In the review of Superman II which ran in the October 1981 issue of Twilight Zone Magazine, critic-cartoonist Gahan Wilson questioned the pettiness of the Man of Steel’s on-screen behavior and came to the conclusion that the producers and director had an immense dislike for the character and what he represents.

Wilson’s hypothesis was confirmed a few issues later in an interview with director Richard Donner. In it, Donner, who directed the first (mostly good) Superman film and chunks of the sequel before parting ways with the franchise, mentions his ongoing conflicts with the producers. They wanted a campy send-up along the lines of the 196os Batman TV show, while he insisted on keeping it truer to the idealistic mythic conception of the character.

As much as the second and especially third Superman movies showed that the snide comedy approach was a horrible mistake, I can see the logic behind making such creative decisions at the time.  Superman, despite being  a universally recognized popcult icon, is a tough concept to sell to modern audiences.  

The pure, idealistic brand of  heroism associated with the character fell out of favor when the grand illusion of a post-war consensus died a prolonged death during the 60′s counterculture era and its grotty 70′s aftermath.  No longer was there a sense that Americans were roughly on the same page in terms of ideals and aspirations.  Hell, most folks weren’t even reading the same text, and more radical/reactionary types wanted to burn the book entirely.  Previously universal concepts like “truth, justice, and the American way” resolved themselves in a riot of subjective interpretations.

Toss in a general atmosphere of disillusionment and cynicism and you can see why the notion of a godlike alien with the simple goal of “doing what is right” would lose ground to more flawed, problematic heroes.  Postmodernism would turn out to be more troublesome than Kryptonite for the Man of Steel, hence the flood of thinly-veiled Superman analogues that have cropped up in comics and other media over the past few decades.  We’ve seen super-dictators (benign and otherwise), super-vampires, super-monsters, super-psychopaths, as well as a host of other psychologically or ideologically compromised variants of the Last Son of Krypton.

The genuine article, on the other hand, has been left to limp along on the strength of his brand recognition as DC’s flagship character, occasionally buoyed via the rare exceptional work or marketing stunt.  Conventional “wisdom” argues that Superman’s status as a nigh-invincible paragon of justice makes the character too “hard” or “boring” to write effectively, a self-fulfilling prophecy that has resulted in too many stories centering — singly or in conjunction — around trivial ephemera culled from decades past or praise delivered by others though narration while little is shown to back up these fulsome statements.

While I think that is entirely possible to tell a good contemporary Superman story that remains true to the traditional strengths of the character, I’m willing to concede that the results might not be worth the effort in the current cultural and economic climate of superhero comics.  I’d be estatic if either (or both) of the Big Two geared their output specifically toward my tastes, but there’s no denying that there’s far more money to be made pandering to fandom’s core remnant and its appreciation for junior high-level “edginess” and “maturity.”  What’s left of my inner fanboy may lament the path the genre has taken, but that’s business for you.  Rather than curse the darkness, I’d rather find a room with better illumination.

What does irk me, however, is the disingenous tendency – either as a result of editorial interference or lack of self-awareness — by certain creators to mourn the current state of joylessness in superheroic fare while producing yet more of the same.  If this is going to be the status quo for the forseeable future, if these are the stories you really want to tell, if this is where the money is to be made, then come out and say so.   Don’t dangle a possible return to a misremembered “golden age” while you violently exorcise your shame over enjoying the puerile foolishness of old Satellite Era JLA or Green Lantern or 1970s Marvel stories two pages later.

I’m not going to think less of you for coming clean.  I still won’t read utter drek like Blackest Night, but I won’t think less of you.

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