Tom Brevoort on Superman

[Aziz Abbasi]

I'd really love to see an iconic superhero still bonded by marriage to his wife, is that wrong?
I surely hope Brevoort never gets to be Superman's editor

[Mat001]

Superman can be lonely and feeling isolated without taking away his marriage or the Kents. Jeph Loeb, Kurt Busiek, Fabian Nicieza and Geoff Johns all proved that these last few years. "Last Son", "The Insect Queen", "The Supergirl From Krypton" and Action Comics #850. And that's with the marriage in the present day. Being the last of your kind makes you more of an outcast than not being married or having any other family to speak of. I can read Action Comics #850 and get everything I want in a Superman who feels isolated and lonely.

[[]D[]/\/\[]D @ Nite/So-tite]

Killing off Superman's marriage is like killing off the entire reason why Lois was trying to figure out that the man she loves is both in one same body.

It makes a hero proud to have a love one with him routing him on and also she helped him and even recovered his body in Return of Superman with John and Conner.

What makes me irate about Tom is that he is the reason they killed Spider-Man's marriage. He rid Scarlet Witch because he felt the Avengers needed more A-Listers. Well, the Justice League started out as A-LISTERS!!! They revamped the series in 1987 with Batman the leader. It's these things to the reason why comic companies should never have guys like this making crazy decisions. That's what will kill comic sales.

Most people like the Superman/Lois marriage. Most people like the mix grouping on the Justice League. Oh, and in late 1991-1992, Superman joined the Justice League with the B-Listers if I remember ^_^. Batman had his own team in 1983 called, "Batman and the Outsiders." I don't think Tom looks at the history. He makes unethical judgments just to please himself and not the fans who buy the book.

Are you sure this isn't rather more Joe Q than Tom?

[Mr. Holmes]

Even if you killed the Kents and removed the marriage, Superman isn't going to be lonely. He has a whole family with Superboy, Supergirl, etc. He has very close friends in Batman and other JLA-ers. He has people in the same boat like Martian Manhunter and Wonder Woman. In a shared DC Universe with families, history, and multiple heroes, removing the marriage isn't going to evoke any "lonely god" Superman the way these guys hope. It only works in something like All Star Superman where it's its own continuity.

Maybe for the movies or Earth One they can do it that way. But Superman isn't going to be lonely unless you massacre the DCU in some contrived way. Also, Smallville's 200th episode Homecoming showed that the marriage can still be done in a very entertaining fashion.

[Kurt Busiek]

Superman can be lonely and feeling isolated without taking away his marriage or the Kents. Jeph Loeb, Kurt Busiek, Fabian Nicieza and Geoff Johns all proved that these last few years. "Last Son", "The Insect Queen", "The Supergirl From Krypton" and Action Comics #850. And that's with the marriage in the present day. Being the last of your kind makes you more of an outcast than not being married or having any other family to speak of. I can read Action Comics #850 and get everything I want in a Superman who feels isolated and lonely.

We were working pretty hard to get that in there, though. I don't disagree with Tom.

kdb

[Silver_Leopard]

To me Brevoort sounds like your typical bitter middle aged man, who can't get over the fact that his wife left him and took him to the cleaners.

Well, I don't think he is doing that. But he doesn't seem to like the marriage of Lois and Clark. To be honest, Clark has been that type of person who didn't know others like him exist. He met the Justice League and it worked.

As for the JLI, I did like Fire and Ice, but they weren't great compared to the Big 7 or the Big 10 (when three more members joined). I think the JLI were just comedy and such. Unlike the old Justice League which was fun and action-packed.

I feel that Superman's status quo should not be changed. Only a few adjustments, but not to the fact where the persona that makes Kal-El who he is disappear from us readers. I also think that Superman being the last son from Krypton makes him already lonely. Plus, there is no one like him on Earth (except there is Wonder Woman, Batman, etc). I would build a story to where he finds the Big 7 or Big 10 as a fourth family to him. I could explain this last part, but e-mail me if you want. I can explain that part.

[Flash Gordon]

Superman can use a ton of guidance now. All the elements are there, just no one has really put them together into a single narrative. For instance, Geoff Johns and Kurt Busiek did some cool stuff during their own runs on ACTION and SUPERMAN, respectively. Then the New Krypton fiasco occurred, but still followed a similar narrative, at least to a degree. Than JMS came and tossed everything out the window and did a totally different narrative.

I mean, there's other instances, but right there it shows that the character has no one narrative right now. That's what he needs; making him a swinger, or a single man, or a lonely little boy won't help anything. He just needs a direction, a good writer to come along and stick with him for a while.

Oh, and if anyone tried to pull a OMD on Lois and Clark, I'm done. Lois and Clark are star-crossed lovers. I wouldn't mind going back to the original status quo of the Lois/Clark/Superman drama, but only if it was a total reboot. Otherwise, there is nothing Superman can gain from being single. Lois Lane is not Mary Jane Watson, she's just as inaugural to the story as Clark Kent.

[[]D[]/\/\[]D @ Nite/So-tite]

Oh, and if anyone tried to pull a OMD on Lois and Clark, I'm done. Lois and Clark are star-crossed lovers. I wouldn't mind going back to the original status quo of the Lois/Clark/Superman drama, but only if it was a total reboot. Otherwise, there is nothing Superman can gain from being single. Lois Lane is not Mary Jane Watson, she's just as inaugural to the story as Clark Kent.

Still, most would say the same thing when it comes to MJ and Peter.

[Kurt Busiek]

To me Brevoort sounds like your typical bitter middle aged man, who can't get over the fact that his wife left him and took him to the cleaners.

Well, I don't think he is doing that.

Tom's actually a sappy, happily-married type.

That he doesn't think it's what Superman should be (and remember, it's someone else's phrasing, not Tom's) doesn't mean that he doesn't think anyone should be. His daily life isn't meant to be the stuff of adventure, starring a displaced Kryptonian orphan.

I doubt he thinks Batman should be a salaried office commuter, or Wolverine a lifelong anime fan, either.

Not all judgments about fictional characters are intended as reflections of one's self. I'd think very few of them are. Except to the extent that we have to imagine those circumstances and how a person would react in them, given their history and such, which requires a certain amount of tailored projection.

kdb

[Flash Gordon]

Still, most would say the same thing when it comes to MJ and Peter.

Yes, and they would have a point; but the fact remains that Lois Lane first appeared in Action Comics #1 right alongside the Man of Steel. She has been seen consecutively since, and therefore one can say that she is as much a main character in a Superman story as Superman himself.

[stk]

There's nothing wrong with that, it shows the character has progressed. When I started reading Marvel comics in the 80s, I liked that things have changed since the 60s, they weren't frozen in time like Archie comics.

I see a couple differences there.

Firstly, Marvel has always been a bit more about the characters, imo, while DC has been about icons. When you buy an issue of Amazing Spider-Man, you are buying a Peter Parker story, and when you buy an issue of Daredevil, you are buying a story about Matt Murdock. These characters put on costumes and have adventures, but they are still stories about Peter and Matt. But when you buy an issue of Superman, you are buying a Superman story. When you buy an issue of Batman, you are buying a Batman story.

That's one of the things that attracts me to DC at it's best (while I do admit it's one of the things that holds DC behind Marvel in terms of popularity). But I like the different approaches. I like that if I'm in the mood for one thing on any particular day I can go to one company and if I'm in the mood for the other, I can go to the other.

Secondly, back in the '80s, Marvel and DC could still publish stories that were ostensibly about the same characters that began being published in the 1960s, with time maybe moving a little more slowly in their fictional universes. Maybe 10 years had gone by instead of 20, and the characters could still grow and move forward incrementally. But now we add another 30 years onto that, and it doesn't work very well anymore. The characters have been buried under the weight of their own continuity. DC tried to sidestep the problem by half-starting over in '86, although they botched it in a lot of ways. Marvel's taken the different approach of altering or flat-out ignoring giant chunks of character history that can no longer be reconciled with life in 2010. For example, depending on whether Captain America was unfrozen before the Civil Rights movement, Vietnam, etc. or decades after all those things, alters the character in a pretty major way.

The days of the 1980s, when both publishers could continue to build on their 1960s continuities without complications and repercussions are long since over.

So the two choices are either cutting chunks of continuity out semi-regularly, or restarting the timeline every so often.

I tend to feel that Marvels characters have a little more leeway, but in the case of DC's icons, if you let them "grow" too much, they lose what made them iconic in the first place.


All that said, I agree with anyone who thinks removing Superman's marriage somehow would be a mistake. I really don't think it can be done within continuity that wouldn't damage the character a hundred times more than it would ever help. DC would need to restart continuity again if they wanted to do that, imo.

[carabas]

Wolverine a lifelong anime fan

Somehow I can't imagine there not being a locked room in the X-Mansion that holds a complete sets of Lone Wolf And Cub, Lady Snowblood, and DVDs of Rurouni Kenshin, among other things.

[Jon Clark]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Flash Gordon
Oh, and if anyone tried to pull a OMD on Lois and Clark, I'm done. Lois and Clark are star-crossed lovers. I wouldn't mind going back to the original status quo of the Lois/Clark/Superman drama, but only if it was a total reboot. Otherwise, there is nothing Superman can gain from being single. Lois Lane is not Mary Jane Watson, she's just as inaugural to the story as Clark Kent.

Still, most would say the same thing when it comes to MJ and Peter.

And those people would be wrong.

Nothing against MJ- I loved her as Mrs. Parker, but she was a late comer to the Spider-man saga. Up until the actual marriage occurred she was just another romantic interest for Peter. In fact I'd venture to say Gwen Stacy was considered at that point more "the one true love" than MJ.

If Stan had decided to have Peter wed Gwen in the 70's, MJ would have been a footnote. If Marvel had gone with the Black Cat for the 1988 wedding rather than MJ (and had the newspaper strip follow suit after some build-up), I doubt people would have even noticed when the absent Ms Watson didn't come back into the series.

Lois on the other hand has been there since Action #1 and the triangle between her, Superman, and Clark was part of the storyline for almost the first 50 years (up til the break-up just prior to Crisis). And excluding the 1980's Superboy series she's been part of every other media incarnation of Superman.

The problem with Breevort's view is that you can't put the lightning back in the bottle after you break it. If you undo Superman and Lois outside of a total reboot, you can't put the triangle back in play because the readers already know there is no future in the relationship. With Spider-man you might have a shot at creating a "new MJ" or a string of them to fill the void over time, but with Superman once you remove Lois it's harder to replace all the roles she fills with a new character.

[Finganforn]

There's nothing wrong with that, it shows the character has progressed. When I started reading Marvel comics in the 80s, I liked that things have changed since the 60s, they weren't frozen in time like Archie comics.

Also, all characters are 'distorted', to use the same words you're replying to, from when they were created. Want an example? Peter Parker. Got totally reseted. He behaves like the old peter now, he commits the same old mistakes, etc. But having read lots of old stuff I know the character today is not the same, even if the High Concept sounds alike. Really, wouldn't sell if you did not use current themes which didn't exist as they are today back when they were created, and that means changing little parts (like Pete's sex life, dealing with beverages, and so forth).

The characters' silhouette may look the same, but times changed, creators changed, the whole social scene (politico-religious-economic-etc) is different, the public is not the same (even older readers changed over the years, unless they have very pointless lives or had a comma), creatively speaking there is no way in hell the characters are really the same - some changes are just less subtle than others, like a marriage which is one of many possible. Hell, not even characters like Bugs bunny and co. are exactly the same, and they live in worlds that barely resembles our own with their weird physics and no continued history.

[Silvermoth]

I disagree about the marriage but I completely agree with what else was said. I really don't understand how people say Superman is too nice or too perfect. A great writer and fan can see the humanity in him, the conflict and the power in him. He doesn't need to be an anti hero just to work as a character.

It's the same with Captain America. People say he's too perfect and sometimes he's been written as too perfect but that's the fault of lazy writing. That's not really who Captain America is. As a soldier he deserves respect but he's also conflicted and fasinating.