Superman Is A Dick

[J.G. Keely]

Well, I didn't mean for the group name to grow so direly prophetic, but perhaps I can breathe a little life yet on these coals. Please give me your thoughts on Transmet in the other thread if you have any to give.

I'm sure everyone's seen this already, but here's to hoping that some of you don't spend quite as much time online as I do. Superdickery.com is a site which goes through old (mostly silver-age) comic book covers and collects some of the most bizarre and wondrous ones for our perusal and edification.

The original point of the site was to collect all the examples of superman being needlessly cruel and callous on such covers in support of the hypothesis 'superman is a dick'. Of course, most of them are only set up this way because the Comics Code prevented comic books from dealing with any serious issues like crime, sex, drugs, politics, or anything scary. So, of course, the only thing left to do is write stories about gorilla weddings in other dimensions and people reverting to babies.

Silver Age indeed.

So, I hope you all enjoy it; and feel free to share your favorites with the rest of us, as we may not all have the requisite time to look through all of them between work and sleep.

[Felicity]

I haven't been very active in the group, and I apologize, but I'm dreadfully bad at sticking my oar in after a discussion has gone on for some time already. I just look and flee.

At any rate, I've always thought people were a bit unfair to Supes. He's more of an archetype than a character, and that makes it dreadfully hard to write him as a psychologically interesting person. He'll always exist, because he's mythic, epic, intrinsically compelling. But at the same time, he's frustrating to try to write character-development about, and when people try, they generally make him come off as obnoxious.

[Alexandra]

Don't knock the gorilla wedding. That story is a surrealist classic.

[J.G. Keely]

Indeed, there is a degree to which addressing Supes at all in a comic group is a losing endeavor. However, I often see him as such a dead trope in and of himself that it is exceedingly difficult--without resorting to the pointlessness of dadaism or shark-jumping--to really utilize him as a writer.

However, on must also look to the fact that we will be addressing him, on some level, even though this group seems to tend a bit more towards the 'alternative' comics. He is the grandpappy, after all.

[J.G. Keely]

It's true about the gorilla wedding. There is something psychologically deep and bizarre going on there. I think if someone did a really good study of the gorilla wedding, we would learn something new and strange about mankind. Probably not something we wanted to learn.

[David]

It wasn't the gorilla wedding that ruined Superman. It's the quiet impression you get that this is a recurring plot.

[Alexandra]

But gorilla weddings happened in the Jimmy Olsen books, and not Superman's. Mind you, Lois Lane could be more annoying in that era than a crabby gorilla bride, but let's not allow Jimmy to tarnish Silver Age Supes' rep.

[Michael]

I love Silver Age DC for all its goofiness. Come to think of it I wonder why that site never made fun of MY favorite book, the Legion of Super-Heroes...

On the other hand, no one should delude themselves into thinking Marvel was firing on all cylinders at that time, and certainly not in the 1970s. Hypno-Hustler, anyone?