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Post by Icctrombone on Dec 26, 2020 7:44:59 GMT -5
He's called the big Boy Scout by some. I grew up on the George Reeves TV show on reruns and started to consume his comics starting with Superman # 227. My brother and I started to really love his stuff with the Kryptonite nevermore saga. These days there are more popular comic characters and the anti hero or silly hero like Punisher, Deadpool or Harley Quinn seem to sell more than him. What are your feelings about the Man of Steel?
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Post by Deleted on Dec 26, 2020 9:34:21 GMT -5
Hulk Hogan is the guy who got me into wrestling. Superman is the guy who got me into comics.
From the first time I read a Superman comic, I was in awe of his awesomeness and powers. Then there were the Reeve films, including Superman III (the most unfairly maligned superhero movie ever!). And I really wanted the Kenner Super Powers figure.
I like what he stands for. I respect the fact he spawned a genre and an industry. I feel he can still stand for something good in the 2020s.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 26, 2020 10:06:11 GMT -5
I was in awe of his awesomeness and powers. I like what he stands for. I respect the fact he spawned a genre and an industry. I feel he can still stand for something good in the 2020s. In total agreement. For me Superman, Batman and Spider-Man are my comic book trinity.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 26, 2020 10:08:02 GMT -5
Coincidentally, they are mine too!
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,706
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Post by shaxper on Dec 26, 2020 10:24:33 GMT -5
I adore Superman, but mostly as a piece of cultural mythology. He is an ideal to me, but it's challenging to read compelling comics about the man who is both physically and (when done right) emotionally indestructible. That's why I love the '90s triangle era of comics best. They gave emphasis to Clark's daily life struggles and the struggles of those around him as a means of telling compelling stories instead of repeatedly trying to convince us that the villain of the week was the most dire threat Superman had ever faced.
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Post by brutalis on Dec 26, 2020 10:28:36 GMT -5
I grew up in a time when Superman was the pinnacle of how comics popularity was being measured. Supes and Batman were easily the most recognizable and popular superheroes to most readers. They were the only ones to have multiple series. They were the 2 who had television shows and cartoons. They had the majority of merchandising. Both were there 1st fir big budget movies.
I wasn't a big follower of the Kryptonian but I occasionally picked up his comic when covers caught my attention. Between all of his merchandising, the Reeve's television show and his cartoons I knew his back story and cast of characters. But the hero himself was never really a favorite. He was too powerful, many times portrayed as far too superior in a way that made him seem like a jerk or other times just dumb. With all his abilities he was capable of solving any problem or defeating any villain. That wasn't interesting to youthful me.
There are a great many things though which I do like and appreciate. He SHOULD be the big boy scout. He was raised by traditional mid eastern farm folk. He was a part of our world, adopted and accepted, growing up as a normal child with loving parents who had survived the great depression. He was raised to respect, honor, fight for and be a honorable, moral man. Because he CAN do any and everything that spoke to and in turn taught many a child (hopefully adults as well) to try and always do your best. To respect the world around you and that good is better than evil.
As a heroic ideal Superman should stand tall above all others. He is what every other person or hero aspires to be. He is what every criminal, villain or bad person despises. THAT is what defines or makes Superman such a powerful inspiration. Yet for all of those human qualities which are part and parcel of the character, he often times over the decades becomes the God-like too powerful to be trusted and should be feared or put under control for "our" safety and protection.
Historically I appreciate ALL the richness of what Superman is, and I have a fondness for different era's of his mythology. Just not MY favorite, but is a recognizable and big part of my youth which I enjoyed being able to read and watch growing up.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 26, 2020 10:55:33 GMT -5
Despite my positive comments, I can aim for nuance, too.
I didn’t appreciate it when I read some vintage Superman comics - and he seemed to “dig out” powers like Super-Hypnosis and Super-Ventriloquism. He didn’t need to be be super at everything. What’s next, ‘super-invisibility’?
I also never understood him saying things like, “Great Rao!” I can understand him being curious and nostalgic about his heritage, but “Great Rao!” stuff and the like seemed odd. I thought Byrne’s Superman was more “real”.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 26, 2020 11:09:39 GMT -5
it depends on who is writing, honestly.
some writers just don't "get" Supes (looking at YOU, Bendis), and it makes his book tedious and boring.
Other writers think he's too powerful, and find ways to weaken him to make him more relatable (which sometimes results in awful crap like Red-Kryptonite stories from way back, or Superman Blue . . lightning powers? eccchhhhh. . .even tho the more recent version was a nod to much earlier Superman Red/Blue story).
but when the writer is good? the book is great.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 26, 2020 12:46:55 GMT -5
He's my 2nd favourite DC character after Batman. The majority of my DC bronze age books are Superman, or Superman affiliated.
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Post by chadwilliam on Dec 26, 2020 13:31:04 GMT -5
I love the guy.
The crazy Red K transformations; Siegel and Shuster's Champion of the Oppressed; "All my powers and I couldn't save him"; George Reeves; the Hamilton/Maggin Luthor who possesses a noble humanity he keeps hidden from the world; The Krypton Crawl; the spit curl; the Fleischer cartoons; 'Superman's Song', by The Crash Test Dummies; Jimmy Olsen having his own fan club; early, spunky Lois Lane; meek and mild Clark Kent; Maggin's tragic mythological take on the character; the weirdest Rogues Gallery of them all; Beppo, the Super-Monkey; Curt Swan; Imaginary Tales; the ruthlessness of The Ultra-Humanite; his infinite powers acting to bring out the most creative and intelligent of ideas from those writers capable of accepting the challenge; all those great Silver Age team-ups with Batman and races with The Flash; the guy who was more than just a symbol and trademark.
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Post by Ricky Jackson on Dec 26, 2020 19:06:09 GMT -5
I wasn't really a fan of the books as a kid in the 80s. I had an issue here and there but there were tons of characters I liked more. I loved the Reeve movies though. As I got older I discovered the Silver Age version, mostly thanks to a chapter from the Comic Book Heroes (a book that turned me on to so many great comics and artists). I really do love those stories with all the wackiness and Swan art. Outside of that era, not so much, but I did enjoy the Bryne run and what I did read of the Triangle Era. Planning on trying out Superman: Year One, but mostly for the JR JR art, and I ordered the Krypton Chronicles from TwoMorrows with some Xmas $
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Post by badwolf on Dec 26, 2020 19:22:40 GMT -5
I voted he's good but it totally depends on the era and who is writing him. I didn't care for him pre-Crisis (too powerful and kind of a jerk), but I loved the Byrne runs.
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Post by codystarbuck on Dec 26, 2020 21:01:27 GMT -5
Superman rates the top, in my book. I grew up with The New Adv, of Superman, on Saturday mornings, Action and Superman Comics, from DC, and stood in line for a half hour to see Superman, The Movie, the day after Christmas. To me, he is the epitome of a hero; not because of his strength and superpowers; but because he stands for doing what is right, because you can, not because of rewards, recognition or any other selfish reason. Superman stories did much to help shape my moral views.
I scoff when I read that he is too hard to write or isn't relatable; he's hard to write for hacks and he isn't relatable when you try to look at him as the same kind of neurotic mess that other costumed heroes are made. Superman is a virtuous hero; but, not a holier-than-thou one. He is a boy scout, in the best possible sense of the term. That is always something to admire, especially in darker, more cynical times. He is something to aspire to. There was a time, when a boy scout was a badge of honor and it was used to describe the character of people, not to deride them. Neil Armstrong was an Eagle Scout.
Yet, despite being a virtuous character, Superman had real, relatable emotions. He suffered loss and tragedy and grieved for those who were gone. He kept memorials to people who only he knew, and those he never knew, from Krypton. He loved a woman with all his heart, but denied himself from being with her, for fear that his enemies might try to hurt or kill her, top get to him. He was raised by good, kind, moral humans, who taught him what it meant to be human and he was true to that, yet he still felt like an outsider, because of what he could do.
It is true that there are a select few really great writers of Superman; in my opinion, the greatest was Eliott S! Maggin. He wrote a plethora of Superman stories in the Bronze Age, but he also wrote two novels: Last Son of Krypton & Miracle Monday. Within those novels, Superman is a whole person. As a youth, he befriends the quirky and rather intimidating Lex Luthor, because he recognizes a similar outsider nature, even to the point of being the butt of Lex's jokes. As an adult, he still clings to that friendship, feeling that if he cane somehow cut through Lex's anger and insecurities and reach the person he has always seen inside, Lex could do more than he ever could to benefit mankind. As it was, Maggin's Lex kept a series of cover identities, many of which did altruistic things. He also presented Albert Einstein as the man who arranged for the Kent's to be driving past the landing point for Kal-El's rocket. He was contacted by Jor-El's consciousness, as the greatest mind on the planet where Jor-El had targeted his son's rocket. Einstein knew he was not the kind of person who would raise a good man, having had his own issues as a husband and father. He felt that a child from an advanced race needed to know what it was like to be a human and to understand the best traits of humanity and he saw those in Jonathan and Martha Kent. Einstein could teach the mind, but the Kent's could nurture the soul and forge a man who would be a champion for all mankind, who never saw himself as superior; just gifted.
To me, those are values and virtues to be celebrated, not softened or darkened up, just because it is fashionable. The world around him may be dark; but, Superman is the light shining in the darkness, who won't stop fighting to protect the innocence, until there is no life left in him.
Superman never made any money Savin' the world from Solomon Grundy And sometimes I despair The world will never see another man like him.
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Post by mikelmidnight on Dec 28, 2020 13:11:20 GMT -5
I love the character as he is, to my mind, the iconic superhero. But actual stories about him rarely live up to his potential (and I find him personally difficult to write; whether in fanfic or writing a Supes-standin, I prefer to present him as someone other characters interact or are compared with).
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 28, 2020 13:28:22 GMT -5
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