It's taken me a long time to admit this, but Superman is my favorite superhero. Yes, I know that's a bland choice. If you'd asked me thirty years ago, I probably would've picked Hawkman or Green Arrow, because I was six years old, and over-impressed by wings and archery. Twenty years ago, I was all about the X-Men and the Teen Titans, just like every other geek. Ten years ago, I was wild about The Flash, because he was pretty much the only decent character that the major superhero companies were producing at the time. But through it all, more or less, I keep coming back to my stack of Silver Age Superman comics.
My lingering, unreasoning affection for superhero comics–and maybe the comics medium in general–is most likely rooted in my memories of reading them as a kid; and frankly, I still haven't gotten over that thick Superman anthology that I checked out of my local public library over and over. I can offer all kinds of reasoned defenses of the late '50s/early '60s Superman stories, pointing to the delightful weirdness of their dream logic and so on. But the fact is, when I read one of those old stories about Superman pining for his mermaid girlfriend (Lori Lemaris!) or whatever, I'm really remembering the way I pored over those pages as a pre-teen, while avoiding chores or homework. I think that's what a lot of nostalgia is all about–a pining for the rare moments of youth when we got to do what wanted, rather than what someone was demanding.
Of course I also really do think there's something to those old Superman stories, if only in the way they reveal the clever–bordering on insane–ways that writers can find their way out of impossible narrative traps. I teach a class on comics periodically, and my students either laugh at Superman–something I encourage a bit too much–or dismiss him as boring because he can do pretty much anything. But it's that "he can do pretty much anything" that makes him a fascinating character. I ask this question over and over in my class: "What Is Superman For?" By which I mean many things: What does he stand for, why was he necessary in comics history, what should be done with the character, etc. Throughout the run of the comic, writers have been so stymied by Superman that they've come up with radical new "Elseworlds" interpretations, or changed his suit, or killed him, or come up with crazy new kinds of kryptonite, or concocted wild allegorical stories that evaluate the proper use of power. For such a one-dimensional character, there's sure a lot to talk about with Superman.
There's a lot to talk about with Bryan Singer's Superman Returns, too. Like its obvious indebtedness to the Richard Donner Superman movies, right down to the inevitable "let's strip the big guy of his powers and kick the crap out of him" sequence. Or the way the "Superman stalks Lois" plot plays like an inversion of those '50s Superman's Girlfriend comics. Or the way Singer and company trash decades of Superman mythology for the sake of some vague emotional resonance.
Actually, I'd love to talk about that last one, but I don't want to get into spoiler territory. Suffice to say that while Superman Returns offers some interesting dilemmas for an all-powerful hero to work through, those dilemmas and the way they're resolved don't really fit the mold of any Superman I know, outside of maybe an "imaginary tale" or two. If I have one unshakeable complaint about Superman Returns, it's that it's not really a "Superman" story.
But I'd really rather talk about one particular sequence in the movie. The sequence. The plane crash sequence. Everybody's raving about it, and with good reason. It's not just that the sight of Superman racing to save an out-of-control jet is, to put it mildly, thrilling. It's the little touches throughout the scene that tell us what it must be like to be Superman: like the way he hesitates in outer space for a moment, fully aware that he's fast enough to catch up to any problems, and the way he doesn't worry when the plane suddenly bursts into flames, since he won't feel the burn anyway. The movie even tries to make the physics plausible, because even the strongest man in the world has to worry about leverage.
Then, at the end of the scene, the filmmakers flip the perspective from do-anything do-gooder Superman to the stadium full of people cheering his return. And it's that moment that gave me chills, and may end up being the signature moment of blockbuster season for me. Because after all the bullshit we've been through these past five years–and whatever your political persuasion, I'm sure you'll agree that a lot has sucked about the '00s so far–who doesn't want a Superman to come rushing back and straighten things the hell out. We've all got presidents we miss (Clinton, Reagan, Kennedy, Eisenhower, you-pick-it), or sports heroes (where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio … or in my case, Hank Aaron?), or artists (wouldn't a new Kubrick movie rock right about now? or a new Marvin Gaye album?). So the sense of relief in the faces of that stadium crowd gets to the essence of the Superman fantasy. It's not to be Superman, but just to have him around.
Superman Returns has a couple other action sequences that come close to the plane crash in intensity–credit Singer's clear, well-planned-out action choreography, which emphasizes the real danger of every moment–but nothing else as emotional. And in truth, though I liked the movie fairly well over all, the last hour or so isn't just anti-climactic, it's kind of stupid. Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor doesn't fit the tone of the movie very well, and Kate Bosworth's Lois Lane doesn't seem so much plucky as bitchy (and not especially good at her job, either). Perry White is a dolt, and Jimmy Olsen an afterthought. And the big Luthor plot that Superman is supposed to foil doesn't really make any sense. (Even Singer doesn't seem that interested in it, preferring to cut back to more and more of Superman the lovesick … which, again, is so not the character.)
But those problems all go back to the fact that writers for the past twenty years or so have been unsure what to do with Superman (with rare exceptions that I don't really want to get into here). Read through the recent Superman In The Eighties collection, and you'll see the last vestiges of the Silver Age die, replaced by harder-edged stories in which Superman battles evil on a more cosmic scale. And that's not really Superman, at least to me. Go to any toy store now, and the shelves are full of Superman inflato-suits with big punching fists, as though Superman were all about muscles and sock. That's not Superman either.
The appeal of Superman–again, maybe just to me, though I think to others as well–is that because he can do everything, he doesn't have to do much at all. He can take care of business and then chill out, solitude-style, at his Arctic clubhouse, where he tinkers with robots and obsessively arranges his souvenirs into a massive monument to himself. Or he can spend a whole day thinking up the perfect birthday present for Batman. Or he can make publicity appearances, while dodging Lois' attempts to find out his secret identity. The stakes are pretty low in those forty-year-old Superman stories–even in the "imaginary tales" where some bored staffer figured out a way to end the endless Superman saga, at least for a week. And if somebody today wants to know how to write a Superman story, it shouldn't be that hard. Just ask a ten-year-old boy what he'd do if he were Superman, and take notes.
****
No trailers-in-brief this week. This post is late enough as it is. (Blame a short July 4th vacation trip and the incapacitating illness that made it unproductive.) Next week–in a couple of days, really–there be Pirates.