Clark Kent/Kal-El/Superman 2022 Appreciation

[Vordan]

[BBally]

DC Mech's incarnation of Superman is going for the long hair look but not quite the same as his 90s period.




As a matter of fact, with his backstory as a survivor of a doomed planet who uses a mech to combat a threat that destroyed his planet.

This version of Superman is basically Duke Fleed, the main protagonist of the anime UFO Robo Grendizer.




Seriously, in this incarnation Krypton was destroyed by Darkseid's forces, which is similar to Duke Fleed's backstory of his planet being destroyed by the anime's main antagonists.

[Frontier]

I see that anime hair .

[manwhohaseverything]

Was never really into mechas..So,really didn't try it..But,this feels promising.I hope it's quality content for people that like mechas.

[Vordan]

[Gaius]

[Vordan]

Listened to Hitch’s latest interview on Word Balloon and he leaked some more info on the Waid project (around the 40 minute mark):
-Says Nowlan has finished inking issue 1 and he’s about halfway done drawing issue 2
-It will be an all encompassing Superman story that tackles everything from Smallville to Atlantis (I guess Lori is showing up ) to Metropolis, Lex Luthor, and the Legion of Superheroes
-If this was his final project involving Superman he’d be content with it because it lets him put his own spin on every corner of the Super Mythos
-Waid had pitched this a while ago but Didio vetoed it. Once Didio left, Jim Lee pretty much immediately greenlit it
-Hitch loves Waid’s take on the character and thinks he’s one of the guys who really *gets* Superman (no shocker they work well together given they both worship Chris Reeve)

Sounds like Waid is getting wild with this, Birthright was quasi-realistic but this sounds like Waid going all out and bringing in every single component of Superman he’s wanted to touch on for a while. Modernizing all those Silver Age Superman bits of lore he loved is what I see happening here. Expecting Brainiac will be the bad guy here but perhaps this will also involve multiple Superman Rogues too.

[manwhohaseverything]

I miss this duo..instead we are gonna have superfamily..i don't see the point

[Vordan]

[Frontier]

Listened to Hitch’s latest interview on Word Balloon and he leaked some more info on the Waid project (around the 40 minute mark):
-Says Nowlan has finished inking issue 1 and he’s about halfway done drawing issue 2
-It will be an all encompassing Superman story that tackles everything from Smallville to Atlantis (I guess Lori is showing up ) to Metropolis, Lex Luthor, and the Legion of Superheroes
-If this was his final project involving Superman he’d be content with it because it lets him put his own spin on every corner of the Super Mythos
-Waid had pitched this a while ago but Didio vetoed it. Once Didio left, Jim Lee pretty much immediately greenlit it
-Hitch loves Waid’s take on the character and thinks he’s one of the guys who really *gets* Superman (no shocker they work well together given they both worship Chris Reeve)

Sounds like Waid is getting wild with this, Birthright was quasi-realistic but this sounds like Waid going all out and bringing in every single component of Superman he’s wanted to touch on for a while. Modernizing all those Silver Age Superman bits of lore he loved is what I see happening here. Expecting Brainiac will be the bad guy here but perhaps this will also involve multiple Superman Rogues too.

Seems like a weird pitch for Hitch's style, but maybe I'll be surprised.

[Vordan]

Seems like a weird pitch for Hitch's style, but maybe I'll be surprised.

Well Birthright was originally supposed to be an “Ultimate Superman” take, so bringing on board Hitch to continue modernizing and updating all of those old school Superman tropes does make sense to me. Hitch is there to draw all those classic ideas in a way that puts them over with modern audiences, same as Mora drawing the “retro” status quo in Batman/Superman but in a way that doesn’t immediately turn away readers who have never read a comic that came out in the 20th century.

[Vordan]

Someone shared this old interview with Timm on Reddit so I figured I’d share it here too. Timm doesn’t hold back on how he views Superman and I believe this continues to be how he truly views the character:

Lamken: What did he have against the Superman series?

Timm: When we started corresponding, he was very complimentary about the Batman show. He really loved the first series of Batman that we did. So that was cool; I wrote him a fan letter, and he wrote me a fan letter back, [which] just blew me away — I was floating on Cloud Nine for a week. But when we did the Superman show, he got all bent out of shape that we didn't do it exactly like the Fleischers did; he thought that we updated the character too much, which is kinda bizarre, 'cause we really didn't.

If I had it to do over again, I'd update the character more — I think that the show would have been more successful if we had reinvented [things] a little bit. Superman's just not as intrinsically cool as Batman. Superman makes a lot of sense in 1940; he doesn't really make a whole lot of sense in 1999. The DC guys'll tell you the same thing — they have a very hard time making him seem fresh and exciting. He's just been around for so damn long. I'm proud of the Superman show. It's very traditional. We did incorporate all the Kirby stuff, and we gave Jimmy Olsen baggy pants, and we had mecha-style robots instead of 1940s-style robots, but other than that it's very true to the old-fashioned Superman. The reason why we didn't make it Fleischeresque is that I didn't want anybody to literally put it side-by-side with the old Fleischer shorts and say, "They're just doing a third-rate knockoff of the Fleischers." Because we can't compare with that.

But Alex got really bent out of shape about it. I'd write back to him explaining why I did what I did, and it went back and forth, two or three exchanges, and then I just stopped hearing from him. I didn't hear from him for about a year &
a half, and then [Batman: Animated] came out last year. I sent him that as a Christmas present, and I wrote in there a little note saying, "Alex, I hope that we can agree to disagree and still be friends." And he wrote me back this postcard
that started out nice and ended nice, and in the middle was just full of poison. It starts off with "Thank you for that unexpected gift, blah blah blah blah blah, Yes, We must agree to disagree, because I think you're wrecking Batman!" He goes off on a tear about how bad the Superman show was, about how bad Batman is, and Batman Beyond hadn't come on yet, but he'd heard about it, so he's saying, "And I can't imagine how bad that Batman Beyond show's gonna be, blah blah blah blah blah, Say hello to your wife and lovely daughter for me." [Laughs]

Lamken: Maybe it's easier to say this because the Fleischers never did Batman, but it almost seems as if your Batman has more of a Fleischer influence than your Superman.

Timm: Definitely. Y'know, I think that even the Fleischers recognized way back when that Superman was just an intrinsically dull character, to a degree, so they threw in all that film noir stuff. It's the same stuff that we were trying to put into our Batman show; it actually seems to be a better fit for Batman than it was for Superman.

What a twat lmao. Rest of the interview is interesting though but it confirms my prejudice against him.

[Gaius]

Yeah, recall reading that interview from a DCAU fan site that collected a lot of interviews from the creators and staff on their mindsets for the main leaguers.

There's some interesting BTS stuff on working on a show but also good material if you want to get really riled up about how much Timm DGAF outside of his self-insert, lol.

[Frontier]

Someone shared this old interview with Timm on Reddit so I figured I’d share it here too. Timm doesn’t hold back on how he views Superman and I believe this continues to be how he truly views the character:


What a twat lmao. Rest of the interview is interesting though but it confirms my prejudice against him.

It's amazing S:TAS ended up as good as it did.

[ironman2978]

It's amazing S:TAS ended up as good as it did.

Well they had Paul Dini, Alan Burnett and other people working on it besides Bruce Timm, who honestly feels very overrated. J.M. Dematteis offered Bruce Timm to head the live action DC franchise, I honestly rather he stay away with a 60 foot pole.