Superman General

Sure it does. You need more straw for that effigy you're building? Superman has visited dozens of alternate universes. In that time he's met only one decent Luthor and dozens of bad ones. Alexander Luthor Jr. in fact theorized at one point that no matter what world you go to, Superman and Luthor will always be enemies. The last time this Superman saw his Luthor the guy gave up universal peace to try and get one last shot at killing Superman. And despite his recent "turn around" New 52 Luthor still has a lengthy rapsheet of crimes that he committed before the Crime Syndicate arrived.

But sure. Superman attacked him out of jealousy. Right.

1) When was that? Was that during the Grant Morrison run? 2) How do you know he no-showed? It was shown quite clearly that Pre-Flashpoint Clark helped out, but he did so so fast that nobody saw him. (Thus fixing the plot hole that is Pre-F Clark lived on New 52 Earth for so long even though previous writers like Morrison didn't include him because they didn't know at the time.)

And technically, Superman didn't attack Luthor first. He merely touched the S-shield on Luthor's chest (a symbol Luthor appropriated) which was booby-trapped.

He tried to rip off a piece of Luthor's armor - that's pretty much assault by any standard. Meanwhile, the attack in question was in Johns's Forever Evil arc - I'd say an artificial eclipse and half the League being missing kinda warranted a more proactive response. And since Superman has not only witnessed Luthor's public heroism, but explicitly has found no evidence of villainy whatsoever, going all Calvinist on how Luthor is always destined to be the villain no matter what isn't exactly convincing or admirable.

Feel free to disagree or call it a strawman, but given how the whole Rebirth line is yet another gimmick to boost sales, if that's the kind of Superman it's actually going to present, don't be surprised when it doesn't work.

Since the damage the Crime Syndicate did to the moon meant that the Earth was racked with tidal waves (I believe), I'm pretty sure Pre-F Superman was busy saving a whole lot of people, especially since he knew that the New 52 Superman could handle himself.

It's the old objectivist "A=A" in regards to Luthor, right? They covered that a bit on the old Justice League Unlimited. I can see Superman being leery of any Lex Luthor he encounters, but I like to think he'd give him the benefit of the doubt. Superman doesn't actually WANT to fight Luthor.

"Don't be surprised when it doesn't work."

I love how Indiana is convinced that his taste is representative of all taste. Last I checked Rebirth is selling really, really well.

Difficult as it is for me to say, I do think Superman could have handled this better.

Not denying that, but Indiana's characterization of it as "driven by jealousy" is ridiculous.

That's the thing, really - in the DCAU as well as modern comics, it looks a lot more like he does, whether or not Luthor is up to something heinous at the time. JLU explicitly had Captain Marvel tear him a new one over it. I don't know if it's about avoiding the boyscout image and swerving too much into making him a self-righteous asshole, or just that he's become less popular than former C-listers like Deadpool and Harley, so writer aggression transfers onto the character. Right about now, Cavill's "Man of Murder" is just about the nicest iteration ever since All-Star, which itself was a send-off to the Silver Age wherein even Luthor could find decency. (Though the animated adaptation where Superman doesn't punch him out afterward is even better.) Instead, in the mainstream comics, he's become a paranoid judgmental prick, because every DC hero just has to channel Batman nowadays, with or without in-story justification. At least the New 52 version had some personal reasons to hate Nu!Luthor. This Superman, however, jumped straight to public assault, without even a bit of monitoring. That's not warranted just by simple paranoid suspicion; he explicitly went after the logo as if he had a trademark on it. And since it's not my style to go "not muh Superman" as is fashionable within the fandom, I just calls it as I sees it.

edited 12th Jun '16 10:15:50 AM by indiana404

Well the logo was a symbol of his Kryptonian family.

And that Captain Marvel episode is the only one where Superman attacks Luthor without provocation. Every other instance it's Luthor that instigates the confrontation. Well excepting this recent comic.

Except that no, he's not guilty of assault, because he didn't assault Luthor. But hey, why let that get in the way of an argument?

edited 12th Jun '16 10:29:48 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

He didn't even rip off the chest-plate, he merely touched the symbol and there was a booby trap. In fact, Luthor even says, "Nobody touches me."

If someone taps you on the shoulder and you punch them in the face, that's considered assault on your part, not theirs.

And if you wire a taser into your coat so that anybody who bumps into you gets electrocuted that's a crime too.

And if you've geared up for hoisting a bank robbery while wearing powered armor, it's your own fault for giving it automated defenses in case you need to deal with hostile individuals... oh, wait, no, it isn't. It's like if the Human Torch should be held responsible for fangirls trying to rip his clothes before he's flamed off after saving the day.

Sorry, this isn't Superman being suspicious over Luthor doing something visibly shady. This is Superman getting riled up over Luthor doing heroics in a suit that looks like his, but, alternate universes taken into account, actually isn't. This is Superman wasting time going after Luthor before having any evidence of him doing anything wrong, instead of just going off to help people and showing he's a real Superman that way. In short, this is Superman being a dick, only not just on the cover.

Haven't read the issue, so can't comment on whether Superman's behavior is dickish or not, but I hesitate to take you're word for it. You kind of always seem to think everyone traditionally represented as a hero is being a dick.

As usual, I think indiana is bringing up mostly valid points, but blowing them out of proportion to support his "Superman is the worst character" thing.

I think Superman is jumping the gun and judging Luthor too harshly in this issue, but I don't think that that ruins the story of the character or whatever. Its the set up for a story where Superman distrusts Luthor based on past grudges, learns to be more trusting, but then is ultimately betrayed in the long run when the writers make Luthor fully evil again. Its a fairly obvious character arc being set up.

You're just in time. Bayble Cuber's going to watch an inkle dribble adventure from days of old on my holo-pyramid viewer.

It's not that Superman is a bad character, but that for a variety of reasons, Superman always doing the right thing has stopped being a prescriptive guideline for writers to do their best when it comes to presenting him with actual challenges, and instead has devolved into tautological templardom, where the right thing is whatever Superman does at the time. Like you said, Luthor will inevitably go full villain, so that Superman's point is proven... by sheer moral luck.

Ironically, whenever he is faced with an actual hard choice and has to do something not traditionally wholesome in order to resolve the situation, cries abound of how "Superman always finds a better way". If that's what's meant by a better way, I'll go with the occasional neck snap any day.

edited 12th Jun '16 10:36:47 PM by indiana404

Nobody complains when Superman is presented with a tough choice. People complain when Superman's solution to that dilemma is murder.

Have you read Superman: Lois and Clark? In it, Pre-Flashpoint Superman goes up against Blanque, a villain who is telepathic, telekinetic, and sadistic and the only thing he wants is revenge against Superman, to kill his family. You know what Superman doesn't do? Murder him. Instead, he imprisons him in a cell designed to shut down his powers, which he has along with a bunch of other cells housing other creatures that Superman is trying to find some way of stopping or helping.

It's not the most ideal solution, because there is no ideal solution, but it's not fucking murder.

Ah, so flying across town to insult and strip another guy is not assault, but killing a violent behemoth about to fry a family is murder. And I thought phonetic misspellings were the worst problem with English nowadays; the semantics has clearly shifted from traditional legal definitions, or, y'know, common sense.

Didn't follow the Blanque arc, but as the apparent solution is basically the same as in What's so funny..., it's good to know I haven't missed out.

No, in What's So Funny... he just shut down their powers until they realized he had won. It wasn't a situation where the bad guy was going to keep on coming over and over again no matter what, which was the situation with Blanque.

However, you appear to be saying that a murder solution is better than a non-murder solution, so I have no idea what the hell you are talking about.

"Insulting" and "touching" are neither considered assault. Poor judgment, perhaps, but not assault. Snapping someone's neck when there were other viable options? Murder.

edited 12th Jun '16 11:16:24 PM by alliterator

Given that the "other viable options" conversations always seem to hinge on 20/20 hindsight and advanced aerial acrobatics, instead of acknowledging Superman being untrained and barely used to flying, I'd say a defensive kill was still the most feasible option at the time, and there's no court on Earth that would call it murder.

If the Blanque arc was resolved with a previously unmentioned power nullifying gizmo, then this is the same situation as in What's so funny... - the question is posed as what to do with a violent, destructive and absolutely unstoppable force... and then ditches the "absolutely" bit. Pass.

edited 12th Jun '16 11:25:38 PM by indiana404

It wasn't. Also, there is no such thing as an "absolutely" unstoppable force — see the "unstoppable force versus immovable object" dilemma. There is always something that will stop an unstoppable force (which makes them not really "unstoppable," I know, but people love to use the word).

(Also, I don't want to keep bringing it up, but "aerial acrobatics"? Flying up is not aerial acrobatics. It's flying up. He did it a hundred times in the film.)

He also did it in the Zod fight. The result - one crashed satellite, and wouldn't you know it, Zod had just learned flying down.

But more to the point, exactly how does killing in defense of immediately imperiled innocents constitute murder, let alone by any legal definition?

As for unstoppable forces, wasn't there a Hulk crossover where the answer was "surrender"? Good thing he didn't try it against Blanque. Or Zod, for that matter.

Superman has a LONG history with Lex Luthor, and has good reason not to trust him. Add to that the man has appropriated his S-shield and cape, and I can understand him wanting to put a stop that that. I don't think he overreacted at all.

Superman has a long history with a different Lex Luthor, and explicitly no evidence that his one is up to anything wrong. Nor does he have any claim to the shield of his alternate universe counterpart. I'd understand if he was suspicious and decided to snoop around some more, but just going half-cocked accomplishes nothing. There were no innocents at risk, no clues of any foul play. He wasn't intervening to protect anything but his own bruised ego.

The story hasn't yet reached Kingdom Come levels of stupid, with Superman's would be competitor explicitly named after a biblical false god, but it's clear the guy really can't handle competition.