Reminder: when an alien baby with every power under the yellow sun crash-lands in the middle of Kansas to be raised by humans…
…you absolutely must teach him about Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
Moe Lane
PS: Everybody dang well knows that Superman is Clark Kent, I figure. But what’s the victory condition in convincing him that he’s not?
There has always been a lot of ‘what if’ speculation surrounding what I consider to be the ‘Paragon’ superheroes. Superman. Captain America. Red Son(is that right? the one where Superman comes down in the Soviet Union as a child. Yay, an all powerful being in service to a murderous, totalitarian regime.) All the Captain America wackiness with Hydra and associated bullshit.
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Never really interested me. For myself, the compelling thing about these characters is that they are who they seem to be. It does happen very occasionally.
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Speculation about them being bad or turning bad has always seemed to me to be the usual need of small people to see heroes pulled down- to see them as flawed so they never have anything to aspire to- or live up to. Or rather, as I suspect they see it, to be looked down upon.
It is “Red Son” with the Soviet upbringing, but the “Injustice” Superman takes it to a whole other level as a cautionary tale.
I had forgotten Injustice. It came after I stopped paying much attention to the comics (was that a comic before they turned it into a video game?)
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There was one that I found somewhat interesting. ‘Kingdom Come’ (not sure on the title.) In it, they chronicle the rise of ‘Edgelord’ superheroes. Lois Lane is killed by something or other, his parents are killed (or die) and Superman essentially says ‘To Hell with you People’. He retires to the family farm and just ignores everyone. Wonder Woman has to go and get him when wackiness ensues.
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Superman Returns. I realize it is seen as a horrible movie and I will grant that Lex Luthor has an idiotic motivation. However, I liked how they tried to explain the mentality of Superman. Imagine you had his power. Imagine you had his senses. Imagine you were a truly good, decent man. How could you not help when you heard a child crying for his parents, or people crying for help?
I don’t remember the name of it. But there’s apparently one not-Superman comic book out there that has a rather less idealistic Superman stand-in who decides he needs a break from the constant deluge of sensory overload. So he flies off-world and out of range for a short bit… and some mega-disaster just happens to occur while he’s off-world. He gets blamed by lots of people because he didn’t help during the disaster, and this pushes him over the edge.
I haven’t read Red Son myself. But what I’ve heard about the plotline suggests that it’s entirely too kind to the Soviet Union. Superman is a true-believing Soviet citizen, and the Soviets didn’t take over the world in just a few years? Yeah, right…
I believe the first paragraph describes the motivation in “Red Son” .. although I’ve also never read it, just had the gay communist associate describe the plot.
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Communism depends, a lot, on guilt ..
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Mew
Irredeemable. It was pretty good.
Of course, that’s what makes the antihero version of Lex Luthor compelling. He knows what he (and pretty much everyone he’s ever met) would be like if they had godlike power. He has committed himself against an obvious threat that could squash him like a bug.
And his efforts are thwarted by one thing he can’t understand or plan for; Superman being inhumanly good.