(What’s So Boring ‘Bout) Truth, Justice, and the American Way
Sorry for going into fanboy mode here, but this post “Why Superman Will Always Suck” is just wrong :
Really, what lessons do the Superman comics teach? It says that mankind is full of dull, pointless weaklings and evildoers who can only be stopped by a white ubermensch from another planet, who didn’t work a day in his life in order to achieve his powers. Yeah, you could say he’s a symbol of “hope,” but not hope in human nature - hope in an all-powerful alien who saves the world daily so you don’t have to get off your butt and act like a moral person. What sort of message is that?
Just because Superman comics and movies are almost universally made by people who share this “Superman is boring” attitude doesn’t mean there aren’t any interesting stories to tell. The way I see it, Superman has a number of traits that could be mined for interesting stories :
He’s an immigrant - Although raised on Earth, Superman is constantly aware of the fact that he’s not from here. He tries to assimilate as much as he can, even trying to stand up for “Truth, Justice, and the American Way”, but the mixture of awe and fear he inspires among humans is a constant reminder that he’s different.He’s adopted - As much as he loves his adoptive parents in Smallville, there’s the part of him that’s always wanting to know about where he came from. Who were his parents? Why was he found as a baby in a fiery hole in the middle of a field? Why is he stronger and faster than anyone he’s ever met?
He’s lives in the closet - It’s hard enough to hide your personal life from your coworkers, imagine how it would feel if your were living two completely separate lives? As comfortable as he feels living life as Clark Kent, he lives in constant fear that his secret life as Superman will be revealed.
He can’t be everywhere at once - How would Superman deal with the fact that while he pulled a cat out of a tree, across town someone got hit by a car? Or that while he stopped a bank robbery, an earthquake killed 1000 people in a country a few hundred miles away?
Moral Complexity - How does someone with the moral code of a boy scout (to use a frequently-cited cliche) deal with an environment in which poor people are dying because they can’t afford health care and there’s a direct correlation between lower-income communities and high crime rates? Superman may see things in black and white, but the real world is much more complex.
There are plenty of ways to write interesting Superman stories as long as you have writers that can break out of the trite, anti-hero stereotypes of the 80’s that pretty much ruined superhero comics. Then again, considering that Superman is owned by DC Comics which is owned by Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. which is a subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX), maybe it’s safe to assume Superman will always suck. At least, as long as we’re talking about Superman as a globally-recognized brand name and not the guy in blue tights. Interesting ideas and corporate groupthink rarely mesh well together.
12 comments »
Copy link for RSS feed for comments on this post or for TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
For some reason, I was by the DC offices in New York a few years back, and I just remembered being saddened. I never was a big fan of DC, but it was clear from that passing visit that the supercorporate ownership of DC was going to eventually drain it of any life it had.
Comment by Earnest — April 15, 2008 @ 10:38 pm
(warning;not safe for the humorless) Poor Superman,he always was a slightly brainwashed do-gooder,smacking up petty crooks,saving Louis Lane from nasty falls,children from speeding cars…super…However being a reporter as well as a super hero with x-ray vision,one can only wonder why he never peers into the dark boardrooms of the goverment,and corporate power,which rule the masses he purports to save.Superman would never bust into the a secret meeting of Dick Cheny and the oil barons demanding justice,he would never fly up to the White house,and arrest Bush and Gonzales for ordering torture,but he will swoop down on any laid-off Joe who just became stupid,or desperate enogh, to steal a loaf of bread,and happily turn them over to the nearest for profit prison he can fly to..Superman is a reporter,but he only see’s the crimes of the people,he is lauded because he saves a few,but he is oblivious to the sinister nature of a corporate run goverment which seeks to dictate every aspect of peoples lifes,for its own profit.Superman is super,you can’t knock a guy who saves the world over and over again,but sometimes I wish he had bigger fish to fry…..”Look,up in the sky,its a bird its a plane! No its Superman!”… …crap,I have an outstanding parking ticket!….(I’am joking of course,and I certainly mean no disrespect to Mr. Superman,his creators,
or,fans.)
Comment by pogo — April 16, 2008 @ 6:38 am
DC’s been going to shit across-the-board for awhile now, but for a precious time there its supreme editorial board was too busy deadening and exploiting its main brand-name characters to do anything heinous to its younger generation of superheroes.
On that note, Superboy rocked kind of hardcore for a good long while there. He had some of the issues you mention above, gaining more of them as he grew - more power, more friends, more responsibility, and all from a younger, fresh-eyed perspective. He also embodied a lot of the echo-boom generation’s fears and worries. Is the science that gave us life, that furnished us with better lives before we were even born, eventually going to doom us without our ever getting a say-so? How do we deal with the boomer generation, which we were always taught to think of as warriors for truth and open justice, when we discover some of them are downright evil?
Where do half-immigrant and half-native weirdos with no extended family and no good attachment to either parent really belong? How do they find their place? Do they ever really get a home?
Comment by Faaaanboying — April 16, 2008 @ 11:26 pm
There was a bit of that in the third film, where he destroyed the world’s nuclear weapons by throwing them into the sun (who knew he was a DFH?).
Comment by me — April 17, 2008 @ 1:33 am
The tragedy of Alan Moore. He destroyed comics in order to save them.
Anthony Burch isn’t completely wrong, but I do get the impression reading his article that his sense of the Superman character is based a little too much on the post-John Byrne era. The idea that Superman has no values of his own and simply upholds the right-wing values of the ruling class describes the post-modern, post-Frank Miller Kal-El that, as far as I can tell, was written by authors who didn’t like him anyway.
I’m not completely denying that Clark Kent is a conservative, but he is so in the old sense: he learned his values from his small-town upbringing, and he sticks by a moral code that he genuinely believes in. He may often be a defender of the status quo, but he isn’t a tool.
Comment by Cris — April 17, 2008 @ 5:44 am
Well, this is the corporate history of Superman, not the hidden history. You see, he can’t reveal all the behind the scenes pressure he put on the rich and powerful. While his public story begins in 1939, he had actually been around since the early 30s, and his most important achievements occurred then. While many credit Roosevelt’s attempts at court-packing for the Supreme Court’s sudden change of heart on the New Deal in 1937, it was in fact a behind-the-scenes meeting with Justice Owen Roberts by Superman that secured his tie-breaking vote in West Coast Hotel Co. vs. Parrish. He also made the difficult call, early in his career, to let the Freemason’s murder Huey Long, a decision he always regretted.
Comment by Joe — April 17, 2008 @ 12:00 pm
Joe, please start writing Superman comics. Those actually would be interesting.
All the fascist rightwing nonsense aside, Superman is boring because he’s just too much. Too strong, too fast, too heat-visiony, super-breathy. They just stapled on so many powers that no one stands a chance. Batman has to become Iron Man every time he tangles with the guy, and even then it’s a close call.
Comment by Jeb — April 17, 2008 @ 3:39 pm
Well Joe here in Louisiana, Huey Long is still a touchy subject,your startling information will make Superman a bigger hero to some,and a dirty rat to others.I don’t know about the Freemasons,but Huey Long was so feared by the federal goverment,that it has employed,a very nasty propaganda against him,and this state,for the last seventy years…..And now we find out Superman,could have saved the Kingfish,I should pity the Man of Steel with so many sad regrets,to be a super hero seems an awful fate indeed…
Comment by pogo — April 17, 2008 @ 10:30 pm
I thought “Red Son” was a pretty interesting take on the Superman mythos, and a pretty good story to boot.
He’s certainly not my favorite superhero, but a good writer can write a good story about just about anyone.
Comment by Royko — April 18, 2008 @ 9:09 pm
*blink* *boggle* I find Superman interesting not in spite of, but BECAUSE of those weaknesses. Yes, he’s built like a brick outhouse, and yet, he’s gone into fights not even expecting to return (not in the monthlys, but in the annual events), to save people that aren’t even his own.
Yes, he’s a moral absolutist for HIMSELF, he won’t kill, he won’t torture, but he can’t punch cancer or hunger (the nineteen-eightysomething special “Heroes Against Hunger” was something that brought tears to my eyes, Superman not able to fix things). And really, he holds himself to a higher standard than any normal person could hope to maintain, although he shows a degree of flexibility in holding others to that code (otherwise, the cops would have told him long ago to lay the hell off, after he’d busted…oh…half the college students in the world in one night)
He never EARNED the powers, that actually makes him MORE heroic. He was given the whole world wrapped in a bow, and instead of using that for fame, fortune and power, he eschews that utterly, working a real job for a paycheck.
As far as the “We don’t need Superman”/”He causes all this”, umm, same with any city with a Superhero. “Batman vs. the Street Thug” lacks some, I don’t know, gravitas. You need the costumed freak to make the hero seem heroic. And yeah,
And don’t say Batman is a better hero, he’s so relentlessly driven that he seems to have become a caricature driven as much by vengeance as justice. Yes, he’s DEFINITELY smarter, more driven, but he has nothing outside his crimefighting (his Bruce Wayne persona is no more real than Matches Malone, just something he wears for convenience), while Clark has not only a career, but friendships, and love.
(I like both characters as characters, but as far as the best HERO, it’s no contest)
Comment by Jason — April 18, 2008 @ 9:43 pm
HE was young and impressionable, possibly not yet 18, and he believed what the leaders of his adopted homeland told him, and he let Long die by the assassin’s bullet, and of course the blood was on his hands. For the rest of his life, letting someone die ‘for the greater good’ never washed with him, and he never again believed, with out evidence, what the powerful asked him to believe. It was very formative, that experience. Yeah, I totally want to write “A People’s History of Superman.” Anyone else?
Comment by Joe — April 20, 2008 @ 11:01 am
Ah… I guess not.
Comment by Joe — April 22, 2008 @ 9:23 pm