Originally Posted by
Revolutionary_Jack
The point is again, why? There's really nothing to be gained from doing a take just for that reason. These characters were never intended to fit in a single period.
That's a bit fairer of an ask
I disagree completely. The art style for Superman TAS was colorful, bright, sun-shiny exactly the contrast you needed from BTAS. It would never have worked for the DCAU as a whole because it expanded to include groups like Justice League and characters like The Flash and Green Lantern whose versions we see here were created well after the '40s.
Hard disagree.
The only logical way for Superman to deal with that is, a) release them from the camps, b) take on Uncle Sam and the US Govt, c) be reviled by the American media and American society for being a commie, d) fight the US Army who are armed with Kryptonite, e) Lead a revolution that ultimately topples the government.
The Japanese Internment system was quite popular in its time and had mainstream support, and while there was some murmurs and complaints about it post-war, America never apologized for that officially until the '80s. If you do a story where Superman fights and opposes that as it was happening, the story can't have Superman end the story as an all-American hero. That's the biggest issue dealing with this.
Superman is supposed to be in-universe a beloved, popular hero embraced by American society. That's fine if you do a story with personal takes and genre trappings (i.e. the kind where Superman battles robots and Luthor and Brainiacs i.e. the usual comics stuff). But if you set that against history, you run into a problem, Superman can't be the universally loving and heroic champion of the oppressed and be embraced by mainstream America in the '40s to '60s. This was the entire point of Watchmen, real-life beloved celebrities of that time across entertainment and sports had racist and LGBT views of that time and were embraced by mainstream America in that time. The ones who spoke against that, were condemned.
I don't know, that to me was never the appeal of Superman.
People act as if Superman became big for this reason and this reason alone. The answer is he didn't. Superman's primary audience in the 30s, the '40s, and the '50s were small children who knew nothing about politics, about history, or anything. To young kids they wouldn't think of their time as "the 40s" (mostly because the concept of the decade hadn't caught on yet), they'd see it as the present. Today the main introduction of characters to young children is merchandise...toys, stickers, and so on. Children know who Superman is from seeing that, and they know him and recognize his logo long before they ever find out he was created in the 30s by two Jewish guys who got swindled by First National. That's the real audience of Superman the IP, remember that always, and that has nothing to do with history, period, setting.
Superman in the '40s and '50s was embraced and became the biggest hero in comics but in that time his comics had many racist stories and elements. The Fleischer cartoons had racist elements. In the '50s, there was a time travel story where Superman swindled the original land of Metropolis from the native tribes who lived there...our hero folks!! And that's the beloved SA era of comics. And don't get me started on foolishness like Lois Lane changing her skin and so on that came later.
The ideal version of Superman that people have was never the reality of the character in the actual period published. If it was, Superman would never have been embraced the way he was in the America of the '40s and '50s. The mainstream of that era was racist and any successful mainstream work in that era has an asterisk mark next to it for that reason.