Superman Through the Ages! Forum

When Superman gets new writers they seem to always want to bring him back to his "golden age" roots.

My guess is that most comic book writers are fairly left wing so they want to use Superman as their mouth piece . I don't mind that sorta thing but only if you're the person who created the character! other wise it seems a tad forced

and while I like those golden age stories, their isn't all that much to them really. Plus frankly Supes comes off as a bit of a bully and that type of vigilantism is very much a part of the American psyche , its also profoundly anti-democratic

Politics of any kind are a bad idea, since you immediately alienate half your audience as soon as you choose a side.

Things were different in the Golden Age.  As far as Superman goes, one man's "social activist" is another man's urban terrorist.  Audiences were less sophisticated then and content with simplistic morality plays; "What if we had a champion to tear down those slums and throw the crooked politicians in jail?"  Of course the real-life answer, then and now, is that the government would drop everything to see Superman captured or destroyed.  And why not?  If a vigilante is a bad thing, then a super-vigilante is the worst.

Even if you accept that his behavior is "good" and that once he did it, everyone would be on his side, then again logically you have one path open to you; move on each month to a new city and do it all over again.  Cleaning up Metropolis won't help anything in Chicago or New York.  And if he really cares about "justice," shouldn't he care about enforcing it everywhere? Quickly the book becomes one about Superman's cross-country crusade to impose justice by force.  Then when his bullying has turned America into a Utopia, it's off to Europe, South America, the Middle East, etc to continue the crusade.  Of course in his absence, things begin to slide back in the States, so he'll have to come back and start the cycle all over again. 

The stories were fine for the time they were written for, and the children they were aimed at.  But they're like Dick Tracy; I love that strip, but there's no way anything Tracy does would stand up in court today, more likely he'd be kicked off the force for beating confessions out of suspects or use of excess force.  Last week I read a story where he got hit over the head with a telephone and when the tables were turned, he let his partner hold a gun on the perps while he beat the tar out of them as payback.  That stuff, like GA Superman, has to be viewed as a product of its times; it's fun, but you can't go back.
  

well supes comes off as a bully when he had limited powers
if golden age supes had his "normal" power levels then he'd basically be  a facist dictator!

Plus writers have a desire to go back to basics. But I liked all the "junk" that got added to superman. It gave him his own universe to play in and made him stick out a bit more from other heroes

If a writer gets rid of all his "junk' they are just going to add new junk anyways. Its not like every issue needs to be totally fresh

I could metropolis being a total dump when supes first moves there but after a year he turns it into silver age metropolis where he has plenty of free time to pull pranks on his friends. So take that Batman!! you never cleaned up gotham, ya chump!!!

plus why would I want to see a vastly powerful character beating up regular crooks??

and i liked colored kryptonite and super pets!!! so sue me

What's more, as we have seen, it's going to be all the old junk just slightly re-jiggered.  With the last reboot, they took away Kara, Krypto, Kandor, etc only to bring them all back in inferior forms.  Brainiac, Terra-Man, Prankster, Parasite, Nightwing and Flamebird...the most you could say about any of them, if you were generous, is that they were interesting updates to old ideas.  But is that the same as creating something new?  Not even close.

This, BTW, is where we get hilarious catch-phrases like "a fresh new take on..." 

Sorry, but "recycled" is by definition not "fresh."

I really do like the Golden Age Superman.
If you think that a man who breaks into a governor's house to keep an innocent woman from dying, who tears open a bank vault to save someone trapped inside, who stops a man from abusing his wife isn't heroic, then I must disagree.

Every version of Superman pales in comparison to the Golden Age man of steel, and if they actually try to take him back to that and succeed, then I heartily approve.

The thing is that I don't find a lot of good stories in comics these days for the most part. The modern approach seems to be, don't tell a story. Using comic book language, comic book motifs, is regarded as old-fashioned--or I don't know what the thinking is, but it seems like the writers are embarrassed to use the language that classic scripters and artists developed to tell a story with economy--so we don't have transitions through captions, exposition through thought balloons. The argument is that the artwork is supposed to do that--but really artists don't do a lot of story telling through their art these days--they just make pretty pictures. So you're never getting a really well told story. In fact, procedural TV crime dramas use the equivalent of classic comic book story telling techniques much better (montage shots, exposition, voice over--think of the typical CSI show which uses a series of shots to show how a piece of evidence is processed, which is the kind of thing you used to find in a good Bill Finger story).

So even if the modern writers were to take a classic Jerry Siegel story--they would strip it of all the motifs that Siegel and the artists handled so well. And instead of feeling like a full story that you could really chew on, the story would feel light and unfulfilling.

Modern writers don't seem to believe in the worth of the story as story. They seem to believe that readers don't want story, but rather some kind of spectacle. So for example, if you take the first Superman story (which was not even Siegel's best writing--he was capable of much better)--the whole story would centre around Superman getting really angry and threatening and that would be 'the story'--because this is always we're supposed to care about. There would be no transitions, just a jumble of scenes where the heroes and villains posture, and nothing would be accomplished by the end of the story.

They can't tell a story because a story has a start, a middle, and an ending.
now "stories" just go on and on and on forever.

Maybe they are better "artists" but they are worst "story tellers".

I'm not sure that Superman should go around threatening innocent bankers. Or just tossing around private citizens. People say they "softened" superman but it seems like he became a bit more mature. Plus I liked when supes would trick criminals into giving up.

Its sorta like a modern writer trying to do "golden age" wonder woman. It only worked because Marston was a bit of a weird guy (no offense). If they tried to do it again it would come off as "ironic" or totally miss the point.
or like when other people write Kirby's 4th world saga. When I read those stories its just like Kirby is writing down a dream he had the night before, I can follow it but its so personal that I don't see how someone could copy it without it falling into parody or it just being a boring superhero adventure.

same goes with golden age superman. The politics are a bit off sometimes (he destroys the projects!?!?what kinda person agrees with that, though I agree with the idea that the a bad enviroment can cause some kids to "turn bad")
I just feel we are going to get Morrison's politics wrapped up in Superman instead of Seigels original vision. Its not reassuring that Grant talks about how supes is a "socialist crusader". Ya because we all see how awesome socialism is plus Supes never seemed like that in the golden age. a populist? sure. A commie? I don't know.
You'd have to be either SUPER right wing to think he was a socialist because if he wasn't quoting Ayn Rand He'd HAVE to be a commie
or
SUPER Left wing where you have a wish fulfillment where you'd love to have the greatest american comicbook hero agree with you're politics.

Let's say I don't think it's terribly heroic to toss a guy into the air or dangle him by his heels from a great height until he agrees to sign a confession.  As crime-solving goes, it's pretty much the exact opposite of Holmes- or Columbo-like deductive brilliance.  It's also childishly simplistic and, after the tenth time or so, embarrassingly unimaginative.  And one would imagine that even in 1938 the courts would dismiss any confession signed under duress. 

I think Siegel's heart was in the right place, and I even agree it's thrilling, but ultimately it was an approach that had nowhere to go, and even before they changed gears it had already been tired for some time.

It would be kinda funny if Superman keeps on tossing these crooks into jail but they just get released because everything Superman did was totally illegal!!!

I can only really "buy" superman being that kind of bully if someone's life is immediatly in danger. Like the women getting the electric chair. He needed to stop that right NOW or she was going to die. Other wise he just seems like a deranged bully.

Plus at some point Supes would get the wrong guy and then its just him terrorizing an innocent citizen for no reason.

Reading the interview...


 ??? Does not compute.

Morrison needs to lay off the hallucinogens if he expects anyone to make sense of what he's saying.

That's true, and it gets on my nerves too... I just bought those stories from the nineties where Dominus alters reality to turn Superman into a 1940s two-fisted Nazi fighter. (http://superman.nu/tales2/thesuperman/) It's a great story, but in the third issue it starts going into another part of the story, and I just started getting first. Turns out I wouldn't be able to get the whole story without buying another like ten issues I don't care about. And even then, it came in from another set of stories and goes into another set of stories.

I appreciate what they're trying to do with that sort of thing. It's trying to be realistic. In real life, things don't have a beginning and an end all the time. Mostly they happen in the middle of something and as soon as it ends you don't notice 'cause you're already starting another chapter. I get it. It's cool.

It's just not as easy or fun to read as a simple one-shot to three-part story told over one to three issues.

I like those stories too- Superman disguising himself as "the old man of the sea" or something is definitely fun to read. And sure you can make the argument that he matured. But I think that the stories themselves were more childish by that point. There's a significant difference between a story for kids where Superman fights a criminal who turns out to be a public servant subverting the system for his own ends  and a story for kids where Superman fights an vaguely-defined group of "crooks" who somehow forgot where they hid their loot in the public museum and decided Superman could help them find it if they hold his buddy Kent hostage. Both fun? Naturally. But one of them is going to come across as sillier and more childish, and it's not the one where you say Superman has matured.

His reluctance to do that in later years is something that has been constantly criticized by people who think that corrupt businessman Luthor got away with too much. Had he just barged in there and slapped him around and all of Metropolis cheered, I doubt you'd be expressing the same concerns. I could be wrong. But I believe I am not. Because not only is Luthor a "villain", he's a famous "villain". But the private citizens you're talking about aren't villains, they're mostly just criminals. Is it against the law for Superman to manhandle them like that? Undoubtedly. But unlike what you said, he never threatened anyone innocent.

A little aside here: Marston wasn't a bit of a weird guy, he was a LOT of a weird guy. The reason people try to do Golden Age Superman and Batman but not Wonder Woman is because Golden Age Wonder Woman was BAD. Good enough to inspire good characters with the same names forty years later, but not good themselves. He used those comics as an excuse to throw around his sexual fetishes. I have no problem with it if he liked his wife to tie him up, or even if he wanted to write comics about it, but I cannot support him putting that sort of material into comics he was writing FOR KIDS. That is all I have to say on William Moulton Marston.

I understand. But by that logic nobody should have ever told a story about Superman except for Siegel and Shuster. Like the Fourth World, Superman is more powerful than his creators. To think that he wasn't going to be written by other is not sensible. If you're saying that it's okay to tell stories about him besides the original Siegel/Shuster tales because Superman changed afterword, then I am confused. Is he a different character now, one that was not created by Siegel and Shuster? Is he no longer Superman? You used the phrase "boring superhero adventure" to describe other people writing the New Gods. That doesn't seem too far off from what happened to Superman after his socialist crusader phase wore off.


He destroyed the projects because of reasons like the one you just said. Bad environments leads to bad citizens. Crime is caused by poverty. That's not politics, it's a statistical fact. Destroy that poisonous environment, get a new, better one built (which is what he did in that story), and the crime decreases. Sometimes criminals reform. Potential new criminal get education, become ordinary citizens, etc. Decent theory. I don't know that it's a bad thing they didn't get into all that in-story though. That might have made it too preachy. An excess of preachy makes any story dull. That's what's wrong with Grounded, anyway.

Socialism is awesome. Communism is not socialism.
Anyway, maybe we ARE getting Morrison's politics, but that's not the first time it's happened. Actually, that's been a trend since probably the Bronze Age. Superman is so aggressively apolitical because every writer wants him to be political, but they want him to agree with them. So instead, his politics are veiled, concealed in the story. For example. in "Must there be a Superman" he tells people who could really use his help dealing with their oppressors to bugger off and do it themselves, but he sure helps them rebuild after a natural disaster. That's pretty clearly representative of a conservative government. Was it supposed to be political? Probably not, but the author got his beliefs across and it seems pretty clear what they are. Every writer writes morality tales, but every writer has different morals.
Now the difference is that for the first time in a long time, Superman may return to being openly political rather then closet-political.

Reality is over rated. Especially when it comes to comic books. You have to wonder why some people are so intent on imposing reality on a genre that suspends the laws of physics.

But comics are like a three-legged stool. You need three legs to support them, or they just don't hold up. So some forms of reality need to be in a story otherwise it's almost incomprehensible. But it's up to the storytellers to select which legs of reality they are going to use to give their fantastical story some comprehensible support.

Existence may not conform to the boundaries of a story, but our human minds impose story elements on things. Or least many of us do--it depends how your memory works. If you have one of those memories that works best if you can put the framework of a story onto a sequence of random events, then it's easier to remember things. And this kind of use of story as memory was what got us out of caves and into over-priced condominiums.

There's something so satisfying about a story. It's hard to express just what that is, but you understand this when you encounter an unsatisfying story. If you've ever endured this experience, perhaps at a movie theatre after seeing a film that just ends without any satisfying conclusion, then you may have found yourself in the hours afterward reviewing the movie in your mind, trying to find something that will have made the motion picture worth your while, trying to extract a meaning and a conclusion from something that refused to deliver such.

We carry around these stories (much easier to transport in our brains now that they've been packed into stories rather than random moments) as we go through our daily life and they seem to help us interpret out reality. Funny that a story about Superman becoming Nightwing in the bottle city of Kandor can assist us in processing an experience at the supermarket check-out, or that Alice's odd conversation at the Mad-Hatter's tea party could actually be useful to us when dealing with a customer service agent over the phone--yet it happens.

With stories intended for children there are some stories that are garbage in/garbage out. I mean, if we sit a child in front of a TV and all that child sees are the really badly done television programs that seem to have been created with as little effort as possible (we can all think of some), then we shouldn't be surprised if we end up with a dull and stupid child. But many many children's stories have value--they usually have layers and layers of meaning, for both children and adults--if we take the time to examine them.

It's probably true that most of the people who wrote really good children's stories were weirdos. It's a bit careless of us adults that we entrust our children's minds to these corrupters of the innocent--but at least we end up with more original children. Maybe this is because few of use believe the world is sane and sanitary. We know it's messy, and those weird stories are a better way to cope with the world. Since children can't be encased in bubble wrap all their lives, they have to be prepared for the shortcomings of reality. It's the job of the parent to protect the child to some degree yes, but also to expose the child to reasonable amounts of danger, so that the child can and will protect itself physically and mentally as it goes on in life. We aren't always going to be there, so they need their own inner Superman or Alice who will come to the rescue when they are about to lose their minds and their grip.

After thinking about this a bit, I don't thing the changes in the "DC Relaunch" are going to be all that big.  It seems as if 99% of the history is intact, leaving me to believe that any changed in Superman are going to be superflicial, no pun intended.

DC is probably "testing the waters", in that they're letting the Siegels and their lawyer think they're going to change Superman drastically, to let them know if there isn't a settlement then they will.

If you look at Superman in Flashpoint we can see an alternate Superman which might be another DC warning to the heirs that they're prepared to alter the character if necessary.

The talk of going back to a golden age Superman probably won't amount to very much either. 

The 4th world saga (much like Wonder Woman) was such a personal work that its hard for another writer to duplicate it.
With Superman it seems like seigel just wanted to make a popular comic strip character and make money off it.
not that their is anything wrong with it. And seeing as Superman is still very popular and my favorite superhero I guess going about it the Siegel way was a much better idea.


Not to get political...but really? socialism isn't an awesome idea. its terrible.

actually No, I wouldn't be happy if Superman slapped around Lex.
its boring
Superman should only resort to violence when he had no other choice. He's SUPERMAN!!!! he's not some teenage bully who forces his will onto other people based on the fact that he's stronger then everyone else.

Its an incredibly immature thing to do. Sure pulling pranks on people isn't all that grown up either but I don't think he ever threatened innocent citizens to scare them.

Not to get political, but I think you misunderstand what is meant by socialism. Most western democracies use some of the ideas of socialism. Really state politics is just a mess of different economic and political theories all cobbled together in some effort to achieve consensus so a party can govern (which the current crisis in the United States demonstrates--if Obama can save the U.S. from defaulting on its debt and committing fiscal suicide, he will have done so by putting together a package that combines a little socialism with a little capitalism, a little liberalism with a little libertarianism). With so many special interests in most countries it's impossible to put into practice some pure theory of politics and economics.

Socialism isn't communism, you should remember. Socialism is in part the redistribution of wealth for the benefit of all--which is what governments do--they collect money through taxes and then redistribute it through services that deliver assistance to those in need. They even use tax money to assist business interests, in the hope that businesses will contribute to the good of the nation and the employment of its citizens.

I think this is what is meant by the socialism in Superman. He reflected the kind of concern for the average citizen that was a vital interest in the 1930s, because of the Depression. The American response to the impoverishment of his citizens was to introduce a socialist policy of assistance that helped the nation recover from the economic devastation it had endured. And a social safety net was put in place, in the hopes that such things would not happen again. Of course, because this was a political compromise, the social safety net may not have achieved all that was hoped it would.

the great depression lasted longer because of those very programs.

So no, I am not confused by what "socialism" is or what "communism" is. People can ACTUALLY disagree politically without one side being stupid. I disagree with plenty of people but I don't think the other person is dumb or "lack understanding" I just happen to disagree with them.

No offense of course IndiaInk.

Have to agree with Carmine on this one.  FDR's programs were a total bust (if well intentioned); it was the war that turned things around.

My problem with redistribution of wealth "for the good of all" is that at some point, somebody in a position of power has to make the call on exactly what the "greater good" is.  So far no politician has ever proven equal to the task, and human nature being what it is, I have no reason to expect any ever will.  I wouldn't have much use for a superhero who set himself as the final arbiter there, either.

Politics aside, the social crusader role for Superman just isn't going to work unless DC does a line-wide reboot. I'm sorry, but how is a story about Superman stopping war profiteers or destroying slums interesting or relevant when you have villains will the know-how and access to technology to create weapons that far surpass the destructive power of any device we currently have on the planet? With all of the blasted super-geniuses, technoconglomorates, and the maddening amount of advanced alien technology leftover from Rao knows how many alien invasions, DC's Earth should be 50-100 years ahead of us, yet it isn't.

DC wants to do social commentary with Superman? Fine, that's what Clark Kent and his job as a new reporter is for.

"But, that isn't as interesting as Superman punching the social issue of the day in the face."

Well, guess what, realism-wanting reader? The acting-without-thinking of the Golden Age Superman has the very real possibility of making the situation worse. Take the Golden Age strongman terrorizing the wife beater in Action Comics #1: what happens after the abuser gets out of jail? Louise Simonson dealt with this issue in Man of Steel #16, Superman later found the body of the abuser's wife in the city morgue. So, unless DC is going to take the leap of making Superman judge, jury, and executioner again; what's more effective? Superman beating the hell out of the guy or Clark Kent calling the police to deal with a domestic disturbance and taking a more thought-out approach to the entire situation?

Side-note: I believe MOS #16 was the 1st part of a two-parter with Dan Jurgens. Read more about it here http://www.supermanhomepage.com/comics/comics.php?topic=special-reports/dan-jurgens

Y' know those old Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams GL relevant titles just didn't sell and GL got cancelled back in the 70s and hard to share back pages from the Flash.

Reboots and relevancy don't last for the long haul.

It's not 1934 anymore. Nor 1938.

Shame all of the real creativity died with Mort and Julie -- and with them the SF writers who created myths not marketing gimmicks. 

Bleccch.........

Again. Perhaps, such was said in 1986, and yet I fail time and again to see it.

A new golden age would be nice of course.

I despise looking to the "good old days" with nostalgia and the recent past, present and future with disappointment, overlooking everything good about them.

Those GL comics you're talking about? They may not have sold well, but they're remembered thirty years later as being classics. They're decent stories too. Maybe a little preachy.

Those "myths not marketing gimmicks" were created to keep kids interested, by a man who had so little respect for his audience that they had the attention span of a goldfish. Weisinger said that. He thought kids had short attention spans, so every six months he'd introduce a new thing. Know who else did that sort of thing? The much hated Dan Jurgens, in the nineties. The gimmick marketer himself. I honestly enjoy some of those dark age 90s stories better than some (not all) of Mort's own gimmicks.

Weisinger was a bad boss, stifling his worker's creative talents. This is a well known fact. He also hated Superman. He was jealous of his powers, and eventually quit the job because of it.

Julie Schwartz was great. But it's not like he did things too differently from other hated people. John Byrne tried to lower Superman's power level and tell more character based stories. If that doesn't sound familiar, it should, Julie Schwartz did the exact same thing. The difference? Schwartz did it better. But don't try to claim he did something different that made him special, he just did it a different way.

Writers today are just as creative. In fact, they have to be more creative, because we expect constantly high quality stories. They don't always deliver. But sometimes they do. And on those occasions, it is VERY unfair to hold them up as inferior, just because it's not the sixties anymore.

As for me, I'm going to look at the future with a sense of optimism that Superman will actually get better instead of getting worse. Who knows? It could happen. :)

I don't know exactly why Mort Weisinger quit; I did read somewhere (I wish I could recall where) that he suffered a serious nervous breakdown in 1970, which perhaps not at all coincidentally was his last year as editor.

I'm a liberal (yes, even us leftys like the Man of Steel!), but even I'd rather see a more Bronze Age than Golden Age style Superman.

Though I recall even the Golden Age version eventually stopped being a vigilante (the earliest version) and became fully on the side of the law...

They're a LOT preachy.  Think "last few seasons of M*A*S*H" preachy.  They are at least pretty to look at, but that's about it.

O'Neil and Adams blame the poor distribution practices of the day for the cancellation.  Also I believe I've heard the ever-reliable "they banned it in the South" defense.  And in fairness, the whole reason they were allowed to do those stories was because the book was pretty much doomed already.


I've never heard that one.  If Mort was really jealous of a fictional character, I hope he sought mental counseling after his retirement.  But then, if he had a problem with Superman's powers, he was the one man on Earth who could have done something about it, so I doubt that's the way it went down.  Superman may have been the strongest character in comics, but he still had to answer to Mort, so tell me again who was most powerful.


Part of the problem is how you define "high quality stories."  Fans of modern comics ask for -- or at least accept -- standards fans of earlier periods would not have tolerated.  And yes, vice-versa.  If you look closely at arguments made on the Web, the bottom line is people are saying the old way or new way of telling stories is wrong, not the stories themselves but the approaches taken.  If a modern fan is opposed to the Silver Age approach, it doesn't matter how "good" the story is, they still won't like it, and the same with Silver Age fans reading modern tales (One side: "How can it be a good story when it has a dog in a freaking cape?"  Other side: "How can it be a good story when the 'hero' rips people's arms off?").  Similarly, I've heard people criticize TV shows of the 60s and 70s -- which I love -- as "too slow" to watch for an hour, and while I don't agree with them, I know where they're coming from when I watch modern shows, which are certainly faster-paced.  Not better, but faster, even too fast for those of us who grew up on something different.

So...for me a "high quality story" has a beginning, middle and end, preferably confined to one or two issues, and something interesting happens along the way that makes it worth my time.  Modern "decompressed" story-telling techniques make today's comics a hard sell for me, since extremely little happens in the course of an average issue, a full story may take six months to a year to unfold (longer when the creators can't meet deadlines) and I often get the impression no one went in with a plan.  The only way it really works for me is to "wait for the trade" and read the whole thing in one go, but even then I usually lose interest after 20 or 30 pages of story that, in the past, would have fit onto four or five.

Of course the other thing that lets me out is that 3 or 4 dollars for 22 pages of story -- decompressed story, at that -- is way more than I'm comfortable spending on something I get so little out of.


I hope you're right, for your sake and that of the kids of tomorrow, who deserve heroes, too.

But I have to say based on the pages that we've gotten a peek at so far, I don't share your optimism.

Yes, from what I have read, Green Lantern was apparently already in trouble when Schwartz decided to embark on a different direction in the comic with O'Neil and Adams, but it seems not enough readers cared for the new look.

The comparison with M*A*S*H isn't one I had thought of, but it is certainly apt. The earlier seasons of M*A*S*H are certainly much more enjoyable than the later generally heavy-handed, "message" ones, in my opinion.

You've really never heard that? Yeah, he actually was really stressed out all the time. It was realizing that the stress was due to his jealousy of Superman that he retired from his editorial position. He did seek help, though I'm not sure if he did it leading up to or after his retirement. Probably both.

And he did tone Superman's powers down, but not the way we usually think of that concept. It's my theory that it just didn't occur to him to let Superman keep his powers, but weaker. He made stories where Superman lost his powers entirely all the time, to bring him down to our level. He always got him back up to full, sun extinguishing Silver Age power.

But yeah, he was often verbally abusive to his writers and everything. Someone (I forget who) actually switched to Marvel after less than a week because Weisinger made him so mad. I'm surprised you hadn't heard of it. Sad but true. He did give us a bunch of pretty great additions to the mythos, but by most accounts I've ever heard, he was not a very good boss.


Part of the problem is how you define "high quality stories."  Fans of modern comics ask for -- or at least accept -- standards fans of earlier periods would not have tolerated.  And yes, vice-versa.  If you look closely at arguments made on the Web, the bottom line is people are saying the old way or new way of telling stories is wrong, not the stories themselves but the approaches taken.  If a modern fan is opposed to the Silver Age approach, it doesn't matter how "good" the story is, they still won't like it, and the same with Silver Age fans reading modern tales (One side: "How can it be a good story when it has a dog in a freaking cape?"  Other side: "How can it be a good story when the 'hero' rips people's arms off?").  Similarly, I've heard people criticize TV shows of the 60s and 70s -- which I love -- as "too slow" to watch for an hour, and while I don't agree with them, I know where they're coming from when I watch modern shows, which are certainly faster-paced.  Not better, but faster, even too fast for those of us who grew up on something different.

So...for me a "high quality story" has a beginning, middle and end, preferably confined to one or two issues, and something interesting happens along the way that makes it worth my time.  Modern "decompressed" story-telling techniques make today's comics a hard sell for me, since extremely little happens in the course of an average issue, a full story may take six months to a year to unfold (longer when the creators can't meet deadlines) and I often get the impression no one went in with a plan.  The only way it really works for me is to "wait for the trade" and read the whole thing in one go, but even then I usually lose interest after 20 or 30 pages of story that, in the past, would have fit onto four or five.

Of course the other thing that lets me out is that 3 or 4 dollars for 22 pages of story -- decompressed story, at that -- is way more than I'm comfortable spending on something I get so little out of.[/quote] Now, I've never had much respect for the type of 90s anti-hero who rips off his enemies arms, and I hold up Superman as the best of all heroes because he never kills, never really even hurts his enemies. And I've never had too much trouble with flying dogs in capes.

If I'm opposed at all to the Silver Age way of telling stories, I'm opposed to the dumbing-down it created to make it easy for kids to swallow without raising too many moral questions. Sometimes they ended up with a good story anyway. Not always. I am biased against the comics code, largely because I feel it knocked Superman down from being a more interesting character in the Golden Age into his pro-authority Boy Scout incarnation of the Silver Age. Sometimes they added great stuff into the mythos, sometimes they told good stories. Not always at the same time. It was still fun. I just prefer my Superman not to be Silver Age, compared to the Golden and Bronze age versions.

Funnily enough, I also prefer my stories to have a beginning, middle and end, and extend one to three issues. I don't always like the decompression fad either- I think it makes it harder to write, always having to extend every arc to be twelve issues. When it works, I think it works great, but that's not half as often as it should. I can read decompressed comics without any problem, but it's no coincidence that Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man, with it's one-shots on top of relationships that change over longer periods of time, is my favorite comic that I get regularly right now. I think we've got more in common than we do differences.

THIS seems to be our main difference, though...
I may not hate the pages we've seen so far, but I do think that Superman can be better than that.
And I hope he becomes better than that.
I appreciate that you hope I'm right, and I thank you.  ;)

That would have been Roy Thomas.  And I think it was closer to two weeks. But still. One of my favorite parodies remains Roy's "Stuporman" from Not Brand Ecch #7, featuring a scathing parody of Mort and his sycophantic assistant, a thinly disguised E Nelson Bridwell.  You can read it at my site here: http://supermanfan.nu/oddities/stuporman_1.htm (http://supermanfan.nu/oddities/stuporman_1.htm)

I'd certainly heard that Weisinger was a prize jerk and bully, pretty much the boss from Hell.  In fact the only fellow pro I've ever heard speak about him in anything close to civil terms was Julie Schwartz, his friend from childhood who followed him into pulps and then comics.  And even Julie said Mort was a shameless liar.  But this is the first time I've heard that Mort was jealous of Superman.  In fact, I'm not sure I've ever heard an explanation for why he left; it always seemed to be enough that he did.  You don't look a gift horse in the mouth.  Much as I loved the stuff that was added to the mythos during his heyday, he definitely overstayed his welcome.  By 1970 the books were just pitiful.