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.

Very extensive site

Here's a link to the Superman Homepage. It's a vast website, which I have barely begun to explore. It's got an image gallery that I go back to again and again. Really great and useful stuff. A quick glance reveals that there's something called the Superman Web Ring. Have to check that out further.

it's also got a very brief thread about Obama as Superman, including a picture I hadn't come across yet (also including one of Obama as Green Lantern).

No real link between the different links.

One of the reasons I became interested in Superman, intellectually speaking, is the way kids respond to the character. I'm working on compiling a bibliography for this site, in which I'll have sections devoted to all sorts of topics--one of which will be the way kids pretend to be Superman. This post, from the Examiner.com, is sort of related to that. It's about heroism.

Heroism is perhaps the most important aspect of the Superman theme. Or meme. Or mythos. I'm working on the right term to describe the stories and thoughts that surround the character. I guess it's a mythology, in which there are subversive strains, and in which grow several memes that manifest themselves in oral tradition and popular culture as well as mass-mediated art. I'm thinking of the "superman isn't perfect" meme that has been the subject of most of my writing on Superman so far.

Anyway, one of the things that writers like to do is compare Superman to human heroes. Like this, from the article I linked to above:

We all try to aspire towards our heroes. 'I wanna be like Superman' is usually the types of phrases that we hear. Our children always want to be the cool, superhero types. What if I were to tell you that a modest 'superhero' type of person lived in New York City and did the most unselfish thing in the world? He saved a man's life from the nasty subway tracks.


This is an interesting fan site, Superman Fan Podcast. It's a lot of comics history, very thorough, from all appearances.

Doing all this research reveals something new all the time, little bits of information that may or may not become useful. For example, there are Canadian awards for comics work called The Joe Shuster Awards. Recently, they posted the final interview with Shuster, who, you should recall, was the man who drew Superman. Here's a bit of it, with another interesting slice of information.

Superman, with his heroic physique and glowing optimism, was patterned largely after Douglas Fairbanks Sr. And Clark Kent his name derived from movie stars Clark Gable and Kent Taylor was a combination of timorous, bespectacled Harold Lloyd and pale, mild-mannered Joe Shuster himself.

And I just have to post more about Obama being Superman. Here's a link to a video. I think my favorite part is the Joker.