DC's attitude adjustment and long live the Classic Superman!

[Captain Kal]

Captain Kal,

The evidence to support Clark's growing powers over time is still in MOS#1.  Clark didn't start flying until he was 17-ish, remember?  And he was definitely older than 8 when he looked into the next room and found Ma's purse with his x-ray vision, no?

It's not baseless, and there is evidence to support it.  Again, how many football seasons could Clark have participated in in high school?  If he won the last 5 games for the team, SOLO, that would still be a minority in the season, and more than enough to only start raising eyebrows then.  I appreciate your attention to detail.  

Given all that is actually stated during Byrne's run in MOS and elsewhere, Superman does not appreciably lose his stored power for any period less than three days. Nothing in canon supports the baseless speculation that his younger self ever had bouts of losing power in shorter periods. Indeed, Jor-El did state that the yellow star would make Kal-El grow ever more powerful. Speculation only counts if some evidence exists to support it. It fails even more if evidence contradicts it.

I don't believe that it was ever clearly stated that he had bouts of losing his powers per se.  I am merely looking at it from the standpoint of what a rechargable battery can do.  It stores energy just fine as long as it is plugged in.  However, it doesn't store energy nearly as well if you're using it at the same time.  Now, if the energy is low to begin with, and you use energy while it's charging, you could run into problems.  This on top of the fact that as he gets older, his body should be able to store and process the energy more efficiently (one would think.)  Putting this all together should reasonably support what you may claim to be a "baseless speculation."

Furthermore, if you want to take it one step further, the powers would never necessarily disappear per se, but the power levels would fluctuate.  I don't think that THAT is too much of a stretch.....

Jmr72777,

The issue isn't whether Clark's powers grew or not.  The issue is that no canon evidence exists that he ever used up his powers faster when younger than when older.  He never suffered a power failure until the Post-Byrne stories Doomsday and The Final Night.  The only evidence we have is the number of powers and their power-levels increased over time; he was always getting stronger in one way or another.  The evidence for your speculation is nonexistent therefore it's a baseless speculation.  That's equivalent to making it up.

[DoctorZero]

It was really a shame that they discarded all those stories way back when.  Hopefully the attitude readjustment will continue.  They literally threw the baby out with the bathwater when they redid the legend, in my own opinion.

[Super Monkey]

It was really a shame that they discarded all those stories way back when.  Hopefully the attitude readjustment will continue.  They literally threw the baby out with the bathwater when they redid the legend, in my own opinion.

To quote Alan Moore :

"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."

[King Krypton]

My problem isn't that Byrne rebooted Superman. It's that he went about it the wrong way.

Superman, to my mind, works best as a man of two worlds, Krypton and Earth. He embodies the best qualities of both but can never fully belong to either. This has been done to great effect in the Reeve movies and on the the WB animated show. Byrne's decision to make Krypton as horrible a place as possible so there would be no attachment to it whatsoever gutted the character, to me. Without that love and respect for his heritage, what is Superman? Just a Joe Average in tights, another Peter Parker. The grandeur and sense of being more than just a Kansas boy was deliberately gotten rid of. In its place we got a farm boy who would never grow away from that old mindset, and who had every reason to hate where he came from. For being so quick to bash the earlier Superman for being too Kryptonian, Byrne sure wasn't shy about plunging Superman into an equally harmfull opposite extreme.

The Luthor revamp was interesting at first, but over time, and especially in the last decade, it proved to be a creative dead end. Over and over again, Luthor was made so untouchable that he could never be exposed or defeated, and any exposure was blamed on evil clones and the like. He never grew or evolved as a character, and he ended up being really boring and static. And time and again, Superman was made to look stupid by never being able to expose Luthor. It's like DC didn't want to be bothered with growing away from the original Byrne setup. They just wanted to stay stuck in 1986 at all costs, and it was reflected in the stories.

The revamps of old characters was just pathetic. The assembly line of Supergirls has been hopelessly convoluted and hard to keep straight, especially the Byrne Supergirl. Brainiac started off with the stupidest of new origins and became another convoluted, confusing mess. The assembly line of disposable Bizarros, ending with the bizarre fantasy-made-flesh we now have? Worthless. The various General Zods from Byrne onward? Gimme the movie Zod any day; the post-Crisis comics versions are stupid beyond belief. And don't get me started on the two Kryptos....

And ultimately, the biggest problem I have is that Byrne made a point of sucking all the epicness and scope out of Superman. The stories, right from day one, were so down-to-earth that there was rarely ever any sense of lift, of greatness. Occasionally there've been some Superman stories that are truly great and worthy of the character, but they're the exceptions, not the rule. More and more DC opts for overwrought soap-opera contrivances. Like making Lois a blackhearted, emotionally abusive spouse who treats Clark like garbage and is always ready to walk out on him for no reason whatsover. Like giving Clark job woes and having Superman such a whiny, self-doubting loser that he has to seek therapy because he can't cope with being a superhero. Like piling on a mountain of dead-weight supporting characters whose sole purpose is to disguise the fact that Superman himself is being badly written. Like sticking the books in an "all-event, all the time" format where shallow, short-term gimmicks are what drive the series. And so on. DC doesn't WANT to write good Superman stories. The minute you get a book like Birthright that DOES try to bring back the greatness of yore or a book like Matt Wagner's Trinity that shamlessly depicts Superman as the herpoic, inspiring man of two worlds he's supposed to be, DC does everything possible to pretend those projects don't exist and leaves them to rot, supporting the latest regurgitated tripe instead. They really don't get Superman; all they care about is staying stuck in 1986 and that's that. What did they take from Birthright? Krypton's design scheme. They didn't even try to look at the richer persona Waid gave Superman. THe commanding, assured Superman of Trinity (the best post-Crisis Superman story to date)? DC wouldn't be caught dead using that treatment of Superman. They're too busy using angst-consumed Peter Parker-Lite.

A couple years ago, I read Alan Moore's Supreme TPBs, and I was shocked by them. Even though he was using a Superman analogue, his stories were genuniely, truly Superman, with updated takes on the classic characters that truly worked. Had Superman been rebooted in that fashion in 1986, the character would almost certainly not be in the hopeless mess he's in now, and the books would have been better off in the long run. Instead, after the dual failures of two miniseries that deserved far better fates, we're all pinning our hopes on All-Stars Superman to save the day. But again, I have to ask: What guarantee is there that DC will learn anything from it?

[NotSuper]

My problem isn't that Byrne rebooted Superman. It's that he went about it the wrong way.

Superman, to my mind, works best as a man of two worlds, Krypton and Earth. He embodies the best qualities of both but can never fully belong to either. This has been done to great effect in the Reeve movies and on the the WB animated show. Byrne's decision to make Krypton as horrible a place as possible so there would be no attachment to it whatsoever gutted the character, to me. Without that love and respect for his heritage, what is Superman? Just a Joe Average in tights, another Peter Parker. The grandeur and sense of being more than just a Kansas boy was deliberately gotten rid of. In its place we got a farm boy who would never grow away from that old mindset, and who had every reason to hate where he came from. For being so quick to bash the earlier Superman for being too Kryptonian, Byrne sure wasn't shy about plunging Superman into an equally harmfull opposite extreme.

The Luthor revamp was interesting at first, but over time, and especially in the last decade, it proved to be a creative dead end. Over and over again, Luthor was made so untouchable that he could never be exposed or defeated, and any exposure was blamed on evil clones and the like. He never grew or evolved as a character, and he ended up being really boring and static. And time and again, Superman was made to look stupid by never being able to expose Luthor. It's like DC didn't want to be bothered with growing away from the original Byrne setup. They just wanted to stay stuck in 1986 at all costs, and it was reflected in the stories.

The revamps of old characters was just pathetic. The assembly line of Supergirls has been hopelessly convoluted and hard to keep straight, especially the Byrne Supergirl. Brainiac started off with the stupidest of new origins and became another convoluted, confusing mess. The assembly line of disposable Bizarros, ending with the bizarre fantasy-made-flesh we now have? Worthless. The various General Zods from Byrne onward? Gimme the movie Zod any day; the post-Crisis comics versions are stupid beyond belief. And don't get me started on the two Kryptos....

And ultimately, the biggest problem I have is that Byrne made a point of sucking all the epicness and scope out of Superman. The stories, right from day one, were so down-to-earth that there was rarely ever any sense of lift, of greatness. Occasionally there've been some Superman stories that are truly great and worthy of the character, but they're the exceptions, not the rule. More and more DC opts for overwrought soap-opera contrivances. Like making Lois a blackhearted, emotionally abusive spouse who treats Clark like garbage and is always ready to walk out on him for no reason whatsover. Like giving Clark job woes and having Superman such a whiny, self-doubting loser that he has to seek therapy because he can't cope with being a superhero. Like piling on a mountain of dead-weight supporting characters whose sole purpose is to disguise the fact that Superman himself is being badly written. Like sticking the books in an "all-event, all the time" format where shallow, short-term gimmicks are what drive the series. And so on. DC doesn't WANT to write good Superman stories. The minute you get a book like Birthright that DOES try to bring back the greatness of yore or a book like Matt Wagner's Trinity that shamlessly depicts Superman as the herpoic, inspiring man of two worlds he's supposed to be, DC does everything possible to pretend those projects don't exist and leaves them to rot, supporting the latest regurgitated tripe instead. They really don't get Superman; all they care about is staying stuck in 1986 and that's that. What did they take from Birthright? Krypton's design scheme. They didn't even try to look at the richer persona Waid gave Superman. THe commanding, assured Superman of Trinity (the best post-Crisis Superman story to date)? DC wouldn't be caught dead using that treatment of Superman. They're too busy using angst-consumed Peter Parker-Lite.

A couple years ago, I read Alan Moore's Supreme TPBs, and I was shocked by them. Even though he was using a Superman analogue, his stories were genuniely, truly Superman, with updated takes on the classic characters that truly worked. Had Superman been rebooted in that fashion in 1986, the character would almost certainly not be in the hopeless mess he's in now, and the books would have been better off in the long run. Instead, after the dual failures of two miniseries that deserved far better fates, we're all pinning our hopes on All-Stars Superman to save the day. But again, I have to ask: What guarantee is there that DC will learn anything from it?

I agree 100% with EVERYTHING you said--you said it all.