Superman Complaint Thread

[TheSuperMule]

Bendis is so much worse than Tomasi.

[Yoda]

Part of the problem is people are like "well Superman was like X" at one time and it was 45 years ago, twice to three times the age of some of the people on this forum. That's a lot of time to cement things. So complaints that "it's only since post-Crisis that X has been common", is kinda nuts cause you're talking about 40 years of inertia!

Plus, comics are a miniscule portion of the "lore" for any character now. The definitive Iron Man is RDJ. No one gives a crap about the comic Iron Man (as an aside to Iron Man fans throw conniptions and consider the character a failure cause his comic sells like crap and gets relaunched every 2 years?) Superman: The Movie, Smallville, and now Snyder and Superman & Lois are what is defining the character. Comics don't matter.

[manwhohaseverything]

Spider-Man had had one basic suit that has had minor stylistic upgrades in 60 years paired with a second black and white suit that is a alternate. Sound familiar? Batman pretty much the same. The shades of color and minor stylistic upgrades over the years but it’s all the same basic design.

Miller views their children as ultra powerful special gods above humanity. Just like he views Superman as above humanity who are fragile little bugs to them. There are creepy supremist undertones to Miller’s take on Superman. But the point was that somehow Clark & Lois’ Jon isn’t worthy of his place but from people who salivate over Miller’s version is hypocritical and entire based on a shipping preference. I’m well aware of the double meaning to Golden Child. It reinforces the point I was making.

Just look at the movie costumes.. that's that.spiderman has worn a bag over his head and fought crime.. Pete's sake.

Welcome to superman comics,where superman's whole shtick is saving lowly misguided humans.I don't care about shipping.As far as i am concerned you clois people and sm/ww kindly take a leave so that clark falls in love with adventure or something like that.i wouldn't have a problem with a guy treating me like a bug if i treat a bug like it's life is less than mine.btw,buddha's teaching of universal non-violence.Buddha just means enlightened one.Not the higher one or savior or god or whatever.It can be you me or anyone.So,double meaning or not.

[Jim Kelly]

Part of the problem is people are like "well Superman was like X" at one time and it was 45 years ago, twice to three times the age of some of the people on this forum. That's a lot of time to cement things. So complaints that "it's only since post-Crisis that X has been common", is kinda nuts cause you're talking about 40 years of inertia!

Plus, comics are a miniscule portion of the "lore" for any character now. The definitive Iron Man is RDJ. No one gives a crap about the comic Iron Man (as an aside to Iron Man fans throw conniptions and consider the character a failure cause his comic sells like crap and gets relaunched every 2 years?) Superman: The Movie, Smallville, and now Snyder and Superman & Lois are what is defining the character. Comics don't matter.

The Classic period in art and archaeology can be hundreds and thousands of years in the past. So you're lucky that it's only 40 or 50 years ago for the comic book artform. And you have access to most of that either through the back issues, scans or reprints.

And the nice thing about Classic comics is there were a lot of done in one stories. Now if you want to read anything from the last twenty years, you're in a whole lot of trouble. You either have to find the collected edition (which might be out of print) or go on eBay and bid for an entire run of all those comics--and then you have to read all those comics, just to figure out why Superman says something on one page. Or your best bet is to find a webpage from a fansite that gives you the whole story in a synopsis, with some pics from the original comics.

Say you want about movies or T.V. shows being what the people know. They're wrong. Comic books are the source material. More importantly, comic books are their own medium. They matter as the thing itself--and shouldn't need to be adapted in another medium just to prove their worth. Superman is a comic book character.

As much as people might like James Bond movies--and probably will never read an Ian Fleming novel--Ian Fleming is still the primary source. And the movies are all drawing on that source material, as well as previous iterations of the character in movies.

Sherlock Holmes is in the Arthur Conan Doyle stories. Tarzan is in the Edgar Rice Burroughs books. Hamlet is in the First Folio--and as best we can reconstruct how the play was originally performed.

Popular opinion might not agree. But popular opinion can go suck an egg.

[DochaDocha]

I remember way back in the early 2000s how annoyed I'd be that Hollywood would kind of poo-poo at comics and just do whatever they wanted for the movies. I always thought that was a bit disrespectful because for so many comic franchises, the comics themselves were the only continuous body of work that kept these things relevant going into the 20th century. Back then, the normies who were the age of college grads didn't read comics or didn't watch cartoons. Heck, they probably wouldn't even watch a superhero movie until someone normalized superhero movies to be acceptable to watch for adults. So I thought the whole boom of superhero movies wouldn't be possible without the financial support from comics fans.

These days, it's a little different, since we went from less than 1% of the population knowing who Thanos was to "Thanos" being a household name today. The aforementioned normalization kicked in years and years ago. And even though I'm not currently buying any Superman books, I don't think I'll ever be happy about the idea that what happens in the Superman comics doesn't matter or shouldn't have at least a limited influence on TV and movies (my dislike of the current run means I'm probably burying my own grave by saying this, ironically...)

[Yoda]

The Classic period in art and archaeology can be hundreds and thousands of years in the past. So you're lucky that it's only 40 or 50 years ago for the comic book artform. And you have access to most of that either through the back issues, scans or reprints.

And the nice thing about Classic comics is there were a lot of done in one stories. Now if you want to read anything from the last twenty years, you're in a whole lot of trouble. You either have to find the collected edition (which might be out of print) or go on eBay and bid for an entire run of all those comics--and then you have to read all those comics, just to figure out why Superman says something on one page. Or your best bet is to find a webpage from a fansite that gives you the whole story in a synopsis, with some pics from the original comics.

Say you want about movies or T.V. shows being what the people know. They're wrong. Comic books are the source material. More importantly, comic books are their own medium. They matter as the thing itself--and shouldn't need to be adapted in another medium just to prove their worth. Superman is a comic book character.

As much as people might like James Bond movies--and probably will never read an Ian Fleming novel--Ian Fleming is still the primary source. And the movies are all drawing on that source material, as well as previous iterations of the character in movies.

Sherlock Holmes is in the Arthur Conan Doyle stories. Tarzan is in the Edgar Rice Burroughs books. Hamlet is in the First Folio--and as best we can reconstruct how the play was originally performed.

Popular opinion might not agree. But popular opinion can go suck an egg.

I remember way back in the early 2000s how annoyed I'd be that Hollywood would kind of poo-poo at comics and just do whatever they wanted for the movies. I always thought that was a bit disrespectful because for so many comic franchises, the comics themselves were the only continuous body of work that kept these things relevant going into the 20th century. Back then, the normies who were the age of college grads didn't read comics or didn't watch cartoons. Heck, they probably wouldn't even watch a superhero movie until someone normalized superhero movies to be acceptable to watch for adults. So I thought the whole boom of superhero movies wouldn't be possible without the financial support from comics fans.

These days, it's a little different, since we went from less than 1% of the population knowing who Thanos was to "Thanos" being a household name today. The aforementioned normalization kicked in years and years ago. And even though I'm not currently buying any Superman books, I don't think I'll ever be happy about the idea that what happens in the Superman comics doesn't matter or shouldn't have at least a limited influence on TV and movies (my dislike of the current run means I'm probably burying my own grave by saying this, ironically...)

I was being somewhat hyperbolic. The comics of any era do still matter, but the general public perception of the characters is largely set by non-comic appearances now. And that then filters back into the comics a lot more than it ever did before. Marvel does this more than DC in the short term, but you do see it across the board and it takes more time for things to be cemented into.

Comics, today, are read if a character is lucky, by 50,000 people. A few get to 100,000. An episode of Superman & Lois that people would say is a ratings "failure" is watched by 800,000 tv sets or devices. Comics may influence the people who write the shows and movies, but what gets distilled into those TV shows and movies are what sets the perception of the character.

[RobinGA]

I think this is quite right. The influence of TV and its devices is so profound.
It is so radically different that people experience the character through video games, TV, movies.

The converse is that comics allow you a lot of space to explore what the character looks like.
On these TV shows it becomes which stream of ideas that will get explored, distilled down.

[Jim Kelly]

Well, this is something that bugs me about the fandom. They are really super-hero fans. They like super-heroes, but comic books are just a cheap delivery device. If they could, they would rather have super-heroes delivered to their brains in the form of movies, T.V. shows or photo-realistic video games--even animated features are a better option than those "comic books."

I'm a fan of the artform. I like super-heroes, but I appreciate comics as a medium that can be about anything at all. I appreciate the history of that medium, the visual language that is exclusive to that medium, all of the men and women (along with their human virtues and failings) who developed that medium.

I don't think most super-hero fans (certainly not the ones who prefer the movies) have any deep understanding of comic books. Comic books could be Fumetti photonovels (using stills from live action) and they would be just as satisfied.

[Alpha]

That's also true of all other forms of entertainment/ art.

[DochaDocha]

I was being somewhat hyperbolic. The comics of any era do still matter, but the general public perception of the characters is largely set by non-comic appearances now. And that then filters back into the comics a lot more than it ever did before. Marvel does this more than DC in the short term, but you do see it across the board and it takes more time for things to be cemented into.

Comics, today, are read if a character is lucky, by 50,000 people. A few get to 100,000. An episode of Superman & Lois that people would say is a ratings "failure" is watched by 800,000 tv sets or devices. Comics may influence the people who write the shows and movies, but what gets distilled into those TV shows and movies are what sets the perception of the character.

Yeah, I knew you weren't being literal.

I just hope that we don't get to a point where the comics literally don't matter and that source material largely gets ignored. If nothing else, the comics are a good testing ground for what will eventually happen in the movies. I like to think that the Infinity saga tested well in comics so much that the saga was chosen for the Capcom line of Marvel games in the 1990s, and when the MCU kicked off they had confidence to go in that direction because it worked in two smaller but relevant stages.

Of course, this line of thinking backfired for me on a few occasions, too *coughDoomsday*.

[Sacred Knight]

In arguments about the best live-action Superman, George Reeves is consistently and inappropriately left out. My GOAT is Reeve and probably always will be. But Reeves is up there and deserves more recognition. I understand his time was so long ago, but its still worthy of remembrance.

[Prime]

Idk if you guys have seen it, you probably have, but there is an issue of Superman Red and Blue is it? Where Clark is kidnapped by the Russians and tortured. And apparently some other sites think he was raped by the Russians. Was it really was implied?

[HsssH]

Idk if you guys have seen it, you probably have, but there is an issue of Superman Red and Blue is it? Where Clark is kidnapped by the Russians and tortured. And apparently some other sites think he was raped by the Russians. Was it really was implied?

From what I remember it wasn't implied, but I could see how someone could make such an assumption because thats usually what happens in such prisons.

[manduck37]

Idk if you guys have seen it, you probably have, but there is an issue of Superman Red and Blue is it? Where Clark is kidnapped by the Russians and tortured. And apparently some other sites think he was raped by the Russians. Was it really was implied?

It's left kind of vague but I can certainly see where people would think rape was implied. The scene uses language where Clark says he was restrained so that he was vulnerable and exposed. They he says "They... they did things to me and made me look at Kultov while they did them". Some of imagery was kind of unclear about what was going on too. It's also completely reasonable to assume they just beat him up on a daily basis. I think it far more likely that the writer just didn't want to go into any ugly details about torturing someone. There are lots of ways you can interpret that scene.

[Stanlos]

Idk if you guys have seen it, you probably have, but there is an issue of Superman Red and Blue is it? Where Clark is kidnapped by the Russians and tortured. And apparently some other sites think he was raped by the Russians. Was it really was implied?

8^o
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