THE PROBLEM WITH MAN OF STEEL

Trailer Shots- S Symbol

Man of Steel.

Say those words to a group of Superman fans and then step back because nine times out of ten it is about to get real up in whatever joint you happen to be in.  Even civil conversations about the show can have a charged edge to them.  I think it is safe to say that the last time Superman fandom got itself into a tizzy over something related to the Last Son of Krypton was, oddly enough, the John Byrne mini-series Man of Steel.

Man of Steel #01 A

There must be something about using that name in association with a revamp.

I have some seriously mixed feelings about the film Man of Steel.  I wasn’t angry like some but I didn’t fall in absolute love with it like others.  I can and will list off the aspects of the movie that I really liked but ever since my first viewing there is something about it that just didn’t sit right with me.  It’s this nagging thought scratching at the back of my mind that doesn’t have a name.  I knew I had this big problem with the film but I couldn’t articulate what it was.

As someone that likes to be able to explain why I have a problem with something this was very annoying.

Recently the wife and I upgraded our home entertainment system with a new television and our first Blu-Ray player because I love being behind the times.  After the long, arduous process of getting everything set up I popped the Man of Steel Blu-Ray disc (I bought the combo pack when it came out because I knew this day was coming) into the player and started going through the special features that were not available on the DVD version.  One of those features was called Strong Characters, Legendary Roles, which was really good.  It explored what aspects of the Superman legend that the writers and director and other behind the scenes people were drawing from for the movie.  At one point David Goyer (the guy that wrote the film in case you didn’t know) begins to discuss where he was coming from with Superman and he revealed that Man of Steel was a first contact story.  Since Superman was an alien he would fundamentally change humanity and that’s what Goyer wanted to explore.

As soon as he said the words, “first contact,” it hit me.

My problem with Man of Steel is that it’s a first contact movie.

And that’s a terrible way to introduce Superman.
Continue reading THE PROBLEM WITH MAN OF STEEL

HAPPY BELATED THANKSGIVING

JSA 54

I hope everyone that celebrates the holiday had a nice Thanksgiving yesterday.  Between things being busy around the house and the fact that the new FCTC hits on Thursdays I didn’t have anything prepped to post to mark the occasion, so hopefully this post will make up for that.  Rachel (my wife for those of you that were unaware that I was married much less what my wife’s name was) managed to whip up her usual amazing dinner with a lot of help from me because of her arm (long story).  The only upside to unemployment is that I got to give her as much assistance as she needed.  After dinner and desert Rachel. a friend of ours that joined us for dinner and I played the Superman III board game that Rachel got for me a few Christmases ago.

Superman III Game 1 Superman III Game 2

It’s a weird game but once we figured things out it was a lot of fun.

I have a lot to be thankful for.  Too much to list at the moment as I am about to finish clean up duty and go to bed.  I did want to take a moment and thank everyone that reads this blog and follows my podcasts.  It means a lot to me that you take a few minutes out of your day to pay attention to my ramblings.  I hope each and every one of you had a nice Thanksgiving (if you celebrate it) and a great holiday season.  Take care and…

More to follow…

FCTC EPISODE 193: DEAD AGAIN PART 5

FCTC_Ep_193_LargeEpisode 193: Dead Again Part 5

Welcome to the one hundred and ninety-third episode of From Crisis to Crisis: A Superman Podcast!  This podcast has a simple premise; examine just about every Superman comic published between Man of Steel #1 in 1986 to Adventures of Superman #649 in 2006 in an informative and hopefully entertaining format.

Part index.  Part commentary.  Part history lesson.  All podcast.

Dead Again continues…

And continues…

And continues.

Sigh.

On a more pleasant note welcome to cover date 1995!  Come on in.  Sit a spell.

Mike and Jeff begin there look at the January 1995 cover dated books with Superman: The Man of Steel #40 which has Superman fighting things that aren’t there and a lot of body horror imagery.  Then in Superman #96 the villain behind all of the Dead Again shenanigans is revealed and Superman fights more things that aren’t there.  This is what experts refer to as a mental mind@#$%.  After that the boys take a quick look at Superboy #11 and Guardians of Metropolis #3, which they had some disagreements about.  Mike also goes on and on about the Jack Kirby Fourth World books from the seventies in this section, so be warned.  Finally Mike and Jeff hop into a cab, pay their $7.50 and head on over to a segment they like to call Meanwhile, At The Daily Planet.

Do you like covers?  Because we just happen to have the covers to the Superboy and Guardians of Metropolis books we talked about during this episode!

You can subscribe to the show in two ways. First there is the RSS Feed and there is also the iTunes link. Are you on Facebook? Be sure to “like” the official FCTC page, which you can find by clicking on this link.

If you want to comment on the show or contact the hosts you can always private message Mike and Jeff, at the Superman Homepage, leave comments here or at the Homepage or here or email them by clicking this link. All questions, concerns, fears, trepidations and cheap shots are welcome.

Next time: Dead Again concludes in Adventures of Superman #519.  Also the boys will be covering Action Comics #706 followed by Steel #11, Metropolis: SCU #3, Outsiders #14 and the Supergirl story from Showcase ’95 #1.

WHO’S WHO WEDNESDAYS – THE COUNCIL

Welcome to another of the re-tooled Who’s Who Wednesdays, a regular feature here at the Fortress where every Wednesday (hence the name) I will present an entry from the original series of Who’s Who comics that DC published between 1984 and 1988.  Superman was well represented in those series and I wanted to share the entries with you just in case you have never seen them.  Today’s entry is The Council!

Council

(originally published in Who’s Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #5 (July 1985)

Be sure to check out Episode Five of the amazing Who’s Who: The Definitive Podcast of the DC Universe hosted by Rob Kelly and the Irredeemable Shag.  It is an awesome podcast that I cannot recommend highly enough.

Remember that you can click on the images to make them larger.

MY VERY FIRST PRINTED LETTER

Superboy 61

Back in late 1998 I finally climbed on to what some people called the Information Super Highway, a term that is very, very ’90s.  The Internet was a wild, untamed place back then though it was a lot more organized than it was just a few years before so I think I lucked out on when I came into things.  My internet service provider was AOL and while AOL gets a lot of crap (some of it deserved) I rather liked it.  DC had a big presence on AOL and it was fun to check out the content they provided.

DC was still doing the whole letters page thing back then and almost immediately I started writing into the books I was reading at the time.  Then as now I felt like it was sort of cheating.  To my mind a letter was something you physically wrote and mailed with a stamp but I gave the whole e-mailing thing a go anyway.  Towards the end of February 1999 I got an e-mail out of the blue congratulating me on getting a letter printed in the then latest issue of Superboy.  I had totally forgotten that I had written into that title and hadn’t picked up my comics for about a month because of work so I was unaware that the letter had been printed.  A day or two later (right about my very non-birthday as a matter of fact) I picked up Superboy #61 and there on the second page of the letters column was my e-mail.

Here’s a scan of that page.

Superboy #61 Letters

It may not be a dissertation on the themes of a major work of fiction but looking at the letter now it wasn’t a bad start.  I was so excited when I finally got my copy.  I felt like John Candy in the movie Splash and ran around shouting, “They printed my letter!  They printed my letter!”  Superboy was one of my favorite titles at the time.  Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett had come back to the title and suddenly it was fun again after a few years of coasting through storylines. Superboy #61 was the second part of the Hypertension arc was the first story that dealt with Hypertime, the pseudo multiverse thing that DC started a few months before during The Kingdom fifth week event.  Hypertension gave Kesel and Gummett the chance to revisit the classic Superboy and while it may seem very late ’90s DC it was so much fun.

Now I want to re-read that story.

Anwyay, seeing that e-mail printed encouraged me to write more over the next few years.  Some of them even got printed.  I’ll post more of those in the future.

WHO’S WHO WEDNESDAYS – THE GANG

Welcome to another of the re-tooled Who’s Who Wednesdays, a regular feature here at the Fortress where every Wednesday (hence the name) I will present an entry from the original series of Who’s Who comics that DC published between 1984 and 1988.  Superman was well represented in those series and I wanted to share the entries with you just in case you have never seen them.  Today’s entry is The Gang!

Oh, FYI this one is coming out on Friday so that I could so the whole Doomsday post a few days back. 

Gang

(originally published in Who’s Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #8 (October 1985)

Be sure to check out Episode Eight of the amazing Who’s Who: The Definitive Podcast of the DC Universe hosted by Rob Kelly and the Irredeemable Shag.  It is an awesome podcast that I cannot recommend highly enough.

Remember that you can click on the images to make them larger.

FCTC EPISODE 192: DEAD AGAIN PART 4

FCTC_Ep_192_LargeEpisode 192: Dead Again Part 4

Welcome to the one hundred and ninety-second episode of From Crisis to Crisis: A Superman Podcast!  This podcast has a simple premise; examine just about every Superman comic published between Man of Steel #1 in 1986 to Adventures of Superman #649 in 2006 in an informative and hopefully entertaining format.

Part index.  Part commentary.  Part history lesson.  All podcast.

Dead Again continues!

Mike and Jeff close out cover date December 1994 with parts seven and eight of Dead Again.  First up is Adventures of Superman #518 where Superman travels to Apokolips and there is a lot of fighting.  Then in Action Comics #705 a Man of Steel that is at the end of his rope believes he has found the man or rather imp from the fifth dimension responsible for the supposedly real but probably fake dead body that has been causing Superman so much grief.  Following this the boys look at both Steel #10 and Metropolis: SCU #2, which they have some serious mixed feelings on.  After discussing what else was going on in the DCU that month Mike and Jeff dive into two more episodes of the second season of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman; Church of Metropolis, which introduces Intergang to the series and Operation: Blackout, which has a friend of Lois pop back up with hilarity supposedly ensuing.

Just in case you were curious what the covers to Steel and Metropolis: SCU looked liked here they are.

You can subscribe to the show in two ways. First there is the RSS Feed and there is also the iTunes link. Are you on Facebook? Be sure to “like” the official FCTC page, which you can find by clicking on this link.

If you want to comment on the show or contact the hosts you can always private message Mike and Jeff, at the Superman Homepage, leave comments here or at the Homepage or here or email them by clicking this link. All questions, concerns, fears, trepidations and cheap shots are welcome.

Next Time: Dead Again concludes in Superman: The Man of Steel #40 and Superman #96.  The boys will also briefly discuss Superboy #11 and Guardians of Metropolis #3.

23 YEARS AGO TODAY…

Superman #75 was published.

I see posts on this date every year asking a simple question.  Where were you on November 18, 1992?  In a perfect world I would have this grand story of how I counted the minutes until school got out so I could get to the comic shop.  Maybe there would be a mishap or two along the way to sweeten the story.  A flat tire.  A run in with the police.  An alien invasion.  Something to take what happened from a simple anecdote to a quirky independent film.

None of that happened.

The truth is I really don’t remember much about November 18th, 1992 and I wouldn’t get my copy of the comic where Superman died until a few days later, which is the opposite of a perfect story.

Why the wait?

Well, there are several answers to that question.  For one thing despite being sixteen years old and a junior in high school I did not yet have my drivers license so I was still dependent on the kindness of family and friends to get me to the comic shop.  Another reason is that while I had been reading and collecting the Superman books since 1987 I was not at the point where I was going to the shop on a weekly basis.  Sometimes a month would go by before I would get my books.  This did not diminish my love for them or this era.  In fact it made getting those comics even more special because it was more of an event than an errand.

The main reason behind me not getting my copy of Superman #75 on the day it came out was theatrical in nature.  That fall I was in the cast of the Senior Class Play at Emmaus High School because I was into that sort of thing.  We were putting on a production of The Pink Panther Strikes Again and while I did not have one of the main roles I was one of the secondary characters with a fair bit of stage time.  The week Superman died we were preparing for the show to finally go on so if I had to guess I would say we were running through another dress rehearsal that Wednesday as Thursday was opening night.  I was so distracted by this that I did not realize that the comic had come out until that Saturday morning when I saw something about it in the newspaper.

This is the exact article I clipped out of the Morning Call (Allentown, PA’s biggest newspaper) that morning.  It was a bit exciting and nerve wracking because I realized Superman #75 was out and I didn’t have my copy.  Luckily (or maybe unluckily) I didn’t have a whole lot of time to dwell on this fact as the final performance that night distracted me from my lack of a dead Superman.  It wasn’t until the cast party after the curtain went down that I was once again reminded that the Man of Steel had passed on and joined the choir invisible.  Someone (I have no idea who) put on Saturday Night Live and I walked in just in time to see this skit.

I thought the skit was funny back then and to be honest I still think it’s funny today.  The Chris Farley Hulk bit was great and I particularly like Al Franken playing Lex Luthor.  My most vivid memory of watching this at the party was the moment where Batman doesn’t recognize Black Lightning.  Without thinking I blurted out, “That doesn’t make any sense.  Black Lightning and Batman were in the Outsiders together.  He should totally recognize him.”

I won’t say a hush fell over the room because that didn’t happen.  I won’t say I was roundly mocked for being a nerd because that didn’t happen.  I was in a room full of theater/band/chorus people and we were well aware of our glass houses.  I will say there were some strange looks and for one of the first times in my life I realized I was the only comic geek in the room.

So at this point the story should have been that I got home on Sunday and told one of my parents that I needed a ride to the comic shop.  There would be some begging and pleading and finally my Dad would have relented because he was like that.  I would have gotten the issue and read it in my room, maybe with my tape of the Superman score playing in the background.

Somewhere a dog would have barked.  It’s that vivid in my head.

Well, that didn’t happen.

I got home that morning around eight or nine and quickly fell asleep as the adrenaline of doing a show and being at an all night party finally wore off.  Later that afternoon I woke up and felt like crap.  I had a nasty head cold that somehow skipped all the normal preamble of the itchy throat and the stuffy head and the inevitable invasion of my chest with the coughing and the wheezing and all that.  This cold decided to hit me all at once.

I didn’t get sick often but man I was down for the count that day.

I was so sick that I actually stayed home the next day, which is saying something because I wasn’t absent all that often.  By early afternoon I was up and around and feeling better when when it hit me.

I still didn’t have my copy of Superman #75.

Suddenly I began to worry.  Were they sold out?  Would I get my copy?  Would I have to wait even longer?  Would I have to go to a bunch of stores to find it?

Then it hit me.

I had a hold box at the comic shop.

In 1992 my home base for buying comics was The Comic Vault.  I had been going there since they opened in the summer of 1990 because of all the shops in the Lehigh Valley they were the closest to my house.  They were also right across from one of the main movie theaters in the area so it was convenient to go there before or after catching a film.  It was the first shop where I had a hold box or subscription service or whatever your shop calls them and while stocks would rise and fall, utilities and transportation services would collapse and the X-Men titles would be no damn good the Superman titles were always on my list.

“Remember,” my father was fond of saying.  “Always have the Superman titles on your pull list.”

There was hope.  I called the shop and asked if they had held my copy of Superman #75.  I was informed that my copy was there as were the issues leading up to the big moment.

And suddenly life was a lot like this.

My mom happened to be off from work that day so I asked her if she would run me to the comic shop to get the death of Superman.  I’m not sure how I asked her but I am fairly certain that the words “death of Superman” were in my probably incoherent ramblings.  My parents were always enablers when it came to my comic addiction.  They didn’t like it and I know they didn’t understand it but I was into it and that was enough for them.  That night Mom drove me to the Comic Vault and even lent me the money to buy all of the issues when I came up a little short.

I hope I never forget that moment.  That was the last time my mother drove me to the comic shop.  A little over a year later she would pass away from breast cancer so the memory of getting my copy of Superman #75 will always have that slight twinge of sadness to it.  She didn’t have to lend me the money but she knew this was important.

It meant a lot to me then and it still means the world to me now.

We got home and I went upstairs and read the whole Doomsday story in one sitting.  I was so intent that a lot of the little details, such as the number of panels per page shrinking from four to three to two to one as the story went on, escaped me.  It’s weird to think about it now but getting to that final moment was the goal.  I needed to see how Superman died.  That’s so strange.  Why would you want to see how your favorite character met his maker?  I can’t quite explain it but as I carefully tore into the sealed bag I was intent on witnessing Superman’s final moments.

After I finished Superman #75 I had this overwhelming feeling of sadness.  I didn’t cry but there was a finality that hung in the air for some time before I snapped out of it, gathered my comics together and put them in my room.

The next day I wore the black armband that came with the comic.  That lasted until second period.  I found a rather unflattering drawing of me wearing the band and quietly took it off.  Part of me will always feel that I should have kept it on.  I mean I know it was a tad silly but at the same time it was a big deal to me.  I should have been able to stand up to the mockery of my classmates but that didn’t happen.

Not that the day was full of adolescent humiliation.  I was far from the only kid in school that was into comic books.  We didn’t hang out or anything because I was into the Superman books and they were into the X-Men and Spider-Man titles and by November of 1992 the few Image books that had come out by then.  They were the cool kids.  I was the geek that read Superman, a character that was roundly mocked and despised but now he was dead and the issue he died in was a big deal.  A few of them came up to me that day and asked if I had gotten my copy of Superman #75.  I told them yes.  In fact it was just waiting for me at the store.  I had been reading the books for five years.  Comic Vault had been holding them for me for the past two years.  Of course I got my copy.

And suddenly for the first time in my comic collecting life I was ahead of the curve.  I went from being the guy that took a fair amount of crap for reading Superman to being the the guy that didn’t have to struggle to get the hot comic that everyone wanted.

Part of me feels like I shouldn’t take such glee in that smug feeling of satisfaction.  Another part of me tells that part where to stick it because sometimes you have to take your victories where you can get them.

The next year was pretty hectic but I was still following the Superman titles.  I remember that weird feeling after reading Superman #77 when I realized that there wasn’t going to be another Superman book coming out the next week.  I remember hearing about Adventures of Superman #500 and the amusing circumstances behind me getting my first copy.  I remember buying most of Reign of the Supermen all at once because my summer was consumed with a theater workshop.

And that is my biggest takeaway from the entire Death and Return of Superman saga.  The stories were exciting.  The books were well written with fantastic artwork.  Superman was getting is due for the first time in years.  All of that was important but above and beyond anything else are the memories I have of that time period.  All of those little moments that stick out in my mind.  Where I was when I bought certain issues.  Changing comic shops right at the beginning of Reign.  The day I got my copy of Superman #82.

It was such a great time and so much fun.

Superman #75 itself is an interesting contradiction.  On one hand it is an action packed issue that doesn’t work as well without reading the previous six installments of the Doomsday storyline.  On the other hand Dan Jurgens writes these beautiful moments where we realize how sad it is that Superman has died.  Showing the Kents right there at the end still gets me to this day and those final pages of Clark dying in Lois’ arms are emotional.  I still get that feeling I got back in 1992 when I reached the end of the issue and my favorite character was, for the moment, dead.  Rationally I knew he was coming back.  I didn’t know how and at that moment I didn’t care.  I was wrapped up in the myriad of emotions that his death made me feel and that’s powerful.

That’s why I buy every new edition of the trade paperbacks and hardcovers.

It’s why I have a sealed bagged edition, an open bagged edition, the Millennium Edition and all four printings of the newsstand edition.

Yes part of that is the collector in me but it’s also important that I have every version of the story that I can get my hands on and that I support the trade paperbacks and the omnibuses because if those keep selling DC will keep reprinting them and the story stays fresh and new for the current generation.  I feel bad for the newer readers because certain things like Lex Luthor the Second and Supergirl probably make little to no sense to those that aren’t familiar with their backgrounds but the heart of the story still shines through.

I don’t remember where I was on November 18, 1992.

I do remember the first time I read this issue and how I got my copy.

And with luck I always will.