Silver Age Continuity

[Permanus]

Totally off topic, doesn't this General Petraeus have a really good comic-book character-sounding name?

Yeah! I'm sure I remember him fighting The Fantastic Four in a special double-sized issue.

[nightwing]

Every time I hear "Petraeus" spoken by a commentator I think they're saying "General Betrayus", which sounds like one of those ridiculous names Jack Kirby used to come up with, like "Scott Free" or "Beautiful Dreamer."

"The Para-Demons knew where we were!  But how could they, unless...someone here is a traitor? But who?  Certainly not Lance Lionheart, or Percy Puresoul?"

"NO, fools!  I was I!"

"General Betrayus?  Not YOU!"

[Uncle Mxy]

Every time I hear "Petraeus" spoken by a commentator I think they're saying "General Betrayus", which sounds like one of those ridiculous names Jack Kirby used to come up with, like "Scott Free" or "Beautiful Dreamer."

"The Para-Demons knew where we were!  But how could they, unless...someone here is a traitor? But who?  Certainly not Lance Lionheart, or Percy Puresoul?"

"NO, fools!  I was I!"

"General Betrayus?  Not YOU!"

Co-signed! 

[JRJ123]

To be honest, I don't mind all these stories that seem to irritate all of you. But then, as I'm sure you've all noticed from the nature of my posts, few though they are, that I am a relative newcomer to the world of comics and I don't read too much into it (feel free to put me in my place as and when you deem it necessary). Having not been alive until 1988, I can't wax lyrical on all the relative merits of the Golden Age, Silver Age, Iron age etc. To tell the truth, I don't really know much about them apart from what I've read on Wikipedia or on these message boards. I just like the stories to be engaging (which I feel they are), and the artwork to be good (and some of it is truly incredible, like the current JLA comics, such as the one with the nightmare where a mass nuclear strike on every city sees all the superheroes except Superman die horribly, and the Earth explode when Superman flies away.). Don't judge me 

[VanZee]

The utter hubris to me is the refusal to accept that many fans of classic Superman appreciate the fact that they were meant for kids, were fun without intellectual posturing, and were NOT great literature and are NOT great literature today.

Perhaps the single most insightful comment on this message board.

There is the continuity imposed by editors and writers--continuity obsessed upon by fanboys--and there is the continuity understood by the casual culture.  Thus, even if an editor decides Superman can eat Kryptonite like candy, he will always be vulnerable to Kryptonite in the pop culture.  Solid writers build on that; slipshod writers diminish that.  Hollywood—that great calculator that reduces all equations to the lowest common denominator—"groks" the pop culture and delivers it in iconic form.

The appeal of these characters is they are inextricably absurd, running around in tights, cracking wise or melodramatic, expressing an ethos ultimately wacky but wonderful in its black/white simplicity.  The hubris is placing the angst of Hamlet in the mouths of wrestlers and rodeo clowns.