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Final Crisis and also how to fix DC Comics
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exactly my point. superman is a cultural icon (an american one, to holmes' essential britishness) on the level of sherlock holmes. kings of a modern mythological pantheon, for an age that understands stories as works of imagination rather than as explanations for a natural phenomenon. they aren't meant to comfort us and explain our fears, but point the way forward- see these great men? thus can we be as well! they're fictional signposts on the road to inspiration and self-improvement. nobody reads a sherlock holmes story and thinks "man, it would be sweet to be stupider than that guy".
but sherlock holmes doesn't fly around and save the universe in his stylish red underpants, so, you know.
i actually expected someone to mention holmes, and have been trying to think of other fictional characters that are on the same level of cultural ubiquity as superman and sherlock holmes (i.e. just the name is enough to conjure up a rough mental picture and frame of reference for the concept in virtually any...uh...westerner, i guess? western culture identifier, let's say), and i can't really think of any. help, guys!
Any other story telling mechanism, trope, or what have you, that someone may have felt was new and inspired was only such to themselves, in my opinion.
Oh, and the first true super hero was definitely Sherlock Holmes.
In that he possesses all of the attributes commonly associated with super heroes (core attributes/character traits, obviously not shit like heat vision or the ability to fly), his stories and the manner in which they were told served as obvious inspiration, and he was the first big star of serial fiction that I'm aware of.
he actually just redid the lyrics to Age of Aquarius.
I, too, wasn't into DC comics back in during the Death of Superman. I was confused why Wonder Woman and Batman weren't fighting Doomsday. Aquaman? The Flash? The Wonder Twins? :P
You know, I'd really hoped DC would just take the opportunity to disentangle itself from its continuity for a second, accept that the classic Aquaman was back, and just blaze ahead with a clean slate. Instead, it looks like they're going to jump through hoops for a while, fight to reposition the dead Aquaman as the "real" one, and then try to explain why there are three Aquamen, in a massive exercise in continuity wankery.
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Indeed. I mean, if they're going to use the King Arthur analogy, then why do it halfway?
Oh, so I re-read FC in the order Grant Morrison recommends (also I see why Batman is before FC #5, as it's referenced in FC #5 that Batman has escaped) again today. Oh my god. SO GOOD. So. Good.
About mythological characters being the first super heroes: I personally never saw them that way. They're often essentially figures of analogy for use in creation myths, sensational representations of historical figures, fables, and folk lore. Their inspiration, purpose, and meaning are - frankly - inherently and entirely different from what we popularly consider a "super hero". That term, as it has been used since 1940 or so, generally refers to fictional characters that were produced for the sole purpose of pop consumption, possessing supernatural powers or talents and traits. Different beasts in my opinion, but I feel where you guys are coming from.
Booooo. There goes my hope of having a readable Justice League book every month. Also, don't be usurping the Blue and Gold brand name Mr. Robinson.
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why does DC hate us
Kind of weird how almost a year later we'll get to the series, since Robinson was trying to emphasize Hal wanting the league to do more in his first Superman issue.
From this morning's Times Book Review of All-Star Superman vol.2 trade: Having re-read FC again, it's pretty clear how much Grant Morrison loves Superman and the idea of Superman; that he is not just a hero and not a mythology rooted in supernatural explanations of the universe. He is a paragon; the embodiment of what is right about story-telling as a medium and a tool. He is uplifting, and almost as pure an embodiment of hope as exists, uncorruptable and righteous in his values--our ideal values. It is telling that one of the most critical acts he does in the entire series is to sing a very specific note. There is so much more to who we are and what we are capable of, but Superman is the embodiment of that in a physical sense by literally doing in the pages of a comic what is for most of us a symbolic or metaphorical act. He is a solar battery. He has an eidetic memory and precision control of muscles than can move planets. But he is also at his most powerful not alone, but when he becomes something beyond a manichean concept of good and evil. That is his greatest power, at least in FC, to become what he needs to be to push the story forward; to push the universe forward out of the abyss. He doesn't want your faith, or love. He would never dare to ask, because it is his own traits and his own eternal hope and power that he sees as something to serve as a bulwark to what he has come to admire about his adopted planet: that in the best of us, we endure. And so he stands behind humanity, because to stand before them would be itself a constriction of those ideals and those traits he has come to embody and find so important (which I would say Millar points out rather well in Red Son). He is a reflection of us at our best, and as the dream and the ideal evolves so does he.
I definitely don't have any feelings of cynicism towards comics, they're just another visual medium to me. That is, I have no disparaging feelings toward the craft and I'm certainly not contemptuous about it.
But I mean, I don't look at Jack Bauer, Jason Bourne, or Indiana Jones the same way that I look at Gilgamesh or King Arthur, either. Batman's a sweet ass dude but I don't envision people a thousand years from now finding an old issue of Detective Comics and imagining him the champion of our ideals and culture, or that Superman's comics are a record of our customs, or that we widely believed that the events of the Marvel universe were factual. I imagine they'd look upon them as we look upon the works of Shakespeare or the writings of Conan Doyle. I suppose a strong case could be made for Mark Twain's work, and many others, but not for comics (even the bomb ones like Y: The Last Man).
Folklore that has been handed down and evolved, fables, creation myths, representations of actual people that existed who's stories evolved as they passed through cultures and centuries (becoming a product of all of those cultures in the end).... these are all different from characters created by one or several people with the expressed purpose of being entertainment within a particular brand of serial fiction, and that aspire to no higher meaning or purpose (mostly, on the last part of that sentence there).
And just because fables et tal can be entertaining, like comic books, doesn't mean that they're cut from the same cloth. Also, sorry to be all back-and-forth about this, I just wanted to articulate where I was coming from.
No offense, but that would be a very narrow and targeted view of story telling, fiction, and the cultures and traditions that inspired the character. It is awesome that writers are so passionate about comic characters though, it's those creators that help make the medium so special and unique. I'd say that people like Neil Gaiman have the same level of love for story telling through comics as Grant does for Superman.
That said, I will bet that Superman will be around in 1,000 years.
You know, if aliens come to earth 10 million years after we've gone and wiped ourselves out or something, and all that remains of everything we have done are Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, All Star Superman and Superman Beyond, I don't think that would be too bad of a legacy.
Ok, in short, yes they are similar, and in fact are the same thing.
Oral legends and fairy tales and folk tales were all told solely for entertainment. They portray social values, they give the listeners a "history" of their people, they can have morals or any other edifying purposes, but their main purpose is to have something to do around the campfire at night. People tell tales because we love to listen to them. And here's the important part: People love to listen to them because we are interested in hearing about people who are stronger and better than us. It is entertaining to hear about magnificent deeds that we know aren't true, but that we wish were true.
Just because at this point in time, things are more cemented and more constructed than oral tales does not mean that they are not cultural institutions along the same lines as those same oral legends and characters.
If nothing else, the idea of superman has so pervaded the global consciousness that you can literally go almost anywhere, show a picture of him, and people will know who he is.
Don't even need a picture of all of him, just the emblem will do.
Oh jesus.
"We were here and we dreamed up some crazy awesome shit" is probably the best message we could hope for. Bit of a better tone than a smoldering nuclear wasteland and a plastic flag on the moon.
"They only got as far as their moon and then they blew themselves up? Pfft, galaxy's better off without 'em!"