The Evil Superman Discussion Thread

[Multiverse]

Ultraman.jpg

Nothing beats Ultraman as the definitive evil Superman.

[Ra-El]

DC should make an edit: No Evil Superman adaptations for the next 10 years. The only exception would be Bizarro, but the Bizarrro World version, with his Bizarro League, his cube planet and all that crazy ****.

[Kuwagaton]

Injustice lives as its own story, but with the game it's not an RPG or anything. It's popular because it's good, if it had that same dull gameplay the developers had in place before MK9 it'd be just as forgotten MK vs DC

[Guy_McNichts]

Right now, I'd say the biggest problem with "evil Superman" stories is their overdone. So now its just tiresome and cliche.

The thing about "evil Superman" is, while a story that shows him lose his morals or give in to corruption could be an interesting character study, that's rarely what we get. I think part of that is Clark is so firmly established as a good and decent man, it's hard to imagine a scenario where he would genuinely abandon everything he is. Honestly, if he really was to get fed up with mankind, I think the worst he'd do is just leave. Or go into exile like in Kingdom Come.

The fact is most "evil Superman" stories are not really about him as a character or why he would turn bad (Red Son being an arguable exception). Him becoming evil is just the device to focus on how everyone else reacts and deals with it. That's why most "evil Superman" stories fall back on mind control, the Anti-Life Equation, or (perhaps the worst) playing the dead Lois card.

And I agree, the notion that all it takes for Superman to do a complete 180 is for Lois to die is really insulting to the character.
For all people adulate The Killing Joke and the whole "one bad day" theme, what a lot of those fans seem to forget is Joker's plan in that story fails (Gordon doesn't go insane) and Batman throws his logic back in his face ("Maybe it was just you all along?")
So Superman of all people abandoning everything he believes and his principles because of a single tragedy frankly just makes him look like a weak-willed fool.

That leads to what might be the most irritating element of "evil Superman" stories now: how often they're used to adulate Batman. Because writers and fans are too in love with the idea of the hero without powers being the lone opposition to the god-like being with only his wits and gadgets.
Injustice is the most egregious example of this, as others have pointed out. The almighty Bat would never lose his morals. He would never turn evil. Hell, even the Justice Lords Batman wound up turning good and helping the League...because Batman in any form in incorruptible.

As tiresome as "evil Superman" is, "Batman is always right" is just as overdone. Both awful flavors that tend to go hand in hand.

Which brings me to Wonder Woman, and I have to say as a Wonder Woman fan, it frustrates me to no end that the vast majority of "evil Superman" stories tend to offer only one of two options to Diana:
She either becomes just as evil and for less reason (Injustice, the Justice Lords, Red Son), or she's crushed/killed by him with embarrassing ease (DCeased, the Justice League movie, Absolute Power).

Like, on paper, if anyone should have the best chance of opposing an evil Superman, it should be Wonder Woman. And I feel like a story depicting her as the last/only hope against a corrupted Superman--done right--should be an epic, tragic, maybe catastrophic war of gods.
But that would distract us from Bat-Poochie, so Diana needs to get put out of the way as quickly and anti-climatically as possible and screw her.

It does feel like "evil Superman" stories, when their not about how great Batman is, are just an ugly indulgence for certain edge-lord fans who love the idea of Superman proving he's the strongest hero of them all by stomping all over every other hero.
It's flip-side to the idea that "Superman is great because he has this god-like power and devotes it to helping others," becoming instead "Superman is great because he could murder EVERYONE and NO ONE could stop him, so aren't you grateful he doesn't?"

I just find it a gross interpretation of Superman.

I'm just not a fan of the idea that no one--neither individually, nor collectively as a group--can stop him if he turns bad or fill the void of his absence if he was gone. Superman being the strongest hero is one thing, and I'm not against that. But Superman being stronger than everyone put together? No, that's insulting to the other heroes...some of whom are supposed to be the best and strongest in their own way.

I'd be happy if we had a moratorium on "evil Superman" stories for a long time. They do him no favors, they don't reveal or explore anything interesting about him, and they're just annoying now.
But, if we must keep beating this horse, just once I would like to see one where Wonder Woman is the only hope against him and she's not curb-stomped like a chump. If we have to keep rehashing "evil Superman," throw Diana fans a bone at least once, please.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

DC should make an edit: No Evil Superman adaptations for the next 10 years. The only exception would be Bizarro, but the Bizarrro World version, with his Bizarro League, his cube planet and all that crazy ****.

That's a major problem. Because we've seen so many takes on a crazy and power-mad Superman, the concept of Bizarro loses its punch. You need a stable and straight take on Superman before you do Bizarro otherwise the character doesn't fully work.

The Injustice comics did an issue with Bizarro and its point was that Bizarro was somehow a more normal and sane version of Superman than Injustice!Superman...which is a neat take I'll admit but it's also a mess of a story.

As for a DC moratorium, I agree. If I were to do it, it would be this:
-- A standing moratorium on no "evil Superman" or AU Superman in any Elseworlds, any Multiverse explorations, or stories where Superman gets mind-controlled and goes on a rampage. At least 5 years at short-term, ten at medium.
-- No promotional materials, no covers, and no posters or such an show Superman with glowing red eyes.
-- Ideally I'd argue to shelf the "heat vision" as a whole for a decade because it's gotten to the point that heat vision has displaced flight as Superman's most iconic power and that's a huge problem. However I can see writers objecting so I'd say use 'heat vision' but avoid close-up panels of Superman's eyes going red, no big splash images of him using it, and nothing promotional.


The problem however is that there's no chance of this happening. DC/WB owned by AT and T have no editorial control. Nobody has economic and market clout internally to argue for these changes. The comics publishing side is so anchored around Batman that Superman can't compete. So office-politics'wise, it would be hard to pull off.

[Yoda]

Injustice lives as its own story, but with the game it's not an RPG or anything. It's popular because it's good, if it had that same dull gameplay the developers had in place before MK9 it'd be just as forgotten MK vs DC

I think with respect to the games this is exactly it. The majority of its popularity isn't based on the story, it's based on the gameplay. Even the comics aren't really exceptional sellers by themselves. It's popular enough to continue, but I don't recall it ever being a mainstream sales juggernaut - at least not in the way DeCeased is.

Personally, I think Kingdom Come is probably a more toxic influence (second only to DKRs) on Superman than things like InJustice or Snyder's DCEU. No one really considers either of those "evil" versions to be templates for a good Superman story. Whereas the Kingdom Come version is lionized as one of the greatest interpretations but probably has as more toxicity to it than either.

[Vordan]

Once upon a time it was this super edgy and surprising take. Our greatest hero has turned evil! What do we do?!?!? But now it’s been so throughly beaten to death that it’s not surprising at all. Superman seems to always be turning evil at the drop of a hat. And it’s always the same basic plot of Batgod having to rally the heroes so they can kick Superman’s ass. They’ve run the plot into the ground and they repeatedly fail to even do anything interesting with it. Look at Mark Waid’s Irredeemable. It’s an evil Superman story that has something interesting to say about how Superman works. In contrast, Snyder, Injustice, these have nothing of worth to say other than “Superman is stupid and mentally weak and Batman is BADASS”.

I like the Justice Lord take. Cool costume (which most evil Supermen don’t have), and his fall isn’t “one bad day” so much as it is seeing the ever escalating endgame of where his battles have taken him. Lex killed Wally in the public view and nobody cared. His fall is based on him losing faith in humanity, and seeing how he’s complicit in Lex’s schemes.

Next time they do one can they not toss Wonder Woman under the bus so he can have some arm candy to gawk at him in place of Lois?

The hilarious (and aggravating) part is 9/10 times he doesn’t care about Diana at all. She’s practically throwing herself at him in Injustice and he just doesn’t even pay any attention to her.

I think with respect to the games this is exactly it. The majority of its popularity isn't based on the story, it's based on the gameplay. Even the comics aren't really exceptional sellers by themselves. It's popular enough to continue, but I don't recall it ever being a mainstream sales juggernaut - at least not in the way DeCeased is.

Personally, I think Kingdom Come is probably a more toxic influence (second only to DKRs) on Superman than things like InJustice or Snyder's DCEU. No one really considers either of those "evil" versions to be templates for a good Superman story. Whereas the Kingdom Come version is lionized as one of the greatest interpretations but probably has as more toxicity to it than either.

This is wrong. Injustice is one of DC’s top selling comics, it was a digital powerhouse unlike anything else we’ve seen. It’s incredibly popular and a best seller.

[Yoda]

This is wrong. Injustice is one of DC’s top selling comics, it was a digital powerhouse unlike anything else we’ve seen. It’s incredibly popular and a best seller.

By the metric of digital comics or regular sales though? Digital sales on the whole are a fraction of print, or at least that's the common refrain. So what does best seller in digital translate to in actual comics sales? I know the collections are popular.

[Vordan]

By the metric of digital comics or regular sales though? Digital sales on the whole are a fraction of print, or at least that's the common refrain. So what does best seller in digital translate to in actual comics sales? I know the collections are popular.

Regular sales. Consider: Taylor was originally only going to write about 6-12 issues like all the other digital tie-ins. The series sold so well that it went on to cover the entire 5 year gap between Taylor’s first issue and the game. Even after Taylor left the series sold well enough for the new guy to do two years worth of issues. They put out 2 freaking omnibuses of Injustice 1, they wouldn’t be doing that for a digital series that didn’t sell well lol.

[Yoda]

Regular sales. Consider: Taylor was originally only going to write about 6-12 issues like all the other digital tie-ins. The series sold so well that it went on to cover the entire 5 year gap between Taylor’s first issue and the game. Even after Taylor left the series sold well enough for the new guy to do two years worth of issues. They put out 2 freaking omnibuses of Injustice 1, they wouldn’t be doing that for a digital series that didn’t sell well lol.

I know the TPBs are popular and I'm not saying it didn't sell well for a digital book. But we don't know what those numbers are and the digital market is thought to be more or less completely separate from the print. Were the print Injustice books on the same level sales wise - I don't recall it being in like the top 20 regularly but I could be wrong. Or are we talking about two completely different markets?

Unrelatedly, it is also annoying that people shorthand Injustice into Lois dies and he goes nuts, when it's drastically different than that. He himself kills Lois and their child and then that nukes Metropolis killing millions. Similarly to the SnyderCut version, where Darkseid mind controls him, he doesn't side with Darkseid because of Lois' death. It's not really central to the point here, but it annoys me when the actual circumstances just get shorthanded.

[Vordan]

I know the TPBs are popular and I'm not saying it didn't sell well for a digital book. But we don't know what those numbers are and the digital market is thought to be more or less completely separate from the print. Were the print Injustice books on the same level sales wise - I don't recall it being in like the top 20 regularly but I could be wrong. Or are we talking about two completely different markets?

Unrelatedly, it is also annoying that people shorthand Injustice into Lois dies and he goes nuts, when it's drastically different than that. He himself kills Lois and their child and then that nukes Metropolis killing millions. Similarly to the SnyderCut version, where Darkseid mind controls him, he doesn't side with Darkseid because of Lois' death. It's not really central to the point here, but it annoys me when the actual circumstances just get shorthanded.

The floppies you mean? Those didn’t sell insanely well, but I don’t get your point. Some books don’t sell well in the DM but do sell well in digital or in trades. Injustice is one of those. The DM is dying off and a book not selling there doesn’t mean as much as it used to.

[Yoda]

The floppies you mean? Those didn’t sell insanely well, but I don’t get your point. Some books don’t sell well in the DM but do sell well in digital or in trades. Injustice is one of those. The DM is dying off and a book not selling there doesn’t mean as much as it used to.

My point is an insanely popular digital book might mean 10,000 sales where a "failing" floopy might sell 20,000. So how widespread is the influence of the story of Injustice versus the popularity of the game.

[Sacred Knight]

For my evil Superman, I like the original E-3 Ultraman. An evil version of our hero from Krypton and he gets stronger with each Kryptonite exposure.

Agreed. And I still dig that original costume.

[Vordan]

It’s pretty goddamn sad that this thread will easily have enough content to keep going for years. Coming up we’ve got
-Suicide Squad game with evil Superman
-Injustice 3
-And as much as I love it S&L is using this trope as well

My point is an insanely popular digital book might mean 10,000 sales where a "failing" floopy might sell 20,000. So how widespread is the influence of the story of Injustice versus the popularity of the game.

17AA8EE5-D72E-4403-9E9D-09E5EA8A7B15.jpg
Went to YouTube and to a popular pirate site, you can usually tell the big storylines by what people are viewing there. As you can see, Injustice is insanely popular. Look Yoda they put out five years worth of material for I1, 72 issues for I2, a prequel, a retelling of the first game’s story with Ground Zero, and a goddamn crossover with He-Man. Injustice to Superman is like Flashpoint for Flash or Blackest Night for GL, I’ve seen people unironically say it’s one of the best Superman stories. If you want to pretend it’s not that popular or well known, go ahead, I’ve wished many times myself that were true, but this is the story that has really hooked in lots of people in regards to Superman. People now see Lois dying as a guarantee Superman will go evil because of this story. It’s not a coincidence that we’ve gotten so many evil Superman stories after 2013.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

One thing worth pointing out, the nature of Injustice as a tie-in comic to a game series, that means a good chunk of its readership aren't regular comics readers, and who certainly didn't go in to read the original DC stuff. Maybe a minority but not enough.

So Injustice Superman introduced readership to comics, readers who didn't get converted to reading Jurgens' and Tomasi's run, to Bendis' run and so on and so forth.

There's actually some decent issues in Injustice. The Annual with Plastic Man is legitimately one of the best Plastic Man stories in the last few decades.