Originally Posted by
Myskin
I’m out of the shadows for a while, just to give my 2 cents about this crossover I had some interest in. I’ll go straight to the point: story-wise, in my opinion it is probably the lowest point ever touched by a Superman comic in my whole life.
Not because of the plot. The plot was conceived in order to reach a point, and it is successful in that regard. The point was making SuperDad the official, one and only, Superman. Don’t be deceived by the “merging” thing: it is not a merger in any way, this is 100% SuperDad. We shall see what will happen in the future, but every single element from the splash page (yes, also young Lex, even if someone missed him) is compatible with SuperDad rather than Nuperman. Yes, Jor-El has a headband, but if you look very closely you’ll see it wasn’t even properly drawn by Mahnke – it is just a result of the colouring. This makes me think that it is an afterthought, or something which they added “just in case”, but I think that Nuperman is completely, definitely gone. I don’t think that this should shock anyone.
It is not the lowest point because of the dialogues. Don’t get me wrong, the dialogues and the story development are TERRIBLE, as bad as we can expect from Jurgens (“true love can conquer all”??? Seriously?) It’s basically a bad fanfic in that regard, but nothing we haven’t seen before (or even worse) in the past.
It is not the lowest point because of the art, which is great, and I think that we can all agree about it.
What I seriously find unforgivable is that we have reached a point in superhero comics where character development and psychology of the protagonists simply don’t mean anything anymore. We can seriously suggest that a major character has his own psychology forged by a “fusion of memories/feelings”, not because he lived some experiences and the reader followed him and his fictional life – which should be the basic element of a story, any story. One of the discarded solution to end the Spider-clone saga is now a reality, by the way. I am starting to think that the editors find ideas on message boards and later they implement them in the stories. I am serious.
We can seriously have a story where a kid saves the day thanks to the POWER OF LOVE and someone is dragging the characters from Watchmen into it because Manhattan stole 10 years of the characters’ life and he made them miserable because… Who cares, seriously? And more importantly – what does it ultimately mean?
Even worse, I am increasingly worried by the level of masturbatory self-reference Superman comics have reached. It’s a red queen’s race where the main purpose of Superman adventures is not getting the characters in unexplored territories. What a lot of people are aiming at is not a good development and a good conclusion, but rather a good starting point. The FINAL Superman origin. The DEFINITIVE Superman. It should sound familiar to all of us – it’s an obsessive and vaguely unhealthy nerdish ambition every Superman reader has experienced in their own life (yes, including myself) and which dates back to Return to Krypton (does anyone remember the half-silver age, half-Byrne Jor-El and Lara?), maybe even earlier. And Birthright. And Superman 200 and the three possible outcomes of reality created by Superboy’s punches. And I think that 16 friggin’ years are more than enough to have the story done (or – I speak just for myself – just read other comic books).
Seriously, it’s not about the costume, or the kid (which – at this point – I think that we can consider the new breakout character), or SuperDad vs Nuperman, a comparison which doesn’t mean anything. It’s just about proper storytelling, good or acceptable character development, new ambitious ideas. Say what you want about TRUTH – I stopped reading it halfway, just to be clear – but the scope of that story and its main ambition were infinitely more daring and interesting than this. Even GROUNDED – which is probably the worst Superman story ever written - had a more interesting premise.