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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 4, 2022 21:49:40 GMT -5
I grew up in the 80s... my main Superman exposure was old reruns of Superfriends, which I found at the time camped and old seeming compared to Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends. My first interest in the comic was 'Reign of the Supermen', and I remember being annoyed when they brought him back.
I got into the triangle era later, though.
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Post by Prince Hal on Aug 4, 2022 22:14:38 GMT -5
On television, with George Reeves in his brown costume.
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Post by berkley on Aug 4, 2022 23:54:45 GMT -5
On television, with George Reeves in his brown costume.
I didn't realise George Reeves was an invisible person - it's so nice to see the invisible actors being given equal opportunity in the television industry!
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Post by berkley on Aug 5, 2022 0:19:57 GMT -5
Why, as the Symbol of American Imperialism, of course Naw, that's Richie Rich!
I know you, and perhaps Zaku as well, are joking, but I find this idea interesting: I don't have any detailed memories of the Richie Rich comics, but I would have said that he was a symbol of the joys of capitalism, if anything, but perhaps not even that - maybe if he represents anything at all, it's nothing more than just what his name says, the joys of richness and wealth, regardless of where it comes from.
This is a touchy subject so I hesitate to keep it going, but I do see Superman in the way Zaku, perhaps jokingly, stated - apologies to fans of the character and especially to any American members who find the idea offensive. I recognise that this is an American message board where we mostly talk about American comics, wherever we're from as individuals, so this kind of comment could legitimately be criticised as trolling. But to state it as briefly and simply as I can, I see Superman's physical powers as at one level a symbol of US military might, and I see his moral uprightness as an expression of America's vision of itself as the only morally correct superpower: all its wars, all its military interventions around the world, are always made in the cause of freedom, as opposed to all other countries, who often act only in their own interests
But this is getting away from the thread question, which is how Superman was viewed in general, not what I think of the character personally.
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Post by Prince Hal on Aug 5, 2022 1:59:48 GMT -5
On television, with George Reeves in his brown costume.
I didn't realise George Reeves was an invisible person - it's so nice to see the invisible actors being given equal opportunity in the television industry!
Yeah, you don’t see them much anymore.
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Post by Mormel on Aug 5, 2022 3:34:00 GMT -5
Me as a kid in the 90s in the Netherlands, my mom and I would tune into Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman every week (though I don't remember a whole lot about that show) and even then with many more caped heroes making it onto the small screen in Saturday morning cartoons, I think we saw Superman as the definitive superhero. Superman and Batman were the two comic book heroes everyone (even folks who didn't read the comics or watched the movies or shows) could name the abilities, partial backstory, partial supporting cast of. For a character like Spider-Man, it was a lot more rare to find someone who could tell you who that was (at least here in Holland).
The Christopher Reeve movies aired regularly on TV. Superman was referenced/parodied in Dutch media every so often. Definitely a fixture of popular culture.
I don't know how big he was in previous decades, before 1990. I suppose the Donner movies were very popular (well 1 and 2, at least), but I'm not sure how much of an impact he made among the Dutch comic reading audience, to whom American superhero comics have always been one of many genres to vie for the readers' attentions, and by far not the biggest player in that market.
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Post by tarkintino on Aug 5, 2022 4:27:21 GMT -5
Basically the title, doesn't matter when you grew up. Trying to come to an understanding on why the Man of Steel popularity waned over the decades. From my comic collecting perspective, he was a flagship character for DC and well-licensed, but I did not see him as the pinnacle of superheroes, not in print, or in other media. At times, he was more brand than interesting character, and that's undoubtedly due to the terrible influence of Mort Weisinger on all things Superman, and for me--like many readers who cut their teeth on comics of the Silver/Bronze Ages, he seemed largely irrelevant compared to other DC characters. Even as the post-Weisinger Superman editors/writers attempted to move away from the Weisinger influence in the 70s, he still had the image and aura of a "safe," corporate symbol than active part of the DC universe in the way a Batman or Green Lantern were in more than their main titles, and felt fully integrated with other stories.
That, and I was never fond of Swan's art (even with Anderson's usual great inking), and that really seemed like a bait and switch when I would see some great Superman covers from the pencils of other artists, only to see the same, "safe" Swan work for the interiors.
I watched the Reeves TV series (which I did not really enjoy, but it was more of a curiosity piece for me) and Filmation's 1960s DC cartoons in syndication, saw Superman the Movie, but again, he was not the pinnacle of superheroes for me.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 5, 2022 5:10:56 GMT -5
Superman was flat out the coolest, most positive superhero when I was growing up, and in his truest form, still is. The actual success in "doing right by him" by various creative teams over the years has certainly varied, particularly in more modern jaded times, but the "real" Superman will always be the greatest. He wasn't just this "overpowered character" that writers sometimes struggled to come up with interesting challenges for, but much like Captain America for Marvel, more importantly was the heart and soul of "fighting the good fight" if you will. Superman does best with a more "classic" treatment IMO because he is more an ideal and inspiration. The 90's animated series really got it right still, and likewise his occasional appearances in Batman Brave and the Bold. And those are both proof it has nothing to do with "inherent limitations" of the character in modern times, in the hands of the right creative team he will always be awesome, there's a timeless appeal when done right. His popularity certainly hasn't waned for me over the decades in the least, and I'm pretty sure he's still pretty prominent. It's like tennis pro ratings to me, you get a player who was a #1 for long stretches of time, and later in their career they start to drop in the rankings, but still remain solidly in the top 10 for the most part. Superman has certainly not dropped too far, he's going to remain a high profile property even if they can't nail stuff like with the lackluster modern movies or whatnot. You took the words right out of my mouth, so to speak.
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Post by kirby101 on Aug 5, 2022 8:30:28 GMT -5
I know you, and perhaps Zaku as well, are joking, but I find this idea interesting: I don't have any detailed memories of the Richie Rich comics, but I would have said that he was a symbol of the joys of capitalism, if anything, but perhaps not even that - maybe if he represents anything at all, it's nothing more than just what his name says, the joys of richness and wealth, regardless of where it comes from.
This is a touchy subject so I hesitate to keep it going, but I do see Superman in the way Zaku, perhaps jokingly, stated - apologies to fans of the character and especially to any American members who find the idea offensive. I recognise that this is an American message board where we mostly talk about American comics, wherever we're from as individuals, so this kind of comment could legitimately be criticised as trolling. But to state it as briefly and simply as I can, I see Superman's physical powers as at one level a symbol of US military might, and I see his moral uprightness as an expression of America's vision of itself as the only morally correct superpower: all its wars, all its military interventions around the world, are always made in the cause of freedom, as opposed to all other countries, who often act only in their own interests
But this is getting away from the thread question, which is how Superman was viewed in general, not what I think of the character personally.
Like any truly iconic myth, he can be interpreted many ways. He can be a symbol of American power, but he is also the symbol of immigrant assimilation. I think after WWII, as America's wars became more and more interventionist and expansionary, (and at times criminal) Superman became less "American" and more a global figure.
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Post by earl on Aug 6, 2022 12:48:49 GMT -5
I know at the comic store I worked at in high school in the 80s, before the reboot - Superman/Action were about as unpopular as you could get. I think there was like 2 subs. It often did not even make the board.
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Post by Duragizer on Aug 7, 2022 1:17:38 GMT -5
I know you, and perhaps Zaku as well, are joking, but I find this idea interesting: I don't have any detailed memories of the Richie Rich comics, but I would have said that he was a symbol of the joys of capitalism, if anything, but perhaps not even that - maybe if he represents anything at all, it's nothing more than just what his name says, the joys of richness and wealth, regardless of where it comes from.
This is a touchy subject so I hesitate to keep it going, but I do see Superman in the way Zaku, perhaps jokingly, stated - apologies to fans of the character and especially to any American members who find the idea offensive. I recognise that this is an American message board where we mostly talk about American comics, wherever we're from as individuals, so this kind of comment could legitimately be criticised as trolling. But to state it as briefly and simply as I can, I see Superman's physical powers as at one level a symbol of US military might, and I see his moral uprightness as an expression of America's vision of itself as the only morally correct superpower: all its wars, all its military interventions around the world, are always made in the cause of freedom, as opposed to all other countries, who often act only in their own interests
But this is getting away from the thread question, which is how Superman was viewed in general, not what I think of the character personally.
I'd say this applies to most versions of Superman, but not the genuine article created by Siegel & Shuster.
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,709
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Post by shaxper on Aug 7, 2022 2:01:48 GMT -5
I gree up in the '80s and, thus, was turning into a dark adolescent at pretty much the same time that Batman was. However, even as a kid (and before DKR or the '89 Batman film), I valued Batman over Superman. Superman was very cool, but whereas his films showed up on television once per year, the 1960s Batman television show was on reruns every day, and the two heroes seemed to share equal presence in the Superfriends cartoon and in licensed merchandise. So I was always a Batman fan first. Heck, with the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman show on daily reruns as well, I was probably a WW fan second. I'm not sure I even understood that Superman was supposed to be DC's #1 hero. In fact, I recall being confused when I first came across those old DC Comics that have Superman in the company logo. Had I grown up half a decade earlier, I would have understood the enormity of those first two Superman films, but (growing up in the '80s) they were just great movies that showed up in TV once a year. They didn't have the same presence in my life that Adam West, Burt Ward, and Lynda Carter did. And, of course, had I grown up in the 1950s or 1940s, I would have understood Superman's importance even more than that. All that being said, when the '89 Batman movie hit (and once my own fanboyism wore off), even I noticed the sea change. Not only was Superman suddenly not cool, but neither was Robin, and neither was a Batman who in any way resembled the goody-goody detective I'd grown up with. Had I been old enough to have read the comics prior to this point, I would have understood that Batman's evolution had been far more slow and nuanced than most comic historians make it out to be (Frank Miller only took what other writers had already done and then pushed it all to a more extreme level), but from a mainstream culture perspective, it seems to me that EVERYTHING changed in the Summer of 1989, when the Tim Burton Batman film first informed mainstream popular culture that Batman was supposed to be dark. Three and a half decades later, filmmakers aren't done outdoing each other to make each iteration of Batman somehow darker than the one before it to the point that the '89 film looks like a joke by today's standards. And yet, its impact remains clear. Dark heroes sell. Thank God Marvel figured out how to make Captain America cool while also telling Tony Stark not to curse. In light of that, I'm more than a little disappointed that DC hasn't figured out how to bring back a goody-goody Superman and finally rescue the franchise from being comicdom's greatest hasbeen.
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Post by tarkintino on Aug 7, 2022 4:24:03 GMT -5
I know at the comic store I worked at in high school in the 80s, before the reboot - Superman/Action were about as unpopular as you could get. I think there was like 2 subs. It often did not even make the board. I had a similar experience in the 80s; other than Superman being forced out of the ball-and-chain of stale, corporate representative with his experiences in Crisis on Infinite Earths, Superman was not an appealing character to most readers i knew at the time, which included those who were from an older generation. The Reeve films did not help his cause, as it reinforced the idea that he was as emotionally nuanced as a pencil and not as colorful (if a pencil could be colorful).
Throughout his history, few ever understood the character (ignoring the creators' early presentation of the character), instead, beating the dead Weisinger horse to the point where Superman was just a face of some enforced idea of post-WW2 morality (wholly artificial), without understanding that few real people live that way, rarely aspire to behave in that way, and do not find fictional characters appealing when ball and chained into that personality. To be quite honest, as remote as Galactus could come off (no matter who wrote him in the Silver & Bronze Ages), his stated purpose still made him far more understandable (which does not mean support of his goals and abuses) than the milk-and-cookies, corporate representative Superman. It is only in recent years that he's enjoyed writing (in certain adaptations) that explores the struggle he would face trying to relate to humans, instead of his being the trademarked statue of mythical, staid iconography which made Superman one of the most unappealing of the flagship superheroes.
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Post by commond on Aug 7, 2022 8:13:51 GMT -5
I grew up between the Byrne reboot and the Death of Superman. I happily collected Byrne Superman books and was a fan of the triangle era as well. Watched the Superman movies when they were rerun on television and was a fan of the Lois and Clark show. Never once had any negative thoughts about Superman.
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Post by chaykinstevens on Aug 7, 2022 8:42:29 GMT -5
Had I grown up half a decade earlier, I would have understood the enormity of those first two Superman films, but (growing up in the '80s) they were just great movies that showed up in TV once a year. They weren't that bad.
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