Tagged: Superman

Jen Krueger: Hating Superman

Jen Krueger: Hating Superman

I’m going to preface this week’s column by saying I’m going to express what I realize is a very unpopular opinion.

I hate Superman.

I don’t mean that I hate one of the movies, or one of the TV shows, or a particular run of the comic. I hate the character of Superman, because I find him boring.

For me to be interested in a superhero, the hero has to be flawed in some way. Iron Man has been my favorite hero for some time because of how deeply troubled Tony Stark is, from the narcissism and egomania that get him into tough spots, to the self-destructive tendencies that emerge when he’s forced to face the fact that he isn’t perfect. To be the hero he wants to be, he must grapple with a dark streak inside himself, and watching that internal battle is a thousand times more compelling to me than any external battle Iron Man engages in with an antagonist. And even when I am watching him take on a villain, Iron Man doesn’t really prevail because of the powers of his suit. Everything hinges on the man inside the suit using his advantages to the best of his ability, and that ability is sometimes compromised by the man himself. At the end of the day, Iron Man doesn’t even matter as much as Tony Stark, whose flaws have given him a complexity that makes him matter a great deal to me.

Superman, on the other hand, is basically perfect. Sure, there’s a type of rock that makes him physically weak, but to me that’s about as interesting a flaw for a hero as a gluten allergy. But even putting aside his ridiculous physical attributes, Superman continues to be about perfection. His biggest problem is that no one could possibly understand his infallible and unwavering goodness, and that he’s so benevolent he can’t help himself from dedicating his life to protecting the human race. He may brood alone in the Fortress of Solitude, but when all of a character’s contemplation stems from how hard it is to deal with being so darn unflawed, there’s neither complexity to that contemplation nor capacity for change. And while Tony Stark is sometimes Iron Man, with Superman it feels much more like Superman is sometimes Clark Kent. Stark is a person who is humanized by his flaws, but Superman is an alien who sometimes masquerades as a normal person. If Superman will always be Superman, and Superman will never be wrong, I don’t care about watching him fight villains because his external conflicts are no more interesting than that of any other hero, and almost any other hero will have an internal conflict to bring to the table as well.

But why is it that flaws and the internal conflict stemming from them are what make a hero interesting in the first place? Because those are the things that move characters from people I can sympathize with to people I can empathize with. For a long time, I wasn’t a fan of Captain America because he struck me as another hero who is little more than the embodiment of good poured into a red, white, and blue costume. But once Captain America was brought to present day and had to contend with being a man out of time, I was completely engrossed. Trying to find a place in a world that has so greatly surpassed the core beliefs around which his whole identity had been built is an internal conflict rich enough to make me care for Steve Rogers, and more importantly, it invites me to put myself in his shoes by making him vulnerable in a relatable way. I can imagine how he feels because his emotional struggles are universal even if his specific circumstances aren’t, but I can’t say the same about Superman since he has little to no emotion to struggle with.

At this point, I suppose it’s only fair for me to point out there’s technically one incarnation of Superman that I do like, but it’s one so markedly different from any other representation I’ve seen that I honestly don’t think of it as the same character. Mark Millar’s Superman: Red Son imagining a world in which Superman fell to Earth in Soviet Russia rather than the U.S. manages to put aside the hero’s perfection by making Superman a tool in a society he wants to actually belong to. Instead of willfully holding himself apart from humanity, Red Son features a Superman who recognizes he’s a cog in a machine and yearns to be something more. Reading Red Son was the first and only time I’ve seen a Superman with that kind of emotional depth and realism, which makes it the first and only time I’ve ever felt I could relate enough to what Superman was feeling to care about him.

Dennis O’Neil: They Say It’s Your Birthday…

Julius SchwartzSome 75 years ago I stuck out my head, decided I didn’t like what I couldn’t quite see yet, and protested, but it was too late to go back and so I’ve been occupying space and respirating ever since.

Think 75 is a big number? Well, my component atoms popped into existence at about the time as the Big Bang, when it all began, and that was 13,798 billion years ago, give or take (and what’s a billion or two among friends?). Now, that 75 seems pretty tiny, doesn’t it? And, matter of fact, it is.

For 49 or 50 of those years, I’ve been involved in what was once a backwater of American publishing, comic books. My timing was pretty good. Roy Thomas brought me into the business just as it was emerging from a decade of disrepute, during which its continued existence was in doubt. But first the late Julius Schwartz reinvented a few once-popular superheroes and, a little later, Stan Lee concocted a new approach to writing comics. Then Roy, and Steve Skeates, and I came to New York, young guys who had grown up reading and liking the kind of fantasy-melodrama that comics purveyed, and the business evolved around us. I can’t speak for Roy or Steve, but I wasn’t thinking of a career, and that was probably sensible since no career path existed in the world of comics. I was just doing a kind of nutty fiction writing and putting food in the mouths of those who depended on me and that was pretty much that.

We’re still here, Roy and Steve and I, and so is the business.

But it’s not exactly the same business. Even those who were taking comics seriously weren’t predicting what they’ve become. The look of the product is different: the pages slicker and fewer per issue, the art style showing influences that weren’t available a half-century ago. The vocabulary is sophisticated, and the themes either more mature or more adolescent, depending on your sensibility. Comics’s usual form, the complete-in-this-issue story, is odd and rare.

Imagine that, you gentle and kindly millennials…no continued stories! And more than one story per issue! And text stories with nary an illustration in sight! And half-page humor strips!

AND…all in color for a dime!

Then, there are the movies. Oh,yeah, Hollywood had been borrowing material from comics since the early 40s and after the first big budget Superman flick in 1978, it was possible to anticipate more superdoing at a theater near you. But I doubt that anyone predicted superheroes becoming their own genre, a first cousin to science fiction but, nonetheless, their own thing, and that they would dominate summer entertainment. Cinema technology evolved in tandem with the ever-more-mature costumed good guys resulting in a near perfect marriage of form and content. We sure didn’t see that coming.

What next? Well, given everything in preceding paragraphs, you’ll pardon me if I pass on prognosticating.

Marc Alan Fishman: Wanted, Dead or Alive … Not Both.

Wolverine Potato HeadSo I guess when the AV Club is reporting on the future death of Wolverine, the cat is out of the bag, eh? In yet another PR stunt, the mainstream comic houses show their full hand in hopes mega media attention will somehow garner a boost in pulp sales. I’m reminded of that saying concerning the definition of insanity. And surely this is a topic we, the snarky columnists of any number of media outlets, have covered… well… to death. It’s still worth another look though, so indulge me, kiddos. It’s time to beat a dead horse.

Isn’t it a shame when the knee-jerk reaction of your most dedicated fan-base upon hearing about the death of a beloved character comes with an audible snicker and eye roll? Suffice to say when I’d read the newswire piece it didn’t come as a shock, as much as a continual reminder that my favorite medium was often regarded as kitsch. And truly, no other medium comes to mind – save perhaps for soap operas or pro wrestling– where the announcement of a significant loss bares no bitter fruit as much as it comes complete with scoffs from the peanut gallery.

Wolverine to be stripped of his healing factor and killed. Peter Parker’s mind is destroyed, only to be inhabited by Otto Octavius. Batman banished forever in time by the impact of some Omega beams. Superman dead. Thor dead. Professor X dead. Steve Rogers dead. Jean Grey dead. Colossus dead. Hell… Bucky Barnes dead. Phil Coulson dead.

Feh, I say. Feh! In each instance of the leaked announcement, I immediately retort “…until sales drop, or a movie comes out.” And if you’re a betting man, you’d be smart to go all in each time. I think though, that ranting and railing against something you could count on as easily as the tide coming in, is a waste of negative feelings.

What sits at the root of all of these stabs into the mainstream ether is the soul-crushing realization that our beloved cape-and-cowl crowd are all for-profit entities, each built to harness the dollars and cents of a loyal customer base that has proven more often than not to continually purchase product even while loudly protesting it. Simply put, one need not sweat the wrath of the fanboys and girls until they leave you high and dry at the checkout counter. And as attendance at comic conventions continue to swell, and the multiplex becomes choked annually with blockbuster after blockbuster… there’s little need to fear that our ink-and-paper rags are going away while the licenses need to be coddled.

And what would you do if you were the EIC of a major comic book publisher? You’d keep hitting your cash piñatas until they stop dropping Tootsie Rolls. One can’t simply let their comic character live and die with the times. They must constantly be in a cycle or dramatic repartee with one another. They must converge on mighty battlegrounds. They must make odd alliances. They must recalibrate, reinvent, and redefine their very being every few months. The moment they stop, the attention is drawn elsewhere. Even to let a mortal man, like Frank Castle – a character whose very mission is clearly drawn in severe black and white terms – die a hero’s death, is really just another way to bookmark him for a new series later. One cannot simply let a comic character die… not when there’s a bloodstone to find and money left on the table.

To learn of Wolverine’s impending dirt map should not actually be met with a scoff, and an upturned nose. As in nearly all my aforementioned examples of re-re-retconned demises… in their immediate wake came some of the best stories I’d ever read concerning that character! When Batman was time-bulleted away, Scott Snyder’s Detective Comics gave me the Dick Grayson I’ve always wanted to read. When Dan Slott took the leap to let Otto drive as the friendly neighborhood wall-crawler, he opened up a fantastic object lesson in proactive versus reactive heroism. And when Wolverine bites the big one, it will be less about ending his story as it is opening up a new chapter in the plethora of X-books that will no doubt be touched by the loss. Death, as it were, is then less about the loss specifically of the character in question, rather, it’s about the aftermath that needs to be considered.

It is sad to me that we must accept this as fate; that our heroes and villains are merely pawns in a never ending churn and burn of story arcs and universe resets. In the time since its inception, the Marvel Universe (the 616), and the DCU (whatever we call current continuity since it’s neither new, nor 52) have relegated themselves to reinvention at every turn of the corner. Unlike a soap or the WWE, where fictional characters can eventually die in real life… or even Doctor Who, who remains the same alien in spirit, but purposefully reimagined to coincide with the times – mainstream comic books must remain forever in Neverland. While DC tried hard to create legacies with a few of their major heroes (The Flash and Green Lantern, most of all), they too eventually succumbed to a massive PR stunt (the still-absolutely-unbearable Flashpoint), in order to move the zeitgeist back into its clutches.

So mourn not for James Howlett, folks. Let no tears stain your mutton-chopped cheeks for his once robust form. For now, he will join any number of other X-Men at the famed Marvel Island. He’ll enjoy the umbrella drinks, and free bacon… as the 616 spins out of control.

Because let’s face it, a world with Wolverine leaves a roster spot open on at least 1,246 different teams. And that is why we mourn.

The Point Radio: Jessica St Clair and Lennon Parham – Brainy Beauty Besties

Beautiful, brilliant besties, Jessica St. Clair and Lennon Parham, are headed to The USA Network for a new series, PLAYING HOUISE (premiering tomorrow on USA). They talk about writing comedy, making the new show stand out and the strength of their longtime friendship. Plus Warner Brothers finally publicly says “There will be a JLA movie!”

THE POINT covers it 24/7! Take us ANYWHERE on ANY mobile device (Apple or Android). Just  get the free app, iNet Radio in The  iTunes App store – and it’s FREE!  The Point Radio  – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE  – and follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

Dennis O’Neil: How Long Can You Go Without Faking It?

Story ideas are pretty malleable. I once presided over/rode herd on/sweated out an 1,100+ page continuity that began as a plot for two 15-pagers.  Hemingway is credited with writing a story in only six words.  (Go on. Google it.  I’ll wait.)  I did something a while back, just a bit over 500 words, that, I think, qualifies as a story, though some might disagree, (and because we cherish the First Amendment, if for no other reason, we welcome their dissent.)

Slick magazines, back when my mother was reading them, featured stories complete on one page.

Superman’s origin, which, you might recall, involved an exploding planet – we’re not talking small, here – was originally told on one page and the first Batman story ran a mere six pages, but it was very close to a Shadow novel that must have been in the neighborhood of 45,000 words.

[[[The Great Gatsby]]], often cited as a great novel, is 47,094 words. [[[War and Peace]]], ditto on the great novel label, goes 587,287.

So, is there a point to all this?  Let’s try to find one.

Story ideas, and literary forms, might be malleable, but that doesn’t excuse scriveners from the labor of plotting and structuring. You can’t just plunk yourself down at the keyboard, decide you’ll do an 1,100-pager and begin to perpetrate the opening of this Sahara of a continuity. No, check that: you can begin the aforementioned perpetration, but a prudent person might advise against it. The danger is that, toward the end, you might find a lot of loose ends that defy knotting, or you might have given your characters problems that they can’t solve and still stay true to whatever else you’ve established.  Or you might just run out of plot. Then, you begin to improvise. You fake it. You pad. Are you, by now, boring the reader? Admit the possibility, anyway.

It happens.  A person far wiser in the ways of Big Media recently confirmed what I’d read somewhere.  Sometimes, writers and producers of television entertainment begin a protracted and complicated storyline with no clear idea of how they’ll get from A to B. They make it up as they go along.  Sometimes they get away with it.  Sometimes.

I know that some Nineteenth Century literary luminaries – Charles Dickens and Fyodor Dostoyevsky to name two – serialized their novels before publishing them in hard covers.  I wonder: did they make it up as they went along?  Did they do outlines?  Plot summaries?

What we did, my comic book colleagues and I, was make pretty detailed outlines, in consultation with our freelancers. We all knew what story we wanted to tell and had a reasonably firm idea of how it should end.  There was a few small disagreements: some of my merry men wanted the outline to be detailed; I wanted to leave wiggle room and preserve the option of someone having a better idea along the way.  But we generally knew where we were going and how to get there.

One more thing: that outline assured us that we had enough plot to justify the number of pages we were planning to occupy.  We could and did permit side plots to run in parallel with our central story, but we wanted none of that padding stuff.

Is here any padding in the preceding 551 words?  Well…

Mindy Newell: Who Are You?

“Whooooooooo are you? Who? Who? Who, Who?”

WHO ARE YOU
Composed by Pete Townsend
The Who, 1978

Picking up from last week

All our super-powered mythic creations, whether hero or villain, man or woman, are avatars—whether we realize it or not.

Superman, of course, is the Big Kahuna avatar of comics. Every corrupt politician that Superman put in jail, each mobster who pulled a gun and watched the bullets bounce off Superman’s chest, every misogynistic wise-ass jerk who insulted a woman and was punished by Superman was really being punished by these two bookish, nebbishy, and schlemiel-y kids from Cleveland, Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, who weren’t able to fight the anti-Semites or win the gorgeous goyishe blonde.  I doubt very much either of them were consciously aware of the psycho-sociological underpinnings of their alien hero who would capture the world’s imagination, but it’s all there, as many critics and writers, including Danny Fingeroth, Jules Feiffer, Grant Morrison, Scott Bakutman of Stanford University, and A. C. Grayling of The Spectator have noted.  Grayling’s article, “The Philosophy of Superman: A Short Course”, discusses the need for a Superman over the decades since his creation in the 1930’s, including the early 21st century and events post-9/11, stating that:

…caught between the terrifying George W. Bush and the terrorist Osama bin Laden, America is in earnest need of a Saviour for everything from the minor inconveniences to the major horrors of world catastrophe. And here he is, the down-home clean-cut boy in the blue tights and red cape.

Others more erudite than I am may have used more polysyllabic pronouncements when analyzing the characterization of the Man of Steel, but I will say that he is a fugue, an escape, an exodus into a world in which, simply put, the good guys win.

Depending on your definition of “the good guys,” of course.

(more…)

The Point Radio: Indy Films Get The Bird From Patton Oswalt

There are two things you need to know about the 2014 Film Independent Spirit Awards (airing Saturday March 1st on The Independent Film Channel). Patton Oswalt is hosting and, in lieu of gold statues, winners each get a live bird. Patton is here to explain it all. Plus Superman and Spider-Man get big events in May and we get a new Angry Bird this week.

THE POINT covers it 24/7! Take us ANYWHERE on ANY mobile device (Apple or Android). Just  get the free app, iNet Radio in The  iTunes App store – and it’s FREE!  The Point Radio  – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE  – and follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

The Point Radio: LEGO Voices And BLACKLIST Reveals

It’s Superman, Wonder Woman and even Batman on the big screen. Move over Affleck, Will Arnett talks about how he found just the right voice for The Dark Knight in LEGO THE MOVIE, plus more on THE BLACKLIST as cast member Parminder Nagra and show runners John Eisendrath and Jon Bokenkamp teased us on when we can expect some big reveals.

THE POINT covers it 24/7! Take us ANYWHERE on ANY mobile device (Apple or Android). Just  get the free app, iNet Radio in The  iTunes App store – and it’s FREE!  The Point Radio  – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE  – and follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

Mindy Newell: Superman, Wonder Woman, and Mythic Complications

Newell Art 140127

So my fellow ComicMix columnist Marc Alan Fishman doesn’t have a problem with the idea of Wonder Woman being a descendant of Kryptonian colonists in the next installment of the Superman cinematic universe. Yes, I know that this may be just one of those wild Internet rumors, but I gotta tell ya, ever since The National Enquirer broke the story of Al Gore, Rielle Hunter and their love child, I don’t easily dismiss stories that are far off the media mainstream path. And besides, Warner Bros. has, to quote another ComicMix correspondent (Vinnie Bartilucci) “gone on record how ‘complicated’ a story Wonder Woman has.”

Complicated?

Wonder Woman’s origin is based on the myths of the Hellenic culture, the same culture that gave The Iliad and The Odyssey, the two Homeric mythic sagas that are considered epics of the imagination and central to modern Western literature. Not to mention that during the Hellenic period Athens was the center of philosophy, or that the Library of Alexandra is believed to have contained over 700,000 volumes before it was burned by Julius Caesar’s troops, or that the Isle of Rhodes harbored universities that taught politics and diplomacy. Not to mention brilliant thinkers whose names escape me – oh, now I remember: Plato and Socrates and Pythagoras and Socrates and Aristotle and Euclides.

The Percy Jackson series is based on the Hellenic myths. The BBC is currently airing Atlantis, based on the Hellenic myths. Battlestar: Galactica (both series), Xena: Warrior Princess, the video game God of War – all based on Hellenic mythology. I even read that Moulin Rouge!, which starred Nicole Kidman and Ewan Macgregor, was based on the Orpheus myth. You know, the story about that guy with the lute who attempted to rescue his beloved wife Eurydice from Hades.

I think that when Warner Bros. uses the word “complicated” in describing Wonder Woman’s story they are really saying that they believe the American audience is ignorant and dumb.

I think they are looking in the mirror.

•     •     •     •     •

While I’m on the subject of the Amazon Princess, many of my sister writers who are involved in comics either as authors or critics are dismayed that Wonder Woman has been relegated to “Superman’s Girlfriend”; hell, I ain’t so that happy about it. But I’ve recently fulfilled one ambition for 2014 and have read the four issues of Superman / Wonder Woman that are available on www.Comixology.com – in fact, I subscribed to the ‘zine. In all honesty, I don’t think it’s badly written at all; I especially like the relationship between Diana and Hessia.

I do have two major complaints, though. The first (and most important, since this is a book that is about the relationship of two people) is that so far the heart-to-heart conversations are not taking place between the two lovers, who seem to be struggling to get past their (understandable) physical desire for each other in establishing a real relationship. The honesty and heart-to-hearts are not between Kal-El/Clark and Diana, but between two other couples: Diana and Hessia, and Superman and Batman.

My second complaint is that, for right now at least (after all, the series is only four chapters in), the book seems to be a Justice League of America / The Brave and The Bold hybrid. It seems more like a team-up book than one exploring the dynamics of the relationship between these two great DC icons, with all the “guest appearances” of other heroes.

What I’d like to see writer Charles Soule do is “borrow” from Marvel’s great superhero romances – Jean Grey and Scott Summers, especially. I hope he has the “writer’s balls” to do this. If he does, he’ll be on track to writing a really great comic, imho, of course. But if the book’s pairing becomes simply a veneer of a relationship, it will just disappear into the great void that has swallowed too many comics with great promise, but which ended in boredom and cancellation.

TUESDAY MORNING: Jen Krueger

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

WEDNESDAY MORNING: Mike Gold

 

Marc Alan Fishman: A WONDERful Problem To Debate

Marc Alan Fishman: A WONDERful Problem To Debate

Don’t you love when a spoiler leaks to we, the misbegotten nerds, and suddenly the Internet is on fire? I sure do. And nothing has gotten our ragespew a flowin’ in recent memory like the potential spoiler (ahem… alert.) that Wonder Woman would be a descendant of the Kryptonian colonists of yesteryear in the Man of Steel movieverse. Funny enough, it didn’t phase me in the least. Whereas some of my close personal friends let loose a brilliantly recorded tirade railing against the very notion of it, I simply concluded that it made sense to me. Rao be damned!

So, Internet, why all the anger? Well, the knee-jerk reaction is to simply say the pitch is not in line with the true origins of the character in the source material. It’d be rude of me to then say completely straight-faced “Oh my gawd, you’re absolutely right! In fact, I concur that the only way to enjoy a character’s portrayal in a different medium is to ensure that his or her origin matches perfectly detail-for-detail their previously published debut!” Then you’d roll your eyes, and call me an ass.

Well, go on, call me an ass. Because you know what? I give a flying invisible jet’s patootie if Wonder Woman descends from ancient Kryptonians. Or that Superman killed Zod. Or that Batman will not be Bruce Wayne, but Dick Grayson.

Ha! Got you there for a sec, didn’t I? The simple fact is as a fan of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, what I care most about isn’t their backstory but how they are portrayed in the present of the film.

I understand the fear and outrage. We proud geeks – covetous keepers of our continuity – despise the idea that movies or TV shows depicting our wares must be muted, diluted, or otherwise repackaged to appease the lowest common denominator. But when it’s done with conviction, quality, and common sense, we tend not to get our underwear so wedged up our own asses.

Remember how much we all loved Tim Burton’s Batman? OK, remember how many of us loved it? Well, I don’t recall the masses going insane-in-the-bat-brain over the revelation that the Joker was one Jack Napier. And while I recall plenty of nit-picky problems over Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, nary a word of anger seemed to spewed over the organic webshooter after the film came out. Same could be said of the blackcasting of Michael Clark Duncan as the Kingpin, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, or Idris Elba as Heimdall. Funny how that is, isn’t it?

And where is the utter outrage at the animated DCU? Or Marvel’s Hulk Agents of S.M.A.S.H? And what are we going to do with all the yutzes who like Arrow?! I mean, last time I checked, Oliver Queen had a god-damned goatee. Interesting enough, all I hear is good things about the show. Even the notion that a Flash spin-off might occur has seemingly traveled the Interwebs without igniting civil war. And this week when someone dropped that Donal Logue might play Harvey Bullock in a pilot revolving around a police procedural Gotham show? Somehow, we all woke up the next morning perhaps uttering that scariest of phrases… “I’ll see it when it comes out, and make up my mind then.

And therein lies my point. It’s not a factor of fear that Warner Brothers chooses to reimagine Batman in Christopher Nolan’s trilogy, or change gears with Superman twice within a 10 year period. It’s all a matter of business. The same could be said with Disney/Marvel. Consider cold and calculated business that allows characters like Gravitron and Blizzard to be reimagined on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in order to better suit the long-terms plans of their movies and television series. As I’ve come to find here in my waning youth, the all-mighty dollar drives all that we love in the world of content creation. While true passion for characters and story may drive we the few and proud creators… without the financial backing of crazy-mad corporations, what we build may exist only on our hard drives, our sketchbooks, and our minds.

If Wonder Woman in the polarizing Man of Steel DC movieverse ends up with a strain of Krypton flowing in her meaty non-clay veins… so be it. I’ll care far more that she is portrayed as regal, strong, and self-assured. If Themyscira’s statues tribute Rao over Zeus, big whoop-dee-doo. So long as it’s filled with overly tall, buxom, man-hating women (you know, who are all like… empowered and crap) then my prayers shall be answered. Or better yet? If the character, her background, and her portrayal all lend to the forward momentum of actually realizing a cross-picture universe for DC… then we’ll soon be living in a golden age. With powerful franchises from both the big two comic book publishers in place, those evil unwashed masses who dilute our precious universes may end up loving the same characters we love.

And when they do? They might just take that bold leap to a comic shop to see what they’ve been missing all along.

SUNDAY: John Ostrander

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

TUESDAY MORNING: Jen Krueger