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Author Topic: Superman is vegetarian, right?  (Read 24934 times)
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Aldous
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« Reply #8 on: September 30, 2006, 09:21:19 PM »

Quote from: "Continental Op"


I'd be more interested in those gorgeous Oksner women...
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Uncle Mxy
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« Reply #9 on: October 01, 2006, 02:34:53 AM »

Quote from: "Permanus"
I rather like that take; it gives him a dimension he didn't have before. Writers (or more likely, editors) never seem to like having Superman espouse a certain cause because they don't want to alienate any readers. I suppose vegetarianism is something nobody can really object to.

If you're wanting to do a marketing agreement with McD's or KFC for the next Superman event, you don't want Superman coming across as some vegetarian.  It's not like The Simpsons where you can attack other names to meat products because Lisa is a vegetarian.

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1970s Clark's taste for beef bourguignon was probably a bit of a fashion thing, when you come to think about it. It was such a mainstay dish at dinner parties back then, rather like when fondues enjoyed a brief but baffling trend in the 1980s. Anyone over 40 probably owns a fondue set that hasn't been in use in twenty years somewhere in the back of their cupboard.

You know that beef bourguignon was a euphemism, right?
Is vegetarian Mark Waid's secret code for virgin?  Smiley
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TELLE
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« Reply #10 on: October 01, 2006, 03:37:32 AM »

The idea of a connection between a code against killing and not eating (or pretending to eat) meat, let alone the idea of Superman being a vegetarian, would have seemd ludicrous to the writers and editors of Superman.

Of course, many of these men were well educated and had at least a nodding familiarity with people like Ghandi and Bernard Shaw so who knows?  (There was also the example of Hitler.)

For myself, I became a vegetarian out of late-teen self-righteousness and have stayed one for years out of habit.  One can imagine Superboy having a similar experience (at least, I like to imagine myself as Superboy, buzzing around my room  Cheesy )
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Great Rao
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« Reply #11 on: October 01, 2006, 04:20:15 AM »

Quote from: "Super Monkey"
Quote from: "Continental Op"


case close!  :lol:

Beppo, you keep wolfing down those sacred cows and I'm going to have to start in on the monkey-burgers...

S!
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"The bottom line involves choices.  Neither gods nor humans have ever stood calmly in a minefield forever.  Good or evil, they are bound to choose.  And when they do, you will see the truth of all that motivates us.  As a thinking being, you have the obligation to choose.  If the fate of all mankind were in your hands, what would your decision be?  As a writer and an artist, I've drawn my answer."   - Jack Kirby
Permanus
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« Reply #12 on: October 01, 2006, 09:03:18 AM »

Quote from: "Uncle Mxy"
You know that beef bourguignon was a euphemism, right?
Is vegetarian Mark Waid's secret code for virgin?  Smiley

Oh my word! I didn't know that!
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Uncle Mxy
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« Reply #13 on: October 01, 2006, 12:42:20 PM »

Pre-Crisis, beef bourguignon was an implied reference to this classic scene:

http://superman.nu/Maggin/lois2.php

and "doing the nasty", so to speak.  I learned what beef bourguignon was because of reading references to it in Superman comics.  I assumed it was Julie Schwartz's favorite food or somesuch, was slack-jawed to find out the hidden meaning many years later.  

Post-Crisis, Loeb reintroduced it as Superman's secret code phrase for informing Lois that he was ok, and undoubtedly as a nod to Maggin.
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Gangbuster
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« Reply #14 on: October 02, 2006, 05:01:17 AM »

Quote from: "TELLE"
The idea of a connection between a code against killing and not eating (or pretending to eat) meat, let alone the idea of Superman being a vegetarian, would have seemd ludicrous to the writers and editors of Superman.

Of course, many of these men were well educated and had at least a nodding familiarity with people like Ghandi and Bernard Shaw so who knows?  (There was also the example of Hitler.)

For myself, I became a vegetarian out of late-teen self-righteousness and have stayed one for years out of habit.  One can imagine Superboy having a similar experience (at least, I like to imagine myself as Superboy, buzzing around my room  Cheesy )


I think that religion played a part in this oversight. Gandhi was a vegetarian because he was Hindu. I'm a vegetarian for only part of the year, and in the case of Superman's caretakers, they were mostly Jewish. So while Superman probably wouldn't be seen with a giant hambone in his mouth, or eating enough bacon to feed an army, beef would be perfectly acceptable, (though cheeseburgers wouldn't.)

It is an interesting quandary, though. Many meat-eaters support the Endangered Species Act, so the idea of Superman moving and preserving the species of tree is a bad one. However, in my thinking fighting evil also means noncooperation with an evil system...so if Superman really did believe that animal life was sacred, then he should not have cooperated by eating meat. However, that type of Gandhi-ish thinking probably did not enter into the equation in the minds of Superman's Jewish (and later Methodist) writers.
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« Reply #15 on: October 02, 2006, 10:19:16 AM »

Still, now that I think of it, I prefer to imagine Superman/Clark faking everyone out, only pretending to eat meat and maybe regurgitating it later somehow (maybe the same way he uses his super-breath or swallows explosives?) or using a sligh of hand to hide it in his napkin, etc.  This allows him to enjoy the taste (we know he has a sensitive taste --he can enjoy Lois' vanilla lipstick or spices from Oric).

Superman and trees have alot in common and many of his best friends are animals (Krypto, Beppo).
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