Lois and Clark ongoing? Yes or no.

[Sacred Knight]

With each passing week and with each passing issue of titles I used to enjoy my optimism keeps lowering. And you know me, I'm usually Mr. Optimistic. But man things have sucked this fall.

I imagine meetings for Superman's direction going like this between writers: "What are you doing?" "I dunno, what are you doing?" "I dunno, what are you doing?" "I dunno, but good luck." "Good luck to you guys too, see ya next year."

[Ascended]

I think the take away is that one thing we can all agree on is the Superman line is in trouble. We just all don't agree on why exactly, aside from new leadership being needed at the editor's chair.

However aside from a few brief moments of greatness here and there since 2003-ish, the Superman line has been constantly in flux, so the more things change, the more they stay the same. I'd like to think just changing editors would start to fix things...but perhaps that is too optimistic. I don't think even getting rid of DiDio would help. I think the issue with Superman goes to the top of Warner Bros. Until someone at the top of the WB wakes up and realizes they are completely mishandling the franchise on nearly all levels (largely due to their Batman fetish, I think), nothing will change and we will continue to see things twist in the wind.

Well, there's a problem there too.

Even with how badly Superman has been handled since the 80's and how few opportunities hes gotten in larger media in that time, he's still the second biggest money maker at DC, and the fourth biggest money maker in comics as a whole (which is actually impressive when you think about it). Until that changes WB isnt going to care if they could wring a few extra million out of him; they have Batman for that and putting Superman back on track would require time, effort, and money. So they'll leave things as they are until Superman stops making money, and when that happens they might put in one half-assed attempt to revive him, and then throw him to the wolves and let him fade.

They control DC, so DC's hands are tied. Who was it who said that "top end talent dont work on Superman!"? Even if DC put someone in charge of Superman who understood the character and knew how to make him great again, WB isnt going to let that person have the big name creators very often or give that person many opportunities to prove Superman is still viable. And the longer Superman is mistreated, the less his successful versions are remembered, which means that the majority of creators will continue to use him poorly because they've never done the research.

And that's a non-issue anyway since Didio and the rest of DC's upper management dont get Superman either. Superman is still a big deal, and no editor is going to shoot themselves in the foot by throwing the franchise under the bus on purpose. But when they dont know how to treat the character, he ends up under the bus anyway, despite whatever good intentions DC management might have. I mean, I doubt Didio said "Let's ruin Superman comics by doing New Krypton!" Obviously they were trying to salvage the brand's sales potential, but ended up making it worse.

And as long as that "S" shield still sells t-shirts, WB wont do a damn thing. Superman's legend has become his biggest enemy.