Superman no longer a US citizen?

[rick957]

Thanks to everyone for the various recommendations.  I looked up the credits for a few things that got mentioned here and plan to add certain ones to my shopping list.  I'm one of those people who buy comics based on the creators involved rather than the characters; it seems a more reliable way of finding good stuff, for me at least.

I think there's a significant portion of comics fans out there who, like me, fell in love with the medium as a child and read them now mostly for nostalgic reasons, looking for the same simple pleasures from long ago. 

What seems to have happened with the superhero comics is that fan-creators have taken over and tried to repurpose the characters to deal with more adult themes.  This is not a new effort; it's been going on since at least the late 60s/early 70s, when Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams did their "relevant" GL/GA stories. 

The problem with this supposedly-sophisticated approach is that all the lasting superheroes were originally conceived to tell simple morality tales that children could enjoy.  The best of these stories -- a tiny portion of the overall material produced -- were made with such a high level of craft that people of any age could take pleasure in them.

The generations of fan-creators that took over from the pioneers of the medium completely misunderstood the appeal of superheroes, incorrectly imagining that the genre was flexible enough to handle any subject matter, including levels of realism that are grotesquely incongruous with the very concept of costumed do-gooders.  Alan Moore and Frank Miller got away with it in the 80s because it was still a novel approach back then, but the rest of the industry followed their example without recognizing the limitations of the techniques they used.  The result has been a glut of ridiculously violent and sexually explicit comics that please neither creators nor fans, many of whom continue to completely misunderstand the medium they love and therefore perpetuate the basic problems. 

There's my soapbox take on the decline of the medium.  :)  That plus nobody likes to read for pleasure as long as TV, video games, and the internet offer less-intellectually-demanding entertainment.

Sorry for the thread hijack, but I figured the topic had been wandered from in other ways already.

[Shjade]

Isn't At Earth's End the one reviewed by Seanbaby, where Superman fights twin Hitler clones with a 50-barreled quad-gatling gun or something? That's firmly into So Horrible It's Awesome territory.

No, it's definitely dead center in So Bad It's Horrible. This is one of those cases where it's even worse than it sounds.

As for good Superman comics, I rather liked the one issue of Grounded that I read. Dunno if the whole arc is any good, but it has (had? it's over, right?) potential.

[NotCarrot]

This could be something motivated by too much PCness, but I'd read the actual story and anything springing from it before coming to an actual judgment. And from a strictly in-character perspective, it does make sense, particularly if Superman wants to start acting more globally without worrying about sparking some sort of international incident. Of course, given the nature of comics, this probably won't last more than a year or two before being retconned or something.

Also, 'Kingdom Come' was an excellent Elseworlds/alternate future type story. Beautiful artwork and good writing.

And 'Superman At Earth's End' was reviewed by Linkara, not Seanbaby (unless he reviewed it and I don't know about it). His first review, as a matter of fact. One of the few times the 'Where bad comics burn' catchphrase has been used literally.

[Heaven Sent Blossom]

Talk of Superman comics with no mention of All Star Superman? For shame people, for shame indeed.
All Star is easily one of the best Superman tales written, and possibly one of the best things Grant Morrison has ever written as well.
For Superman-related there's also Luthor: Man of Steel which is pretty damned amazing.
Mostly though Superman has always been a good character conceptually, with awful execution.

[Assallya]

This, seems to me, as a controversy piece meant only to remind the world about the comic book.

Realistically Superman should have long ago acquired global citizenship.  If it works for David Suzuki it should work for Superman.