[BOOKS] "Superman: Earth One" Vol1-3 (Complete) - Review

Comic books are a dying industry and have been for decades now. The properties do very well in other media (particularly film), but actual book sales fluctuate quite a bit. Super-hero companies do a lot to try and push higher sales. The big names, DC and Marvel, employ somewhat different methods, to varying results of success or failure.

DC's approach is usually (and often stupidly) trying to be "hip" and "cool". Before they relaunched their entire continuity again in 2011 ( a move that I have and will always defend), they sought to launch the "Earth One" books, a series of stories that reintroduce their biggest characters to a wider readership. These are the so-called "graphic novels", essentially glorified comic books without the stigma the medium carries and with a lot less restrictions in content or continuity, which aim at being easier to pick up and read by people who don't usually read comic books.

Reportedly a Wonder Woman series is in the works, but currently only Superman and Batman have been published. I reviewed the first (and currently only published) chapter of Batman: Earth One; for the most part, it's the same Batman from the comics with few deviations from the standard lore and the only thing that truly stands out is that it's mostly a Jim Gordon story starring Batman than it is a Bruce Wayne story.

Sadly with Superman things aren't that simple; the public already loves Batman. Batman is an easy character to sell. Superman is a timeless, but not necessarily loved figure in the pop culture psyche. I did review the first chapter of Superman: Earth One for another blog, way before I started this one; you can read that review here (but please, don't).

Looking back at that review, I may have obsessed over certain details I find important as a fan, but ultimately I missed the point. Having read all three books now, there are still some things that bother me in regards to both the portrayal of the character and the approach to the story and the lore. However, a reintroduction to a wider audience means shifting focus to different aspects of a character, not necessarily foreign or new concepts, just facets of a story that aren't as usually touched upon in the niche as much others.

[NEWS] Jesse Eisenberg cast as Lex Luthor and Jeremy Irons as Alfred

There are a few legitimately interesting news coming from the sequel to "Man of Steel", which really ought to be named properly at some point. It's shock after shock with this thing, though that's not necessarily a bad thing.

So, after learning that Batman and then Wonder Woman would be in this, with rumours of more Justice League members making at least an appearance, after Ben-frigging-Affleck cast as the Dark Knight, we now finally have two more names added to the cast.

Jeremy Irons, a talented and distinguished actor, is Alfred Pennyworth, Batman's trusted butler and surrogate father figure. Irons is a fantastic actor, but he never sold me as a normal, seemingly mild-mannered butler. That's not a complaint, I'm merely wondering whether or not they'll take another direction for the character, particularly the one from "Batman: Earth One", where Alfred was a trained and active English Secret Service agent before taking over custody of young Bruce.

Of course the one everyone's been talking about is Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor. People have lost their collective shit over this. Common complaints are common: he looks too young, he's skinny, he just doesn't look the part.

All of the aforementioned complaints are, naturally, absolute bollocks and they are all a diversion from the real protest:

"He's not Bryan Cranston"

Listen to me: I like Bryan Cranston and he would be a perfect Lex Luthor, but get over yourselves you entitled little dip-shits. I think Jon Hamm should've been Superman, it didn't happen. How can you realistically have a problem with this? Not seeing Lex in him right now I get, but are you really telling me that a talented, Academy Award, Golden Globes and BAFTA (among others)- nominated actor will not be able to pull off a role?

You do realize that's kind of how acting works, right? You don't need to have seen these people in similar roles before, you need to let them do their jobs, especially when they have proved that they have to skills. 


By the by, opinions respected and all that PC-bullshit, but at what point exactly did you start thinking that actors, especially skilled actors, require your permission to stretch their abilities and progress their careers and take it in new and interesting directions?

Get over yourselves; about Eisenberg, about Gadot (as Wonder Woman), about Affleck. The casting directors definitely have a better idea what they're doing than you and Warner is riding far, far too much on this entire project to take chances.

Fan-manip of Eisenberg as Lex Luthor. Looks fine to me!

Which leads to another point entirely; the entire branding for this movie has changed. "Man of Steel", love it or hate it, was promoted a very particular way. There was an idea, there was a vision, but most of all there was a desperate need to make it work financially and in terms of popularity. Especially considering that the legal dispute between DC Comics and the Jerry Siegel estate left the property in jeopardy, Warner had to release a new movie by the end of 2013 to maintain the rights to the character.

So "Man of Steel" had to play it safe, if not in terms of the actual material (which took chances with a lot of its plot and story decisions), then definitely in terms of promoting it. So, it was branded as the "realistic" approach to Superman, piggy-backing on the success of the Dark Knight Trilogy, with the names of Christopher Nolan and David Goyer all over the trailers and press releases.

The new film has changed entirely. Not only is it no longer a solo-Superman movie, but the driving forces behind it are promoting it differently as well.

The earlier fast-tracking has been stopped. The film has been delayed a whole year, to find a release spot that won't be challenged (particularly by Marvel), which will also undoubtedly give time to polish the film and its inescapable DC Cinematic Universe continuations.

Then, Nolan seems entirely absent from the more recent press-releases. The big name they sold "Man of Steel" on is gone, which actually makes sense considering he was mostly in a supervisory position during the first film as well. Then Goyer is no longer the head-writer; he's credited for the story, but the script is actually penned (or at least re-written and polished) by Chris Terrio, who recently won an Oscar for his screenplay of Affleck's "Argo".

That in itself is pretty big for two reasons: for one, the main problem with "Man of Steel", the terrible script that dragged down the entire film, is (probably) out of the picture now with a much better writer tending to it. Secondly, it points to a thought everybody had since Affleck was announced as Batman: he was chosen not just as a good fit for Snyder's vision of Batman in this series, but also for his connections with talent as a director. He will likely bring people he has worked with on board and he may even helm the directing duties himself in one of these movies (be it the upcoming Batman films or even Justice League).

Finally, one small interesting note is that DC's very own Geoff Johns is now listed as a producer. I was never a huge fan of Johns' work, particularly on Superman titles, but one can't deny the dude has good knowledge of and grasp on the characters and the source material.

For all intends and purposes, it seems "Batman VS Superman" and whatever films follow are taking a different direction. They're branded as huge projects with Academy Award prestige and will probably take a more light-hearted, more comic-book-like approach with the gravitas of big names and multi-million-dollar production values.

I liked "Man of Steel" a lot, but it was a deeply flawed (if not fundamentally broken) film. If it was merely a jumping off point for better things to come, colour me very intrigued and hopeful for the future of Warner's super-hero blockbusters.

[BOOK REVIEW] "Superman Returns": The Novelization

In 2006, Bryan Singer's "Superman Returns" came out. The film was not terrible, but it recycled a lot of the plot from "Superman: The Movie", had a poor handle on the characters and it was just kind of boring.

As it's customary for big Hollywood blockbusters, a novelization was penned and published, this one from none other than Marv Wolfman: veteran comic book writer and author with decades in the medium, having worked for both DC and Marvel and being one of the masterminds that orchestrated the 1986 Superman reboot following "Crisis on Infinite Earths" a year earlier.

Sadly, good as a writer as Wolfman may be, he still had to follow the film's script as closely as possible and thus condemn his work to the same issues that plagued the movie.

Not actually from the book. Obviously.

To his credit, when he has the leg-space to expand on the material, the book shines. Using his extensive knowledge of Superman lore and adding original bits, he paints a lively and grandiose picture of Krypton in Jor-El and Lara's younger life, then juxtaposes it to the utter destruction of the "Return to Krypton" sequence.


*** The "Return to Krypton" sequence was the scene showing Superman's visit on the ruins of his home-planet. A significant portion of the budget went into making it, but Singer decided to keep it out of the film anyway, because he felt it didn't flow with the rest of the story. The sequence itself is visually impressive, but I always found it underwhelming, as there are no emotional connections established toward the planet, its inhabitants or even the celebrated super-hero at this point in the movie. 


Thanks to his descriptive narrative regarding Krypton's society, customs, history and even topography/geography, the haunted ruins of that once great people resonate with the reader. Combined with several flashbacks from Smallville and Metropolis that tangle in the exhausted Superman's mind, the character's pain over his home-world's destruction makes his pathos tangible and easy to connect to.

Which is far more important than it sounds, because once Superman returns to Earth and the film's story gets under-way, the narrative starts crumbling.

It's not Wolfman's fault; he does the best he can considering what he has to work with. The biggest problem with Superman Returns, though, was never the plot. It was the characters and especially Superman and Lois Lane.

Superman's loneliness rings hollow and actually kind of dishonest. The efforts to show his closest people moving forward are forced and his brooding is severely overplayed, considering he is welcomed back on Earth by everyone, he gets his job back and even though Lois has moved on and has a family (painful, I am certain), he gets his life back almost intact.

Honestly, the whole Lois thing never worked in this story. Superman leaves without telling her and he's surprised to come back and see her having a life? Sorry dude, but no matter how you try to rationalize it, if you left her without a word she really couldn't have meant that much to you.

Unless you take your love-advice from Twilight and Dawson's Creek.

Having said that, Wolfman does manage to redeem him, at least in part. Thanks to the strong groundwork he lays during the Krypton chapters, it becomes clear that Superman is suffering from a light form of PTSD over seeing Krypton's ruins. His alienation from humanity is because he saw his people's floating carcasses in deep space and came close to death up there himself.

Even so, by the time the book hits its second chapter, all of Clark's inner monologue regarding his pathos comes off as padding.

The other, even bigger, crime of that original story was Lois Lane. In one of the worst interpretations of the character, Lois isn't her own person but rather Superman's own plot device. She smacks you right in the face with her "sassiness" to the point of just being a bitch and the rest of the time she's only there to make Superman sad and stuff.

Strong, independent "girl reporter" she is not. She uses and manipulates and throws hissy-fits like a teenager. The worst thing about her in the movie was that she clearly seemed to not care about her fiance, Richard, all that much and he was just convenient. It doesn't help that Richard was probably the nicest, most sympathetic character in that entire film.

While Wolfman can't salvage that wreck, he does contribute to her redemption as well, again thanks to the all-too-important inner monologue. Unlike the film, in the book Lois concludes early on that she likes her life. She loves Richard and she's happy. That's the life she wants to have, not one with an alien demigod.

In the book, there is no love triangle. It's mostly about Lois and Superman dealing with the consequences of their actions and realizing nothing stands still and they have to move on, rather than open the possibility of getting back together.

Lois still lacks the agency and depth she needs to be a good character, but at least this makes her just a tad more sympathetic.

But fret not, because there is an exception amidst the mediocrity: Lex Luthor. In the movie, Lex was insignificant. Spacey played him considerably more menacing than Hackman had, but he still had the same sense of humour and had the same real-estate obsession that just doesn't make good material for a super-hero story.

It is perhaps because Wolfman knows Luthor well considering his contribution to the character in 1986, but he does wonders with him. He expands with original details on his family history and his own background (adding in even both a LexCrop and a Luthorcorp reference) and details his desires, motives or even his simplest likes and dislikes. Some of the most interesting parts of the book are those that study him, both as an individual, but also through his relationship with Kitty.

Where Kitty was mostly a bit-character in the movie, in the book she is vital in understanding Lex, looking at him through the eyes of someone who is infatuated by him, even though she's not blind to his insanity.

Lex Luthor is the best thing about the entire book and the chapters that focus on him turn the novelization into a great read; fitting, too, since Wolfman manages to completely detach Lex from Kevin Spacey's portrayal and deliver the character we know and love from the comic books; complex, intriguing, charming and menacing.

The supporting cast doesn't get much in terms of focus, even though what little is there is good enough. Especially in Jimmy Olsen's case, who has been in a bit of a rut and falling into depression in Superman's absence.

Also of note is the fact that all hints that Jason is Superman's son have been removed from the story. This was likely done to avoid spoilers, as novelizations usually come out before the films they're based on and Singer was -for some reason- banking a lot on that revelation that everybody had already discovered as soon as the plot synopsis hit the web.

I know many fans -myself included- hated the addition of Jason in the story, but his relative exclusion in the book doesn't work as well as one might have hoped. Considering the rest of the story remains intact, some bits just don't make sense anymore.

Particularly the ending, when Superman visits the White-Lane homestead and leaves apparently having now found a place to belong, even though nothing has really changed. Before that, Jason's heavy involvement in the third act/part of the story feels forced, since he no longer serves the plot and can only be excused if seen as Richard, Lois and Jason are a unit, just another family saved by Superman-- a new dynamic in his relationship with the Daily Planet ace reporter and their previously romanticised rescue encounters.

In the end, I enjoyed "Superman Returns: The Novelization". I've always held the opinion that the film was gorgeous and as such some of the more visually-demanding scenes don't work as well in the book (the train-set sequence or the plane rescue for example), but Wolfman's efforts to expand on the material and his great handle on Lex Luthor give the novelization a certain edge.

If there is something that this book really did for me, however, was to finally and definitively reveal to me the real problem with Singer's original story. Like most detractors of the movie, I was hung-up on the logical inconsistencies of the story, or the lazy plot, or the characters or details like continuing off from the Chris Reeve series (I wanted an original look and feel) or things like the super-stalking.

The real issue, it seems, is a far larger one; mainly that the story has meat and it could have been done a lot better.

This is a particularly sore point from where I'm standing, because Singer had full-reign over it. This wasn't a studio mandate with a struggling crew trying to make the best of someone else's story. Singer came up with it and loaded it with subtext that came directly from his heart. It was his story through-and-through and it was one he really wanted to tell (the screenwriters have gone on record saying they'd have done it differently). Remember; HE jumped ship from X-Men and went to Warner with this story.

So when I came to the realization that the concept had meat and Singer butchered it, I had to wonder how that was even possible! Thanks to Wolfman's contribution, it's clear that there are several better directions this same story could've taken.

One of those directions would be to tell the story through the eyes of the supporting cast and show how much the world was affected by Superman's absence (something only barely touched in the original script). Jimmy Olsen in the book is the perfect example of this, having lost practically all hope during that time.

Alternatively, the story should've been more consistent in its approach to the theme of alienation and looking for a home. Singer shoe-horning the child in it greatly distracts from the subtext, which is otherwise very well-plotted.

In the movie there is a great line that's sadly missing from the book: during the beat-down sequence on New Krypton, when Superman affected by the Kryptonite on the continent and he's being brutalized by Lex and his men, the last son of Krypton screams "I am still Superman".

Many cringe at that line, but honestly it's fantastic. At that point, Lex has stolen the last remnants of his home-planet, has turned them into a weapon and has stolen his powers as well. Between this and Superman's detachment from humanity with Lois and his mom moving on and away from him, he is left with literally nothing to connect to. That line is a man's desperate cry to hold on to something he can call his own. It presents a bigger challenge and threat to his character arc, than the actual violence and the physical effects of the Kryptonite.

If the story was better-plotted to signify those bits and themes more, the film would've received better reception. But as it is, the story is slow and doesn't flow well, while it's extremely busy and ultimately burdened with far too many unneeded subplots, all the while it comes off as extremely indulgent.

Most of these problems plague the book as well. However, Wolfman's efforts aren't wasted, as his expertise on the mythos and his descriptive narrative are enough to draw the reader in and shower them with an enjoyable, albeit flawed and fairly anti-climactic, classic super-hero story.

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"Shadow of Apokolips" - Superman Month #3

TRANSCRIPT:

This shouldn't be so hard! I wanted to celebrate Superman this month and talk about the character's importance and relevancy in our pop-culture and by extension in society. It was easy with the books, it was easy-enough with the movies, but when the time for the games came, I was defeated.

Yes, video-games aren't exactly fertile ground for symbolism and academic studies on allegory, but Superman has a few gazillion super-powers and he first appeared in a book called Action Comics. If there is one thing games are supposed to do well, that's action.

The obvious choice for a retro-review is, of course, Superman for the Nintendo 64, but that game is less celebrating and more a shortcut to a fucking stroke.

Poor Superman never had luck in video-games. Past the primitive stuff on the arcades and the home computers, the first big consoles release was that terrible Japanese-made adventure/RPG hybrid with the overly cutesy characters for the NES. Then we had the 16-bit games, one for the Mega Drive by Sunsoft that played like a broom-stick with a cape getting pummeled by random enemies and that Death & Return of Superman game based on the comics for the Mega Drive and the SNES. It was repetitive and Superman was barely in it.

Then there was that tragedy of the human condition as seen through the cartridge slot of the N64 and then the handhelds. There was the Game Gear port of the Mega Drive game, which actually played better than the console version, there was that original Gameboy release, which was -and I shit you not- worse than the N64 game and a couple of releases for the Gameboy Advance and actually one of them was pretty damned good, especially for a movie-tie-in!

The punchline here is Superman Returns for the GBA isn't even a Superman game; it's a puzzle-game with Superman iconography! But you know what? It's probably the best Superman game, from a purely technical standpoint at least. The puzzles are simple but engaging, a strict timer makes the game challenging and it's got pretty nifty music as well.

But there were two more console-releases, when early in the '00s Warner scheduled two games, one for the XBOX One and by that I mean the actual FIRST XBOX THAT CAME OUT and one for the the PS2 and the Nintendo Gamecube. The XBOX game was called "Superman The Man of Steel", in case you couldn't tell who the game's about by going simply with "Superman" and it was an action game based on the comics. The other game was "Superman: Shadow of Apokolips" and it was based on "Superman: The Animated Series", just like the N64 game.

It was made by the Infogrames Sheffield house back when Infogrames had divisions or, you know, existed. The story was okay for a simple kids game. Most of the original cast from the series reprise their roles, sans Michael Ironside as Darkseid as he was busy at the time being Sam Fisher. The writing was definitely below the show's level. It was focused on Darkseid providing Intergang with Apokoliptan weapons in the shitty prequel game for the GBA, then doing more or less the same for Lex with the goal to kill Superman.

It's pretty basic stuff, though even that could've done better, as Darkseid's plan never amounts to anything and his involvement is merely a cameo; as is Lex's with only three bosses in the game, Livewire, Parasite and Metallo, all of who seem strangely unconnected to the overall plot.

Where the game truly falters is gameplay and mechanics, which is a pity, because it actually has the right idea. No, seriously, the game makes you nigh-invincible to most attacks and grants free control over Superman's most iconic powers practically for free. There are bars for both health and the powers, but they don't empty fast and they automatically refill relatively quickly.

It's still not there yet, but of all the Superman games I've played, this is the closest it's come to making me feel like the Man of Steel and that includes Superman Returns, which also featured similar mechanics and made the player practically invulnerable to everything.

But unlike the ill-fated Superman Returns tie-in, Shadow of Apokolips stands out as a true Superman game because it makes good use of the Kryptonian's powers. It's a tfourteen-level game that requires utilizing Kal-El's abilities, ranging from super-punching the shit out of identical robots, to interacting with the environment and solving puzzles.

It's actually kind of genius in its simplicity. A very basic objective design works on a completely different level, because it involves the use of Superman's flight, speed and often-times heat and x-ray vision, making the main character unique and hard to replace with another stock action hero, as is often-times the case with many second and third-rate super-hero games, especially from the 8 and 16-bit eras.

That's not to say level design is flawless, though. The game's short length only mildly counters its repetitiveness which becomes clear early on, especially in regards to the combat. Furthermore, the brilliant developers behind this wanted to add challenge to the puzzle sections of the game, so they opted for timed missions. A LOT of timed missions.

And they don't let up either; they start hard and they only get harder. There are few more infuriating things than carrying stuff to put into other stuff from one side of the map to the other, only to have the timer run out three feet from the goal, after which you're called to try all over again.

The primary cause of the fuck-ups is movement and camera control, especially in-flight. The game was made before developers started using the right analogue stick for camera control and thus navigating the map to an objective or exploring to find that slot or that button you need to push can be frustrating, especially under a timer. There is a particularly asinine mission toward the end that epitomizes the concept both level and control design flaw and has made me quit the game in the past.

Not to mention, while the mission objectives make a fairly decent use of Superman's set of powers and that's the main strength of the game, the leaps of logic to put the Man of Tomorrow in these situations is sometimes jarring. Between melting reactors and water dams that seem to have been built with no safeguard in place, in case something goes wrong, there is a particularly hilarious mission where Superman has to deactivate the self-destruct mechanism in LexLabs, a process that requires leaving the main hub where the machine is, finding a corridor nearby, releasing two locks and getting a key that looks like a giant energy ball, then transferring it all the way back to the main room, climbing up at the top of the machine again and imputing it there. Did I mention the main hub is run through by giant deadly gas pipes that end up exploding and filling the entire facility with the stuff?

Who the hell thought this was a good idea?! Why would you build an override mechanism so ridiculously complicated? The Black Mesa administration had better sense of securing their facility and that's a place where three-quarters of its staff got eaten because of equipment malfunction!

Special nod has to be given to the visuals and especially on the Superman character model. The game uses the cell-shading technique, which I admit I'm not very fond of and despite its efforts to mimic the look of the show, it comes off a bit bland. The level of detail on Superman, however, is fantastic and the attention put on his animation is stellar. Sometimes it's worth flying around in the game, just to see all the subtle ways in which Superman animates.

With the exception of that puzzle thing, Shadow of Apokolips is likely the best solo-Superman game ever made, but I'm still hard-pressed to call it a "good game". Its difficulty curve can be frustrating and while checkpoints between objectives usually balance out the game's trial-and-error approach, some of those objectives dragon on for too long and each retry forces the player deal over and over with the same annoyances, such as the camera.

Also, the poor writing and the short length forbid the game from being perceived as anything other than a holiday title aimed at children and as such condemns it into obscurity for the super-hero game sub-genre.

But the ideas *are* there. This shouldn't be so hard! In this day and age, when game technology has got so far that Tomb Raider can't make even because of its insane production costs, a character with so many possibilities shouldn't be shoved into meaningless kids titles.

Superman Returns, released in 2006, was the last solo-Superman game we got and even though it suffered from a hurried production schedule that left the game entirely unfinished past the basic playable level, that one also had several good ideas.

So far the best games in which Superman has appeared are Justice League titles, such as the criminally underrated Justice League Heroes, Nether Realm's fighting titles, as well as Lego Batman 2, which had the purest form of Superman in a video-game and it didn't seem hindered by it at all.

That's just not right. Developers like to cite Superman's invulnerability as a problem in making a game about the character, but that's a cop-out excuse. Games may not be art, but they are deeply creative medium that requires innovation and sometimes this innovation will have to come out of necessity. That's how we got Metal Gear for fuck's sakes!

At least three games I just mentioned found different work-arounds to Superman's invincibility, which isn't even that much of an issue when pitted against larger-than-life villains such as Darkseid. Why not have a double-length health bar that's refilled automatically depending on Superman's exposure to the sun? Require the player to fly up and recharge every now and then and grant back a little less health with each recharge. Imagine the possibilities in an open-city environment with regular day-night cycle that would make night-time missions more challenging without the option to recharge. Think of  how smoothly the difficulty curve would rise if in later stages the player found themselves off-world in places with a red sun or no sun at all, like Apokolips.

Instead of a game-over that's ultimately meaningless in video-games these days, require the player to back down from a fight and flee to let Superman recuperate. Every now and then have enemy henchmen look for him when he's weak and defenceless, forcing the player revert to the Clark Kent persona and try to blend in without raising suspicion.

Even without taking the option of an open-world game, have different enemies impact on Superman differently. Standard thugs with AK-47s shouldn't have an effect for him, but troops armed with Kryptonite weapons should reflect various types of damage based on the type of Kryptonite they use. Troops with high-voltage weapons can incapacitate Superman, even if they can't kill him. Enemies who deal in magicks can deal a lot of damage. Silver Banshee, who screams in hypersonic frequencies almost made his head explode once; literally. Then bring in the heavy-hitters, the Brainiacs, the Zods, the Darkseids. Force different ways to take out different types of enemies. Superman doesn't kill, so require indirect methods of elimination for the human enemies who can't take the abuse. And so on and so forth.

As we live in an era when super-hero games are more than just cartoon tie-ins and make their own multi-million mark on the market, the archetypal super-hero deserves a place there as well, simply because there are so many things you can do with a character like him.

Games with super-powered characters come out all the time and Prototype taught us not too long ago that a powerful central character can offer a very cathartic game. It's a loss glossing over Superman, because of a minor hindrance that has been dealt with before successfully. It's a loss for Warner, because it loses money from establishing a household name into a huge market, it's a loss for the gamers that miss out on what could be a genuinely, extremely fun game and it's a loss for the gaming industry that can't innovate to use one of the biggest characters in the audience's collective consciousness and consequently employ a lot of smaller and obscure starving studios.

You want to make a good Superman game? Take Shadow of Apokolips and put it on steroids.

The Movie Production Hell & "Superman Returns" - Superman Month #2

TRANSCRIPT:

I know that reviewing the last Superman Movie in waiting the new one is kind of ridiculously obvious, but what else can I talk about? Asking someone  to review Superman: The Movie in this day and age is like asking a chef to critique the taste of plain toasted bread. It's great for what it is, but everyone's had it already. Superman II is too reliant on its predecessor and Superman III & IV have nothing to say.

What's left, Superman And The Mole Men? I mean, it's great, watch it really, but it's essentially a modest, expanded episode from the Adventures of Superman TV Show that didn't even exist back then and that movie served as its pilot

So, about that production hell. After the major successes that Superman The Movie and Superman 2 were, someone thought it a good idea to make a semi-parody in Superman III, while Superman IV.... Superman IV is a very sad tale for another time, but the gist is that despite Chris Reeve's best intentions, the film should've never been released especially at the time it was released.

Warner Brothers, who owned DC by the time Superman IV came out, never quite gave up on another Superman film, but they never really rushed to production either, not knowing for sure if they had it right. Throughout the '90s a ton of scripts were written and then thrown out, with the most notable one coming from Kevin Smith and based loosely on the Death & Return of Superman storyline. Smith's script was actually genuinely good, but he had to deal with the insanity of Hollywood Producer Jon Peters and he was kicked off the project when Tim Burton was brought on to direct and he requested a completely new script.

Burton's film never got made either and more attempts continued, including one in 2002 with a script by J.J. Abraams, which tried to shake up a lot of classic elements for better or worse and was also eventually thrown out, allegedly because of a terrible review from Ain't It Cool News! which acquired a copy of the script at the time.

The problem with all of the above was that those people got paid. Each and every one of them attached to the project at one point or another were paid and while they provided work, none of it ever got to the market, making the Superman project a financial black hole.

Superman was still making money on television and to a lesser extend comics and merchandising, but this was an era before wide-spread DVD releases and ticket sales that also pushed toy advertising were the X marked on the treasure map.

The super-hero movie craze that broke out early last decade thanks to X-Men and Raimi's Spider-Man cleared the path for a new Superman. While the project was still a risk, getting an idea underway was easier thanks to the increasing popularity of the sub-genre and the audience's like for big super-hero iconography in their summer movies.

So eventually in 2004, Bryan Singer brought his credentials from directing the two well-regarded X-Men films and an idea he had, pitched it to DC and two years later we got "Superman Returns".

Superman Returns received mild critical praise, but it wasn't that well-liked by audiences. I myself quite liked it the first time I saw it, but it's a film so deeply flawed that with each subsequent viewing I really grew to hate its guts.

WB found Singer's approach safer than it really was. The man having grown up with the Christopher Reeve films and seeing themes on the character that reflected his own conflict opted to shy away from retelling the origin and making a quasi-sequel to those films instead.

What Singer failed to realize is that just because you know an origin story, it doesn't mean retelling it is unnecessary, as if cinema isn't entertainment but instead a history textbook that aims to inform instead of entertain. Don't we celebrate Jesus' origin story, like, every goddamned year?

The film came bundled with a number of far larger issues but that one was hanging over the whole film the whole time. Feeling like a super-hero movie from another time, with a super-hero that belonged to another generation not because of his personality but rather his presentation, even I found it hard to follow his character arc throughout the film and I'm a Superman fan, I don't need much in terms of background details to follow the material.

It definitely didn't help one iota that the film Singer wanted to do was largely to project his own conflict of being both gay (i.e. different) and adopted (i.e. feeling alienated). It was a valiant effort, but it was done by shoehorning Superman's child into the story.

That's just too much baggage for a character in a film that's supposed to re-ignite public interest in him after three decades of absence. Extra problems include a cast that's hit or miss, with Brandon Routh being often-times wooden in his delivery despite his inherent charm, Kate Bosworth not having the acting chops to pull off Lois Lane in a billion years and Kevin Spacey. Just Kevin Spacey. The man is an amazing actor, but I'll be damned if he made the tiniest effort to get into character as Lex Luthor.

Still, you can argue that a bald-shaved Kevin Spacey running up and down the set is still pretty fun to watch.

The plot was also all over the map, with a monumentally stupid villain plot, an internally inconsistent use of Kryptonite that made the single physical challenge for Superman in the film seem even more forced and Superman just kind of lifting things. I've never been one of the people that want Superman to punch stuff, even though that's welcome; for me the character has always been at his best when he's preventing disasters ala Superman The Movie. But he didn't even do much of that either in this film, with the exception of the gorgeous plane rescue sequence early on in the movie.

Singer also made the mistake of laying on the symbolism and the subtext a bit too thick, burying all story beats underneath them. In the end for all the movie has to say it seems that very little actually happens. Superman feels isolated because he returns to a world that's not pining for him, but still welcomes him with open-arms when he comes back. Lois is the only one who's sceptical and honestly she's right to be, considering the guy bailed out on her without so much as a goodbye.

Worse, considering that this is supposed to be a vague sequel to Superman II, either version really, Superman's pathos in this movie is directly contradictory to the character arc he went through in the first two films, which had him realize that his role as protector will always put him in a separate place from humanity and this will have to do, because it's a goal noble and necessary.

In his effort to reflect his own inner conflict onto a character he didn't really own, Singer made a very unsympathetic Superman who spends his time in the movie looking like somebody kicked his puppy in the nuts, then tries to break up a family, then he kind of sort of kills some bad guys, then almost dies but for some reason doesn't and then he no longer feels lonely because he realizes he has a son.

This is many things but proper story-telling isn't one of them. Despite the effort at a character arc, Singer also misses the connotations of Superman as myth within the context of his world and ours as the audience, reducing him yet again to a basic messianic figure on par with Jesus Christ.

This is a point that I can rant on for hours, but people who think that Superman is a clear parallel for the origin of the Christian lord and saviour are way off mark and their stubbornness to support this position, as if one imaginary friend isn't enough for them, is honestly exhausting.

There had been no parallels of Superman and Jesus Christ until the 1978 Donner film and whatever followed *that* version of the character ONLY. Before that there was no great plan for the father to send down his son to save mankind as a god. There was just a desperate father shooting his infant son to wherever in HOPES he'd save his life. The only and I mean ONLY biblical metaphor in Superman is that of the origin of Moses, not Jesus.

Drawing parallels between the two most well-known origin stories in the history of mankind is a cop-out and a disservice to every single complex literary, mythical and mainly philosophical element that Superman has in his very make-up. Making him a metaphor for Jesus friggin' Christ is undermining Nietzsche’s influence on the character and by extension everything from his impact on pop-culture to the fucking name!

You can't look at Superman as a myth when you've essentially transformed him into a full-on god figure without the necessary layers to critique humanity and stand as an example and our potential and not as a saviour that extends a helping hand because he's better than us.

In the end though, I really can't blame Singer for doing the movie he wanted to do. It wasn't for me and I admit that annoyed me, but it was a fan's dream-project and honestly it's not all bad. The first forty or so minutes of the film are fantastic. The cinematography is gorgeous despite and at times because of the muted colours and Singer has a good eye for action even if there isn't a lot of it in the film. There is a train-set sequence early on in the movie that's one of my favourite scenes in any picture, ever and a Superman beat-down sequence later on is absolutely heart-breaking. Despite the occasional wooden delivery the cast is pretty solid and even though the main characters are major dicks, Lois Lane in particular is a terrible person in her efforts to be feisty, Superman's alienation resonates especially when Lex Luthor purposefully takes away from him his Kryptonian heritage when he's already in the process of questioning his humanity. It's a good movie that has something to say and deserves to be seen.

It's just sad that between the added baggage and the terrible pacing, for the man of steel's big return on the silver screen it really was a failure in re-establishing the character in popular culture and failed to look into the inner workings of its protagonist, rather than those of its director.

Financially it made double its money back and WB had slated a sequel, with Bryan Singer saying time and again he'd go all "Wrath of Khan" in it, i.e. having established the basics he'd do a full-on action movie, but the film failed to generate the hype the character needed and even though it was profitable for the studio, it wasn't the break-out success they wanted and a sequel still presented a far greater risk than a household name like Superman should've posed.

This was partly Singer's own fault, for spending far too much money on a Return To Krypton sequence that he filmed but never used and then containing Superman into the human and the pedestrian, instead of the sci-fi epic the mythos has in its very genetic make-up. But in all fairness, part of the blame relies on WB themselves, as Superman Returns had to not only make a profit on its own merits, but also cover the hundreds of thousands of dollars lost on the project over the decades following Superman II. 

As such the sequel was scrapped, the cast and crew moved on to other projects and WB looked for new ideas for Superman, until they settled on David Goyer's pitch. And while how that turned it remains to be seen and judged on its own merits, I can't say I'm heartbroken that I never saw more of what Superman Returns set up.

"Secret Identity" - Superman Month #1

TRANSCRIPT:

As the hero that essentially established super-hero comic books and allowed them to soar to heights that helped these characters spill over to other, bigger media, it's a moot point celebrating Superman without looking at at least one of his books.

But single issues are too short and their point far too hurried, while storylines are either too big for their own good or require at least some knowledge of continuity to really get into. Elseworlds stories and standalones, on the other hand, require minimal knowledge of lore and expand on their content and context just enough, without dragging on for too long.

I originally wanted to look back at Red Son, being fresh out of the Injustice storyline, because it's a terrific book that holds true to the essence of the character, while ending on the realization that humanity will keep evolving and reach its peak, then fuck up and do it all over again; a point perfect not just for the reality of our species but also for what Superman represents for his audience and our kind in general.

But the way it delivers its message is too heavy-handed and it strolls through standard super-hero territory far more often than the other book I'd really like to talk about, the excellent 2004 "Secret Identity".

 "Secret Identity" was a four-part-miniseries spawned by the creative mind of talented writer Kurt Busiek, featuring the moody, striking and yet brilliantly humble art of Stuart Immonen. The story, according to Busiek himself, came from an idea that's been dangling in his head since the mid-80s about doing an on-going of Superboy Prime, because he saw great potential in the humanity of the character as he was mostly removed from the tropes of the genre.

Superboy Prime was a one-off character that was introduced in '85. He was a regular teenager living in Earth Prime, i.e. our world, where super-heroes don't exist and all of the known heroes are fictional characters in the comics. His parents, surnamed Kent named him Clark, unbeknown to them that the boy was in fact Kal-El teleported from Krypton before it exploded. One Halloween night he discovered he had the powers and met the Earth-1 Superman from the standard continuity, just in time for him to join the Crisis on Infinite Earths event and get stuck at the end of the new Universe, lost forever.

There's also this. But we don't talk about it.

Busiek had trouble pitching the idea over to DC editorial for years considering it'd mess with the big universe-rebooting event, until early in the 21st Century he was asked if he had any good ideas for Superman stories. He made the pitch, focusing on the potential of such a story from the human perspective rather than the super-hero one and what he'd like to do as an on-going, turned into a much more focused mini-series that removed itself from Superboy Prime past the original concept and became its own thing.

What's really great about Secret Identity and why it's required reading for Superman's 75th anniversary is the simple fact that it meticulously analyzes the humanity in Superman, as both myth and character, in a story where the actual Superman isn't even in!

The hero starts off as a regular teenage boy whose parents thought it'd be funny naming him Clark Kent, condemning him to a life of awful reference jokes, bullying and a ton of memorabilia of a fictional character he doesn't even like.

Clark is a quiet person; Busiek is very heavy-handed in his approach to what Superman's dual identity represents and he frames the hero of his story to be the ultimate introvert. He's not a coward, but he is meek. He's not a misanthrope, but he doesn't have friends. People can't see past his name and he doesn't feel the need to bother with them.

He externalizes his loneliness and solitude in his narration and by extension his writing, but he doesn't whine. He knows he has it good and that whatever it is he's feeling is normal in his age and for the type of person he is. He recognises he's not special or unfairly treated. He's just a boy.

That's the point of the story, at least in part. The original Superboy-Prime, while largely disposable within the greater context of the DCU, has always been the stand-in for the comic book fan. In the first chapter of Secret Identity, the question is, what would the teenage reader do if one day they woke up and had Superman's powers.

That's where the similarities with the original Superboy-Prime end as well. Busiek cleverly ditches the Kryptonian lineage of the original story, because it's inconsequential to the subtext. Young Clark has many questions about his new-found powers, but no answers are ever clearly given. For all his parents let on, Clark is their biological son, not a strange visitor from another planet. There is a hint that maybe a meteor strike in Kansas or government experiments on babies to create super-powered agents may have lead to the manifestation of his powers, but they are treated as theories even by the characters themselves.

The potential Busiek saw in Superboy Prime was a cultural one, specifically society's tendency to judge and abuse a label, even if the thing that people mock you for being is secretly true, but it's still so much better than being like them. For Clark the best thing about his powers was how they let him drift even further from the world. Fame & fortune cross his mind and he considers outing himself, until the insane actions of a reporter make him realize that keeping his super-hero existence a secret is the better option. He's not angsty about it, just very -well composed.

For the purposes of the story, the powers are the physical manifestation of the introvert’s alienation and their potential, that's why their origin is of no importance. When he moves to Manhattan that alienation grows and he keeps to himself, but it's no longer a point of conflict. He's content being like that and truly-enough, he finds that his detachment also contributes to his work as a writer, as it gives him a unique perspective on the world.

But this is the point in anyone's life when being yourself runs the danger of detaching you from life entirely. Labels tend to become us and growing older we have less and less strength to fight them.

Falling in love with Lois gives him the chance to attach himself to the more pedestrian, human stuff a bit more. When the government captures him, it's the moment when people face adversities in their lives and realize that "shit just got real". The government represents the ugly side of life catching up with you and wanting to take advantage of who you are, something real and inevitable in all our lives. If one wants to be successful to any degree, the establishment will catch up to them, social or otherwise.

That he escapes -briefly- and uses the event as a catalyst to share his secret with Lois and find solace in another person means one thing: he's starting to find his way.

Growing up is a common theme throughout the story and when Lois reveals she's pregnant, Clark has to deal with the questions he put off. Why is he different? What effect will this have on his children? What effect will his secret identity have on his children, both literally and figuratively. It's the point when he realizes things have to change, because there are people he has to protect and care for. If you're an introvert, a family requires you to open up to the dangers of the world that you've so far easily ignored.

As such, within the story Clark makes a deal with the establishment -the government- to help them out. And sometimes his job is intrusive to his life (it takes him away from his kids' birth), but that's how things are sometimes. You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you get what you need.

As his life passes and his daughters grow up, he sees the change. Change in himself, in his powers and the world around him. He's successful -as is his wife- and that's the point in the end; be yourself and try your best. Find people to connect to and trust with that inner self and spread your wings. You'll need to compromise sometimes with situations and people, but you won't need to pander to anyone.

Part of himself has been passed on to his girls (represented by the super-powers) and they have embraced both their dad for it (by teasing him about the label mercilessly) and carrying on his legacy as super-heroes.

Clark sees life pass him by toward the end; the establishment doesn't need him as much until it eventually retires him, he has made an unlikely friend through the years by revealing a part of himself, a different part than that his family or his colleagues know, technology has taken flight and his secret identity is irrelevant, as super-heroes operate openly; in a better world, a world more progressed, people can be who they are without being challenged for it.

And like sunsets, life ends and then starts again all the time. And humanity moves and evolves.

The story of Secret Identity is one of growing up and facing life without compromising the core of yourself. It's a story about labels and how they ultimately don't matter. Whether you are the nerd, the introvert, gay; you don't owe it to anyone to approach them if they won't see past that label and you can find people to share it with. And in sharing, you help the world change. Even if you're essentially Superman, by the time you check out, it's the little stuff you've done that make the difference.

This story's Clark is not the Superman of the books. He's not inherently good, he doesn't view the world through the prism of the benevolent demi-god that seeks to inspire. He doesn't out himself to make his job easier and he doesn't patrol like comic book heroes usually do. That he helps people is a byproduct of his powers; they are his first and foremost and exist to serve him. When he spots trouble he intervenes and he enjoys doing it, but this isn't someone that sets out to be a guardian, protector or saviour.

It's the secret identity in the end and not the powers that make the difference. It's not the lives that he's saved, but rather the choices he has made, his books, the type of person he is that change the world for the better.

It's also a story about the realities of the comic book industry, where introverted creators discover that they have the talent, the established big companies try to abuse it and own it and in the end a compromise is needed by both sides for the world to truly benefit from them. In the end the work will pass on to fresh talent and for every book that ends a new one will start being written.

But most of all what stands out is that there is one constant despite the deviations from the popular myth; the "S".  This is a Superman story without Superman in it. That Busiek sought to express those themes via Superman iconography, that the representation of Clark Kent's true self is in the set of powers that everyone knows from the comics is a testament to the importance of super-heroes in our pop-culture, Superman in particular.

For the last couple of decades the fact that super-heroes fill in a very basic, Freudian need for power-fantasies and projection of our wishful thinking has been considered a bad thing. But truth is this type of myth and legend is necessary for humanity to connect with its inner-self, its true character, its limitation and its potential. They're a necessary medium exactly because of their simplicity and their ability to soak in the most primitive and basic of our intellectual desires. Sometimes it's so that we can be free of them in real life, but most of the time it's because they help us define ourselves by looking at them as outsiders.

Superman is the ultimate archetype in pop-mythology and we need to project our fears and hopes onto him, to rationalize our conflict as something as basic as a pair of glasses or leaping a tall building in a single bound, because then we can look at what it is we lack and desire and work towards striving in our goals. The confusion of mind even for something simple is far greater than the projection of our ideas onto popular iconography that has been and can be passed on to other people and future generations.

"Secret Identity" is a lot of things and all of them make it one of the finest Superman books that have ever existed, but most of all it's the realization that however juvenile our fantasies and however fictional our heroes, we need them both in order to function and progress. Clark Kent realizes it when he finds himself floating in the middle of the night. The real Superman realizes it when he puts on his silly glasses. We know it each and every time we recognise the symbols of these characters when we see them on anything at all.

And as someone once said, knowing is half the battle.

TGG: Happy Birthday Superman! ("Superman Month" Intro)