Travels with Kal-El, in search of America (spoiler thread)

[Doc Beechler (mod-MD)]

 

 

So, it begins this week...JMS is taking Kal on a hard-travelin' hero journey across the country to reconnect after losing...again!...his people.  Will it be awesome or cringe-y...or both?  Let's take the trip together!

[Travis Herrick (Modular Mod)]

I would point them out, but I wouldn't worry too much about them. I think they are worth mentioning

[Philip Portelli]

From what I read the age-old debate of "Who's Faster? Superman or the Flash?" got so heated and nasty that it forced DC to shut down their own forum!

[ClarkKent_DC]

Back when World's Finest had Superman instead of Batman as the regular character, the letters column answered the question this way: The Flash is the better sprinter, but Superman is the better marathoner.

 

Works for me.

[Doc Beechler (mod-MD)]

I think that Flash and Superman overdid the speed, thus causing a small time-slip so the pie was eaten and then there again.  In fact, at one point their super-ness caused a hamburger that wasn't there before or ordered by Superman to appear in front of him for a short time.  ;)  

 

I wonder if some of the pages had been done prior to Roberson's rewrite and some of the art had to be redone after causing some of the art mistakes.  

 

Anyway, Roberson actually has me back onboard and I hope he stays on after the JMS storyline is finished.  

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

His grief and angst over killing the Phantom Zone criminals in the pocket dimension eventually caused Superman to develop another identity as the Hamburglar...

[Doc Beechler (mod-MD)]

Robble...robble...and AWAY!

[Doc Beechler (mod-MD)]

I was watching the recent Secret Origins of DC Comics documentary on DVD this weekend...it's pretty awesome to hear Mark Waid, Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Neal Gaiman, Karen Berger and others talk comics...and something on it hit me as to how important Superman is to many of us.  Louise Simonson was talking about the Death of Superman and World Without Superman storylines, she was a member of the writing team, and she starts talking about the Kents burying some items of Clark's by the farm in Kansas because that's all they have of him.  While talking about it, she starts crying, really crying.  I was taken by how normal it seemed for this adult woman, relating fictional events, to have this very heart-felt response.  Out of all of the Superheroes, Superman is the one that everyone actually wishes was real.  And there are stories from writers (Edmond Hamilton, Mark Millar, Grant Morrison) who, at one time or another, felt that Superman was real...if just for a moment.  The recent documentary Waiting for Superman began with the horror of one young man finding out that Superman wasn't real and wasn't coming to save him.  My girls are 8 and are, for the most part, certain in their understanding of fiction vs nonfiction...but yesterday, one of them kind of took me aback by asking if Superman was real. 

 

All I could say was..."I hope so". 

 

I think Superman teaches us that it's important to BE good people...to be, as much as we can, Superhuman.  God, Santa Claus, Superman...stories about them allow us to actually do the good works by example.  Stories are the programming and our deeds show that we were listening.

[Philip Portelli]

There was a Pre-Crisis/Early 80s tribute to Jerry Siegal and Joe Schuster with a (typically) great Gil Kane cover with the apt and fitting caption, "If Superman Did Not Exist, Someone Would Have to Create Him!"

[Figserello]

Philip Portelli said:

There was a Pre-Crisis/Early 80s tribute to Jerry Siegal and Joe Schuster with a (typically) great Gil Kane cover with the apt and fitting caption, "If Superman Did Not Exist, Someone Would Have to Create Him!"

This was a little sub-plot of All-Star Superman. I'm discovering lately that a lot of Morrison's clever DCU ideas actually originated outside his prodigious brain.

And, yes Doc. Superman is a completely different order of fictional character to the likes of Nova and Iron Man. He guides my life, in my better moments.

DC doesn't do him justice by trying to spread him so thin. There should be less, and better Superman stories produced every year.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

ISSUE #710: This series continues to confound me with it's alternating scenes of near greatness and simple sloppiness. The story itself is a continuity implant "re-telling" the "first" meeting of Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne. As is apparently the case throughout the entire DCU proper these days, any past story is fair game for being included in continuity. For example, this story references both Superman #76 (the 1952 one) as well as John Byrne's Man of Steel #3 before establishing yet another "first" meeting. It also references the Loeb/Sale short story in which the Wayne limo breaks down driving through Smallville, the Superman: The Odyssey one-shot and Mark Waid's Birthright among others. that's cool. I consider that all part of the fun.

 

But (as there was last last issue) there is a scene that just doesn't work on a technical level. The splash page is page four, Superman descending for a landing to meet Batman atop a hill. The first panel of page five shows Superman's toe just before it touches the ground. That's the story the pictures tell, but the script tells another story entirely. In that first page five panel Superman's dialogue baloon reads, "...so that's what I've been doing in Utah. What brings you here?" This indicates that, for whatever reason, Superman floated in the air and didn't land until he'd caught Batman up on what's been going in in his life lately. That's the comic book equivalent of a boom mike dropping in shot. Just... sloppy.

[Doc Beechler (mod-MD)]

I must be too type-B. The floating here and the diner stuff last issue didn't even register during my reading. I can see what you're saying after the fact, but I guess I've always been a words over pictures guy.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

I would counter that comics is a medium of words and pictures. When the pictures don't synch up with the words (or vice versa), that creates a cognitive disconnect in the reader's mind. Have you ever read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics? He discusses the relationship between words and pictures (and what goes on in the "gutters") far better than I ever could. How do you feel about boom mikes dropping into shot in movies or TV?

 

Waitaminute... aren't type-A people the crazy ones?