Michael Bailey nails the problem with Superman and DC comics: NEW COSTUME…SAME DRAMA…DEEPER SHOVEL

[manofsteel1979]

As some of you know...I about went completely ape-sh!t yesterday over the news of the nature of how the storyline "TRUTH" starts. First, to whom I chatted with privately who talked me down of the ledge of falling down the rabbit hole...I thank all of you. You guys and ladies know who you are.

I will not be talking about that in detail here. Instead I would like to talk about something that was posted in that thread that I want to share with all of you, and get your thoughts on it. It is a blog post by SUPERMAN HOMEPAGE contributor Michael Bailey in which he explains his own misgivings about the upcoming changes and lays the case out for why Superman has by and large become a huge mess over the last decade.

Here's the link so you guys and gals can read the whole thing.

There are a few things I do want to quote here though from the blog directly that most closely mirror my own thoughts and discuss them in more detail.

First, on the leadership at DC and their apathy towards Superman:



On Geoff Johns:

Geoff Johns seems to be only interested in Superman The Movie. The fact that his big move back in 2006 was to bring in as many concepts from the Salkind films as possible made me think that he really didn’t have anything new to bring to the character. While his more recent run was entertaining and had some good moments a lot of the beats seem to be taken from the book of Richard Donner. I could go on but there is a lot of ground to cover here.

On Dan DiDio

Dan DiDio seems to be the least of the offenders here. Years ago he likened Superman to a firefighter…he sits and waits to be called into action and then goes back to waiting once the job is done. This completely negates who Superman is as a character. While firefighters are heroes through and through Superman is more than that. He is a symbol. It makes telling stories about the character problematic at times but he is an icon. He’s an inspiration and to reduce him to the role of errand boy is a bad idea. Superman doesn’t wait for trouble. He goes looking for it. It’s why he’s a reporter in his civilian guise. The fact that Dan admitted some time back that if Superman is selling bad the entire line seems to follow suit was nice but recent decisions seem to indicate that it was either hype on his part or he forgot that lesson pretty darn quick.

On Jim Lee:

(Lee)also doesn’t seem to understand how the character works, which baffles me because Superman is pretty basic. Lazy creators will fall back on the old “he’s too powerful” chestnut or worse the “well, he’s an alien and an outsider so let’s make him like an otherworldly Peter Parker” mindset. Lee has worked on two Superman stories. Superman Unchained and For Tomorrow. He was put on both of those titles because he was a big name and those books would sell. I don’t begrudge this and to be fair the problems with those stories are not entirely on Lee because he didn’t write them. It’s not his fault that Brian Azzarello and Scott Synder, talented though they may be and good on other characters, missed the mark considerably when it came to the Man of Steel. Still, he was a part of those projects and thus he gets part of the blame.

More than any of that Lee has always seemed rather dismissive of Superman. When I read his comments concerning Batman’s 75th birthday compared to his comments during Superman’s 75th anniversary I got the sense that he really liked Batman and talked about Superman like you do that uncle everyone likes but you don’t get on with all that well. You say nice things about him but there’s nothing behind it. Lee just doesn’t seem to have time for the character. When I look at all the decisions made with Superman during the course of the New 52 I see a co-publisher that is either actively changing things to make the character more in line with what he thinks the character should be (rather than what a character like Superman evolves into over the decades) or he doesn’t give a toss so Superman is allowed to hop on the ground like a freshly caught fish. The dance is entertaining but it is also short lived and ends in death.



Lee doesn’t get the character and when both publishers fail to get the character then I don’t hold out a lot of hope for Superman’s standing at DC.]

Later on, Bailey talks about the issue with finding a solid characterization for Superman.

Superman is one of those rare fictional characters that has transcended the medium he was launched in and become something more. As I mentioned earlier he is an icon. Superman has evolved into a symbol and while that symbol may mean different things to different people it doesn’t change the fact that telling stories about him is hard because you have a fragmented fan base that all want different things from the characters. Some want a straight and true Superman that saves the day and never has any doubts about his mission or his place in the world. Others, like myself, enjoy a more complicated take on the character and want to see him grapple with who he is while at the end of the day doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do. Serialized fiction lives or dies by taking the protagonist into places that challenge them and that is hard to do with an icon. So I understand that sitting down and telling a Superman story can be a daunting task. I really do.

At the same time I have no patience for a writer overcoming that challenge by adding on personality traits that work just fine for other super-heroes but are wrong for Superman. The biggest fallback option is to make the character feel isolated and alien. On the surface this makes perfect sense. He’s an alien. A stranger in a strange land. He lives among us but he is not one of us so naturally he would feel like an outsider. This ignores a key aspect to Superman’s origin and that is he was raised by the Kents. Whether the Kents died when Superman was a young man or they lived well into his adult years Superman spent his formative years living with a human family that loved and accepted him. This is what made Superman who he is. I know there are people that love the idea that Superman just naturally had a desire to help people and a love of his adopted world but to me the story is so much better when the Kents are the origin of that love and desire.

You can have angst. You can a young Clark Kent feeling like he is missing out on something because he can’t run and jump and play as hard and as fast as he is able. You can even explore the idea that if Clark knows he’s adopted or an alien or both from an early age that he would have a desire to learn about where he came from but the moment you cast an adult Superman as someone apart from humanity you are throwing out one of the aspects that makes the character so special.

and he goes on to talk about how writers can make Superman work WITHOUT betraying what makes him exceptional...and has strong words for creators that want to reinvent the wheel.

The perfect model for getting a modern audience to like and accept Superman is being played out with Captain America. In the current series of films Cap is portrayed as someone that may have doubts about his mission but at the end of the day he steps up and serves as the hero the world needs to be even if his decisions are unpopular. There is a scene between Agent Coulson and Steve Rogers in the first Avengers movie where Steve wonders if his outlook and what he represents are a little outdated and Coulson counters that with the world being as dark as it is they could use some of that old fashioned thinking.

That’s what Superman needs to be. He needs to be, as Marlon Brando once said, the light that shows people the way. He needs to be the beacon in the darkness. The lighthouse that gets us back to land. Again he can have doubts and wonder if he’s doing the right thing but those should be momentary and rare. Superman should be the character that walks into the room and no matter how bad the situation is everyone suddenly feels like it is going to be all right.

I know it’s hard for some creators to wrap their head around that concept but I think that speaks more towards who the writers are as people than who Superman is as a character. If you can’t understand the idea that someone can do the right thing purely because it is the right thing to do…if you can’t wrap your head around an alien not feeling like a freak and wanting to take care of the world that adopted him after he lost his own…if you can’t balance the icon with the character then you have absolutely no business working on that character.

None.

Zero.

Nada

There is a lot more, in there, but it's those exerpts, particularly the bolded parts, that ring the truest to me and mirrors my feelings exactly to why the news yesterday, and the general move the last decade to constantly "fix" Superman troubles me.


So...thoughts???

[Last Son of Krypton]

The way I see it, the new Superman (and the whole new 52 (or whatever it's called now)) is still trying to find its footing. It has happened with every reboot, let's give them some time. We'll see how things evolve in the next 2-5 years. Stay tuned.

P.S. Bailey totally lost me at this:

... what I think is the essence of the character are JMS’ Superman Earth One graphic novels. The man that started one of the most boneheaded stories in Superman’s history (Grounded, for those curious) is now the man that is writing the best Superman in comics.

[Myskin]

Don't want to sound too harsh, but frankly speaking I don't find useful information in Bailey's article. It pretentiously tries to highlight very complicated inner dynamics within DC offices from public interviews (I honestly found the part about Jim Lee rather laughable) and the rest of the article, about what Superman should be, is simply an arbitrary opinion transformed in a dogma.

And nobody knows anything, zero, nada, about TRUTH yet. Come on. I don't think that this attitude is very serious.

It's not that Superman hasn't any problem, quite the contrary, editorially speaking he has been in trouble for three - four decades IMHO, but the process of rebuilding him as a character would take a LOT of work and critical thinking, way more than this simplistic article would suggest.

[Myskin]

Waitaminute.... I didn't read the part about Earth One. Facepalm.

[manofsteel1979]

The way I see it, the new Superman (and the whole new 52 (or whatever it's called now)) is still trying to find its footing. It has happened with every reboot, let's give them some time. We'll see how things evolve in the next 2-5 years. Stay tuned.

Yeah and I agree with you to a point as a whole in terms of the larger DCU, but the issues with SUPERMAN date back WAY before the New 52 relaunch and do not stem from it. The only thing the New 52 relaunch has done is make certain aspects of the problem clearer to see when further separated from the pre-existing continuity.

P.S. Bailey totally lost me at this:

Yeah...I found that statement a little suspect too. I didn't HATE those books...but by no means are they great. On the surface, yeah, they seem truer to what Superman is, but when you read the stories themselves...not so much.

I don't agree with him on everything here. However, he nails the problem at the core, which is DC and by extension Warner Bros don't seem to like Superman all that much, and because of that, they keep changing this or that or this other thing to fix what they think was broken...but really wasn't. They can't separate their own personal dislike from the equation. The fact is, their "fixes" are what is harming the character. They choose not to see it.

[Last Son of Krypton]

Yeah and I agree with you to a point as a whole in terms of the larger DCU, but the issues with SUPERMAN date back WAY before the New 52 relaunch and do not stem from it. The only thing the New 52 relaunch has done is make certain aspects of the problem clearer to see when further separated from the pre-existing continuity.



Yeah...I found that statement a little suspect too. I didn't HATE those books...but by no means are they great. On the surface, yeah, they seem truer to what Superman is, but when you read the stories themselves...not so much.

I don't agree with him on everything here. However, he nails the problem at the core, which is DC and by extension Warner Bros don't seem to like Superman all that much, and because of that, they keep changing this or that or this other thing to fix what they think was broken...but really wasn't. They can't separate their own personal dislike from the equation. The fact is, their "fixes" are what is harming the character. They choose not to see it.

I don't think that WB/DC doesn't like Superman. On the contrary, along with Batman, he is the character with more exposure (He's also the center of the multiverse ). What WB/DC is trying to do is find the right direction to bring the character into the new millennia and, of course, they've failed in part and they'll probably do again "something wrong" in an attempt to evolve the character. But at least they try to keep him relevant.
What Superman really needs right now are new writers with a lot of energy and something new to say (Pak is one of them).

[manofsteel1979]

Don't want to sound too harsh, but frankly speaking I don't find useful information in Bailey's article. It pretentiously tries to highlight very complicated inner dynamics within DC offices from public interviews (I honestly found the part about Jim Lee rather laughable) and the rest of the article, about what Superman should be, is simply an arbitrary opinion transformed in a dogma.

And nobody knows anything, zero, nada, about TRUTH yet. Come on. I don't think that this attitude is very serious.

It's not that Superman hasn't any problem, quite the contrary, editorially speaking he has been in trouble for three - four decades IMHO, but the process of rebuilding him as a character would take a LOT of work and critical thinking, way more than this simplistic article would suggest.

To be fair, Bailey wasn't ranting as much about "TRUTH" as the overall handling of Superman dating back to before the New 52. In fact the New 52 is just a small blip in the overall radar, as is Truth at this point. Even he at the end takes a wait and see approach. Granted, he comes off pessimistic due to the fact the track record doesn't lend much confidence,but given how things have shaked out, is he really all that wrong to feel that way?

I grant you, Superman has been in trouble as far back as the early 80's,perhaps even as long as I have been alive.(I'm 35) and the previous regime prior to 2003 aren't blameless in the slow decline of the character. I am not someone who thinks that it was all sunshine and lollipops until big bad DiDio and Lee came to DC and set about ruining Superman and our childhoods because they are Evil people who eat puppies for fun. There are people out there that have that mentality here and elsewhere on the net, but I am not one of those people, and if you read the whole thing in total, and his other thoughts elsewhere , he is not in that camp either.

it seems though from 2003 on that the accelerator has been pushed to the floor and the damage has been accumulating in larger portions, and I think the insights of the people in charge on how they view Superman and what they've actually done when given chances to write, draw and edit Superman directly are a valid way to draw conclusions when comparing the two. Is it that hard to think that if you dislike something or are apathetic or don't get something, that if given control of that thing, that you might not end up doing that good of a job running that thing?

Granted I doubt all the crappy decisions with Superman and DC as a whole originate from Dan Didio and Jim Lee. They answer to a larger corporation at the end of the day, but their personal philosophies towards Superman DOES impact in some way what kind of Superman comics we get on the shelves.

If TRUTH is what you and others suggest,a rebuilding of the character and his mythos from the ground up by stripping it down to its core, and at the end we have a Superman and Clark Kent that is true to what Siegel and Shuster put forth in 1938, with all of his mythos and what makes him unique intact, but re-examined, cleaned up, tweaked and put together into a stronger whole as we move forward? Then great. I certainly think the current writers have the ability to do just that...and this storyline could easily be a vehicle to do it. I am intrigued by some of the questions raised and the stories that could result.

However, If the end motivation is to change everything just for change shake without little thought beyond trying to win over people who don't like or understand Superman, then the end result is just more of the same we've seen the last decade. This is thin ice. Do we fall through, or get to the other side triumphant?

[Myskin]

Is it that hard to think that if you dislike something or are apathetic or don't get something, that if given control of that thing, that you might not end up doing that good of a job running that thing?

Look, sorry if I insist on this point but the mere idea that "Didio/Lee/Whoever doesn't like Superman and therefore Superman is a mess" is - in the current situation and in the way it was presented in the article - frankly ludicrous. First of all, we don't know how much they like Superman, and we certainly can't deduce it from a series of shallow interviews. In his interviews JMS seems to be Superman's greatest fan ever, and IMHO nobody succeeded in destroying the character as much as he did with his horrible Earth One OGNs and Grounded. But aside from that, we are talking about corporate people here. Superman is a property, their job is to find a way to sell it, the fact that they like Superman or they don't is simply irrelevant.

And by the way, while editorially speaking Superman has been a mess for decades, I don't think that this happened exclusively because of the writers, or the editors. I am your same age and I followed Superman adventures for a large chunk of my life, but I think that I can simply admit that, ultimately, the concept of Superman as we usually conceive it simply doesn't work anymore. Nothing is coherent and all of its pieces have become an endless contradiction within the context of modern comic art. The glasses, the ID, the sense of his mission, his job, the place he works in, his ethics, his costume. Everything. I am 100% sure that the almost total absence of critical thinking about the character in the 80s ultimately damaged him. That's why Batman sells more. Not because of the darkness, the violence, the coolness and so on, or rather not exclusively because of these details. Batman as a character is simply convincing, while Superman isn't.

[Blacksun]

Look, sorry if I insist on this point but the mere idea that "Didio/Lee/Whoever doesn't like Superman and therefore Superman is a mess" is - in the current situation and in the way it was presented in the article - frankly ludicrous. First of all, we don't know how much they like Superman, and we certainly can't deduce it from a series of shallow interviews. In his interviews JMS seems to be Superman's greatest fan ever, and IMHO nobody succeeded in destroying the character as much as he did with his horrible Earth One OGNs and Grounded. But aside from that, we are talking about corporate people here. Superman is a property, their job is to find a way to sell it, the fact that they like Superman or they don't is simply irrelevant.

And by the way, while editorially speaking Superman has been a mess for decades, I don't think that this happened exclusively because of the writers, or the editors. I am your same age and I followed Superman adventures for a large chunk of my life, but I think that I can simply admit that, ultimately, the concept of Superman as we usually conceive it simply doesn't work anymore. Nothing is coherent and all of its pieces have become an endless contradiction within the context of modern comic art. The glasses, the ID, the sense of his mission, his job, the place he works in, his ethics, his costume. Everything. I am 100% sure that the almost total absence of critical thinking about the character in the 80s ultimately damaged him. That's why Batman sells more. Not because of the darkness, the violence, the coolness and so on, or rather not exclusively because of these details. Batman as a character is simply convincing, while Superman isn't.

being a fan doesn't always meant the writer will do good.

I think while Batman continues to be a juggernaut on sales, DC will negligency Superman.

[Last Son]

After all these years, still complaints about the Donner references?

[Sacred Knight]

His Jim Lee stuff is purely conjecture, but in his defense he states right out before he delves into it that its just a feeling he has, and he has absolutely no proof to it. So I was willing to read his thoughts when he was decent enough to qualify it for what it was rather than trying to pretend it was rock solid fact like so many fanboys do.

[Cypher]

I read this in the other thread and agreed with most of it.

The bottom line is Superman is screwed and theres nothing we can do about it.

[Sacred Knight]

As long as Pak and Kuder are writing/drawing Superman he's good. His look could consist of a paper sack over his head and he could jump out of the shadows saying "BOO!" and those two would make it work.

[Flash Gordon]

He's got the Geoff Johns part right but the rest? Nah.

Superman Homepage posts a lot of whiny stuff like this, nothing new. I, for one, am excited about the return of Bruce Springsteen Superman. He should have stayed like that from the beginning. The costume could have been used when with the Justice League, or on special occasions.

[Ascended]

The article brings up some good points, but I dont think he's positioned well enough to really be able to judge. He's not working with any more information than any of us could drum up with a Google search, and there's a big difference between what really happens behind the scenes and what gets said during interviews with the media.

I tend to agree with Myskin on this, at least to a degree. The main problem Superman has had for the last few decades is that there has been a habit of taking what doesnt work or doesnt quite fit right and either sweeping it under the rug and ignoring it, or ignoring that it doesnt quite fit and using it anyway. We saw a lot of the silly Silver Age stuff ignored during the Bronze Age. Bryne ignored even more during his reboot, and even Morrison, who might as well be a Saint in the Church of Superman, didnt dissect the character as much as he (perhaps) should have during his run with the 52. Batman has had the opposite treatment, and his mythos and methodology has been worked over and reworked again and again until the mythology as a whole feels tight and solid. Or at least, as tight and solid as you can get with this medium.

It doesnt matter if Didio, Lee, and the people above them at WB understand Superman or not. All they really need to understand is that they have to hire people who do understand the character and then stay out of the way. If I know this, as a lowly business student, then certainly they know it.

I will say that, right this moment, TRUTH feels like a definitive moment. If it is, as many of us hope, the critical analysis of the character that we know he needs, then we'll likely walk out of the other side with a stronger, better defined Superman. If this is just more missteps by DC, shock value stories with no exit plan, then we're not likely to see Superman get the right kind of attention he needs until there's a major management shakeup.