What book would you like Mark Waid on?

[SiegePerilous02]

I think a lot of people dislike the marriage, but there isn't any value in getting rid of it. Some people love the old love triangle Clark/Lois/Superman and the dating and courtship that they had through the decades... but nobody really wants Superman dating OTHER people. Nobody really wants a single Superman...

Lois & Clark was always the endgame for the character. Even with the occassional bits with Wonder Woman or Lori Lemaris or Lana... it's always going to come back to Lois and Clark.

Spider-man is a lot more fluid. MJ wasn't his first, one true girlfriend. There are fans of Gwen, There are fans of Black Cat, There are a lot of interesting directions that you could take a single Spider-man. But Superman? Even the ones that don't like the actual settling down aspect of the marriage still believe in a Lois/Clark relationship.

I think the marriage is one of those things that gets people passionately debating about it on either side, but its presence or lack thereof doesn't really impact sales much either way if the overall direction is well received. If there is no marriage in his run if he comes on board, some people will make a fuss online about it but if the series otherwise well received and sells well it won't matter too much. Plus, do we know how Waid feels about Lois in general? She could still be included, just not as a wife.

Lois is an essential part of the mythos, she's his main love interest and the unspoken endgame for when his story hypothetically ends...but I don't view the marriage as that essential or especially interesting despite how popular it is. I've actually always been more invested in the Spider Marriage. True MJ wasn't his first and only love, but Peter was designed from the ground up to be a character who grows and goes through arcs of a life story, from teen to adult, so marriage is a more natural part of his set up. And there was a lot of shared development between him and Mary Jane that made her the natural choice, which is why OMD is so bad. Clark meanwhile is a more archetypal/static character who doesn't have one consistent version. The versions of Clark and Lois who got married in post-Crisis weren't even the originals. Plus they just don't have compelling stuff like the death of Gwen or Harry becoming the Green Goblin to bring, their friendship circle falling apart, to bring them together as a bedrock for their marriage the way Pete and MJ did. It's never been as interesting as a marriage, IMO.

[Comic-Reader Lad]

Whether or not Superman HAS to be married isn't really the point. The fact is that he IS married and has been since 1996. I don't agree that Superman is a "static character" or works best that way. He's not Archie.

Saying "No more marriage" after a quarter century and thinking fans could be satisfied with the series going backwards to an old, outdated status quo with cutsey-poo stories of Lois saying how she wishes Clark could be more like Superman and Clark winking at the reader just aren't going to fly today. Too much has progressed with the character. 1965 is gone, and it doesn't need to be brought back. Even if you do the triangle in a more modern way, it's still a regression, and it's the last thing the character needs.

As for an out-of-continuity ongoing Superman title, that just leads to fractured fanbases and cannibalization of the readership, which is another thing Superman doesn't need. If you've got a pre-marriage story you gotta tell, do it as a flashback or as a one-shot special, but don't reverse the character's progression in the main continuity just to bring back your childhood.

[manwhohaseverything]

Whether or not Superman HAS to be married isn't really the point. The fact is that he IS married and has been since 1996. I don't agree that Superman is a "static character" or works best that way. He's not Archie.

Saying "No more marriage" after a quarter century and thinking fans could be satisfied with the series going backwards to an old, outdated status quo with cutsey-poo stories of Lois saying how she wishes Clark could be more like Superman and Clark winking at the reader just aren't going to fly today. Too much has progressed with the character. 1965 is gone, and it doesn't need to be brought back. Even if you do the triangle in a more modern way, it's still a regression, and it's the last thing the character needs.

As for an out-of-continuity ongoing Superman title, that just leads to fractured fanbases and cannibalization of the readership, which is another thing Superman doesn't need. If you've got a pre-marriage story you gotta tell, do it as a flashback or as a one-shot special, but don't reverse the character's progression in the main continuity just to bring back your childhood.

The character progressed so much that the character doesn't make a damn sense. People who want a serious clark kent secret id with just a pair of glasses need to get a good look at if it works or not. Either bring back the absurd humour and 4th wall breaking or shove the identity like bendis did or make significant changes to the disguise that is clark kent so it feels more like a disguise when seen through the prism of realism .Those are three options.Either way, superman in general has a personality of stick most of the time.

[Lightning Rider]

Superman. Flash wouldn't be bad but after his last run, I think he'd do better with Superman at the moment.

[Frontier]

I think the marriage is one of those things that gets people passionately debating about it on either side, but its presence or lack thereof doesn't really impact sales much either way if the overall direction is well received. If there is no marriage in his run if he comes on board, some people will make a fuss online about it but if the series otherwise well received and sells well it won't matter too much. Plus, do we know how Waid feels about Lois in general? She could still be included, just not as a wife.

Lois is an essential part of the mythos, she's his main love interest and the unspoken endgame for when his story hypothetically ends...but I don't view the marriage as that essential or especially interesting despite how popular it is. I've actually always been more invested in the Spider Marriage. True MJ wasn't his first and only love, but Peter was designed from the ground up to be a character who grows and goes through arcs of a life story, from teen to adult, so marriage is a more natural part of his set up. And there was a lot of shared development between him and Mary Jane that made her the natural choice, which is why OMD is so bad. Clark meanwhile is a more archetypal/static character who doesn't have one consistent version. The versions of Clark and Lois who got married in post-Crisis weren't even the originals. Plus they just don't have compelling stuff like the death of Gwen or Harry becoming the Green Goblin to bring, their friendship circle falling apart, to bring them together as a bedrock for their marriage the way Pete and MJ did. It's never been as interesting as a marriage, IMO.

At this point I don't think there's as much mileage from the will they or won't they of Lois and Clark compared to just having them together and using that in stories.

I don't think there needs to be a 1-to-1 comparison between Peter and MJ's relationship development for Lois and Clark's relationship progression in Post-Crisis to seem compelling. It's just different.

[SiegePerilous02]

Whether or not Superman HAS to be married isn't really the point. The fact is that he IS married and has been since 1996. I don't agree that Superman is a "static character" or works best that way. He's not Archie.

Saying "No more marriage" after a quarter century and thinking fans could be satisfied with the series going backwards to an old, outdated status quo with cutsey-poo stories of Lois saying how she wishes Clark could be more like Superman and Clark winking at the reader just aren't going to fly today. Too much has progressed with the character. 1965 is gone, and it doesn't need to be brought back. Even if you do the triangle in a more modern way, it's still a regression, and it's the last thing the character needs.

As for an out-of-continuity ongoing Superman title, that just leads to fractured fanbases and cannibalization of the readership, which is another thing Superman doesn't need. If you've got a pre-marriage story you gotta tell, do it as a flashback or as a one-shot special, but don't reverse the character's progression in the main continuity just to bring back your childhood.

The DC characters as they classically are lean more towards the Archie model than the Marvel template, and applying the latter hasn't always benefited them because they weren't designed that way. You say he isn't a static character, but he hasn't really had much character development in post-Crisis (and it's not just the bland marriage that contributes to this). He had a fairly basic character arc, died and came back, got married and has been pretty much done ever since. There is a reason we haven't really had a big main continuity story for him since his death, he was done as a character and there is nowhere else to go. It's also not natural "progression" there can't be any such thing when the continuity is built on top of multiple reboots. Character "events" and "arcs" are not always the same as "character complexity." The pre-Crisis guy was more complex than the one who came after.

Nobody is asking for the specific 1965 model to be brought back (and would you rather the "cutesy-poo" stories of a happy married couple that is somehow the blandest thing going despite the two character involved being larger than life?). If you do it in a modern way, it's not a regression. There is no definitive end for these characters, especially the big ones like Superman, so they are never actually progressing towards anything. It's mostly always the illusion of progression. The strict mainline continuity, much like the current floppy business model, may be on its way out anyway. I think you're really overselling how much the marriage and so called "progression" really matters to anybody besides us increasingly irrelevant Wednesday Warriors.

And it definitely isn't my childhood. You don't have to be that old to find the older setups, or modern twists like the New 52 version, more interesting than the post-Crisis one. From the perspective of some, the marriage fans are the ones whose nostalgia is disrupting new interesting takes

At this point I don't think there's as much mileage from the will they or won't they of Lois and Clark compared to just having them together and using that in stories.

I don't think there needs to be a 1-to-1 comparison between Peter and MJ's relationship development for Lois and Clark's relationship progression in Post-Crisis to seem compelling. It's just different.

I think the will they/won't they thing definitely ran out of mileage by the time they originally did the marriage. it was an interesting shakeup that was needed at the time. But it ran out of gas itself eventually, and the next logical step (kid) wasn't, IMO, implemented in the smoothest way and actually made things worse. Ultimately, I think Lois always needs to be around in some capacity, but it shouldn't be a rigid "marriage or no marriage" thing depending on whose writing it.

It's all subjective. It's different, but you can still find one more compelling than the other. I think for me, both couples were married by the time I started reading random comics in the 90s, and I loved Spider-Man way more at the time. So by extension, I cared more for his marriage. The Superman who happened to be married at that point was, IMO, just inherently boring. The Superman I was exposed to as a kid (extending to STAS) never grabbed my interest, I had to go further back to find the really interesting stuff.

[Frontier]

I think ostensibly individual runs tend to show character development in their own way even if it doesn't necessarily change the status quo much.

[SiegePerilous02]

I think ostensibly individual runs tend to show character development in their own way even if it doesn't necessarily change the status quo much.

They definitely can, but with inconsistent things can be with creative teams discarding the previous creator's work, or full blown reboots, or just spinning their wheels on filler until the next seismic shift, it's hard to consider character development as that rigid in mainstream superhero comics compared to other serialized fiction. Especially when they don't ever have endings.

[Morgoth]

They are now in a position where it is safer to just leave the marriage and that's it. At least because of Jon, they can't remove him anymore, because erasing Jon means getting a colossal ton of criticism, Bendis just changed his age and this led to the fact that his run was hated incredibly strong. So did the change in the tone of the relationship with Lois. After all this, do you really think they'll let Waid or anyone else do something? No chance. They will now do everything as safely as possible, judging by what they are doing now with comics.
The most they can do in the future is just arrange a divorce for them. And then, again, it won't last long, because majority prefers marriage, judging by the fact that DC listens precisely to this part of the fanbase. They killed New 52 version because of that, lol.

[Güicho]

He said he wanted to write Captain Marvel. Just give him that.

If it's SHAZAM! great, I'd want him to acknowledge and use the new extended SHAZAMily though, not reboot again.
Although if he wants to make Freddy dark-haired again that'd be fine.

Beside one of the main hero books, he'd like to revamp.
I'd let him put together a roster of unclaimed adrift characters of his choice.
Put them together on a team of his own creation.
Come up with a new name and theme, no Justice League______. No Batman's______.
Something actually new, and a new reason for them coming together.

And as a vehicle for him to intro a few new characters of his own design.
And no - we want you to just changed the gender and/or ethnicity of yet another already existing favorite character and concept, cause It's controversial and clever. No, that is lazy, and unimaginative!
By new character I mean actual a new idea, concept and character.

The guy has talent, use it!

[Sacred Knight]

Whether or not Superman HAS to be married isn't really the point. The fact is that he IS married and has been since 1996. I don't agree that Superman is a "static character" or works best that way. He's not Archie.

Saying "No more marriage" after a quarter century and thinking fans could be satisfied with the series going backwards to an old, outdated status quo with cutsey-poo stories of Lois saying how she wishes Clark could be more like Superman and Clark winking at the reader just aren't going to fly today. Too much has progressed with the character. 1965 is gone, and it doesn't need to be brought back. Even if you do the triangle in a more modern way, it's still a regression, and it's the last thing the character needs.

As for an out-of-continuity ongoing Superman title, that just leads to fractured fanbases and cannibalization of the readership, which is another thing Superman doesn't need. If you've got a pre-marriage story you gotta tell, do it as a flashback or as a one-shot special, but don't reverse the character's progression in the main continuity just to bring back your childhood.

Fanbases are already fractured everywhere. Even if I agreed you should put in the effort to prevent that (which I really don't, these characters are old and have undergone different incarnations before, hence the reasoning for the fracturing), its already at least half a century too late to try and fix that. Some properties more fractured than others but its still everywhere to some degree. I see absolutely zero negative of having a main continuity, and then having a place for stories that aren't within that mold. It in fact will make even more sense now with an increased focus on the digital market. That's a natural home for such content.

All this said? I thought Waid's qualms about the marriage have died down anyway. I mean hey, if they haven't and he got free reign to erase it? Lucky me. But I don't think its a sticking point with him anymore to even be an issue. How he feels about Jon, who knows. If he didn't like it and they let him get rid of him lucky me again, but there's A, no indication they'd let him, and B, not really an indication yet how he feels either way anyway.

[Zero Hunter]

Mark Waid is not the same writer he was 20 years ago. He is a major Silver Age fanboy which can lead to a lot of "I want it back how it was in my day" thinking which leads to bad retcons and devolving characters. Everyone who keep saying give him the Flash needs to just stop and go back and reread the end of his first run. He had completly run out of ideas and every other story involved the Speed Force. He then went bottom of the barrel ideawise and created Barry's long lost evil twin brother. The man was spent and his 2nd run was not good at all either. His Legion run is still considered one of the worst things to have happned to the series too.

Maybe he does have some fresh ideas for Superman, but I would be worried his Silver Age fanboyness will just swallow the character up into a hole of goofy and corny troupes.

[manwhohaseverything]

Maybe he does have some fresh ideas for Superman, but I would be worried his Silver Age fanboyness will just swallow the character up into a hole of goofy and corny troupes.

Silverage didn't just have goofy and corny you know. It also had stories that inspired things like for the man who has everything and the iron giant. Heck! There were issues where superman questioned his own need for violence, control, acceptance.. Etc.

[SiegePerilous02]

Mark Waid is not the same writer he was 20 years ago. He is a major Silver Age fanboy which can lead to a lot of "I want it back how it was in my day" thinking which leads to bad retcons and devolving characters. Everyone who keep saying give him the Flash needs to just stop and go back and reread the end of his first run. He had completly run out of ideas and every other story involved the Speed Force. He then went bottom of the barrel ideawise and created Barry's long lost evil twin brother. The man was spent and his 2nd run was not good at all either. His Legion run is still considered one of the worst things to have happned to the series too.

Maybe he does have some fresh ideas for Superman, but I would be worried his Silver Age fanboyness will just swallow the character up into a hole of goofy and corny troupes.

Hes been swallowed up in bad tropes already. They just happened to come after the Silver Age.

Not being limited to one take would be good. But if we have to, we could use things swinging back to the Silver age after post crisis stuff had another shot with Rebirth

[Superfly Frankenstein]

As a literal 35 year Superman collector (man, I’m old), I would love Waid on a Superman title as long as he writes him properly. The best thing DC can do is put together a tight continuity like they did in the years after Crisis up til Infinite Crisis and make it work. There are good stories you can write with a married Clark and Lois. DC just needs to fix things and once they are fixed, stop screwing around.