So it is your position that, for the first 55 or so years of his publishing history Superman was a bad guy. Duly noted.
Superman
- Thread starter urbandefault
- Start date
A kryptonite Ruffi?
Green Kryptonite will make him weak and floppy.
Red Kryptonite will make it seem like it's his idea.
No, his moral was perfectly aligned with the then current perception about women. So it was ok for him mistreating Lois for the pettiest reasons. Now that we realized that,well, women are human beings too, in hindsight his old behavior is at least problematic. Or you think it's perfectly ok for him doing something similar even today, because it's a comic and in comics "everything goes"?
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God, I love some of those old panels lol. The covers for Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane are a scream.
https://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/lois-lane
No, his moral was perfectly aligned with the then current perception about women. So it was ok for him mistreating Lois for the pettiest reasons. Now that we realized that,well, women are human beings too, in hindsight his old behavior is at least problematic. Or you think it's perfectly ok for him doing something similar even today, because it's a comic and in comics "everything goes"?
Strawman argument on multiple levels, including conflating a secret ID with physical assault and ignoring that he kept his ID secret from almost all his close friends, including men.
I'm sorry, do you have panel where, I don't know, he spanked Perry White? Or where he mindwiped Jimmy Olsen?
Superman was a Dick in the Silver Age. There are sites dedicated to his superdickery. Yes, he mistreated men too of course, but in the case of women, it was all peppered with that classic 1950s American misogyny. And remember, also in that era they transformed Lois Lane from intrepid reporter who was in the 40s from a bumblebee just wanting to get married.
Above all else, a powerless Zod was tossed to his death by an all-too-pleased Superman. That Daddy/Santa, that walking tower of virtue killed a defenseless man. That was the intended outcome for the theatrical release. One can easily argue that his killing of Zod was heartless, since Zod not only lacked power, but no longer posed a threat to humankind.
On the other hand, Man of Steel's Superman killed Zod out of pure necessity, as he (Zod) was going to murder more innocents and in quite realistic fashion, a megalomaniac (one with superpowers) was never going to be negotiated with / talked down, therefore, Superman was more than justified in his action.
No longer a threat? That was by no means certain.
Zod's superpowers may have been gone, but he was still a smart man; that kind of intellect, dedicated to evil, could have done serious damage. Especially on a planet of primitive Earthlings.
That could also certainly have been applied to the old Zod. He could also have gone on a killing spree and murdered innocents. That would have definitely been within his wheelhouse. And with Ursa and Non, even more so...
His brief rise to power was solely based on using force by way of his superpowers. A powerless Zod could be apprehended or killed by any random person on the street.
Riiiight. Do YOU think you could take him in a fight?
One, I do know how to defend myself, so the answer is yes. Two, even if I did not, Zod never exhibited any fighting prowess that was not directly based on his superpowers. His every encounter--from the police to the military would have ended in his death if he had been powerless in those scenes. So again, remove that, and he was weak and no threat at all, making him a powerless victim of Superman.
He sorta did that in the Donner Cut, taking a machine gun in the White House and shooting people.
In a deleted scene he had Non kill a kid.
He was a General, a rank he got on Krypton, where he had no super powers. Yes, he definitely had combat training.
And Krypton possessed scientific and technological know-how Earth couldn't even come close to circa 1980. He was a threat even without the rays of a yellow Sun giving his molecular structure superpowers.
If Zod stripped of powers was that formidable, then it follows that cigarette smoking human Lois would not have been able to simply punch out the dangerous (as heavily implied by Jor-El in the 1st film) Ursa without so much as an attempt to block the telegraphed punch.
Surely, one must assume if Ursa was part of Zod's insurrectionist little gang on Krypton, she was capable of handling herself, even if she lost her powers...but that did not happen, as the film only shows the Kryptonian villians being a threat due to exclusively relying on their superpower.
Ursa is not a General. No rank is given for her. Non has been given the backstory of being a former mad scientist, a Mengele so to speak, who got brain damage resulting in his dumb (both unintelligent and mute) on-screen persona. So we know that he, despite his physical stature, wasn't a soldier. Ursa, in the Lester version, was Zod's lover, with a hatred toward all male persons other than her two companions. There's no background to her, at least the movie version of the character (who, at the time, was the only version, the comics only introduced her in 2007), so there was no reason to assume she was a soldier or had any particular combat capabilities.
It always amazes me to see the view that Superman killed Zod in cold blood at the end of Superman II.
I know this is just anecdotal, but none of my friend group who saw the movie when it opened came away with the idea that Superman had killed him or let any of the other Phantom Zoners die. There is nothing that establishes the Fortress of Solitude is built over a bottomless pit, or any other kind of chasm. All we see on screen is that a) Superman arrived at the Fortress before the villains and set up a trap for them and b) when the trap is sprung they vanish in a mist. That's it.
The idea that Superman killed them goes against the very tone of the movie itself, especially in its depiction of Superman, and is speculation that is not supported by the movie itself.
I know this is just anecdotal, but none of my friend group who saw the movie when it opened came away with the idea that Superman had killed him or let any of the other Phantom Zoners die. There is nothing that establishes the Fortress of Solitude is built over a bottomless pit, or any other kind of chasm. All we see on screen is that a) Superman arrived at the Fortress before the villains and set up a trap for them and b) when the trap is sprung they vanish in a mist. That's it.
The idea that Superman killed them goes against the very tone of the movie itself, especially in its depiction of Superman, and is speculation that is not supported by the movie itself.
I don't want to do the math, by I'm quite sure that just the tossing against the wall would suffice to break Zod's back.