Crimebuster
CCF Podcast Guru
Making comics!
Posts: 3,944
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Post by Crimebuster on Feb 2, 2022 22:01:00 GMT -5
To quote the esteemed MDG If someone comes close to exposing your secret identity, all bets are off.Lois must ALWAYS be taught a lesson. Yet she refuses to learn it. Good for her!
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Post by Icctrombone on Feb 2, 2022 22:22:02 GMT -5
To quote the esteemed MDG If someone comes close to exposing your secret identity, all bets are off.Lois must ALWAYS be taught a lesson. Yet she refuses to learn it. Good for her! I have to disagree, she never solved his ID and gave up to date Clark Kent.
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Post by tarkintino on Feb 2, 2022 23:25:06 GMT -5
Lois is 100% correct that Clark is Superman. But because he uses his superpowers to constantly gaslight her, she ends up going to great lengths to prove to herself and everyone else around her that she's not stupid, or crazy, or wrong, as Superman and Clark keep claiming. Yeah, but she would not be in the position of defending her sanity to others (and herself) if she was not obsessed with Superman in the first place. She has such a sense of entitlement... ownership with Superman, that she comes off like someone with the behavior of a Class-A obsessed fan/stalker. Clark had pretty normal relationships with Jimmy, Perry, and just about everyone in his circle, however, with Lois, it was "Superman this, Superman, that" Ohh, if anyone ever needed one of those "what are people really thinking"-type of satires seen in MAD, Lois is the one. I'm sure he has enough robot duplicates to plant doubt into Lois' mind....
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Post by zaku on Feb 3, 2022 2:32:26 GMT -5
To quote the esteemed MDGIf someone comes close to exposing your secret identity, all bets are off.Lois must ALWAYS be taught a lesson. Fortunately, this trope is rightfully dead and gone. It might have been a nice narrative gimmick once, but then it just got offensive. :-P
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Post by zaku on Feb 3, 2022 6:26:40 GMT -5
Clark had pretty normal relationships with Jimmy Countercase: If you mean the relationship between Olsen and the "Clark Kent persona", it has always been portrayed as little more than a working relationship, I think?
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Post by Commander Benson on Feb 3, 2022 7:57:27 GMT -5
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Post by tonebone on Feb 3, 2022 8:31:09 GMT -5
I think Superman's Super-Dickery stem's 100 percent from:
A. Mort Weisinger was a bully, and found bullying funny and the natural order of things. He was a blowhard and a bully, and people rarely stood up to him. In his world, if you can bully and get away with it as the Alpha predator, that was the circle of life. You either bully, or be bullied. Superman would OBVIOUSLY be the Alpha.
B. Mort was aiming for a 8-12 year old audience, and - for better or worse - these stories fulfilled the fantasies of that age group... someone asked earlier "so if someone is bullying you, you bully them harder?" The answer is yes. That is the power fantasy of that age group, and, to them, a justifiable form of conflict resolution.
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Post by tarkintino on Feb 3, 2022 8:49:50 GMT -5
Clark had pretty normal relationships with Jimmy Countercase: If you mean the relationship between Olsen and the "Clark Kent persona", it has always been portrayed as little more than a working relationship, I think? Yes, I meant Clark, and he and Jimmy had a real friendship--one could see Clark's genuine affection for Olsen in a younger brother sense.
Oh, about that bathrobe or smoking jacket, Superman had no choice other than to destroy it: the Superman emblem's colors did not really mix well with that drab, muddy brown. Jimmy should have known better!
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Post by zaku on Feb 3, 2022 11:56:20 GMT -5
I think Superman's Super-Dickery stem's 100 percent from: A. Mort Weisinger was a bully, and found bullying funny and the natural order of things. He was a blowhard and a bully, and people rarely stood up to him. In his world, if you can bully and get away with it as the Alpha predator, that was the circle of life. You either bully, or be bullied. Superman would OBVIOUSLY be the Alpha. B. Mort was aiming for a 8-12 year old audience, and - for better or worse - these stories fulfilled the fantasies of that age group... someone asked earlier "so if someone is bullying you, you bully them harder?" The answer is yes. That is the power fantasy of that age group, and, to them, a justifiable form of conflict resolution. This. We also have to remember that Superman's behavior was by no means the norm for the other DC Comics heroes published in the same period. No one blames Barry or Hal today, even in hindsight, for how they treated Iris or Carole at the time. Compared to "Girls Have Cooties" Superman, they looked like two serious, responsable adults engaged in an honest and progressive relationship.
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Post by zaku on Feb 25, 2022 11:40:34 GMT -5
Recently I reread the 1986's miniseries about Lois Lane and it is EXCELLENT! I don't know why people don't talk about it more often. It's probably the best Pre-Crisis Lois Lane story I've ever read. I haven't read many of them, but I always remember them rather generic and bland. This is the first time she looks like a real human being and not just a storytelling gimmick or part of some idiotic love triangle. I'm talking about it here because reading this story I realized that Clark Kent is also a terrible person to have as a "friend". Always passive-aggressive, always lightly whiny, unable to take any responsibility and always disappear in time of need. It is not clear why anyone should hang out with such a person outside the professional sphere. And he, moreover, feels ABSOLUTELY justified to behave like this with others, because in this way he protects his secret identity. And by protecting his secret identity, he also protects his friends. In short, he treats them badly for their good. Superman is an a$$hole, but Clark Kent is no better.
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Post by Prince Hal on Feb 25, 2022 22:46:45 GMT -5
Except on the TV show, where Clark was often the hero of the (half) hour. He was witty, streetwise, brave and capable. Superman, meanwhile, often came across as condescending, even a little annoyed at having to save everyone’s bacon.
George Reeves was really excellent as the two very different characters without having to play Clark as the cowardly opposite of the perfect Superman.
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Post by zaku on Feb 26, 2022 4:32:02 GMT -5
Except on the TV show, where Clark was often the hero of the (half) hour. He was witty, streetwise, brave and capable. Superman, meanwhile, often came across as condescending, even a little annoyed at having to save everyone’s bacon. George Reeves was really excellent as the two very different characters without having to play Clark as the cowardly opposite of the perfect Superman. I am increasingly convinced that people believed that Superman was the paradigm of honesty and heroism only thanks to the tv shows and movies. Where, usually, he DIDN'T spank an adult woman without her consent. By the way, there was absolutely no sense in Clark pretending to be a whiny, spineless coward klutz. Usually the justification in the stories was that he did this to dispel suspicions that he was Superman. Absurd because: 1) Many still believed that he was Superman anyway. 2) So the opposite had to be true? Was every black-haired, vaguely assertive person in Metropolis a suspect of being the Man of Steel? Luckily this was one of the first things they got rid of with the reboot.
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Post by mikelmidnight on Feb 28, 2022 12:50:57 GMT -5
Except on the TV show, where Clark was often the hero of the (half) hour. He was witty, streetwise, brave and capable. Superman, meanwhile, often came across as condescending, even a little annoyed at having to save everyone’s bacon.
That was actually restored on the Lois & Clark tv series, of all places. I guess they felt there was a limit to how nerdy they could make Dean Cain look at the time.
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Post by Prince Hal on Feb 28, 2022 14:30:31 GMT -5
Except on the TV show, where Clark was often the hero of the (half) hour. He was witty, streetwise, brave and capable. Superman, meanwhile, often came across as condescending, even a little annoyed at having to save everyone’s bacon.
That was actually restored on the Lois & Clark tv series, of all places. I guess they felt there was a limit to how nerdy they could make Dean Cain look at the time.
They should see him now.
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Post by zaku on Mar 1, 2022 5:42:17 GMT -5
I think I've found the reason in-universe why Superman had these questionable attitudes toward women (a good chunk of victims of his acts of superdickery are women). Well, the IRL reason is because the editor was a sociopath and most the authors were old white man who formed their beliefs about women in the 50s, but I like to think is because he comes from one the most misogynist culture in the universe, Krypton. It seems to me that its earth-1 version was depicted as a quite male-dominated one. I mean, this is the famous scene where Jor-El talks to the Science Council. These are the most important people on Krypton. How many woman do you count? And really, every time we meet a Kryptonian woman is always the mother of, the daughter of, the sister of... I struggle to remember any female Kryptonian character with any kind of agency. And the only time we meet a strong, independent woman from Krypton? Yes, Kal, it figures... And think how Kryptonian surnames for women work: when they are maiden, they use the full father's name as a family name, then when they marry they take the husband's. It is probably only a legacy from when Kryptonian women were considered a man's property, but it is indicative that it survived until the destruction of the planet... And don't forget the headbands, which symbolized the status of a free citizen. A status that only Kryptonian male citizen could wear...
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