Superman and the Authority

[SiegePerilous02]

And the films (no him getting brainwashed in plans that never saw fruition doesn't count), the various animated movies and the cartoons.

I wouldn't count the Snyder films. They have fans but are way too divisive to be considered a clear hit for the character, to the point where the studio is chucking Cavill despite still being interested in the role. The extreme hate and the extreme love the take gets mostly exists in the fandom sphere. Like Myskin said, the overall reception of that Superman among the mainstream is a resounding "meh."

The brainwashing counts (at least halfway) because it was heavily foreshadowed as going to happen in both BvS and the Snyder Cut, plus we have his delirious state post-resurrection where he attacks the League. Combined with the character being so poorly fleshed out in this iteration, the main visual of the movie is angry/stoic Superman with flashing red eyes even when he's not being brainwashed. I'd also say while the DTVs don't count for nothing, they are more of a niche product than the movies or Injustice games and aren't reaching as wide an audience.

If you look at the recent evil versions of Superman we've gotten in adaptations, it's only Injustice and the upcoming Suicide Squad game (which is likely also him being brainwashed as well). WB/DC doesn't do evil Superman nearly as often as people complain about and most of the recent versions have simply been him getting mind controlled, something which happens to other superheroes quite regularly. @Myskin Nor is everything that he's been in been only terrible or mediocre. Superman and Lois has been one of the best reviewed shows DC has ever put out and even the films have their fans despite how divisive they are. Superman's depiction in Justice League Action was also well done. There is plenty to like now for a Superman fan. Truth be told @Myskin, I don't know what standard you hold Superman to. Even if everything isn't as good as All Star it isn't the same as being all bad.

Superman being brainwashed into doing evil things is only superficially different from the Injustice stuff. People don't need to be told the specifics of the differences because it sucks either way, and that's why people tend to lump it in together, because the end result is Superman being a frightening figure that needs to be taken down either way. While other heroes get brainwashed, does it happen with the same frequency and high profile stuff as Superman? Because the big shared cinematic universe that WB launched had the idea of brainwashed evil Superman as one of the ultimate threats, and so far he's the only one being shown in the advertising of the SS game. And now we have confirmation that some people in charge want him to be more authoritarian.

Yeah, I don't think the Superman and Lois show should be downplayed and the upcoming cartoon and stuff like JL Action doesn't count for anything, but people are noticing these trends and hate them for a reason.

[I'm a Fish]

These days it's hard to tell them apart.

How so?

(10char)

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

I read the recent interview with Morrison and I thought it was interesting. Plus the art looks great so I'm gonna check it out.

[Robanker]

The example they use is also dismissive and minimizes the whole situation.

“My parents died and I didn’t become a tyrant. If I can do it so can superman.”

Umm. K.

Except that’s a weird example bc parents are, generally, not supposed to outlive their children as the natural order of life. That’s not at all the same thing as Clark’s wife and baby being murdered in front of him or him being tricked into killing them causing a psychotic break that makes him mentally unstable and sick or susceptible to mind control.

Again, obviously we all agree that he wouldn’t become a tyrant and those stories are bad but the reasoning people give now with Morrison just being the latest example is hella sexist. Superman wouldn’t become a tyrant because even if Lois is murdered….what she stands for would still live on. And he would never dishonor what they fought for together. It’s not what she would want.

And maybe we could just stop killing her off period as some kind of disgusting litmus test because Morrison isn’t some kind of feminist hero with this answer. This answer is bad, guys. LOL

I think something important to remember is that Morrison's throughline with Superman across their career is "he's us, but at 11."

In the end, I saw Superman not as a superhero or even a science fiction character, but as a story of Everyman. We’re all Superman in our own adventures. We have our own Fortresses of Solitude we retreat to, with our own special collections of valued stuff, our own super–pets, our own “Bottle Cities” that we feel guilty for neglecting. We have our own peers and rivals and bizarre emotional or moral tangles to deal with.

I felt I’d really grasped the concept when I saw him as Everyman, or rather as the dreamself of Everyman. That “S” is the radiant emblem of divinity we reveal when we rip off our stuffy shirts, our social masks, our neuroses, our constructed selves, and become who we truly are. Batman is obviously much cooler, but that’s because he’s a very energetic and adolescent fantasy character: a handsome billionaire playboy in black leather with a butler at this beck and call, better cars and gadgetry than James Bond, a horde of fetish femme fatales baying around his heels and no boss. That guy’s Superman day and night.

Superman grew up baling hay on a farm. He goes to work, for a boss, in an office. He pines after a hard–working gal. Only when he tears off his shirt does that heroic, ideal inner self come to life. That’s actually a much more adult fantasy than the one Batman’s peddling but it also makes Superman a little harder to sell. He’s much more of a working class superhero.

American writers often say they find it difficult to write Superman. They say he’s too powerful; you can’t give him problems. But Superman is a metaphor. For me, Superman has the same problems we do, but on a Paul Bunyan scale. If Superman walks the dog, he walks it around the asteroid belt because it can fly in space. When Superman’s relatives visit, they come from the 31st century and bring some hellish monster conqueror from the future. But it’s still a story about your relatives visiting.

Their throughline is always "Superman is life through the lens of the fantastic," so it strikes me as very on-brand to rationalize loss that way for Clark. As someone who lost a parent to illness and now takes care of that parent's parent much later on in life, I can say with (admittedly anecdotal) certainty that Clark absolutely would overcome grief and not betray the character he's always had and that made Lois Lane fall in love with him to begin with. I absolutely hate the idea of Lois dying to motivate an authoritarian push (and hopefully that plan is dead in the water with Didio's firing) but we'll see where this goes.

I actually share your derision of Morrison's history on female characters for the most part (Final Crisis in particular feels very unintentionally sexist in my memory of it), but for good or ill, I don't think it's in any way intentional.

I do think your assessment of the comparison between losing a parent and his wife being violently murdered (sometimes at his own hands) is fair, but I think Grant was speaking more towards grief rather than the instrument of its arrival. We all respond to grief differently, but I do think Grant's point is one that at least reflects my own experiences with loss. I don't think Grant is looking at Lois dying as simply an engine for Clark's man pain. I don't think it has to do with Lois being uninteresting, it's just not what the story's about. If this was about "how does Clark live in a world after Lois," absolutely you need to develop that. But the story seems to be more that everything has gone wrong and Lois dying may be part of it. From what I've gleaned, Superman and the Authority has an underlying theme of regret for not changing the world enough. Obviously, we don't really know how/if Lois factors into this story. She's alive and well in Superman vs Imperious Lex so she may very well still be alive and the reference was more towards other takes or perhaps one that's been modified since Dan left.

These are stories, ones that revolve around Clark, so ultimately everything is about how it relates to him. If we were telling my or my grandmother's story, no matter how important my mother was, she'd have to die and that would drive the development of the protagonist as Lois often has been used. I hate that they keep using Lois that way and I want it fucking D O N E W I T H but here we are. Execution is the name of the game. I think Morrison has their heart in the right place, and the constant mention of Clark as a good, kind man leads me to believe that Injustice this is not.

[HsssH]

When I pointed out that Snyder's intention was for ALE to infect him and Lois dying was an opening for that someone pointed out that it doesn't really matter because end result is the same. So I think probably same applies for Injustice. We nerds might argue about how Superman was an unwilling participant and that plenty more people died, it wasn't just Lois, but it often just gets boiled down to "Lois died, Superman went nuts". Sucks, but I'm not sure if we can really fight against that perception.

[Myskin]

When I pointed out that Snyder's intention was for ALE to infect him and Lois dying was an opening for that someone pointed out that it doesn't really matter because end result is the same. So I think probably same applies for Injustice. We nerds might argue about how Superman was an unwilling participant and that plenty more people died, it wasn't just Lois, but it often just gets boiled down to "Lois died, Superman went nuts". Sucks, but I'm not sure if we can really fight against that perception.

Why should you fight it? I mean, that perception is more or less adherent to the truth.
All in all, it boils down to one detail - Lois Lane dying causes Superman to become evil. That's the trope. The ALE is just a detail which makes no sense outside Nerdville (and as far as I am concerned it makes no sense within the Snyderverse either, but still) and the fact that many people died is somehow irrelevant because those people have no face nor personality, whereas we know that Lois Lane and Superman have a specific relationship.
The point is that no matter how many out-of-the-world, fantasy element you include, what people will (rightfully) remember is the most humanlike, discernible behavior: a mourning, or a trauma can change someone's personality for the worse. That's it.

Of course, depending on the writer's skills and intentions there can be room for discussion. For example, I don't think that Waid presented KC Superman's reaction to Lois' death in the same way Snyder did. And I guess that more people would have been more open to Snyder's Superman becoming evil if Snyder had presented him under the temporary effect of some kind of mind control (as it happened to Hawkeye in The Avengers), but as far as I know Snyder has never suggested that his Superman would get rid of ALE, not even in his plans for JL3.

Just to be clear, I am not inherently against Lois Lane dying. As far as I am concerned, they could throw her under a steamroller if the story is interesting.

[Vordan]

I read the recent interview with Morrison and I thought it was interesting. Plus the art looks great so I'm gonna check it out.

Bellarie really makes Janin look good. I do wonder if the coloring in the preview is how it will look in the final product. The monochrome aesthetic is an interesting take, perhaps meant to be reflective of Superman’s internal mood/depression at the state of the world.

[HsssH]

Of course, depending on the writer's skills and intentions there can be room for discussion. For example, I don't think that Waid presented KC Superman's reaction to Lois' death in the same way Snyder did.

Interesting comparison considering that JL2 was not made.

[Myskin]

Interesting comparison considering that JL2 was not made.

I am basing myself on the official outlines for JL2 and JL3, the glimpses we get in ZSJL, BvS etc. Everything points out to Superman becoming the main antagonist of JL after Lois' death. Would Snyder have done something different if JL2 and JL3 had been made? Maybe (albeit unlikely IMHO), but there are literally zero clues to that. On the contrary, we have a lot of confirmed clues about Superman becoming evil after LL's death and Darkseid's intervention.

In KC, Superman's main reason for abandoning humanity is that Magog - the character who murders Lois Lane's murderer - doesn't pay for his crimes. It's literally the opposite of what Snyder showed and was planning. KC Superman is not without flaws, and some of them are Waid's fault, but most of them - in particular the Gulag - seems to be relatively unrelated to Lois Lane's murder and Superman's reaction to it.

[SiegePerilous02]

Of course, depending on the writer's skills and intentions there can be room for discussion. For example, I don't think that Waid presented KC Superman's reaction to Lois' death in the same way Snyder did. And I guess that more people would have been more open to Snyder's Superman becoming evil if Snyder had presented him under the temporary effect of some kind of mind control (as it happened to Hawkeye in The Avengers), but as far as I know Snyder has never suggested that his Superman would get rid of ALE, not even in his plans for JL3.

Batman was going to time travel or something to save Lois so the ALE never took effect. As far as I know, Superman would have no agency in freeing himself. Meanwhile, Lois was defined only by her womb.

JL 2 and 3 not ending up being made doesn't count for much in this strike against Snyder's Superman. The set up for it happening was still blatantly there in two of the final films, including Lois's charred corpse in the Snyder Cut. Of course people are going to count it.

[Myskin]

Batman was going to time travel or something to save Lois so the ALE never took effect. As far as I know, Superman would have no agency in freeing himself. Meanwhile, Lois was defined only by her womb.

JL 2 and 3 not ending up being made doesn't count for much in this strike against Snyder's Superman. The set up for it happening was still blatantly there in two of the final films, including Lois's charred corpse in the Snyder Cut. Of course people are going to count it.

Now that I think about it, there are at least two more examples of Darkseid corrupting Superman, and both are generally better received than Snyder's attempts: Darkseid's appearance during the Byrne run (here, i think: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon....1LBhPj+0XL.jpg) and the Superman TAS episode Legacy, which was more or less inspired by Byrne's story (I won't take into account Justice Lords, Brave New Metropolis, etc).
In both these situations, if memory does not fail me, there are two major details which make the storyline more acceptable than Snyder's work: the first one - Superman gets rid of Darkseid's mind control on his own and fights him, and - more importantly - both are just cases of Superman getting "hypnotized" so to speak, not differently from Hawkeye in Avengers. The "evil Superman" personality is clearly shown as a fake one; in normal circumstances, the character does not behave that way and there is no major psychological issue which causes his transformation.

The main problem with Snyder's version is that Superman becomes vulnerable to Darkseid after Lois' death, so it is quite impossible not to interpret the change as a metaphor of his despair. It's not that classical "mind control" isn't an abused trope, but in the two aforementioned examples it doesn't give you the idea that the character is so psychologically frail to become a mass murderer after the death of his girlfriend. Plus, in Snyder's version it is quite easy to think that Superman may hold a grudge against Batman for even more reasons, all of them coherent with an inherently frail personality (he may be jealous of Batman's relationship with Lois; he may be vengeful against him for not saving her; etc.). The Flash himself clearly said in BvS that "Lois is the key". In that regard, it is basically impossible not to see the similarities between Snyder Superman and Injustice Superman. That and the fact that Superman can't save himself from ALE, and needs Batman.
So, yes... Morrison is right.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

Bellarie really makes Janin look good. I do wonder if the coloring in the preview is how it will look in the final product. The monochrome aesthetic is an interesting take, perhaps meant to be reflective of Superman’s internal mood/depression at the state of the world.

That makes sense.

[DochaDocha]

I really, really resent The Dark Knight Returns for popularizing a lot of terrible Superman tropes, but at the same time, I don't blame it for every copycat story that followed it. The writer of one story can't be held responsible for all the writers and stories that follow it. By a similar token, I'm also more forgiving with Kingdom Come. I should also add that I was really impressed when I first read it all those years ago, though I felt the story lost some of its luster as I had more time to think about it. Nevertheless, I am not going to blame KC for all the other stories that followed that thought fridging Lois was the most efficient way to make an evil and/or authoritarian Superman.

So that's where I take issue with Injustice. The only really new ground it broke was that its mode of delivery was in a video game. It's so derivative, I can't give it any credit for taking any real risks or bringing anything new to the table. It borrows from Kingdom Come, STAS' "Brave New Metropolis," Red Son, and the Justice Lords, and doesn't manage to improve on any of them.

[Ascended]

In KC, Superman's main reason for abandoning humanity is that Magog - the character who murders Lois Lane's murderer - doesn't pay for his crimes. It's literally the opposite of what Snyder showed and was planning. KC Superman is not without flaws, and some of them are Waid's fault, but most of them - in particular the Gulag - seems to be relatively unrelated to Lois Lane's murder and Superman's reaction to it.

No, Waid made a different mistake, he had Clark quit because his viewpoint wasn't the popular opinion, like some kind of....politician.

I dunno why anyone is even worried about an authoritarian Superman in this Authority book. It's Grant Morrison writing Superman, and in all their decades writing Clark I can probably count on one hand the number of times Morrison has let me down with this character. They're considered one of the best Super writers for a damn good reason.

I've avoided just about all the news and interviews about this book so I know next to squat, but looking at the costume and title name my assumption this is picking up where our t-shirt Superman left off, back when he was arguing with the rookie League about how proactive they should be. My guess is this is the older version of that guy, and he's probably gonna throw his weight around (gods I hope so!) but authoritarian? I doubt Morrison would lower themselves to write such a thing.

[manwhohaseverything]

I don't really understand superman fans general hate towards "evil superman".I guess,it stems from the general reverance of what "good" superman represents to them morally.For something connect to these ips to get popular.it needs to connect with people at somelevel and For there to exist familarity with the concept(as it stands presently).invincible,homelander,..etc are persepective on the character.You can't say "kingdom come" is right persepective,others are false.Simply because kingdom come or red son portrays/gives the fans of the character a breather.why can't superman the all powerful alien be viewed through the lenses of paranoia against aliens?why can't superman be viewed through the lenses of distrust towards fake politicians,celebs and the likes by the common folks? or any other such persepective that the character rightfully conveys in the "main-line"..