Superman General

Good point. Team-ups are weird.

Amusingly, Siegel-era Superman did things the Elite would totally approve of.

The golden age was filled with Early installment weirdness, unlike the silver age which was filled with regular weirdness

The preview for the next issues shows Jon is a bit angry at Bruce and storms out of the safehouse, leaving Bruce to talk it over with his grandad.

Hey its Superman's birthday today, dope.

Happy B-Day Supes.

Edited by slimcoder on Apr 18th 2022 at 2:45:11 AM

https://twitter.com/TalkingSuperman/status/1514249257041211398?cxt=HHwWjMC5taXr2IMqAAAA

https://twitter.com/TalkingSuperman/status/1500913755588280342

Take a look at these tweets. They do a good job of highlighting some of the distinctives of early Superman.

Edited by StarformDCX on Apr 18th 2022 at 6:04:53 AM

Lol the new earth prime superman and lois had a backup that fired shots at mos pa Kent. Clark uses super speed to save a kid on a bike from getting hit by a bus and starts to apologize to pa but is cut off saying what were you supposed to do, let him get back

So basically a shot at Golden Age, Lois & Clark and Smallville Jonathan.

those too but specifically a shot at man of steel pa kent.

Funny considering he was less harsh towards Clark over that than those three but rose tinted glasses can be weird like that.

I think the reason that instance stuck out so much is its much more recent and he chose to die instead of having clark possibly reveal his powers. instead of clark running at normal humans speed and helping jonathan and saying "hey its like when moms lifts cars to save their babies"

I originally said this in the DC General thread, but maybe it's more appropriate here:

The evolution of the farmer backstory is fascinating. The first story to portray the Kents as farmers was a 1942 novel written by one of the writers of the Superman radio show. The Pre-Crisis Superboy series had the Kents run a general store in the middle of town, with a few flashbacks indicating that they had been farmers when Clark landed (as a nod to the novel) but sold the farm when Clark was old enough to go to school. The 1978 movie established the Kents were from Kansas (in Superboy comics Smallville's location was unidentified). Post-Crisis comics were the first comics to portray the family farm as a major part of Clark's life (they were imitating the 1978 movie and its sequels). So the Kansas farmer origin is actually Newer Than They Think.

Another fascinating "how things have changed" bit: I recently read some Silver Age Superboy stories and noticed that Clark's parents were comfortable with Clark using his powers to do chores like chopping firewood, which is very different from the approach taken by modern works like Superman vol 4 #26 and Superman of Smallville where Clark using his powers to do farm chores is treated as a shortcut/cheat that he has to learn to avoid. I guess this reflects the cultural impact of steroid use and such. (Old comics are also blase about things like Wonder Woman using her powers to win baseball games.)

Edited by StarformDCX on Apr 20th 2022 at 5:36:56 AM

I can understand "Clark, you can't play high school football because you're a god," but "Don't use your powers to do chores" is silly. What's he supposed to do, turn off his super strength while carrying a sofa?

I could see a rationale for it in terms of the secret identity. If you get in the habit of using your superpowers to do mundane tasks, you might end up using them without thinking in situations where that would give you away.

Aren't some chores not really a le to be sped up? Though that never seems to pose a problem anywhere, it would be funny if Clark vacuumed at super speed and ended up not getting any dirt picked up. Maybe a broom?

There was a thing like that in Superman #26. The chores weren't being done well because Clark was speeding through them.

Found an article talking about how fantastically Action Comics is doing now

Turns out AC actually trended

It goes into why this is actually impressive

So yeah it apparently trended purely on positive word of mouth, not due to a controversy or a ratings stunt like when Jon came out as bisexual.

Its pretty cool.

I think there was also an issue that sold out.

A few weeks ago, I borrowed Action Comics: Warworld Rising from the library. I loved it, for a lot of reasons: compelling threats, great roles for the whole Superman family (Lois is great here, Johnson is the only writer who can make aged-up Jon tolerable for me, etc.), political intrigue, beautiful Daniel Sampere art, and a take on Aquaman that I found delightful (no longer king, he's a trusted agent of the Atlantean state, with no one trying to push him out for a change). The way that Thao-La has internalized her people's oppression is kind of fascinating. But there's something that bothered me about the story. After Task Force X does its "steal the power source" mission in Atlantis, and the Atlanteans are reasonably unhappy about the US violating their sovereignty, Superman says stuff like "Amanda Waller did that, not the US," in multiple scenes, and there's never any pushback to that. Task Force X is an American intelligence agency authorized by the president. It's not some kind of private fiefdom. I wanted to see Clark confront Amanda about her actions, but instead, the story gives off the impression that intelligence agencies are just impervious to any criticism and people from the countries those agencies belong to should never do anything to rein them in.

I mean, the Warworld Saga is still ongoing, so who's to say we won't get back to that Amanda Waller part later on? I would not be surprised if it turns out the real puppet-masters of Supes' circumstances are her, the head of the United Planets and Mongul all wanting to get rid of him.

Woof, typing all that sounds a hell of a lot more compelling than the last big Action Comics story. (*death glares at Bendis, Marisol Leone and the Invisible Mafia*)

My complaint was more that the way Clark's dialogue is written, it sounds like he regards Task Force X as some kind of independent entity that isn't part of the US, and therefore thinks it's unfair for non-Americans to blame the US for what Task Force X did. I think that makes him seem kind of dumb / blinded by patriotism. Revisiting the story I find that Black Canary also voices this idea, saying "Amanda Waller did this, right? She's not the US government."

https://i0.wp.com/comicbookdispatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/img_5759.jpg?resize=666%2C1024&ssl=1

I think the Robbie Thompson Suicide Squad run is portraying Waller as having gone rogue, but I think that happened after Warworld Rising took place, since her reasons for trying to steal the Genesis Fragment were directly tied into US interests as portrayed in Warworld Rising (Steve Trevor made it abundantly clear that the government wanted the Fragment). There's a scene where Clark is standing between the American and Atlantean navies and talking to representatives of both groups, and in that scene Clark pulls out the "Waller did it so it doesn't count" argument, and the Atlanteans respond by saying "give us Waller then." Clark makes it sound like Waller is a rogue actor, even though she wasn't at this point, and it makes it look like Clark is super-naive and just blindly thinks his government would never do anything bad.

Edited by StarformDCX on Apr 30th 2022 at 12:32:17 PM

Given that Waller runs a purely fictional government agency, it's up in the air how much autonomy she has. Like, does she need approval from someone higher up whenever she sends Task Force X on a mission? Or do they just give her some objectives they want accomplished, and how she goes about achieving them is left up to her?

Although that gets me thinking: who's President in the DCU's America? Are they going the whoever's-the-real-world-president-at-the-time route? The fictional-character-as-president route? Or just the don't-show-their-face-or-refer-to-them-by-name route?

It's the current president. Trump showed up in Benjamin Percy's Green Arrow, Tom King's Batman, Rob Williams' Suicide Squad, and Doomsday Clock, and Obama showed up in Reign of Doomsday, Flashpoint, some New 52 Superman stuff, Dan Abnett's Aquaman, and the first issue of Rob Williams's Suicide Squad, so it's presumably Biden now.

Edited by StarformDCX on Apr 30th 2022 at 2:45:06 PM

In that case, it's probably best to keep responsibility for stuff like Task Force X on the characters directly supervising them, and assume they don't tell their higher ups everything they get up to. Because otherwise, you're taking real world people, currently still living and active in politics, and assigning them blame for what you have your madeup characters do.

Edited by RavenWilder on Apr 30th 2022 at 1:04:14 AM

Black ops stuff is dependent on not telling anyone else what's going on after all

It's still bad diplomacy to say "our black ops group did it so it didn't count." Clark (and Black Canary!) come off badly in these scenes, is what I'm saying.

I don't think Johnson is trying to disparage Joe Biden. What I'm criticizing is this notion that America in the DCU has no collective guilt in what Task Force X does, and by implication that Americans in the real world should say "we have nothing to do with that" when their country hurts another country.