Reactions

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.)