Bad ideas in the history of Superman comics

[Aarcee]

What are some of the worst ideas you can think of in the history of Superman comics (this can include, miniseries, one-shots, and crossovers)?

One of the first that comes to my mind is Bebo the Super-Monkey.

[King Krypton]

1. Superman being Passion of the Christed to death.

2. Doomsday, mindless killer with no personality.

3. Lois Lane, abusive wife and shrew for all seasons.

4. Jeb Friedman, the man who hooked up with Lois right after Superman's funeral and eventually stole her away from Superman.

5. Lex Luthor, static tycoon who can magically foil any and all attempts to expose him no matter how stupid and unrealistic his actions are.

6. ElectroSupes.

7. The thankfully-rejected idea that Superman's parents survivied in suspended animation.

8. Any kryptonite beyond gree, red, blue, gold and white.

9. Clark Kent willingly sacrficing an innocent life in exchange for resurrecting Lana Lang, killing Jonathan Kent in the process. (Yes, Smallville, line up and take your 40 whacks.)

10. Smallville's Lana Lang being the end-all be-all of the Superman mythos and the reason why Clark Kent and Lex Luthor become enemies.

11. Any Super-Pets beyond Krypto.

12. Extradimensional protoplasmic shapeshifter merged with an earthbound angle with fire wings Supergirl.

13. Cir-El Supergirl.

14. Russian cosmonaut Zod.

15. Krypton as a cold, barren, lifeless dystopia that deserved to blow up and has no meaning to Superman.

16. Any additional survivors of Krypton beyond Krypto, Supergirl/Kara, General Zod, and Zod's little band of goons.

17. Superman, whiny, henpicked, incompetent crybaby with a major yellow streak.

18. Interlinked books where you're forced to buy books you may not like or may not be able to afford just to follow one story.

19. The clutter of useless supporting characters in the latter half of the Jurgens era.

20. Terra Man in any incarnation.

21. Superman and Batman being at odds and not trusting each other instead of having a snarky but profound friendship.

22. Bloodthirst the crossdresser.

23. Superboy's punk haircut and earring.

24. Steel's flirtation with being a mutahuman.

25. Brainiac, the fatso carny who gets possessed by an alien intelligence and goes through bodies like most people go through candy bars.

26. Vartox's Zardoz costume.

27. Assembly-line Bizarros who get killed off with astounding regularity.

28. Gus Gorman and Ross Webster.

29. Nuclear Man.

30. Movie Luthor realizing that Kryptonian crystals could make weapons and vehicles he can use to conquer the world and wasting his time making an island instead.

31. Frog-eating Lois clones.

32. Lex Luthor, Pepe Le Pew-like Lois Lane stalker.

33. Teenybopper Metallo.

34. Resplendent Man.

35. Shelley Long, Drew Carey, Delta Burke, and other such losers as supervillains.

36. Clark Kent refusing to fly on Smallville or even try to live for anything other than Lana Lang when superheroes abound around him.

37. Imperiex, the Galactus wannabe who was nothing but a badly conceived plot device.

38. Lena Luthor -- first she's a baby, then she's genetically altered and force-grown into an adult Brainiac woman, then she's a baby again, then she's retconned out. What was the point of all this?

39. Devouris the Conqueror. The Tom Thumb version of Galactus, only incompetent.

40. Strange Visitor.

41. The whole of "For Tomorrow."

42. Dr. Polaris acting like a Bettie Page wannabe named Repulse.

43. Luthor cloning himself and pretending to be his own son while sleeping with Supergirl.

You know what? I have to stop here. Thinking of all the garbage that's polluted Superman since the Iron Age (and a few bad ideas before that) is just making me angry.

[Kid Omega]

Most everything between Otto Binder and Grant Morrison.

[J. Robb]

There's very few bad ideas, the problems are usually bad execution.

[Rattlehead]

There's very few bad ideas, the problems are usually bad execution.


Not always. King Krypton's list is full of things that can only be described as bad ideas.

[Sean Whitmore]

Not always. King Krypton's list is full of things that can only be described as bad ideas.

Of course, his list is also full of things that aren't true, so take that with a grain of salt.


SEAN

[Rattlehead]

Of course, his list is also full of things that aren't true, so take that with a grain of salt.


SEAN

I've personally read a lot of the crap on that list. And of course, all of Smallville past Season 3, and Lois and Clark past Season 2 falls into the bad idea department.

[thehod]

http://www.comics.org/graphics/covers/3386/400/3386_4_0000000123.jpg

Don't really think anything else needs to be said, do you?

[botch]

1. Superman being Passion of the Christed to death.

2. Doomsday, mindless killer with no personality.

3. Lois Lane, abusive wife and shrew for all seasons.

4. Jeb Friedman, the man who hooked up with Lois right after Superman's funeral and eventually stole her away from Superman.

5. Lex Luthor, static tycoon who can magically foil any and all attempts to expose him no matter how stupid and unrealistic his actions are.

6. ElectroSupes.

7. The thankfully-rejected idea that Superman's parents survivied in suspended animation.

8. Any kryptonite beyond gree, red, blue, gold and white.

9. Clark Kent willingly sacrficing an innocent life in exchange for resurrecting Lana Lang, killing Jonathan Kent in the process. (Yes, Smallville, line up and take your 40 whacks.)

10. Smallville's Lana Lang being the end-all be-all of the Superman mythos and the reason why Clark Kent and Lex Luthor become enemies.

11. Any Super-Pets beyond Krypto.

12. Extradimensional protoplasmic shapeshifter merged with an earthbound angle with fire wings Supergirl.

13. Cir-El Supergirl.

14. Russian cosmonaut Zod.

15. Krypton as a cold, barren, lifeless dystopia that deserved to blow up and has no meaning to Superman.

16. Any additional survivors of Krypton beyond Krypto, Supergirl/Kara, General Zod, and Zod's little band of goons.

17. Superman, whiny, henpicked, incompetent crybaby with a major yellow streak.

18. Interlinked books where you're forced to buy books you may not like or may not be able to afford just to follow one story.

19. The clutter of useless supporting characters in the latter half of the Jurgens era.

20. Terra Man in any incarnation.

21. Superman and Batman being at odds and not trusting each other instead of having a snarky but profound friendship.

22. Bloodthirst the crossdresser.

23. Superboy's punk haircut and earring.

24. Steel's flirtation with being a mutahuman.

25. Brainiac, the fatso carny who gets possessed by an alien intelligence and goes through bodies like most people go through candy bars.

26. Vartox's Zardoz costume.

27. Assembly-line Bizarros who get killed off with astounding regularity.

28. Gus Gorman and Ross Webster.

29. Nuclear Man.

30. Movie Luthor realizing that Kryptonian crystals could make weapons and vehicles he can use to conquer the world and wasting his time making an island instead.

31. Frog-eating Lois clones.

32. Lex Luthor, Pepe Le Pew-like Lois Lane stalker.

33. Teenybopper Metallo.

34. Resplendent Man.

35. Shelley Long, Drew Carey, Delta Burke, and other such losers as supervillains.

36. Clark Kent refusing to fly on Smallville or even try to live for anything other than Lana Lang when superheroes abound around him.

37. Imperiex, the Galactus wannabe who was nothing but a badly conceived plot device.

38. Lena Luthor -- first she's a baby, then she's genetically altered and force-grown into an adult Brainiac woman, then she's a baby again, then she's retconned out. What was the point of all this?

39. Devouris the Conqueror. The Tom Thumb version of Galactus, only incompetent.

40. Strange Visitor.

41. The whole of "For Tomorrow."

42. Dr. Polaris acting like a Bettie Page wannabe named Repulse.

43. Luthor cloning himself and pretending to be his own son while sleeping with Supergirl.

You know what? I have to stop here. Thinking of all the garbage that's polluted Superman since the Iron Age (and a few bad ideas before that) is just making me angry.

smallville has had some bad decisions, but the good outweighs the bad and if anything if they are going to reboot supes again, they should take the majority from smallville.

Clark didn't decide to be a hero until his late 20's in the post crisis comics, using the glasses and being a superhero as a kid is a dumb idea, and smallville is just folliwng post crisis. A hero's journey isn't like a light switch, that's why it's a journey, the world's greatest superhero should have an origin as big as Smallville's. Ideas like 'I have powers, I shall save the world' are exactly why Superman isn't that popular and why Marvel's characters are bigger sellers and much more popular. Smallville has managed to 'Marvelize' Superman and make him relevant to a modern audience and also likable without being too much of a boy scout or a badass and uncampy.

And Clark didn't know that another life was going to be exchanged, he has always valued life in Smallville. It's as realistic a portrayal as it can be without being a comic book character, naive but stern.

and krypto is a stupid idea in itself, if you think the other pets are stupid but krypto a superdog with a cape isn't stupid...well. this si the type of stuff that normal people roll their eyes at and say 'childish'.


Supes doesn't have too many good comics or ideas, guess it's fitting the world's first superhero to have the most comic book conventions.

i think bad comics has warped your taste, and my taste, just in case, my fave movie of last year was children of men and my fave album was something along the highway by cult of luna.

[cactusmaac]

Electro Supes wasn't an inherently bad idea. Changing the costume and powers temporarily could have made for interesting stories. The problem was nobody really knew how they worked.

I don't know why Smallville Lana Lang gets so much hate.

Common to all corporate characters, Superman goes through patches of uninspiring runs but there's a lot of good material out there too.

[Sean Whitmore]

Electro Supes wasn't an inherently bad idea. Changing the costume and powers temporarily could have made for interesting stories. The problem was nobody really knew how they worked.

Hell, I liked it. I got a kick out of Superman having to figure out ways to use his new powers to pull off the rescues he used to with ease.

Don't get me wrong, there were bad stories during that time, but that's because it was the 90s, not because Superman had new powers.


SEAN

[pariah-1972]

Giving Superman a mullet way past it's due date.

[Ms. M]

King Krypton's list is so comprehensive, it is hard to add to. But if we're including TV/movies, I will add the "sissy Superman" from the first season of the Justice League cartoon, which even the creators admit went too far.

I will also throw in the comic from a few years back when Lana made pathetic advances at the married Superman.

And while the Superpets are hard to defend, I do love Streaky the Supercat. I think it actually says a lot about male/female differences that Superman has a superdog and Supergirl has a supercat. Bring back Streaky!

[ultramandingo]

...... a lot of supermans "bad ideads " are what make me heart him - giant turtle jimmy olson , bizzaro anything , composite superman , super pets , mermaid girlfreinds , Mr. Mxyzptlk - its all the attempts at making him " cool " that suck

[Froggy]

The mullet. energy powers weren't that bad

[d newton]

16. Any additional survivors of Krypton beyond Krypto, Supergirl/Kara, General Zod, and Zod's little band of goons.
Superman 668 to 670 proves otherwise. Not all Kryptontians (sp?) want to get involved in fights like Clark & his cousins.

[Captain Smith]

Marrying Lois and becoming a wussy called "Smallville".

Having so many others exceed his power level and taking him out so easily in various story line. For example: There should be no doubt that J'onn isn't superior to him, yet the latter is seen that way.

Losing the abililty to fly between planets and stars

[Super Hero Guy]

Any story from the Silver Age that involves Lois trying to trick Superman into marrying her. This is the best they could come up with?

[caboose]

Any story from the Silver Age that involves Lois trying to trick Superman into marrying her. This is the best they could come up with?

Weren't they all in Lois's own comic though?

[marshal99]

Any story from the Silver Age that involves Lois trying to trick Superman into marrying her. This is the best they could come up with?

Any modern writers nowadays would wish to have a comic that can last 137 issues like it did with Lois Lane back in the day.
IN present time , any comics that can last 50 issues are considered success.

Lois Lane lasted 137 issues
Jimmy Olsen lasted 163 issues.

[Heraclevs]

In general, the devolution of Superman comics, and comics in general, into op/ed pieces, rather than pure entertainment, is a really bad idea. If I want to read propaganda, liberal or conservative, I'll buy a newspaper and head for the editorials. I don't support it creeping into my entertainment media.

It goes beyond comics... I used to like Green Day... used to.

- Romans 9

[Heraclevs]

Oh, and the ability to understand all languages, too.

- Romans 9

[Super Hero Guy]

Giving Lois Lane and Jimmy Oslen their own comics.

The cheap attempt at explaining why nobody recognizes that Superman is Clark Kent back in the 70s (his glasses magnify his subconcious hypnotic power or something)

[Aarcee]

1. Superman Red & Superman Blue
2. the clones
3. Supergirl running around in a glorified cheerleading outfit (for the love of Rao, put some pants on that girl).

[DeadXMan]

Giving Lois Lane and Jimmy Oslen their own comics.

The cheap attempt at explaining why nobody recognizes that Superman is Clark Kent back in the 70s (his glasses magnify his subconcious hypnotic power or something)


with out those comics superdickery would not exist

and kirby did Jimmy oslen's comic book
your dare speak ill of The king?:mad: :mad: :mad:

[Sean Whitmore]

with out those comics superdickery would not exist


Neither would all the money that both of those series' huge circulations brought in.


SEAN

[Aarcee]

with out those comics superdickery would not exist

A hilarious site. :D

http://www.superdickery.com/galleries.html

[DeadXMan]

A hilarious site. :D

http://www.superdickery.com/galleries.html

my fave non-boner image

http://www.superdickery.com/images/dick/1296_4_063.jpg

[Captain Smith]

Currently, the Kryptonian space navy. One corny but neat thing in the original origin is Kal-el making it off Krypton in a little test ship.

If they had a space navy, then gave it up, blah, blah. The destruction of the planet without a wholesale abandon ship is quite silly.

Too many damn Kryptonians. So Supes is great because of his personality? That's a stretch, he's rather boring and had intervals when he went nuts or tried to rule the world.

He's just another supersuit now.

[CaptainCanada]

I didn't mind Electric Superman; Morrison did some really cool stuff with him on JLA. Now, mullet-Superman was just annoying.

The whole idea of Superman being Superboy when he was young is a terrible concept.

[Zacharius]

Always being more powerful than anyone else.

"can do anything, defeated by nothing"


This is especially true in Tv series with lousy fights.

[zebop]

1. Supermullet

2. Electro-Superman

3. Lex Luthor destroys Metropolis and the next day he's the President of the United States. Hello, I know it's fiction but even fiction has to make sense.

4. Marrying Lois Lane. Good-bye sexual tension, hello wussy Superman. Ask Lois if you can have your balls back.

5. Supergirl. Pick anyone you want. They all suck but the current Super-Brittney airhead is particularly annoying.

6. Bringing back green, red, gold, white, blue, black and bubble-gum Kryptonite. Ugh.

7. Toyman=child molester. WTF?

8. Chuck Austen.

[Loren]

3. Lex Luthor destroys Metropolis and the next day he's the President of the United States. Hello, I know it's fiction but even fiction has to make sense.

1) I seem to recall that that the Metropolis incident wasn't entirely intentional on his part.

2) Even if it was, they addressed it in the story: it was blamed on a clone.

3) It was hardly "the next day." Action #700 was in 1994. Lex was elected President six years later, in 2000. He did other stuff inbetween that was more damaging to his electability than what happened to Metropolis.

7. Toyman=child molester. WTF?

I'm pretty sure he wasn't a child MOLESTER. A child killer, yes. But I don't recall any sexual crimes on his part.

[Sean Whitmore]

Always being more powerful than anyone else.


Well, yeah, he's Superman.


SEAN

[Loren]

The worst Superman ideas that always come to mind for me come from Byrne's "World of Smallville" mini-series. The "World of Krypton" and "World of Metropolis" minis were reasonably good, but the Smallville one introduced elements to the mythos that were SO bad, that I'm pretty sure they've never even been acknowledged by subsequent writers, even for the purpose of rectifying them. I think they were all quietly retconned by universal omission.

So, off the top of my head, the four worst ideas from that mini, in reverse order:

4. The Kent farm wasn't part of the Kent family. Ma Kent inherited it from her first husband when he died.

3. As indicated by #4, Ma Kent had a first husband before Jonathan Kent: Dan Fordman. (To illustrate just how how much this idea has been ignored, Smallville + "Dan Fordman" gets only 28 results in Google, several of which aren't even in English.)

2. ALL of the other kids in Smallville when Clark was growing up were Manhunter agents, implanted with devices to help the Manhunters spy on Clark.

1. A young Lana Lang was the Manhunters' primary agent in Smallville.

-----

I'll add one more, which seems to float in and out of the Superman mythos depending on the writer:

The notion that Krypton was located in a galaxy other than the Milky Way galaxy.

For most of Pre-Crisis and Post-Crisis, Krypton was in the Milky Way. The animated series also put Krypton in our galaxy. On the other hand, the first movie said it was in the fictional Xeno Galaxy, and "Birthright" put it in the Andromeda galaxy. "Smallville" has insanely made references to Krypton being in contact with MULTIPLE galaxies.

A couple of years back (namely, here (http://comicfacts.blogspot.com/2005/03/kryptonian-astrophysics-101.html)) I went into some detail about why putting Krypton in another galaxy is a very bad idea. I see several reasons:

- Let's assume that Jor-El's ship traveled faster that light (through hyperspace or whatever). Let's say that little Kal was in suspended animation, and that the trip took 10 years. That would mean that the little prototype ship that could was traveling at a speed equivalent to 150 trillion mph, or about 220,000 times the speed of light. At that speed, you could travel from Earth to Pluto in about 1/14 of a second. Kryptonians may not know much about making spaceships, but they can sure make 'em fast.

I think this also creates an inconsistency where Jor-El (and Zor-El, I suppose) manages to create a one-person spacecraft that can achieve that kind of speed, and yet no one else on Krypton seems capable of even getting off-world.

- On a related note, it's pretty absurd to claim that Jor-El would send his kid to a whole other galaxy, rather than to a closer populated world. ("Birthright" tried to address this by claiming that while the Milky Way is awash with alien races, the Andromeda Galaxy has only one: Krypton.)

- It's inconsistent with everything else that's said about space travel in the Superman books and the DCU. The whole "Legion Lost" series was about how even 30th Century space travel couldn't cope with traveling between galaxies.

- As Kurt Busiek pointed out, other alien races in the Milky Way tend to know Kryptonians by reputation. There's no possible way they could know that if Krypton was in another galaxy.

[King Krypton]

Currently, the Kryptonian space navy. One corny but neat thing in the original origin is Kal-el making it off Krypton in a little test ship.

If they had a space navy, then gave it up, blah, blah. The destruction of the planet without a wholesale abandon ship is quite silly.

Too many damn Kryptonians. So Supes is great because of his personality? That's a stretch, he's rather boring and had intervals when he went nuts or tried to rule the world.

He's just another supersuit now.

Superman was "just another supersuit" for 90% of the Iron Age. A small handful of Kryptonian survivors wouldn't change that either way. The character himself was neutered. Whether or not he's "THE ONLY KRYPTONIAN" (a concept I think is inherently faulty) wouldn't have changed the fact that the stories were gutless, Superman was wussed out, and the books were mired in self-imposed formula ruts.

4. Marrying Lois Lane. Good-bye sexual tension, hello wussy Superman. Ask Lois if you can have your balls back.

Even as someone who hates Lois as a result of her Iron Age shrew makeover, I have to ask...how can there be "sexual tension" when there's absolutely no chance of them getting together? And being married does NOT inherently mean that the man has to become a wuss. That happened because DC backtracked on wanting to marry them and kept looking for reasons to break them up. They had no interest whatsoever in even trying to write a stable, happy marriage.

[Aarcee]

How about Mr. Mtzysptlic (Yeah, I probably misspelled it; you try spelling it)?

[dancj]

4. The Kent farm wasn't part of the Kent family. Ma Kent inherited it from her first husband when he died.

3. As indicated by #4, Ma Kent had a first husband before Jonathan Kent: Dan Fordman. (To illustrate just how how much this idea has been ignored, Smallville + "Dan Fordman" gets only 28 results in Google, several of which aren't even in English.)
Are they bad ideas? They seem pretty harmless to me.

2. ALL of the other kids in Smallville when Clark was growing up were Manhunter agents, implanted with devices to help the Manhunters spy on Clark.

1. A young Lana Lang was the Manhunters' primary agent in Smallville.
Blame Millenium for that. There was nothing right about that series.
I'll add one more, which seems to float in and out of the Superman mythos depending on the writer:

The notion that Krypton was located in a galaxy other than the Milky Way galaxy.
[Snip]
That would mean that the little prototype ship that could was traveling at a speed equivalent to 150 trillion mph, or about 220,000 times the speed of light.
I think most versions of the story have the ship using some kind of hyperspace/wormhole type technology which would make the distance pretty irrelevant - just like it's irrelevant to boom tube technology.

[dancj]

How about Mr. Mtzysptlic (Yeah, I probably misspelled it; you try spelling it)?
Okay Mxyzptlk, (or in it's original form, Mxyztplk).

Damn I'm good!

[Kid Omega]

I'll add one more, which seems to float in and out of the Superman mythos depending on the writer:

The notion that Krypton was located in a galaxy other than the Milky Way galaxy.

For most of Pre-Crisis and Post-Crisis, Krypton was in the Milky Way. The animated series also put Krypton in our galaxy. On the other hand, the first movie said it was in the fictional Xeno Galaxy, and "Birthright" put it in the Andromeda galaxy. "Smallville" has insanely made references to Krypton being in contact with MULTIPLE galaxies.

A couple of years back (namely, here (http://comicfacts.blogspot.com/2005/03/kryptonian-astrophysics-101.html)) I went into some detail about why putting Krypton in another galaxy is a very bad idea. I see several reasons:

- Let's assume that Jor-El's ship traveled faster that light (through hyperspace or whatever). Let's say that little Kal was in suspended animation, and that the trip took 10 years. That would mean that the little prototype ship that could was traveling at a speed equivalent to 150 trillion mph, or about 220,000 times the speed of light. At that speed, you could travel from Earth to Pluto in about 1/14 of a second. Kryptonians may not know much about making spaceships, but they can sure make 'em fast.

I think this also creates an inconsistency where Jor-El (and Zor-El, I suppose) manages to create a one-person spacecraft that can achieve that kind of speed, and yet no one else on Krypton seems capable of even getting off-world.

- On a related note, it's pretty absurd to claim that Jor-El would send his kid to a whole other galaxy, rather than to a closer populated world. ("Birthright" tried to address this by claiming that while the Milky Way is awash with alien races, the Andromeda Galaxy has only one: Krypton.)

- It's inconsistent with everything else that's said about space travel in the Superman books and the DCU. The whole "Legion Lost" series was about how even 30th Century space travel couldn't cope with traveling between galaxies.

- As Kurt Busiek pointed out, other alien races in the Milky Way tend to know Kryptonians by reputation. There's no possible way they could know that if Krypton was in another galaxy.

Like someone else said, there's the wormhole/warp thing. Overall, it's not something I'd get wrapped up about, but if they're going to get specific... yeah, why leave the galaxy?

Even Star Trek only takes place on one end of the Milky Way Spiral Arm.

[KET]

1. Supermullet


I dunno....the long hair never really bothered me. However, it did seem that the writers kept it going merely because they couldn't think of any other dumb changes, until...



2. Electro-Superman

...THIS, on the other hand, was just wholesale ridiculousness. Take one of the most recognizable superhero characters, and change nearly EVERYTHING about him except his name. It's really no big surprise that this idea flopped big time.

3. Lex Luthor destroys Metropolis and the next day he's the President of the United States. Hello, I know it's fiction but even fiction has to make sense.

Well, the whole Luthor as US President plotline would have probably played out better if DC and its writers stable had figured out a far better endgame to it than merely shoving the guy back into his stupid purple and green super-suit. Like most of DC's recent event-driven ideas, there was a lot of great build-up, then a total lack of a thought-out exit strategy.

4. Marrying Lois Lane. Good-bye sexual tension, hello wussy Superman. Ask Lois if you can have your balls back.

Actually, I blame the Lois and Clark TV show more for that one.

5. Supergirl. Pick anyone you want. They all suck but the current Super-Brittney airhead is particularly annoying.

Nahhh, the problem's not the character, it's DC's continuing MISMANAGEMENT and abuse of the character over the years. What's particularly frustrating about the situation now is that DC keeps running away screaming from what should be SG's basic concept: 'The Princess Myth with superpowers'. DC should really ask the folks at Disney about how it's supposed to be done.

The whole recent idea of turning SG into a slutty, Hollywood tabloid-styled headcase just doesn't fly well.


6. Bringing back green, red, gold, white, blue, black and bubble-gum Kryptonite. Ugh.

This recycling trend is merely indicative of lazy gimmicks DC always fall back on when they run out of ideas.

[Loren]

Like someone else said, there's the wormhole/warp thing.

Which only solves the speed issue. All the other problems still stand. Wormholes don't explain why Jor-El would send his kid to another galaxy, why no one else seems capable of accomplishing the same technological feat (except when somebody visits dead Krypton), why anyone's ever heard of Kryptonians, or why no one else on Krypton used the same means of escape.

Thankfully, Busiek's recent Kryptonian material seems to shoot down the 'other galaxy' approach. There's such an obscene amount of empty space between galaxies, there's no way that Kristen Wells and Co. would have gradually made their way across it. And Kurt himself was the one who raised the issue of the Kryptonian reputation.

Overall, it's not something I'd get wrapped up about, but if they're going to get specific... yeah, why leave the galaxy?

Even Star Trek only takes place on one end of the Milky Way Spiral Arm.

Yep. And the difficulty of traveling merely from one side of the Milky Way to the other was the whole foundational plot to "Voyager."

[Berserk]

In my opinion, the worst idea will always be the lack of any sort of disguise over his face. Just taking off his glasses and slicking back his hair should not fool anyone.

[winegeek]

Actually, I blame the Lois and Clark TV show more for that one.

If you have Superman : Doomsday,watch the extras. They explain Clark and Lois were supposed to marry in Superman 75. WB wanted DC to delay for the new show, Lois and Clark to catch up. So they killed Superman instead.

The marriage was natural progression. Stalling for the TV show caused relationship problems. Johns & company are doing a very good job getting it all back on track.

[MaxofSteel]

This recycling trend is merely indicative of lazy gimmicks DC always fall back on when they run out of ideas.

You may call it lazy gimmicks, but I call it fresh ideas for new readers. ;) Personally (as a non-new reader), I like the the return of the other K's myself.


Regarding the marriage though, I'd say it was inevitable, although it has unfortunately led to less interesting stories from Lois' standpoint. It seems she has less of a personality nowadays, or that she's lost her aggressive spark. I dunno. :/

[Mon-el]

The whole idea of Superman being Superboy when he was young is a terrible concept.

I've had a couple of days to think about this. Instead of posting my first knee- jerk reaction.

Since Superboy was one of the few characters that was held over from the Golden Age to the Silver Age and throughout the Bronze Age. Seems apparent it's not really a bad idea is it? or was a "terrible concept".

Furthermore without the existence of Superboy you would never had the many characters that wouldn't have existed due to HIS character or his title. No other comic book character was actually made and then pushed out of his own title due to the popularity of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

[KET]

If you have Superman : Doomsday,watch the extras. They explain Clark and Lois were supposed to marry in Superman 75. WB wanted DC to delay for the new show, Lois and Clark to catch up. So they killed Superman instead.


Actually, I already knew about all this comics history BEFORE DC bothered to put it on a DVD. Still, the idea doesn't work if they don't have writers who will follow through with making it work naturally.


The marriage was natural progression.

No, I think it was an inevitable consequence of Jenette Kahn's influence on the character's multi-media marketing strategy at the time. She had a LOT to do with getting "Lois and Clark" on the air.

[KET]

You may call it lazy gimmicks, but I call it fresh ideas for new readers. ;) Personally (as a non-new reader), I like the the return of the other K's myself.

Whether you like the idea or not, it's still recycled. There's nothing fresh about it, and an all-too-typical example of DC's current nostalgia-pandering fetish.

[pariah-1972]

Whether you like the idea or not, it's still recycled. There's nothing fresh about it, and an all-too-typical example of DC's current nostalgia-pandering fetish.If only this nostalgia fetish went all the way then we wouldn't have mass killings and have more fun lighthearted stuff.

[MaxofSteel]

Whether you like the idea or not, it's still recycled. There's nothing fresh about it

That may be true, but I don't necessarily consider that to be a bad thing. Some old ideas tend to work better than newer ones. And if they work better, or are more interesting, why not use them again?

[dancj]

Wormholes don't explain why Jor-El would send his kid to another galaxy, why no one else seems capable of accomplishing the same technological feat (except when somebody visits dead Krypton),
The New Gods do it all the time with their Boom Tube technology.

why anyone's ever heard of Kryptonians, or why no one else on Krypton used the same means of escape.
No-one else escaped because Jor-El was the only one who thought the planet was about to explode, and the only one who'd built a prototype space ship. I'm not sure how putting Krypton in another galaxy changes anything here.

[King Krypton]

If you have Superman : Doomsday,watch the extras. They explain Clark and Lois were supposed to marry in Superman 75. WB wanted DC to delay for the new show, Lois and Clark to catch up. So they killed Superman instead.

The marriage was natural progression. Stalling for the TV show caused relationship problems.

There's also the fact that the creative teams had a change of heart during that delay period and decided they didn't want to marry them after all. Paul Levitz even admitted it in Superman: The Complete History. And even after the marriage was done, the new creative teams under Berganza were just as opposed to the marriage as the Jurgens-era guys ended up being, and Lois' abusive behavior carried over into that era and went to major extremes. When your creative teams have no intention of even trying to make the marriage work, there's no chance of it working.

[Sean Whitmore]

And even after the marriage was done, the new creative teams under Berganza were just as opposed to the marriage as the Jurgens-era guys ended up being, and Lois' abusive behavior carried over into that era and went to major extremes.

"Uh-huh. Examples?" he asked, not really expecting an answer.


SEAN

[winegeek]

When your creative teams have no intention of even trying to make the marriage work, there's no chance of it working.

True. Good thing Johns & Busiek show every intention of making the marriage work, and they've been doing a great job with it. Once DC made the decision they weren't going to retcon after Infinite Crisis, it seems there is an effort to stop living in the past and accept the status quo.

[winegeek]

Actually, I already knew about all this comics history BEFORE DC bothered to put it on a DVD. Still, the idea doesn't work if they don't have writers who will follow through with making it work naturally.

So why blame the tv show? For many of us this isn't "history" but something we read real time. The stories pre-death were rich with character development, Lois wasn't portrayed as a shrew, they were engaged in a partnership. It all changed post death when DC had to stall, waiting for the show to catch up. That was when the problem began.

Regardless, no story works if the writers aren't on board. It's too bad DC didn't publish K-Metal, this discussion would be moot.

[BoosterBronze]

Regardless, no story works if the writers aren't on board. It's too bad DC didn't publish K-Metal, this discussion would be moot.

True, but then we wouldn't have 40 years of fun "Oh, I'll prove you're Superman" stories.

[King Krypton]

"Uh-huh. Examples?" he asked, not really expecting an answer.


SEAN


Hmm...let's see:

1. Leaving Superman under the pretense of vacationing with her mother, seding him "Dear John" messages teling him she's not coming back, and writing journal entries about how much she hates him for saving Wonder Woman instead of her dad. (Post-OWAW.)

2. Admitting while under Dracula's influence that she's got a grudge against him for saving Wonder Woman instead of her dad.

2. Hysterically accusing him of sleeping around with the JLA after Cir-El claims to be his daughter, even demanding that he cut off a rescue in progress so he can come home and be read the riot act.

3. Nagging him over Krypto at every turn.

4. Nagging him for leaving during emergencies (the dreaded giant lobster issue, a parting shot from the Jurgens era).

5. Throwing a hissy fit over Clark's firing being staged so he could spy on Luthor.

6. Giving a news crew unwarranted grief when they were trying to help her out on her first day of work as a TV anchor (Seagle run).

7. Chiding him for "eavesdropping" when he overhears someone dissing him.


All this stuff is from the last few years of the comics. Of course, you'll just pretend it doesn't exist and accuse me of lying, as is your wont. You'll also pretend that Kelly and Casey never said anything negative about the marriage in interviews with Wizard circa "Return to Krypton," I imagine, much less acknowledge Levitz's admssions that the marriage fell out of favor with the creative teams and is still an issue of contention at DC.

[Sean Whitmore]

2. Admitting while under Dracula's influence that she's got a grudge against him for saving Wonder Woman instead of her dad.

5. Throwing a hissy fit over Clark's firing being staged so he could spy on Luthor.

7. Chiding him for "eavesdropping" when he overhears someone dissing him.

Ooooh! Abusive!

1. Leaving Superman under the pretense of vacationing with her mother, seding him "Dear John" messages teling him she's not coming back, and writing journal entries about how much she hates him for saving Wonder Woman instead of her dad. (Post-OWAW.)

4. Nagging him for leaving during emergencies (the dreaded giant lobster issue, a parting shot from the Jurgens era).

What a bitch. Women are supposed to have babies, not emotions.


3. Nagging him over Krypto at every turn.

The super powered dog that kept destroying their apartment and threatening their secret? You know that's not what "nagging" means, right?


6. Giving a news crew unwarranted grief when they were trying to help her out on her first day of work as a TV anchor (Seagle run).

That's abusive to her husband...how?


2. Hysterically accusing him of sleeping around with the JLA after Cir-El claims to be his daughter, even demanding that he cut off a rescue in progress so he can come home and be read the riot act.

Okay, I'll give you one. One out of your seven "examples" has merit.


Of course, you'll just pretend it doesn't exist and accuse me of lying, as is your wont.

Nah, "exaggerating to the point of ridiculousness" sums it up better.


SEAN

[kello]

http://www.comics.org/graphics/covers/3386/400/3386_4_0000000123.jpg

Don't really think anything else needs to be said, do you?

This was the first thing I thought of when I read the thread topic. If you don't consider Electro Supes to be the dumbest Superman transformation, I openly question your fanhood, nay, your sanity.

[Nector]

I think one of the worst ideas was Earth Two, I mean come on what are you trying to do you're just ripping off you're own Bizzaro idea (Power girl is hott though :p )

Which leads me to Another thing, Bizzaro is awesome but we don't need Zibarro

[pariah-1972]

This was the first thing I thought of when I read the thread topic. If you don't consider Electro Supes to be the dumbest Superman transformation, I openly question your fanhood, nay, your sanity.I thought Electric Blue Superman looked cool but i haven't been a superman fan since i was a kid so take that for what you will.

[Super Buddies Forever]

I never had a huge beef with Electro Superman because I saw it was nothing more than a storyline. The only fault I have with it is that the writers never seemed to figure out how his new powers worked.

[pariah-1972]

I never had a huge beef with Electro Superman because I saw it was nothing more than a storyline. The only fault I have with it is that the writers never seemed to figure out how his new power worked.That happens A lot of electrical/magnetic based characters,

[Darth Joker]

Hmm...let's see:

1. Leaving Superman under the pretense of vacationing with her mother, seding him "Dear John" messages teling him she's not coming back, and writing journal entries about how much she hates him for saving Wonder Woman instead of her dad. (Post-OWAW.)

2. Admitting while under Dracula's influence that she's got a grudge against him for saving Wonder Woman instead of her dad.

2. Hysterically accusing him of sleeping around with the JLA after Cir-El claims to be his daughter, even demanding that he cut off a rescue in progress so he can come home and be read the riot act.

3. Nagging him over Krypto at every turn.

4. Nagging him for leaving during emergencies (the dreaded giant lobster issue, a parting shot from the Jurgens era).

5. Throwing a hissy fit over Clark's firing being staged so he could spy on Luthor.

6. Giving a news crew unwarranted grief when they were trying to help her out on her first day of work as a TV anchor (Seagle run).

7. Chiding him for "eavesdropping" when he overhears someone dissing him.


All this stuff is from the last few years of the comics. Of course, you'll just pretend it doesn't exist and accuse me of lying, as is your wont. You'll also pretend that Kelly and Casey never said anything negative about the marriage in interviews with Wizard circa "Return to Krypton," I imagine, much less acknowledge Levitz's admssions that the marriage fell out of favor with the creative teams and is still an issue of contention at DC.

The first three are Lois feeling insecure over Wonder Woman's role in Clark's life. I mean - can you blame her? Lois isn't dumb - she knows that, in many ways, Diana is a more ideal match for Superman than she is. And she probably knows that Wonder Woman once had a big crush on Superman that hasn't entirely gone away.

The Krypto thing is understandable.

The final four aren't good, but that's the dark side of Lois' personality. She's suppossed to represent the prototypical female news reporter who is firmly feminist and will admirably do whatever she can to dig up the dirt on crooks and scroundrels. These folks are heroines to a degree, but they're not saints.

[pariah-1972]

The first three are Lois feeling insecure over Wonder Woman's role in Clark's life. I mean - can you blame her? Lois isn't dumb - she knows that, in many ways, Diana is a more ideal match for Superman than she is. And she probably knows that Wonder Woman once had a big crush on Superman that hasn't entirely gone away.

The Krypto thing is understandable.

The final four aren't good, but that's the dark side of Lois' personality. She's suppossed to represent the prototypical female news reporter who is firmly feminist and will admirably do whatever she can to dig up the dirt on crooks and scroundrels. These folks are heroines to a degree, but they're not saints.I never really understood why people think diana is better suited for Superman.... unless we find out that Supes can't have children with lois, i think lois represents his fascination/obsession with being human and loving the human race.
Diana on the other hand comes from a race of amazon warriors that are practically first cousins to the roman gods and not to mention what the amazons have done recently i'm not sure there cultures would match up entirely.

[PatrickG]

Agreed on the Manhunter points.


The notion that Krypton was located in a galaxy other than the Milky Way galaxy.

For most of Pre-Crisis and Post-Crisis, Krypton was in the Milky Way. The animated series also put Krypton in our galaxy. On the other hand, the first movie said it was in the fictional Xeno Galaxy, and "Birthright" put it in the Andromeda galaxy. "Smallville" has insanely made references to Krypton being in contact with MULTIPLE galaxies.

A couple of years back (namely, here (http://comicfacts.blogspot.com/2005/03/kryptonian-astrophysics-101.html)) I went into some detail about why putting Krypton in another galaxy is a very bad idea. I see several reasons:

- Let's assume that Jor-El's ship traveled faster that light (through hyperspace or whatever). Let's say that little Kal was in suspended animation, and that the trip took 10 years. That would mean that the little prototype ship that could was traveling at a speed equivalent to 150 trillion mph, or about 220,000 times the speed of light. At that speed, you could travel from Earth to Pluto in about 1/14 of a second. Kryptonians may not know much about making spaceships, but they can sure make 'em fast.


He wasn't in suspended animation. He used a wormhole. That's also how so much Kryptonite wound up on earth.


I think this also creates an inconsistency where Jor-El (and Zor-El, I suppose) manages to create a one-person spacecraft that can achieve that kind of speed, and yet no one else on Krypton seems capable of even getting off-world.


I think they were capable and chose not to. The Busiek take seems to be that they were indoctrinated against offworld travel by a scientific and peaceful government scared of what the Kryptonians would become again under a yellow sun. The "Zod" millitary contingent believed Jor-El and were probably eager to use Krypton's destruction to declare martial law and go subjugate a bunch of lesser races after escaping. I'd go so far as to say that the Science Council was at least WILLFULLY ignorant and perhaps even suppressed the truth, committing to a course of racial mass suicide rather than allowing a new empire to form.


- On a related note, it's pretty absurd to claim that Jor-El would send his kid to a whole other galaxy, rather than to a closer populated world. ("Birthright" tried to address this by claiming that while the Milky Way is awash with alien races, the Andromeda Galaxy has only one: Krypton.)


By understanding was that Jor-El's options were limited. He needed a world where the natives looked Kryptonian but where his son would have a biological advantage in case he was greeted with hostility. Earth stands out as a choice because a Kryptonian could pass for human and powers are not terribly widespread.


- It's inconsistent with everything else that's said about space travel in the Superman books and the DCU. The whole "Legion Lost" series was about how even 30th Century space travel couldn't cope with traveling between galaxies.

I always found the DnA Legion's tech to be INTERESTING but a small fraction of what I'd like or expect 31st century tech to be. I mean, Star Trek or Babylon 5 should be to 31st century tech what the Crusades is to modern warfare.


- As Kurt Busiek pointed out, other alien races in the Milky Way tend to know Kryptonians by reputation. There's no possible way they could know that if Krypton was in another galaxy.

Sure they could. Kryptonians had an intergalactic empire. If they could travel between galaxies (and they can) and they had an empire that was defeated by an internal coup of idealistic scientists...

Heck... I'm gonna suggest that based on what we've seen, the "red sun" weakness was genetically engineered by anti-war Kryptonians to isolate and de-fang their military might. Similar to the Roger Stern Eradicator "genetic link". Heck, the Red Sun weakness may have been the Eradicator's contribution to the mythos post-IC.

To me, it makes little sense that something the volume of a human could be an effective solar battery for the kinds of feats Superman does. It works far better for me to imagine that he has a number of unusual properties which allow for his powers (which may be augmented or triggered off by sunlight). But it would essentially be a case of every cell in his body being conditioned like Pavlov's dog to shutdown in certain conditions, probably as the result of an engineered genetic mutation that the Kryptonians' used because they feared and rejected their own power.

Imagine a scenario where every adult is essentially a walking nuclear weapon capable of destroying the planet. It would seem sensible to concoct a safeguard against your people's own excesses, to give your race an Achilles heel to turn them away from the path of conquest and violence.

[Darth Joker]

I never really understood why people think diana is better suited for Superman.... unless we find out that Supes can't have children with lois, i think lois represents his fascination/obsession with being human and loving the human race.
Diana on the other hand comes from a race of amazon warriors that are practically first cousins to the roman gods and not to mention what the amazons have done recently i'm not sure there cultures would match up entirely.

I'm a subscriber to the "man of steel, woman of kleenex" theory.

To be a brutally frank, I don't think that Lois should be able to even survive having sex with Supes. Wonder Woman, OTOH, would.

[pariah-1972]

I'm a subscriber to the "man of steel, woman of kleenex" theory.

To be a brutally frank, I don't think that Lois should be able to even survive having sex with Supes. Wonder Woman, OTOH, would.
Meh i feel dirty thinking too much about a superman's sex life.
and anyways i was talking about emotional and personality capabilities.

[pariah-1972]

blaargh doubley posted

[BoosterBronze]

I think the Superman/Wonder Woman thing has less to do with sex, and more to do with the fact Superman is an amazing warrior and can share a kinship with WW as superhuman warrior trypes that Lois can never be a part of.

So when Superman is 'pretending' to be a mere mortal like Lois, she has to feel somehow diminished.

[The Batman]

I've never seen Superman as a warrior though. Sure he has to fight, and because he's so powerful he's pretty good at it, but it's only a last resort for him. I also don't think Superman has to pretend anything around Lois anymore.

[Jolly Mon]

Agreed on the Manhunter points.



He wasn't in suspended animation. He used a wormhole. That's also how so much Kryptonite wound up on earth.



I think they were capable and chose not to. The Busiek take seems to be that they were indoctrinated against offworld travel by a scientific and peaceful government scared of what the Kryptonians would become again under a yellow sun. The "Zod" millitary contingent believed Jor-El and were probably eager to use Krypton's destruction to declare martial law and go subjugate a bunch of lesser races after escaping. I'd go so far as to say that the Science Council was at least WILLFULLY ignorant and perhaps even suppressed the truth, committing to a course of racial mass suicide rather than allowing a new empire to form.



By understanding was that Jor-El's options were limited. He needed a world where the natives looked Kryptonian but where his son would have a biological advantage in case he was greeted with hostility. Earth stands out as a choice because a Kryptonian could pass for human and powers are not terribly widespread.



I always found the DnA Legion's tech to be INTERESTING but a small fraction of what I'd like or expect 31st century tech to be. I mean, Star Trek or Babylon 5 should be to 31st century tech what the Crusades is to modern warfare.



Sure they could. Kryptonians had an intergalactic empire. If they could travel between galaxies (and they can) and they had an empire that was defeated by an internal coup of idealistic scientists...

Heck... I'm gonna suggest that based on what we've seen, the "red sun" weakness was genetically engineered by anti-war Kryptonians to isolate and de-fang their military might. Similar to the Roger Stern Eradicator "genetic link". Heck, the Red Sun weakness may have been the Eradicator's contribution to the mythos post-IC.

To me, it makes little sense that something the volume of a human could be an effective solar battery for the kinds of feats Superman does. It works far better for me to imagine that he has a number of unusual properties which allow for his powers (which may be augmented or triggered off by sunlight). But it would essentially be a case of every cell in his body being conditioned like Pavlov's dog to shutdown in certain conditions, probably as the result of an engineered genetic mutation that the Kryptonians' used because they feared and rejected their own power.

Imagine a scenario where every adult is essentially a walking nuclear weapon capable of destroying the planet. It would seem sensible to concoct a safeguard against your people's own excesses, to give your race an Achilles heel to turn them away from the path of conquest and violence.

It seems like everyone wants to retcon Krypton's (and Superman's) backstory. You want Krypton's populace to have been condemned to "racial mass suicide", and the red sun weakness to be an "engineered genetic mutation that Kryptonians used because they feared and rejected their own power". Is there any thing else you'd like to change? Are you ok with his outfit?

[pariah-1972]

I think the Superman/Wonder Woman thing has less to do with sex, and more to do with the fact Superman is an amazing warrior and can share a kinship with WW as superhuman warrior trypes that Lois can never be a part of.

So when Superman is 'pretending' to be a mere mortal like Lois, she has to feel somehow diminished.But he is mortal he is not a god and he can die he just happens to be a super mortal.

and this is how he sees himself obviously.

[Rik Sunn]

I disagree with a lot of the items on the initial list, feeling that there's an awful lot of Silver Age rose-colored glasses and post-COIE hatin' going on there. But that being said, I can think of a few things that just drive me NUTS as a big Supes fan:

The whole "King of the World" storyline. Ack.

This new/old thing of him losing his powers at the drop of a hat in the presence of red sun or the absence of a yellow one. In the post-COIE days of "living solar battery" Superman, he would have been able to at least stay super for a few minutes under a red sun, and things like the ending of IC and/or the first few pages of the current LOSH story arc (where he arrives in the future and, before he even starts to feel noticeably weak, he's having his skin penetrated by simple firearms) wouldn't happen.

Most post-COIE reimaginings of some of the retconned Silver Age concepts. I don't need to see a new Krypto, thanks. I've never liked any of the various post-Crisis incarnations of Kandor. If they can't be restored to their original form, you probably should just avoid using them altogether.

The Clone Disease. Outside of Superboy, I'm not aware of any non-Superman characters who were affected by this, in spite of being in a universe where clones were spectacularly common. There were plenty of better ways to hit the reset button on Lex Luthor, without creating this thing that should have, but didn't, affect the whole DCU.

[Rik Sunn]

I never had a huge beef with Electro Superman because I saw it was nothing more than a storyline. The only fault I have with it is that the writers never seemed to figure out how his new powers worked.

I disagree. As a reader during that time, I felt like the writers (and I) had a really good handle on how the powers worked. The only thing I didn't get a feel for was what the hell made it happen. There was an implication that it had something to do with that ancient wizard guy who was repressing the people of Kandor, but they never clarified it and eventually the whole thing just went away.

I also think the Millennium Giants and the whole red/blue "division" were really indicative of some really recycled ideas. During the '90s, I felt like not everyone was playing from the same playbook, so you got things like the Wolf character in Anima serving essentially the exact same function in the universe as what Parallax later turned out to be, and the Millennium Giants being essentially identical to the Giants in the Marvel vs. DC mini (a particularly egregious offense since Jurgens was involved with both and should have told the Superman writers "Hey, this one needs to be reworked!").

[cactusmaac]

Which only solves the speed issue. All the other problems still stand. Wormholes don't explain why Jor-El would send his kid to another galaxy, why no one else seems capable of accomplishing the same technological feat (except when somebody visits dead Krypton), why anyone's ever heard of Kryptonians, or why no one else on Krypton used the same means of escape.


If you go by the pre-IC continuity, Jor-El got the idea from Starman. If you go by Smallville, Kryptonians had been visiting Earth for centuries and Jor-El picked the Kents as the family he wanted Supes get adopted into. I doubt he had many other options particularly for congenial planets with a yellow sun.

As for nobody else having the same technology, it's not that surprising. Krypton was one of the most advanced planets around and they probably weren't in the habit of socialising with the rest of the universe or letting outsiders learn their technological secrets.

I have really disliked a lot of the rehashing of Silver Age elements in Superman comics. Krypto is an incredibly stupid idea that should never have been reintroduced, Kandor too, I don't want Superman teaming with the LOSH during his teen years or meeting Mon-El, Luthor as mad scientist is nowhere as interesting as him being a billionaire tyrant.

It's good when Morrison writes Superman because he's imaginative and capable of capturing the spirit of the era. Too many other writers just geek out on the weird shit they read when they were ten without considering whether it fits with a modern interpretation of the character.

[666MasterOfPuppets]

Which only solves the speed issue. All the other problems still stand. Wormholes don't explain why Jor-El would send his kid to another galaxy, why no one else seems capable of accomplishing the same technological feat (except when somebody visits dead Krypton), why anyone's ever heard of Kryptonians, or why no one else on Krypton used the same means of escape.

I tried to address this in a fanfic I wrote. Essentially, Krypton was the most advanced race in the universe, and with time, they actually colonized other planets. But then came something called the GREAT WAR, which seriously damaged Krypton's reputation, and made the Council decide that space travel was prohibited.

Or something like that. :p

[666MasterOfPuppets]

Hmm...let's see:

1. Leaving Superman under the pretense of vacationing with her mother, seding him "Dear John" messages teling him she's not coming back, and writing journal entries about how much she hates him for saving Wonder Woman instead of her dad. (Post-OWAW.)

2. Admitting while under Dracula's influence that she's got a grudge against him for saving Wonder Woman instead of her dad.

2. Hysterically accusing him of sleeping around with the JLA after Cir-El claims to be his daughter, even demanding that he cut off a rescue in progress so he can come home and be read the riot act.

3. Nagging him over Krypto at every turn.

4. Nagging him for leaving during emergencies (the dreaded giant lobster issue, a parting shot from the Jurgens era).

5. Throwing a hissy fit over Clark's firing being staged so he could spy on Luthor.

6. Giving a news crew unwarranted grief when they were trying to help her out on her first day of work as a TV anchor (Seagle run).

7. Chiding him for "eavesdropping" when he overhears someone dissing him.


All this stuff is from the last few years of the comics. Of course, you'll just pretend it doesn't exist and accuse me of lying, as is your wont. You'll also pretend that Kelly and Casey never said anything negative about the marriage in interviews with Wizard circa "Return to Krypton," I imagine, much less acknowledge Levitz's admssions that the marriage fell out of favor with the creative teams and is still an issue of contention at DC.

Yeah, Lois has crossed the line sometimes. Especially in "Lois & Clark", the show with the dumbest Clark Kent I've ever seen:

Clark Kent (a.k.a. Fred): I love you, Lois.
Lois (a.k.a. Daphne): I love you more.
Fred: No, I love you more.
Daphne: No, I love YOU more, hihihihi...
Fred: Let's solve this mystery!
Criminal: I would have succeeded if it weren't for those meddlers!!!

[666MasterOfPuppets]

But he is mortal he is not a god and he can die he just happens to be a super mortal.

and this is how he sees himself obviously.

And this is the point that annoys me the most.

Superman IS, or in any case SHOULD be an IMMORTAL ALIEN GOD sent to Earth to save us. I love the whole messianic angle that's existed within the character since his very creation, in some form.

Hell, in fact, I read somewhere that Jor-El means "Awe/Wrath Of God" and Kal-El "Voice Of God" in hebrew, and that Siegel and Shuster liked to play with mythic imagery.

To this day, I fail to see what's the fear some people have (including DC) of writing an ultra-powerful Superman. And the whole "if Superman's too powerful then he's impossible to write because he has no challenge" theory has gotten old already.

Superman is larger than life itself. He's immortal, timeless. He should be able to ignite stars with his heat vision, hold black holes in his hand, move planets away from their stars and even turn them into DUST with his bare hands.

But now, the aforementioned theory has made that almost every other guy with super-powers is "nearly" as powerful as he is, which in my opinion, is simply ridiculous and doesn't hold water for me.

Another thing that bugs me is that there are too many Kryptonians. I can stand Zod and his lackeys, but things are going too far (no, I haven't read Busiek's "Third Kryptonian" storyline, so please don't spoil it, ok?), I believe. Superman should be unique in every possible way.

I admit that some things from the Silver Age might work again, but it's also true for me that not EVERY single idea that was used in the Silver Age might work TODAY.

[PatrickG]

It seems like everyone wants to retcon Krypton's (and Superman's) backstory. You want Krypton's populace to have been condemned to "racial mass suicide", and the red sun weakness to be an "engineered genetic mutation that Kryptonians used because they feared and rejected their own power". Is there any thing else you'd like to change? Are you ok with his outfit?

I love the outfit.

Heck, I wish Jor-El had the headband and sun on his chest.

I'm against retcons only when they go against the intrinsic nature of something. When they contradict something.

I'm in favor of as many retcons as possible when they add depth to something.

IMO, the conversation between Jor-El and the Science Council should always hearken back to its earliest interpretations.

I'm extremely wary about recostuming characters or changing a single word of dialogue.

I'd much rather explain the published dialogue and costuming of characters than revamp them to keep the spirit intact.

IMHO, the particulars of Superman's published history are what we keep unfairly losing track of. The costumes, the origins, the nuggets of dialogue.

If you want to make Krypton "more relatable", you don't do that by making it more sci-fi. You make the old sci-fi work by tacking onto it without changing it.

I could much easier accept that the council lied and really believed Jor-El but felt that death as a species was nobler than the alternative, as opposed to constantly revamping them to make their stubborn denial more justified.

Why didn't they believe him? It's at the heart of almost any revamp. Krypton is supposed to be a utopia and highly advanced and yet they didn't heed Jor-El's warning.

Every revamp has tried to address this and it usually involves making Kryptonians look evil or stupid. Maggin's Earth-Prime Superboy origin had the council accept Jor-El's warning but move too slowly because they were bureaucratic, presumably to add realism. The Animated Series made the council into Brainiac's unwitting pawns.

I'd rather they appear high minded like the Guardians, operating under a "greater good", than evil or stupid or manipulated.

The average person may not accept that their planet is about to blow up. But the most intelligent, most scientifically advanced beings in the universe don't have that out.

I'd rather see an additive retcon stacked into their history, a "lost scene" after Jor-El leaves the council, than see their conversation with him constantly revamped to address the impossible folly of their decision.

Preserve the particulars of plot. Modify the spirit. Reveal secrets. Don't adjust the particulars to suit your reading.

That Krypton was ond of the oldest and most advanced civilizations should be irrefutable. That Kal-El was born into a scientific utopia should be irrefutable. That the council rejected Jor-El should be irrefutable.

This presents a problem and the problem should not involve sullying Kryptonians' reputation as a species of unparalleled intellectual genius. You make them shortsighted or stupid or pawns or bureaucrats and you impugn that. I'd rather make them sacrificial martyrs and keep their established words intact while adding new ones than change or deviate needlessly from what has been said.

When a character says or does something "out of character", you would do better to create mitigating circumstances or suggest that they were lying than try to smooth over a story.

New Earth has come close to my "ideal world" but not quite far enough. IMO, Superman's continuity should be his publishing history with the oldest elements taking precedence over the newest and the most memorable elements taking precedent over all.

He should be married to Lois. He should have fought Doomsday. I see no reason to contradict that he was a TV anchor or that Roger Corben was the second Metallo when John Corben was presumed dead without contradicting that John Corben was Metallo when Brainiac 13 invaded or that Superman fought a scientist named Metalo early in his career.

Honor the greatest number of stories possible while adding nuance to them with retcons that add new knowledge but do not contradict anything of substance.

Changing Jor-El and the Science Council's interactions contradicts substance for spirit and thus throws the narrative baby out with the bathwater.

Adhere to the substance. If that means adjusting the spirit to preserve the substance then do so. It's so crucial to establish a cohesive narrative voice in a serial genre like this. The invisible narrator has to be reliable which means that anything implausible must be a lie perpetrated by a character or an omission. But what we see on the printed page must be the SELECTIVE literal truth, not the figurative truth or the emotional truth.

[PatrickG]

I disagree with a lot of the items on the initial list, feeling that there's an awful lot of Silver Age rose-colored glasses and post-COIE hatin' going on there. But that being said, I can think of a few things that just drive me NUTS as a big Supes fan:

The whole "King of the World" storyline. Ack.

This new/old thing of him losing his powers at the drop of a hat in the presence of red sun or the absence of a yellow one. In the post-COIE days of "living solar battery" Superman, he would have been able to at least stay super for a few minutes under a red sun, and things like the ending of IC and/or the first few pages of the current LOSH story arc (where he arrives in the future and, before he even starts to feel noticeably weak, he's having his skin penetrated by simple firearms) wouldn't happen.

Most post-COIE reimaginings of some of the retconned Silver Age concepts. I don't need to see a new Krypto, thanks. I've never liked any of the various post-Crisis incarnations of Kandor. If they can't be restored to their original form, you probably should just avoid using them altogether.

The Clone Disease. Outside of Superboy, I'm not aware of any non-Superman characters who were affected by this, in spite of being in a universe where clones were spectacularly common. There were plenty of better ways to hit the reset button on Lex Luthor, without creating this thing that should have, but didn't, affect the whole DCU.

Here is one of the crucial problems I recognize as a Silver Age aficionado.

There are elements of the mythos that people cannot forget. Wipe these out and people struggle to reintroduce them.

IMO, the way forward is to acknowledge everything.

Instead of retelling the Kryptonian Kandor's origin, use it. Use it matter-of-factly. Tell new stories with it instead of harping back on its beginnings.

All-Star Superman is great, partly, because I have yet to see a rationalization or a reintroduction of anything. Anything Grant wanted to use, he was free to assume was already on the table.

X-Men has maintained a large fanbase because they keep the quirks and tweaks and embarrassing complications. Nobody ever felt the need to make Jean Grey into Cable's real mother. His mother is her clone. Deal with it. Narrative consistency. Absurd things happened and they get explained or don't get explained but they still happened.

Same thing with Batman, largely, or Fantastic Four or Spider-man or Wolverine or most of the JLA's membership.

Gotham City used to have giant roof props. Nobody ever retconned that. Any retcons that did happen with Batman never really addressed anything goofy or eliminated it. He still has a robot T-Rex in the Batcave. The retcons with Batman happened whenever somebody did a stylish flashback that was well-received.

But there can and have been flashbacks of the current continuity with a goofy grin alongside the Club of Heroes and fighting the Riddler on giant typewriters. It happened. No need to retell it or ultimize it, for the most part. Paul Sloane was still the second Two-Face. Chief Man of the Bats teamed up with Batman. He started dark, got goofy and got dark again. Nobody really HAS to contradict this and if one person does, nobody flinches.

Write mature stories that include less mature stories as part of their backsdrop. That's half the fun.

[dupersuper]

and the Millennium Giants being essentially identical to the Giants in the Marvel vs. DC mini (a particularly egregious offense since Jurgens was involved with both and should have told the Superman writers "Hey, this one needs to be reworked!").

Well, they were all giants, and they don't talk, but that's about it. The DC/Marvel giants were far larger and more powerful, looked humanoid, and were representations/cosmic entitys. The MG's were just skyscraper sized weird looking things destroying and recreating earths' magnetic field. Completely different power levels, motivations, circumstances, etc. They were far more like the giants from the GL/LEGION/Darkstar story Trinity, but that was intended and mentioned in-story.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

The worst ideas in the history of Superman have generally been from creators who think Superman is broken and needs to be fixed. Since 1986, Superman comics have been a merry-go-round of various creators playing tug-o-war over who Superman is and where he comes from.

[TROUBLEZ]

Going from the completely mechanical Brainiac who looked and acted terrifying to a green guy with a yellow mustache and goatee.

[J. Robb]

The worst ideas in the history of Superman have generally been from creators who think Superman is broken and needs to be fixed. Since 1986, Superman comics have been a merry-go-round of various creators playing tug-o-war over who Superman is and where he comes from.
Aside from the obvious BIG changes in '86, the "merry-go-round" didn't really start until the Loeb/Kelly team's "Return to Krypton" story in 2001. Superman's been suffering death by a million retcons since then.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Aside from the obvious BIG changes in '86, the "merry-go-round" didn't really start until the Loeb/Kelly team's "Return to Krypton" story in 2001. Superman's been suffering death by a million retcons since then.

I disagree. The creators who immediately followed Byrne started reintroducing stuff he'd ditched very quickly, drastically altered them or at the very least shoehorned them into the new status quo that Byrne had setup. The tug-o-war over the utopian vs. dystopian Krypton also started before the Berganza/Loeb/Kelly era began. I remember them back-peddling on the cold unemotional Krypton around the time Electro Supes.

To my mind, Byrne's initial and ill-advised "Superman is broken! I'll fix him!" mission statement was taken up by every creator that came afterwards.

Unfortunately, neither Byrne nor any of the creators that followed him realised what Alan Moore so effectively showed in Supreme. There was nothing wrong with Superman that a little imagination and good writing couldn't fix.

[marshal99]

Going from the completely mechanical Brainiac who looked and acted terrifying to a green guy with a yellow mustache and goatee.

Actually , the pre-crisis Brainiac started out as just a normal looking bald headed green guy with hideous clothing in space. The completely mechanical Brainiac only came into being in the 80s. The mechanical brainiac and Luthor with the green war armor came in the same issue. If i'm not wrong , Perez had a hand in at least one of the new redesign if not both.

http://www.supermanartists.comics.org/superwhoswho/brainiac-action242.JPG

[MythicBrawn]

I'm a subscriber to the "man of steel, woman of kleenex" theory.

To be a brutally frank, I don't think that Lois should be able to even survive having sex with Supes. Wonder Woman, OTOH, would.

I 1000% agree with you on this one. I figure sex with Lois, a normal human, would be extremely unsatisfying because he would have to hold back too much. It would be similar to a normal man having sex with WW. WW would probably be unsatisfied plus the guy would run the danger of damaging/losing his unit. But, who cares. It's comics so bring on the suspension of disbelief.

[Joe-Dono]

I dont really think that the whole sex thing should be explored, who knows what kind of pandoras box we could uncover.

[pariah-1972]

Why is everyone picking on Byrne:(

[Carter Hall]

http://www.comics.org/graphics/covers/3386/400/3386_4_0000000123.jpg

Don't really think anything else needs to be said, do you?

Absolutely agree. I don't think there's ever been a worse Superman idea than this.

[J. Robb]

I disagree. The creators who immediately followed Byrne started reintroducing stuff he'd ditched very quickly, drastically altered them or at the very least shoehorned them into the new status quo that Byrne had setup. The tug-o-war over the utopian vs. dystopian Krypton also started before the Berganza/Loeb/Kelly era began. I remember them back-peddling on the cold unemotional Krypton around the time Electro Supes.

To my mind, Byrne's initial and ill-advised "Superman is broken! I'll fix him!" mission statement was taken up by every creator that came afterwards.
For me though, the difference with the post-Byrne teams is they made their changes organically. For the most part, the changes were made within the stories instead of just ignoring or retconning the past.

More recently, changes are made editorially, not in the stories, so we get fractured storytelling like a new General Zod or revamped origin every couple of years. They make zero sense within the comics themselves, we're just meant to accept the editorial decree "This is how things are now". Then when we don't accept that, they change things again, and say "Okay, this is how things are now..."

Superman wasn't broken in 2001, but after many unnessecary "fixes", he certainly is now.

[TROUBLEZ]

I hate that too.

"THIS is Supermans origin"
"Okay, now this is Supermans origin NOW."
"Scracth all those before, this is finally Supermans origin"

Instead of coming out with a mini series every 5 or 10 years that has to explain EVERY LITTLE THING just do it in a back of of an anniversary issue or annual. And make it brief so it's not too constricting for writers.

[Joe-Dono]

stupid question time... why is superman electric?

[Zacharius]

Code vs killing is a bad idea.

Original Superman killed; it was better that way.

[pauwoo]

Electro Supes

Superman Red & Blue

New Superboy

Grant Morrison

[Sean Whitmore]

Grant Morrison

Must have missed the issue where the idea of "Grant Morrison" was introduced. What is it, some crazy form of kryptonite?


SEAN

[666MasterOfPuppets]

Another thing I see as a bad idea is the red sun weakness. And losing all of his powers when under a red sun IMMEDIATELY. Some powers, like his invulnerability, should be intrinsically tied to his molecular structure or something.

Bah.

[4thHorseman]

stupid question time... why is superman electric?

Nobody knows

[Iroquois]

Another thing I see as a bad idea is the red sun weakness. And losing all of his powers when under a red sun IMMEDIATELY. Some powers, like his invulnerability, should be intrinsically tied to his molecular structure or something.

Bah.
I concur with the part about losing his powers instantly. If he's storing yellow sun energy, then red sun won't suck them away. He'll just won't be refueling any more, thus ending up powerless at some point.

And add the stupid sun lamps in this. Even Kryptonite isn't that cheap.

[mlcm]

I concur with the part about losing his powers instantly. If he's storing yellow sun energy, then red sun won't suck them away. He'll just won't be refueling any more, thus ending up powerless at some point.

And add the stupid sun lamps in this. Even Kryptonite isn't that cheap.

The Superman from Grant Morrison's DC One Million was victim of a power drain thanks to the yellow sun. Luckily, he punched the shit out of time and got better.

[666MasterOfPuppets]

I concur with the part about losing his powers instantly. If he's storing yellow sun energy, then red sun won't suck them away. He'll just won't be refueling any more, thus ending up powerless at some point.

And add the stupid sun lamps in this. Even Kryptonite isn't that cheap.

I'm more supportive of the "yellow sun turns his powers on, red sun turns them off (eventually)" way.

And agreed on the sun lamps...

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Superman wasn't broken in 2001, but after many unnessecary "fixes", he certainly is now.

He wasn't broken in 1986 either....

[Super Buddies Forever]

I don't think many people would have a problem, myself included, with the New Earth origin/altered continuity had Birthright never happened. The last five years of Superman have been a trainwreck due to MoS being retconned away and then all of that being washed away within two years of its introduction.

I would have accepted Birthright had it come out right after IC. I would have accepted New Earth Superman had Birthright never been published. Together it's just been too much. At least when Zero Hour occurred, nothing was really altered with Superman's origin.

And no, I never had a problem with Post-Crisis introductions of Pre-Crisis concepts. My personal favorite was Bibbo's Krypto. Had Loeb really wanted to bring a super-powered dog back into the equation, that dog should have just been caught in a Cadmus experiment or something. As it stood, it was just too much to accept that there just so happened to be another dog named Krypto living in the faux-Silver Age Krypton while ignoring the other one ever existed.

Looking back on it, this constant tug of war with Superman's status quo really did begin back in the Loeb/McGuinness era. Suddenly Jimmy Olsen had been de-aged to 12, there was the failed attempt to reinsert the Silver Age Krypton (I breathed a massive sigh of relief when RTK2 undid that), we had new versions of Krypto, Bizarro, and Supergirl that ignored the characters of the same names that had existed in the same continuity before, and Lex Luthor became a cackling power suit wearing goon.

I'll agree that it's amazing that Batman has never been touched to this degree. The only glaring retcons I can think that ever happened to Batman due to timestream hijinx (aka editorial mucking) were Jason Todd becoming a juvenile delinquent and Joe Chill's status as the Wayne killer (and, even in the years immediately following Zero Hour up through the Murderer/Fugitive arc, it was always kept ambiguous whether Chill hadn't done it or if it was just Batman's paranoia getting to him following his alternate timeline experience during Zero Hour). Everything else more or less happened as published.

It's hard to take any Superman canonicity seriously at this point, because you know the second a new editorial team comes into power Superman's history will just be altered to fit the childhoods of those in power. When those who grew up reading Post-Crisis Supes take over, we'll see the reinsertion of cold Krypton, Matrix, and Eradicator. That won't last long, because then the Loeb fanboys will move in, or maybe someone who really liked Birthright.

I just want it to stop. Make me a promise that Superman's history will go untouched for the new few decades and let me warm up to this New Earth version before you pull the rug out from under me again.

[DeadXMan]

What ever happen to Bibbo and Krypto(n)

[J. Robb]

He wasn't broken in 1986 either....
No, he wasn't, which makes this decade's creative teams look even worse. Not only did they not learn from past mistakes, they've made the mistakes the norm.

[Iroquois]

At least until the reboot, Superman was consistent and so was the change that followed. It was later, when things got retconned out of nowhere (including the whole Birthright origin debacle) that the real problems started.

[kello]

stupid question time... why is superman electric?

To the best of my knowledge, he got the powers from doing the "electric slide" too much.

[Super Buddies Forever]

At least until the reboot, Superman was consistent and so was the change that followed. It was later, when things got retconned out of nowhere (including the whole Birthright origin debacle) that the real problems started.

Exactly. While I can understand how pre-'86 fans must have felt when MoS erased the continuity of old (especially in light of "my" era now being erased), at least the writers and editors stuck with it for 15 plus years. While they did add new elements, they did so within the confines of the world Byrne set up. They respected that it was the origin, even if they weren't happy with some of the changes.

Now it feels that some creative teams are more eager on defining Superman's past than moving him forward into the future. What was the bloody point of Birthright if it was going to be rendered null and void within two years of becoming the official origin? What's more, was it ever established HOW Birthright became canon? I recall some bizarre time travel story in Superman 200, but the implications never made much sense to me.

Where are the Linear Men when you need them? They never let this go on when the DCU was under their watch.

[Zombie Superman]

As a married man, I'd like to defend both the marriage AND the addition of Chris Kent.

Both were certainly done with more maturity and longer-lasting ramifications than Spidey's now late marriage and his late daughter.

Horrid ideas I dislike intensely:

Electro Superman

The Byrne Krypton

Various 90s stories, post-Death of Superman

Matrix Supergirl

Steven Seagle and Scott McDaniel's run on Superman

"For Tomorrow"

The fact that as yet, we've seen neither hide or spit-curl of the Earth-1 Superman

Dominus

More to come...

Z\S/

[Iroquois]

I defend the marriage too. But not Chris. Chris realized what fears I had since I read he was adopted by Lois and Superman. I hate the idea of Superman Jr. and Chris is already in control of all his powers and can apparently carry out rescue missions.

[Zacharius]

Worst idea.

Lois Lane.

She gets into trouble so often it´s ridiculous.

If Superman had a medal for every time he’s rescued Lois Lane, he’d have enough metal to build a battleship, for, as all Metropolis knows, these rescues have run the gamut from bandits to burning buildings. Extricating Lois from trouble has become daily routine for Superman! (Jul/Aug 1946: “Clark Kent’s Bodyguard!”).

There was one story where Lois jumped out of window just to prove Superman always rescues her and modern Lois is equally lousy.

Celibate Superman would be a better idea.

[Zombie Superman]

Worst idea.

Lois Lane.

She gets into trouble so often it´s ridiculous.



There was one story where Lois jumped out of window just to prove Superman always rescues her and modern Lois is equally lousy.

Celibate Superman would be a better idea.

You're single, aren't you?

Z\S/

[Iroquois]

I think he was being mostly sarcastic. And he's not very far off, even though it really depends on the writer. If you take L&C:TNAoS, the situation was ridiculous. The woman would be in danger at least three times per episode.

On the other hand, the original Golden Age Lois Lane, much of a bitch as she might have been to Clark, she was kick-ass.

[666MasterOfPuppets]

As a married man, I'd like to defend both the marriage AND the addition of Chris Kent.

Both were certainly done with more maturity and longer-lasting ramifications than Spidey's now late marriage and his late daughter.

Horrid ideas I dislike intensely:

Electro Superman

The Byrne Krypton

Various 90s stories, post-Death of Superman

Matrix Supergirl

Steven Seagle and Scott McDaniel's run on Superman

"For Tomorrow"

The fact that as yet, we've seen neither hide or spit-curl of the Earth-1 Superman

Dominus

More to come...

Z\S/

OT: Since when does Spidey have a daughter?

Back on topic: Agreed on Seagle and McDaniel. It failed to meet my expectations. I remember Seagle saying things like that the whole idea for him was to make Superman do things no one else could. Nothing like that happened.

Disagreed on "For Tomorrow", but hey, I understand why many people didn't like it.

[Knight Lancer]

OT: Since when does Spidey have a daughter?

Exactly....

[Zacharius]

Early on, however, Lois Lane comes to realize that she is under Superman’s personal protection and that, no matter how dire her predicament, the Man of Steel will always arrive in time to rescue her.

“Why should I worry,” replies Lois smugly, “when Superman has made it his full-time activity to look after helpless me?”

“Superman has always managed to show up and save me whenever I was in trouble! I’m sure he won’t fail me now!”

Maybe it´s just me, but I think Lois is a gold-digger who expects constant services from Superman (regardless of what other responsibilities Superman may have)

[J. Robb]

My only real problem with Chris Kent was his lacklustre introduction. Clark and Lois adopting a Kryptonian kid should have been a big deal, as big as the Death story or the wedding. Instead, he's considered so unimportant DC couldn't even bother to finish his introductory story.

[blackphoenix]

I don't know if anyone has mentioned it, but that Dr. Frankenfurter looking dude (from that Spilled Blood or whatever storyline with the racist Bloodsport and that Heavy Metal chick) kinda sucked. Some dude in a corset who claims to be responsible for all the wars thru history? Yeah, ok.

And the Cir-El Supergirl.

And the CURRENT Supergirl.

[dupersuper]

I don't know if anyone has mentioned it, but that Dr. Frankenfurter looking dude (from that Spilled Blood or whatever storyline with the racist Bloodsport and that Heavy Metal chick) kinda sucked. Some dude in a corset who claims to be responsible for all the wars thru history? Yeah, ok.


Bloodthirst, Bloodsport, and Hi-Tech.

[llozymandias]

The way too many writers (since the 70s) have written Superman as though he was the george reeves version. A very low iq character who thinks with his fists. Also too many of those writers wrote him as a very easily beaten character.


Then there is how Luthor has been written over the years; too often in the 70s & early-mid 80s he was written as a buffoon. In the late 80s & the nineties he was written as nothing more than a cheap copy of the Kingpin. Now he is written either as a bigot (who only hates superman because Kal is an alien) or as a mis-guided good guy who thinks he is saving humanity from Superman's harmful influence. Basically Lex is written too often as DC's J Jonah Jameson. Why can't Lex be written right again? An evil super-genius who wants to conquer & rule everything, & who hates Superman because Kal is Lex's biggest obstacle.


Changing Rao from the kryptonian name for "GOD" to the name of krypton's sun & the name of a "sun-god" who actually existed in krypton's past.

[The Batman]

Maybe it´s just me, but I think Lois is a gold-digger who expects constant services from Superman (regardless of what other responsibilities Superman may have)

Yeah, those quotes need to be placed into context before we can start talking about what a superhero golddigger Lois is.

[Froggy]

what was that story where superman fought the indian gods? not bashing that one just wanted to know. only stories i hated were the over complicated continuity related ones

[Ite]

http://images2.fotosik.pl/98/7ac74c53078e18e6.jpg

[TROUBLEZ]

I don't think this is a horrible idea, but it doesn't make too much sense:

Superman in All-Star and I'm assuming the Silver Age, is portrayed as super-brilliant. He has robots that can do many extraordinary things, he has developed suits that can mimic his powers for 24 hours, etc, etc. So why doesn't he provide his intellect and inventions with the rest of the world. The Super-Suit would of course fall into the wrong hands, but if he's super brilliant, why not use his intellect to further the advancement of the human race?

In "For Tomorrow" the padre asks Superman if he can cure cancer, and Superman says he doesn't know, but even if he could he wouldn't, because he doesn't have the right to do that. Why not?

If he' so smart, why is it okay for him to change human development/destiny by stopping giant missles, invasions, etc, but doesn't want to share his technology, inventions or possible cures?

[Zacharius]

If he' so smart, why is it okay for him to change human development/destiny by stopping giant missles, invasions, etc, but doesn't want to share his technology, inventions or possible cures?

Usual excuse is that if superhumans did everything normal humans would become less important and that would be too much for their fragile egos.

Real reason is that publishers realised that Superman couldn´t stop Hitler in comics because in real life WW2 would have continued anyway.

Publishers have continued status quo - policy since then.

[666MasterOfPuppets]

I don't think this is a horrible idea, but it doesn't make too much sense:

Superman in All-Star and I'm assuming the Silver Age, is portrayed as super-brilliant. He has robots that can do many extraordinary things, he has developed suits that can mimic his powers for 24 hours, etc, etc. So why doesn't he provide his intellect and inventions with the rest of the world. The Super-Suit would of course fall into the wrong hands, but if he's super brilliant, why not use his intellect to further the advancement of the human race?

In "For Tomorrow" the padre asks Superman if he can cure cancer, and Superman says he doesn't know, but even if he could he wouldn't, because he doesn't have the right to do that. Why not?

If he' so smart, why is it okay for him to change human development/destiny by stopping giant missles, invasions, etc, but doesn't want to share his technology, inventions or possible cures?

Perhaps because he thinks that humankind isn't mature enough to handle that tech for their own betterment?

[Iroquois]

Superman, much as he wants to fit in, knows that he's an alien. I'd assume he believes that it's not his place to interfere as much. He's there as a shield of a sort, but nothing beyond that.

[TROUBLEZ]

Superman, much as he wants to fit in, knows that he's an alien. I'd assume he believes that it's not his place to interfere as much. He's there as a shield of a sort, but nothing beyond that.

So there is degrees as to how much Superman will interfere?

How does he decide what is interfering and what is just saving lives? A disease that he might be able to cure should be allowed to kill people, but what about a country that is experiencing mass genocide? Does he leave Metropolis and save the people or choose not too?

I just dont think the cancer thing should have been brought up, but that's just me.

[Iroquois]

Actually, yes, there are degrees. The thing with Superman is that he will sort of "act in impulse", in the sense that if he hears a bridge falling, he'll catch it. But when it comes to gigantic decisions that affect directly humanity as a whole, he'll think about it twice. Imagine him curing cancer and two years in the future, the Earth being overpopulated. Who do you blame then?

[dupersuper]

There are plenty of geniuses throughout history who didn't cure cancer...

[The Batman]

Actually, yes, there are degrees. The thing with Superman is that he will sort of "act in impulse", in the sense that if he hears a bridge falling, he'll catch it. But when it comes to gigantic decisions that affect directly humanity as a whole, he'll think about it twice. Imagine him curing cancer and two years in the future, the Earth being overpopulated. Who do you blame then?


Pretty much. Superman helps out in small and immediate ways like catching the occaisional falling girl reporter or stopping the odd bald evil genius. Things like the elimination of diesease and hunger and war, which to happen will require humankind to grow up and put behind them their differences and to work together towards a common good, he probably doesn't do because it'd mean that humanity would never have to grow up or mature, humanity would remain a child race under the care of a dotting overprotective Super-patriarch.

As it stands, Superman still looks after us, but not to such a degree that there aren't still things that we'll have to figure out for ourselves.

[ultramandingo]

........howabot Joe Shuster Jerry Siegel selling off rights to their character for $130 !!!!!

http://www.greatkrypton.com/superman/creators.php

[Choppa]

As it stands, Superman still looks after us, but not to such a degree that there aren't still things that we'll have to figure out for ourselves.

Along with this I always believed that Superman does help in some capacity in order to inspire humanity to rise above it's problems and have hope adn to be a role model for other superheroes.

[Zacharius]

he probably doesn't do because it'd mean that humanity would never have to grow up or mature, humanity would remain a child race under the care of a dotting overprotective Super-patriarch.

This is still rationalisation to keep the world somewhat similar to real life Earth.

Readers simply do not want perfect paradise.

The prosaic reason for the lack of true change in the DCU involves publishing schedules and audience accessibility—the world the superheroes inhabit needs to be readily understandable by new readers; the imaginary world must match the real world up to a point. More importantly, a true superhero utopia would lack drama, and the imperfections of these universes makes room for the conflict that the stories require. (Admittedly, Gaiman's Miracleman issues challenge this last argument).

[Powerboy]

Hell, I liked it. I got a kick out of Superman having to figure out ways to use his new powers to pull off the rescues he used to with ease.

Don't get me wrong, there were bad stories during that time, but that's because it was the 90s, not because Superman had new powers.


SEAN

I think DC gave a good explanation at the time when people were criticizing the electro-Superman. I read that talk show hosts were making fun of the powers and saying that's not the Superman they remember. Key word, "Remember" as in "When was the last time most of them actually bought a Superman comic?" As DC put it, they can make all the jokes they want but we are talking about a character who has been around for decades and people just were not reading him anymore. Anything that shakes up the status quo may bring ridicule from the purists but it also brings readers.

[Powerboy]

5. Lex Luthor, static tycoon who can magically foil any and all attempts to expose him no matter how stupid and unrealistic his actions are.

15. Krypton as a cold, barren, lifeless dystopia that deserved to blow up and has no meaning to Superman.

16. Any additional survivors of Krypton beyond Krypto, Supergirl/Kara, General Zod, and Zod's little band of goons.

17. Superman, whiny, henpicked, incompetent crybaby with a major yellow streak.

18. Interlinked books where you're forced to buy books you may not like or may not be able to afford just to follow one story.

21. Superman and Batman being at odds and not trusting each other instead of having a snarky but profound friendship.


5. At first, Lex Luthor as a corporate owner was a good idea. Luthor the mad scientist had been done to death and was in an endless repetition of mad scheme foiled by Superman, off to jail again. Corporate Luthor was a villain for the 1980s that could be taken much more seriously. The problem, as with all good things, is that it too finally got old from endless repetition too and now mad scientist Luthor is starting to look good again for a while.

15. This was again a more 1980s cultural view of the dangers of technology and a more humanist view that its the human qualities that gave Superman his greatness. Yes it dumped a lot of the mythical perfect man idea but it worked in its time.

16. But Krypto is okay? Its just a matter of keeping around the characters and situations you've grown to like.

17. I don't get that at all unless you mean more a real person than a symbol.

18. I agree with that one. With the price of comics today, this Countdown "Try to make me buy another book" thing stinks.

21. Six of one, a half dozen of the other. The friendship was warm and fuzzy but it really didn't make sense unless they get to know each other for a long time and learn to trust each other considerig their very different attitudes and approaches.

[DMike]

15. Krypton as a cold, barren, lifeless dystopia that deserved to blow up and has no meaning to Superman.

I'm still confused at the idea that the Byrne Krypton somehow deserved to blow up for being cold, barren, and lifeless compared to the Silver Age version. Is there some kind of unwritten standard that a society has to be warm, thriving, and emotional to deserve to exist? If anything, one would think the kind of planets that deserve to blow up are the violent war-faring ones like Apokolips or the Dominator/Spider Guild/Gordanian homeworlds.

[PatrickG]

I'm still confused at the idea that the Byrne Krypton somehow deserved to blow up for being cold, barren, and lifeless compared to the Silver Age version. Is there some kind of unwritten standard that a society has to be warm, thriving, and emotional to deserve to exist? If anything, one would think the kind of planets that deserve to blow up are the violent war-faring