I have suffered a lot for comics. Well I don’t really mean suffer, I’ve endured TV shows that I probably should have stopped watching before the opening credits or sat through entire films that I knew were lazy and uninspired because they were based on comics characters. I’ve never actually suffered for comics.
Smallville is a good example of this, some episodes of that show have been absolutely atrocious, but I’ve sat through them because it’s Superman, taking as much enjoyment from an appearance of Zatanna or J’onn J’onzz as I can. As much as I hate to admit it, this is how the latest run of Superman has made me feel.
Following from the ‘New Krypton’ saga, which had all the energy and epic of a classic Superman arc, Stracynski has slowed things down. It does make sense that Superman would want to reconnect with Earth after what took place (his absence, a war, mass deaths, planet explosions etc), and perhaps walking across America helping people with real life problems like domestic abuse is the way to do that, it’s just the execution has been so trite. It isn’t a new idea, Green Lantern and Green Arrow drove across America for ages in the 70s dealing with real life. Speedy turned out to be a heroin addict and Ollie was accused of not saving black guys… It was a big step for comics to take on subject matter of this nature and although severely dated, it’s a classic run. This unfortunately (for all the hype) is not.
The Superman portrayed in this arc is not the Superman I know. He’s preachy, sarcastic, harsh and judgmental. The supporting roles are clichéd and lack the depth needed to pull off the mushy stuff. There are some touching moments, but the lackluster character development makes it hard to care.
Another thing I don’t understand is Superman’s attitude. I always thought he would abstain from dealing with problems we should be able to solve by ourselves, but here we see him getting pissy because he had to step in over domestic abuse. It would have been nice to see him help the police force stamp down on drugs or social services step in on abuse. But no, he bypasses the rules that those organizations have to follow and solves our problems with a wave of his fist and a twinkle of his eye and then moans he’s the only one doing anything about anything. If you want to reconnect with the populace, that’s a bad attitude to have.
It wasn’t too surprising to hear Straczynski is leaving the project. If he won’t have time to finish the arc while doing the sequel to the Earth One graphic novel, then it seems to me he was preoccupied with the first one when he was writing this arc. Hopefully a new writer will be able to inject the time needed to flesh out these stories, and give us back the Superman we all know and love.
Joe Innes.
