I'm not really a giant fan of Superman, for all the reasons that anyone who isn't a giant fan of Superman isn't a giant fan of Superman. He's a little too too, you know? I like me some baggage, and failure, and character flaws other than being too nice. But I still appreciate the scope of his importance, and read his various titles, because no self-respecting girl who follows the DCU and was a toddler in the late 1970s* would do otherwise. In general I don't get overly invested in the Superman stories beyond their importance to the big picture. Which is why this New Krypton thing is, how shall I say it, a triple helping of whack.
100,000 Kryptonians. With the power of Superman. And naturally without his values and loyalty to humans. Let's put it this way: if Geoff Johns and James Robinson manage to think up an escape from this situation that is not totally devastating or totally preposterous, I will be stunned. Either the world ends, or they all die in a General Lane Kryptonite attack, or Superman improbably convinces them all to behave forever, or somebody finds them an empty but perfectly inhabitable planet orbiting a yellow sun that they can all go be powerful and autonomous on. Ok, that one is probably the most plausible. But that seems a little anti-climactic.
I think, though, that what's really sitting weird about this storyline isn't the crap sandwichness of the situation vis a vis homeland security. It's that it just so wholeheartedly unravels the mythology of Superman. He's the last son of Krypton, forced to cope with this responsibility on Earth. That's, like, his thing. Sure there's been the joy and drama of introducing isolated characters like Supergirl and Phantom Zone folk and alternate-universe Kryptonians, but not a whole damn city's-worth of them--I know the bottle Kandor thing has been around for a while, and I'll admit to never quite getting my head around it--but this is just nuts.
Now I realize that people who have been reading comics for decades might look at this and go "girl, this is nuthin, we've seen crazy irretrievable shit and this ain't it." Ok fine. But you understand my concern. I guess maybe this is where reboots come in handy. Perhaps Johns phoned up DiDio sometime last year and said "Dan, I'd like to use my Crisis Line please," and Grant Morrison will render this all moot. Cuz otherwise, I don't see this ending without a whole lot of martial law and broke shit and PTSD.**
*Like Aaron with Julie Newmar, I attribute my first recognition of the opposite sex and vague understanding of its significance to Christopher Reeve. I assume this also works for gay males of my approximate age.
**I know it's comics, everything will be fine.
2 comments:
I've recently been coerced into reading this Superman storyline you speak of. Not being a fan of the "DCU," I also thought I missed something... I thought Krypton was all blowed up or somethin'. Guess not. Not only are the people from Planet Krypton alive and well, but they're also a bunch of douches.
** In defense of DC, the last few issues of Detective Comics has impressed the heck outta me.
Krypton is all blowed up, but Braniac had shrunken the city of Kandor into a bottle and stolen it before it blowed up, and then Superman went and rescued it and brought it back and put it back to regular size on the North Pole and all the people came out and were like "wow we can fly." If that helps clear it up.
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