Controversial Superman Opinions

[Gaius]

I never read the Green Lantern story where Mongul destroyed Coast City. Is that where his downward slide began? It seems like he was disrespected after Crisis. Others take over Warworld, including the Brainiacs, and everyone owns Mongul. Seems screwy to me. As if they didn't want Mongul to be a top tier Superman villain.

Blowing up another guy's city will tend to put you in the crosshairs of said other guy.

Especially since it's probably the most notable thing Mongul did besides being the world's worst gift getter.

[Ra-El]

Blowing up another guy's city will tend to put you in the crosshairs of said other guy.

Especially since it's probably the most notable thing Mongul did besides being the world's worst gift getter.

Yeah, Mongul is in serious need of a memorable story. I hope that when we finally get some epic run on Superman, Mongul or Brainiac are the ones to be used as the main bads, just can't take more Luthor or even Zod.

[Agent Z]

Far as I know, yeah that's about where Mongul's decline began, but I think a lot of it is more a matter of what was happening to other characters, rather than a concentrated effort to nerf Mongul himself. I don't think DC cared enough about Mongul for him to be a factor in any decisions at all. He just sort of got swept up in everyone else's stuff.

For one thing, we had the power drop between pre- and post-Crisis and that closed the power gap a lot, allowing heroes like Diana and Hal to hold their own against Mongul when they hadn't been able to before the reboot. Stuff like For the Man Who Has Everything and the beat down Mongul put on Diana wouldn't be allowed in post-Crisis, where she and Clark were so equal in power and capability it made little difference.

And then there's Darkseid, who became a more active player in the Super-verse during post-Crisis. When you've got Superman brawling with the Omega God himself, a fight with Mongul looks like some second-rate opening act. And it is; Mongul is just a poor man's Darkseid who was created largely because pre-Crisis DC treated Darkseid as a threat too big to be contained in a single rogues gallery. But in post-? Clark seemed to be fighting Darkseid every couple months.

And I think a lot of people look at Mongul in Johns' Green Lantern run and discount how truly scary the guy was; ultimately Mongul lost control of the Corps to Sinestro so Mongul seems "less" in our eyes, but if you go back and look at what Mongul actually did....he was pretty gods damn scary. But he ended up kneeling to another villain again, and you can only do that so much before you end up looking like a henchman with an inflated opinion of yourself.

Also, Mongul beat Diana in Infinite Crisis.

[Agent Z]

The "Marvelizing" of DC is completely nonexistent.

[manwhohaseverything]

The "Marvelizing" of DC is completely nonexistent.

Have you read american alien?well,that is based on postcrisis superman.It is a book about clark kent(not superman the vigilante strongman or kal el the alien immigrant).This is what we got.

byrne superman stripped from donnerisms and goldenage influences gives you spiderman in a cape.In fact,for many people superman is dc's spiderman.

[The World]

I don't think people really like the idea that Superman is "human". They just like the idea of Superman touting the human race as this great thing and bending the knee to it. It's an ego trip for the reader to see Supes attribute everything in his life The Kents, Lois, Perry, etc because they're human like the reader.

[Vordan]

The "Marvelizing" of DC is completely nonexistent.

Not all of DC certainly, but I do feel like they tried to bring certain areas of the DCU into tune with what Marvel was doing, Superman being one of those areas. Whether they succeeded or not is totally up for debate, but there’s a reason DC went with Byrne’s Superman reboot pitch over Frank Miller’s or Alan Moore’s. They wanted to make their main heroes more popular, towards the end of the Pre-Crisis era sales were in the toilet, and Marvel was indisputably the “cooler” company. So DC spent a lot of effort to try capture the attention of the Marvel audience, hence why they made a big deal of Kirby coming to work for them initially and why they ultimately gave Byrne the job.

But I find that you don’t see what happened to DC after Crisis to be “Marvelizing” interesting. Why is that? Superman in particular went from being a character DC mandated be aimed at children Pre-Crisis, to trying to imitate the more teen demographic characters at Marvel with Byrne as I see it.

[rpmaluki]

I don't think people really like the idea that Superman is "human". They just like the idea of Superman touting the human race as this great thing and bending the knee to it. It's an ego trip for the reader to see Supes attribute everything in his life The Kents, Lois, Perry, etc because they're human like the reader.

I'm starting to believe this the more entrenched in the character I become but I don't think it's stops with readers, I think DC/WB does the same to an extent and I don't like it. I want his Kryptonianess explored beyond the El's put him in a spaceship and beamed him to earth.

[Agent Z]

Not all of DC certainly, but I do feel like they tried to bring certain areas of the DCU into tune with what Marvel was doing, Superman being one of those areas. Whether they succeeded or not is totally up for debate, but there’s a reason DC went with Byrne’s Superman reboot pitch over Frank Miller’s or Alan Moore’s. They wanted to make their main heroes more popular, towards the end of the Pre-Crisis era sales were in the toilet, and Marvel was indisputably the “cooler” company. So DC spent a lot of effort to try capture the attention of the Marvel audience, hence why they made a big deal of Kirby coming to work for them initially and why they ultimately gave Byrne the job.

But I find that you don’t see what happened to DC after Crisis to be “Marvelizing” interesting. Why is that? Superman in particular went from being a character DC mandated be aimed at children Pre-Crisis, to trying to imitate the more teen demographic characters at Marvel with Byrne as I see it.

Because it's a false dichotomy based primarily on superficial differences between the two companies and ignores that they've had more in common with each from the beginning than not. The original takes on Superman and Batman wouldn't be out of place at Marvel and many Marvel characters like Captain America and Silver Surfer aren't that different from what people think DC characters are.

[Vordan]

Because it's a false dichotomy based primarily on superficial differences between the two companies and ignores that they've had more in common with each from the beginning than not. The original takes on Superman and Batman wouldn't be out of place at Marvel and many Marvel characters like Captain America and Silver Surfer aren't that different from what people think DC characters are.

I can agree with that.

[SiegePerilous02]

The "Marvelizing" of DC is completely nonexistent.

The specific choice of Byrne being brought in when he was in an attempt to revamp Superman and make him appealing to the Marvel fans of the 80s (and it working at the time) indicates otherwise.

Golden Age Superman wouldn't be out of place in Golden Age Marvel, but Byrne added some 80s style soap opera/serialization and made him more relatively "grounded" while more cartoony elements like Krypto that had either never been prominently seen at Marvel or didn't exist got wiped out. The reason NTT was the hottest book at DC was it was a Marvel-like book by (at that point) creators who had worked at Marvel and COIE was an attempt to bring the whole thing in line with that.

[Cyberstrike]

While I agree we shouldn't tone down Superman to please everyone, I also think people overestimate just how controversial that would be. There is no evidence that Superman would piss off half the country. I repeat: There is literally no evidence that Superman would piss off half the country.

Research polls done on Americans show that most aren't as divided as Fox and CNN keep going on about. The majority of Americans have what we would call center-left positions:
https://medium.com/@StealYoRedBull/a...y-b770db517ba5
(Note that some of those numbers are already dated. For example, the % of Americans in favor of healthcare are now at 70%).

Even among Republicans, we forget that Trump won in 2016 by pretending to be anti-Establishment.

This fear that Superman would piss off half the country is a worst-case scenario, not even the most likely scenario. Frankly the people who insist on this don't bother to do any research and some may be even using it to rationalize the fact they don't want a Superman that is an actual champion for the little guy.

The simple truth is that regardless of a writer's political leanings these days you are going to piss someone off and to quote Captain Picard "If we're going to be damned then lets be damned for who we are" So yeah if Clark Kent is going to be a reporter he needs to have a political point of view regardless on what subject he's reporting on.

IF DC gets Mark Waid to take over from Bendis and Waid has made no secret of his left-leaning political views and used his last run on Captain America to show his utter competent with Trump.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

The simple truth is that regardless of a writer's political leanings these days you are going to piss someone off and to quote Captain Picard "If we're going to be damned then lets be damned for who we are" So yeah if Clark Kent is going to be a reporter he needs to have a political point of view regardless on what subject he's reporting on.

IF DC gets Mark Waid to take over from Bendis and Waid has made no secret of his left-leaning political views and used his last run on Captain America to show his utter competent with Trump.

Well said.

Honestly, a left-leaning Superman might even sell better at this point than a neutral Superman. If 75% of the country want it and 25% are repulsed by it, that would still translate better in terms of sales than a middle-of-the-road Superman which no one really wants. A Superman which doesn't take any side is exactly why Superman has been MIA in the last few decades, as we were discussing a few pages ago.

[phonogram12]

The specific choice of Byrne being brought in when he was in an attempt to revamp Superman and make him appealing to the Marvel fans of the 80s (and it working at the time) indicates otherwise.

Golden Age Superman wouldn't be out of place in Golden Age Marvel, but Byrne added some 80s style soap opera/serialization and made him more relatively "grounded" while more cartoony elements like Krypto that had either never been prominently seen at Marvel or didn't exist got wiped out. The reason NTT was the hottest book at DC was it was a Marvel-like book by (at that point) creators who had worked at Marvel and COIE was an attempt to bring the whole thing in line with that.

Yeah, these are all pretty much accepted facts and has been since the '80s.

[9th.]

Because it's a false dichotomy based primarily on superficial differences between the two companies and ignores that they've had more in common with each from the beginning than not. The original takes on Superman and Batman wouldn't be out of place at Marvel and many Marvel characters like Captain America and Silver Surfer aren't that different from what people think DC characters are.

Yeah all this "Marvelizing" talk sounds like nonsense to me