Another All-Star 10 essay

It's called "How Superman Saved my Life," written by Alice W. Castle for the website Panels.net, which I like quite a bit. It includes a scan of the page from All-Star Superman 10.

Says Superman: "You're much stronger than you think you are."

Castle writes:
Those words were like a firebrand in my mind, scorching away the pain I’d been suffering through. In one page, I felt like I was the one being held in Superman’s arms and being stopped from taking that fatal plunge because, of course, he was right. I am much stronger than I thought I was and it was never as bad as it seemed. For every terrible night, there was the dawn of a new day that let me try again. That let me seek out help and friendship, comfort and warmth. Those words stopped me from doing something terrible and set me on a course that, in so many ways, brought me here today.

I tell you this to give you context to my relationship to Superman. It’s a pretty emotional one. I’m not the kind of person who loves Superman because he’s a cool character or because I like seeing him punch Brainiac in the face or what have you. I love Superman because, for a time, Superman was all I had. And, sadly, it felt like that was being taken from me as I watched Dawn Of Justice.

A few more Superman links...why not?

All-Star Superman has been getting some scholarly attention recently. Here's "Making and Breaking the Superhero Quotidian," by Frank Bramlett. It was published by ImageText, an online journal of interdisciplinary comics studies. It's a pretty good journal. They also published an article on Alan Moore's Superman a while back as part of an entire issue on Moore's work.

Then there's this four-part examination of Morrison's Superman that spans decades' worth of stories. Very thorough, by Jim Dandeneau.

Heroism and Superman

I think about Superman: Earth One a lot, primarily because I do not like it at all. But in light of recent Superman stories, maybe I'd be better off rephrasing: These days, Superman isn't for me. Smallville, the various DC comics, Man of Steel--looking at what the stories have in common is instructive, leading me to figure out why I don't particularly care for Superman these days.

What's the biggest difference between George Reeves in Adventures of Superman and Tom Welling in Smallville? What separates Earth One from All-Star? Man of Steel from Superman: The Movie?

The answer could be multi-faceted; we could talk about mood and tone, about narrative sophistication, about musculature, about time frame, etc. But for me, the difference comes down to conflict. George Reeves, Christopher Reeve, Grant Morrison, Richard Donner...all these versions of Superman are confident in their role, they don't have any internal conflict over what they should do. Tom Welling, Henry Cavill, Zach Snyder, and J. Michael Straczynski...they all show us a Superman who hesitates, equivocates, and sometimes just plain doesn't want to be a hero.

I'm not saying that Superman shouldn't be allowed a few moments of doubt, or of weakness. Neither am I saying that there shouldn't be stories about heroes who are reluctant or who flinch in the face of difficult choices.

What I'm saying is that I don't care for Superman in that role. I don't need to see him trying to figure out his morality. I don't need to see him wandering, second-guessing himself or his place.

But that's just me. My Superman was fully formed after a single page of exposition written by Jerry Siegel and drawn by Joe Shuster. Even when they had chances to expand--such as in the Superman ongoing series that debuted soon after, or in the newspaper strips--they didn't depict Superman as hemming and hawing about whether or not he'd be a hero. He just is one.

Apparently, a sizeable chunk of the audience does want to see him trying to figure things out, questioning himself. Evidently there's a market for a Superman who is also Spider-Man. That's fine; it's just not for me.

The interesting thing about this, about the current versions of Superman, is to place him into larger contexts. What can we infer about, say, the mentality of the United States based on the version of Superman that dominates pop culture right now? 

For one thing, the United States has a confidence problem. It's no longer sure of its identity. It wants somebody to tell it what to do. Sadly, that somebody seems to be military in nature. This lack of self-confidence and the military nature of our appeal for help  probably reflects the origin of the nation in both genocide and civil war. When in doubt, charge into battle. This nation is not missionaries, it is not compromisers, it is not negotiatiors.

A while back, when I was in full research mode, I went through All-Star and counted up the total number of panels devoted to violence. It's something around fifty (though I'm not going to look for that page of notes within the thousands that are weighing down my filing cabinet). It's not a story about fighting. It's about finding other ways to solve problems, through unity and sympathy. Whole issues go by without a single punch thrown.

In short, I don't think the United States has always been this way. It's tied to 9/11, of course, and reflected in the dominant stories of our time (as stories have always reflected their tellers' situations). Stories like Superman/Batman and Civil War seem to be meditations on how the United States should use its power. As far as I can tell, they're literally arguments between people about this topic that turn into violence.

Wait a second. Are these movies really about gun control?

I guess I'd have to watch them to find out. I might just reread All-Star instead.

Batman versus Superman

Here's a topic that will probably always get me to link to it: That page in All-Star Superman 10.

Then there's this thing, claiming that nobody cares about people disliking BvS. I'm willing to look past the title, even though I very much do care what people think about this movie.

And here's an example of why I care.

And another example: discussions about superheroes don't get more interesting than this one, from Panels.net--a site I've come to like quite a bit. Yeah, it's got that Morrison/Quitely page from All-Star Superman 10 once more. Still inspiring people. If you're reading along, make sure to check out the comments on that article, since they make a counter-argument that's also worthwhile.

Still haven't seen Dawn of Justice. But that preview of Rogue One looks cool.

More about All-Star

In preparation for the final revision of my book about Superman, I've been getting back to reading about him. In the process, I found a couple of links that are worth saving:

First, a lengthy discussion about Morrison/Quitely/Grant's All-Star series. There's a lot of stuff worth reading here, though perhaps the most worthwhile portion is the material about Superman as a Marxist hero.

Second--and linked to in the above article--is a strip written and drawn by Paul Chadwick, about Superman and someone stranded in a car. I might have to track down the original.

From Chadwick's "Ex Machina" in Christmas with the Super-Heroes #2 (1989)

Different Perspectives

Quitely and Grant

Since I've posted quite a bit about All-Star Superman in the past, I thought I'd do so again.

Here's a link to a long article about the ray bradbury reference in the first issue.

 The writers at Hooded Utilitarian didn't buy into the general praise of the series, and they offer a series of insightful articles about why. This first one by Noah Berlatsky discusses how All-Star feels decadent, a retread of the silver age stories that never quite captures their true feeling. Here's another he wrote on the same subject.

I borrowed Berlatsky's scan of the sea dragon, art by Marley for the Korean comic Dokebi Bride. Looks amazing.

This next one by Berlatsky is a comparison of two images, one of Superman and the other of a big dragon. Here's a follow-up. I wanted to post these stories in part to give an alternate perspective on All-Star Superman, and the art of Frank Quitely. The writer shows the images in part to point out how the superhero image suffers by comparison. There's something worth quoting here:

The point here is that super-hero comics very rarely have a strong sense of wonder. With all the spectacular feats, you’d think they would—but somehow they all end up as tricks; they’re fun and goofy, or I guess more recently bloody, but they don’t actually inspire awe. And I think it’s because of something Tom said, “Superman keeps the universe our size.” Super-heroes are there to make things more manageable. Awe—a sense of vastness, of human insignificance or vulnerability—is antagonistic to everything they stand for. If Superman saw that dragon, he wouldn’t be scared or impressed—he’d just punch it in the snout. (As Wonder Woman did in a similar situation..) There’d be big explosions! There’d be excitement! There’d be action! But there wouldn’t be a moment where you said, “oh my god,” and felt rooted to one particular spot, and overwhelmed.

The point here is that super-hero comics very rarely have a strong sense of wonder. With all the spectacular feats, you’d think they would — but somehow they all end up as tricks; they’re fun and goofy, or I guess more recently bloody, but they don’t actually inspire awe. And I think it’s because of something Tom said, “Superman keeps the universe our size.” Super-heroes are there to make things more manageable. Awe — a sense of vastness, of human insignificance or vulnerability — is antagonistic to everything they stand for. If Superman saw that dragon, he wouldn’t be scared or impressed — he’d just punch it in the snout. (As Wonder Woman did in a similar situation..) There’d be big explosions! There’d be excitement! There’d be action! But there wouldn’t be a moment where you said, “oh my god,” and felt rooted to one particular spot, and overwhelmed. - See more at: http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2009/04/nowhere-man-somewhere-dragon/#sthash.OQBMq6hq.dpuf

The point here is that super-hero comics very rarely have a strong sense of wonder. With all the spectacular feats, you’d think they would — but somehow they all end up as tricks; they’re fun and goofy, or I guess more recently bloody, but they don’t actually inspire awe. And I think it’s because of something Tom said, “Superman keeps the universe our size.” Super-heroes are there to make things more manageable. Awe — a sense of vastness, of human insignificance or vulnerability — is antagonistic to everything they stand for. If Superman saw that dragon, he wouldn’t be scared or impressed — he’d just punch it in the snout. (As Wonder Woman did in a similar situation..) There’d be big explosions! There’d be excitement! There’d be action! But there wouldn’t be a moment where you said, “oh my god,” and felt rooted to one particular spot, and overwhelmed. - See more at: http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2009/04/nowhere-man-somewhere-dragon/#sthash.OQBMq6hq.dpuf

The point here is that super-hero comics very rarely have a strong sense of wonder. With all the spectacular feats, you’d think they would — but somehow they all end up as tricks; they’re fun and goofy, or I guess more recently bloody, but they don’t actually inspire awe. And I think it’s because of something Tom said, “Superman keeps the universe our size.” Super-heroes are there to make things more manageable. Awe — a sense of vastness, of human insignificance or vulnerability — is antagonistic to everything they stand for. If Superman saw that dragon, he wouldn’t be scared or impressed — he’d just punch it in the snout. (As Wonder Woman did in a similar situation..) There’d be big explosions! There’d be excitement! There’d be action! But there wouldn’t be a moment where you said, “oh my god,” and felt rooted to one particular spot, and overwhelmed. - See more at: http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2009/04/nowhere-man-somewhere-dragon/#sthash.OQBMq6hq.dpuf

The point here is that super-hero comics very rarely have a strong sense of wonder. With all the spectacular feats, you’d think they would — but somehow they all end up as tricks; they’re fun and goofy, or I guess more recently bloody, but they don’t actually inspire awe. And I think it’s because of something Tom said, “Superman keeps the universe our size.” Super-heroes are there to make things more manageable. Awe — a sense of vastness, of human insignificance or vulnerability — is antagonistic to everything they stand for. If Superman saw that dragon, he wouldn’t be scared or impressed — he’d just punch it in the snout. (As Wonder Woman did in a similar situation..) There’d be big explosions! There’d be excitement! There’d be action! But there wouldn’t be a moment where you said, “oh my god,” and felt rooted to one particular spot, and overwhelmed. - See more at: http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2009/04/nowhere-man-somewhere-dragon/#sthash.OQBMq6hq.dpuf

It's certainly an interesting perspective on superhero comics. On the same website, Tom Crippen discusses Superman at length. He warns that it's a idiosyncratic perspective, and everything I've found in my own study of what people do with the character sort of works differently. Crippen wonders about the religious connections, the mythical nature of Superman, and I deal with that a lot (though not exhaustively--I pulled everything about Superman and the hero myth out of my book, though that seems really weird; it may be an article some day, if I can pare it down from the 70 pages it currently takes up). Anyway, here's a key point of Crippen's article:


There’s my Superman. He’s modernity. It’s what he stands for, and he grows directly out of it. He’s the odd doodle our collective mind drew when the second-by-second experience of modern existence, the way modernity feels, became impossible to ignore. “Super,” the category he embodies, represents the new dimension added to existence by technological development. The most extreme transformations in our physical environment are now produced by means we find unreal and abstract, that feel like they have nothing to do with us; he’s there to bridge the gap.

He also writes: When I was reading Superman, I was getting ready for a lifetime of user manuals and tax forms. All right, I'm bitter.

This is all interesting stuff, and worth thinking about. For Crippen, Superman is all about modernity. For both these writers, Superman isn't enough. He doesn't work in a beneficial way. For Berlatsky, there's no inspiration, no sense of wonder. One result of my own research, which involved interviewing people about what they do with Superman, is that I found Superman to be the inspiration these writers don't find. That's an awkward sentence, but the point is that plenty of people work to make the world a better place, modeled on their interpretation of Superman. The scholar Ben Saunders, in his book Do the Gods Wear Capes?, finds in Superman an evolving meditation on the nature of virtue, something that everyone I interviewed also indicated in one way or another. What Superman does is much less important than what we do with Superman in mind.

Cover by Mike Allred

Now, I talked to Superman fans, so they are predisposed to find useful things in Superman stories. When Berlatsky discusses the sense of awe, he's really getting at something religious, Rudolph Otto's sense of the numinous. That's not what Superman does. He's secular. I'm not saying that this makes Quitely's image of Superman in the sun any more valuable (in fact, nobody I talked to mentioned this image as being particularly meaningful to them); what I'm saying is that these writers don't find Superman valuable in the way that other people do. And that's fine. Personally, I like reading all the different perspectives, and both Berlatsky and Crippen make some really interesting points. Well worth reading.

While we're on the subject of Morrison's Superman, here are a few articles on his Action Comics run from a little while a go. From the Mindless Ones. And more. And on Morrison.

And while we're on the subject of awe-inducing images of sea monsters, I've always like this one, from the World's End volume of Sandman, by penciller Michael Zulli, inker Dick Giordano, and colorist Daniel Vozzo:

Prometheus

I wrote my dissertation on Prometheus, specifically on the ways this Greek figure has been used in modern America. I finished a few years ago, so when the movie of that name came out earlier this year, I wasn't in a rush to see it. I watched it at home a few weeks ago.

I liked it. At first, I was a bit frustrated that so many things were left unexplained. After a few days, I began to like this more and more. I know that there's some plan for a sequel, but I won't get excited about that until it's released.

I find the idea behind the film compelling, with or without the ties to Alien. And by 'the idea', I'm referring to the ancient alien hypothesis--that a long time ago aliens came to earth and in some way either created humanity or at least tweaked life's evolutionary path toward us. It's part of the story of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and lurks in David Brin's Uplift Series. And not so long ago The 'History' Channel got a lot of mileage out of it. They started mainly from Erich Von Danniken's book The Chariots of the Gods, and the literature that sprouted in its wake. I wrote a bit about this in my article for Strange Horizons, Superman as Science Fiction.

Prometheus works pretty well as a set-up. I do hope the payoff is up to par. But what I liked about it most were the images and how they explored the themes of the plot. We've got a story about an expedition to the stars ostensibly undertaken to find our origins (and the twist that it's also about finding out how to live longer). It's about our birth as a species, and so it seems appropriate that the film's most potent image and most potent sequence reflect this. The sequence, the one most often praised and singled out, is the robotic c-section.

Yes, it's tough to watch, terrifying and electrifying. But think about it for a second. This is a movie about the relationship of a creator to its creation; it goes out of its way to point out that people not only create other people, but robots as well. Then, the robot David (Michael Fassbender) tries an experiment on a Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) by putting a drop of the black liquid in his drink (a strange analogy of insemination?), which results in a Shaw (Noomi Rapace) getting pregnant. Horrified, she gets a medical robot to remove the offspring from her body. Crazy stuff.

Then, the image: I think this was the most frequently used promotional image:

"Sometimes to create, one must first destroy."

David holding a hologram of the earth. It's interesting how this movie almost insists that light has weight. But most interesting is the fact that David, the robot who kinda sorta inseminated Shaw with the alien baby, has the whole world in his hands. And doesn't he say, at one point, "Doesn't everyone want their parents dead?"

Anyway, I'll close with one more image.

Luthor-Quintum Update

So I write about All-Star Superman a lot. I like it. It makes people think interesting thoughts. One guy told me that people who don't like All-Star Superman don't have souls. Another guy (actually, several people) seem to think that the character Leo Quintum--invented for the series by author Grant Morrison--is actually Lex Luthor, come back from the future to atone for his crimes by making the world a better place through Science. I wrote about this theory a while back.

What is with this cover?

Interestingly, it showed up in the book Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods as part of Peter Coogan's essay "Genre: Reconstructing the Superhero in All Star Superman." There's a bit about structuralism, a bit about genres, and he goes through the various proofs that Leo is Lex. He even cites some of the comment threads in which the idea appeared online, originally by Cole Moore Odell. (Coogan wrote Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre, a book which I have seen cited a whole lot. It's got an Oedipal analysis of Superman and Luthor, and I have a thing or two to say about that interpretation of the character in my own book--which I hope everyone in the world will get to read some day.)

Denny O'Neil must make a full time job of writing intros now.

People are fascinated by the fact that Morrison himself does not say an unequivocal 'yes' or 'no'.  The whole thing is summed up here. Lurking behind all of this is the notion that Morrison gets the final word on the matter. But does he? People can interpret the stories in whatever manner suits them, even bending the narrative to fit their interpretations, often without realizing they are doing so. Artists tell a story, and people do what they will once they read it.

I'm kind of obsessed with the art of Frank Quitely.

This is really what's at the heart of my study. I spent a lot of hours talking to people to find out just what they think of Superman, how they incorporate him into their lives, and what meanings they find. Some people find it compelling to think of Quintum as a reformed Luthor. They hunt for clues in the manner of conspiracy theorists. They make their arguments. They find meaning there. And in that meaning, we might look for clues as to their own nature, their own worldview. The Quintum-Luthor identity complex is a fascinating look at, perhaps, a need to find redeeming qualities even in the most base of villains. It's the idea that we all can be redeemed in the end.*

More about redemption, though not about Superman, next time.




*It's interesting to note that, while the comic book version of All-Star offers in an off-hand manner the fact that "Even Luthor seemed to find some closure in the face of renewed global calls for his execution", the animated movie of it has Luthor play a more prominent role at the end. The fact that he gives Quintum the formula for Superman that leads to Project and the Superman dynasty suggests a more fully realized redemption, in spiritual if not in legal terms.

Some new links

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.

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.

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.

Smallville

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.

all star puzzle: is leo quintum really lex luthor?

I've got to keep these handy. It's the idea that the character Leo Quintum in All-Star Superman 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.

Untold Tales

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.

Short one

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

Thoughts upon Completing the Space Odyssey Series

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.

Aliens Among Us

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).

What's that one movie...

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.