Carter TV series, and so did the Earth-2 Diana in the Wonder Woman comics published during the TV series run.

For what it's worth, Wonder Woman worked for Army Intelligence in the first season (set in WWII), then in later seasons jumped ahead to the 70s, where she worked at the fictional Inter-Agency Defense Command.  There were plenty of fictional intelligence agencies around in the 70s, including Oscar Goldman's Office of Scientific Intelligence.  A pretty dumb name, but not as dumb as putting Steve Trevor in any job that involves "intelligence."

I think one of the reasons why the CIA had so many opponents early on is that it was set up in such a way that it doesn't really answer to anyone, be it the Pentagon, the President or Congress.  That was as scary a notion then as it is now. 

Everytime I think of the WW II OSS I STILL get reminded of the "OSI", I had no idea the "Six Million Dollar Man" had that much influence on me... 8)

 
Face it, SMDM had a huge influence on anyone old enough to remember it.  To this day I still run in slow motion while making funny noises.  Granted, that has more to do with joint issues now, but in my heart I'm still Steve Austin!

Bring back leisure suits! 

I just double-checked my dog-eared old copy of "Cyborg" to find that Steve as originally created worked for the OSO or Office of Special Operations.

The TV show did have a big influence on all of us. In its heyday it was the highest-rating TV show in the world, wasn't it? Full credit to Lee Majors.

The OSO acronym appeared in the first TV movie, as well.  Steve's boss in that outing was a real jerk named Oliver Spencer, played by the great (and sadly late) Darren McGavin.  Spencer treated Steve as government property and wasn't very sympathetic at all to his depression over becoming half-machine (a neat subplot dropped after season one).  Interestingly, McGavin gave Spencer a cane and a limp, which supplied a neat subtext to the whole thing (ie: maybe he's jealous of Steve's prostheses?).  At the end of the film, he asks Dr Wells whether they could just put Steve to sleep and store him somewhere until the next assignment.  :o

By the time of the second movie, if memory serves, Oscar Goldman was in place and the name was changed to OSI.  (In the novel, I think Goldman was just a middle-management type and not the director).

Blast it, why isn't this show on DVD?!?!?!

Well, anyway (cough!), Brought to Light isn't about WW2.

But it is on DVD, Nightwing. I have rented the whole first season on DVD from my local store. The set included "The Six Million Dollar Man" ("The Moon and the Desert" pilot film), both subsequent TV movies (which I don't like), and all of the first season episodes from "Population: Zero" onwards.

Yes, I know the pilot film well as I have watched it recently again. I think one of my earliest memories is sitting down with my Dad to watch the new "Six Million Dollar Man" TV show. Those were the days. That regular opening sequence still sends a thrill down my spine every time I see it. I thought Steve was pretty darn cool in those days! I think Lee Majors did a top job and the success of the show is thanks mainly to him. I also think his charisma and good looks held the whole thing together long after it descended into outright nonsense.

Actually most of the opposition came from other agencies jealously protecting their "turf", such as military intelligence services and the FBI.  (J. Edgar Hoover didn't care for the OSS, either.)

Pity we never had a "Wonder Woman" and "The Bionic Woman" crossover -- one wonders if there was any interdepartmental rivalry between IADC and OSI.  Or perhaps due to a bureaucratic snafu, BOTH agencies send their top female agents undercover to the SAME case -- without knowing of the other's involvement!   :o  Hmm... Jaime Sommers was a professional tennis player, and her skydiving accident probably made the newspapers.  It probably wouldn't take Diana long to figure out that Jaime was fitted with bionics.  But would the Bionic Woman discover Diana Prince's secret?   ;)

Aldous writes:


Alas, it's not available here in Region 1.  I know it's been out in the UK for some time (and, I gather from your post, available to Aussies and Kiwis as well), but here in the States it's still a no-show.  Universal won't give any answer as to why, although speculation has ranged from legal issues (like the also AWOL "Batman") to waiting for a movie tie-in (though the Jim Carrey movie now seems, mercifully, dead).  Two years ago they circulated a brochure that suggested Steve and Jamie would both show up on disc, but there's been no news since then.

I'm half tempted to buy one of those multi-region players just so I can buy a Region 2 or 4 copy of SMDM off eBay. 

And what do you mean you didn't like the second two TV movies?  What's not to love about wannabe James Bond movies made on a $20 budget?  And that groovy Dusty Springfield version of the theme song..."The Six Million Dollar MAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!"

Oh well, lots of weird stuff going on in the DVD market.  I understand fans in England can't get the Avengers!! :o

dto writes:


It wouldn't take a bionically-enhanced ear to hear that explosion every time Diana twirled around in a locked office!  :D

I remember being a bit disappointed that they saddled Diana with a "secret agent" gig in the later seasons.  That made it seem like just another SMDM wannabe, like "Gemini Man," "The Invisible Man," "Man From Atlantis" and all those other "James Bond with superpowers" shows from the 70s.

Plus, you've gotta wonder how Diana Prince would ever get top-level security clearance when, by all rights, there should be no record of her birth, education, previous employment or even American citizenship.

Or maybe that would make you the ideal spy.  Hmm....

Two things:

One: Yes, Kryptonite Man does make appearances in the 1970s and later. But KM was only a regular part of the scenery of the Superman book, and a niche in the Superman world, in the decades prior - which makes his big role an idiosyncratic and rather inappropriate choice, considering the kind of story "Whatever Happened..." was supposed to be.

Two: Relax - nobody's attacking Superman in the sixties. Okay, think of it like this: I love the "Cap's Kooky Kwartet" Era of Avengers a great deal, when the Avengers were just Cap and three reformed super-villains. However, if a contemporary writer wanted to replicate the Quartet era dynamic, he wouldn't be able to because all the characters have moved ON since then: Hawkeye has since been LEADER of his own Avengers team. He's not going to fight with Captain America or be a hothead. Scarlet Witch is a powerful, confident woman and no longer a doormat, and Quicksilver realizes this and he no longer is obsessively protective as he used to be. Further, Wanda's been married...she's pretty much gotten over her cute little crush on Captain America, and Hawkeye and the Scarlet Witch are now just really good friends. I love this era, but it would be thoughtless and dumb to attempt to duplicate it.

That's my big problem with Moore's Superman proper stories. My problem with SUPREME is the above-stated disses by omission.

My point was that Maggin and Bates picked very similar criminals, Moore couldn't use Amalak (dead), and he didn't use Parasite or Terra Man, but otherwise the list of Superman's greatest foes was the same for "Who Took The Super Out of Superman?" and "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" without the inclusion of the original (and true  ;D ) Legion of Super Villians in the former.

>>
Plus, you've gotta wonder how Diana Prince would ever get top-level security clearance when, by all rights, there should be no record of her birth, education, previous employment or even American citizenship.


At least in the Golden Age, Wonder Woman got her secret identity/job/etc. from a lookalike woman who was named Diana Prince and worked for the military, who wanted to move to South America to be with her fiancee; Wonder Woman simply stood took over for the Latin-America-bound "real" Diana Prince. Not sure if the same situation happened on Earth-1 or not...

Nightwing: 


Johnny Nevada: 


Yes, that was my understanding too, that Diana took on the identity of another (real) woman who was out of the country; very much like The Shadow & Lamont Cranston I suppose.

dto:


I very much doubt my bourgeoning hormones could have coped with Lynda Carter and Lindsay Wagner on the screen at the same time............  :o  :P  ;D

You're being a little unfair, my friend. Once you have a TV character with super-powers, what are you going to do with them? Gemini Man, week after week, could act out the fantasies of adolescence, like creeping into women's change rooms or pinching bikini-clad bums on the beach (maybe the footprints in the sand could create some dramatic tension). The Man From Atlantis, finding himself short of a bob or two, could get work for a fishing company as a tracker, but after several weeks (minutes?) of deep sea fishing scenes, it might all get kind of boring.

However, I have to admit, I haven't seen those later episodes of "Wonder Woman". I rented the DVD set (nostalgia, you understand), and when I watched the pilot episode I was amazed what a gorgeous creature Ms. Carter was in that get-up, but found the story weak -- although fun and watchable. The first episode proper I thought was awful, and it went downhill from there, and I returned the DVDs unwatched for the most part. An awful series that doesn't hold up at all, unlike some of those 70s gems.

Aldous writes:


Yes, but you don't have to work in the spy angle, do you?

As you say, a superpower is meaningless without some crime or other to fight, and so the challenge becomes how do you get the hero onto the case?  With the James Bond angle, it's easy...M calls him and says, "Here's your job, get to it."  I can see the appeal.  But it's not the only way to go.

Simon Templar was a roving adventurer who seemed to find trouble wherever he went.  Usually it was handled well enough that it worked.  Batman, like Bond, was called to action by an authority figure but managed to keep his freelance status and, in the process, a bit more mystique than a company man like Bond.  Superman had his super-senses "on" all the time so he detected trouble anywhere in the world, 24/7.  The JLA had its satellite monitoring system, and so on.  Or you could do like the Equalizer or Paladin...just take out an ad in the paper and wait for the calls to come in!

In that regard, I have some respect for the "Hulk" TV show, which was at least "original" enough to rip off "The Fugitive" instead of Steve Austin.  Banner went from town to town and seemed to stumble into trouble wherever he went, with McGee a step behind him all the time.  (One thing always puzzled me, though...why did he leave whatever town he was in at the end of each episode, never to return?  The logical thing would have been to lay low until McGee left, then resume his identity in town.  Most of those places were so rural and quiet that the odds were very much against anything else ever happening dire enough to trigger the Hulk transformation).

Even Steve Austin didn't totally work as a spy.  For one thing, the show was too cheap to fully exploit the potential for international travel.  But a bigger issue was Austin's celebrity.  As an astronaut who had actually walked on the moon, he was a pretty poor choice for undercover work.  Also, his bio was so over-the-top only a 9-year-old like me could swallow it...test pilot, astronaut, superhero and secret agent all in one. If he'd only been a billionaire like Bruce Wayne, it would have been a complete package.


There are actually some folks who prefer the later episodes, but I'm not one of them.

I agree the pilot movie was much better than the rest of the series, and Lynda looked better.  She had a bit of "baby fat" or something that I really missed later on.  The great thing about Lynda was that she could wear that skimpy get-up and seem totally innocent and sincere.  There wasn't even a hint of the seductress about her, which of course made her seem twice as desirable. 

A highlight for me was the moment when Wonder Woman bursts in on the nest of Nazi spies and they all open fire on her in deadly earnest, except for Red Buttons, who already knows bullets won't stop her.  He goes through the motions of shooting at her, but the whole time he's rolling his eyes as if to say, "oh, yeah, like this is gonna help."  ;D

Grumble grumble Bought to Light humph humph World War Two.