How sympathetic do you find Dark Knight Returns Superman?

[CharlesInCharge]

Do you think he deserved the beatdown he received from Batman and Green Arrow? Let's not forget, he did work for a corrupt governmen and cost Oliver his arm. Not to mention, trying to shut down Batman after all the good he did in cleaning up Gotham and geting the mutants under control.

Thoughts?

[Miles To Go]

He gets some manner of redemption in subsequent sequels, but I much prefer the original depiction in the series. The parts where he's recovering from nuclear fallout are just sublime bits of writing.

[Superlad93]

In my opinion Superman is the hero of DKR, but Batman is the protagonist and that's ultimately the clash.
The harshest arrows shot at Superman in DKR by fans are usually "he's a government stooge" and
"he gets the crap beatin out of him by Batman." But both of these things don't stop this Superman from
being a heroic an sympathetic character. The issue is that it's not his story, so Bruce's draconian views on
heroics and what the super-heroes should be is what's getting explored and given narrative support.

It's no real wonder why the question of "how sympathetic is he" is brought up because in the POV of the
story at hand/Batman's POV Superman is at best a giant wet blanket man-child, and at worst the
personification of "big brother" watching over you.

In any other context Batman would've been painted as the unstable hero who finally lost it, and Superman
would be wrestling with the idea of having to stop this crazy person with too much money and time and not
enough perspective.

If I were to look at this in the neutral then I'd have to say Superman ended up being a good guy who was
put in a really awful rock vs hard place situation, and he--being a pretty good guy--picked the option that
would let him continue to save people even without making a big show of it.

[superduperman]

I think he did what was necessary to save the superhero community. I blame DC and Batman fans for taking it and misinterpreting it over the years. "Oh, Batman can totally kick Superman's ass!" That's not really the message of the story. If he wanted to, Superman could have unplugged the suit at any time. He could have fried Bruce from space. He could have done any number of things that would have prevented a fight in the first place including just flown into Wayne manor from the get go and just hauled him off to prison. He didn't. He gave him a semi-fair fight because that's the kind of guy he is. Somehow that got turned into "Superman's a pussy!" That's not it at all. It was DC who took that and used it as an excuse to turn Batman into the Batgod. This guy who is ten steps ahead of everyone else. Which he wasn't. Superman was basically just indulging him.

Where I think Miller went off the rails was in the sequel. Where Luthor was basically holding him hostage. THAT was where I think they went too far. I've said before that the Frank Miller who wrote DKR and Year One no longer exists and DKR2 is proof of that. Even he forgot what the message of his own book was. DKR3 made at least some attempt at redemption. But I'm still iffy about Superman Year One after all this time. 1980s Miller could do something cool with him. I don't know about today. He had to have someone else rein in his excesses just to get DKR3 done.

[Jon Clark]

Let's not forget that Batman hadn't been fighting the good fight the past few decades. Superman had been trying to balance doing good for the world with not being on every nation's most-wanted-list while Bruce was retired. The all of a sudden Bruce decides it's time to up-end-the-applecart by putting back on the Batsuit. It wasn't as if Superman was looking to confront Bruce. Superman was looking for a peaceful solution the whole time. Batman was the one who insisted on going toe-to-toe. And once Bruce had managed to get off the government's viewscreen, Superman had no problem letting Bruce operate underground. It's not like Superman couldn't have restarted the conflict when he heard Bruce's heartbeat resume. If Bruce had operated more covertly from the start of the story there needn't have been any Superman/Batman confrontation.

Batman may be the guy who comes out on top, but it's clear that Superman was never the enemy Bruce treated him as throughout TDKR. I might have been rooting for Bats over the real bad guys, but I was Team Superman while doing it.

[Francisco]

DKR Superman suffers from the same ailment Superman from BvS suffers:It's not his story.

[daBronzeBomma]

I cannot separate that incarnation of Superman from the disastrous effects the portrayal had on the overall character going forward from that point.

Byrne may have birthed the Dumbed-Down and De-Powered Superman, but Miller conceived him.

Pre-COIE Earth-1 Supes ate nukes for breakfast. He didn't answer to the U.S. government, at least not like that. He knew how to use his superspeed in a fight.

But really, it's the influence that this diminished version had on later encounters with Batman and others that still bother me.

This is Compromised Superman, and I find him 0% sympathetic.

[JackDaw]

I am always completely baffled at the interpretation put on Superman’s actions in this story by most fans...they bear little or no relation to what actually happens on panel.

Here’s what is actually shown:-

Superman temporarily weakened by a nuclear blast (incurred because he saved lifes yet again) is summoned by Batman. Batman..in an armour suit powered by city’s entire electrical grid hits Superman. Superman looks puzzled as to why his supposed friend has done this, staggers a bit and flies away. Later at the “funeral” Superman can tell Batman is still alive, but refuses to expose the ruse.

In other words..at no point is Superman willing to fight or expose a man he regards as a friend.

That’s a much more realistic interpretation of what actually happens in the comic, than the “Batman beats Superman” that is trotted out time after time after time.

[CharlesInCharge]

I cannot separate that incarnation of Superman from the disastrous effects the portrayal had on the overall character going forward from that point.

Personally, I think it was the double whammy of Superman IV (which came out at the same time) and DKR that caused the problems the character's franchise is still enduring. That said, I've never brought into the idea that Miller flat-out despises Superman. I think it's more that he has a love-hate relationship with him.

[SiegePerilous02]

I find him more sympathetic than Bruce in the story. It's not a perfect portrayal by any means, but I think Miller didn't want to portrayal either hero as being at their best in the story and it wasn't (at the time) how he'd write them in a normal setting. Fans and some creators just came away from it with different interpretations that bled over into the main continuity, and even Miller seemed to start falling into it even if he didn't initially.

Personally, I think it was the double whammy of Superman IV (which came out at the same time) and DKR that caused the problems the character's franchise is still enduring. That said, I've never brought into the idea that Miller flat-out despises Superman. I think it's more that he has a love-hate relationship with him.

I'd add Crisis rebooting him into that as well. Though very early on, Miller and Steve Gerber were going to be in charge of the new Superman continuity. I wonder what Frank in his prime would have done with the character? Plus, Gerber was already proven to be a good Superman writer. i can't help but feel we (and the character) would have been far better off in the long run if they had been in charge and not Byrne. There's a reason why Year One is the reboot of the Trinity from that period that holds up the best. Or, preferably, no reboot at all.

[Kuwagaton]

The road untraveled normally looks enticing, but Frank Miller left right after Year One and Collins under performed critically and commercially, while Byrne sold into the millions. Tough to be sure rebooting was gonna work with him. But at least he'll get his Year One in a few months anyway.

I'd have to re-read deeply to see if the rest of Miller's use of Superman seems to apologize for the legacy of DKR, or if he figured it was sympathetic enough.

[SiegePerilous02]

The road untraveled normally looks enticing,

This is very true.

I still wish that often rumored run by Alan Moore would have happened.

but Frank Miller left right after Year One and Collins under performed critically and commercially, while Byrne sold into the millions. Tough to be sure rebooting was gonna work with him. But at least he'll get his Year One in a few months anyway.

I think that's down to Collins not being Frank Miller. Byrne's MoS may have sold in the millions at the time, but it is generally not as well regarded as Year One today, and while Superman still is a pop culture juggernaut, his popularity isn't what it once was. And Batman is at the top of the food chain, and has been for a while, and his post-Crisis reboot was less radical than his two peers in the Trinity. Byrne stuck around longer than Miller perhaps would have, but we don't know if Gerber would have been out the door as quickly. And I think Frank doing a Year One for Superman now is too little too late. His reputation and quality of work has plummeted, and this is coming long after the character needed it.

[DochaDocha]

I cannot separate that incarnation of Superman from the disastrous effects the portrayal had on the overall character going forward from that point.

Byrne may have birthed the Dumbed-Down and De-Powered Superman, but Miller conceived him.

Pre-COIE Earth-1 Supes ate nukes for breakfast. He didn't answer to the U.S. government, at least not like that. He knew how to use his superspeed in a fight.

But really, it's the influence that this diminished version had on later encounters with Batman and others that still bother me.

This is Compromised Superman, and I find him 0% sympathetic.

Pretty much agreed with all of this.

[Powerboy]

Do you think he deserved the beatdown he received from Batman and Green Arrow? Let's not forget, he did work for a corrupt governmen and cost Oliver his arm. Not to mention, trying to shut down Batman after all the good he did in cleaning up Gotham and geting the mutants under control.

Thoughts?

It has honestly been so long since I've read it that it's hard to say. I agree with the person who said it's hard to separate it from it's detrimental affect on Superman as a character.

Although I've read remarks by Miller that would indicate he doesn't care for Superman as a character, I think John Byrne bears as much of the burden or more because he chose to run with a Superman that was the dumbed down and less knowledgeable version that Miller presented.

In some respects, I never got the popularity of the whole thing even before Superman came into it. And yes, I know lots of comic fans think it's supposed to be this brilliant and insightful work of literary genius that should be compared to Hamlet or something and there were some clever nuances such as Bruce Wayne being influenced by "The Mark of Zorro". But I generally just saw it as being in the "Robocop" sort of dark, dismal world and a story of exaggeration, a slippery slope story where everything was taken to extremes. What if you took the Silver Age Superman to his ultimate extreme?

The art was the first thing that turned me off to it because the jut-jawed exaggeration was a reflection of the story and intentionally so. It told me what the story basically was right away.

What surprised me is how many people seemed incapable of seeing that. At first, it was just a type of story that didn't interest me. I wasn't big on Watchmen either. But then I realized a lot of my friends had this image of Superman as always being like the Superman of this story and that just totally was incomprehensible to me. Not out of inability to see that a slippery slope could lead to this but many thought there was no slippery slope to slide down, that he had always been like this. But "Why some people don't like Superman" is a thread onto itself.

To answer the question, I had sympathy for Superman because I thought he was just doing what he thought he had to do. It was a world where the government had become corrupt but he felt he couldn't break the law. Why the Silver Age Superman would chain himself to the law so strongly is another matter that I think has everything to do with how powerful he was. Of course, there were other choices he could have made such as vanishing and living his life as Clark Kent but then he couldn't be out there saving people. So, to just straightforwardly answer the question, I did have a lot of sympathy for him, more than for that version of Batman.

Ultimately, this Superman and this Batman were supposed to be the Silver/ Bronze Age versions decades later but I never completely bought that this was Superman. For it to work, his intelligence had to be dumbed down and portrayed as if he was ignorant of many aspects of science instead of the genius he was portrayed to be 90+ percent of the time who had mastered all human sciences and many Kryptonian ones.

And also, the idea of Batman "beating" an opponent who wasn't even really fighting him (because instant win if Superman wasn't playing around) and was trying to reason with him and then Batman crowing about how he beat an opponent who wasn't even fighting him. Ya know, I want to be all intellectual and polite about this but f**k it. It sucked.

[Powerboy]

In my opinion Superman is the hero of DKR, but Batman is the protagonist and that's ultimately the clash.
The harshest arrows shot at Superman in DKR by fans are usually "he's a government stooge" and
"he gets the crap beatin out of him by Batman." But both of these things don't stop this Superman from
being a heroic an sympathetic character. The issue is that it's not his story, so Bruce's draconian views on
heroics and what the super-heroes should be is what's getting explored and given narrative support.

It's no real wonder why the question of "how sympathetic is he" is brought up because in the POV of the
story at hand/Batman's POV Superman is at best a giant wet blanket man-child, and at worst the
personification of "big brother" watching over you.

In any other context Batman would've been painted as the unstable hero who finally lost it, and Superman
would be wrestling with the idea of having to stop this crazy person with too much money and time and not
enough perspective.

If I were to look at this in the neutral then I'd have to say Superman ended up being a good guy who was
put in a really awful rock vs hard place situation, and he--being a pretty good guy--picked the option that
would let him continue to save people even without making a big show of it.

I love this interpretation.