News Superman & Lois Ordered to Series at The CW

"So you're just going to leave them at the bottom of that shaft, Superman?"
"Didn't I mention? That shaft is where I store my Phantom Zone portal."

 

Not even broken bones, it's just a super-fun happy slide!

As for characters never being seen again, I posit that Lois murdered Lana right after the scene in SIII where Lois sees the ring that Clark gave Lana. Go check out the final shot of Lois looking at Lana and tell me she didn't kill her.

 

Because it is always better to find a non-lethal solution to any kind of a problem. In my last post I came up with several non-lethal solutions, the majority of which would not have taken any longer than snapping his neck did.

 

That's true even for us mere mortals -- much more so if you're frickin' Superman.

It's frankly disturbing how eager some people are to see a moral paragon's hands covered in blood.

 

Means nothing. Comic books, you know - soft reboots go on eternally. Everything going back to 1939 is canon for Superman. It all happened.

Zod was absolutely determined to destroy Earth.

He escapes from the Phantom Zone.

Later, Zod destroys Earth.

This was Clark's ultimate concern in the Byrne "pocket universe" story as well; one wonders if there might have been some influence. In either case, Clark cannot see any absolutely certain way to protect Earth from Zod.


Yeah, you'd like for Superman to Absolutely Never Ever Kill Anyone, okay. But he has, and it wasn't a behavior that was new or unheard of at the time that Snyder made MoS. That is the point; Snyder did nothing to diminish or "darken" the character in that regard.

 

haven't seen it mentioned by the series is going to be CTV SCI-FI in Canada.

 

The intent of the filmmakers. If they wanted Superman to haul Zod and Company off to jail, or anywhere else, that would have been in the theatrical release. It was not, and it was clear and satisfying to audiences that the villains were killed.

Sending someone to the Phantom Zone is not a snap-a-finger-and-you're-done process, and Zod escaped from the Phantom Zone, so it was highly unlikely that he would ever be able to be held there again. Again, Zod posed a threat to all humankind--an imminent threat, so he had to be dealt with as quickly as possible.

You may not like the idea of Superman killing, but his first few published years had him killing, and having not a single, troubled thought about it. That is who the character was created to be in a period of American history where vigilante justice--lethal vigilante justice--was accepted in reality, and among its fictional heroes. Superman turned into a camp counselor/Daddy was the character on a divergent course.

Some would like to pretend it was a "mistake", when clearly, those working on the early comics knew what they were doing.

True.

 

"Gleefully"?

Seriously: Punisher. He's been in so many books you can enjoy to your hearts content. Why can't you leave us Superman?

...What?

 

He's not wrong.

 

What do you think this was? A movie being filmed on a set?

 

I'm gonna put this out there: Superman and Doomsday kill each other in The Death of Superman.

That fact right there ought to dispel the notion that comics Superman wasn't a killer and end any arguments about how filmic iterations of the character killing are somehow out of sync with the comics.

 

Nobody has argued that Superman has never killed in the comics. So not sure what going, "Aha! Comics Zod!" or, "Aha! Comics Doomsday!" or, "Aha! Random bad guy in Superman comics story from 80 years ago!" is supposed to be proving, exactly.

I think it's very clear he has not killed -- has actively avoided killing -- many, many times more often. That he holds life, all life, as sacred, as precious, as worthy of protection and preservation -- and, in the case of the villainous, of the chance for redemption.

Why not applaud and champion all those stories? Why not choose to write that Superman, in crafting your movie or TV show? Why the eagerness to see him soiled by blood?

 

Exactly what I said.

 

I don't have a problem with Superman, or even Batman, killing if the it's an absolute last resort in an extreme situation, my issue with Man of Steel is just that I thought they jumped right to Superman killing Zod to quickly.

Honestly, when it comes to the DC how characters like Batman, or Superman, or Wonder Woman are presented in new movies and shows, I really don't give a fuck about pretty much anything they did before the 1970s. The characters have been retconned and rebooted so many times at this point, that they're really not even the same characters they were in those first couple decades. Now those comics can be a fun read, and interesting from a historical perspective, but when it comes to looking at how modern stories approach the characters they're pretty much useless. New adaptations tend to go with the modern versions of the characters, so when you're trying to use the early issues as a way of showing how the characters to supposed to behave in adaptations, you might as well be using a Spider-Man comic to show how Batman is supposed to be acting.

 

The biggest problem is that it's a victory for Zod. Yes, he dies, but he convinces Superman that his view of the world is right, that killing is the only answer. So Superman loses, morally, in his very first battle. That's a terrible way to end a origin story. It's cynical in a way that's totally wrong for Superman. The problem is that Zack Snyder and the WB execs who hired him assumed that every superhero story has to be Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns. But those stories were meant as deconstructions of superhero stories, not default templates for them.

It's also a problem because it perpetuates the movie-long pattern of Clark having no will of his own, just obeying what assorted male authority figures tell him to do. He's a secondary character in the movie named for him. Jor-El is the real protagonist of the film.

There's this myth that's taken hold in fandom that Superman and Batman were violent for their first couple of decades and not lightened up until the Comics Code crackdown in the '50s, but it's an absolute falsehood propagated by people with an agenda. They were lightened up within two to three years. Their codes against killing were firmly in place by 1942-3. By the mid-'40s, Batman comics were pretty much following the exact template parodied by the Adam West show decades later, except that Batman & Robin were funnier than the TV versions, constantly making wisecracks and bad puns as they fought bad guys.

The early, violent versions of the characters were just their embryonic forms, before they'd matured into the characters we know. They're rough-draft ideas that fell by the wayside, like Superman jumping rather than flying, or Clark Kent working for the Daily Star, or Bruce Wayne just living in an ordinary house.

 

That's nonsense. The older versions of Superman matter more than this week's, since every successive version is more fleeting and ephemeral. He's the Man of Kleenex.

Be as arbitrary as you like. I don't care about any version after 2013.

But then, today's Clark is just as likely to kill as any ever was, if a writer takes it into his head next week. Can't cork that bottle again.

 

I love James Bond movies. Always have. Bond's a killer. It's central to the very concept of the character -- "licensed to kill," and all that.

I get a vicarious thrill out of Bond killing the bad guys. When he deliberately drops Trevelyan to his death at the end of GoldenEye -- "For England, James?" "No. For me" -- it's a nasty, satisfying jolt. The savage in me laughs, and fist-pumps, and applauds.

Superman appeals to my better angels. If Superman kills, it's a tragedy, a defeat. As a character, he wins by saving lives, by helping people, and when necessary, by bringing people to justice within the law, while genuinely hoping they'll turn their lives around. He'll reach out in friendship and empathy to the worst villain if they'll give him the slightest chance.

There's a lovely notion in Mark Waid's Superman origin story, Birthright, that part of the reason Clark values life so profoundly is because he can see it, literally see its beauty in a way humans aren't capable of, and see the emptiness its ending leaves behind:



Superman may have killed, in a few stories on a few occasions. A couple of those stories may even be good, if they grapple with the event in a meaningful way. But it's an act fundamentally opposed to who Superman is and what he represents.

Bond's a killer. Superman's a savior, a protector, and a friend.

 

Man, I hope Waid gets to write more DC soon. Preferably Superman, and/or Wally-Flash, and/or Justice League. But anything, really.

 

Not to detract from Waid, but the concept of Superman revering life because he could perceive its energy with his super-senses originated in Elliott S! Maggin's late-'70s novels Last Son of Krypton and Miracle Monday. When I saw the concept in Birthright, I assumed Waid was homaging Maggin.