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.

Links

In case you were wondering, Nic Cage really did name one of his kids after Superman.

Superman is also a handy way to describe and promote carbon nano-tubes.

Evidently in India, Superman spends most of his time dancing and singing. Seems about right to me. Have you ever seen an Indian film? This is particularly notable for the completely incomprehensible line "The grasslands have invited us to come to them./And when we went there they laughed asking us about the bed." Maybe it makes sense if you're more familiar with India. Or maybe the subtitles are badly translated. Or something.

Hmmm...not sure what to make of this one. It's a news article describing the Penn Libraries' superhero program, which presently includes an exhibit about superheroes and the ancient world. It's kind of vague, but kids seem to like it.

And then there's the Pakistan Observer. I leave interpretation up to you:

I watched as a rather thin Obama in Superman’s uniform threw a rope around the Empire State building then attempted to pull. Nothing happened as the American President, heaved and puffed away, till I heard the lady next to me shout, “Dive into the river Obama and push America up!”Obama seemed to have heard as he took a flying leap into the Hudson and didn’t surface for sometime as the crowd waited impatiently on the riverbank.