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I want James Gunn to be hugged by a grizzly bear and be eaten by it.
I want a Superman who is effective in solving problems and perilous situations, but he does it in a manner he doesn’t have to offend the people he’s saving, like Batso, but in a kind and warm way so they can feel safe and protected and many, specially women, want to hug him as a consequence, but not as the primary objective Gunn wants.
Superman’s main objective is people perceive him as one of them, a friend. He can do extraordinary things but only as tools to protect the innocent. He doesn’t need to be a fearful figure and resort to violence to do his job. People understands this and have a sentiment of gratitude and warmth they have for a friend and want to buy him a beer after the ordeal. He has no problem with folks wanting to take a selfie with him and children wanting to have a chat or a piggy back ride. That’s part of being Superman, and he enjoys it: he wants people to accept him. Specially after events like the fight with Doomsday, where citizens realized he’s as dangerous as the creature he was fighting and be too scared to be near him. That fear he doesn’t need, but he also doesn’t need to be a rock star or a celebrity. He needs people to trust him and let him do his job, not to pester him to get an autograph. He will chat with then after the danger is over or to cool down a situation so people trust him or the other League members.
That stupid idea of wanting Superman to be one thing, and one thing only, is what blinded creators to unleash the potential of the character. A character who can literary be anything. He’s not just the friend of Batso or the husband of Lane. He’s not even just a hero. Like when he still used his secret identity, he’s a lot of things, like an alien, a human reporter and a superhero. Creators must be open to the possibilities.
I know: limiting those possibilities make the character more easy to handle for mediocre writers, but makes us miss all the richness of Superman.
“Yeah, I want Supes to be a devoted and loving husband.”
“I want Superman to be a tough hero”
“I want people want to hug him”
Superman is plenty. Creators just can’t or don’t want to see it. They grew with just one version of him (given the limitations of his writers and editors) and got married with that vision.
Supes can’t seem to land a director or creator who grasps the whole of the character. We, the audience, always pay for their miopic views and many shortcomings.
Superman can live outside the Daily Planet. He can stay out of Metropolis. He can confront other villains than Lex Luthor.
Superman has 85+ years of history. Stop telling us always the same story.
Music is magic. Dancing is practical magic. I don’t think you can be happier than when you are dancing. If you can’t dance, like me, I’m sorry. I didn’ t mean to to offend you or hurt you. But seen people dancing makes my spirit rise. My father, mother and older sister were accomplished dancers. I always had two left feet. Now, I don’t even have one. Seeing their joy while dancing made me share their happiness. When I see people dancing I feel joyful and my body can’t help but clumsingly sway along. Don’t envy dancers, thank them for sharing their art with the World. Be part of their magic, their joy.
This is a topic I touched some time ago, but it’s still happening and is still bothering me: Everything human heroes do is perfectly natural. Everything metahumans do need to be explained scientifically.
Batso, like Cyrano, can beat 100 opponents at once because he practice a shit ton of martial arts. No questions asked. This is so. Period.
Green Arrow can place an arrow in the asshole of a cockroach a 100 yards away. Okay, he’s an artist with the bow. He was alone on a desert island an practiced a lot. Cool.
Superman flies. How the hell can Superman fly???? Well, he manipulates gravity forces and such…yeah. But how can he change directions so fast? He manipulates gravity very fast, even in deep space, where gravity is so thin, you must go near a solar system to feel some. But…how???
Bullets bounce out of his chest. His body is as hard as steel. Better yet: he projects an energy field about one inch around his body which deflects the bullets, that’s why his clothes are unharm…or his clothes are indestructible…or something…
How??
How??
But…how???
It never ends. It’s a kind of magic.
For humans doing the impossible is like breakfast: happens every day. It just is.
For Supers it’s like going to the Moon: there has to be an explanation, a reason why this is so.
Iron man has metal shrapnels inserted milimeters from his hart. He parties, drinks, fights, has sex. No problem. Business as usual. Batso has his entire body scarred and sewed together like a map. It only bothers him when he laughs. No biggy. Nothing too severe.
Superman catches a tiny fragment of Kryptonite in his torso, every human around him must carry his fainted body to the nearest meta medical emergency facility before he dies.
I know it is to celebrate the immense resilience of the human condition…but, how about extend the same courtesy to the metas and aliens?
In the end, all explanations reach a loop. A neverending circle where How and Why are repeating incesantly ad infinitum, like Pi. Then writers, exhausted their meager imagination, conclude shouting “It just is!” in annoyance. Then why didn’t you say that earlier, instead of the scavenger hunt for explanations, one more idiotic than the other. (it must be said that scientists stil have supercomputers working 24/7 on Pi, it must be the same sentiment).
DC went so far as to post a book, supposedly written by Batso, called “Anatomy of a Metehuman”, which offers little or none answers to the big “how” and “why”. It just complicates matters. For a price.
Basically, don’t look for answers there. It’s a waste of your hard earned money and your precious time.
Interesting thing is: in spite considering Superman a different species than us all together, he still has sex and reproduces with a human…sort of.
Like in the fifties Sci Fi movies, where aliens abducted women to procreate.
No so different after all.
Guys…
Just admit it’s a kind of magic and everybody happy. Stop digging for plausible explanations that don’t exist.
Remember in the “Golden Age” of comics when couples got married and children magically appeared from the woodwork? No questions asked.
Let’s leave it at that. The better answer is always the simpler one. Specially in literature.
What’s your opinion on Green Arrow and Black Canary? As characters not as a couple
I like them. Individually and together.
Oliver is the “poor man’s” Batman, with what looks like a real social understanding. Trying to make things right when he can, withou constantly preaching and trying to impose his view of what society has to be, while watching from the roof of his family Manor.
He was a womanizer, a drunken asshole, but a honest dude al around. He didn’t need to fake and gave no excuses or appologies. And he always strives to do better.
Unlike Bruce, he was a real playboy, a spoiled rich boy, and that gave him a more clear perspective of the limitaions of the human tribe. His calling came at an adult age, he didn’t grow into it. He’s trully chosen his path as a man, not as a child with childish illusions, so his is a true convertion.
All in all, I don’t buy this literary tendency of believing rich paladins decide to fight for the common man and against injustice, but since it’s been around from the dawn of man, let’s accept it a an actual thing.
Oliver seems to suspect he and others being rich in a World full of exploited and needy poor people is an injustice in itself, and he voices it out loud, when other rich assholes tend to educate society that only they know what needs to be done.
As John Lennon once said: “People in the cheaper seats: clap. The rest of you just rattle your jewelry”. But that’s was seconds before he became a rich bastard himself.
Oliver Queen deserves my respect only for that. For keeping the social bullshit to a minimun.
Dinah, like many female characters in comics, has a rather cumbersome history. Sometimes she is the first Black Canary, others it was her mother and she just followed on her footsteps. One thing I find attractive is she doesn’t take shit from anybody, male or female, and can usually put her money where her mouth is: she can take in combat any other fighter (mostly)
She also is brutally honest, that’s why Diana considers her one of her best friends.
She respects Batso as a colleague, without the reverence other heroes have for him.
She’s a born leader but also a team player. She feels she’s always learning, which makes her somewhat humble.
She was approached by Lady Shiva and the League of Assassins, because of her remarkable skills, and she turned down both, with all the danger it implies.
Another SMWW crumb from the “house of ideas” Deconstructed Characters (DC) Gottta take what we can get.
It’s as we (superwonderfans) always say: SuperWonder is inevitable.
Inevitable as an omen. As a manifest destiny.
Whatever the context, they are there. Supporting each other. I have to give kudos to Diana, having to deal with her love stupid decisions and still being happy for him. But it’s all only temporary. Lane is mortal and has an expiration date. However uncertain, it’s there.
Love has patience. Specially when you have all the time in the World.
You may see the rise and fall of civilizations. You’re sure you’ll see the demise of all your rivals. You don’t even have to force things, just wait for them to happen.
Kal-El is stubborn and pigheaded, he thinks his destiny is to be human, but he will wise up with time.
We, immortals, have time to wait.
Time is on our side. Yes it is.
You’re searching for good times, But just wait and see, You’ll come running back.
It’s not eugenics, or any of those stupid thoughts little, desperate, people use as arguments. It’s how things are, given the scenario DC plotted for these characters.
We, immortals, coined a phrase for the occasion: we’ll sit on the river bank and wait, sooner or later you will see the corpse of your enemy passfloating by.
All the damage they inflict is just temporary. SuperWonder stays.
We’ll be there to pick the pieces scattered all around.
Diana is a better person than I. I’d punch reason into Kal’s head long ago. She’s the bigger person. I hope Kal will appreciate that.
But when you’re immortal, things have a different perspective.
I’m sure I’ll see the floating corpses of DC’s current heads. I’ve seen plenty of them in the last years. I laughed. It’s rather satisfactory.
Remamber all the times Batso did his disppearing parlor trick with Superman present and he seems as baffled as Gordon or any other human like it was magic or something? Writers have a very selective memory and remember things as they see convenient or not. That time Supes said “I didn’t know you were in the building” and Bruce smugly answered “You are not supposed to” Oh yes, Bruce, he is.
Writers from DC Comics, listen: Superman has hypersenses. He can hear a fly taking a shit in the underground garage being on the rooftop of a skyscraper. If Superman can hear Lane’s beatng heart (yes, folks, she supposedly has one) halfway across the Globe, he can hear Batso leaving the room at any given moment. He even knows when Bruce squeezes a fart, no matter how well the bat conceals it.. Don’t come to me with the “Okay, but he wasn’t paying attention at the time. Batso knows this” bullshit. Superman is paying attention to everything, so he can prevent and avoid danger coming to himself and to others, if not…what’s the f..ing point? He can filter the backgrownd noise and isolate and focus on the one he needs, while still being aware of any other disturbances.
Is like the times he seems amazed and excited riding on a rollercoaster, with the sudden ups and downs…Guys, guys…the man can fly. Faster than a speeding bullet. Change directions on a dime, in a split second without even messing with his hairdo.
Human writers need to remember that is not the way to make Kal look more human, it only makes you look more like stupid humans. You are only human and have human limitations, many. Superman does not. If you cancel Superman’s powers to accomodate to your lame story requirements, why giving him superpowers at all?
One of the many writers in the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” series staff (I think it was Brannon Braga) once said “I won’t let tradition interfere with my story” when asked why he didn’t observe and openly contradicted the vast background the series had on one particular subject. That’s not how it works, I’m afraid.
Writers: your story will probably be forgotten next week. Sorry: that’s the fate of episodic writing. You’ll never be Hemingway. The character, hopefully, will continue and endure the damage you are inflicting upon it to serve your egos.
While I am grateful for the many good stories that had me entertained throughout the years, they are not a sign of your importance: they are a sign of how great the character is. And you have to respect that importance. If you can’t, Try some other discipline. Knit sweaaters or something if it is too big for you.
“So it’s not gonna be easy. It’s going to be really hard; we’re gonna have to work at this everyday, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, everyday. You and me… everyday.”
― Nicholas Sparks
Do you like Superman dynamics with Martian Manhunter? I find their bond underrated
I’ve said before Kal should find more things in common with J'onn than with Bruce: The loss of their entire civilization, their being cast aways in an strange planet and their adoption of that planet as their own to protect.
But Kal must’ve been Bruce’s friend. Because of tradition and to justify all the abuse Bruce submitted him to.
Mostly because DC wanted Superman to identify as human rather than an alien. So he could accept his marriage with stupid Lois.
