Was the New 52 an objective mistake in regards to Superman?

[Agent Z]

I really don’t care how they justify it to be perfectly blunt. It’s a crap characterization that Timm and Dini (who have admitted to not really liking the character) pushed in the DCAU. Zack Snyder was going to use it too before his plans were mercifully cut short. Given how many heroes have dead parents, or spouses, or whatever Clark going so far off the deep end every time Lois dies makes him look terrible. Also NRS doesn’t like the character and have admitted that, so I don’t give a damn what justification people come up with. He’s evil so they can wank off Batgod, simple as that.

Also Joker is supposed to be wrong about one bad day. He’s wrong in The Killing Joke as proved by Gordon. He’s wrong in the Dark Knight as the boat scene shows. Batman literally calls him out on being wrong in both stories. Making him right, and making him right with ******* SUPERMAN is adding insult to injury and is pure edgelord stuff.

Snyder was going to have Clark be brainwashed by Darkseid. Completely different thing.

And when did the NRS writers say they disliked Superman?

[JAK]

As a "starting point" I suppose it's acceptable......but that's leaning heavily on the idea that Clark is just a regular ol' guy, exactly like you or me, without his powers. And I have never found that to be terribly interesting. I dont even think it conforms with the nature of the mythos, even in broad strokes.

But as a starting point I suppose I could accept it (I did during the excellent triangle era, after all), as long as we're not actually *in* the starting point anymore.

That's interesting - I didn't read it that way, but then by that point we were heavily into having the Fortress, etc (1991/92). At this point in the history, I saw it as a Superman who's barely had 3 or 4 adventures (even though it's supposed to take place over a longer period, it doesn't fully read that way to me), so his worldview is still pretty small. Kinda like a 20 year old making declarative statements about their life - in a few years, that's not likely how they'll feel if they've gotten around enough.

Having said that, for readers who were looking at these as they came out, I can certainly see the frustration. Byrne himself may not even have intended for that to be a starting point (he likely didn't), but in practice that's what it became.

Oh! Off topic, have you finished your Rath or Aqualad gear on DCUO yet? I got what I wanted, but haven't finished the styles. They're doing a bonus currency weekend starting tomorrow, I might try to finish it all up then if I can get away from finals.

I haven't, actually! I've been so busy these past few months, I've barely had time to get on and play. Sucks, too, since I want to buy about 1,000 ice walls for my Fortress, LOL!

Im sure he meant exactly that; Superman was a costume, nothing more. There was no duality; there was just a guy from a farm who happened to be an alien with powers and wore a cape for reasons.

That's my feeling, too - but I also put that in the "starting point" column; since he'd soon be having wider-scale adventures and even leave his Metropolis Clark identity behind for awhile in "Exile"... he'd still call himself Clark largely, but that idea of what that meant to him (and what all it encompassed) would shift. If that makes any sense?

[Kuwagaton]

What is an adventure, that he'd only had a few by 1991?

That does remind me though that the New 52 had the built-in premise that Superman had been in action for a whole five years at the start of one book. For all the disadvantage Perez faced, to me that was kind of a potential hindrance for Morrison.

[Shriveling_memo]

The superman after rebirth with a kid is awful. Jade one good storyline and that's that. New 52 was cool and taking superman in a whole new direction away from the Clark Kent identity. If given more years, would have been a version of superman

[Korath]

It isn’t enough for him to have spent most of his life here, and been taught by the Kents to do what’s right? Clark needing his mommy and daddy alive to constantly tell him to do the right thing is a terrible look for the character imo. It’s why so many of the recent evil Superman stories have him jump off the slippery slope after Lois or whoever dies. It makes him look weak-willed and it’s not an interpretation I support. Clark should be a hero because it’s what he was taught, but also because it’s what he WANTS.

This.

If you need some external moral compass to be able to decides that helping and saving peoples is Worth it, whatever or whoever that external moral compass may be, you're not a good guy or gal at heart.

And New 52 Superman was, through and through, a good guy.

I never cared about Superman; I'll probably care about him and his whole mythos in the foreseeable future (in fact, I don't care so much that each and every hint that he's somehow central to the whole DCU makes me cringe -like Reborn, the last issue of Doomsday Clock or all the talks by creators and fans about how Lois and Clark together are essential or else, everything is wrong. bah).

But for five glorious years, I loved Superman. And Wonder Woman, another character whom I just can't stand to read his classics because I find the values and morals presented there to be either hypocritcal or outright bad.

In that respect, for me, New 52 was an objective success.

[Miles To Go]

Injustice Superman is not meant to be a definitive blueprint of anything resembling Superman. The game and concept is enjoyed largely by those who are at that age to be deconstructive about everything, but I've been around here long enough to know it's not a well regarded entry point into the lore by a lot of this community. You'll notice not a lot of Injustice discussion actively goes on here either.

I never cared about Superman.

And that right there is the whole problem. You can't hang on to a short-term experiment as the definitive blueprint of the character all your life and dismiss the other takes as being irrelevant because it doesn't fit your view of what a good hero should be. Because he is a good man, and Lois is an equal to him on a moral level, just as important to his story. These interpretations have withstood the test of time and ones DC constantly go back to them for a reason, because they resonate with the majority. Turning your nose up at those interpretations means you only have a finite interest in the characters, which is amusing when N52 is in itself very much a finite concept.

The superman after rebirth with a kid is awful.

Plenty disagree.

If given more years, would have been a version of superman

And if that version had inevitably become the one with the kid and Lois, would you have supported it?

[JAK]

What is an adventure, that he'd only had a few by 1991?

That does remind me though that the New 52 had the built-in premise that Superman had been in action for a whole five years at the start of one book. For all the disadvantage Perez faced, to me that was kind of a potential hindrance for Morrison.

No, I mean he'd only had a few small adventures by the end of Byrne's MoS. I started reading in 1991/92, and his world view had certainly shifted by the then-current comics (91/92), which made Byrne's MoS feel like a mental starting point for the character to me, instead of a constant worldview.

[rpmaluki]

Injustice Superman is not main continuity/Earth Prime Superman. We readily accept the likes of Ultraman and such as a different Clark but I find it weird that people are quick to ascribe the Injustice Clark as our Clark when that is not the case. What's the point of having all these different universes if at the end of the day it's one and the same Superman with no variation? Nothing says that main line Clark will turn evil when Lois dies and as someone already said, Injustice Superman had a psychotic break because he was duped into killing his Lois. Superman has lost Lois before and he's never turned into a murdering tyrant. I refuse to treat Injustice as nothing more than the whims of a select few individuals who didn't appreciate Superman for what he was and not as some prophetic uttering of where Superman is going when or rather specifically if Lois does die.

Considering Lois and Clark have had children throughout their 80 year history, I don't doubt if N52 was allowed to continue that they would have somehow ended up together and in some future had a child. Them having children isn't a new concept, it just needed to graduated into the main continuity and instead of seeing them navigate parenthood with a new born baby, we got Jon instead and apart from a few teething issues with Rebirth, I'd say Jon has been a success.

[The World]

Are we really so far beyond Pre-Flashpoint that no one remembers what it was like? The line imploded on itself after the end of WoK, what did you want them to do.

You know there was a time when I likened the N52 fans vs Post-Crisis fans to the old Pre-Crisis fans vs Post-Crisis fans. It seemed on the surface level at least to be more of the same; an old set of fans disappointed with the current vision for a character they loved vs a new group that was looking to get into a character that they had previously held at a distance. But over time I realized that was a pretty weak comparison, the two Supermen didn't really have similar arcs and this created a different kind of feeling once they were gone.

At the end of his run the most you could probably say about Pre-Crisis Superman was that he just wasn't hip anymore. He was important but outdated and that the sun was setting on his time. He had a hell of a run that crossed nearly 50 years that saw his writers reawaken the energy of the old Greek Heroes and transform it into a modern day science fantasy. He opened up the pathway so that there could be people to follow after him even for his eventual replacement. Yeah he had his failures and black marks but he had a resume of some of the greatest moments you could ask for in a long and storied existence. 50 years is a long time to sit at the mountain top and he got a strong send off. His time was over.

When Post-Crisis Superman came to his end it was more like the final punchline in the long running joke he had become. He was still irrelevant and unhip but also lacking any semblance of a spine, no sense of pride in his work, no sense of self and easily rundown. We really bust JMS chops for grounded but on the other hand you had people like Joe Casey trying to explain that Superman was a pacifist when he historically wasn't, you had writers trying to say he was really just a naive farmboy when he didn't farm, you had the endless meaningless pedantry of the Clark first mindset, there came a point where the writers wanted to call the guy anything as long as the didn't have to call him a Superhero as if that was somehow an insult. The character honestly didn't really seem like he wanted the Superman job and flashpoint seemed like a backdoor exit for a guy who looked like he had been ready to retire 10 years earlier.

Frankly I'm not sure why the Post-Crisis guys were so cut up about it. Back then they themselves seemed to believe that Post-Crisis Superman would have a relatively short Superhero career to better fit in with his Clark first/regular guy image. A lot of his old school grit and perseverance had been curbed to make him seem more "normal". Why not let the guy just take a hike and move on while someone really looking to stick in for the long haul comes on board. Even now if you look through out the threads discussing the current Superman they're more about the panic of him not having enough down time than it is about discussing the quality of his hero work or adventures. Modern Superman seems more like an alternative to traditional Superhero stories than a legend of the Superhero community.

The Pre-Crisis guys were at least looking at Superman get his lights put out by Batman and knowing that wasn't congruent with the characters history. The Post-Crisis guys generally seemed in the dark about what Superman was like prior to '86 so when they encounter it again they call it out of character.

[SiegePerilous02]

The problem with Injustice Superman is that it's a very mainstream depiction of the character, of which he has had few positive/fully embraced ones in recent years. It casts him as a villain for more Bat-God wankery. Yeah, it's not the main version, but I do not see how it in any way helps restore the character's popularity.

Snyder was going to have Clark be brainwashed by Darkseid. Completely different thing.

Still would have been an incredibly dumb move to make Clark a brainwashed puppet after one flawed solo film and a team up movie that cut out all his scenes, making him a passive character with little development. Spending another film as Darkseid's brainwashed minion until he was inevitably snapped out of it by Lois instead of his own will would have been fucking terrible on top of all the other stuff.

I've defended DCEU Superman in the past, and I will still go to bat for some parts of MOS at the very least. But overall it was a botched experiment, and the creative decisions (both executed and planned) cannot be defended anymore now that we have the final result. And it ain't good, or else we'd have another solo movie by now.

[The World]

Byrne's Superman is perfectly fine. It's the one that we keep coming back to above all others while everything else has it's time then steps aside.

Byrne's Superman is literally fanfiction he produced based on the tv shows he watched growing up.

[Yoda]

You can believe the character needed a refresh or a reboot in 2011, I had dropped the books by then, and still think the New 52 version wasn't the way to do it. Those aren't mutually exclusive positions.

[Vordan]

Are we really so far beyond Pre-Flashpoint that no one remembers what it was like? The line imploded on itself after the end of WoK, what did you want them to do.

You know there was a time when I likened the N52 fans vs Post-Crisis fans to the old Pre-Crisis fans vs Post-Crisis fans. It seemed on the surface level at least to be more of the same; an old set of fans disappointed with the current vision for a character they loved vs a new group that was looking to get into a character that they had previously held at a distance. But over time I realized that was a pretty weak comparison, the two Supermen didn't really have similar arcs and this created a different kind of feeling once they were gone.

At the end of his run the most you could probably say about Pre-Crisis Superman was that he just wasn't hip anymore. He was important but outdated and that the sun was setting on his time. He had a hell of a run that crossed nearly 50 years that saw his writers reawaken the energy of the old Greek Heroes and transform it into a modern day science fantasy. He opened up the pathway so that there could be people to follow after him even for his eventual replacement. Yeah he had his failures and black marks but he had a resume of some of the greatest moments you could ask for in a long and storied existence. 50 years is a long time to sit at the mountain top and he got a strong send off. His time was over.

When Post-Crisis Superman came to his end it was more like the final punchline in the long running joke he had become. He was still irrelevant and unhip but also lacking any semblance of a spine, no sense of pride in his work, no sense of self and easily rundown. We really bust JMS chops for grounded but on the other hand you had people like Joe Casey trying to explain that Superman was a pacifist when he historically wasn't, you had writers trying to say he was really just a naive farmboy when he didn't farm, you had the endless meaningless pedantry of the Clark first mindset, there came a point where the writers wanted to call the guy anything as long as the didn't have to call him a Superhero as if that was somehow an insult. The character honestly didn't really seem like he wanted the Superman job and flashpoint seemed like a backdoor exit for a guy who looked like he had been ready to retire 10 years earlier.

Frankly I'm not sure why the Post-Crisis guys were so cut up about it. Back then they themselves seemed to believe that Post-Crisis Superman would have a relatively short Superhero career to better fit in with his Clark first/regular guy image. A lot of his old school grit and perseverance had been curbed to make him seem more "normal". Why not let the guy just take a hike and move on while someone really looking to stick in for the long haul comes on board. Even now if you look through out the threads discussing the current Superman they're more about the panic of him not having enough down time than it is about discussing the quality of his hero work or adventures. Modern Superman seems more like an alternative to traditional Superhero stories than a legend of the Superhero community.

The Pre-Crisis guys were at least looking at Superman get his lights put out by Batman and knowing that wasn't congruent with the characters history. The Post-Crisis guys generally seemed in the dark about what Superman was like prior to '86 so when they encounter it again they call it out of character.

For all of New 52 Superman’s flaws, he was a guy who 100% embraces being a hero and never wanted to be anything but. He was kind of an antidote to the hand-wringing, naval-gazing, out of touch person that Post-Crisis had become. He had actually tried to change the status quo even if he ended up accepting that he couldn’t change it as much as he liked. He didn’t just instantly fall for Lois because she was his “soul mate” or whatever lazy cop out people use so they don’t have to actually figure out why Clark likes Lois or vice versa. And he actually had a connection to the Siegel and Shuster original stories unlike now where everyone pretends he started with Byrne.

You can believe the character needed a refresh or a reboot in 2011, I had dropped the books by then, and still think the New 52 version wasn't the way to do it. Those aren't mutually exclusive positions.

Ultimately while I liked how Morrison set him up, by the end he had suffered from so many bad stories it was almost a mercy kill. I still wish more of him had been incorporated into Rebirth Supes.

[The World]

New 52 feels like an Elseworlds story to me. i dont know this Superman/Clark he's so different from the Superman i grew up with, the suit, the powers and even the personality. tbh i feel like he don't have any obligation to protract this earth, i mean why should he? all the people that make his life meaningful on earth was gone. his parents dies and Lois is not his. his connection with these mere mortals that make him Clark Kent/Superman, make him want to protract the earth with all his strength. as a human, i don't care about his relationship with other gods. they live above us. when the New 52 Superman died, i don't feel anything ..i was like welp! he's dead lol. actually i was quite happy because we are getting Superfamily. finally they let Clark Kent/Superman and Lois grow as charterer after 80 years.

This entire post is why reading the golden age is important. It's so off the mark and could be solved by just reading the works of the people that put in the framework that makes up the character and the world he exist in.

[Yoda]

For all of New 52 Superman’s flaws, he was a guy who 100% embraces being a hero and never wanted to be anything but. He was kind of an antidote to the hand-wringing, naval-gazing, out of touch person that Post-Crisis had become. He had actually tried to change the status quo even if he ended up accepting that he couldn’t change it as much as he liked. He didn’t just instantly fall for Lois because she was his “soul mate” or whatever lazy cop out people use so they don’t have to actually figure out why Clark likes Lois or vice versa. And he actually had a connection to the Siegel and Shuster original stories unlike now where everyone pretends he started with Byrne.

Pretty sure he fell for Lois in the Golden Age too.