Superman For All Seasons...

[fajrdrako]

A while ago I read Batman: Dark Victory by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale and loved it. The next graphic novel I was able to get from the library was Superman For All Season (by the same team) and it was a beautiful, well-written book and I wanted to love it. But I didn't.

It was interesting, though. It works with DC Canon (more or less) but with the sensibility of Smallville.

Things I liked about it:

• the photo album with the credits and titles at the beginning
  
• the silhouettes with depiction of a tree that begin each seasonal section - reminding me very much of the art in one of my favourite books from childhood, Silver Pennies
  
• Lana Lang. Yeah, little though I like the Lana Lang (failed gothgirl) of the TV show, I loved Lana when I was a kid reading Adventure Comics. This Lana in Superman For All Season is like her - a bright redhead with a good heart. Clark tells her his secret in the first section, and it overturns her life. She wanted to marry him. Learning his secret, she has to come to terms with the reality that he doesn't want to marry her.
  
• The art, in general, is superb, including especially its evocation of character and its use of special effects for Superman's powers.
  
• The dog Shelby. Not Krypto by a long shot, but a good character.
  

I'm not going to list what I didn't like because there was way too much, particularly the characters. Lex as a nasty megalomaniac with hair; Lois as a busybody - why does she always just strike me as an obnoxious brat? I'm more or less neutral on sweet old Ma and Pa Kent on the whole, but here they were so philosophically wise and calm and good that I kept wishing for Annette O'Toole's worried frown and John Schnieder's platitudes and bad temper. And Pete Ross! I loved him in the Adventure Comics days, and would dislike him in Smallville if I thought he had enough personality to dislike - here he does nothing but complain and whine about his life. Rather like a certain Kristen Kreuk character.

I also have trouble with the character of Clark Kent/Superman, as usual. It might be indicative of my problems with the character in this story that he isn't once referred to as Kal-El, who was always my favourite of the Superman personas, and the most real to me. He's always a hit-and-miss character for me. For a man with his powers to be distressed because he is not fully omnipotent - I would be irritated, except that in this story he is young enough for it to be acceptable. All that self-effacing virtue, much as I want to like it, usually ends up making me feel that he lacks personality and depth. Which he usually does. Thank heaven for the Tom Welling version of the character, whom I can love.

It was an excellent comic; but I'd better stick to Batman if even the good Superman comics annoy me.

Comments

[kelex.livejournal.com]

Ma and Pa Kent. I like the Ma Kent of Smallville, (AoT) and the Pa Kent from the comics and/or the movies. Because Annette makes Martha into a real character, who knows the way the world works and who understands just how special her son is, yadda yadda. Pa Kent, in the comics and the first Supes movie, is the same way, as much as he can be. Because in the first movie, he counsels Clark that yes, he is different. He's always going to be different, and that's probably the hardest thing he's ever going to have to live with. But that he wasn't given his special gifts to impress girls with, but that he had a destiny. And he did it without platitudes or anything else, without prejudice, and I think that's why the Pa Kent of the first Superman movie has always stuck with me as being the best Pa Kent.

Kal-El vs. Clark Kent & Superman Clark has a real serious split personality problem. He's three people in one. Clark Kent, farmboy and later on, mild mannered reporter. Superman, anonymous superhero of Metropolis, and later the world, and Kal-El, the last son of Krypton. The mild manered reporter bit always got on my nerves (the stupidity, the bumbling, etc) but it was necessary to hide who he is. Necessary to make people think that no way could dumb 'ol CK be Superman. There had to be the distinction somewhere (and yes, I'm aware that I'm drawing more on the movies than the comics, but the comics I absolutely hated and didn't read regularly until the Death of Superman, back in '94.) and it was obvious that making him an idiot would be the best kind of shield.

The self-effacing virtue, I'd like to think, comes from the Kal-El side of the equation, the alien part of his brain that gets the fact that he is nothing special where he comes from, and also, from the Clark Kent side of his brain, where he's been raised to think his gifts are something to be used when necessary, not necessarily for the good of all, and when he suddenly starts getting all this praise as Superman, he doesn't know how to handle it other than to say it's not deserving of it. It's the (exaggerated, I grant you) equivalent of a singer today who wins a Grammy, gets up to the podium and says that he shouldn't be getting the award, God should, because God gave him the beautiful voice to sing with and all he's doing is using his gifts.

Finally, too, you have to keep in mind what time and what mindframe the US was in when Superman was first created. Truth, Justice and the American Way. *snort* He was created... 1930s, I think? 1940s? Either way, we were just in or had just come out of a couple of big World Wars in which people were exterminated like garbage. Not to mention, we had the great fun of the Depression going on, and all such, so of course, the superhero we looked for at that time would have to exemplify all that was good and pure about the age he was living in. Yes, he's evolved with the times, as the Crisis on Infinite Earths situation shows, but there are certain things that, to the DC franchise ,makes Superman Superman and that you cannot change. One of those is his boy-scout-ness, that I think even Batman has commented on.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I was never really convinced that Superman needed to hide his identity; and bumbling Clark always seems silly to me. Thank goodness Tom Welling doesn't bumble. He does many things, but he's competent enough.

If I could interpret the self-effacing virtue the way you do, I'd like it. As it is.... it's a bit like Clark Kent's bumbling: it seems dishonest to me, or unrealistic perhaps. No, I don't want him to have a big ego, either. There could be more balance.

It isn't the time at which he was created that affects my view: Batman was created at almost the same time, and I've always loved Batman as a character. Not necessarily all Batman stories, or all versions of the character, but the character in general - rather the opposite of Superman, where it's the exceptional versions of the character that I like, but not the character in general.

[kelex.livejournal.com]

Tom Welling seems to go with the more innocent, less bumbling thing, although they do occasionally give a nod to that, like in the pilot, and whenever he got close to Lana's necklace, he turned into a stumble-bumble, and I'll bet that comes into play later... "What, you mean stumble-butt Kent? The one who's always falling at my feet? You're kidding, right?"

And no, it's not necessary for him to hide his identity, for his own personal safety, but it is necessary to hide it for the safety of his family and friends. Because if you can't hurt Clark/Supes, then you go after his parents, his wife/girlfriend, his friends, etc, and use those against him, hurt them to get to Clark/Supes. And I think that if it were *just* Clark Kent, Alien, with both parents dead, no Lois/Lana, no friends, then he wouldn't, because no one else would be put in peril. But as it is now, he has to protect his family and friends too, and the only way he can do that is to establish that Clark Kent *can't* be Superman, so that Clark's relatives are always safe from harm.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Tom Welling seems to go with the more innocent, less bumbling thing

Yes, which is why I love him so.

whenever he got close to Lana's necklace, he turned into a stumble-bumble

I liked that because it was such a plausible explanation, and because Clark himself didn't quite understand what was happening.


it's not necessary for him to hide his identity, for his own personal safety, but it is necessary to hide it for the safety of his family and friends

That is their rationale. I don't have to like it. There are various ways a superhero can be handled: some have no secret identities at all (like the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the Legion of Super-Heroes, Dr. Strange) and the protection of their loved ones becomes part of the storylines. I like that.

Now, don't get me wrong: I sometimes love secret identities, as with Bruce Wayne or Peter Parker, but in both these cases, the civilian identity is not a 'front' or a false image: Batman really is Bruce, Peter really is Spidey. I would like the Clark Kent too, if he didn't pretend to be something he isn't - the mild-mannered, vague guy in glasses. It's the falsity of the identity that mostly bothers me.

Another reason I dislike it - and this happens on the TV show, too, where it is merely a mild annoyance - is that there are whole plotlines devoted to 'Superman has to keep his identity hidden' - the keeping of the secret being a theme until itself, rather than the business of fighting evil. It's an artifiical kind of action and I don't like it at all. It keeps the material from being substantial in the long run, in my opinion.