Superman

[Shine]

Superman Timeline

Over the course of graphic novels life span things change, grow and evolve. Not only the characters but the world they inhabit as well. They need to, if Metropolis remained in 1938 forever it wouldn't make for very good reading today and, for the most part, I agree with and accept this. In a perfect world this sort of evolution would be seemless, this is however not a perfect world and there are visable cracks in the continuity of the Superman universe. This would be forgivable if the writing were compelling enough to deter our attention from it, alas it is not. When I think of Superman I think of the great destiny that lies before him and the difficult choices he must make to achive it. Does he shape the world in his image, creating a utopian society, through force? Does he attempt guide the world into an age of enlightenment but never interfering directly? Or does he simply let the world do as it does while trying to maintain order? I believe this is where it was always ment to go but never did. My question is why? Where did this story go wrong? And where is it going?

[MVS]

It goes here:

[Josh]

I approve.

[rezo]

They need to, if Metropolis remained in 1938 forever it wouldn't make for very good reading today and, for the most part, I agree with and accept this.

I don't. I would love for all of these comics to have been locked in whatever time they were created in, and actually progress from a definite beginning to definite end. I always wonder how great Batman would be if there were a "complete" Batman story. One or perhaps two great struggles against each nemesis and a definite ending. Instead of changing the amount of years Captain America was stuck in ice, they should have had him revived in the 60s and kept his story in the 60s. All of these comic characters that exist in the modern era could chat about him or some such.


The only direction the "superman" story is going now -if comics are anything at all like they were when I followed them - is somewhere that allows for more superman stories to be made in the future. Although all of the comics that look at Superman in the future will clue you in to what became of him. I imagine the future will be edited every once in a while whenever someone gets a new idea. Kind of like Erik Larsen and Peter David's differing versions of the Hulk vs. Doc Ock.

[Shine]

I was hoping someone would bring up the issue of a definate ending. After watching Babylon 5 and reading a lot of J. Mike's other stuff I can't see why any comic can't follow this formula. If they kept Superman Short, say a 10 year run, they could have made something great of him. And every decade or so they could do a retelling of it from a modern perspective, like the way a comic is esentially "reset" when they make a movie or series out of it.

[rezo]

I was hoping someone would bring up the issue of a definate ending

I did mention that I wanted the comic to have a definite ending =\

Anyways, what you've said about the modern "retellings" is right on. The original story is there and complete, and the update is just something to familiarize a new generation with an old popular property. John Byrne restarting Superman could have been such a restart, but I don't think the story reached anything conclusive before that. DC just had a huge history for their characters that had trouble making sense, so they created their "crisis" to clean things up and start things over.

[Shine]

I know that, that's why I said it .

Anyhow what killed it for me was how they killed him off. A nothing character just apears and rampages through the city. I'll admit that at that moment Superman was more "super" than he had been in a long while, but then to fill the market with all this Aftermath Death of Superman crap only to bring him back in what had to be the most pathetic marketing ploy in the history anything. They went further into crap-dom when they did the whole energy being Red/Blue thing. This is the kind of stuff that tells your audience that you're fresh out of good ideas and you are now working on the pile of bad ones that have accumulated over the years.

I remember an ep. of Justice League where GL, Flash, and Hawk Girl were sucked into an alternate dimention where they met the Justice Guild. The one line that stuck with me was when the leader of the JG said something to the effect of "We've already given our lives once to save this world, and we can do it again." That's the kind of hero that Superman could've been; should've been. Superman was upstaged by a group of lame 1950's joke characters. DC gave them a far more noble death than what has been awarded to their flagship hero. No Superman gets to linger arround for the next thousand years praying for death.

[rezo]

I know that, that's why I said it

oh, ha, I read it completely the wrong way~

Yeah. I think the official line was that "Superman has already defeated all of his rivals countless times. None of them were capable of pulling it off, so we needed something new." But just creating a character to beat everyone up randomly before finally beating down Superman was stupid. They could have spent some time developing a new character instead to take that role.

Everyone knew he was going to come back though. Its sad that the first thought you have when a character dies is "when are they coming back?" I liked the "Funeral for a friend" storyline that came up after his death.Not too much fighting, just page after page of people being sad. If they had followed that up with something other than the "who is the real superman" arc, it would have been much better. Around the time of the Red/Blue Energy thing I just stopped following comics altogether. It was funny seeing the reaction to it in the mainstream news media though. They'd have little sections in the news made for the sole purpose of saying "WTF is this? Remember the old superman? Why'd they do this? It doesn't make sense! Ah well. . .in other news" ...

[Despair]

It goes here:

Matt, It was beyond perfect

[Mzo]

If you like your superheroes limited and mortal, there's quite a bit of that in the DCU. Sure, it might've taken them forever to do, but there's a large number of dead and retired heroes lying around.

Why are Supes, Batman, and the other big ones still around? Why haven't they moved on? Money, fucking duh.

At least Green Lantern and the Flash have seen some significant progression. Barry Allen is still dead, and that was far cooler than Superman's death or the crippling of Batman could ever be. Too bad Hal's still getting bumped around the DCU... is he still the Specter, or have they changed that yet? I gave up on comics (to favor video games) a couple of years ago.