Superman's whole thing is that despite his power, he is an incorruptible bastion of hope. What do writers what to do? corrupt him for some reason.
What do writers what to do? corrupt him for some reason.
They do it because they are lazy writers and "Evil Superman" is an easy, lazy story they can tell.
Superman is a subversion of the power corrupts idiom. To subvert a subversion is to spend a lot of time and energy winding up where you started
I agree with you but after years of treading the same ground. It's normal for people to want to try a different path.
If Superman had a finite lifespan, the bastion of hope symbolism would be of utmost believability, but there is no way someone with an immortal life won't stray at some point, even if it's crossing to the other side just a little bit. That is realism.
Why some writers of the comics, movies and animated series fail is because of the context in which they use it and the reasoning for his dark turn. It is impossible to expect anyone to be good forever at all times, especially with such powers bestowed upon them. It doesn't work from a story telling perspective.
Lmfao. You're being downvoted by the gatekeepers as usual. And this is why no youth today likes superman. They all find him extremely boring. A one dimensional character. And the reason for this is because boomers won't allow the character to grow, develop and evolve. Batman has been allowed to grow and develop as a character over the years and look at how he's blossoming and maintaining his relevance. Boomers have one idea of who they think superman is and always want him to be only that. No development. No growth. Same thing all over again every single time. Snyder was right; You need to stop protecting your god!!! The gatekeepers always want to keep Superman in this safe space where nothing happens to him. A safe space where there's always an escape for him. Always finding a way out of every situation. It gets repetitive and boring eventually. And this is why gatekeepers cant even handle superman showing any negative emotion. They act like he's some robot. God forbid superman gets angry or upset about anything. He's always supposed to see the positive side & good to every situation with a smile on his face like some robot. Not surprised the gatekeepers came complaining as usual when Superman lasered off one of Steppenwolf's horns in ZSJL. Y'all are destroying the character. It's fucking boring!!! Let the character face things!!! Let him be tested!! Let him face trials!!! Let his morals be tested!!! And let's see how he handles them!!! We want to see him overcome it & be better!!! Do this!!! Rather than always finding ways for him to escape so that he avoids facing these things. It gets lame and boring!!! We are tired of seeing a superman who is incapable of being flawed because he has to always be some perfect being!!! Fuck that!!!!
You just hit the nail on the head. All these downvotes and no one can make a proper comment to anything that I wrote.
Superman can still be good and make errors, for someone who has lived amongst us, part of what makes us human is going through the emotional spectrum of anger, joy, hate, happiness, sadness, upliftment. Choosing right and wrong. He can be the former most of the time, and a much better decision maker than the average man, doesn't mean he can't be fallible, for example putting him in a spot where he has to choose the lesser of 2 evils, and the uncomfortableness of that situation. It still makes him good at heart and he can still be the definitive moral compass of his peers, but this way he's presented with unique challenges that aren't about physicality. Take him out of his comfort zone as you alluded to. It boils down to how it's executed from a story point perspective.
Yet these gatekeepers expect a man who survives for thousands and thousands of years to live in perfection for eternity. It is ridiculous and could work in the comics but not in a live action format. People connect with experiences they can relate to.
The reason why Batman is so popular is because people can relate with his pain and the mental damage that pain has brought him. It can't be his money. People need to relate with Kal, it can never be through his powers, but through the tough choices he has to make at various points and how this takes a toll on him and the supportive ways he uses to combat that toll. That is more captivating.
He can learn to control himself far better than the average human due to his gifts but they don't even expect any wiggle room for creativity with such a character to make him much more compelling.
And it kinda goes to what Snyder said recently, that of course people took completely wrong and out of context. If these characters can’t be tested from time to time, put through crucibles or have a “dark knight of the soul”, it is making them kinda irrelevant.
They also miss the fact that why would he know Steppenwolf has horns? For all he knew that was just armor, and he was using his heat vision to strip as much of it away.
Most evil superman tropes don't really have much in common with Superman aside from powersets aka the most interchangeable part of superman to where I think the trope is fundamentally unworkable ( aside from Maximortal).
Personally, I think it's used well in Invincible. I interpret that use of the trope not as evil superman per se, but as (for the first season, that is) Superman split in two. Nolan served as the God, while Mark served more so as the humble man, albeit still with powers. I suppose invincible can be summed up as "what if General Zod was Superman's dad"?
I mean is it really. I mean like what does Nolan have in common with Superman. Yes he has the same powers, is beloved and is also an alien. But those aren't the important parts of Superman. It doesn't say anything about Superman is thus feels like a hallow coat ( at most it's saying immigrants are dangerous). Now Mark he's a superman pastiche but the conversation is about evil Superman.
I mean is it really. I mean like what does Nolan have in common with Superman.
He's an alien who look like a human, lives a human life, and is aesthetically similar. Sure, elements of their personalities are vastly different, but Nolan is in the cultural shadow of Superman like how Moana for example owes a lot to older disney films, serving as a sort of response.
Yes he has the same powers, is beloved and is also an alien. But those aren't the important parts of Superman.
Are they the most important part? No, of course not, but when making a character which serves partially as a tool to comment upon Superman, it's hardly like incorporating those elements is meaningless. I believe, also, that he is meant to be a sort of vegeta-like figure, with his son, mark, being more similar to Goku narratively speaking. I don't think Omniman is solely a superman-like figure, but that he serves several functions.
It doesn't say anything about Superman is thus feels like a hallow coat
I would say it's saying something to the effect of "Superman is good, in great part, because of his humanity". A major theme of invincible is that it's humanity (that is, morality, not biological humanity) that makes a hero, rather than the powers. Cecil, Robot, and Debbie for example have no powers, but are either heroes or formative in shaping the hero's morals (Debbie is the reason mark is good, after all).
( at most it's saying immigrants are dangerous)
That's a pretty baffling take, seeing as figures like Martian Manhunter or Thadeus were immigrants who chose to do heroic things.
Now Mark he's a superman pastiche but the conversation is about evil Superman.
Eh, I disagree. I agree that Omniman and Invincible as a whole isn't a one-to-one "evil superman" trope, but I believe that due to aesthetic and thematic parallels, it should be considered a modification of the trope.
And as the wonderful folk at Overly Sarcastic Productions said, the answer is "He'd still be Superman."
I have a tough time believing that Lois getting killed would automatically make Superman evil. Is he that fragile?
It didn’t automatically make him evil though; what made him evil was
the loss of his wife and unborn baby (as well as the city) being a continuation of a long-standing villain’s escape of justice
Darkseid soon after invades and Clark has to use lethal force to end the invasion
Aquaman rebels against the other heroes for some reason and Clark has to go hard to stop him
Bruce is constantly undermining him and he has to deal with the friendship ending
Diana is constantly fuelling the fire that leads to Clark going down a darker path
Say what you will about Injustice but he doesn’t just become evil; there’s a progression there
all that other stuff (except lethal force) seems like small potatoes to make Superman a dictator and villain.
The thing I have a harder time wrapping my head around is a lot of the other heroes going along with it and for as long as they did (like The Flash).
Either way I really dislike Injustice (except for the PlasticMan annual).
I mean does it?
You have the power to see every injustice in the world, feel the death throes of an entire city and it’s all because you got manipulated into killing not only your family but your city
Like that’s your entire supporting cast, all your friends (so Perry, Jimmy etc are all dead as hell) and that’s just the start. That’s not small potatoes, that’s a huge deal and I don’t think many people would have the strength to keep going after that.
Injustice has heavy flaws; I certainly won’t deny that and almost think as an original work, divorced from the DCU it could be stronger for it but that’s not the point. The point of my comment is people ironically enough missing the point of Injustice Superman’s arc while arguing he misses the point of the character’s mythos.
It’s a bad faith reading
I’m talking about all the things listed above aside from the death of his wife and unborn son (which was brought up earlier and not the focus of that post).
But even then it just didn’t work for me. Red Son did the slippery slope trope so much better compromise after compromise until there was no going back (and funny enough still felt like Superman to an extent… albeit a Superman who lost his way).
I mean eh it’s not really that minor and it’s all coming at once
I do agree Red Son does it far better though
That’s why Kingdom Come was the more believable take.
thank you
"evil" is both relative and a wish, but that's not to say there aren't some lazy stories concerned with the premise.
Evil Superman can be interesting. Its just been done to death.
I do agree, Superman Red Son is my favorite.
Moore gets it, and it's why I have such trouble with the untouchable, unreachable Messianic figure he's painted as in some depictions. Kudos to Moore for also giving the great Curt Swan the proper credit he's due.
I don't dislike the movie but I have such a strong dislike for the relationship dynamic it created between Jor El and Kal El. As soon as someone starts with the "I have sent You My Son" stuff
Yes, I'm glad STAS and others dispensed with that. Jor-El and Lara were desperate and wanted to give their son the best chance of survival, not only of the trip but also getting it shot down by the Science Council. (Which is why I love the ending of Birthright). Jor-El as God doesn't really fit.
I think the messianic parts can work but only if it’s explored in contrast with Clark. Sort of like a normal man who is elevated to a position of change and hope he didn’t ask for similar to Paul from Dune.
It might be fine to explore in a story provided the writer arrives at the proper conclusion and communicates that clearly. Clark would resist that sort of elevation above humanity because he understands it's not just his incredible powers that make him special; it's his humanity at his core that guides what he does with those powers that make him truly "Super."
Curt Swan was an excellent artist.
This is why Alan Moore is 🐐. He’s absolutely right.
The man has always treated comics with such sincerity. Not a condescending "this is for kids" attitude.
Alan Moore is the Shakespeare of comics
“I haven’t read any superhero comics since I finished with Watchmen. I hate superheroes. I think they’re abominations. They don’t mean what they used to mean. They were originally in the hands of writers who would actively expand the imagination of their nine- to 13-year-old audience. That was completely what they were meant to do and they were doing it excellently. These days, superhero comics think the audience is certainly not nine to 13, it’s nothing to do with them. It’s an audience largely of 30-, 40-, 50-, 60-year old men, usually men.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/22/alan-moore-comic-books-interview
That is not true. He said loved Justice League New Fortier https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK6H3BIR4Xo
The quote is true. Doesn’t mean one comic changed his mind about comics in general.
I don't quite understand your usage of this quote.
"Expand the imagination of kids" and "this stuff is for kids, so it shouldn't be sincere?" Are two very different things
For Moore, it's to make mature thought provoking stuff for the suddenly aware mind. Instead of treating it as low art, low effort kids content that it was often labeled as being when he was up and coming in the industry
I can’t say exactly who Moore thought his comics were for, maybe he has addressed this in some interview or another. But he’s certainly not saying anything about them being “low effort kids content.” He seems to be saying the comics of his youth weren’t low-effort at all, but were meant for ages 9-13.
From the Moore interviews I’ve read, I suspect he’d also cringe at being compared with Shakespeare, but who knows.
That doesn't answer my question though, why did you use this quote then? As a response to what the other guy was saying, it doesn't fit cleaning in a supportive or negative reading.
Nah, it’s not really meant to. He’s not responding in a debate, nor am I.
Except that Moore pretty clearly says superhero comics were meant for kids. I can’t say whether he felt others had “condescended” to them. He’s actually saying the opposite: that modern comics aren’t written for kids.
It's why I don't blame him at all for being super cynical about the industry after it took all the wrong lessons during his time.
And how he got screwed over on rights to The Watchmen.
"he cannot be a god because gods are dictators who set rules for others to follow, Superman sets rules for himself and uses those rules to our benefit"
Preach my beautiful snake wizard!!
Reminds me of a similar quote I heard once which said "Gods are strong because people believe in them. But Superman? Superman is strong because he believes in people"
They believe in me. And in my heart, I believe in them.
- Superman, JLA #4
And that's what a man is or man should be. Have rules for himself that bind him to make him better at any field of life while not enforcing on others.
It's funny how many "edgy" writers like Moore,Ennis and Millar love Superman and treat him with absolute respect.
It's very weird for me to see people call Moore an edgy writer. It happens pretty often on the internet, but imo, Moore is the opposite of an edgy writer. He either writes mature and well documented stories, or silly stuff.
Like, Frank Miller, for me, writes edgy stuff. It can be very interesting, but it's "dark" for the sake of being dark. But with Moore, when he writes a violent scene, it's always layers upon layers.
Edgy suggests a shocking content just for the sake of being shocking, like a pre-teen discovering he can swear as much as he wants and every adult around will be angry, but unable to do a thing. Moore is the opposite of that - if you cannot analyze every aspect of his story under three different prisms, then he was having an off-day.
That's precisely why I put edgy in quotation marks.
I mean, he did do some edgy stuff later on his carreer, mostly with sex stuff
Yeah I have no idea what Lost Girls was going for
It was edgy as was neonomicon.
I do think Edgy gets a bad rep. In many ways, Watchmen is incredibly edgy in its original definition, but so are the shite works of Ennis and Frank Miller.
What moves Moore away from Miller and Ennis is how he uses those Edgy and sometimes uncomfortable subject matter to service the narrative in order to tell a nuanced story, see from hell and Watchmen both. Miller and Ennis (with some interesting exceptions, DD and Preacher) often use Edge for the sake of Edge without the talent that makes that aesthetic choice worth making
Also that Moore realized that if you're going to deconstruct a genre or characters as part of your narrative, the story is incomplete without either re-constructing them, or trying to build something entirely (or at least relatively) new in the process.
This is an incredbly lazy take. I don't how people can read League of Extroditary Gentleman and go mr.hyde raping the invisible man is not just shock value
Lost Girls, Watchmen, Dark Knight. I'd call all of that edgy.
Moore and Ennis respect Superman. But definitely a doubt on Miller because he literally wrote TDKR, which really demeans Superman as a character.
I know people have issues with how Miller uses Superman in that book, but it ends with the most 'classic Superman' type of moment when he knows a secret and winks at the 'camera' instead of revealing it. That's pure George Reeves stuff.
I was referring to Mark Millar but Frank for all his problems doesn't seem to hate Superman at all.
Yeah apparently he was trying to deconstruct Sikver age Superman in TDKR and loves Golden age Superman though not ure if that's true anymore or was at all
And to add that,he literally wanted to pitch a more Golden Age version of the character as the Post-Crisis Superman which still makes me wish we got to see it for better or worse.
Yeah would have been interesting to see that especially with it being Mikler at his prime though we got to sorta see that with superman year one which was you know
DKR demeans everybody.
Superman stories should be at least 35 percent Ckark Kent.
Does anyone know where this interview is actually from? It does seem to align with Moore’s thinking, but that doozy of a grammatical screw-up at the end makes it suspicious. It’d be nice to know who actually did the interview.
Anyway, it does make me wonder what he might think of more recent incarnations of Superman.
Agreed, I felt my brain hiccup reading that last sentence.
And I’ve been googling, and all I see about this quote is this exact same image that someone else posted on Reddit like two years ago. And some social media posts regurgitating this language.
A rare non-insane take.
I like that Supes is the one superhero people who generally hate the genre (like Moore and Ennis) love
Everytime I read this kind of thing about Alan moore I always get a little sad for him, I really really used to love comics so much...
My favorite magician ❤️
Superman is what mankind COULD be, not what it is
Polluting this philosophy with "realism" misses the point entirely
He did write "For The Man Who Has Everything" after all.
Superman represents the best of both worlds to bring a better tomorrow.
Except Curt Swan was never a writer on Superman's comics, IIRC. He was the character's primary long-running penciller though.
That's what he said!
No, he implied that Swan was reponsible for the mythmaking of Superman from the 50s through the 70s. While I don't want to downplay Swan's contributions, the myths and stories were clearly the creation of the writers.
... No he didn't at all.
He said "under the pencil of." Superman was literally penciled by Swan. It's common verbiage amongst comic fans and creatives. He was implying what literally happened, the superman Myth was being penciled by Swan
That's not the way I read it. If the stories and the myth were what's important, then why didn't he credit the actual writers?
Because he wanted to credit the work of the illustrator, because Moore loves his work. Nuff said really
It’s a fair point. Who knows, maybe he did. This is just a sound bite from an interview without a source cited, maybe he talked about editors and writers too. I can’t find the interview this quote is supposedly from.
Also, DC didn’t run credits in comics till maybe the late ’60s…? Whereas it’s obvious Swan drew the majority of Superman comics, and at the very least was responsible for his look throughout the period Moore cites. (There’s a “how to draw Superman” style sheet from the ’70s that Swan created, and I suspect DC artists were expected to follow it or something similar.)
To be fair, he was never meant to be a messianic figure. He was based on Moses, not Christ. Both do the same (lead their people to paradise) but still different
Perfect summation of One who is greater than all else and decides to neglect it for our sake. Makes me wish Moore stayed on the writing staff of RoboCop 2
Alan Moore is smart for a crazy wizard.
The most real statement
This guy gets it.
He applied it to Supreme very well. His run is probably the best not-Superman around
I love everything Alan Moore has ever said
I was terrified that Moore was gonna attack Superman. Glad to see he has respect for the character.
Shame we got so few Superman stories from Moore. He got Superman.
Superman summarized
hates bullies
loves helping people
Simple as that
i have no idea what he said
He basically said that superman is not god because God is someone who set rules for others rather than Superman sets rules for himself like man should and can. He also said that superman was the first superhero that made the base for other heroes and that all heroes are basically his children and lastly he said if America has a legend comparable to the Ageless myth of antiquity that is superman which is perfected by curt swan
oh so i did read it right at least he didn't call him a opening for authoritarian
supreme is coated
Aside from the slight atheist tangent I fully agree
I assume he means polytheistic deities that usually appear in mythology.
Actually yeah.
like, if he was talking also about the christian one, i think that the g would be bigger.
Yep. Uses the indefinite article (“a god”) and even plural (“gods are”).
Depends on who wrote this, right? You wouldn't interpret how he meant to write it if you interviewed him
Knowing that he actually has spoken on interest in polytheism (specifically as seen in mythology) and expressed a disbelief in monotheism, I doubt it.
That's not Atheistic, that's a Classicistic reading of Superman. Superman is a rejection of the typical Greek Mythic figure in Homers work because he makes his own rules instead of following the somewhat predetermined paths of characters such as Achilles and Oddyseus
Achilles and Odysseus aren't the gods. Moore says gods are dictators. I don't really don't mind his opinion but to say he's unaware of the negative connotation of "dictator" is suspect
what exactly is your point? I can’t quite make it out over the sound of whatever inscrutable axe you’re grinding
If by grinding axe you mean simply replying, then okay?
I have no axe against Moore. I simply don't define god(s) as a sort of dictator. I don't really get trying to gaslight about some agenda over this, but no axe against you either lol. It's okay to disagree with the dude's world view and I've given no issue with his take on Superman.
Superman, the character I came to discuss 🤷🏿♂️
That's 100 percent correct and a great way to put it. I think it's why all the 'evil' Superman stories seem boring and wrong, it is fundamentally against the core idea of Superman as a myth.