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News Superman & Lois Ordered to Series at The CW

JD said:
I think it's probably just because people, guys especially, tend to make a bigger deal of women's hair color than they do guys.
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Or live action precedent sets an expectation. Without an obvious redheaded Jimmy or blonde Barry appearing previously, fewer people have it in their minds when a new version debuts.

Christopher said:
have never had a redheaded Matt Murdock
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Matt had red hair in the 2003 Daredevil movie. It didn't look realistic at all, but Affleck did dye his hair for the role.
 
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TREK_GOD_1 said:
There's no such thing as "ridiculous ways" when the source is used, as seen in the DCAU.
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Again, even Dwayne McDuffie, who wrote and produced for the DCAU, said he always had to hobble Superman (and the Flash) because at actual full power it was impossible to write fights involving them.
 
The Realist said:
Um ... sure he has. Aside from a few isolated attempts to fix what doesn't need fixing -- the "New 52" in the comics, Snyderman in the movies -- Superman has remained the heroic and moral exemplar he should be.
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The New 52 maintained the character as a heroic and moral exemplar. That was the thematic point of Morrison's take on the character. That part has never been in question. I was referring to the "power up" Superman that is the most powerful character in the DCU.
 
DigificWriter said:
I think they may be going the same route as Smallville the TV Series and putting both the town of Smallville and the city of Metropolis in the same state and within driving (or flying) distance of one another.
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In the comics they have often been portrayed as being fairly close to each other, albeit on the East Coast rather than the Midwest as in Smallville.
 
^ I'm pretty sure Smallville has always been in Kansas in the comics, even as somebody who doesn't read a lot of comics.

So the only way that Smallville and Metropolis could be depicted in the comics as being close to each other is if Metropolis were also situated in Kansas, which, as far as I know, has not generally been the case in mainstream DC continuity.
 
DigificWriter said:
^ I'm pretty sure Smallville has always been in Kansas in the comics, even as somebody who doesn't read a lot of comics.

So the only way that Smallville and Metropolis could be depicted in the comics as being close to each other is if Metropolis were also situated in Kansas, which, as far as I know, has not generally been the case in mainstream DC continuity.
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Smallville used to be in upstate New York based on maps that appeared in the comics up until Byrne's reboot.
 
Tosk said:
Or live action precedent sets an expectation. Without an obvious redheaded Jimmy or blonde Barry appearing previously, fewer people have it in their minds when a new version debuts.
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Except that Jimmy Olsen was originally portrayed on radio as blond, and his infrequent comics appearances in the 1940s followed suit, or occasionally gave him brown hair. The first-ever redheaded Jimmy was onscreen -- Tommy Bond in the 1948-50 film serials. Those were in black-and-white, of course, but Bond was well-known as a child star from the Our Gang/Little Rascals shorts, so his hair color was probably known. Jimmy wasn't portrayed as a redhead in the comics until around 1954, and not consistently until 1958. Which implies that the comics were actually following the live-action precedent -- although by that time Jack Larson was the best-known live-action Jimmy and he had brown hair. (It was Larson's presence on the series that led to Jimmy becoming a major player in the comics for the first time in the '50s, even getting his own spinoff title that ran for 20 years.)

Matt had red hair in the 2003 Daredevil movie. It didn't look realistic at all, but Affleck did dye his hair for the role.
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Oh, okay. I'll have to remember that.


YLu said:
Again, even Dwayne McDuffie, who wrote and produced for the DCAU, said he always had to hobble Superman (and the Flash) because at actual full power it was impossible to write fights involving them.
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Which led to the magnificent "World of Cardboard" speech.
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N-121973 said:
And the first Superman film which I think is where Byrne got the idea from.
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Yeah, the '78 movie was the first to put Smallville in Kansas. The radio series has Clark grow up in Centerville, Iowa, though.
 
theenglish said:
The New 52 maintained the character as a heroic and moral exemplar. That was the thematic point of Morrison's take on the character. That part has never been in question. I was referring to the "power up" Superman that is the most powerful character in the DCU.
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Okay, confession time: I was kind of talking out of my ass regarding New 52 Supes, because I haven't read most of his run. My impression was that he was a darker, more aggressive, more brooding, and generally less idealized version of the character. I was also influenced by the fact that DC killed him off in favor of the return of the post-Crisis Superman, which suggested to me they considered the new guy a mistake. (Plus I really really really hate the idea of pairing the character romantically with Wonder Woman instead of Lois Lane.) But, I bow to your greater familiarity with the New 52 years.
 
I've never really seen where Superman's power level was that important to the character. Having his basic powers, invulnerability to everything but Kryptonite, flight, heat vision, freeze breath, super strength, ect. and his personality, have always struck me as the important parts. It was his personality that made him the inspirational figure, not his power level. That's why so many of the different versions have had varied power levels, from only being able to jump high, to being a god who can do practically anything.
 
JD said:
I've never really seen where Superman's power level was that important to the character. Having his basic powers, invulnerability to everything but Kryptonite, flight, heat vision, freeze breath, super strength, ect. and his personality, have always struck me as the important parts.
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I could do without the "invulnerability to everything but kryptonite." Like I said, when he's too invulnerable, then the only way to create any peril is to give the villains access to a ridiculous amount of kryptonite, and it gets tedious.

Superman has had other vulnerabilities. Traditionally, he's susceptible to magic. (This is sometimes misunderstood to mean that anything magical affects him like kryptonite, but it just means that he can be affected by magic in the same way as other people, e.g. a magic spell could transform him or a magical weapon could harm him.) Some stories have made him vulnerable to sound-based attacks because his super-hearing is so sensitive. He's sometimes been susceptible to brainwashing or mind control. And in some versions (mainly post-Crisis), he can't survive indefinitely without oxygen, or fly in space under his own power. (This is true of Arrowverse Kryptonians.)


I used to have a problem with Superman's freeze breath, because it seemed like an arbitrary and random power to give him. But then I remembered my physics. When a compressed gas expands, it cools, which is why the spray from an aerosol can or a fire extinguisher is cold. And if Superman (or -girl) can inhale a massive quantity of air into his (her) lungs, then it must be compressed in there. So having it actually cold enough to instantly freeze things is an exaggeration, but there's some logic to the idea after all.

As for heat vision, I don't think it became a separate power until the 1960s. Originally it was just a side effect of his x-ray vision, that when he concentrated the x-rays intensely enough on something, it would burn/melt.
 
The Realist said:
Okay, confession time: I was kind of talking out of my ass regarding New 52 Supes, because I haven't read most of his run. My impression was that he was a darker, more aggressive, more brooding, and generally less idealized version of the character. I was also influenced by the fact that DC killed him off in favor of the return of the post-Crisis Superman, which suggested to me they considered the new guy a mistake. (Plus I really really really hate the idea of pairing the character romantically with Wonder Woman instead of Lois Lane.) But, I bow to your greater familiarity with the New 52 years.
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I think the reason for reintroducing the post-Crisis Superman was to restore his relationship with Lois. In the new 52 he was romantically involved with WW and Lois didn't know his identity as Clark. One thing they did that I really liked was making Lois a little older and having Clark and Jimmy be the same age and best buddies. My original response to KP had to do with his assertion about how powerful Clark had to be when his power levels have varied widely over the decades.

You should read Morrison's run though as it is a great reboot of the character and has a couple of F-U's to the Man of Steel movie including a great story where the whole point is that Superman does not have to kill to save the day. It also has a great Myxy story that reinforces the point that Superman's heroism lies in the way he inspires others.
 
Christopher said:
=

I used to have a problem with Superman's freeze breath, because it seemed like an arbitrary and random power to give him. But then I remembered my physics. When a compressed gas expands, it cools, which is why the spray from an aerosol can or a fire extinguisher is cold. And if Superman (or -girl) can inhale a massive quantity of air into his (her) lungs, then it must be compressed in there. So having it actually cold enough to instantly freeze things is an exaggeration, but there's some logic to the idea after all.

As for heat vision, I don't think it became a separate power until the 1960s. Originally it was just a side effect of his x-ray vision, that when he concentrated the x-rays intensely enough on something, it would burn/melt.
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That's cool (pun intended), I had never considered how freeze breath worked. As for heat vision, Byrne's version envisioned the power as pyrokinesis that was focused somehow through his eyes.
 
theenglish said:
As for heat vision, Byrne's version envisioned the power as pyrokinesis that was focused somehow through his eyes.
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I seem to remember reading back in the day that Byrne's version codified the idea of Kryptonian cells storing energy from sunlight. I thought it followed that heat vision was a means of directing that stored energy through the eyes.
 
DC instituted the Rebirth Initiative for one reason and one reason alone: money.

Rebooting their universe with The New 52 popped readership and comic sales for a little while, but as soon as sales started dwindling, they decided that the reboot was a mistake and started backtracking on it but without once again hitting the "reboot button" completely.
 
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