April 15, 2008

Supes

Every time I hear someone argue why Superman sucks, I suspect they haven't read many Superman stories, have a lack of imagination, or both. Link.

5 comments:

Dan said...

I'd like to add some insight to this argument... but I won't. That guy is teh dumb.

Noumena said...

An alternative hypothesis: They've mostly encountered Superman in big-budget movies, cartoons, and other watered-down contexts. The first image in the link is from last summer's movie, which sucked for pretty much exactly the reasons given.

Unknown said...

I haven't read very many Superman stories, I admit. But I've only read one that I gave even the slightest bit of a shit about, and that was "Secret Identity", which wasn't really Superman.

I couldn't possibly have less interest Superman as a character.

MosBen said...

Baby lands on new planet. His home was destroyed and his parents dying act was to ensure that he escaped the death of his race. Raised by simple country folk he grows into incredible powers which he uses to make his adoptive home better.

There. That's Superman. You can go anywhere from there including some incredibly boring stories about punching shit and some incredibly interesting stories that either play on an aspect of that foundation or simply add other layers of complexity to the character.

The reason some people think that Supes has a boring personality is because too often he's been written with a boring personality. No person on Earth, even Kryptonian refugees, is so simple that they can be encapsulated by "Truth, Justice, and the American Way." Clark is a man and like anyone he has his own foibles; they just need to be explored.

I'll never understand why it's such obvious conventional wisdom that "parents killed in alley" is intrinsically and exponentially more compelling than "last member of a species, alone in the universe." Bad writers write bad Batman stories just as well as they write bad Superman stories.

MosBen said...

Incidentally, there are plenty of people who would have written Captain America off as a boring character until Ed Brubaker's current run.