I'd buy this comic, but ONLY if it was Superman punching Pat Boone in the face over and over.
You know, Rock n' Roll was actually kinda cool once. Why must Whitey ruin
everything? (Except of course, for Elvis and the Stones. And even Elvis, like Bill Clinton, is an honorary black man).
REVENGE IS LIFE!
DEATH TO PAT BOONE!
That guy?
Are you sure?
Okay, in the interests of fairness, Otto Binder is probably not 100% responsible for the direction Superman took in the 1950s, with its emphasis on unchangeability, stories centered around a temporary gimmick like Superman briefly turning old or Jimmy Olsen transforming into a genie, and sitcom-esque plots with Superman's secret identity. Editorship had a lot to do with it; Bill Finger for instance, wrote vastly different work for Superman than he did under other editors.
(Though Bill Finger got a few Superman stories that weren't based on the usual fifties nonsense, like "Superman vs. the Futuremen," my old pal Richard Levins's favorite story. It featured villains actually central to the plot, adventure/science fiction elements, Superman using his brain for something other than tricking his friends, and in general was much more reminiscent of the Mac Raboy FLASH GORDON comic strips of the same era.)
And yes, there are a few Otto Binder stories that I do like: for instance, the original "Kryptonite Man" tale, but the reason I like this one is because it is so very UNLIKE Binder's usual output: it was a story centered around a charismatic central villain, Luthor (not an interchangeable gangster who wants to take advantage of Superman now being rainbow colored or half-ant or whatever), and has the adventure/science fiction tale be the MAIN story instead of a secondary story to provide momentum for whatever the gimmick is.
You mean the same Otto Binder who created Supergirl,
Four things:
1) Supergirl's best stories would come under much better writers later on, NOT under Binder;
2) Supergirl is such an obvious idea to do that I'm not sure how much credit to give ANYONE for her "creation;"
3) Supergirl, as she was initially envisioned, was a pretty lousy idea. "Linda Lee?" If she's Superman's cousin, why doesn't she have Kent in there somewhere? Oh, that's right: the L.L. thing, which became tiresome around the time when cavemen drew Superman comics on cave walls. The point here is, Supergirl was not incorporated into Superman's life at all; it took later writers to make her something less than an afterthought, and naturally the first thing to go was the orphanage and the LL name.
4) Actually, the example of Supergirl proves my point. The reason she is so famous is because unlike all 500,000 of Binder's stories, he didn't excuse her away with a lame gimmick. He didn't have "Supergirl" actually be Lois Lane in disguise trying to trick Superman into revealing his secret identity. It's telling the very first thing Kara said in that debut story was "Look again, Superman! I'm REAL!" Well, imagine that! Something real actually being introduced!
Streaky the Supercat
If it was his idea, he should be brought up for war crimes.
And even the best Streaky story, "Revolt of the Super-Pets," was by Jim Shooter, where Streaky actually had a personality: vain, interested in creature comforts, and prestige.
...and what IS Streaky's gender, anyway?
the Legion of Super-Heroes,
Well, I'll be a three-eyed Kryptonian babootch, he DID technically create the Legion, didn't he?
Like Supergirl, all of the great Legion stories were written by other people (ahem, Hamilton, Shooter, Bates, Levitz), not Binder.
Ideas are nothing Execution is everything. Yes, the Legion concept was fascinating and had promise even in the FIRST appearance, but it was the imagination of fans, not what was on display, that aroused curiosity. In other words, the reason the Legion was popular was because fans were more creative than Binder was.
As time went on, Binder's style of storytelling just wasn't appropriate for the Legion. Quick Legion trivia: what story followed after Jim Shooter's immortal Sun-Eater and Adult Legion tales? Was it another classic tale of the Legion vs. a grandiose, incredible villain?
No. It was an Otto Binder tale called "The Six-Legged Legionnaire" featuring Lana Lang as Insect Queen, and an unmemorable villain named Oggar-Kan who was never seen again. Instead of Legion heroism, except for some cool shapeshifting by Chameleon Boy, it was all about Lana saving the day by turning into various insects. It was quite clear from this story that Binder's creation outgrew him: it didn't feel like the Legion story at all.
same Otto Binder who brought Captain Marvel to the highest heights of Greatest?
Man, you KNOW what I'm going to say here.
Here's how I feel about Captain Marvel: take every objection I have to Superman in his worst decade, the 1950s, and multiply it times a billion.
Captain Marvel was the wrong comic to become the blueprint for Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman the 1950s. The pulp-era grit and haunting, weird adventure spirit that typefied the Golden Age hero strips was flushed down the toilet in service of intelligence-insulting, ridiculous whimsy.
People think only Batman was adrift at this time. But almost every criticism of Batman at this time could also be leveled at Superman, too: he was so caught up in using his powers to teach Lois a lesson that he forgot to, y'know, fight
villains.
Fighting actual villains! What a concept!
Thank Vishnu that Gil Kane was doing Westerns, Kubert was doing war comics, Kirby was doing monster books, and Julie Schwartz was starting his sci-fi inspired books like FLASH and ATOM, because otherwise this whole decade was a washout for superguys.
Similarly, the plan of Superman (in the story where he thinks he's dying of Virus X) to melt the Antarctic ice to make room for future human development. Though these stem from a pre-modern-ecology-movement point of view.... :-)
Oh my God, YES! Glad to see I'm not the only one that thought that was an insanely bad idea. "Let's melt the ice caps by creating a second sun!"
Apart from the large-scale ecological insanity, could you imagine a world without night? Sure, crime would decrease but the suicide rate would quadruple!
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