Just Stay at Home

Yeah, it's been a while. But I'm back, and so is Thursday Night Thinking!

That's our Superman; always thinking about others.

Question, though: what the hell was Barack Obama doing in that issue? Last time I checked, he's not president in the DCU...

Here's a quick Thursday Night Thinking! Enjoy!

It's only going to be quick posts this week, I fear. This is the last week of classes and my first big term paper is due a week from today. So I'm going to have to keep this short and sweet for a while.

So rather than go into a long-winded explanation of what I think about the Superman "citizenship" thing I'll just point you to Scipio's post on the subject. He sums up my thoughts pretty well.

I've been asked to say a few words about "The Incident" in Action #900.

This is a subject that many are speaking on, and I'm not confident I have much unique perspective to bring to bear on it. Nevertheless....

I'm not going to weigh in at all on the legalities of citizenship, the nigh impossibility of "renouncing" it, or international law's distaste for permitting anyone to be "stateless". I could write a book about that and, at one point in my career, actually might have.

I will however make two points. The first is one I have seen elsewhere: it's nice to know that Superman still matters. After 900 issues of Action and 70 years in the media, Superman matters enough that when Superman makes some kind of political statement, the world pays attention.

Many are saying, "This is overdue, a sign of our changing times; it's about time we cast aside the antiquated, jingoistic view of Superman as a champion of 'the American Way', whatever that means!" Many others are saying, "This is inappropriate, a sign of our moral waywardness; if anything, it's time for us to reaffirm the American Way and Superman as its champion."

Which leads me to my second point.

Superman 'renouncing his citizenship' (whatever THAT is supposed to me) so he can oppose a foreign dictator is exactly the kind of kick-ass crazy crap Superman was created to do.

Have you ever actually read a Golden Age Superman story? Like the one where he violently breaks into the Governor's Mansion? Or the one where he drags a party of rich folks down into a coal mine to experience the plight of their workers? Or the one where he tells off the police commissioner for being soft on illegal gambling? Or the one where he hoists the leaders of two warring European nations onto a mountaintop, and tells them to duke it out to settle their differences, while their armies stand down?

Superman was the honey badger of the comic book kingdom. Golden Age Superman was a bad-ass, anti-authoritarian, rabble-rousing, reformist, interventionist, loose cannon. He did whatever the heck he wanted to, just to stand up for the little guy, to oppose tyranny, to right wrongs. He didn't care about violating the rights of others, or moderating his use of power.

He barged right in and made things right where they were wrong, and if you got in his way, you got your toes stepped on. Too bad for you, and your car that he just crashed into a nearby mountain.

Superman, in short, didn't stand for the American Way; he WAS the American Way. And it's nice to see that he still is.

You and I may not like it; you and I may not agree with it. But don't try to tell me it's "not what Superman is about" or that it's "out of character".

Action Comics #900 comes out tomorrow. That's quite the milestone.

In the end, of course, it comes down to Superman and Lex Luthor. We should have figured out long ago that he was the one behind the "Reign of Doomsday." After all, it always seems to come down to the two of them.

It didn't start out that way, of course. Lex Luthor wasn't one of Superman's first villains. And the Luthor we know today bears very little resemblance to the one who first appeared (but then, the same could be said for Superman).

Sometimes things just coalesce in a certain way. As time went on, the Superman story became about pairs of things. Lois and Clark. Earth and Krypton. Luthor and Superman. That last one is the trickiest, of course. It's about two incredibly powerful forces stacked up against each other.

One of them is pure, undiluted human greed, cruelty, and ambition. It's the mind that dreamed the atom bomb and the voice that launched the Holocaust. It's the great gifts of humanity turned in the service of unmitigated evil.

And the other one? That's the mind that cured disease, the voice that called out against oppression. It's everything good in humanity taking a stand against evil. That has never changed, even if the story has. Whether it's a megalomaniacal space-god or a man beating his wife, good will take a stand against its evil. And it will win.

It's a bird, It's a plane... It's Superman.

I know some of you won't necessarily be able to follow my advice from yesterday. Monies are sometimes in short supply these days, and comic books are expensive. So how about this? An excellent free comic.

Some of you may have read Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant before. I may even have mentioned it before. But I can't recall, and since I can't get enough of her work I thought I'd mention it again.

The most recent comic is especially pertinent as it's about the always complicated relationship between Lois Lane and Superman. Despite what anyone might say, Ms. Beaton understands those characters cold. Go check it out.

After a long absence we return once again to Thursday Night Thinking!

You can't. He's Superman. You're Red Tornado.

Ah, it's good to be back again with Thursday Night Thinking! And what could be more appropriate for this week than a classic Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen cover?

The other big news from last week? Amy Adams has been cast as Lois Lane.

Now I'll level with you: I've never seen a movie with Ms. Adams in it. I don't get to see a lot of movies at the best of times and I imagine that a number of her movies came out when I was in Japan. I almost never went to the movies there.

Ms. Adams is clearly a "real" actor, however. She's been nominated for some Oscars as I understand it. Now, that may not really mean anything but it should count for something.

She also doesn't look too young -- a problem I had with Kate Bosworth (among others). In fact, at thirty-six she's actually older than twenty-eight year old Henry Cavill. This also does not bother me. Indeed, I'm of the opinion that Lois Lane should be older than Clark Kent. She's an established reporter by the time Superman shows up.

If things keep trending the way they have been this Superman movie could turn into something great. Here's hoping...

All right, people; it's Thursday Night Thinking. I don't have time for a substantive post, so take this image from the most recent issue of Superman. He's thinking, am I right?

I'm sure that many of you have seen this image before:

That is an page from 1978's now classic The Super Dictionary, a children's book. Unsurprisingly, Luthor's nefarious deed is the entry for "forty."

Luthor's cake stealing has been something of an Internet "meme" for quite a while now as I understand it. It is a delightful image and I think I've featured it here on the blog at one point in the past.

But this week's Superman #709 takes it to an entirely different level and brings the cake thievery into DCU continuity:

Truly, we live in an enlightened age.

It's Thursday Night Thinking, and that means another crazy cover from the depths of the Silver Age!

They say it's Lois Lane... But it feels like Jean Loring to me!

Apparently all the people who make comic news take Presidents' Day off. That's not really fair. I mean, I don't get the day off. I still had to go into school and try to instill a joy for 17th century samurai culture into a bunch of kids who would rather be doing keg stands while dressed as Abraham Lincoln.

But I digress. The only remotely comic related news I can find is this article mentioning that Kevin Costner -- yes, that Kevin Costner -- has apparently been linked to a role in Zack Snyder's Superman reboot.

Let us consider this for a moment. Set aside the fact that I'm not sure that's a good idea. Consider another fact we know about this film: all rumors point to Zod being the villain.

Now before you stop me, I'm not suggesting that Kevin Costner is up for the role of Zod. I'm just saying that there seem to be some serious deficiencies in some of the things we hear about this film (setting aside the apparently excellent casting of Henry Cavill).

Here's my problem with all signs coming from this film: It seems to be making some of the same mistakes that Superman Returns (which I liked well enough) made. One of these problems is connecting it too closely to the original Superman movies. Superman Returns did this by making it an explicit sequel. This new movie almost seems to be doing the same with having Zod as the villain.

Why would they make Zod the villain? There are a lot of Superman villains (good villains) that have never made it to the big screen. Zod has had his shot. And that's exactly the problem. Zod has probably been chosen because the general public is aware of the character from Superman II. A lot of people who know nothing about the Superman mythos know the phrase "Kneel Before Zod."

That brings me back to Kevin Costner. There's a real problem in my eyes with casting actors that are better known as themselves than they are as their characters. Superman Returns had this problem. Never once while watching this movie did I ever think of Kate Bosworth as being Lois Lane. She was always just Kate Bosworth pretending to be Lois Lane. I was never able to suspend the disbelief and think she was really Lois Lane.

Kevin Costner is that same kind of actor to me. It's always "Kevin Costner as Robin Hood" or "Kevin Costner as Elliot Ness." Those characters were never simply those characters when I was watching the movies. They were always Kevin Costner playing those characters.

Now, I'm not saying this new Superman movie should have all unknowns or anything. But it needs actors that I can believe. Despite not having a great script to work with, Kevin Spacey was a believable Lex Luthor. I was able to forget that I was seeing Spacey on the screen.

And when I see the new Superman movie I don't want anyone pulling me away from the story. I want to believe that Superman and everyone around him are real for an hour and a half. I don't think that's too much to ask.

With typical fanfare we return again to Thursday Night Thinking! Gaze upon the wonders of Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen!

Yes, Jimmy... Your "good looks." I'm sure that's why they did it...

Wizkids, makers of the superhero table-top game “Heroclix”, has just announced that their next full DC expansion set will be Superman-themed.

Wizkids had great success recently with two Marvel sets focused around one main character (the “Web of Spider-Man” and “Hammer of Thor” sets). This “Cape of Superman” set will be the first DC set focusing on one character. While the “Arkham Asylum” set had a healthy representation of Batman and villains it was more of a potpourri than its name suggests. After all, it included figures like Human Bomb, Ghost Fox Killer, Lightning Lord, Amon Sur, and Metron.

The potpourri strategy was a sensible one. Seldom was any one customer overjoyed at the list of characters in any one set, but each set had enough variety to entice almost everyone to get it for the characters they did like.

But the evolution of the game gave this strategy unfortunate side effects. Characters you really wanted to play together were spread out across many sets. For example, after ten years, you still can’t field a Detroit League Team because they’ve never made Steel (*ugh*) or Vibe (*popping hearts around head*). Also, early characters were often hopelessly outclassed by later figures they should have been compatible with, simply because the game mechanics had been improved. There hasn’t been a solo figure of the comic book Catwoman since the first DC set ten years ago, and it’s nearly unplayable in today’s game.

As a character represented in Heroclix, Superman has suffered from these side effects. I can easily put together plenty of Heroclix teams (good and evil) to play around Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, and (with a bit of customizing) even Aquaman. But a Superman teams still remain a challenge to compose. The sets always have a Superman—there are plenty of great versions of him—but his allies and enemies have been wanting.

With the advent of individualized “special powers”, rather than dials composed entirely out from a group of generic “standard powers”, Heroclix has made great strides in playability and comic book accuracy of its figures, including recent additions to the Metropolis Heroclix rolls like the Kryptonite Man figure. But this new Superman-centric set provides a fresh opportunity to bring Metropolis alive on the Heroclix maps.

Which leads to my actual point: Wizkids, don’t give short shrift to the supporting cast. Superman’s supporting cast is much more important than almost any other character’s, and a more central part of his mythos. Jimmy Olsen’s public profile is enormous; people who can’t name three Superman villains can all name Perry White, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen. Jimmy Olsen’s comic book ran for 20 years, for pity’s sake. Yet, after ten years, there’s still no Jimmy Olsen figure in Heroclix, though Wizkids has managed to emplasticify such mayflies and lowlights as Forerunner, Aztek, Shimmer, the Holiday Killer, and the Human Defense Corps. Julius H. Schwartz, you could make an entire sixty-figure set (plus addition LEs) of nothing BUT Jimmy Olsen figures, each one a different one of his bizarre transformations or alter-identities.

Wizkids has gotten much wiser in including “regular people” characters as supporting figures in their newer sets (such as Mary Jane Watson, J. Jonah Jameson, Alfred Pennyworth, and Amanda Waller). They used to just represent them as one-click deep pogs! But I want to encourage them to go even further in that direction: I shouldn’t have to have ordered customs made just to have important characters like Iris West, Jean Loring, Steve Trevor, Etta Candy, and Jimmy Olsen on the board.

In short… if Jimmy Olsen and Perry White are not represented in this “Cape of Superman” set, I am going to be really ticked off.

P.S. It's hard to be too critical of Wizkids in this respect, since DC itself seems to have half-forgotten the importance of a recognizable, long-term supporting cast to a successful superhero mythos. Only Geoff Johns seems to get it. Fortunately for the fate of supporting characters, his influence is powerful and wide, so maybe others will start to catch on.

It's Thursday and that means Thursday Night Thinking!

I've been seeing a lot of thought balloons in comics lately. That makes me more than a little happy. And Superman seems to be improving slightly too. That also makes me happy...

I took the last few days off (mostly because the weather made me not feel like posting). But if there's one thing I won't miss it's Thursday Night Thinking!

There was a lot of good stuff in this week's Superman 80-Page Giant. But for my money the Jimmy Olsen story was far and away the best. It really encapsulates the madness that life must be when you're Jimmy Olsen...