Draft

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scratch

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

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

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.

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

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.