The Four Color Media Monitor

A columnist at ComicBook wrote about what he considers the most overrated Superman stories in history, and says, amazingly enough, that the Death & Return of Superman's an overrated saga, though there's also parts here that conflict with what he claims. Since this column has number one at the bottom, let's begin with that, if it helps understand what's going on here:

“The Death of Superman” is an iconic story in the history of comics. It made real world news, and lived up to its name. There are some great Superman creators involved — Dan Jurgens, Jerry Ordway, Roger Stern, Tom Brummet, Louise Simonson, the late great Butch Guice, and Jon Bogdanove. The art is awesome throughout, capturing the spectacle of this massive fight. However, the fact that this is just a massive fight that repeats itself every chapter is the problem with the story. Every issue of this story follows the same formula — Superman and his friends get trounced by Doomsday, and Superman vows to stop the monster. The last issue is the only different chapter in the entire story, because it ends with Superman dying. “The Death of Superman” is a beloved story, but that’s mostly because of the place it holds in comic history. Even the choice of villain, the then all-new Doomsday, didn’t really feel right. This is a good story, but it’s more because of the spectacle, and the much better stories that came after it — “World Without a Superman,” “Funeral for a Friend,” and “Reign of the Superman” — than for its own quality.

"Beloved", you say? Gee, that's disputable, considering that afterwards, prior to Kal-El's return, the ensuing stories saw Cat Grant's son murdered by the Toyman, and unsurprisingly, this goes unmentioned in the article. "Iconic", my foot. You could surely get a ton of valid issues to write about out of a shoddy storyline like that, yet the writer remains pretty superficial on the subject, and when he brings up Superman's return, listed as 7th on the puff piece, he says:

“The Return of Superman” brought back the Man of Steel after his death against Doomsday. This is a perfectly fine story, seeing the weakened Superman, Superboy, the Eradicator, Steel, and Hal Jordan battle Cyborg Superman and Mongul after their destruction of Coast City. It does everything that it needs to be, but it’s one of the weaker chapters of the entire “Death and Return of Superman” saga. It doesn’t really deal too much with the effects of Superman’s return, just immediately throwing him into a battle against his enemies. The main problem with the story is that it’s pretty basic. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it’s still an entertaining story, but it just doesn’t have the impact that it should.

How fascinating he does mention the storyline that preceded Emerald Twilight, because all that did was add injury to insult. So, nothing wrong with turning Silver Age Green Lantern Hal Jordan into a lethal villian, and destroying his hometown in the process? And then, note how weak the column's take on Superman's going and coming actually is - what good does it do to say it's all "basic"? And why not ask why Superman had to be even momentarily "killed" at all? This article, alas, doesn't seem written to make a thoughtful point. And, the writer's other choices reek of questionable positions too. For example, what's written about Grant Morrison's take on the Man of Steel:

In their Action Comics run, Morrison, working with artists Rags Morales, Andy Kubert, Gene Ha, Travel Foreman, and Ben Oliver, gives readers a very complicated story without a lot of characters that new readers would recognize. For example, Lex Luthor is in it, but he’s not the main villain; in fact, he really doesn’t appear all that much in the story. Instead, Morrison decided to use villains like Metallo, Captain Comet, and an all-new Fifth Dimensional Imp Vyndktvx, with OG Fifth Dimensional Imp Mr. Mxyzptlk playing a quasi-heroic role in the story. It’s a classic complicated Morrison story that plays with the medium of monthly comics to tell its story, which has hurt its reception with fans who don’t love Morrison’s writing. Morrison definitely gave readers an interesting story (all 19 issues tell one story that comes together in last story arc), but this isn’t the best book to start on if you’re a new fan. It definitely has its moments like Action Comics (Vol. 2) #9, which introduced Calvin Ellis, the Barack Obama-influenced Superman of Earth-23 to the New 52, and Action Comics (Vol. 2) #0, a touching story about Superman’s cape, and is honestly the best Superman story we got in the New 52, but it has a lot of drawbacks that keep it from being perfect for any reader.

Oh, so if there's anything considered wonderful here, it's the leftist political influences? In that case, it only compounds the perception this column was written for awkward virtue signaling, and wasn't written altruistically. But, since we're on the subject, interesting Morrison was willing to work with an artist as overrated as Morales, who from what I can tell, is just as liberal as he is. In hindsight, I can't stand Morales' work as artist on the 2002-07 Hawkman series, though his work on Identity Crisis was the really repellent example from his resume. And then, the column brings up a Braniac story written by none other than Geoff Johns, and is just as baffling on that:

Geoff Johns’s post-Infinite Crisis work on Superman has a lot going for it. I’d definitely argue that “Last Son,” “Superman and the Legion of Superheroes,” and Secret Origin are peak Superman, but not every story is as flawless of those three. A perfect example of that is “Brainiac,” a story that reintroduced a more classic version of Brainiac to the DC Multiverse, while also trying to make sense of the various other versions of the character. However, I think that the biggest problem with the story is the change made to Brainiac. Brainiac was always a dangerous villain, but this story made him into a musclebound bruiser who can punch it out with Superman. This is an interesting change of pace, but it also just doesn’t feel like Brainiac. We’ve gotten multiple versions of Brainiac over the years, some better than others, and this one is one of the lesser versions of Brainiac. I don’t have a problem with a super strong Brainiac, but this version of the character never really felt right, and latter appearances by the villain would make him more like the classic Brainiac. This story is an important step in that direction, but it goes much too far. This is still a great story — it has a cool horror vibe to it, a heartbreaking Superman moment, and some amazing art from Gary Frank, but it’s not as excellent as some of Johns’s other work on Superman.

Wow, what's this? The writer's fawning over horror themes introduced in the tale? Another clue this wasn't written altruistically, that's for sure. But now, even more troubling is when political biases come into the news script, as seen in the following about one of John Byrne's stories from the late 80s:

Writer/artist John Byrne rebooted Superman for the post-Crisis DC Universe. Byrne’s run was considered the gold standard for modern Superman for a long time — and there are some good stories from his run — but recent years have seen it get a re-evaluation. Byrne removed many fan-favorite aspects of the character and went out of his way to take away Superman’s immigrant heritage. He wrecked the Krypton mythos, and even disrespected Jack Kirby with Action Comics (Vol. 1) #593 because of a personal feud between him and the King. Byrne did bring Zod back in Superman (Vol. 2) #20-21, with an alternate universe Supergirl asking Superman for his help against General Zod, who killed everyone on her Earth. It’s a good story, but it ends with Superman using Kryptonite to kill Zod, Ursa, and Non. This is a huge misunderstanding of who Superman is; Superman doesn’t kill, he figures out a way to win without killing. Byrne made a lot of mistakes with Superman, and this is honestly one of the biggest. It led to 2013’s Man of Steel killing Zod in that film, another gross misunderstanding of Superman’s character that allowed fans who liked that moment to point at this comic and argue that it was comic accurate for Superman to kill Zod in the movie.

While the part about disrespecting Kirby is valid, based on how he handled Big Barda, the part about "immigrant heritage" is muddled yet telling. Ahem. Even in the Golden Age it was established Kal-El was sent to earth as an infant from an exploding planet, and how many times do I have to point out that makes him a refugee? Also, if memory serves, wasn't the story in focus something set in a different dimension? It may have featured Zod as an opponent there, but IIRC, the woman involved was a post-Crisis reworking of a Bronze Age villainess named Faora, or in the new take, Zaora. And Superman's a fictional character, so it's not whether he kills that's the issue, but whether he should be written doing so that does, and if it suits his character, or doesn't. Though if Supes was depicted in the past being more open to killing aliens as opposed to human villains, that'd be hypocrisy incarnate right there. At least valid point is made about the 2013 film, which never saw an official stand alone sequel; just the equally overrated Batman v. Superman a few years later. There's also what's said about the 6-issue miniseries from 1986 that began the post-Crisis rendition to ponder:

John Byrne’s run on Superman began with this six-issue miniseries. This story told the new history of Superman, doing away with multiple aspects of the character. Gone was Superboy, the Legion of Superheroes, and the various other surviving Kryptonians. Krypton was transformed into a sterile science based society that took away a major part of pre-Crisis Superman. Clark Kent was suddenly a football playing All-American, sent to Earth in a “birthing matrix” and born on Earth in Kansas, taking away his immigrant status. Byrne was going super conservative with his version of Superman and it honestly never felt right. Now, that said, there are some cool parts to the book — the Superman/Batman story is pretty great and Byrne did introduce the corporate mogul version of Lex Luthor. However, the way Byrne fundamentally changed Superman was a huge mistake, and it took years for fans to get back the best parts of the pre-Crisis. I was personally a fan of this story for years, but it just doesn’t stand up when compared with the more classic versions of the character that came in the years after it.

Well if the columnist is implying it's wrong for Supes to be depicted as a proud American fellow growing up, I think that sums up all that's wrong with this jumble of a column. As though it weren't bad enough the "immigrant" propaganda is repeated ad nauseum, and in the most confusing ways possible. And seriously, Byrne's take was "super conservative"? I seem to recall a joke alluding to Reagan from the miniseries, where a police captain unsuccessfully tries to persuade some grocery store robbers to surrender, leaving Superman to clean up the job. It may not have been heavy handed as today's political allusions are, but that itself is hardly the most respectful allusion to conservatives there. There certainly were allusions to other politics liberals might've embraced at the time in Byrne's stories, like Maggie Sawyer being lesbian, but it was anything but conservative, and must we remind that Byrne was the one who made a big deal out of indirectly establishing Northstar as homosexual in Alpha Flight back at Marvel? I guess the columnist is just so determined to be woke, he's willing to throw even an otherwise liberal writer like Byrne under the bus to make his baffling points.

So as a result, I'm not sure it's a case of considering any of these stories, no matter the writers or era, overrated, so much as a supposed fan's desire to virtue signal, and make it far less convincing he believes these stories are overrated. Interesting no pre-Crisis stories were mentioned, and one must wonder why only post-Crisis stories matter here. This is why truly, ComicBook is one of the most pretentious specialty sites for entertainment topics.

Labels: bad editors, dc comics, dreadful writers, golden calf of death, Green Lantern, history, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, Superman, violence, women of dc