I Read A Ton Of Superman Comics And Wound Up Angry At Man of Steel

 

(Reposted with minor alterations from my Resetera post.)

I've always had the opinion that Man of Steel is a fine movie.  Occasionally my stance is it's a great Dragon Ball Z film, and a mediocre at best Superman film.  It never really made me angry, because there ARE some good parts to it.

But last night I read Superman: Birthright and Superman: Secret Origin, and the more I read of each one, the more I realize that I only think Man of Steel is "fine" when viewed in a vacuum.  When specifically compared to Mark Waid (or even Geoff Johns') comics, Man of Steel goes from "yeah, whatever" to embarrassing.  How could anyone have looked at that film and thought it could be a decent representation of Superman?    The best parts of it are the beginning where they show Kryptonian society, and the fight scenes (like I said, DBZ).   It's boring-ass muted colors and a Superman film that's trying so hard to get across a bunch of lazy metaphors about Christ are indicative of direction from a man who does not understand Superman, on any level.

Last night, I cried multiple times reading Birthright [I]and[/I] Secret Origin.  Not full out bawling, but my eyes welled up because there's just SO much heart to the character.  Like, let's take Geoff Johns' Secret Origin.  The first issue has Clark as a young teenager who's powers are starting to make more and more trouble for him. He can't play football--his best friend tackles him and breaks his arm. He kisses his other friend Lana Lang and heat vision nearly burns the school down.  Finally his dad decides to show him who he is, and when he touches the space ship he arrived in, Jor-El and Lara-El show up and explain who he is and what Krypton was.  He snaps and tries to burn down the space ship.  Why?

The solution to making Superman relatable isn't constantly weakening him until he's no stronger than any other superhero.  It's challenging him with things that you can't just punch away.  Like finding out that your parents aren't your birth parents.  That you aren't even human, and your own people--your own culture--is long dead.  Geoff Johns' Superman struggles with the feeling of being isolated--of feeling like no one else in the world understands him.  That's something we all identify with, even if we can't pick up a truck.

Superman: Secret Origin is so blindingly obvious as an origin story (minus the Legion, which wouldn't fit in a movie) that I'm amazed they didn't just turn it into a screenplay.  Superman winds up dealing with Lex Luthor, Parasite, and Metallo in a story that doesn't leave Metropolis destroyed, but does show Superman putting his life at risk time and time again to save the people.  He puts himself right in the path of Metallo's Kryptonite blasts.  And when they confront him about it--who he is, what he wants--we get a simple explanation of who the character is that anyone can understand:

Let's try Superman: Birthright.  That's a little less Silver Age-y, and is more of an attempt to modernize the 1986 Superman origin Man of Steel for the 2000's era.  Mark Waid loves Superman, and you can tell it in every page he writes the character.  

In Waid's Birthright, Jonathan Kent is a man struggling with the fact that he's about to lose his son to the world.  The moment Clark makes the decision to try and openly help people, Jonathan becomes noticeably more distant.  While his wife is excited to share her son, Jon becomes so frustrated that he literally tries to smash Clark's ship inside their barn...and the building nearly collapses on him.  And instead of us getting that stupid scene where Clark doesn't save his own dad from a fucking tornado  (more on that later), we get this:

Granted, both comics go out of their way to make Clark Kent into a "gee whiz, aw shucks" kinda dude.  But that's a complete change when he becomes Superman.  This is Superman after he's had to save Metropolis from some wanton destruction caused by Lex Luthor:
 

That's Superman.  The nicest guy in the world until you start harming people who've done nothing wrong to you.  Then you realize he's a godlike being who COULD choose to make you a speck on the wall, and just chooses not to because that's not how he was raised. But he WILL scare the piss out of you.   Of course, this comes back to haunt Superman later.   Lex decides to use the secret knowledge he's gained of Krypton to make society aware of Superman being an alien and make them believe he's the advanced scout for an alien invasion.  Only HE knows the truth:

You want to set Lex up as an amazing supervillain?  

This is how it's done.  You have him explain to Superman that he's alone in the world--everyone he ever knew died decades ago.  And you rub his face in it for no other reason than that he called you on your own bullshit.  It's so delightfully Lex.  Lex even goes so far as to fund an entire army that pretends to be Kryptonian, dressing them up in the crest of Superman's home world, having them lay waste to the city.  That's how you hurt a man who's invincible but just wants to help people and to be loved.  You make the people turn against him, you make it so he can't help anyone.   The second you make it about punching Superman should always win, but there's ways to challenge him that don't involve punching.

He's had the opportunity to study pieces of Krypton so he makes them look convincingly alien, while also weaponizing Kryptonite radiation to weaken Superman and make him unable to fight back, in the belief that Superman would run away to protect himself.   Because that's what anybody would do, right?

Right.

Eventually, Lois Lane helps Superman by getting the Kryptonite out of the machine that's broadcasting it's radiation across the city.   It comes down to a showdown between Lex and Superman but that's basically a wash.  Lex does have a way to communicate with the Kryptonians though, sending signals to the past while also allowing them to see the present. That leads to this scene, where Superman gets to communicate just one time with his birth parents:
 

Superman is often thought of as the ultimate immigrant story, and Birthright really highlights this idea.  Even Superman's birth family only wants the best for him, and while they sent him to a planet where he'd wind up with all these powers, ultimately they had no way of knowing that.  They only knew that his best chance for survival (nevermind success) was somewhere where they wouldn't ever see him again.

That DC manages to put out multiple films that so obviously miss the point of Superman becomes more insulting the more of his comics you read.  He's so EASY to get.   Even Grant Morrison's Socialist Superman is cool:

This would've been fine for a Superman that dealt primarily with social issues, though admittedly having Superman be a cocky dick doesn't work IMO when he's facing alien threats (makes him too much like everyone else).

One last set of images from Superman: Secret Origin:
 

Imagine fucking this character up.