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After some research and review, one terrifying point has become clear to me.
Somebody in DC's Superman offices is smoking crack.
I'm not saying it's Superman group editor Eddie Berganza. I'm not pointing any fingers at Levitz or Didio or Loeb or Carlin. However, with the evidence I'll present today, it's obvious that either something is in the water or the pipe's getting passed around like the DC offices are Eric Forman's basement.
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| from Superman #178 |
The end result is that the Last Son of Krypton has lost his way, majorly, and there seems to be no way to stop the bleeding.
Allow me to present the people's exhibit #1: pages from Superman #178. Nameless dweeb tells Lex that his "job is to sift through the literally billions of bits of photo evidence our spy satellites have picked up through the past four decades." He then tells PresiLex that the images he's brought are from 25 to 30 years ago, noted with 300x magnification.
Now, I accept that the DC universe and ours are drastically different. I even accept that DCU science was sophisticated enough to create Steel from the All Star Squadron and has many other incredible feats of science under its belt. So I'll concede that in the DCU there's a possibility there were spy satellites that could magnify an image 300 times in, oh, the mid seventies. Sure. However, that such data, given the high number of alien incursions on Earth in DC, and given the DEO's rather zealous cataloging of all things "metahuman," the idea that 1) this dweeb walks into the West Wing to report this instead of it ending up on Director Bones' desk, 2) that this information took three decades to decipher (if the tech was there, this was just sitting around when Ronnie or Clinton were in office?) and 3) that no one elseÑthe processors who delivered the data to the dweeb, the techs who download the images from this super-satellite from the sixties, and so forthÑhas access to these self-same files just flies in the face of logic so strongly that one can only attribute it to the kind of weeded-out theorizing so popular amongst professional musicians and college students.
People's exhibit #2: Superman #179. In the space of one page, in dialogue delivered by Natasha Irons, more Black superheroes are "created" than in the last few years of my memory, by any big four publisher. Superman struggles with his white guilt or what have you, and comes to a conclusion that's no conclusion, getting in the last word but changing nothing within himself or within the situation. This calls into mind the Vince Moore principle, which allows that "nothing ever changes for DC heroes that can't be rebooted away." This case is also bolstered with people's exhibit #3, excerpts from the much-discussed Action Comics #775, where Superman faces down an ideological doppelgänger of the Authority, and ends up beating them, basically, because he's better than they are. Of course, the tactics that gained the group (The Elite) their notoriety and acclaim at the start of the book seemed strangely verboten at the end -- they "jobbed" the match as badly as anything involving The Undertaker or Goldust. Superman also "takes on" the bigger problems of the world in Superman: Peace on Earth (which we haven't scanned largely because we don't want to bend the book, so go peek at a copy at your local store) with disastrous results that again leave him happily trudging through the status quo as a symbol of all that's wrong with superhero comics. Caricature or not, perhaps Muhammad X has a point.
(As a sidebar, this discussion is in no way intended to provide a thesis on the character, which has been done in a fairly civilized fashion at Newsarama, and we have nothing to add to that discourse at this time)
People's exhibit #4: Some promo imagery from the JSA/JLA book shows Superman and Sentinel floating above the surface of the Moon, just outside the Watchtower. Please note the frosty breath emitting from Kal-el's mouth. Yes, Virginia, breathing in space. Now, according to most scholars of post-Crisis, post-Byrne, post-Zero Hour Superman, the guy cannot breathe in space. There are a number of incidents, from to War of the Gods right up to recent months in his own books, which show Supes using suits and respirators in space. With the Imperiex crisis and his outer space adventure "Infection," it seemed like he could "hold his breath" for long periods of time. Despite getting blasted and punched, his "super" control was sufficient to keep him alive. A new theory floating around comic shops and online discussions is that Superman, solar-power battery that he is, can metabolize ultraviolet light from yellow suns to act in lieu of oxygen in his system.
Uh huh.
Finally, we present material from Man of Steel #121, where Nine of Diamonds from the Royal Flush Gang "hurts" the Man of Steel by implying his fight is meaningless because he can't do anything to stop crime. Which is true. Again, the "pain" felt by Kal-el is existential and easily forgotten in a month, a week, or whenever editorial or creative forces mandate.
As supplementary evidence, we present ways to do the Superman concept more creatively, which, sadly, the conservatism of the pseudopod of AOL Time Warner disallows. Consider Mr. Majestic and Supreme, who ostensibly had the same issues of overwhelming power that can be applied to a variety of situations. Either ignore the root causes of the existential crises that Kal-el seems to be fruitlessly facing (although some argue that Kal-el "confronting" these issues is an important step in public dialogue, which again makes me believe the issues are all talk with no solution) or in addressing them, reach out and make changes (some of '70s Supreme, with a dash of The Authority's utopianism applied for fun).
We're not here to snatch the pipe from Mr. Loeb's hand, if indeed he is the perpetrator (note that two of the four people's exhibits were written by him), or chastise Berganza for not catching the wildly contradictory continuity points (yeah, I said the "C" word, get over it) that are an editor's responsibility to handle. The goal here is simply to illuminate that either somebody is asleep at the wheel, or a number of people are way too heavily medicated. Apologies to Grant Morrison, who allegedly works better on drugs.
The prosecution rests.
Hannibal Tabu is a freelance graphic designer and writer living in Los Angeles with his wife, his glorious new Titanium Powerbook and his unholy legions of action figures. He sincerely believes he will have some kind of comic book out this year and will quit being the sideline player he's been accused of being. He has no enmity towards any parties he's worked with, despite some mixups and mishaps. He records his triumphs and failures at his own private Tennessee, www.operative.net.
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