A Job for Superman

News

2011-11-03T05:45:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I have officially submitted my proposal for the Superman book to a publisher. The editor promised to send me some sort of response by Christmas.

On the same day that I submitted the proposal, I got an letter informing me that an article I wrote about Superman movies and myth has been accepted for publication in a book called Global Mythologies and World Cinema, edited by the folklorist and media scholar Mikel Koven.

Exciting times.

Draft

2011-08-11T05:07:00.000-07:00

So I haven't been able to post things recently. Don't know why. I've been trying to post that on August 10 I finished a draft of my book "Superman in Myth and Folklore." It's the whole reason I have this blog. It's far from done, but I've reached the point where I'm comfortable letting other people read the manuscript. So I'll forget about it for a while, and work on other stuff (like an article on Superman movies for a book edited by Mikel Koven). In case you were wondering, writing the book is the single biggest reason I have posted nothing in a long time. It's all I've been doing, aside from spending time with my family. I had set a deadline of August 10 for myself, and I nailed it. I also set a word length of 80,000. Final count of this draft: 80,366. So I was off a bit there.

I think the book is pretty good as it is. It surely needs work, and I already have some revisions in mind, but I'm going to wait to get some other opinions.

In other news, here's a really cool statue of Superman from Colombia. It's modeled after Christopher Reeve, and Rodin's Thinker. (got the story from the Superman Homepage)

relaunch

2011-07-19T05:14:00.001-07:00

Here's a link to the New York Post story, which reveals the new cover for Action Comics # 1. And here's a brief article reacting to it that pretty much sums up what's going on.

2011 Superman Celebration

2011-06-13T12:09:00.000-07:00

I couldn't go to Metropolis this year. But it's not the loss it might have been, since people are pretty good about documenting the events. Here's a link to the opening ceremony.

Thoughts on which one is the real one

2011-06-13T06:01:00.000-07:00

This essay appeared in The Comics Journal Recently. It's about the blandness of Superman's face. There's nothing distinguished about it. It makes comparisons to Batman, etc, being masked and therefor more interesting. There are some provocative thoughts here, but most notable is this

And this is why Superman actually remains unique. He is the unfinished and irresolvable superhero. there have been debates about which is his aspects is the ego, and which is the alter ego, but really it's a chicken and egg scenario; neither had priority. He arrived as an infant, tabula rasa, and the very first time his adoptive parents concealed his super-baby traits, he was split in two by a super-secret concerning his identity. He was always both Superman and Clark, or he is forever neither of them, two possibilities that are equally chilling.

I'm reminded again and again of the idea that the interpretation tells us more about the interpreter than about the text.

Thoughts on Smallville, Continued

2011-06-07T10:22:00.000-07:00

So the last post was a bit rough on Smallville, so let's balance that out a bit. I've been watching the old episodes of the show online as they're posted. Three new ones a week. One of this week's was called Faded, about a guy who can turn invisible and uses his power to kill people.

That's not the interesting part. What I liked about the episode is that it begins with Clark saving this guy's life. Clark sees him about to get hit by a car and pushes him out of the way. The guy, Graham, spends the next twenty minutes trying to repay Clark for saving his life. Then Clark finds out he's a killer. In the end, the killer is killed.

But Clark takes a moment to think about things. If he'd never saved Graham, then the next person he killed would still be alive. Should he have saved Graham?

The show, in the words of Chloe Sullivan, says yes: "Save first, ask questions later." Clark seems to accept this, though he doesn't really comment on it. It's all too short an exchange. And it puts the moral decision in Chloe's philosophy, not Clark's. That's not a huge problem, since we're the moral creatures we are because of other people's advice as well as our own contemplation. It's part of the show's characterization of Superman that virtually everything we know and love about the character originates elsewhere in his teens and early twenties. More than any version I've seen, Smallville makes Superman an accumulation of moral influences, rather than a philosopher in his own right.

Ah, but I'm veering toward harsh criticism again. Let's backtrack and veer in another direction.

This episode, more than any other of the show, made me think. The truly great Superman stories are all about what Superman would do in certain situations. Not just, what would Superman do if a monster attacked or a volcano erupted or Luthor hatched a real estate scheme. But what would Superman do if he found out that he was dying (All Star)? What would Superman do if he were forced to kill someone to save the world (Whatevert Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?)? What would Superman do if a group of anti-heroes killed villains, but were embraced by the public (What's so funny about Truth, Justice, and the American Way?)?

This episode, for a minute at the end, poses the question, What would Superman do if he found out he saved a murderer? It's a good question, one I haven't seen in the comics (though I haven't read 75% of them--do you have any idea how many Superman comics exist?). We see how Smallville answers it: Save first, ask questions later. How would the comics answer it?

I suspect that the golden age wouldn't pose the question. But what about the Weisinger era? I suspect that it would have come up in a different way: Superman saves a guy, finds out he's a killer after the guy kills again for whatever reason, but then by some strange and magical circumstance (Mxyzptlk?) is thrown back in time to see if he'd still save the guy. Superman wouldn't question himself--he'd save the guy, but this time he'd find a way to stop the guy before he kills again and put him in jail. Mxyzptlk would get angry that he really caused no trouble, but Superman would have a speech about how you save everybody (similar to Smallville, but in the mouth of the protagonist). Then he'd trick Mxyzptlk back to the 5th dimension and call it a day. All in all, a nice eight pager.

Using Mxyzptlk is probably too easy, but hey, I'm not a Superman writer.

It doesn't quite feel like a siver age story to me. Would it come later, in the 70's? The theme feels right, but I can't see the story happening that way. I think it would have a lot of conversation between Superman and the killer. It's certainly not an 80's story, or a 90's. Right now, it might work, except that Superman is so embroiled editorially determined fiat that it wouldn't work. Then again, by all accounts Mort Weisinger was the fiattiest of all editors. So what do I kow about it?

So that's my thought on Superman for today.

Some Thoughts on Smallville

2011-06-01T13:07:00.000-07:00

Well, it's over. That's something.

I haven't watched every episode of the show, but I've seen a whole lot of it as part of this project.

Smallville, in the end, treated Superman less as the initial Superhero and more as the culmination of a superhero movement. The first four seasons are spent largely in Smallville, where Clark Kent is reactive, using his powers only when he absolutely has no choice, and he keeps them a secret. In season five, a lot more happens in Metropolis, and he meets a woman who has powers and dresses in a costume, who works at the Daily Planet, is clumsy in her secret identity, wears glasses as part of it, and whatnot. It begins the notion that he could be a superhero. From there, he meets a succession of other heroes and becomes the Blur all as part of the process that leads him to create a public persona called, I think, Superman. It's an interesting notion, though I don't think it was originally part of the plan for the show.

The show evolved over its ten years. In the end, it was basically nothing like it was at the beginning. The same can be said for the Superman comics. Evolution is part of the character.

I have a few criticisms, and I think that these are damning in the end.

First, the show didn't give us a good look at Welling in the suit. There have been endless discussions about the reasoning behind this. The official reason is that it essentially wasn't necessary, since the show was about Clark Kent and not about Superman. This is at once a dodge and an example of idiotic thinking. Clark Kent is Superman. The actual result of not showing him fully suited up is that people wonder why he didn't appear in the suit. And they come up with answers; namely, that he didn't look good in it. This is not something that you want people to think.

But a more profound flaw in the show is the choice to delay the choice to don the suit and become Superman. The show basically takes the first page of Action Comics #1 and stretches it out to ten years. That first page has the telling panel wherein we learn that "Early on, Clark decided he must turn his titanic strength into channels that would benefit mankind. And so was created... Superman."

The language there is telling. He decides to become Superman. We're not told of any motivating situation. Later retellings cement the choice in the morality learned from his parents, but it's still his choice. It happens early. He makes that choice in Smallville and journeys to Metropolis to carry the choice to its logical end. In the show Smallville, he seems to make the choice when he's just out of high school. Before that, he does use his powers to help people, but they're only people close to him, people in his community and especially people he loves. There's nothing wong with this. He's not Superman when he's in his hometown, not devoted to all of humanity yet. This develops with the show well enough. By the last seasons, he does devote himself to helping everybody he can. But then...He only becomes Superman because if he doesn't do something the entire world will end. They conflate his emergence in the suit with personality elements and forces outside himself. He waffles. He doesn't want to save the world, even though he's sure he can do it. His choice is removed by circumstance. He could opt to do nothing, but everybody would die. That's not much of a choice.

It's the difference between desperation and altruism. Superman is usually altruistic. He decides to do goo however he can.

The Superman of today acts because of forces outside himself. This is really desperation. This is the Superman of Smallville. It's also the Superman of Superman: Earth One, a popular comic book released last year. Again the earth is threatened, and Superman delays and delays and delays until he has virtually no choice but to become a hero. With this being so popular, and Smallville enduring for so long, it seems that this element of Superman is the one for our time.

In the end, my main critique of Smallville is that Clark Kent, even when he dons the suit, never FEELS like Superman. They did their best in the last season to make it happen. They tried to show him being inspirational and heroic. But for me, it just never came together. So I suppose I'm glad they never really called him Superman, never really showed him fighting the neverending battle in the suit. They can keep the Smallville Clark Kent, the Earth One Clark Kent. I'll stick with the real thing. The one who was always Superman, and who didn't need ten years and a planetary crisis to figure it out.

My Own Worst Enemy

2011-05-20T11:19:00.001-07:00

My buddy Mike Judd and I wrote a movie called My Own Worst Enemy. Mike and his wife Jessica are going to produce it. They start shooting it the day after Memorial Day. There's a cast and a crew and someone is constructing what I can only imagine will be the single greatest prop time machine of all time (take that, time traveling DeLorean!).

So, there's that. Proof that, despite what my wife thinks, not everything I do is related to Superman.

controversy II

2011-05-03T05:27:00.000-07:00

So I finally found some people who like the Superman story called "The Incident".

Here's one: "Superman: Truth and Justice for All, Not Just the U.S."

There's "Super Citizen of the World."

And this, "Abandoned by Superman." The title's ironic, commenting on the idiocy of everyone who says that sort of thing, especially those who didn't actually read the comic.

And to show you some of the people who are commenting on it without actually reading the comic, here's a bunch of clips collected on Comics Alliance.

There's a lot more of the positive reaction out there now. Everything I've seen is coming from comic book fans and people who actually read through it to get what's being said.

controversy

2011-05-02T06:27:00.000-07:00

Well, there's a back-up story (The Incident) in this week's Action Comics #900 that's caused a stir. In it, Superman states his intention to renounce his U.S. citizenship so that his international actions may not be construed as American policy. He does so after the Iranian government gets angry because he showed up to nonviolently support some protesters in Tehran. Here are some relevant links.

First, from comic book resources' robot 6. This one's a pretty good summation of the internet reaction.

There's comics alliance, which has a huge discussion in the comments.

Here's an example of the outside (outside of comics fandom, that is), reactionary response.

Thus far, I've been unable to find any genuine praise for the element of controversy, aside from the stray comment to news stories or blogs. As a story, regardless of what Superman intends to do, it's really not very good. It's only 9 pages, and lacks a real ending. It's told mostly in flashbacks, and of those 9 pages the entirety of the first is devoted to a guy standing around, checking his watch, and waiting for Superman to arrive. Narrative economy is not on the menu today. It also ends with a pretty lame attempt at demonstrating Superman's inspirational effect on the conflict in Tehran that draws him to Iran in the first place.

As for my feeling on the controversy, Douglas Wolk says it pretty well: 'Plenty of stories, from Paul Dini and Alex Ross's Superman: Peace on Earth to the beginning of "Grounded,"have addressed why Superman doesn't simply solve the world's geniune problems. The real answer is that that's not what Superman stories are about. The point of Superman stories is to wildly distort the world as we know it: to provide a huge, fun perspective on alienation, on leading a double life, on the struggle to understand what truth and justice are before one starts fighting for them. And anyone who purports to be offended at "The Incident" should remember that this happens in the same universe where, in 2000, Lex Luthor was elected President of the United States.'

At heart, this is a controversy inherent to the genre. It's one of the things that made a mess of Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. Any time you try to insert real world problems into superhero stories, you run the risk of exposing the genre for what it is: fiction. No genre can stand up to the real world.

The most interesting aspect of the whole thing is the frequent equation of Superman and Obama, which arises from the bafflingly persistent "birther" movement that demands further proof of Obama's US citizenship. People are making lots of jokes about needing to see Superman's birth certificate or something of the kind.

Humor collection

2011-03-29T05:23:00.000-07:00

So I need to have this handy. It's a collection of superman newspaper cartoons from over at the superman homepage.

Scratch

2011-03-01T17:59:00.000-08:00

So after a lengthy discussion with a colleague, I have decided to scrap the 150 some pages I've written of my Superman book and start from scratch. Well, almost from scratch. Bits of that 150 pages are ok, and will migrate to the new manuscript. But the whole structure of the thing is changing.

After reaching this decision yesterday, I have written 7000 words. Not too shabby.

Huzzah!

Some new links

2011-01-27T09:58:00.000-08:00

At Too Busy Thinking About My Comics, Colin Smith wrote a four part exploration of All Star Superman and Superman: Earth One. It's really, really good. Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4. In-depth, clear, and insightful.

Here's an article about superman's ethics.

This one's from the Superman Homepage: (Not) Believing Again: Superman Returns--From Postmodernism to Faith (and Failure) by Ben Murane. It's an academic approach.

Speaking of an academic approach, here's Brent Allred's thesis from Melbourne College of Divinity, it's about the use of movies and literature in Christian Education of kids, it's got some stuff about Superman.

And another thesis, this time about Superman and America, by Michael Mautner.

That's enough of that for now.

Super heroes and America

2010-11-22T13:54:00.000-08:00

Here's an interview with Alan Moore, from a while ago. He's always got something interesting to say, but what's relevant here is this thought:

I'm interested in the superhero in real life, but not the comic book version. I've had some distancing thoughts about them recently. I've come to the conclusion that what superheroes might be--in their current incarnation, at least--is a symbol of American reluctance to involve themselves in any kind of conflict without massive tactical superiority. I think this is the same whether you have the advantage of carpet bombing from altitude or if you come from the planet Krypton as a baby and have increased powers from earth's lower gravity. That's not what superheroes meant to me as a kid. To me, they represented the wellspring of imagination. Superman had a dog in a cape! He had a city in a bottle! That's wonderful stuff for a seven-year-old boy to think about. But I suspect that a lot of superheroes now are basically about the unfair fight. You know: people wouldn't bully me if I could turn into the Hulk.

It's not Moore at his most articulate, since he's really contradicting himself at the end there. And he's falling victim to the same affliction that plagues many a person when looking at the popular culture of their youth: "These kids today don't have any taste, with their long hair and powerful superheroes." And he's confusing the individual with the collective, and wish-fulfillment with apprehension.

Not that Superman's for kids anymore.

All right then.

2010-07-23T06:40:00.000-07:00

I've got some more links to post.

Recently there was a piece on NPR about Superman.

Then there are parts 6 and 7 of the Fortress of Soliloquy's analysis of Superman's origins. While we're at it, the same blog has some interesting thoughts about Superman 701, the first full issue of the Grounded story where Superman walks across America.

On the same subject, here is a page of links to reviews of Superman 701, courtesy of Comic book resources.

And here's another review. From Living Between Wednesdays.

Moving along, here's a list of the 10 Superman comics you must read.

That'll do.

Reactions

2010-06-28T07:18:00.000-07:00

So the beginning of the "Grounded" story by J. Michael Straczynski has gotten a lot of reaction. Here are a couple of the more interesting posts:

First, there's a Comics Alliance Review by a guy who doesn't usually like Superman. There's some good debate in the comments.

This one's more interesting, from Polite Dissent, a blog by a doctor.

This isn't a review, but a walking tour diary. It's just a bit of comedy.

And here's a collection of links to reviews.

Unrelated but still interesting:

Here's a woman's blog about showing Superman movies to her kids for the first time.

And here's a writer's thoughts about the death of superman way back when...

Trust me, this one's important.

2010-06-24T09:04:00.000-07:00

Here's an article. It may not seem relevant to Superman, but it is. It's called "Inside the Baby Mind." From the Boston Globe last year. And it's about how psychologists and neuroscientists are discovering the ways babies think, as opposed to the ways adults think.

A Big Week

2010-06-23T06:10:00.000-07:00

So evidently this is an exciting time to be a Superman fan. There's a lot of hype, anyway, from the comics world. DC's really pushing the fact that Straczynski is writing Superman. Action Comics #700 comes out today. So there's lots of stuff on the web about him right now.

Here's a lengthy and interesting post about his costume and origin.

And a sort of retrospective with lots of visuals.

Then there's The Many Tomorrows of Superman.

Here's a description of Absolute All Star Superman, with a lengthy comment by designer Chip Kidd.

That'll do for now.

Superman on the moon

2010-06-22T09:40:00.001-07:00

So recently someone asked me about the picture at the top of the blog. She had read this before meeting me, and the first thing she commented on was that there's a tiny picture of Superman at the top of this. There's a reason for that.

It's a picture from All Star Superman issue 6. Superman sees his dog Krypto for the first time in a while, and they're playing fetch and racing around in space to celebrate. They stop by the moon for a second, and we get this image.

Now, my degree is in folklore, and my specialization is mythology. I spend a lot of time considering the meaning of gods and what they do. I'm writing this book because the term myth is thrown around a lot when people talk and write about Superman, and I thought it would be a good idea to figure out exactly what people mean by that.

My graudate advisor was Greg Schrempp, who's written a lot about science and myth, greek philosophy, and maori cosmology. In his forthcoming book Scientists and Centaurs, he writes a passage about the first descriptions that astronauts gave of the earth as seen from space. he describes it as possessing virtually all the characteristics of a myth. It got me to thinking that maybe being a god is all about perspective.

Gods know things that people don't. When they tell us, we call it revelation and it's a very, very sacred thing. When people develop their own ways to find these things out, such as reading tea leaves to predict the future, we call it divination. We get little glimpses of the divine. One of the things that separate humanity from divinity is knowledge, which is why Adam and Eve eating the fruit of knowledge of good and evil was a crime--god didn't want humanity to be divine.

Knowledge is gained in lots of ways, but one of the most effective ways is through experience. We learn by doing things and by going places. Gods are able to go anywhere and do anything. They can stand at the archimedean point and see the cosmos from the outside. They have a perspective we lack. That is, until the astronauts went into space and saw the earth. They had a perspective that until that moment was only theoretical. They had more than a glimpse of the divine.

Superman, of course, can get this perspective whenever he wants. All Star Superman, which will have the above picture on its collected version this fall, is a central story to one of my chapters on myth. It's a story that distills the mythical qualities of Superman into twelve issues. And it's really, really good.

2010-06-19T19:43:00.000-07:00

I'm not the greatest photographer. I've come to learn that my greatest fault in that area is that I just don't take enough pictures. Either that's all I'm doing, or I completely forget about it. Nonetheless, I did get some photographic evidence of the Superman Celebration. Let's start with Thursday afternoon, June 10. This was pretty early, so there weren't many people out yet. Other than Captain Canadian, that is.

Let's jump ahead to Sunday, with the group picture of the Superfriends of Metropolis.

Among the Superfriends, you'll find Brian Morris, who was instrumental in my work this year. I met him last year, and we talked for a while. He agreed to let me follow him around a bit this year, and he introduced me to a bunch of people. He is heavily involved in the Celebration, and he writes or helps to write the dramatic components of the opening ceremonies. He's a bit fan, and my interview with him, his wife Cookie, and writer Sean Dulaney at the close of the ceremony was one of the most rewarding parts. Here he is, showing his shield tattoo on his wrist.

Another tattoo, this time on the wrist of Kristina Johnson. It's the kryptonian symbol for hope.

People come from far away for this thing. This year, Angie Shelton of the Metropolis Chamber of Commers had the idea of having people put pins in a map to show everybody just how far. Yep, people come from Europe.

Was that a pin in Iraq?

They also come from Asia.

And just about every state.

The Superman Celebration was very, very warm this year. But I attended most of the events and managed to conduct the sort of fieldwork that will, I hope, make the book worth reading. I cannot express enough thanks to everyone who worked with me.

One of the most common activities at the Celebration is taking pictures. This revolves around the costumers.

The costumers value the pictures more than those who aren't in costume. This is a picture of the process from backstage, so to speak. Batman on left. Wolverine on right. Note Poison Ivy taking pictures in the middle. They're all friends who costume together and attend events like this. They're also members of The Society of Secret Identities.

This is another example of that sort of thing. On the left are a man dressed as Clark Kent and a man dressed as Superman. They're posed to resemble the fight between the divided Kent and Sueprman in Superman III. On the right are a bunch of people. Sorry it's so dark. It was late at night, in a darkened room.

Below is a reading of an old episode of the Adventures of Superman radio show, by a bunch of fans. What I love about the Superman Celebration is the fan involvement. There's a Celebration Committee of local people who organize everything, but over the years the fans who come from miles and miles away have become part of the process. They work with the committee to organize events such as this reading, the costume dance, the opening (and, starting this year, closing) skits that are part of the ceremonies, and other events.

Speaking of the opening skit, this year featured the prisoners of the phantom zone released to once again confront Superman. This is a photo taken after the ceremony ended. I have video of the whole thing, but no photographs. Superman is the official Superman of the celebration, but the other Kryptonians are fans.

Here's the official Superman again.

That'll do for now.

Some links

2010-06-15T08:58:00.000-07:00

Here's a little article from Comic Book Resources about Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. I'm not really sure what the overall point of the article is, but it begins its conclusion:

So Superman becomes this bland, blank slate upon which a wide range of philosophies can be projected.

Then here's something from The Daily Caller. It tackles the accusation that Superman is an illegal immigrant.

There are some problems with the Supeheroes who pose for pictures with tourists in Hollywood.

Superman Celebration

2010-06-15T08:10:00.001-07:00

From June 10-13, I was in Metropolis, Illinois for the Superman Celebration. Last year when I attended, I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stuff going on. Festivals are like that if you're trying to study them. Consequently, I didn't get what I needed to write about the Celebration. But what I did get, more importantly, were contacts. I made some friends, such as Brian Morris, who really opened the door for this year to be more successful.

So, Brian, thank you. This year, I really got what I needed to get. Except for pictures. Didn't get enough of those.

I've just finished writing up my notes for the weekend. I learned more than I had intended, and see threads that I could possibly follow to new areas of this project, should the need arise. Mostly, this was a series of interviews. They're going to be invaluable for the completion of Superman in Myth and Folklore.

This year, I met a lot of people. That part was easier than last year. I found myself explaining the project more often and more thoroughly than I had expected. My teachers had always told me that you have to do this sort of thing, explain what folklore as a field of study is and whatnot, if you want people to have the kinds of conversations with you that the project requires. This is the first time I've had to do it. But it was worthwhile. People seemed interested and excited about the book. And once I got my points across, they showed me the right way to think about things and look at them.

I went to study a community, and that's exactly what I found. Once I told people this, they would show me things I hadn't noticed, things such as the way in which people help each other, even when they're competing against each other in, say, a costume competition. The point is that people are doing what they want to do in the best way possible, not so much in the winning.

Fashion and the superhero body

2010-05-19T16:42:00.000-07:00

Right now, the idea that superheroes as drawn are, essentially, naked is what's taking up most of my time. I'd been working with what to do with this idea for a while, but then Michael Chabon wrote about it nicely in the introductory essay to Superheroes Fashion and Fantasy. It was a museum exhibit and then a book.

Related is this essay, "The Corporatized Child", by Allen Kanner, which is about the way marketers target children and how this is ruining the world. Don't worry, it's related in my head right now, soon to be related on paper and eventually in print. It's all part of a deadline that's looming in my near future.

Since all this is really about Superman's costume, I should take this opportunity to include this link: Showing Superman without Showing Superman. It's about how people put somebody who's obviously Superman on book covers without the specific iconography. Interesting stuff.

Some alternative Superman costumes as well.

And then somebody on the Internets goes and does something so useful for me that it gives me hope for this technology. Tom Foss of The Fortress of Soliloquy is doing a series of blog posts about Superman's origins. He's done five so far. Here's part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Excellent series, Tom. I hope it continues.

Hero

2010-04-19T15:26:00.001-07:00

The actors who play the role of Superman are often conflated with the character. They are him, to the public. This has been especially relevant since Christopher Reeve's paralyzing accident. Celebrities often offer themselves as examples and models for dealing with any sort of hardship. When Reeve became quadripilegic, his role as Superman became important. He persevered and refused to give up hope that his condition could be cured.

I had a conversation with Jeff Ray, an IU student who works at the Wells Library. He noticed that I was checking out a book about Superman, and we started talking. He told me about his brother's condition, confining him to a wheelchair, and how they loved Superman. Knowing of Reeve's condition added a level of meaning to the character and made him all the more important to them.

Tracy Todd also identifies with Superman because of her condition as a quadriplegic. She recently wrote about her connection with the figure via Christopher Reeve in a blog entry.

With time, I managed to rebuild a new life in a new body. With the help of family, friends and my community I think I can safely say that I have managed to carve out a new, meaningful existence. When things get tough, I think of my Superman – his courageous and positive spirit carries me through the challenges of everyday life. And for that, I am thankful.

That's a great passage. Life is pretty hard, even if you're not dealing with physical difficulties. We use whatever we can find to get through it. I read again and again that superhero stories are only for immature boys, for people who don't want to grow up, that they're adolsecent power fantasies. People who say that are wrong. Tracy Todd, Jeff Ray, and a host of others who live with any sort of difficulty are proof of that. Todd ends with a great line:

Do you have a superhero carrying you through life?

I've been thinking a lot about what rold heroes (and superheroes) play in the world. Todd's blog post seems a perfect summary of the good that they can do for us.

I've been looking for this for a long time

2010-04-19T15:06:00.001-07:00

So Barry Freiman has written up a list of descriptions of all the Superman references on Seinfeld. I'm pretty happy about this, since I have been trying to figure out in which episode Jerry and George talk about Superman's sense of humor for a awhile now.

That is all.

Science Books

2010-04-11T17:30:00.000-07:00

Back to the types of books that focus on Superman. This time: Science!

I was a bit surprised at this, but there are several types of books that deal with science and superheroes. Only one, as far as I know, is solely focused on Superman: The Science of Superman, by Mark Wolverton.

Wolverton takes the position that, though none of Superman's powers are achievable for humanity today, the future may be different. He sees the powers as little more than quantitatively different from such natural human abilities as sight, breathing, etc. He speculates that a combination of technical advancement and evolutionary change will make the equivalent of superpowers a possibility. As far as I can tell, this book served as the primary source for the History Channel's program The Science of Superman.

The Science of Superheroes by Lois H. Gresh and Robert Weinberg takes the opposite approach, demonstrating that nothing superheroes do will ever be attainable by humanity. They discuss alien life and the fact that Krypton would have to be gigantic beyond possibility to create a gravitational pull strong enough to make Superman the kind of being in the comics. There may be some influence on the History channel show as well.

The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios is a bit of a different book from those two. Kakalios is more interested in teaching physics than in whether or not powers are possible. He's quite happy when the powers are handled with a nod to the way the world works, but he's not hung up on it. He's pleased enough to teach us how to use basic (though extraordinary) Newtonian equations to find out how much force Superman would need to jump the 1/8 mile advertised by Siegel and Shuster in Action Comics #1. (He's not at all concerned with flight, since there's no real physics behind it: he ignores the impossible in favor of learning from the possible).

I like this idea of using Superman, and other heroes--the latter two books are inclusive--as a learning tool. A while back I gave a talk to a middle school about this very thing. I brought up other subject areas: fashion, psychology, philosophy, etc. These are topics that don't have more than one book devoted to them, and I think I'll devote a separate essay to them.

In one sense, these resemble the religious books. They take superheroes as a starting point and then discuss the implications.

Whew.

2010-04-05T16:48:00.001-07:00

I've been busy. Busy writing. Writing sixty pages of chapter 4. Maybe it'll have to break into chapters 4 and 5, and old chapter 5 will have to become chapter 6. I set a deadline for myself: have a draft of chapter 4 done by April 1. Well, that didn't quite work, because...because 60 pages, I suppose. I had expected 30. But, man, there's just a lot to say there. At one point, I realized that I needed to know a bit about Beauty and the Beast. I went home, found some books on the topic, read the relevant parts (I'd already read the books), and wrote nine pages that evening. It's out of control.

You read that right. I had to know about Beauty and the Beast for a book about Superman. Cupid and Psyche. East o' the Sun, West o' the Moon. Tale Type 425 for all you folklorists reading this. Do any folklorists read this? Also, Type 312. That's right. Bluebeard.

This is, perhaps, the best part about this project. One night, I found myself doing a bit of research into the life and career of Ben Affleck. Finished with that, I then picked up the next book on my reading list: a history of the friendship of Kurt Goedel and Albert Einstein. Not long after that, I watched the Iron Giant, then got out a book about ritual among the Ndembu. I think it's safe to say that these topics, in that order, and all related to a common end, have never been put together before.

Speaking of The Iron Giant...a great many people, grown men and women, discuss crying when a giant alien robot utters the word single word "Superman." And I've got to admit, it's a pretty emotional moment. That is one fantastic movie.

So I'm now taking a bit of a break from Superman. Those 60 pages (written in about 8 days--I set myself that deadline on March 24th. 30 pages seemed possible in that timeframe) took a lot out of me. The problem is, I can't seem to keep to my break. I spent last night contemplating Yoruba sculpture and how it relates to Calvin and Hobbes. The comic strip, not the philosophers. And, of course, how they all relate to Superman.

Strange Horizons

2010-03-15T19:56:00.000-07:00

Well, folks, today marks the publication of my article "Superman as Science Fiction" on the website Strange Horizons. Horizons is a speculative fiction magazine. Each Monday, they publish a short story, a poem, book reviews, and some nonfiction--a column, an interview, an aritcle, or something of the kind. They also publish art. It's really a great website. I had an article published there a while back, as well.

This is the first time I've had anything about Superman published. I have delivered three papers on the subject at varous conferences, and have a fourth that I'm going to submit soon as part of a panel on fans and fan cultures. They've all been very well-received, and I've been approached in different ways to publish them. But I'm still deep in research mode, so nothing is eady yet.

"Superman as Science Fiction" is a little essay that wouldn't fit in the book I'm writing. Some of the ideas may show up again, but it's very much its own thing. And now that it's published, I see about a million things wrong with the prose that I'd very much like to change. Why oh why didn't I catch some of those when I read over the galley they sent me to check? Nothing major, mind you, but annoying to me in my quest for perfection.

Edit: I've been looking over the article, and I noticed that there are a couple of errors. Sorry. 1) Leo Qunitum is not the only character Grant Morrison invented for All Star Superman. I took someone's word for that, and should really have looked it up (or not included it at all, since it's not necessary information at all). 2) "What's So Funny about Truth...?" does not appear in Greatest Superman Stories Volume 2. Weird.

Nolan

2010-03-12T13:47:00.000-08:00

At first, I didn't think the announcement of Christopher Nolan's involvement (which has now evidently gone from rumor to fact) in a new Superman film would be all that relevant for my project here. But seeing the responses people are posting to the Internets, I have changed my mind. For example, one fan has put up a list of what he thinks the producer should be reading to prepare himself for producing the film. Really, it's just an opportunity for the columnist to write about his favorite Superman stories, which is no bad thing at all. Still, the gist of my point here is that people really want a good Superman movie. How profound of me.

Speaking of writing about favorite Superman stories, Sean Collins of the Savage Critics wrote an essay about All Star Superman. Here's a nice quotation from it:

Batman's the guy you wanna be; Superman's the guy you know you ought to be, if only you could.

I don't have much more to say today. Writing about hero myths is taking up all my energy.

Casting Call

2010-03-09T16:51:00.000-08:00

It seems to me that there's a genre I've been largely ignoring. Let's call it the 'cast list' or something like that. It's simply where somebody imagines who would play whom in a movie made about their favorite characters. This happened before the internet, but the ease with which anybody with access can put together their ideas with pictures, etc., has made the internet the prime medium for this genre.

Superman gets this treatment a lot. There's comic book movie. comic book movie again. there's mtv. comic book movie again.

People feel entitled to a good Superman movie. They put their demands up on the internet. Because of the recent rumor that Christopher Nolan is to be involved in the new film, they write long, long letters and debates about how or why he should be involved.

Religious Interpretation

2010-03-09T13:58:00.001-08:00

Superman may or may not be Christ, depending on who you ask.

There are perhaps more books and articles concerning Superman's connection to Christ than there are on any other Superman topic. It all seems to have begun with John T. Galloway, jr.'s The Gospel According to Superman, fixing a title that has probably frustrated other authors since it's 1968 publication. This book set out to prove once and for all that Superman is certainly not Christ, and that claiming him to be so is damaging. It explores the character's actions and history and ultimately concluding that Superman is in no way like Christ.

This was before the 1978 movie.

After that movie, articles began springing up proclaiming Superman's Christ-like-ness. It was all very deliberate on the part of director Richard Donner and one of the writers, Tom Mankiewicz. They saw the parallels in the stories and made them explicit, most famously during Jor-El's speech to Superman as the baby travels to Earth:

"They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show them the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I send them you, my only son."

As a kid of 1 when this movie came out, I completely ignored the subtext there.

So soon after you've got Sarah R. Kozloff's "Superman as Saviour: Christian Allegory in the Superman Movies" (from the Journal of Popular Film and Television, 1981). People saw the parallel, and it either made them happy or mad. Apparently the director got death threats.

Then there's The Man from Krypton: The Gospel According to Superman, by John Wesley White. I haven't read it yet, but it's on its way to me even as we speak.

More recently, there have been lots of these. I suspect the more obvious Christian imagery in Superman Returns and the widened audience for it provided by the internet has sparked the books and articles.

Anton Karl koslovic's "Superman as Christ-Figure: The American Pop Culture Movie Messiah" came ahead of the rush in 2002 in the Journal of Religion and Film. He's all for the subtext, as it points toward Christ.

There's Stephen Skelton's The Gospel According to the World's Greatest Superhero. There's Ken Schenck's "Superman: A Popular Culture Messiah" in the book The Gospel According to Superheroes, edited by B.J. Oropeza. There are chapters in books such as Holy Superheroes by Greg Garrett, and H. Michael Brewer's Who Needs a Superhero? about this sort of thing.

Sort of Related are books such as Christopher Knowles Our Gods Wear Spandex and Don LoCicero's Superheroes and Gods. Both of these books look for early parallels (which they see as forerunners) to superheroes in myths and legends, not specifically in Christ. They both devote some pages to Superman. Also in this category I'd put Josepha Sherman's Once Upon a Galaxy, which does the same thing with various films and has a chapter on Superman.

Aside from a score of newspaper articles and hundreds of blogs and other websites, that's about it. People like to point out how similar Superman is to Christ, and then they like to argue about it.

I actually have a lot more to say about this, as you may expect. I sat down to take what I thought would be a page of notes and found myself with eight pages of a chapter, and I hadn't even gotten to Christ yet. So, no real commentary or analysis here, but there will be a bit in the book someday, I hope.

New Origin

2010-03-08T15:28:00.000-08:00

All right. J. Michael Straczinsky is writing a new series of "graphic novel" Superman stories, to be drawn by Shane Davis. It's a retelling of the origin story, which will lead into subsequent "graphic novels" in the future. These are free from the other Superman stories published by DC. I put "graphic novel" in quotes because it's really just a long comic book, on perhaps better quality paper, and probably between hard covers.

Straczynski was interviewed by Newsarama recently. He talks about his love for the character and how excited he is by the job. Here's a section relevant to my own project:

I come from a hardscrabble, difficult and often brutal childhood. I come from the streets, I came from nowhere with nothing, and when as a kid I started to tell people I was going to be a writer someday, the reaction was laughter. ...here was a period when I was about 13 that I literally got beat up every day, because no matter how badly I got beat, I would refuse to give in, so they'd try again the next day....So the idea of someone who could fly away, someone who could be anything he wanted, who couldn't be hurt...all of that had tremendous appeal for me. As a kid, it was pretty much all that sustained me.

That part about being able to fly away sounds sort of like run away from the people beating him up, but that's not how I think he meant it. He connected to the character as an escapist fantasy, as a lot of people do.

Interestingly, his interview draws a lot of ire from people in the comments section. I won't go into it here.

Even more interestingly, a part of the interview where Straczysky discusses altering the destruction of Krypton incites one reader to write a reply called "Leave Krypton Alone, JMS." Here Graeme McMillan discusses the origin and how he thinks it's wrong to make the destruction of Superman's homeworld "a hit job on a planetary scale." He's got his reasons, and he does a good job of explaining how it would affect the character.

The interesting thing to me is that people are invested in the origin story. They consider it on very deep levels, both in terms of the character and in terms of their own lives. It's important. And because it's important, it gets retold a lot, always from a perspective, always for a purpose. Always as somebody new wants it to be retold, which isn't always how the readers want to read it.

Edit: I have to add this link, to Newsarama. Today they posted an essay by Straczynski where he writes about the meaning of Superman, and Wonderwoman, two comics he will soon be writing.

The (auto)biography

2010-03-08T14:33:00.000-08:00

People involved in Superman productions seem to want to tell their stories. Probably the earliest is Kirk Aly's A Job For Superman. Alyn starred in the Superman serials of the late forties. He was the first man to play Superman in front of the camera. As with several of these books, I haven't read this one. It's sitting in IU's Lilly Library, which means I'd have to devote several hours to sitting in the library and reading it. It's a special rare book library, and you can't check out its contents.

Next is Noel Neill's Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Neill toured the country speaking to colleges and whatnot a few decades ago. She was one of two actors to play Lois Lane on The Adventures of Superman television show in the fifties. She's still known as Lois. Last year, during the Superman Celebration in Metropolis, Il, the local dignitaries, Neill, and Superman ceremonially broke ground on the site of a new statue, one that will depict Lois Lane as played by Neill. It's right up the road from the famous Superman statue at the Metropolis courthouse. Haven't read it.

I've actually got pictures of the groundbreaking, but not with me. Darnit.

Then there's Superman on Broadway, by Bob Holiday and Chuck Harter. Holiday starred as Superman in the short lived It's a Bird, it's a Plane, It's Superman broadway show. Evidently this has been revived periodically, and was filmed for television, resulting in what's considered the worst of all Superman productions. Haven't read this one, either. Three strikes.

Then there are two books by Christopher Reeve: Still Me and Nothing Is Impossible. I have read these, mostly because the local library has them. They're less about Superman than I assume the others must be. Reeve tried to distance himself from the role somewhat, though he can't avoid it in these books. The second is more interesting since it essentially gives Reeve's interpretation of the character. The first gives Reeve's perspective on the films' production.

Since I've read two out of five of these books, I don't have a genre description or contents breakdown. They're sort of memoirs, sort of autobiographies. There are biographies of Reeve out there, which I am trying to convince myself I don't have to track down. The production histories operate as a kind of biographies of the shows and movies, so they complement these books since they delve deeper into the actors' lives than production histories can.

Then there's George Reeves. He's got a small industry going in the book publishing world. There's Speeding Bullet: The Life and Bizarre Death of George Reeves. There's Hollywood Kryptonite: The Bulldog, the Lady, and the Death of Superman. There's Behind the Crimson Cape: the cinema of George Reeves. There are entries on him in The Hollywood Book of Death and others of that kind. The only one I've read is Hollywood Kryptonite, which is more or less a conspiracy theory kind of book.

In Other News:

Here's an interesting article explaining why the author, Robert Cargill, thinks Christopher Nolan should not be involved in producing a new Superman movie. Nolan, as you may know, recently directed two Batman movies, the second of which became one of the most profitable movies of all time. The author's reasons for wanting Nolan off the project are five in number, but are really just one: Nolan's previous films are all very different and darker than Superman should be, in his opinion. He's right in that they are all quite dark and different from Superman in genre, theme, and mood. This, of course, doesn't guarantee that Nolan's involvement in a Superman film would make it like his other projects. What's even more interesting is this statement:

2) Superman isn't a detective. Nolan thrives telling noir-ish detective stories. Superman isn't a detective. He's a reporter. He hits things. Hard. And flies fast. And burns holes in things. And blows cold air that freezes things. Thinking? That ain't his style. He's not dumb, but a good Superman story isn't about him tracking down criminals; it is about a world in peril with only one man who can save it.

And:

He is Mom, baseball, and apple pie, and he stands for "truth, justice, and the American way." There's NOTHING dark about him or his story, only a sadness that drives his overtly boy scout tendencies.

These areCargill's idea of Superman. Not too different from others', I'd guess, but interesting. Sure, he hits things, but so does Batman. And sure, Batman's the detective, but Superman's a reporter, which means he's a writer. And writers think about things an awful lot. There's also a lot of comics pages devoted to Superman doing experiments and whatnot in the Fortress of Solitude. It's partly how he fills his downtime and how he tries to solve various problems on earth. Still, Cargill's right about the Superman of the movies.

Production Histories

2010-03-03T15:50:00.000-08:00

Over the next few posts, I'll be writing about the sorts of books other people write about Superman. There are several genres, each of which includes four or five books. Today, I'm looking at the "production histories." These aren't about comics, so much. They're about cartoons, radio, tv, theater, and movies. They're behind-the-scenes looks at the shows.

First up is Gary Grossman's Superman: Serial to Cereal. The title reflects the early film serials and the fact that Kelloggs sponsored the radio and television "Adventures of Superman" shows. His book mostly deals with tv and serials; there's a bit about the Fleischer cartoons from the early forties and the radio show starring Bud Collyer, but not much more. It was published in 1976, part of a series on popular culture edited by film critic Leonard Maltin.

It's got all the conventions of the production history genre: short biographies of the stars and producers (both before and after the show), descriptions of the episodes and the author's appraisal of them, some of the controversies and difficulties. I'm going to assume these are fairly standard for production histories of any show, though I must admit that I don't make a habit of reading these sorts of books. I'm racking my brain for any I've read, and come up with nothing.

Specific to Superman, though, are details of the extent to which the actor becomes typecast. In the case of Superman, however, typecasting seems almost the wrong term. If you're cast as a type, you can at least play that type in lots of different shows. If you're a thug, or an ingenue, there are all sorts of shows that have that type of character. If you're Superman or Jimmy Olsen or Lois Lane, then apparently you're done for. It's more specific than typecasting--it's character casting. Also, I'm guessing that few other shows' production histories go into so much detail about the technology required to make a man fly onscreen. All of these books do, and every one of them details the accidents that happened because of it.

Grossman's is pretty good, though dated. He includes lots and lots of pictures. However, it's also sometimes really boring. Do we really need that much information about an actor who played a villain in one episode of The Adventures of Superman? I suppose some people would say yes.

Next up is The Making of Superman: The Movie by David Michael Petrouare, which I haven't read. No offense to Petrou; it's largely because I can't bear to absorb any more information about the production of Superman: The Movie and its sequels.

I did read Bruce Scivally's Superman on Film, Television, Radio, and Broadway. Not bad. It tries to be more comprehensive that Grossman's. It's more recent, so it's got lists of websites and whatnot. All the components of the genre are there, and it gets all the way to 2006's Superman Returns.

There's Superman vs. Hollywood, by Jake Rossen. This is the most sensationalistic of all the production histories. It revels in the controversies and the rumors/legends that have grown up around the actors and shows. It has its villains and heroes. Again, all the biographies, the behind-the-scenes, the flight technology, etc.

Then there's Flights of Fantasy, by Michael J. Hayde. This one focuses almost entirely on The Adventures of Superman, which was the title of both radio and television shows. It's exhaustively thorough, and does the most debunking of the legends. As such, it was interesting to have read this one prior to reading Rossen's Superman vs. Hollywood, which doesn't even attempt to debunk, say, the story that a kid pointed a loaded gun at George Reeves during an appearance as Superman because the kid wanted a bullet that had bounced off Superman for a souvenir. Rossen reports it as fact; Hayde does a bit of digging and concludes that the story was concocted by Reeves as an excuse for limiting his appearance in costume. Hayde cites interviews with Reeves and concludes that this was a fear the actor developed (justifiable, I think, since both he and Collyer and others had been kicked and hit by kids attempting to test their invulnerability).

I found these interesting at first, but I must admit I'm surprised that there are even this many of them. At most, they deal with comics in a superficial manner. Hayde states that the comics may be great, but that Superman owes his popularity to the producers and actors of Adventures on radio and tv. The information is virtually the same in all of them, though each has its own spin. Some, such as Hayde, deal more with Reeves' death than others (Grossman, for example, barely discusses it at all). In all, the genre caters to fans more than a general audience, which is exactly appropriate.

Super Marriage

2010-02-23T16:29:00.001-08:00

Here's an interesting article, It Ain't Easy Being Superman, that compares Superman stories to the role of the United States as a world power. It concludes:

It’s not too late to rethink this. Maybe we can learn something from Haiti, to tap into our country’s instinct to help a neighbor in need, and think more broadly about our long-term relationship with countries that could really stand some bootstrapping assistance. If Superman, Lois, and Clark were real people, their story would have ended up in tragedy without some change in trajectory. We have the opportunity to make that change in our own world, if we would choose it.

Throughout, the writer refers to Superman in the past tense, as indicated above. Nothing against her, but in several versions of the story, Superman/Clark and Lois do change their trajectory, and they're married in current comics continuity. I know, I know, she's using the relationship as an analogy for foreign policy. Still, it brings to my attention that the common conception of Superman still has the love triangle aspect to it, despite any number of shows, comics, and movies. That's how it exists in the minds of a lot of people.

Here's a consideration of the marriage, from Sequential Tart (it's the last section of the page, down a bit):

Especially by bringing in Lois's extended family, the marriage emphasizes the "Superman family" approach to upholding the commonweal in contrast to vigilante crime-fighting. This places Superman's adventures in a larger social context and goes against the grain of the lone wolf hero figure. (Batman has his "family" as well, one that is more wary, even of each other, than Superman's.)

BBC

2010-02-22T17:02:00.000-08:00

A while back (1981) the BBC produced a documentary on Superman called "The Comic Strip Hero", and "Batmitey" was kind enough to post it on YouTube. It begins with an intereview with Superman's creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. They talk about all sorts of stuff. It's crazy to see Joe Shuster hold up his sketch for the cover to Superman number 1.

Also weird: watching Frederic Wertham become annoyed by Superman. He'd written his book nearly thirty years before this documentary, in which he proclaimed Superman to be one of the worst things a kid could read, and yet he doesn't seem to be able to see beyond Superman's powers and the violence with which he solves problems. He seems especially annoyed that the character isn't real. When asked by the interviewer what he thinks of the fact that people say Superman stands for truth, justice, and the American way (this is in the fifth part, as divided on youtube), he can't even answer the question because it makes no sense to him. "How can it stand for something that doesn't exist..." he starts to say, which isn't the question. Then he goes back to the powers: "He flies through the air..." and he talks about how a woman who's raped doesn't need someone who can fly, but a police officer.

It's an interesting perspective. Again and again, people in the documentary talk about how Superman (and superheroes in general) are for little boys who want to be like them. Even Jerry and Joe talk about this. Also lurking behind Jerry and Joe's comments are their everyday wish fulfillments, such as being noticed by girls.

Then there's the thing that's not talked about, but that Wertham is heading toward with his comments when he talks about what "these two schoolboys" started in the beginning...It's what writer Brad Meltzer keeps coming back to in his novel The Book of Lies...the fact that Jerry Siegel's father was probably murdered. When Wertham refers to what the rape and murder victims need instead of Superman, he seems to forget that the victims often don't get what they need. People do bad things to each other. The law cannot protect everyone. So we imagine Superman, and a world where, when the law fails, there's something beyond it to save us. And wouldn't it be great if that something were powerful and unbound by the laws of nature so it could save us anywhere, any time? Wouldn't it be great if this person, or a whole group of people, didn't try to use their power to take over the world?

"There's no 'g' in 'brazier.'"

2010-02-19T17:44:00.000-08:00

I was among the millions of kids who wanted to be Superman. This was largely because of the Reeve movies. I owned very few Superman comics, never watched the old Adventures of Superman show, etc. I liked Superfriends, but it was those movies that did it for me.

So I sat down and watched the first one again. It has been a decade or so since I saw it, and I still like it a lot. There are lots of oddities, like Lois' misspellings (leading to the Perry White line I've used in the title above). Reeve is perfect. After reading that his interpretation is based on Cary Grant in Bringing up Baby, I can see why he chose it. The dynamic between Clark and Lois might as well be that between Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn. If I recall correctly, Reeve worked with Hepburn quite a bit.

My favorite parts: Catching the bullet to save Lois, then feigning fainting. The completely straight delivery of "Truth, justice, and the American way." Miss Tessmacher. The many wigs of Lex Luthor. Christopher Reeve's primal scream of denial as he decides to turn back time to save Lois. Great scream.

Stray Observations:

Superman is a disaster movie. They were quite popular in the late '70's, partly because technology made them possible. And it made Superman's flight possible. So flight and disaster movie, that's Superman. He's our response to "a capricious universe" in the words of Neil Gaiman and Adam Rogers in Wired a few years ago. It's interesting that so many actors who've portrayed Superman have been heavily involved in charity work--attempting to thwart all sorts of disasters both potential and actual. Bud Collyer, George Reeves, and Christopher Reeve (I haven't checked on the others) were all very much involved in these sorts of things.

But Superman is very overtly a disaster movie. The destruction of Krypton is shown in very great length. Lots of people running and falling. The helicopter crash--where he meets Lois--is excessively destructive. And then there's the missile test at the end, where all sorts of avalanches, dam breaking, bridges falling, etc, go on and on and on. There's so much more emphasis on disaster than on heroism, it becomes overwhelming. I know that the greater the disaster, the greater the heroism that saves us from it, but this was excessive.

Not that it makes it a bad movie. I really didn't pay attention to it until I was thinking about the time it was produced and the other kinds of movies that came out during that era. The eighties had very few (more in the nineties--millennial fever?), but the seventies had a lot--notably the Airport films.

Also, they're really showing off those flying effects. The first time we see Superman, standing in the distance of the Fortress of Solitude, he takes off and flies directly toward the camera before swooping away. My guess is that this was showing that they weren't limited by the effects of the old Adventures tv show, where Superman was pretty much always flying in profile, sideways across the screen.

So, it's a great movie, even now, I think. And I hope that's not just nostalgia talking.

Smallville

2010-02-17T15:09:00.001-08:00

As part of this study, I really should watch Smallville more. I watched the last two episodes, but I tend to agree with Chris Sims' assessment: it's not very good. But I liked it in the past. I didn't catch the first few episodes, but somewhere near the beginning I started watching. I sort of kept up with it, if I remembered, for a couple of years. Then, as I recall, it got really really bad. I avoided it like the plague, and then I watched the last two episodes, which did nothing to alter my opinion.

But for this project, I have just watched the first four episodes of Season 1, and I liked them a lot. They blend teen drama, superheroics, weird mystery, monsters (of a sort), and a dash of humor. I suppose that the "monster of the week" plots grew tiresome for the fans eventually, and that the overarching plot of Clark finding out about Krypton, Lex trying to figure out Clark's secret, and the romance took over. But then what happened?

So, now that the show's in its ninth season, Clark is living in Metropolis, working at the Daily Planet, flirting with Lois Lane (who, evidently, has been on the show for five years), has a Neo from the Matrix costume, and fights crime, he still can't fly and isn't called Superman. And I must wonder...why not? Oh, and he doesn't wear glasses.

Certainly I'm not the only one wondering about this.

At the Superman Celebration last summer, I talked to a man named Terry who was there with his grandchildren collecting autographs. He told me that they're all fans of Smallville and that they hunt through the internet to find out all sorts of information. According to Terry, the producers have left the costume decision to Tom Welling, who portrays Clark Kent. I have not found confirmation of this.

Others attribute the lack of the red and blue costume to network interference, because the executives fear that a costumed superman in the television would confuse people when a costumed Superman in a movie theater appears.

It's a curious thing. The show seems to have fallen victim to the same problem that plagues so many shows where the characters are high school students: they have to grow up sometime. For whatever reason, they've kept on with the mission statement--a superman show without superman. Some people are happy with this, some find it unbearable. Enough of both camps still watch it to keep it on the air.

I'm not sure of all the details of the story as it fills out in the subsequent seasons. I know that there's something about Jor-El being sort of a bad guy, and Clark must deal with that. My main interest in this comes because of the origin story. If you consider Superman's origin to be the part of the story from Jor-El placing Kal-El into the rocket to Superman's first public appearance in Metropolis (usually saving Lois Lane), then Smallville still isn't done telling that story. Smallville is the single longest version of Superman's origin out there. Siegel and Shuster's first published version, in Action Comics #1, was precisely one page long. So is Morrison and Quitely's All Star Superman origin. But then, neither of those versions aired on the WB, and needed teen drama to pull in an audience.

Christopher Reeve

2010-02-15T15:33:00.001-08:00

In his autobiography, Still Me, Christopher Reeve doesn't talk about Superman much. It's clear that Reeve liked the role, but didn't like what it did to his career. Following the success of the first movie, he deliberately sought roles that were in no way like Superman. As a result, he selected Somewhere in Time--a movie that evidently flopped on release but now has a very dedicated cult following. I remember seeing all sorts of memorabilia when I visited Mackinac Island, where it was shot.

On top of trying to distance himself from the role, Reeve seems genuinely unaware of how much those movies meant to people. He writes nothing about fans, about people accosting him on the street, etc. You'd think this would have been a major part of his life, but he spends more time describing the comedic stylings of Robin Williams than he spends discussing what Superman meant to people. He gives it one paragraph:

During my stay in Hollywood [for an appearance at the Academy awards; this is after his injury] I entered hotels and buildings through garages, kitchens, and service elevators, and met cooks, waiters, chambermaids, and maintenance crews. Many of them said they were praying for me. Others looked me right in the eye and said, "We love you, Superman. You're our hero." At first I couldn't believe they meant it. Then I realized that they were looking past the chair and honoring me for a role that obviously had real meaning for them. I didn't feel patronized in any way. Clearly a part I had played twenty years before was still valued. The fact that I was in a wheelchair, unable to move below my shoulders, and dependent on the support of others for almost every aspect of my daily life had not diminished the fact that I was--and always would be--their Superman.

Reeve writes about basing Clark Kent on Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby, which is awfully obvious once you give it a second's thought. He writes about being the custodian for the character, and that he did his best with it. I wonder what he would think of current comics artist Gary Frank using his face for the comics version of the character in several of the titles now being published.

In all, he devotes about ten pages of 300 to Superman, which shows what his mindset was. For a man who endured a spinal injury that left him quadripeligic, one might think that he would use Superman as an image for the freedom of movement he longed for and could only experience in his dreams. Nope. He mentions his heroes: Charles Lindburg and Harry Houdini, who embodied this longing for freedom for him. The true recurring image is not flying but sailing. He finds it in his dreams every night, and it orders his existence to some extent.

That said, he does report some funny things about Superman:

In the first draft of Superman was a scene in which Superman sees a bald man walking down the street. Thinking it's Lex Luthor, he swoops down to collar him and take him away. But it's Telly Savalas, who says, "Who loves ya, baby?" to the startled Superman and offers him a lollipop.

Reeve is glad they got rid of that scene. And:

The less said about Superman IV the better.

Links

This is but one fan of Reeve Superman, discussing a movie book she found.

Then there's My Enduring Relationship with the Man of Steel, which is about a woman's fascination with Reeve's character. At first, her fantasy is to interview Reeve, as Lois Lane does on her balcony in the movie. After learning that Reeve wasn't really much of a Superman fan, but is everything she hoped he would be as a person, she reconsiders her fantasy:

...while there was always a part of me that wanted to be with a Superman, what became more prevalent was the part of me that wanted to be like him. After all, Superman has given us a role model with qualities that we mortals can emulate without having to bend steel with our bare hands – fortitude, integrity, honesty, humanity.

Random Stuff

2010-02-10T13:40:00.001-08:00

The Elephant in the Room spends a livejournal post talking about things that don't make sense when it comes to Superman. His reasons: (1) He can't die, thus no tension (2) Kryptonite makes no sense (3) The costume is silly (4) He doesn't solve real world problems (5) the disguise as Clark Kent is flimsy at bst. The comments indicate that he's not alone.

There's an essay in The Man from Krypton (ed. Glenn Yeffeth) called "Six Things that Plain Don't Make Sense about Superman," published in 2005. That essay lists (1) The Pathetic Inferiority complex of the Kandorians, (2) The Frightening Destructive Potential of Superbaby (3) The Odd Construction of buildings in Metropolsi (4) The odd favoritism demonstrated by Jimmy Olson's signal watch (5) Street level thugs who honestly believe they stand a chance, and (6) The absence of any real world limitations to superhearing.

In other links, here's the solution to the mystery of Superman and the Cyclops.

This one's pretty interesting. It's about how Superman can be boiled down to the description: A police reporter affects the outcome of the crimes he covers, then writes about them, hiding his involvement. (from the same website: who should write superman)

I've seen the story of Superman boiled down to one theme on several occasions. Josepha Sherman distills it to either the moses story (baby set adrift, found and rasied, becomes hero) or the story of a hero learning his heritage--these both in her book Once Upon a Galaxy.

Then there's the discussion between Tim Callahan and Steven Withrow in Callahan's column When Worlds Collide. They go over superheroes as "archetypes". This bit by Callahan is interesting, in response to Withrow calling Batman "the dark knight detective" as if it sums up his character.

But doesn't Batman represent something more primal? The "dark knight detective" aspect is something that comes out of Batman's pulp roots perhaps, but isn't he more like "the god of problem solving"? And he mostly ends up solving the problems by punching them in the face, no matter how much his intellect, planning, or Bat-computer might help him get to that point.

Superman, in many ways the opposite, doesn't have any problems, except those which he manufactures for himself. He could correct any injustice almost instantly, and even the social problems writers saddled him with for years were mostly the result of his attempt to pretend at humanity. To pretend to have those very problems. Had this mythic character never adopted the guise of an awkward newspaper man, he wouldn't have had to trick Lois Lane all those times. And he wouldn't have had any of those dual-identity struggles. Batman punches problems in the face to become superhuman, while Superman creates problems for himself to become human.

Does that mean that it's not just Superman that was necessary to birth the superhero genre, but the duality between Superman and Batman?

Withrow doesn't agree with that last point: But I still think the Batman archetype is a reaction against the Superman archetype. Not simply because Superman came first, but because I believe the world view that underlies Superman is more fundamental to human nature than the world view underlying Batman. We are born with a yearning for Superman as our ideal and must learn (if we ever do) to accept Batman as our reality.

I'd like to draw the parallel here with a comment I quoted not long ago, made by Josh Walgenbach: Batman is a man trying to be a god. Superman is a god trying to be a man.

In the 1970's, writer Denny O'Neil produced a new take on Superman, one that was significantly less powerful and more connected to humanity. Here's a lengthy overview, with lots of scanned pages, of that run.

That about does it for now.

Another Origin

2010-02-07T17:22:00.000-08:00

I need to keep this issue in mind. It's time to assemble all the versions of Superman's Origin. This one is Superman 53, from 1948. The site is a review, with a summary and some comparisons to the contemporary continuity. More to come.

George Reeves

2010-01-27T16:59:00.000-08:00

George Reeves died, and the details of his death were immediately fashioned into legend. The newspaper headline read "Superman Kills Self," conflating the man with one of his roles. It was, of course, the role that defined his career, but he didn't necessarily want it to define his life. Nonetheless, to this day The Adventures of Superman has a devoted following, and the death of its star is still cause for speculation.

Part of the reason people still talk about it is the so-called "Superman Curse." Supposedly, if you're involved in the production of Superman television or movies, you're doomed. The Unexplained Mysteries (dot com) has a page devoted to the curse. The Superman Homepage offers a page of "common superman misconceptions" related to Superman, which includes sections on Reeves' death and on the curse. Lou Anders writes an article about it in The Man from Krypton: A Closer Look at Superman. The article is titled "A Word of Warning for Brandon Routh," and was written prior to Superman Returns. It's a curiously nonsensical article, which focuses far more on Keanu Reeves than one would think an essay on Superman should focus on a person who has never played Superman (his role in The Matrix notwithstanding). It does, however, have this little bit:

"...it can't be glossed over that it was this injury (to Christopher Reeve) which began the idle speculation that something supernatural existed called the Superman curse. Perhaps man isn't meant to reach too high, the thinking goes, and daring to take on the role of such a super man tempts the gods too much."

I'm tempted not to note here that Hugo Danner, protagonist of Gladiator and often-cited inspiration for Superman, died while tempting the "gods" by cursing them. He's struck by lightning.

Anyway, Greg Hatcher writes about George Reeves' death on Comic Book Resources.

Here's a page about George Reeves' ghost haunting the house where he died, which I don't think I'd encountered before.

The Straight Dope tackles the subject here.

There's a lot more to this. A book was written about it: Hollywood Kryptonite: The Lady, the Bulldog, and the Death of Superman. This book seems to have been the primary inspiration for Hollywoodland, a film that creates a fictional detective to investigate the case. The book pretty much goes for a murder verdict, the film concludes suicide. The book also goes over a lot of the rumors about Reeves.

There's so much more to this. The rumors persist. In her recent Memoirs of an Occasional Superheroine, Valerie D'Orazio writes about her contemplation of suicide: "Oh, how was I going to do it? Window. Sixth floor. I think George Reeves died like that, no? Took LSD, thought he was really Superman? or was that an urban legend?"

I could link to websites all day, but this seems to cover the important facets.

Was Superman a Spy?

2010-01-26T17:01:00.000-08:00

Brian Cronin writes a blog called "Comics Should Be Good" for the site Comic Book Resources. As a feature on this blog called Comic Book Legends Revealed, Cronin regularly explores "comic book legends" and 'reveals' them as either true or false. It's pretty good. And as one of those blog things that becomes a book, the feature was published by Plume last April under the title, "Was Superman a Spy? and other comic book Legends Revealed."

This reads like a history book, whose focus is less chronological than by topic. There's a section on DC, with chapters on Superman, Batman, and one on everybody else the company publishes. There's a section on Marvel, with chapters on the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Hulk, Captain America, X-Men, and also one on everybody else. Then there's a section on other companies, including a chapter on Disney and a chapter on everybody else.

A book on legends about comic book characters and history should be right up my alley. It's a quick read, and there's interesting stuff (65 legends directly from the blog, 65 new to the book are explored). However, it's not really about legends in the strictest sense. There are no legends told here. There's merely the revelation.

Let me explain, using the latest entry (from January 21) as an example. On the blog, each entry begins like this:

Comic Legend: The musical "It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman" was inspired by the success of the Batman TV series.

STATUS: I'm Going With False.

Then Follows the explanation of why Cronin has chosen true or false as the status. This has to do with the dates of the musical's Broadway opening followed by the original air date of the Batman series, both in 1966. Cronin reasons that Broadway lead time prohibits the show as an influence. That makes perfect sense. He also quotes some of the people involved in the musical to prove that they intended to play it straight, not camp it up like Batman.

All well and good. The book, however, usually neglects to print the legends, nor does it give Cronin's opinion as to the legend's truth or falsehood. So the entries are interesting, but quite often I have no idea what the legend he's revealing was. Some are obvious, some obscure, and some seem just like straightforward anecdotes about comics history, characters, and behind-the-scenes drama. It's not very satisfying on a that level, as I found myself often wondering what the legends were rather than being glad to know the truth at last.

On other levels, I was disappointed that there was no mention of the legend/rumor that George Reeves committed suicide because of all the children getting hurt pretending to fly as he did in The Adventures of Superman.

Also, one of the legends, put on the back cover, is that Wolverine was intended to be a real wolverine by Len Wein, his creator. The book confirms this, but Wein himself has said it's false. Cronin posted this on his blog, but this was after the book's printing, so the book reflects the mistake.

Still, there's some good information here. I'm not sure how I'll use the 30 or so pages on Superman (I can't imagine I'll get a lot of use out of the fact that Superman drawn by Jack Kirby had his face redrawn by somebody else), but I'm glad I have access to them.

September 11

2010-01-25T15:40:00.001-08:00

There's a book called The Terror Dream, by Susan Faludi. It's a book about what the American responses to 9/11 revealed about us as a nation. It's also largely about the myths we tell to get us through crisis. These myths aren't always healthy, as Faludi demonstrates with overwhelming evidence. It's fascinating.

A while back I posted some fan art of Superman grimmacing in pain because of his impotence in the face of the attacks on the world trade center. Here's some more.

It's called 'And Where the Hell Was Superman?' by Hardy Ecke. It seems to be on display in DC somewhere, but my information may be out of date.

Ecke explains the picture on his website: What causes me to fix the catastrophe in a painting is not that an attack on the civilized world is surrounded by unanswered questions, but insted that the saviour of the world became too tired to protect America from evil anymore....A Rambo and a McClane with all the other Hollywood comics cannot rescue the world because if they cannot reach victory with the brain they cannot succeed with the sword.

It's an interesting image, though I don't think it conveys the ideas (at least to me) that he wanted it to convey. I see in this painting an image of a symbol of heroism that is dated and tire, one that can no longer save us, which is evidently what he wanted to paint. But maybe my concept of Superman is different from his. Superman is different that Rambo and John McClane--both reference in his explanation. These guys are all muscle and tactics. Superman is violent, to be sure, but he stands for something more.

This is from Gregoy McNeill, writing on the Superman Homepage: Since then [9/11], our concept of what a hero is has changed. Living with the fear of future terrorist attacks and uncertainity has made us ask "Where's Superman?" The truth is he does exist. It's not the powers nor costume that defines Superman, it's the morals. Superman has evolved from the embodiment of America to what we as human beings can strive to become if we can constructively use our talents and potential in a positve light....All of us are superheroes when we take a stand against injustice. All it requires us to have is courage and faith. Superman is within us, it's our choice to decide whether or not we want to use it.

I think Superman as a moral exemplar is a more common conception than Superman as a brute. There's a therapeutic technique named for him, "What Would Superman Do?"; an English professor counsels the same thought exercise, There's Valerie D'Orazio's blog, Occasional Superheroine, where she titles a post, "Why Superman not Telling a Lie Had Such an Impact on My Life." She ends the post with the question, what would Superman do? (it's at the bottom of the page here). A Google search of "What would superman do" reveals over 5000 hits, though not all of those are immediately relevant, they're interesting.

And I return, as so often, to All Star Superman. A running theme is Brain Vs. Brawn, Luthor vs. Superman. In Issue 12, Morrison reverses it, when a weakened and dying Superman outsmarts Luthor and says, "Brain beats brawn every time," a line Luthor uttered several issues earlier (Issue 1, maybe). Of course, Superman is punching Luthor when he says it.

but back to Terror Dream...Faludi titles a chapter "The Return of Superman." This book would have been published about a year after the film Superman Returns. There's a lot to the book, about how 9/11 affected women in particular. The chapter relevant here is about how we had to search for heroes after the attacks. When none presented themselves in an obvious manner, we (meaning, largely, the media and government) had to invent them. We invented them in a mold that we had long held to be valuable and glorious, a mold cast on cowboys and superheroes. Into that mold stepped Bush and his cabinet, Giuliani, and others.

Also cast in that mold were the men on United 93. We sought evidence that the mold fit, and we found it in statements such as this one, spoken of Lou Nacke on Dateline: "When he was a little boy, he love Superman. And he'd actually had a cape on and went through a glass window pretending to be Superman." He also had a tattoo on his shoulder. So he must have been a hero.

I do not question Nacke's heroism. Nobody really knows what happened on that plane. When Congress tried to award medals to four of the men, whom the media had decided were the heroes who overthrew the highjackers, others protested. Eventually, all the passengers on the flight were given posthumous medals. Lots of other people, too.

Faluid writes that this search for heroes and the apotheosization of them reveals "a deep cultural unease beneath the hero worship." We were constantly looking for new heroes after attacks that "left us with little in the way of ongoing chronicle or ennobling narrative. So a narrative was created and populated with pasteboard protagonists whose exploits would exist almost entirely within the realm of American archetype and American fantasy. There was a danger to being honored with such manufactured laurels, particularly for the tragedy's survivors; for the fantasy to hold, citizens would have to stay in character, never mind that their roles were constrained and deforming, never mind that the command performance prevented them from expressing what they really had witnessed and suffered that day."

There's a danger in casting real people as imaginary characters. They can never deliver fully on the promise of the role. None of these people is Superman (neither, seven years later, was Obama), who would have saved the day. That's why the moral example is so much more important than the warrior. Faluid calls superhero stories the fantasies of adolescent boys, but that only refers to the power the character possesses. If the Superman who returned after 9/11 had been the embodiment of morality instead of the misguided muscle of the governmental reaction, things would have been different indeed.

Superman vs. Tarzan

2010-01-19T20:10:00.000-08:00

So there's the Crash Test Dummies' Song:

Tarzan wasn't a ladies' man

He'd just come along and scoop 'em up under his arm

Like that, quick as a cat in the jungle

But Clark Kent, now there was a real gent

He would not be caught sittin' around in no

Junglescape, dumb as an ape doing nothing

[chorus]Superman never made any money

For saving the world from Solomon Grundy

And sometimes I despair the world will never see

Another man like him

Hey Bob, Supe had a straight job

Even though he could have smashed through any bank

In the United States, he had the strength, but he would not

Folks said his family were all dead

Their planet crumbled but Superman, he forced himself

To carry on, forget Krypton, and keep going

[chorus]

Tarzan was king of the jungle and Lord over all the apes

But he could hardly string together four words: "I Tarzan, You Jane."

Sometimes when Supe was stopping crimes

I'll bet that he was tempted to just quit and turn his back

On man, join Tarzan in the forest

But he stayed in the city, and kept on changing clothes

In dirty old phonebooths till his work was through

And nothing to do but go on home

And there's Superman/Tarzan: Sons of the Jungle.

That's not a whole lot to work with, I suppose. But there's something to be learned from the comparison between the two characters. Let's start with the obvious:

The began in the 1930's.

They're both orphans.

They're raised by adoptive parents.

They wear distinctive outfits.

They're far and away superior to everyone around them.

They rescue people.

I recently read Tarzan of the Apes, the first Tarzan novel that Burroughs wrote. I liked it a lot. I was surprised, since the other Burroughs books I've read have been disappointing. But in this book, he doesn't shy away from the difficulties of the character. And he makes Tarzan learning to read by himself pretty acceptable. He gives Tarzan a real moral dilemma at the end, and then resolves it in exactly the way you wouldn't expect a pulp novel from the '30's to resolve itself. I imagine that the rest of the novels in the Tarzan series have to undo Tarzan's decision to give up Jane and his title as Lord Greystoke, but reading that first one is quite a surprise.

I was also surprised by how superhuman Burroughs makes Tarzan. He's clearly past the potential of even the most physically capable human being. Burroughs acknowledges, though, that even Tarzan is no match for the strngth of the creatures of the African jungle. He has to outsmart them, and this even proves to be an important realization for Tarzan when Western Civilization finds him. He has to come to terms with his humanity.

Isn't that what Superman had to do as well? Is that what the show Smallville was all about for a while? (this is a sincerely asked question. I stopped watching a while ago because of my work schedule) But Superman isn't human. I return again and again to a characterization of the two most important comic book heroes, made by Josh Walgenbach during an interview I conducted with him last year. He said,

"Batman is a man trying to be a god. Superman is a god trying to be a man."

I come back to that again and again. It seems apt.

Sons of the Jungle

It's not so much a good comic as it is interesting. The overall point, possibly not intended by the writer Chuck Dixon, is that we have a destiny, so to speak. It may be written in our dna. It's certainly not a product of our environment. the story begins as in Burrough's first Tarzan novel, with a mutiny that would strand Tarzan's parents (Tarzan is already conceived at this point) on the coast of Africa, far from human settlement. In the novel, the baby is born and the parents subsequently die. The boy is raised by apes (on a side note, I was at first disappointed that Burroughs seemed to have no concept of actualy ape anatomy or behavior; then I realized that he had invented a new species--the apes that raise Tarzan are neither gorilla nor chimpanzee; he calls them anthropoids), etc...

In this comic--a joint effort by Dark Horse and DC--Superman's ship flies across the sky to crash just inside the tree line as Tarzan's mother prays for their salvation. The mutineers see it as a sign to spare the couple, and Tarzan grows up with back in England. He's morose and unhappy. Though he still exhibits the same superiority of physique and intellect that allowed him to survive in the jungle, he hates his life and begins exploring. He makes his way to the jungle where he finds happiness. He journeys with Jane and a reported from Metropolis named Lois Lane. They're on an expedition to find a lost roman colony. I can only imagine that this is a plot from one of the other Tarzan novels (Tarzan and the Lost Empire seems to be a prime candidate).

Superman, on the other hand, grows up among the apes. He's out of place, rejected by both the apes and the few humans he finds. He's confused about his Kryptonian heritage, thinking that all humans are Kryptonians. That's an easy mistake, I suppose.

Anyway, he meets up with Lois and Jane and Greystoke and Greystoke stays and Superman goes back to Metropolis. They each find where they're "supposed" to be.

Crash Test Dummies

This was a bit of a surprise. I hadn't realized that "Superman's Song" begins with most of the first verse about Tarzan, which is why I started thinking about it in the first place.

This song plays more on the "mythological" conceptions of the characters than on actual stories. That's what makes it interesting. Tarzan is the inarticulate brute who starred in the movies. Superman is lonely and unique, not one of several revenants of Krypton, which at the moment in the comics include an entire city that has been saved and placed on a planet near earth. maybe I'm just getting the "lonely" characterization from the tone of the song. It's a funeral dirge (which I thought even before i saw the video).

Note what the song opposes about the characters. Tarzan wasn't a ladies' man, but Kent (notably not Superman at this point) was a real gent. More than just rhyme scheme, this reveals a lot about the conception of the characters. It sets the civilized Kent against the jungle-dwelling Tarzan. However, in Burroughs' novel, Tarzan comments on the lack of civilization among all the humans he meets, thinking that they are no better than the apes and lions he's had to fight for most of his life. When given the chance, he reveals himself as more civilized than the highest levels of western society. And he can still kill lions with nothing more than a knife and a length of rope. He's the master of two worlds. Nonetheless, the inarticulate Tarzan dominates the popular imagination. The movies win out over the books every time. And yet those who adapt books into movies say that nothing they can do will alter the book one bit. Right.

The most interesting thing is that the song removes the "destiny" aspect from Superman. It makes his story all about the choices he makes. He chooses not to rob banks, not to turn his back on humanity. That's what makes the character great, and what is removed in the reading of the character as christ that permeates the current interpretations (stemming, I think from the 1978 movie).

In the end, the afterword to the comic series reveals Burroughs' distaste for Superman. He thinks its a silly character, and he would never put Tarzan in the city as editors asked him to do. But the characters aren't all that different. Tarzan is even once referred to as 'superman.' in the first novel (how in the world did I not write down that page number?).

Yep, I'm about out for today. Here's a picture by Frank Frazetta:

all star puzzle: is leo quintum really lex luthor?

2010-01-13T17:00:00.000-08:00

I've got to kep these handy. It's the idea that the characte Leo Quintum in All Star Superman (reportedly the only character in the story invented by writer Grant Morrison) is actually Lex Luthor, who has come back from the future after having seen the error of his ways as a result of seeing the world as Superman does.

Not-The-BeastMaster posted this one last year. Also, this one.

From the Savage Critics. Also relevant are the comments, as it's the first place I've seen theorizing that Quintum is Luthor. Let's see if I can find another...here...and here...we'll throw this one in there, too, though the part on Superman's a bit down the page...and here...and this one is relevant...and so's this, more or less...

I hadn't even thought of this, and after examining the evidence...I have no comment to make either way.

Memoirs of an Occasional Superheroine

2010-01-12T16:10:00.000-08:00

Valerie D'Orazio began this book as a series of entries on a blog, called "Goodbye to Comics." She expanded and revised these to the book Memoirs of an Occasional Superheroine, which is also the title of a blog she writes. The book is a memoir, so it's about her life, but it's also about superheroes, the comics industry, and sex--not just the kind of sex you have, but the kind that's part of your biology. The part that informs but doesn't define your gender, if that makes sense.

You might not get that from the cover, which features a perky young woman with bright red hair and a cape. It looks innocent. The story inside is anything but. This is about D'Orazio's life in all its difficulties. This makes it a hard book to review, since I'm the last person to know anything about the issues with which the author has had to contend throughout her life. It begins with a childhood of abuse by her bodybuilder father and moves through a series of rejections, sexual harassments, drug difficulties.

Scholars don't like to deal directly with such things. They're difficult topics, so most of us abstract the material to make it more comfortable. It would be easy to just write about the parts where D'Orazio discusses Superman and other superheroes and be done with it. But that would do the book a disservice. It's a good book, and deserves to be addressed on its own terms.

There may be more thorough accounts of the subtle and not-so-subtle forms of sexual harassment that occur in the work place, but I haven't read them. In this book, D'Orazio writes about what it was like to deal with harassment in all of its forms at DC Comics in New York, and it's horrific. I can't imagine it. I'm a man, and men's bodies don't display their sexuality in the way that women's bodies do--whether they want to or not. They have to try to hide it. I sympathize when D'Orazio writes about this, though I cannot empathize. I don't have the experience or the mindset. Men do these sorts of things to women every day--the staring, the offhand comments, the innuendo, the "innocent" requests for dinner, the denial of impropriety, and whatnot. The stress is immeasurable, since the harassment saturates every aspect of the woman's life and work. Is she really being passed up for a promotion because she's not good at her job, or is it because she won't agree to have dinner with the supervisor? No one should have to ask themselves that question. D'Orazio refers to it as unprofessional, when it's actually criminal.

There's a whole lot more to this story. That level of interaction with men follows her throughout her life. She doesn't flinch from describing it, nor from describing herself in less than flattering terms. She does things that, well, aren't so smart. She's the first to admit it, and she often uses a line from a Wonder Woman comic to drive home the point. She has a "fuckitup" button.

And this is where the story gets interesting for me as a scholar who's writing about the uses to which people put the stories that are important to them. She tells her tale, the story of her life, in terms of superheroes. Not merely comic books, either. She refers to Wonder Woman a lot, and Catwoman. D'Orazio has internalized these characters, as well as others such as Superman and Batman. There's a story of Phoenix, from Uncanny X-Men 207, that's also very important to her. Memoirs of an Occasional Superheroine is the story of a woman's life as read through superheroes. In this, it is extremely valuable for me.

I wonder...how much of this--of the reading of her life in terms of comic book charactes--actually occurred at the time and how much of it is part of the process of writing the Memoirs?

If anyone wants to really demonstrate the power of literature in a person's life, all they need to do is point to this book. If one were cynical, one might also use it to demonstrate the negative impact of comics, but to do so would require a gross misreading of the book and the people who populate it--not to mention comics themselves. Comics aren't the problem, instead they provide D'Orazio with a way to understand herself and her troubles. And wow, she's got some troubles. Or had. There's a happy ending.

I've been following her blog, so that wasn't a surprise to me. What was a surprise is the "Second Self" that D'Orazio develops first as a defense mechanism against abuse but that later becomes her conscience, her shadow self, her failures, and ultimately, it seems, her salvation. She rejects the second self (she never refers to it as her secret identity or alter-ego, as one might have expected, and I think it's a wise choice; to do so would be to force us to read it as acomic book trope, which would reduce it in ways that I don't think are appropriate, especially considering how the book ends) at first, which seems to be a bad idea. But this is not a book about love, or self-love, or anything like that. It's more about acceptance: of her problems as things she can't ignore, of herself as a person who has troubles but can overcome them, of the imperfection of the world and the ability to change parts of it--including herself.

It's also about telling her story. She's told not to so often, and listens, that the few times she does tell it early on (about the abuse and harassment), it's basically too late. She needs to tell her whole story in order for it to be an effective strategy in her life, and that's what this book is (well, as much of the whole as anyone can ever tell).

Her blog has changed recently, reflecting that the phase of her life chronicled here is well past. It's more about archetypes, symbolism, and specific superheroes now than anything else. Still interesting, though, just like the book. But the picture from the cover of the book that used to be the masthead of the blog, that's gone.

2010-01-12T14:49:00.000-08:00

Some links:

Archetypes

Here's an interesting discussion of superheroes as archetypes from comic book resources. It's evidently ongoing, so it's not over. It's part of the column When Worlds Collide. Here's a relevant passage:

Superman, in many ways the opposite, doesn't have any problems, except those which he manufactures for himself. He could correct any injustice almost instantly, and even the social problems writers saddled him with for years were mostly the result of his attempt to pretend at humanity. To pretend to have those very problems. Had this mythic character never adopted the guise of an awkward newspaper man, he wouldn't have had to trick Lois Lane all those times. And he wouldn't have had any of those dual-identity struggles. Batman punches problems in the face to become superhuman, while Superman creates problems for himself to become human.

The discussion suffers from a sketchy definition of the concept of the archetype, which is a sketchy concept in the first place that I don't think really benefits anybody. Also a sketchy grasp of comparative mythology. But still pretty good analysis of Superman and Batman and the Fantastic Four.

Original Graphic Novels

This is something that I might not normall discuss here: a retelling of Superman's origin--and presumably leading into a serialized adventures--in a longer, less frequent format than the monthly comic. I mention it because the discussion surrounding it is interesting. This one, by a Grumpy Old Fan, particularly. It goes into the history of Superman and the changes the character goes through. Fans know of the change and have accepted it as an aspect of Superman. It's perhaps one of the character's defining qualities--his mutability.

Bizarro

Here's the Huffington Post using Bizarro as a way to characterize how Washintong does business. Funny.

This sort of thing is really useful. I wish it were easy to record in conversation, but the easiest way to get it is in popular culture, news, etc. By "this sort of thing" I mean people using phrases, ideas, characters, etc., from Superman in other contexts. Such as the article: "Washington often seems like Superman's Bizarro World where "Us is opposite." They even link to the Wikipedia for Bizarro in case the reader can't figure it out from the context clues. Actually, it feels like the quote should be "Us do opposite." Doesn't it?

This is folk speech, and it shows the extent to which Superman has pervaded public life. We can say "faster than a speeding bullet," "Truth, justice, and the American Way," "Up, up, and away," It's a bird, it's a plane..." " kryptonite, and everybody will have an idea what we're talking about. Or pretty much everybody. Are there other phrases? Bizarro is one of them. Batman's got a few of those, too.

Superman Comes Out of the Phone Booth

This is funny. It's a video.

Literacy

This one's kind of old, but interesting. Comics were used in the army to help troops improve their literacy.

That'll do for now.

Comic Book Fanthropology

2009-12-20T09:03:00.000-08:00

Sean Kleefeld recently published a book about comic book fans, and I thought it might be a good one for me to read for this project. It's a pretty good book, overall. He calls it Comic Book Fanthropology. He's serializing it over at the website, or you can plunk down a few bucks for a hardcover, paperback, or pdf over at Lulu.com. Kleefeld also keeps a pretty interesting blog.

The book's title throws me off a bit. Kleefeld isn't an anthropologist, nor does he reference anthropologists in his book. Theoretically speaking, his sources come from media studies (McLuhan and Jenkins) as well as social psychology (Tajfel and Turner) more than anything else. I suppose the title might just refer to anthropology as the study of people more than any particular methodology or theoretical stance. And people like puns in titles.

Kleefeld lays out what he's not doing early on: He's not writing a history of fandom, and he's not writing an academic book on fandom. His theory is used sparingly but well applied. Drawing on social psychology (Tajfel and Turner) he elucidates the fact that fandom exists as a social enterprise in part because people like to share their passions and in part because sharing those passions provides an environment where individuals can affirm their identities and boost their sense of self-esteem and -worth. This is all in the early chapters, which also include a brief history. Despite Kleefeld's wish not to write a history, what he does provide works well for him. It shows the origins of fandom as it arises from people getting together to share their passion. First through correspondence and then in person.

In my opinion, the book breaks down in the last few chapters. The chapter I most looked forward to was on participatory culture. Throughout this book, Kleefeld makes the point that fans engage with comics in more ways than merely reading--more than discussing them with friends as well. While Kleefeld lists these ways (including fan music, fiction, costuming, etc) he provides virtually no examples. There's a photo of a man in a Flash suit, but that's about it. Considering that Kleefeld has apparently read Henry Jenkins' Textual Poachers (he cites and quotes Jenkins), this oversight is perplexing.

Perhaps my own perspective will tell you a bit more about why I find this chapter disappointing. I'm a folklorist by training. More than any other discipline, folklore brings to the foreground the texts that are relevant to the discussion. It's not unusual for folklorists to tell whole stories during academic talk, presentations, and lectures. Folklore books include multiple versions of any text being studied. If you want to see an examploe, check out one of the more widely known folklore books, Jan Brunvand's The Vanishing Hitchhiker. This is a classic example of how folklorists work. There are probably ten versions of each urban legend studied in that book. Some people think it's repetitive, and it is, but it's supposed to be. The versions aren't all the same, so you get to see how different people tell the same story. Sometimes, those differences are revealing, sometimes they're curious, and sometimes merely amusing.

Back to participatory culture. Let's look at two examples: fiction and costuming. It's not merely that fans write their own stories about characters they love; it's what's in the stories that's important. Jenkins devotes two chapters to fan fiction, and retells a great many of the stories (and story types) that show up. He's dealing with Star Trek, mostly (which would be important to comics fans). He concludes, in the chapter "Welcome to Bisexuality, Captain Kirk," that the women who write these slash stories are doing so because it enables them to imagine the sorts of relationships they would like to see portrayed on screen. These are women writing about characters in shows produced with a male audience in mind. Often these women don't have much choice in what's on the television, so they make the shows into something that suits them. These factors are important, and I would have liked to see Kleefeld at least explore the fiction surrounding one character.

As for costuming, again, Kleefeld leaves a lot unsaid. I have conducted two short interviews with costumers, and it doesn't seem to me to be all that hard to get information with which to analyze the phenomenon. People want to talk about this stuff. One woman I interviewed talked about the clash between fans who make their own costumes and those who buy them at the store. She said she doesn't enter costume contests because the emphasis is often on who is the most attractive woman rather than on who has the best costume. She talked about the process of making a costume, substituting one piece for another in the same costume as she makes it, always approaching the "perfect" costume but never quite reaching it. All this and much more from 45 minutes. Sometimes just pointing out the controversies is enough.

This is the fieldwork process, which anthropologists as well as folklorists and other employ to get the data for their analysis. It's what I expected. It is not, however, what Kleefeld promised at any time, except perhaps in his title.

I may be being a bit harsh here. The early chapters of the book are quite good. The discussion of cultural capital is rewarding and thorough. He gives a description of the ritual of buying comic books that I find absolutely wonderful and will quote in my book about Superman. His reading is that this process, engaged in repeatedly and recurrently, provides the comfort and stability that we can also find in rituals. It's more than just habit. I also appreciate his qualification on the definition of being a fan. It's not merely something you identify yourself as; another fan must also identify you as one. This fits both Kleefeld's themes of self-esteem and sociality. Is sociality a word?

Other strong points include Kleefeld's acknowledgment of the diversity of fandom, and his bibliography. This last one may not sound like much, but to me it is. He's found some sources I'll be checking out soon, and for me this is a very good thing indeed. I know it may seem strange, but I also appreciate the index.

He gives a lot of time and space to what it means to be a fan. I just wish he's given more to showing what the fans mean when they express themselves. The book is, overall, a little too abstracted from actual fans--too many hypothetical examples, despite the fan profiles that punctuate each chapter.

I'm a fan of the case study. Kleefeld might have really driven home his points if he'd done one or two of these. Followed fans through the process of buying and reading comics to the participatory culture that follows. He gets closest when quoting and discussing fan "origin" stories. These are great. I wanted more. I wanted Kleefeld to point out how each fan describes entering the world of comics with someone. It's always a social process. This is his main point, I think.

Kleefeld cannot be faulted for not writing the book I wanted him to write. There are some omissions that could be rectified in a revised edition. The strucutre is there, and it's a good one.

Wow, that got really long.

Comics don't sell well

2009-12-09T17:42:00.000-08:00

Normally, this isn't a site for my opinions about Superman or comics, but recently I've been thinking about the decline of the comics busines. It's a poor shadow of its once mighty self. There was a time when pretty much everybody of a certain age read comics. Sure, there wasn't much in terms of entertainment competition: little tv, no video games, etc. But that's not the whole story.

Recently, I've been flipping through The Golden Age of Superman: The Greatest Covers of Action Comics from the '30s to the '50s. It's pretty interesting to see just how exciting those old covers were. The covers that don't feature Superman are outstanding. Here's one:

But the ones that do feature him...those are some stories I want to read. Behold:

In case those words aren't coming through in the image. Superman is demanding more hamburgers. Why? Why must he eat so much to survive? Will the Earth have enough food? I want to know.

Compare that to one of the more recent covers. Let's look at Superman: Secret Origin.

Yep, that's some people standing there. If you're Grant Wood, maybe you can pull that off. Gary Frank, however.... Then there's this one, for Issue 3:

Now, you may have missed it, but there's actually something exciting going on in this image. Lois Lane is chewing on a pen.

Compare:

Not only does this issue feature the star power of Pat Boone, but Superman must stop a song from becoming a hit. Why? How? I must know.

That's what a cover should do--compel you to open the book. Demand your attention and make you want to know more. Do those Secret Origin covers accomplish that? Not even close. I wish this were an isolated thing, but it's not. My favorite comic when I was a kid was Thor. Every issue of the recent Thor series has a cover of Thor swinging his hammer. That's about it. Why would I ever want to buy those?

Untold Tales

2009-11-17T15:51:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the internet, it's possible to acquire and read scripts for films that will never be shot, plots for novels that will never be written, and ideas for comics that will never be drawn. This is both good and bad, I suppose.

For one thing, it's often funny, as we have seen with the recent revelation of the Nick Cage/Tim Burton Superman Lives movie that never was.

For another, it's often tragic, as with the Superman 2000 proposal by Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, Mark Millar, and Tom Peyer. This Superman, by these writers, would likely have been magnificent. Alas, we'll never know if they could have pulled it off together. Actually, we have clues, as all of these writers have worked with Superman since then. Waid's Birthright was powerful. Millar's Red Son is one of the best-selling superman collections to this day (and one that every comic shop owner has pointed to as a constant favorite of customers), and Morrison's All Star Superman has been called "perfect" by a great many writers and reviewers.

So Superman 2000 didn't happen, but you can read about it. And lots of people like to write about it.

And I'm sure some people have incorporated this into their own idea of who Superman is, the residual image formed from all of their exposure to stories about him.

And I thought Nick Cage was unusual...

2009-11-09T16:34:00.000-08:00

Ok, so this brief exchange on the Baby Backpack part of Yahoo Answers includes statements by two people that they're naming their babies after Superman in some way. Clark. Kal Alexander.

I had no idea.

Sports
Here's a story about clutch-hitting in baseball, which concludes with the odd comment that a hitter notorious for not being good under pressure wears a superman t-shirt under his uniform every game.

Also, Florida Gators' Tim Tebow Is Actually Human and Not Superman, reads the headline for a column in the Bleacher Report.

A Different Opinion
Then there's this cynical assessment of Superman, made in 1988 upon the 50th anniversary of the character. It's by Gary Groth, and that name alone will dictate how a great many people would respond to the essay. It's notable for its glossing over of mythology in general and Greek Mythology in particular, especially in its assessment of what it would take to be a successor to those myths. Here's a summation: My only interest in Superman, marginal at that, stems from his continuing presence as a symbol of banality and infantilism in the history of the American comic book.

Museum
I should start keeping track of all the superhero museum exhibits that crop up these days. Here's one.

Fiction, and Costumes Then there's this...story? Anecdote? Joke? I'm not sure what to call it. It's obviously fictional--what with the superpowers and whatnot, but it's hard to tell what the genre is. It's from Haaretz.com, Israeli news in English, but it's about a Palestinian Superman meeting a fellow countryman in a bar over whiskey. There's a reference to the drunk superman joke in it.

in the related category of people dressing up like superman for various reasons, this guy is doing so and walking thousands of miles to raise money for homeless veterans. Apparently, from the newsstory, dressing like Superman and running down the highway is something that makes people call the police.

And speaking of dressing up, this Halloween was the first during which I've seen Superman costumes with a six-pack built into them. The Philadelphia Inquirer did a story on this. It's not just Superman. It's Superman with over-the-top muscles and a cinched waist. It's not just Superman, either. I think it was Susan Bordeau who wrote a famous article a while back about the male body becoming as objectified as the female body. That trend isn't going away.

Now this is comedy. A boy pretends to be Superman, climbs to a barn roof. And..."The goat did not survive the experience." It's a column from the Clarksville Online, the voice of Clarksville, Tennessee, by Sue Freeman Culverhouse.

Another Origin

2009-11-03T20:49:00.000-08:00

In the early 70's, there was yet another retelling of the origin. This one by Carmine Infantino and Curt Swan...The Bronze Age of Blogs kindly posts the whole thing.

Project Progress

2009-10-28T17:33:00.000-07:00

I suppose I should provide some sort of update, in case anyone's paying attention. Despite few recent posts, I've been working hard at this project. I traveled to Boise, Idaho, this past weekend to deliver a conference paper based on a chapter, called The Apotheosis of Our Former Selves. It was about Superman and nostalgia and the need for adults to incorporate some sort of playing in their jobs. Good times.

This was part of a panel on mythology at the American Folklore Society meeting. There's some talk of turning the papers from the panel (three or four, depending on what we decide) into an issue of a journal, sort of like a collection of articles. There's a journal interested. We'll see. It was a good panel, and Boise was pretty cool.

About ten days from now, I'm going to deliver another conference paper. This time, it's about the Superman Celebration in Metropolis, Illinois, and the dedication of Jerry Siegel's old house in Cleveland. This will be part of the Hoosier Folklore Conference, in Nashville, Indiana. The paper's called "When Imaginary Places Become Real."

I'm working on revisions of an article to submit to the journal Western Folklore, whose editor has been more than helpful. And I spent half an hour talking to a book publisher on Friday of last week.

But there's still a long way to go. I've got a good sense of the entire book, and an outline, and a lot of research....still, I figure it'll be a year before I've got a manuscript done and ready to show to anyone. That seems sooooo far away.

Short one

2009-10-19T16:25:00.001-07:00

Just needed to keep this link handy. it's a review of All Star Superman that calls it the greatest Superman story.

More about the Secret Origin

2009-10-15T16:49:00.001-07:00

Just a couple of links. The first is to the Superman Homepage, which has reviews of pretty much every Superman comic for the last ten years (and more). In this one, there are a bunch of review for Secret Origin 1.

Then there's a discussion of the same series over at Blue Tights Network. Mixed reviews, but most people seem excited about the series.

So why, you may wonder, so many links to reviews of this particular comic book? I'm interested because this project is mostly about Superman as a myth. Myths, unlike much of literature, usually don't have an established, authoritative text. Even the Bible (in English) has lots of versions, each with agendas that influence the translation. And, for example, the four books of the gospels actually contradict each other every so often. Greek myth is harder to pin down, since there's no text. You've got Hesiod and Homer, but those present problems. Later writers were just writing down what they'd heard, or paraphrasing other writers. And these often contradict each other as well. It gets even more compex with a living mythological tradition. So what happens is that everybody has to decide for themselves what's canon and what's not. The church may try, but with all of the different sects out there, there's something for everybody. And you can always try the church down the road if you don't agree with the interpretation being offered in yours.

With Superman, there's the added element of continuity. He's been constantly in publication since 1938, with stories in every medium. And writers try to make the story interesting in every medium, so they add or eliminate elements. Then there's editorial fiat, or stories introduced to boost sagging sales or garner higher ratings. And every so often, something like Crisis on Infinite Earths or Infinite Crisis happens, so the entire history of the character is wiped away, to be written anew. Then, there are things such as Imaginary Stories, which aren't real.

Right.

What we've got are competing versions of a story. The reviews and discussions are largely about how well the latest version works, which means that the readers evaluate it in terms of the expectations of the myth of Superman. Each person has a preconception of that story, which by virtue of their own identity, will emphasize, highlight, obscure, or outright eliminate motifs of the story as they see fit. Sometimes this isn't even conscious. Some people will imagine a Superman who is absolutely perfect, in morality, in physique, in action and in intent. Others will humanize Superman, giving him physical flaws or moral grey areas.

This includes the writers and editors. One of the Superman homepage reviewers postulates that the writers of comics today are particularly interested in the comics of their youth, so much so that they will force the comics they are working on to fit into the same mold, whether or not the story is progressing that way. They will alter characterization, add in nonsensical plot elements, etc, just so the comic feels like the comics of their youth. I don't know the extent to which this is true of Secret Origins, if it is at all, but I have certainly read comics that feel that way.

Nonetheless, readers are free to pick their version. There's a continuity to DC comics that runs throughout a great many titles. but there are elseworlds. There are Superman Adventures (well, not right now, but there used to be) that were outside the continuity driven titles. There's smallville, and cartoons, and other stories. Superman's also kind of like the weather. If you don't like it, wait a while. It'll change. Not much, of course, but it'll change. The last time it changed was Birthright, by Mark Waid and Leinil Francis Yu. That was way back in 2004.

This variability is one quality that makes a story mythic. I'm not talking about the variability of a single film adaptation of a movie, or even two or three. I'm talking about the fact that there is no fixed text. People can point to an official Moby Dick or Lord of the Rings. They can't point to an official Superman. Would it be this current Secret Origin? Yeah, if you read the comics and adhere to the continuity. For the next five years or so, until they do it all over again because of a universe-shattering battle. But it's not THE Superman if you're only a fan of Smallville, or of George Reeves, or Christopher Reeve, or the Silver Age, or don't read the movies or watch the shows or read the comics but still know about Superman because everybody does. (Seriously, everybody does. Even people with no real access to American media.)

The point of all this is that there is no fixed text. There is no fixed Superman. The nature of the character's existence is to reflect the world because it's a constant product of that world. Sometimes we're awash in nostalgia. Sometimes we need our heroes to be vulnerable. Sometimes we need them to be perfect. And sometimes we need them to have a mullet.

Too Perfect

2009-10-14T14:35:00.000-07:00

The notion that Superman is just too good to be interesting is one that pops up quite often. Here's one statement, from Miss Cellania:

While Superman is, well, super, he was always too perfect, and rather one-dimensional.

There's Henry Jenkins, from a while ago.

And, because we're still trying to figure out how to make Supermen...Science!

Another review of Secret Origin 1, by Rokk. The discussion is interesing, particularly for this line:

it isn't like DC's continuity or present-day comics for that matter warrant religious following; you pick and choose what you like, sadly

This list is an intersesting one. Not so much for the content--it's really just a list of Superman comics that the writer likes. It's how it's framed that I find worth noting. 10 Essential Superman comics to help you forget Smalliville. As with any sacred narrative worth caring about, there has to be dissention among the ranks. I think this is worth exploring.

I'm going to have to find this one. What if Superman were raised by apes?

I have to post this. In Italy, a Man Dressed like Superman is arrested for stalking Burlesconi.

Following Links

2009-10-12T16:28:00.000-07:00

So I was looking at pictures of the Siegel house in Cleveland (Glenville, to be specific). I came across a few interesting things.

There's evidently yet another documentary about Superman, called Last Son. This one delves into the truth behind the creation of the character. If I'm reading correctly, it's more about the death of Siegel's father than anything else. Looks interesting. Not quite sure how to get my hands on it, though.

Marc Tyler Nobleman, creator of Boys of Steel (a comic book biography about Siegel and Shuster) wrote this little post about the current popularity of Superman's creators. The Last Son guy throws his two cents in.

In an unrelated link, there's this essay on the impact of John Byrne's 1986 variation of the Superman story at newsarama, by tomothy Callahan. He says the legacy of Byrne's changes is the humanization of Superman, and the cumulative stories--continuity, in other words, and character issues instead of just fights.

Here's a lesson plan on how to teach heroism and mythology to middle-schoolers.

Links, and a new origin

2009-10-09T16:57:00.000-07:00

Recently, DC began publishing a new origin for Superman, called Superman: Secret Origin. A bunch of people have stuff to say about this.

Here's a good one, by Rikdad. It begins thus:

The artist takes a pencil and traces an oval where the face will be. Rather than touching the pencil to the paper and drawing it in one solid curve, the oval is composed of many shorter arcs, parallel, intersecting, concentric. Each one nudges the outline from where the previous faint lines had begun, adjusting them, repositioning the curve, correcting it. The pencil is flipped and the eraser rubs some graphite off the page; a sleeve wipes the rubber and dust away, and then the pencil goes back to work. At some point, a mannequin-like shape is there, and then a face is drawn inside, outside, and over it, without ever erasing the original imperfect outline. Eventually it will have life. Eventually it will be a face. Little strokes keep touching it up, making it better, or at least different.

Superman is a work in progress.

Which is good. An apt analogy for the process by which Superman has survived. But it concludes in an even better fashion:

Superman is the Great American Hero, and America is a country that was saved by a quirky Constitutional fiat called the Great Compromise. If Superman was being torn apart in a creative tug of war, Geoff Johns has refused to pick sides. He's come down hard on the side of not favoring sides. Ultimately, the kind of tail fins the rocket has don't matter so much as the adoption of a version of Superman that reminds a plurality of fans of Superman. What could be more pleasing to Superman than to have everybody win?

Good stuff.

I'm planning a thorough analysis of Grant Morrison's All Star Superman series. Here's someone who likes it a whole lot.

Here's some more about Secret Origin.

And more still, from Newsarama.

One more time, from Comic Book Jones.

The consensus about this Secret Origin seems to be that it's completely unnecessary, but that it's pretty good.

Completely unrelated, but still useful: the kids parade in Grand Island.

Which reminds me...Halloween's coming up. There will no doubt be kids dressed up like Superman. Time to do more fieldwork.

There's something more to be said about the "science" behind Superman's powers.

Thoughts upon Completing the Space Odyssey Series

2009-09-29T17:09:00.000-07:00

2001 may well be the masterpiece it proclaims itself to be. I was amazed by the descriptions that made me feel as if something was actually happening, page after page of ecology and climate during which no human acted nor any change took place felt as if it were vitally important.

The mystery unfolded into greater clarity than the movie would allow. Kubrick told the end in images, but Clarke laid it all out for us through the perspective of David Bowman. In this, the film may qualify as a myth while the book would be literature, if we define myth as that genre of narrative that comes closest to music because it requires a great deal of intellectual investment on the part of its audience. We all come out of music, as we all come out of myth, with our own interpretation based upon our own mood and history. While this is certainly true of all narrative, the mode of myth is particularly good at it. So while Clarke's description of Bowman's journey through the Monolith is fascinating and compelling, it is also clearly delineated. Bowman doesn't reveal much about those who created the monoliths, but we know all that he knows.

Which is not true of the film.

2010 is pretty good, too. There's stuff going on. 2061, however, was a huge disappointment. The mystery is never resolved to any interesting point, and the compelling component of the series is barely present. 3001 does little to advance it, preferring the plot to the idea. The ideas come in the form of futurity; of world-building and speculation. That's not why I read that book, and even though some reviews I dug up prepared me for a lack of answers, I was still annoyed. The interesting aspects of the story were perpetually deferred. There was little compelling in terms of character, though that is true of the series as a whole, aside, perhaps, for HAL.

Interestingly, Clarke revisits the same passages throughout. His chapter of 3001 called "The Firstborn" occurs in all four books, if I'm not mistaken. And while he proclaims that these repetitions are heavily edited, I'm not willing to check that statement. We revisit the firstborn, the depths of Europa, and the atmosphere of Jupiter, and a dying Astronaut's final words.

I began this series, as you may recall, as part of a study of science fiction versions of the "uplifting" of humanity by aliens. I'm fascinated by the idea that aliens came to earth long ago and tampered with people to make us somehow better, according to their standards. 3001 is the first book in this series that postulates a negative connotation to this idea. The aliens may not be entirely benevolent. They may lack a certain emotion, which might cause them to exterminate us because they don't like the way we've developed. The ideas are put forward, but never really explored. Towers stretching to the stratosphere, on the other hand, are described in great detail. But I wasn't the least bit interested in the towers.

That might have been to do with my own agenda, reading more for the aliens than for the vison of the future; but I doubt I am alone in this. And so, when the epilogue comes round, short and sweet ("'Their little universe is very young, and its god is still a child. but it is too soon to judge them; when We return in the Last Days, We will consider what should be saved.'"), I was more interested than in the 246 pages that preceded it.

What an evocation. It rivals and perhaps betters "My God, it's full of stars" from from the film. Note that it's a quotation. Something is saying that to something else.

We're given few clues. 3001 brings religious themes into the foreground far more prominently than the others. For the first time, the monoliths--especially the first one, from the African hominid chapters of 2001--are cast in a religious light: "This was where--in time and space--the human species had really begun. And this Monolith was the very first of all its multitudinous gods" (56).

There's a character, Theodore Kahn, whose sole purpose is to inject religion into discussions. And then there's Frank Poole's conversation with David Bowman, where Bowman says that "twice I have--glimpsed--powers...entities--far superior to the Monoliths, and perhaps even their makers. We may both have less freedom than we imagine" (233) .

It's not specifically a religious statement, but when freedom--or free will, as Poole formulates it--comes up, religion can't be far behind. Clarke has some interesting thoughts on religion in the future, which has all but vanished in the wake of the curing of mental illness.

So the effort to push humanity to sapience (or Mind, as Clarke first puts it) might be misguided in the end. But humanity fights against extinction. Everything seemed so optimistic in the first novels. By 3001, the violence of the twentieth century becomes the instrument of humanity's potential destruction. In the novel's timeframe, people have moved past such violence, but the length of time it takes messages to travel through space renders irrelevant the advancements of the third millennium. Clarke's message is clear: We can overcome our current insanity, but it might already be too late.

Not a good business model.

2009-09-23T16:20:00.000-07:00

My e-mail is awash with reports that there will be no Superman movie in the near future.

This, evidently, is news. Something not happening. Is news.

Everyday, I get messages that there is no plan for a live-action, feature-length, theatrical-release of a Superman movie. There are so many of these reports that I won't even bother linking to any of them.

Why is this important?

Well, according to one poll, Superman is the one comic book film that people want to see.

And the reason there's no Superman film in the works? I don't know. Maybe it has something to do with the legal stuff going on.

Science and Superman

2009-09-21T13:39:00.000-07:00

In the world of comic books, the greatest villain is Frederic Wertham. His 1953 book Seduction of the Innocent crystallized the public opinion against comics, giving a voice to the distaste that obtained in many minds throughout the United States. It led directly to the Comics Code Authority, a self-censorship board that comics publishers created in order to pre-empt governmental involvement. Wertham objected vehemently to Superman, whom Wertham labeled a fascist who encouraged children to distrust authority (especially their parents) and to engage in vigilante justice. Embedded among these critiques was a subtler one: that Superman taught children incorrect lessons about physics: “Superman not only defies the laws of gravity, which his great strength makes conceivable; in addition he gives children a completely wrong idea of other basic physical laws. Not even Superman, for example, should be able to lift up a building while not standing on the ground, or to stop an airplane in mid-air while flying himself” (34).

Well, this article, The Science of Superman, goes to some length to prove that the science of Superman simply doesn't make sense--which, I suppose, none of us needed evidence of in the first place. Still, it's an interesting thought exercise. It comes from a book called The Science of Superheroes, by Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg. I wonder if they tackle the perennial question, Would Wonder Woman's lariat really make me tell the truth?

This sort of thing--wondering about the possibilities behind Superman and other science fiction stories--is, evidently, a popular pastime among writers. Maybe among readers, too. There was a National Geographic channel special on the subject, as well as a book called The Science of Superman by Mark Wolverton. Here's an article from the USA Today about it. Predictably, a lot of this stuff came out around the time of the last Superman film, in 2006. Brief comparison: Where Gresh and Weinberg try to point out why Superman's powers simply cannot work, Woverton tries to come up with ways in which they could.

I spent a bit of time studying film, and I wonder if any film scholars have looked at it from the angle of cultural/economic focus point. This is more than trendiness, I think, though there is a bit of that going on. When a film comes out, lots of other aspects of the culture industry get behind it. Books appear, news stories and magazine articles explore it. Its history is laid bare for us to follow. And with Superman, it seems that all of a sudden, the putative science behind it became important.

And then there's this:

The strip is called Bizarro. He does a lot of Superman humor.

Fan Culture

2009-09-11T16:47:00.000-07:00

I've been struggling with what to do with "fan culture" since it's in some ways the foundation of my project. I'm in the thick of it now. But the problem is that I'm a folklorist who wants my book to be about folklore, not about pop culture. Superman is a strange topic for this, since the character arose in pop culture and has resided there for seventy years.

Well, it's not so much a problem in my mind. One of my goals is to demonstrate how little the boundaries of academic disciplines matter to people in their everyday lives. Medium matters to people, but not the way it does to university departments.

The primary thing that separates folklore from popular culture is standardized production--which is largely irrelevant to most people. Folklore is not mass produced. It doesn't come off the assembly line or the printing press. That's key to the definition of folkloristics as an academic discipline. It's what has historically separated it from others, such as English and film studies, etc. The lack of standardized production means that everytime folklore is performed, it will exhibit variation. Every time you tell a story, it will be different, for a possibly infinite number of reasons. And those differences might be meaningful. Then again, they might not. It's what I love about folklore. Endless possibility.

Fan culture does not so much exist for the performances of folklore. It exists for mediated entertainment, such as comic books. The creations of that fan culture, in the form of fan fiction, for example, would not qualify as folklore because the production, while creative, is standardized. Once you write your story and publish it to the internet, it's always the same. The text doesn't change. Every time someone clicks on it to read it, it's the same (other things may change, but that's a different story).

Yet fan culture does exhibit the variation and multiplicity that I love about folklore. It can come in the jokes told, the costumes made (and endlessly changed, as I'm learning through interviews with people who make and wear them--although there are costumes you can buy at the store, which are quite controversial in the world of fan costuming...), there are tattoos, and anecdotes, and all sorts of interesting bits of folklore. That's what I'm writing about in the first four chapters of my book. It's the stuff generally left out of fan culture studies, which focus on institutional, standardized responses to media.

Here's some stuff I've found about fan cultures:

There's a guy named Henry Jenkins who wrote about Fan Culture a while ago. He's got a blog with several entries about Superman. This one, written in response to the 2006 Superman Returns film, is particularly useful.

Then there's Matthew Pustz' book Comic Book Culture: Fanboys and True Believers.

Sort of about fan culture are the works of Lawrence and Jewett: The Myth of the American Hero and The American Monomyth.

Then there's Bill Schelly's The Golden Age of Comic Fandom.

A chapter of Martin Barker's Comics: Ideology, Power and the critics is called "Reading the Readers." I haven't gotten to this yet, but it might be relevant to fan culture.

Christopher Knowles' book Our Gods Wear Spandex: The Secret History of Comic Book Heroes isn't of much use, but it does have a few passages about fans, especially about Alex Ross as a fan-turned-creator.

Speaking of fans as creators, Lauire Cowan's documentary Participate: The Revolution of Fan Culture is not too bad. Mostly interviews from a comic con in New York.

For me, the Holy Grail of Superman responses is the fan who posts to the internet something along the lines of "What Superman Means to Me." It's not as common as I'd like, and I get plenty of it from interviews. This essay by The Onion's Noel Murray is a good one, and it concludes thus:

The appeal of Superman–again, maybe just to me, though I think to others as well–is that because he can do everything, he doesn't have to do much at all. He can take care of business and then chill out, solitude-style, at his Arctic clubhouse, where he tinkers with robots and obsessively arranges his souvenirs into a massive monument to himself. Or he can spend a whole day thinking up the perfect birthday present for Batman. Or he can make publicity appearances, while dodging Lois' attempts to find out his secret identity. The stakes are pretty low in those forty-year-old Superman stories–even in the "imaginary tales" where some bored staffer figured out a way to end the endless Superman saga, at least for a week. And if somebody today wants to know how to write a Superman story, it shouldn't be that hard. Just ask a ten-year-old boy what he'd do if he were Superman, and take notes.

There's other good stuff in there, but this strikes me as something I might quote one day--especially that last line.

Links

2009-09-08T16:46:00.000-07:00

Nicknames

I've been staying away from the topic of nicknames lately. There are far too many, and they largely aren't interesting or worthy of comment. But two of them strike me as worth posting:

The Superman of volunteerism, Justin Brownlee.

And a commentary on Dwight Howard and Shaquille O'Neill, both called Superman, I suppose. Though I hadn't heard Shaq called that (he does have the tattoo). The writer thinks Howard should wait to take on the mantle until Shaq retires.

In Other Links

Here's an article that calls the Siegel house "A Shrine to Superman."

If I ever compete in mixed martial arts, I'll know how to perform the Superman punch.

Who Owns Superman?

2009-09-08T15:22:00.000-07:00

There's a legal battle being fought for the copyright to Superman, and there's a concomitant internet debate about who should have the copyright.

Here's a basic statment of the issue. here's another.

This writer thinks a Superman in the public domain is a good thing, for "culture." He continues his argument here, the foundation of which can be summed up as follows:

Creative endeavours ultimately are the property of the commons, the public.

A great many things are wrong with that sentence. But, moving on...

There's no new information in this article, but the title is telling: "Writing and Ownership, Why Superman has Abandoned us."

And one final article, which sums up the status of the current legal situation, gives a nice timeline (though it's from Wikipedia, it seems ok), and has a strange prediction: Marvel will publish Superman.

Copyright is currently one of the more compelling issues in folklore. Who owns traditional culture? Who can determine what's done with it? Who gets the money from its display?

There seems to be three opinions to the matter.
1. Superman belongs to Time/Warner, who own DC Comics, who, under a different name, bought the character from Siegel and Shuster in 1938 and have renewed their ownership ever since. This is the corporate stance.
2. Superman belongs to the creators and their heirs, despite having sold the character long ago and being paid the contracted amount. They have tried to regain the character at several time since. This is the creator stance.
3. Superman belongs to everybody. This is the, um, public good stance.

Mark Twain argued in favor of eternal copyright, extending unto the descendants of writers. In his formulation, a business created by an individual could be run in perpetuity by that individuals descendants, so why on earth would the creations of a writer be any different? I'm sure other writers have chimed in on this stuff.

Let's talk about mythology.

If Superman is a myth, then everybody already owns the character. The most recent ruling has to do with the particulars of the origin story, which is perhaps the most often told story of the last century. I'm not talking about just the movies and the comics, but also about public discourse. Think of Obama's joking speech of last year, where he denied being christ but insisted that instead he was rocketed to earth from Krypton. That sort of retelling goes on all the time, in every medium as well as in everday conversation. Telling the story in that manner does not infringe upon copyright, as no one's making money from it. And parody is, of course, protected. Then there's the pastiche, such as Alan Moore's Supreme stories. Or Kurt Busiek's Samaratan. Or about a thousand other comic book characters.

There are academic retellings, there are political retellings, there are comedic retellings. And it's all fine. Thus making the third position both correct and irelevant. Unless somebody wants to publish their own Superman comic, or make their own Superman movie, to turn a profit.

As for positions

Aliens Among Us

2009-09-07T16:59:00.000-07:00

I recently came across the transcript of the conference where George Lucas, Steven Speilberg, and Lawrence Kasdan sat down and hashed out the details of a little flick called Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's an amazing, 120 single-spaced pages of instructions on how to work out a story. But interestingly, right in the middle there's a reference to Erich Von Daniken.

Von Daniken wrote a book called Chariots of the Gods, published first in 1968. His basic premise is there's a single answer to all of the mysteries from humanity's prehistory. Evidently everything we can't explain--how the Egyptians built the pyramids, why the Mayans abandoned their civilization, what early artwork is all about, what's the truth in the stories of the gods...--can be solved: Aliens.

Aliens probably seeded earth with humanity, and returned at various intervals to help along the processes of evolution. Our destiny is in the stars, and getting there will involve mining the past for its wisdom. (Much debunking has occurred; see this article for particularly funny stuff)

(Ok, the relevance to Raiders comes in that Von Daniken thought that the Ark was built as a radio transimitter to god--the aliens--a point made by Belloq in the scene where he tells Indy to "sit down before you fall down.")

Also published in 1968: 2001 A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke (the Kubrick film came out the same year). It's a story about mankind's evolution being guided by aliens.

Twelve years later, astrophysicist David Brin published his first book, Sundiver. It's a story set in the future, when humanity has successfully guided the evolution of dolphins and chimpanzees to the point of sentience. They've also been contacted by a number of alien species. Basic to the book (and its sequels) is the idea that no species has attained sentience without the aid of extraterrestrial intelliences. I haven't gotten through the whole of the Uplift series yet, but it's hinted that there is a "mythical" alien species, referred to only as The Progentiors, that got the whole thing started billions of years ago. One of the mysteries of the series so far (I'm only on the second book, Startide Rising) is who, if anyone, "uplifed" humanity.

I'm sure there are a number of other stories that play with this idea: that humanity has been tampered with in its evolutionary path by aliens. I'll seek out as many as I can. As far as I know, Von Daniken is the only one who has taken the idea seriously. His book is a riot, full of "evidence" in the form of pictures of ancient artwork. HIs basic logical argument goes as follows: "Look at this picture! Doesn't it look like an alien!" Or, "We have no idea how the Egyptians got the idea of life after death, so it must have come from aliens."

Oh, right, what's this got to do with Superman?

Well, it seems like Superman is an alien who comes to earth. Now, he doesn't seem to deliberately mess with evolution...but on the other hand, he's always trying to get Lois Lane to go out with him (as Clark Kent). And dating is all about mating.

I'm not an expert in the history of Superman comics, so I don't know if this issue has been broached before. But I do know that in Grant Morrison/Frank Quitely/Jamie Grant's All Star Superman, Superman does eventually record his genetic code and give it to Leo Quintum, super scientist. The purpose of this is ostensibly, or perhaps putatively, so that Quintum can merge Superman's genes with human genes and create a hybrid race so the world will be ok without him. A World without Superman is a recurring trope in Superman comics.

It might just have been me, but I got the impression that Superman wanted Quintum to impregnate Lois Lane with a superbaby (one, presumably, that because it was created in a lab wouldn't give Lois the problems that Larry Niven spelled out in Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex).

2009-08-11T13:53:00.000-07:00

Sports

I've stayed away from sports related supermen lately, but this one is interesting. It's about a football player who was injured in a car crash. Corey Wilson now gets around in a wheelchair.

[H]e has a large Superman symbol tattooed on his chest. He said it's mostly about the concept of overcoming any obstacle as opposed to Clark Kent's alter-ego.
Wilson's girlfriend, Pamela Telliz, suggested the idea of rubber bracelets for the players, fittingly in Superman blue.
"I really feel like he has a little bit of Superman in him to go through what he's gone through and still have high spirits," Clayton said.

The two bits I find curious are the way Superman is referred to as "Clark Kent's alter-ego" for no reason and that Wilson has a little bit of Superman in him.

Obama

I've posted plenty of pictures of Obama as Superman on this site, but this is the first time I've encountered Obama as the Joker. Interesting.

Smallville

The show Smallville is soon to begin its ninth season. I watched it long ago (I suppose I'm supposed to refer to the seasons I watched, but I don't remember which ones they were), but stopped because the show went from mildly amusing to uninteresting. Since then, I've checked it out on occasion, and always found it not to my tastes. Still, it's got quite a following nowadays.

When I was in Metropolis for the Superman Celebration, I saw a line forming outside a building. Not knowing what it was all about, I just joined it. It was a good move on my part, because the guy who stood in front of me wanted to chat. He started telling me about how he had just come to town from Cincinatti for the morning so he could get tickets for the autographing lines for his grandchildren, whom he would pick up that evening and bring back the next day. They were all fans of Smallville--they didn't care for the recent movie, didn't read the comics, etc. But they watched the show together. And this guy, Terry was his name, liked to find out all about the show and the actors on the Internets.

He'd told me also that he'd been a big fan of Superman until about the age of 5, when he discovered baseball. He's a Reds fan, of course.

So he went on, revealing that the producers of the show were allowing the lead actor, Tom Welling, to determine whether or not Superman would fly in the show. It hadn't occurred to me that they'd gone eight years without letting Superman fly.

Kevin Smith, writer and director of Clerks and Mallrats, was once employed to write a Superman film. This never came to fruition, but he tells an interesting story about it. Evidently, the produceer of that never-made film wanted this particular incarnation of Superman not to fly and not to wear a cape. Smith points out that these are perhaps the two most important aspects of the character ("The suit and flying defines Superman" in Smith's words).

In conversation with a friend round about fourth of July, this same story came up. Mike Minter (sometimes called Ian) pointed out that the producers of this show Smallville had done the very thing the producer does in Kevin Smith's story: they take away the cape and the flying (that part's about 8 minutes into the video). Interesting to see that it's in part the actor's choice.

Also, evidently in the newest season of Smallville, there will be some sort of suit: "Clark's new look is black with a silver logo and a black cape trenchcoat. But it does sport the Superman logo (in silver)."

I have no idea what to make of all of this. Except key to the suit are the colors. Red, yellow, blue. In Steven Seagle and Teddy Kristiansen's "It's a Bird," the writer devotes several pages to the importance of the colors. Primary colors. It's vital to the character.

That, and Superman ice cream is red, yellow, and blue. You can't go against the ice cream.

This is a good thing

2009-07-31T09:54:00.000-07:00

I keep finding more and more news stories with passages about Obama such as this one:

"We've found out he's not Superman," said Nora Seeley, 54, when asked what she had learned about the president during his first six months on the job. Still, she said, "things are starting to turn around."

It's no surprise that his reputation among Americans is deflating. Nothing else could have happened in the wake of his popularity upon taking office. People may come to realize that there is absolutely nothing that anyone could have done to fix everything in this short a time. I honestly have no idea how he's doing, but I see more and more local businesses hiring, and that's a good thing.

In related news, here are more of Jennifer Silverberg's photos from the Superman Celebration, this time focusing on food. Here's one from the main story, which I should have posted sooner.

Awe and Wonder.

One of the ideas Joseph Campbell is famous for is his four functions of mythology: metaphysical, cosmological, social, and gastronomic. I may have gotten that last one wrong. But why wouldn't mythology help you digest food properly?

Anyway, the metaphysical function, according to campbell, is all about demonstrating to humanity that life is worth living, that creation is a beautiful thing, and all that. Then we get Dave Gibbons, artist who drew Watchmen, most famously, but also a little Superman story called "For the Man who Has Everything." Both written by Alan Moore. In an interview he said,

"Again, my personal view is that they should make it lighter, with that sense of wonder that Superman has always had. Not to make it childish or puerile but to make it something that has a bright sense of adventure and possibility."

He's talking about what a new Superman movie should feel like. He's not the only one. The internets are awash with fans speculating, hoping, decrying, and dismissing a movie that has no script, director, actor, or even basic idea. It's interesting. Part of this is the age we live in, an age of endless discussion not only of what might be and what might have been but what should be, in everyone's own opinion.

While every work has its fanatics and devotees, I wonder if there's something in particular about Superman that makes this speculation appropriate. I won't bother linking to every quotation in which Superman is called a myth, but doesn't that status mean it's different from a lot of other "properties" out there?

It's particularly appropriate to film versions of the character. Film, more than television or comic books, has the ability to instill that sense of awe and wonder. It's bigger than life, and until a couple of decades ago it had to be viewed in something resembling, if not a religious ritual, then at least a public dream. Everyone sitting quietly in a darkened room, slightly leaned back, dazzled by images of things they previously could only imagine. Compare that to sitting at home, phone ringing, neighbors screaming, cars driving by, etc...It's why the rudeness of modern theater goers is such a sad state of affairs.

Where'd that rant come from? I don't even go to the movies more than once a year anymore.

Bursting into the imaginary world

2009-07-30T11:41:00.001-07:00

There's a trend in people's writing and discussion of Superman, a trend toward imagining what a Superman would be like if he existed in the real world. We saw this in the previous post, where a couple of people imagined what Superman would be like drunk (if indeed he could get drunk) and how the character's politics and morality just wouldn't work. This goes back at least as far as Larry Niven's 1971 essay "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" which delves into the problems of Superman's sexual relationship, should one ever develop, with Lois Lane. Since then, countless writers have engaged in this sort of mental exercise, treating everything from the sensibility and psychological function of the secret-identity to what he would do in his free time. Sometimes, this sort of thing makes its way into comics or television shows (and not just ones featuring Superman--go watch Mallrats for Kevin Smith's contemplation of super hero realities).

There's a sort of opposite number to this mental exercise, in which people imagine what aspects of the real world would be like in Superman's world. Famous examples would be meditations on what Superman would do if actually around for World War II, or 9/11. The example below comes from a galler at Superman.nu. The entire page linked to features fan art of Superman that reacts to the 9/11 attacks. This one was created by Ted Hernandez.

A corrolary of this is perhaps the imaginary casting of a Superman movie. Here's an example that reacts very specficially to the 2006 Superman Returns casting. It's one of those things that people do from time to time, but I've seen a lot of them recently. It may have to do with all the recent reporting on the legal battle over the rights to the character that has gone on between DC/TimeWarner and the Siegel family. It has prompted many rumors about when and if a new movie will go into production.

Links

2009-07-29T12:17:00.000-07:00

First up, Jennifer Silverberg created a sort of photo essay about the Metropolis, Ill., Superman Celebration. You can check out the published work here, here, or some other photos on her website. Thanks, Jennifer!

Then there's this blog entry, wondering why anyone would want to be Superman, based on a recent viewing of Superman II. The writer, unfamiliar with the many versions of Superman's story, is unfortunately stuck with the "Christ Mission" that the films impose on the character. Other versions have Superman choosing his own fate. I dont' know how that would alter the argument she makes.

In a similar vein, this blog entry wonders about whether or not Superman can get drunk.

Haven't posted anything about Obama lately. Here's someone's reality check: "He's not Superman, right?" I like the "right" at the end. And because the idea is floating around in the ether, here's a cartoon that makes the same point (I would post the image, but for reasons unknown to me it won't work).

A common use of Superman in conversation and writing is to point out to someone "You're not Superman." This is meant to indicate that the person--or persons, or everybody--isn't perfect, can't do everything, and should expect it. In this case, it refers to struggling with alcoholism.

There's this novel, by Rich Cohen:

“David Alroy was the first superhero,” Cohen writes of a false messiah known as “King of the Jews” in 12th-century Persia. “He offered a picture of strength to a people lousy with weakness.” Cohen regards Alroy as a model for the figure created in 1938 — “another dark age for the Jews” — by two Jewish teenagers from Cleveland. “Superman is a writer; Superman is brainy in his glasses; Superman is in exile from an ancient nation destroyed by fire; Superman has two names, a fake WASP-y name (Clark Kent) and a secret name in an ancient tongue, Kal-El; . . . Superman, whose cape is a tallis; Superman, whose logo, the “S” emblazoned on his chest, marks him as a freakish stranger as the yellow Star of David marks the ghetto Jew.”

Finally, this is the first I've heard of the movie "A Man who Was Superman."

The Origins of Superman

2009-07-28T16:28:00.000-07:00

The novel Gladiator by Philip Wylie may or may not be an inspiration for Superman. It was published several years prior to Superman's first appearance in Action Comics #1, and sources I cannot cite from memory indicate that Jerry Siegel read the book before coming up with the character. The characters share many of the same traits, though not the same genesis, and the stories explore many of the same themes. If I were to make an argument that they are in fact the "same" story, I would have to found that argument on the despair that Hugo Danner (the Gladiator in question) must fight off throughot his life.

Yet Superman does not despair. Does he? The only reference to this that I can point to comes not in a Superman comic or movie, indeed, it's to a comic book in which Superman does not even appear. It's Endless Nights, by Neil Gaiman, and in partular to the story "The Heart of a Star" drawn by Miguelanxo Prado. In it, in the early days of the universe, the stars and nebulae and the things that come before gods get together to have a meeting. In one conversation, Despair tells the star Rao (around which Krypton orbits):

Wouldn't bringing life onto a planet that is inherently unstable add to the beauty of the life? If at any moment it would explode...Truly it would only be perfectly beautiful, a perfect piece of art, if one single life-form escaped. To remember, to mourn, to despair. (Endless Nights, "The Heart of a Star," pg. 76)

This would have us believe that Superman's defining characteristic is not flight or morality, but mourning and despair. He is alone among people who are like him.

Interestingly, I interviewed a woman named Jodi Chromey, whose affinity for Superman echoes this interpretation. She has two half-siblings, whom she is like but unlike in origin and appearance. So she feels an affinity for Superman and even got tattooed with the S-Shield because of this element of his story.

Danner in Gladiator spends his whole life trying to reconcile himself to his powers--gained because his father performs what would no doubt be considered genetic enhancement if the novel were written later in the cnetury. They cause him trouble and pain at every stage of his life, and the novel is a series of explorations of how Danner tries to cope with each new stage and the troubles it brings. It's a great book.

Hugo realized at last that there was no place in his world for him. Tides and tempest, volc anoes and lightning, all other majestic vehemences of the unverse had a purpose, but he had none. Either because he was all those forces unnaturally locked in the body of a man, or because he was a giant compelled to stoop and pander to live among his feeble fellows, his anachronism was complete. (311)

There's no place in the world for him. He spends a lot of time searching, and we have to wonder why he never finds one. Perhaps it is because he is given no clear agenda by his father, whose experiments created Danner's condition (which, by the way, is not hereditary, which actually separates it from genetic). Perhaps it is because he generally keeps his condition a secret, save for a few times. And when the revelation of his nature does not instill disgust or fear in his confidant, Danner retreats from the potential friend. He keeps expecting greatness, so much so that he does not allow himself to attain it. I'm reminded of a line from one of my favorite stories, Mefisto in Onyx by Harlan Ellison. The protagonist, Rudy Pairis, is also gifted in that he can read minds. Instead of a boon, the horror and ugliness that Pairis sees in others essentially keeps him unemployed and mostly friendless. Ellison says that Pairis "couldn't get out of his own way." I think that applies to Danner as well.

But it doesn't apply to Superman. I think first of the Richard Donner movies, in which Superman is given clear purpose by Jor-El, who sends him to Earth as protector and "light to showthe way." In contrast, Siegel didn't, as far as I know, give much reason for Superman's choice to fight crime and social injustice. Later, Mark Waid's Birthright would spend a lot of time exploring Superman's choice and giving sound reason for it. He does not dwell on despair, but on the fact that Superman comes to the decision himself, after seeing the injustice of the world (particularly in Africa).

For both Danner and Superman, the decision as to what they must do with their lives comes at the onset of manhood. This is when despair is most possible, especially without direction. Danner tries being a soldier, a lover, a laborer, a political "lobbyist", a banker, and other things. Always, his strength proves an obstacle that he cannot overcome. Superman, on ther other hand, splits his life into two parts: super hero and journalist. He chooses not one, but two paths. This may be the real need for the secret identity, which many writers have decried as unrealistic and unnecessary save for the tension it provides the relationship with Lois Lane.

What I have learned reading Danner's story is that the difference that comes with such great strength brings with it not merely responsiblity (as Stan Lee would have it) but also adaptation. Such power is not the provenance of mortals, but of gods, which Wylie's narration repeatedly invoke. The rest of us simply cannot handle it in one of our own. We require not equality, but at least the potential for a level playing field. We resent it if someone rises too high, and we must impugn their perfection. Thus the many jokes that subvert Superman's moral rectitude.

We may just look at Superman and Danner as two explorations of the cost of power, one optimistic and one pessimistic. But that's not all that's going on here. Superman is the story of an optimist, and certainly Danner can't get out of his own way, but their stories (their story?) are actually about adaptation to one's lot in life. Superman devises a way to live by disguising himself so that he may present the world his true face in two aspects. Danner tries to hide his nature, but gives himself no outlet. He reveals his powers only grudgingly, and then rejects anyone who offers solace. Superman does just the opposite. Again, Mark Waid's take on the character rings true: his Superman insists that he cannot wear a mask--if he shows his face, peopel will trust him. Danner hides, and his dishonesty is rejected.

A last thought, on gladiators: they're slaves. More to come.

I need to have this link handy

2009-07-16T16:18:00.001-07:00

The swearing in ceremony for the honorary citizens of Metropolis, Illinois.

The coverage for this event--entirely done by fans--is amazing. I wasn't able to record this ceremony myself, and would have had a lot of difficulty with something I'm writing if Jamie Kelley and Ronda Marston (aka Clark Kent and Lois Lane) hadn't spent the time getting it and putting it up online. Many many thanks.

Clothes make the man

2009-07-16T12:35:00.000-07:00

Ok, so this is happening a lot: People dressed up as Superman (and super heroes in general) are being arrested. It's getting to be something of a pattern. There's this guy:

On Tuesday, he was lying on the sidewalk, which, not surprisingly even in this city, caught the attention of a police officer.
“I am just tired, I am not going anywhere,” prosecutors quoted him as telling the police. “I am Superman, the Governorator, ” he said, according to a law official.
He then ran into the street. Vehicles swerved around him, the complaint said. He “flailed” his arms, refusing to be handcuffed, it said.
And so that was how he landed in Judge Alvin Yearwood’s courtroom, sitting on a hard bench at about 11 a.m. on Wednesday, with a hole in his tights, as prostitution and drunk driving suspects were called up to appear.
“This was the company that Superman was keeping,” said John Marshall Mantel, a freelance photographer for The New York Times who saw him there.

I'm not sure I understand the reason behind referring to the guy as Superman. The "freelance photographer" is only one of the people who do this sort of thing. Because he wears the costume, he is the character. At least that's the logic here. This is a tough subject for me to work through, because there are a lot of facets to it. Lots to account for.

For instance, by putting on a Santa Claus outfit, a person kind of sort of really does become Santa Claus--at least in the eyes of the kids who believe in him. And there is something similar going on with Superman. And with the disney characters. The Superman (Josh Boltinghouse) at the Metropolis Superman Celebration isn't allowed to appear out of Character. He displays his own face (as does Superman--Mark Waid's Superman: Birthright has a great take on why this is necessary; Waid's a guy who really has thought all of this through), and because of his contract, kids who attend the festival will see the same face on Superman for many years.

A guy I interviewed here in Bloomington told me about the day he realized there was no Superman. He told it just like you might imagine a kid relating the story of how he learned there was no Santa Claus. It was the differences from his idealized version and the guy standing in front of him in a truck stop that clued him in. This guy had a wedding ring, a beer gut, and a moustache. None of which the Superman in his imagination possessed.

So what, exactly is going on with comments like the one by the photographer? Why must we conflate the man with the costume? Another example:

Superman and Batman took on New York's Finest last night in an epic Crossroads of the World battle that left the Caped Crusader in cuffs. (from the article linked in my previous post)

The costume is the most important symbolic aspect of Superman. Are these quotations telling us that by appropriating the symbol, we appropriate the identity? Or do they reveal that Superman is only what we make of him? That we control his image with what we do, so we should be careful what we do, especially when dressed as him?

The guy who dresses as Superman in Confessions of a Superhero probably has a lot to say about this. It was kind of appropriate how he as Superman was sort of the leader of all the other people who dress in costume outside the Chinese Theater in LA.

Simply mad about the house.

2009-07-14T15:24:00.001-07:00

Thanks to meeks for the link to his footage of the ribbon-cutting ceremony. The opening speech, by Mike Ocevski (am I spelling that correctly?), is great. If anybody knows the guy who delivered it, and can connect me with him, please do so.

Every child's father should be their hero, but if he wasn't there Superman would be a great substitute.

The speech gives us a whole lot of different interpretations of the character and the way people apply them to their lives. I had no idea there is a Siegel and Shuster society.

The rest of the ceremony is great, too. There were a lot of people involved, and it seems really cool that they gave out bricks from the original house to various people, including the current residents. The "official super bricks."

At the end, when a tarp is being removed from a fence that has been cast with the superman logo: "Can I have my men of faith please lift the veil off the fence?" Tongue in cheek religion?

Immigration

The Invincible Super Blog has an interesting take on the idea of Superman as an ideal immigrant, through the eyes of the character Hitman (issue 34). There are a great many ideas about Superman as an immigrant.

Immigration is a key component of what people call the myth of Superman. Gary Engle writes about it in an essay called "What's makes Superman so darned american?" that's in Superman at 50: the persistence of a legend (I wanted to link to something, but there doesn't appear to be any knowledge of this book on the internets--yet I have a copy on my desk right now).

You know, Superman comics don't sell all that well, at least that's what the comic shop workers I've been interviewing tell me. The last movie was not what people wanted. I have no idea if Smallville is a big hit or not, though the eight seasons it has run offer some indication. And yet Superman is huge right now. There are all these things going on, such as the house restoration. And people write about him on their blogs every day. People also dress up as him every day, sometimes getting arrested for it.

Great, now I have to go to Cleveland.

2009-07-14T11:59:00.000-07:00

Gods Among Men

Another in a series of essays that compare Superman and Jesus--this time with Heracles thrown into the mix.

And here's a blog that unfavorably looks upon the comparison of Obama and Superman.

A New Site of Pilgrimage

I'm wondering how the restoration of the Siegel home in Cleveland will affect this project. The wording in this article has a religious slant, but the real reason to take a look is the photography:

Since Superman was born in Cleveland seven decades ago, visitors from around the world have made pilgrimages to what they consider holy ground. Above, the childhood home of Jerry Siegel, who, along with his friend Joe Shuster, created Superman, in the Glenville neighborhood of Cleveland.

Also from the Wall Street Journal.

Here's one from the town of Cleveland itself, so to speak, that gives actually useful information, such as the fact that the house is still a private residence, its address, and the ribbon cutting that occurred this past weekend.

It's a curious thing, the way these article are constructed. When I was writing about Prometheus, I took a look at reviews of the recent biography of Robert Oppenheimer (American Prometheus) to see the differences in the way people tell a story second or third hand. What I found was enlightening. I saw that the reviewers skewed the story of Prometheus to fit their own ideas of Oppenheimer. With these articles, the Wall Street Journal plays up the fact that Siegel's father died soon after a robbery to imply that Superman was created as a power fantasy of a fatherless teenage boy. Superman as an absent father, highlighting his role as a protector. The cleveland blog begins with references to Siegel as "lovesick," which highlights the love "triangle" with Lois Lane and, further, the fact that Siegel wanted people (especially girls) to look deeper than his nerdy exterior.

I found this same reading of Clark Kent being put forward by one of the people I interviewed at the Superman Celebration. Brian Morris, sometime contributor to TwoMorrows, saw Clark Kent as a challenge: Superman saying to the world see me for everything that I am, not just for my pledge to help you. Kent is a statement that we're all more complex, deep, and interesting that the surface would indicate.

Other interpretations abound, of course. Here's an article by Richard Roeper that includes a transcript of David Carradine's monologue about Superman from Kill Bill (the beginning is about parking meters, but it's in there, I assure you).

"Now, a staple of the superhero mythology is there's the superhero and the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker. When that character wakes up in the morning, he's Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spider-Man.
"Superman didn't become Superman, Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he's Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red 'S'. . . those are his clothes. What Kent wears -- the glasses, the business suit -- THAT'S the costume Superman wears.
"Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent? He's weak, he's unsure of himself, he's a coward. Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race."

Stuff and whatnot

2009-07-09T11:27:00.001-07:00

A more and more prominent issue in the study of folklore is creator's rights and copyright. This is paralleled by its prominence in the world of comics. It's particularly relevant where Superman is concerned. The creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, sold the rights long ago. There has been a great deal of legal conflict over this, as Siegel himself felt cheated. His (and Shuster's heirs) have continued the fight. I don't feel the need to go into the history of this conflict here, nor am I qualified to comment on the technicalities of copyright.

That said, I side with creators.

There has been a new ruling that seems to favor Warner Brothers and DC Comics, who own the copyright at the moment. The only really interesting piece of news here (to me) is the fact that the heirs will gain all rights to the character in 2013. If I were them, I'd have a giant clock counting down the seconds, like the Chinese used to have in Beijing, right by Tiananmen Square, to count down the time until Hong Kong was once more part of China. That thing was huge.

I found this article on Smallville. I don't have much to say about the writer's opinions, other than I'm not a fan of the show. He makes some interesting comments about "canon" and "straying too far", but the one thing I have to get down in writing is that Smallville's creators didn't come up with the notion that Superman and Luthor were friends as kids. That was Jerry Siegel. He wrote a story in 1960 called "How Luthor Met Superboy" where the true reason behind Luthor's hatred of Superman became known. Superboy made Luthor lose all his hair. I'm not even kidding about that. See this article. This phenomenon of thinking the first time YOU encounter something is the first time it happened is pretty common, I think. I've certainly fallen victim to it a number of times. On TV Tropes they call it "Older Than They Think." TV Tropes is one of my favorite websites. I could read that thing all day long.

In other international news...

The new Prime Minister of Bulgaria is referred to as Superman.

So is Michael Jackson.

Two things

2009-07-08T12:05:00.000-07:00

This project began as a study of jokes, but that soon led me to studying religious implications of Superman. This blog seems to be an obvious one to study from that perspective (see also entries for Feb. 25, . The writer calls Superman "an archetype of radical giving and effort for a greater good." That seems accurate enough, to a point. If we take archetype as he is using it, Superman is also the archetype of individual achievement and greatness at something, such as sports, sometimes in service to a team.

On an unrelated note, here's an article imagining what it would be like to be Superman's kid. There's been a lot of this sort of thing--working out the real-world possibilities of Superman's existence. Perhaps most famously, Larry Niven wrote "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex", which was all about the problems of Superman and Lois Lane's physical relationship.

In other news...

2009-07-07T16:16:00.000-07:00

So I got a strange message the other day. It came from an acquisitions editor at the University of Mississippi Press. Evidently they're interested in publishing the book I'm writing about Superman. It's not a contract or anything, merely an invitation to submit a proposal.

So there's that.

There's also an interview of me (yes, of me, not by me--) up on YouTube and on the Superman Homepage. Lois Lane interviews me about this project after Clark Kent talks to a comics writer,. about 8 minutes in. Marge's Donut Den!

A story...

2009-07-07T12:46:00.000-07:00

What does this story have to do with Superman?

Capt. Vancouver was very anxious to Christianize these people [the Hawaiians], but that can never be done until they are more civilized. The King Amma-amma-hah [Kamehameha] told Capt. Vancouver that he would go with him to the high mountain Mona Roah [Mauna Loa] and they would both jupm off together, each calling on their separate gods for protection, and if Capt, Vancouver's god saved him, but himself was not saved by his god, then his people should believe as Capt. Vancouver did. (as told by Townsend 1888, pg. 74; qtd. in Sahlins, Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities, 9)

Only time will tell.

New Joke

2009-06-23T14:45:00.000-07:00

There's a joke circulating right now:

Pinocchio, Snow White, and Superman are out for a stroll in town one day. As they walked, they came across a sign:
Beauty contest for the most beautiful woman in the world. I am entering! said Snow White.
After half an hour she comes out and they ask her, Well, howd ya do?
First Place!, said Snow White.
They continue walking and they see another sign: Contest for the strongest man in the world.
Im entering, says Superman.
After half an hour, he returns and they ask him, How did you make out?
First Place , answers Superman. Did you ever doubt?
They continue walking when they see another sign: Contest! Who is the greatest liar in the world?
Pinocchio enters. After half an hour he returns with tears in his eyes.
What happened? they asked.
Who the hell is Nancy Pelosi? asked Pinocchio

Here's a variation:

Pinocchio, Snow White, and Superman are out for a stroll in town one day. As they walked, they come across a sign: "Beauty contest for the most beautiful woman in the world.""I am entering!" said Snow White. After half an hour she comes out and they ask her, "Well, how'd ya do?""First Place!" said Snow White.They continue walking and they see a sign: "Contest for the strongest man in the world.""I'm entering," says Superman. After half an hour, he returns and they ask him, "How did you make out?""First Place," answers Superman. "Did you ever doubt?"They continue walking when they see a sign: "Contest! Who is the greatest liar in the world?" Pinocchio enters.After half an hour he returns with tears in his eyes."What happened?" they asked.Pinocchio asks, "Who the heck is Nancy Pelosi?"

Here's another variation. No, I have no idea what V Twin Legend is.

Snow White, Superman, Pinocchio, and V_Twin_LegendPinocchio, Snow White, Superman, and V_Twin_Legend are out for a stroll in town one day.As they walk, they come across a sign:"Beauty contest for the most beautiful woman in the world.""I am entering!" said Snow White.After half an hour she comes out and they ask her, "Well, how'd you do?"" First Place !" said Snow White.They continue walking and they see a sign:"Contest for the strongest man in the world.""I'm entering," says Superman.After half an hour, he returns and they ask him, "How did you make out?"" First Place ," answers Superman. "Did you ever doubt?"They continue walking when they see a sign:"Contest! Who is the greatest liar in the world?""I'm entering," says Pinocchio.After half an hour he returns with tears in his eyes."What happened?" they asked."Who the hell is Nancy Pelosi?" asked Pinocchio. They continue walking when they see a sign:"Contest! Who is the greatest moron in the world?""I'm entering," says V_Twin_Legend.After half an hour he returns with anger in his face."What happened?" they asked."Who the hell is ShadowR?" asked V_Twin_Legend.

This is not a brand new joke, since I've been able to find variations from last year:

Pinocchio, Snow White and Superman are walking in the street when they come across a sign 'Beauty contest for the most beautiful woman in the world.' 'I am entering,' said Snow White. After half an hour she comes out and they ask her, 'Well, how was it?' First Place ', said Snow White. They continue walking and they see a sign: 'Contest for the strongest man in the world.' 'I'm entering,' says Superman and after half an hour he returns and they ask him, 'How was it?' First Place,' answers Superman. They continue walking when they see a sign: 'Contest! Who is the greatest liar in the world?' Pinocchio enters. After half an hour he returns with tears in his eyes. 'What happened?' they asked, 'Who is this guy Obama?' asked Pinocchio.

Note the variation at the end. This was October 18, not too long before the election. Right now, the Pelosi variant is the most prominent one, though there are still Obama variants to be found in recent postings. And they're still there in archives.

Then there's a variant with the punchline: "Who the hell is Thaksin?" asked Pinocchio. I'm going to assume that Thaksin here is Thaksin Shinawatra, former prime minister of Thailand, but that not certain.

I think it's really interesting to look at the context for this joke. Contexts, rather. People put this up on blogs, forums, newsgroups, etc. And they provide no context. Despite the fact that the person who came up with this joke could theoretically be identified, no one makes any effort to give credit. Folklore, one of the categories of expression into which this joke falls, is often anonymouse because of the nature of oral tradition. Nobody expects anyone to remember who told a joke to them, but here a link would be very easy. Yet nobody does it. They just copy and post, for the most part. I think it's also important to point out that they're not taking credit for it. A few will reveal that it came to them in e-mail or something like that, but for the most part the posts are nothing more than the joke itself.
Everybody knows that we don't make up the jokes we tell. I remember saying something funny once in response to somebody putting a plastic bag over his head. He asked me where I heard it, and when I said I'd made it up on the spot, he didn't believe me.

Other items of interest in the joke: Superman is a cocky strongman, nothing more.

Why Snow White?

A comic book figure, a character from a children's novel, and a fairy tale princess. There are a lot more versions of this joke out there. Sometimes the variation comes only in a word or two. Sometimes, it's in the punctuation. When people tell a joke out loud, it becomes their own by means of memory, inflection, and taste. When they copy a joke on-line, the variables are different. But variation still happens, despite the potential for verbatim copying. This is fascinating.

Celebration

2009-06-18T15:13:00.001-07:00

This past weekend, I went to Metropolis, Illinois, for the Superman Celebration. I spent the weekend conducting interviews, recording events, and watching stuff.

The Celebration is organized by a committee of citizens of Metropolis who are devoted to their jobs. They're friendly and amazingly organized. Everything went smoothly, and they answered all my questions. I talked to some of them for half an hour or more, and they were gracious and excited about everything going on, even my book. They're led by Lisa Gower and Karla Ogle, who are sisters.

The events were spread out across the town, but many of the activities happened on Market Stree, which runs northeast from the 15' tall Superman statue, famous most recently for a picture of Barack Obama standing in front of it with arms akimbo. Here's the strip of food and vendors looking northeast toward some ominous clouds. About five minutes after I took this, it poured.

And here we are looking southwest, toward the Statue and the courthouse that sits beyond it.

The local businesses, which are located behind the tents in these pictures, use the occasion to try to sell more stuff. Superman gets an endorsement, whether he likes it or not. Here he is, in a collage that includes Obama and a better picture of the statue, advertising for a store. The Skin Shop has super deals (The Skin Shop is a mini day spa, by the way).

Here you can get an idea of the statue's size. These people are standing on the pedement, which is shaped like the Superman s-shield.

There were many people in costume, but only on officially sanctioned Superman, who's name is Josh Boltinghouse. He won the Search for Superman context and a five year deal to play Superman at the Celebration. Here he is, with my son Jacob.

Jacob, by the way, turned 2 this past Monday.

Inside the chamber of Commerce. There are tons of Superman souvenirs there, in case the vendors outside and the Super Museum shop didn't provide enough. (there's also, incongruously, a poster of the Wesley Snipes/Tommy Lee Jones film US Marshalls--which I came to learn was filmed partly in Metropolis). For some reason, I thought this section of the Commerce gift shop worth photographing.

I got lots of good stuff for a book here. If I was ever in doubt that this book will be about something important to people, that doubt was put to rest by this trip. People really make Superman an importatnt part of their lives, and not always for the same reasons. The Superman Celebration crystallizes that into one weekend. For some, it serves the same function that Halloween costuming serves: a chance to put on another face for a day or two, to let loose. I interviewed a pair of brothers, Alex and John Rinaldi, who do not put on costumes but are devoted Superman fans. They said that to dress up like that is to become interesting to others, like becoming a god for a weekend. An interesting observation.

For the town, it's an economic goldmine. They have other things that help this, a casino, a revolutionary war fort (with its own festival and re-enactment), and a harley davidson ralley. But many of them, while not necessarily fans, really get behind Superman and the Celebration. they love the work and the result. They love meeting the people. Karla, one of the chairs of the committee, compared it to a cross between Disneyland and a small town Festival. I'd replace Disneyland with a comic convention, but that might just be because I haven't been to disneyland. But my reason for the convention is the sense of community, which I doubt exists at Disneyland. Do many of the people who run the theme park know the guests by name? Perhaps, but do they incorporate the guests into the opening ceremony, allow them to run a trivia game? My interview with Karla included several moments when attendees would come up to her to chat for a bit. She knew them all by name.

All told, some 40,000 people attended the four day event. There were costume contests, a soft ball game, a car show, and scores of other events. I can't even list them all here, but they spread all over the town. I'm not that adept at fieldwork, having had little practice but a lot of theoretical instruction. I think I may have to go back next year.

A bit of this, a bit of that.

2009-06-09T16:01:00.001-07:00

I suppose that the recent passing of David Carradine makes his speech in Kill Bill a sensible link at the moment. It is a good speech, so good that it was more or less written in 1968 by Jules Pfeiffer in The Great Comic Book Heroes, reissued by Fantagraphics Press not too long ago. Tarrantino often borrows liberally from other movies (so much that it's even commented on in other movies--Swingers, for example [Swingers...haven't thought about that movie in a while]), which makes me wonder if he's read Pfeiffer's book.

I'm not sure what to make of the St. Cloud Superman. Evidently he's all about free speech.

Again with Flickr. The makeup artist says it's inspired by Superman. Red, yellow, blue. Are there flickr people out there who come up with new make up designs (is that the right word) and post them regularly? Interesting. (sorry, the picture won't post.)

This review of Irredeemable is as good a reason as any to bring up the Superman pastiche. It's pretty common in comics to have a character who's not Superman, but is really Superman in all the important ways. This way creators can tell Superman stories that couldn't otherwise be told. It's akin to the Imaginary Stories, which I think have given way to Elseworlds (if those are still around, my comics information isn't the most current), which is similar to the Earth 2 stuff from a while back. In this version, the Plutonian is more or less an evil Superman. I think. Haven't read it yet, but I intend to. It's written by Mark Waid, who claims to be the only person on the planet to have read, watched, or listened to every Superman story ever told (in Superheroes and Philosophy).

Speaking of which, here's a blog entry Waid wrote earlier this year, which cover one of the reasons why he loves the character so much. Here's a passage:

It didn’t matter that he wasn’t real. What mattered was that he cared about everyone in the world, without exception, without judgment.
Everyone.

Waid has become one of the superstar writers in comics, and he's moved from a regular gig writing for DC comics, where he got to retell Superman's origin in a series called Birthright, to Boom! Studios, where he's now the editor in chief.

I’d walked into that theater with a very short future ahead of me, and I’d walked out feeling safe and inspired in Superman’s orbit. Without that, I can promise you I would not be here today.

That's a good note on which to end. Well, not as good as this:

Religion

2009-06-04T15:19:00.000-07:00

So a friend, and sort of a collaborator on this Superman project, sent me a link to this site, which delcares 10 Reasons why Superman is better than Jesus. That article links to another, in which a father recounts his daughter's reaction to Superman. According to the daughter, Superman is better than God.

It is perhaps the most interesting aspect of Superman, that he is simultaneously conscripted by Atheists and Christians as an important character, one which points toward all that is good and right about the respective belief system.

Here's another site: "S" for Superman or Savior?

I'll leave you to figure out the specifics of the religions of the two writers above. But in published books, the comparison works out more favorably. Take Greg Garret's Holy Superheroes. Or Steven Skelton's The Gospel According to the World's Greatest Superhero. On the other side of that issue John T. Galloway points out all of the ways in which Superman fails to live up to the ideals of Christ. There are others.

Perhaps the most interesting aspects of the on-line articles are the comments, in which things can get pretty heated. What we learn most of all is that people really think this through. And both sides conclude that Superman is or is not for them. (I think there may be a parallel to this article, in which Superman is cast as a liberal opposed to Batman's conservatism.)

I think the Superman as Christ thing really took off with the Richard Donner film in 78. He and the writers made the parallels (which weren't always in the comics) too obvious to miss--or to ignore. For my own part, I dislike the blatant mapping of one character onto another. But I still loved that movie.

This article shows a bit of how the plot of the Superman story fits in with Otto Rank's Myth of the Birth of the Hero. Rank's is a psychoanalytic sort of study, one which begins with the reduction of the story to a basic structure, but goes on to interpret it in interesting ways that the author of this article never really deals with in his brief analysis. Alan Dundes, freudian folklorist, edited a version of it a while back that is probably the most interesting one to examine.

Rank's study is an interesting one to combine with Lord Raglan's The Hero, which takes the hero's whole life instead of merely the first adventure. He, too, reduces it to a series of episodes and demonstrates that a great deal of heroes will experience many of the 22 episodes he chronicles. I think Oedipus scored the highest. Back to Dundes, I think he determined that Jesus scored 19 of 22. Pretty good score, though not quite up there with Oedipus, if I recall.

So, to sum up...Superman is Jesus to some people, and the anti-Christ to others?

What's that one movie...

2009-06-03T17:20:00.000-07:00

You know...where Richard Pryor tries to get a donkey to "sit."

Oh, yeah. It's Superman III.

This is just an awful movie. I hadn't seen it since it came out, with good reason. And yet...

There's the hint of something spectacular here. There's the way it opens, without Superman at all. We watch Richard Pryor get denied unemployment benefits. Magnificent.

Then, there's the city scene. It's not well done, but it could have been the best part of any Superman movie ever. If we had seen Clark Kent subtly saving various Metropolitans from disaster and pies in the face, then this could have been great. There's a scene in issue 5 of All Star Superman, where Kent works to quell a prison riot, save the guards, and keep Lex Luthor alive all while avoiding the Parasite and never changing to Superman. If the scene in Superman III had gone that route, it could have been great. Instead, Superman arrives to rip a sunroof off a car. Couldn't Kent have flicked a beer nut to shatter one of the windows (which he does later in the film under the influence of wacky kryptonite)? And what's with that pie?

The rest of the film is really only notable because of the split between the good and bad Supermans. Exposed to a tainted kryptonite, he becomes evil--which consists largely of leering at Lana Lang, arriving too late to save a truck driver, putting the leaning tower of Pisa upright, and flicking beer nuts. Then he divides in two: Superman (whose red is now marroon) and Kent. They fight, Kent wins. Literally, Kent is the good in Superman, who would run rampant, mildly disturbing tourist attractions and otherwise making a nuisance of himself.

2009-05-28T13:45:00.001-07:00

I don't know why I never tire of seeing Obama as Superman. It's always interesting to me. this one is stencilled graffiti, looks like it's on pavement somewhere.

Then there's the cover for this Taiwanese magazine. Flickr is absolutely wonderful for this project.

For a mere 29.95, you too can own your own Superman Obama bobblehead.

American Dreamtime

2009-05-27T17:29:00.000-07:00

I just finished the book called American Dreamtime, by Lee Drummond. Its "an anthropologist goes to the movies" angle is an intriguiging one, of which I approve. I believe it shows its age a bit, being writting way way back in 1995, with all of its defenses of choosing to study movies, but that's a minor quibble.

There are major quibbles, thought. First, Drummond doesn't mention Superman even once. What's the deal?

On a more serious note, Drummond lays out his theory of culture, which he derives from science and the notion that humanity is not a discrete species. He problematizes boundaries throughout the book. His overall argument is that"culture created humanity" rather than the other way around, by which he means that culture preceded homo sapiens and thus played a key role in evolution. There are some very interesting arguments made about myth, its nature and its importance. There's some pretty good macro-level points here.

On the micor-level, the book falls apart. The writing itself is annoying, but that's another minor quibble. Drummond chooses to focus on four films and series of films: James Bond, Star Wars, ET, and Jaws. Good choices overall. The Bond chapter is probably the most successful, and I wouldn't be surprised if Drummond is a huge fan. The chapter that follows it, on Star Wars, is simply inexcusably bad. Never before have I encountered a scholar who makes up data to fit his theories. Yet Drummond seemingly does so. Star Wars was pretty important to my childhood, so I know the films pretty well (but not the books or comics, which is why I have to say "seemingly does so"). So when Drummond puts certain scenes in the wrong movies (such as the first glimpse of Vader's face being in Empire instead Episode IV, as Drummond has it), I notice it but excuse it. However, Storm Troopers (which Drummond labels Imperial Guard but describes clearly as Storm Troopers) are not machines in the sense that he labels them--robots. He invents a scene where Han tells Luke not to worry about killing them because there's nothing inside the armor.

Everybody who's seen the prequels knows that Storm Troopers are clones. Devotees knew it a long time ago. it's not a recent idea. This is just crazy.

And no Superman. It's too bad, really. Then I might have something to say about it.

2009-05-20T13:02:00.000-07:00

This article about the reasons for the success of Batman movies and the failure of the recent Superman movie raises some interesting questions and makes a couple of good points. This paragraph, however, is probably a bit off.

So let's break this down into superheroes and its current trend in film. “Superman Returns,” the 2006 Bryan Singer dirge, didn't fail because audiences no longer resonate with a super being that can fly, shoot heat from his eyes and is immune to bullets. It failed because Superman is the epitome of good morals and justice, which today's audience find boring and childish.

I disagree with his reasoning here. I don't think that "today's audience" finds that boring at all. Success for Superman and for Batman do not have to be mutually exclusive things. I think, rather, that it's entirely more probably that people going to see a movie went with the idea that they'd see a Superman movie. Instead, they got something else. I'm not sure what that something else was--all I know is that it wasn't good by any reasonable standard. They got a lame plot. They got too much nostalgia and too little adventure and excitement. It failed because it wasn't a good movie.

SPORTS

I've been compiling a list of athletes (among others) who are called Superman. The Bleacher Report has done a short one, too, but with the added critique of pointing out how everyone on the list is not Superman for one reason or another.

Art

2009-05-12T13:21:00.000-07:00

Evidently the term Superman in fitness (at least in this article) refers to "Lying flat on your stomach, simultaneously raise both arms and legs (knees locked) as high as you can". From the pose Superman makes when he flies, no doubt.

Interestingly, that pose is sort of justified in The Iron Giant. I watched that not too long ago. It's fantastic, but I watched it because there's a lot about Superman in it. In an essay in the Man From Krypton: A Closer Look at Superman, David Hopkins says that the movie uses Superman as a guide to morality for powerful people. But Hogarth (the kid who befriends the Iron Giant) tells the giant to hold his arms out like Superman to steady himself as he flies. It works.

The latest edition of Wired UK has the Superman logo on the cover. For whatever reason, the computer I'm using won't download the on-line sample of the issue, so I don't exactly know why, but the cover blurb reads "How science is re-engineering your mind, body, and spirit..." so that may have something to do with it. Superman is, in some ways, and especially in the All Star version, about perfecting humanity.

A while back, Neil Gaiman and Adam Rogers wrote a brief piece in Wired called "The Myth of Superman." It's not a bad little essay, though I disagree with their assessment of Superman's villains. Sure, a lot of them are disposable, but as far as I know the only villain who's entered the general lexicon of pretty much everybody is Bizarro. Brainiac gets used pretty often, too. And everybody knows who Lex Luthor is.

I read a really good article on Halloween, called "Does the Word 'Dog' Bite?" It's by the legendary folklorist Linda Degh--legendary because of her primary area of study (legends) and her stature within the field. Her book Legend and Belief changed the way I approach narratives in general. The article only mentions Superman once, as a disguies for children on Halloween, but it's just generally interesting, so I thought I'd mention it. She points out that dressing up as Superman is enacting the legend of superman, a retelling of the story that she labels ostension (after Umberto Eco).

Then there's this, Superdavid:

There's a site called worth1000.com. It ran a contest called Superhero ModRen. People were invited to take a renaissance painting and photoshop in a superhero or villain. Three different entries portrayed Michaelangelo's David as Superman. I liked this one the best, but that's just me. Looking at that statue from the front, it's easy to forget that it's actually a portrayal of David of David and Goliath fame. Once around back, you can see the sling draped over his shoulder in detail, and the story comes into focus. He was supposed to be perfection, I guess, as is Superman. He sired a line of kings that putatively lasted until Jesus.

In a related story, my wife Mandy and I went to see that statue in Florence. Waiting in line, a pigeon pooped on her head.

2009-05-11T12:21:00.000-07:00

I wrote my dissertation on Prometheus, and I analyzed every use of the character I could find, from references in books to businesses that are named after the character. I also studied the use of the name as a referent in conversation. What did people mean when they referred to something as Prometheus, or Promethean?

I'm not doing this for Superman, because that would take the rest of my life, but I still think it's interesting. Take, for instance, the story "Sometimes You Feel Like a Man of Steel". It's hilarious for two reasons: First, because of the description of the pump at the beginning, which goes into far more detail about big macs than is necessary. Second, for the ending, and the perfect way the writer handles being punched in the stomach by a random drunk girl. I think the series of which this is a part, "Life is Real: Writing the final chapters" is a really great idea. I can barely imagine what it must be like to fight terminal cancer, but I think that having a forum to write about it must help in some small way.

Then there's stuff like this. The meaning that people find in Superman's secret identity takes a long time to catalogue. I hadn't come across a homosexual interpretation until now. I don't recall for sure, but I seem to remember a lot of people writing about the homosexual subtext to Superman Returns, basing it on the director's sexual orientation more than anything else. Wait a minute, I don't have to recall anything: i've got the internets...

Here's just about the only one worth a look:

"I think the generation of gay men that grew up on Superman and a few of the other comic superheroes probably read a lot of stuff into it that they recognized -- the whole double-life situation and running into 'closet-like' spaces," Lock says.

In Other News...

Superman Cakes

Back

2009-05-08T12:12:00.000-07:00

Since I discovered that someone is actually reading this (see the comment for the last post--by a real guy!), I figure I should remark on what I've been doing in my absence. First of all, I went to Los Angeles to deliver a portion of this project as a paper for the Western States Folklore Society annual meeting. The reception was enthusiastic, and there was a good discussion afterwards. It prompted one scholar--the incomparable Wolfgang Meider--to give me a book, which was nice. I got some nice feedback, notably from Elliott Oring, a humor scholar of much renown. The paper, by the way, was on a joke:

A guy walks into a bar on the top of a very tall building. He sits down, orders a huge beer, chugs it, walks over to the window, and jumps out. Five minutes later, the guy walks into the bar again, orders another huge beer, chugs it, walks over to the window, and jumps out again. Five minutes later, he re-appears and repeats the whole thing. About half an hour later, another guy at the bar stops the first guy and says, "hey, how the heck are you doing that?!" The first guy responds, "Oh, it's really simple physics. When you chug the beer, it makes you all warm inside and since warm air rises, if you just hold your breath you become lighter than air and float down to the sidewalk." "WOW!" exclaims the second man, "I gotta try that!" So he orders a huge beer, chugs it, goes over to the window, jumps out, and splats on the sidewalk below. The bartender looks over to the first man and says, "Superman, you're a jerk when you're drunk."

It's the same joke I posted a link to (in video version) in the first post. I must say, it got a good laugh when I told it to the crowd of folklorists. The meeting--and my talk in particular--were well attended, which was really nice. It was a good group of people, most of whom I'd never met before.

The other reason for the lack of posts is that I've been writing the next chapter. It's called "The Apotheosis of Our Former Selves" because why wouldn't I use the most ridiculous-sounding chapter title ever? It makes me laugh to think that I may be delivering a paper with this title at the next American Folklore Socity conference. It's in Boise. I've never been to idaho before.

This next chapter is about a joke as well:

At his request, each morning 3-year-old Ray's mother pinned a bath towel to the back shoulders of his size two T-shirt. Immediately in his young imaginative mind, the towel became a magic blue and red cape. And he became Superman. Outfitted each day in his "cape," Ray's days were packed with adventure and daring escapades. He was Superman. This fact was clearly pointed out last fall when his mother enrolled him in kindergarten class. During the course of the interview, the teacher asked Ray his name. "Superman," he answered politely and without hesitation. The teacher smiled, cast an appreciative glance at his mother, and asked again, "Your real name, please." Again, Ray answered, "Superman." Realizing the situation demanded more authority, or maybe to hide amusement, the teacher closed her eyes for a moment, then in a stern voice said, "I will have to have your real name for my records." Sensing he'd have to play straight with the teacher, Ray slid his eyes around the room, hunched closer to her, and answered in a voice hushed with conspiracy, "Clark Kent."

This one has gotten a few laughs as well. I've found it, verbatim, on five different websites. in the process of studying this joke, I've come to invent a whole biography for Ray. he and I don't get along very well.

While we're on the subject of fashion: It seems as if this warrants mentioning:

The "Superman" is what we work-hard-play-hard ladies named our semi-public wardrobe change ... where we wiggle out of the boring business suit and throw on a halter or the cocktail dress that's been smashed in the bottom of a work tote all day.

I'm not sure if this is an example of a journalist inventing a term, or it's real. Either way...

Finally, because there hasn't been a picture of Obama as Superman here in a while:

The Cape

2009-04-22T13:29:00.000-07:00

One thing that keeps coming up is the importance of Superman's cape. Alvin Schwartz insists that the cape is indestructible (in his book An Unlikely Prophet), and the cape appears to be the most common item donned by children when they pretend to be Superman. it's iconic and essential. You can't be Superman without the cape.

That being said, you can buy a reproduction (so is there a real one out there somewhere?) at a comic shop in cincinatti for $295. The article and shop in question (the shop's name is Up Up and Away, which is what I wanted to call this blog) are promoting Free Comic Book day, which is coming up in a week and a half. In case somebody beside me is actually reading this, and that person doesn't know, Free Comic Book Day is exactly what it sounds like. You go to a comics shop and they give you a few free comics that publishers send to the expressley for this pupose.

The cape is one of the two places where the S-Shield is featured. Its color scheme on the cape varies. But since Superman wasn't the guy's name on his home planet, and yet the S-Shield was explained to be part of the blanket or something that he had when he arrived on earth, people started to wonder what the S was all about. So, somebody came up with an explanation, one that involved creating a new language, Kryptonese (later, Kryptonian--they're #'s 10 and 11 on the list of languages on the site I linked). Kryptonian is becoming pretty common in tattoos, such as in this guy's tattoo of his name:

What's weird is that in that Kryptonian alphabet, there's no symbol like the one on the S-shield. The closest is the equivalent for the letter S. I seem to recall that the S-shield stood for the family, the House of El, if memory serves. I'll have to find out.

RANDOM STUFF

I suppose it's inevitable that the world turns into a musical someday. Half the world is busy lip-synching to some song or other on youtube. So why not revive the old Superman broadway show, with a new book?

This one's come up a few times now. Not sure what to make of it yet. Evidently it's in answer to a question about why the crime rate never ends if Superman is so great.

At long last, action-hero-pant-wearing day has the green light. In the UK, anyway. And it supports charity. Evidently, it's not a day when everybody wears a Superman costume they bought at the story; they simply put their underwear outside their trousers. There will be stickers, and the article makes use of the word "whilst." How very English of it.

A guy proposes to his girlfriend while he's wearing a superman outfit.

"She calls me her Superman because I look after her and make sure she doesn't do anything wrong."

That's not the first time this has happened. The Superman guy in Confessions of a Superhero does the same thing. Then gets married in his costume underneath the Superman statue in Metropolis, IL.

There's something called the superman punch.

I don't watch the show HEROES. I found this reference to Superman in the most recent episode. Are there lots of these sorts of things in the show?

You're noble like Superman, you believe in truth and justice like Superman. You're a little fascist like Superman.

Evidently this is a villain calling a hero superman in an attempt to make the hero out to be a fascist.

Superman is real...?

2009-04-15T16:32:00.001-07:00

I've come across this kind of thing before. I've never known what to make of it.

And I was just reading about Superman being a mass hallucination. Then this came up.

This long essay is a good one to have on file. It's got lots of good pictures, including the one that caused much trouble recently--of Clark Kent drinking.

Imagination

2009-04-15T15:02:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to figure out exactly what to do with the fact that kids pretend to be Superman. A big part of me is already dealing with the concept of ostension, which is enacting a behavior that you read about or hear about (such as a kid playing russian roulette because he read about it in a comic book--see The Ten Cent Plague). There was, after all, a rumor that George Reeves killed himself because he felt guilty when all sorts of kids hurt themselves pretending they could fly.

So kids pretend to be superheroes. Scholars study this. Advice sites tell you how to deal with it. Frederic Wertham condemns it and the art form that prompted it. But what does it all mean? I'll get back to you on that.

More Nicknames...

Finally a baseball superman. Shannon Wilkerson of Augusta State.

Soccer. Derby's Superman, Oscar Machapa. The article doesn't refer to him as that except in the headline.

Boxing. Edwin Valero. He's from venezuela.

Mixed Martial Arts. Anthony Manacio. He's got superman tattoos, too.

Lacrosse. Ryan Fioretti. he's a goal keeper.

This one's not in reference to a specific person's nickname, but refers to the fact that superman is a character type. It's in reference to some Dodgers players realizing that they're not going to be "superman." Someone who plays even when they're not feeling up to it. So, you know, it's still sports.

Enough of that. Tattoos

This is funny:

Then there's Turk--Donald Faison of Scrubs. According to some, he's going to remove his superman tattoo.

From an interview in American Way:

I was 18. I wanted to get a tattoo. Superman was the coolest. He could solve every problem. He was the man of steel. I wanted to do it. My right arm is my strong arm, so I thought if I put the tattoo on that arm, it’d make me stronger. Didn’t really do anything for me. I’m just permanently marked with another man’s insignia. You live and learn.

And then there's this one:

More Obama

2009-04-10T15:20:00.001-07:00

Just when i think I'm done working on this for the day...The Daily Show has to go and compare Obama to Superman.

"If you're going to steal from a Superman movie, don't make it Superman IV." That's a paraphrase. Evidently Obama's speech about ridding the world of nuclear threats echoed Superman's speech about throwing nuclear weapons into the sun.

Does anybody else think that the Daily Show will now only be making fun of Fox News?

Superhero decadence

2009-04-10T13:51:00.000-07:00

Superman stands at the forefront of the superhero genre. And thus he comes up a lot in discussing its finer points, its tropes, its triumphs and failings. And so it's natural that he comes up as the first example of what's wrong with superhero comics in Bill Willingham's discussion of the degradation of the superhero, which has been referred to as the age of superhero decadence. More on this to come

Tattoo

2009-04-09T13:58:00.001-07:00

I've been considering Superman in folklore, but mostly in verbal folklore: nicknames, jokes, etc. I've gotten a few pictures here and there, mostly of Obama as Superman. I don't know why it's taken me so long to consider Superman tattoos. It took Scrubs to open my eyes. Turk has a Superman tattoo on his shoulder.

Here are a few pictures. This one from a forum on Wizard, but a guy whose screen name is Team Rocket:

This one's cool. It's on the arm of a guy named Dan Spaulding, of Scenic City Builders, which explains the hammer:

This one's on a thread at bluetights.net, and there are a whole lot of picuters here. I choose this one because it comes up first in a search, and because the placement of the tattoo is another traditional choice. It comes with many names, the placement, which I will not get into here. It's posted by txsupergirl87:

There will no doubt be more tattoo posts in the future. I hear Shaq's got one, too.

2009-04-09T13:30:00.000-07:00

Recently, I've noticed a more populist view of Superman. I sense it lurking underneath All Star Superman, by Grant Morrison, and in a whole lot of articles. Here's one about Superman, Obama, and Warren Buffett.

Speaking of Obama, the Guardian calls him, President Barack Hussain Obama, the multicultural Superman for the globalised world. And i don't think I've posted this picture yet:

Then there's Indonesia. Apparently, Superman and other pop culture heroes have become icons for the ballot, with at least five aspiring legislators superimposing their faces on the bodies of superheroes and using the images on their campaign posters, according to CNN. They neglect to show pictures of these, unfortunately. The article I've linked to is fascinating, actually. It's largely about visual imagery and democracy--how candidates are employing pictures to win votes. It's light on the details of Indonesian democracy, which has only been around since 1998, but the few facts are interesting. I guess I just never expect for there to be other systems of democracy, which seems as if it's taught in schools as a monolithic thing: there's democracy, as opposed to monarchy, or despotism, or oligarchy or Felocracy. But there are forms of democracy. In Indonesia, until recently, voters could only vote for parties. And there is an election to determine which parties get on the ballots.

I guess the most surprising thing is how diverse the topics become when doing a search for Superman.

More Nicknames

2009-04-06T13:35:00.000-07:00

Stephen Ireland, who plays soccer for Manchester City FC, is known as Superman.

Glenn Beck calls himself Superman. I don't think it's a nickname is you apply it to yourself. Probably won't stick.

New Zealand Chief's rugby player Dwayne Sweeney became Superman quite recently, if I'm reading the article correctly.

Li Ka-Shing's son, Richard Li, is apparently being called Little Superman, mostly because his father is called Superman. It's all about business acumen.

Here, a high school soccer team is like Superman because they play well when the sun shines.

Then there's Nolan Belcher. I'm beginning to wonder if all of these Supermans are speculative, like this one, or if there's more to it.

Maya Moore plays basketball for UConn, and is called Superman in this article. Evidently, she juggles, too.

This one's all about golf, not specific to any golfer:

The fashion experts can say what they like about the Green Jacket but it has transformative powers, like Superman's cape or a bite from a radioactive spider. Slip one over the shoulders of a golfer and it turns a man into a boy, a jaded professional into a joyful ingénue. The eyes widen, the arm hairs bristle and the spirit soars.

So the cape turns Clark Kent into a boy, a joyful ingenue. Interesting.

I can only describe this as an article confirming that technological progress will either transform us all into Superpeople, or will render Superman unnecessary. Here's a relevant passage:

This is the first of the lessons I have for new smartphone owners: You will drop your phone. You cannot reverse time by flying around the globe. Your phone will be OK. So don't baby it. You bought it to be used, not put in a display case in your living room.

The article itself opens with two paragraphs about the author imagining flying around the globe in reverse--as Superman did in the 1978 movie--so as to reverse time and prevent the accidental fall of a cellphone.

I suppose that the DC Comictitian is going to come up sooner or later. Might as well be now.

Everybody else is linking to this video on YouTube, so I will, too.

And I know that you can see my underwear

And you can joke about it all you want, I really don't care.

Finally. I suppose I should post a picture of Action Comics #1. In the beginning...

2009-04-02T13:25:00.000-07:00

A central focus of my book is the morality at the heart of Superman. The jokes about him lead me there, as do the conversations I've had about the character. So I'm glad to see essays like this one, at FaceTheReckoning.com. It's a response the idea that Superman's morality would be shaped by his powers, that he would inevitably give in to the temptation to use them for his own selfish ends and because he doesn't, he's not an interesting character. The response is well articulated.

The list of people given the nickname Superman grows every day. Here's Shane McConkey, extreme skiier. Then there's Dr. Gahl, about whom I know nothing other than that he's associated with the fight against Hermansky-Pudlak Syndrome.

The title for the Dr. Gahl post refers to him as "our Superman." I recently read that superheroes are not so much gods in the sense of a lot of gods whose nature gives them provenance over some force of nature or human institution (i.e., Zeus was god of justice and lightning; Athena was god of wisdom in battle and weaving), but rather superheroes are tutelary deities who protect specific cities. It's not entirely true, but super heroes are first and foremost associated with cities, especiallly Superman. Superman is also associated, with varying degrees of agreement, with "the American way," which makes him a patriotic figure more so than pretty much any other super hero. The iconography supports the argument.

What I'm getting at here is the "god's on our side" attitude. It crops up in sports, in war, and probably in lots of other places. Several religious people have written books on Superman, mostly to point out the parallels with Christ and show us the way, so to speak. John T. Galloway, Jr. wrote perhaps the earliest one of these, The Gospel According to Superman. More recent books attempt to demonstrate that Superman is Christ-like, and that this is a good thing. Galloway goes in the opposite direction, labeling Superman a false god and saying that the best response to his story is to compare it unfavorably to the gospels. In particular, he notes that Superman is "on our side," which he criticizes because of his belief that god is on everyone's side. I've simplified his argument perhaps too much, but I hope the point is clear.

If there's "our Superman" there can be one for other people, too. All of which is sort of beside the point. I think the post I've been discussing labels Dr. Gahl as Superman because of his tireless efforts attempting to find a cure for the disease in question. So "our" here isn't a form of patriotism, and in fact includes everyone. I don't even necessarily agree with Galloway. Just writing and writing and writing. Here's a patriotic picture:

Interestingly, the image came up on a website devoted to stem cell research, something Christopher Reeve advocated, if I recall correctly, because it could lead to advancements in treatment for the injuries he sustained. There was an episode of South Park about this, which pitted Reeve against Gene HackMan. Funny stuff.

Then there's this:

superstition

2009-04-01T15:36:00.000-07:00

One of the types of folklore in which Superman is featured is superstition, or folk belief. There are evidently some people out there who believe there is a Superman Curse. Evidently, just pretending to be Superman for a paycheck will lead to the end of your career or life. The evidence are the untimely demises of Christopher Reeve and George Reeves. Also cited are the less-than-thrilling post-Superman careers of Dean Caine, Kirk Alyn, and others. There's an article about it in Glenn Yeffeth's The Man from Krypton (in the Smart Pop book series). It takes the form of a letter to Brandon Routh on the eve of his debut in Superman Returns.

George Reeve contributes the most to this belief, it seems. Snopes has a page devoted to the rumors surrounding his death. There is evidently a book about it, which I have not yet read, and a recent movie called Hollywoodland, which I have not seen. I really need to catch up on my movie watching.

This picture is a custom figure, built by someone called Sillof, who does this sort of thing a lot. Custom figures are more common than I realized. The Superman guy from the Confessions of a Superhero documentary does this sort of thing as well. Here, Sillof imagines a Victorian Superman, based, he explains, on the idea behind Gotham by Gaslight, which imagined Batman solving the Jack the Ripper murders, if I recall correctly.