Action Comics #775

[thehefner]

(I posted this on scans_daily but thought it'd go great here too.)

A lot of people hate Superman.

I mean, a LOT of people hate Superman.

No, I don't blame Superdickery. Superdickery is wonderful, great stuff. No, I mean an all-too-frequent attitude I keep hearing both here and at the comic shop where I work. "Superman is a boring, lame, stupid, un-relateable-to white-bread hick boy scout, an outdated character, even a fascist character, and nowhere near as cool as Batman, yeah, Batman rules and could totally kick Superman's butt, jus' sayin'."

While that last part is certainly up for healthy and (fittingly enough) never-ending debate, whenever I hear variations of the other statements, my heart sinks. And in fairness to that opinion, what if Superman really is from a bygone era? What if those ideals of his truly are outmoded and corny? And if the ideals aren't, maybe he really is too cheesy for today's world. The common myths about black and white absolutes of good and evil have long since been shattered. I mean, hell, who are the popular heroes? People like Batman and Wolverine, who live only in the lighter shade of gray, and Spider-Man, who appeals to the angsting screw-up everyman inside us all. Even before the era of grim 'n gritty, in the eyes of many, Superman was already on the way out.

And all those years of crappy Superman comics really didn't help. But then, the majority of all stories are crap.

I think what happened was that Superman became more of an icon than a character. Sure, we knew he stood for "Truth, Justice and" this most controversial part was quietly edited out over the years, "The American Way," but what the hell did any of those mean? Much better writers and thinkers than I have debated many sides of those arguments, perhaps another never-ending battle. And for my part, sure, I loved the character, but I could help but maybe start to wonder if all those people were right.

Then I read this comic.

I knew, right after I finished this story, that I had just read one of my favorite comics of all time. A pure, eloquent, direct response to all the Superman-haters out there. An affirmation (and by no means is it the only one a person can make) as to why Superman is truly the greatest, why he's important, and why he is timeless.

Enough rambling from me. Onto the scans! Written by Joe Kelly, illustrated by Doug Mahnke and Lee Bermejo.



There's a new super-team in the world. They call themselves the Elite. And they don't take prisoners. After Superman finds the slaughtered remains of a giant cyber-ape in the much-destroyed city of Tripoli, he and Jimmy Olsen are horrified. Much of the public, including Jack Ryder (AKA Yellow-Skinned Wacky Man, AKA The Creeper), feel differently.


In the Fortress of Solitude, Superman wonders if "the world has moved on." Before an answer comes, he has to fly to Japan to stop an rampaging supervillain group. But before he can stop them, they too are slaughtered in the blink of an eye by the Elite, led by Manchester Black. And yes, he's basically the bastard lovechild of John Constantine and Jenny Sparks.













Now we skip ahead some. Superman has just stopped evil analogues of the Men in Black to prove that evil can be stopped without loss of life. But then the Elite show up...













I love this first panel below. Pure Joe Kelly.







Ahh, nobody can drop ridiculously huge objects on people quite like Doug Mahnke, artist of The Mask.





















Astounding. And by no means is it the final word on Superman, that's the best part.

Comments

[eliyes.livejournal.com]

An interesting story.
...I don't think I like it. Maybe it's the art. Not my favourite style.
No, I think it's that for a few pages there, you think Superman decided "what the hell" and started killing, and the part where you find out he didn't... just isn't quite good enough to make up for the feeling of your heart sinking like a stone. :(
But a very, very valid argument.

[taichara]

The gods bless ye. It's bloody rare to see any justice done to Superman these days (cue incoherent rant here); but this was a pleasant change.

Nice to know that some people aren't afraid to write the man with a brain!


Now if we can just survive through this bedamned Crisis (in which Clark's done virtually nothing), we just might make it through ...

[yancentric.livejournal.com]

Yeah, lots of obvious parallels between the Elite and the Authority, so the writer was clearly trying to make a point about the old ways versus the new. It was a good read, but I'm pretty sure I still like the Authority better.

[tompurdue.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the pages you gave yet, but I don't understand what makes people relate to Batman any more than they relate to Superman. He can take a punch from Superman, which is more than any mortal is supposed to be able to do. He's got a damn-near-infinite supply of money. He may not be able to fly but he's able to leverage that damn-near-infinite supply of money to solve most of the problems that could be solved by flying; he just whips out a jet that comes at his beck and call when the story requires it.

I was having some of the same problems watching V for Vendetta the other day (which I enjoyed very much, and was going to write about what I'm about to say). V doesn't make sacrifices; he died at the end only because he chose to go out in a blaze of glory rather than just slipping in, killing the people who needed to be killed, and slipping out the way he does every other time (and he killed a bunch of at-least-somewhat-innocent guards along the way). He's got enough money to manufacture and ship tens of thousands of costumes from a commercial service, under the eye of an incredibly intrusive regime.

Yeah, I know we're supposed to be identifying with Evey rather than with him, but it seems like an artificial story point: we want to have lots of cool-whiz-bang-superhero-shifting-about moments, and we'll add this extra character to provide the human element.

I have similar problems with every superhero I've ever heard of. Of course Daredevil is the man without fear: he's got nothing to be afraid of.

Which is all well and good; the stories exist and are enjoyable and are their own form of literature. But to say, "Well, Superman's too powerful to relate to but I could see myself as Batman" seems like splitting hairs.

[icewolf010.livejournal.com]

Yes. Yes. YES.

This is what I've been trying to say to so many people for so long.

I particularly loved the part where Superman was aghast by the child saying "It's fun to kill."

[pokeyburro.livejournal.com]

Beautifully done story. Been done before, in places I've forgotten, but the archetype has borne retelling since (literally) Biblical times. (In fact, halfway in, I wondered whether Supes was going to "pull a Christ".)

There's one ingredient missing from this story, though I confess this may be a personal taste on my part. Because of it, the story, as told above, isn't enough; it needs more.

I won't give it here; I want to see if you can guess it. (It might be hard given how little clue I gave, but I know if you'll try, you'll start by thinking high and low over this story, and I think we'd both like that.)

"What's so funny...

[the-mithril-man.livejournal.com]

... about Truth, Justice and the American Way?"

Not a damn thing.

Though I might side with the argument that Superman is one of those characters that is so big, so iconic that he is very hard to write at times. I know despite my love of comics and writing my own I would be terrified to write Superman, I just don't have a Superman story in me. Problem is most guys who wrote him, and do write him don't either.

But I do find it a little amusing that the team the Elite is based off of was created and written through many of it's incarnations by fellows who aren't Americans. Not to get all political but maybe they can't write it because they don't get it, and don't want to. I think John Byrne said it better than me though

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11500&PN=1&totPosts=13

#'s 6 & 7 are really accurate. The last few pages of it always remind me of 'The Dark Knight returns'
Batman: "Hurry up Ollie I've finally made him mad!"