Originally Posted by
Adekis
Krypton design
Siegel's Krypton is a world of Supermen, which is a very cool idea nobody ever went back to, but one with a fairly Earthlike social structure. DeHaven's Clark Kent knows nothing of Krypton, we never ever see it, though he does dream up a "scientifiction" story highly reminiscent of his own origin where a scientist sends his son to Mars before Earth explodes. Wylie's Hugo Danner has no Krypton, which is, I suppose, quite realistic indeed, since in "real life" we have no evidence of alien life. I tend to give the award to him based on that-
but the sheer amount of effort put into Snyder's Krypton is staggering. It looks totally alien, it clearly has divergent evolution, the society has little in common with Earth, and as with Marc Platt's Gallifrey, they don't even have natural births anymore! The language itself is totally object based and distant, not that they kept the spoken tongue in the film (I wish they had). So I think I shall give this one to Snyder.
Honorable mentions to John Byrne, whose emotionless, cold Krypton inspired Snyder's more vibrant action packed one, and to Millar's Krypton from Red Son, which mixes the "not alien" thing from Gladiator with a great time travel twist on the Silver Age's Krypton.
Enemies
Here I think Gladiator's Danner is pretty much the most realistic, but by far the least fun- his worst enemy is himself and his own lack of drive. He's very ineffective. He works as a pearl diver, and he's good at that. He's a circus strongman, but there's no greatness there. He spends a long time fighting World War One on the front lines. He asks when he joins to go to Berlin and smash the Kaiser himself, but then when turned down he just fights the war as a Herculean soldier, which as you might imagine, doesn't go very well. He does plan to do just that after a friend dies, but the day he decides to take a plane and just go, the war ends. He can't work in a factory without making other workers look bad, so the unions hate him. Later he tries to be a vigilante, but without the bright colors of "the Superman" that set Kent apart, Danner is just some crackpot strongman, and his attempts to pressure politicians not to be corrupt fails entirely.
DeHaven and Snyder's Kents are both sort of like Danner, in that he uses his powers to do odd jobs but doesn't really get far into his destiny, but in neither case is it his primary obstacle. I do want to point out that DeHaven's Kent gets bonus points in my book for being a journalist before he moves to Manhattan. His first big foe, being in fact a sort of final boss for the book, is Luthor, whose Lexbots are a clever ploy to put world leaders at his mercy- today an alderman, tomorrow dictator of the western world! Not so realistic when described, but the book sets them up very believably. This is definitely an area where I have to give Snyder his props though. In Man of Steel, the pulse that brought Kal to the ship where he learns about his heritage also brings Zod to Earth. Zod's destructive attack and subsequent battle with Superman cause the hate from Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne which makes up the primary conflict in Dawn of Justice, and Luthor also encourages the enmity between Wayne and Superman in a highly complex but very believable way, making Kal doubt himself without ever making it obvious that there even is an outside source of the strife. By the time Luthor reveals himself, Lois was already able to prove he was the mastermind. Additionally, his last deranged ploy, "Doomsday", ties into Krypton's destruction. It all ties up in a nice little bow. There are external factors that arguably hurt that Kryptonian Christmas present- Diana and the Apokoliptan contact Bruce has in dreams and Luthor has after contacting Steppenwolf- but they hardly matter to Superman's arc.
The Golden Age Superman is highly underrated though: he stops wars, thwarts kidnappers, takes a stand against illegal gambling- generally faces down real-world threats. Even the most outlandish foes of the early Golden Age, Ultra, Luthor and the radio's Yellow Mask, have no powers. I'm still giving the point to the movieverse, but I think Siegel and Shuster's original makes a strong play for this category.
Overall: I still think it's Danner by a hair, but just because he's the most realistic doesn't make his story the most sophisticated or the most interesting. Disqualifying Danner, I think I'd give the prize to DeHaven's It's Superman despite Willie Berg's stupid overshadowing presence.