Nightwing83

April 11, 2012 2:02 pm "Or is that problem that all of us are dummies?" Pretty much. I mean, even if you really read "ten different Superman books by ten different writers" (yeah right) you have to stoop to argumentum ad populum, which pretty much means you're still making excuses and that while it's certainly justifiable that a lot of people, "never got into him," or whatever, that the serious haters are--yup--dummies. When people storm onto a message board to troll its posters and the butt hurt when we have responses, they are dummies. When people claim to "understand comics," and don't realize how impotent the "he's too powerful" argument is because he--like 90% of superheroes--usually fights villains with roughly the same power level as him, yeah. Dummies. When people claim he's too perfect to relate to. Well, that might be fair enough, but it's not like he has no flaws as people say. He can be careless, naïve, overly sentimental. If that's not your bag of tea, that's fine. Like you said, "it's not geometry." I just think that when the "he's perfect, he has no flaws," is applied to the idiotic, unfaithful film Superman Returns wherein Superman--I don't know if you saw it--became a deadbeat dad... it sounds like they don't know what they're talking about and are, as I said before, dummies. And finally, when people say, "oh, he's an alien, so you can't relate to him," it tells me they don't understand the basic concept of science fiction. Oh, I'm not claiming Superman should be considered "hard science fiction," by any means; but one of the MAIN points of the genre is that aliens, mutants, machines, etc. serve as allegories for other stuff. So if "he's from another planet," makes him any harder to "relate to" than anything else--AND CAN'T UNDERSTAND HOW ANYONE ELSE CAN--you might... yes... be a dummy. So no, "a bunch or dummies keep spouting the same inane drivel and start crying when you counter it," is not something to consider. If I read a good one I enjoy it, and if I read a bad one, I don't. Sowwy.

April 11, 2012 1:46 am I think that when someone says with a straight face that you can't relate to a character because he's an alien, he pretty much proves he has no imagination and doesn't understand the very idea of science fiction.

April 10, 2012 9:29 pm If you say so. I'd just humbly suggest that whatever comics he is into wouldn't be here without Superman, and that I know those criticisms don't hold water cuz I actually read the comics. If someone wants to appeal to majority/plurality, I humbly suggest he's out of ammo.

April 10, 2012 9:24 pm Well, I'm a pretty pessimistic guy in some respects, and I'm a huge fan of Superman. A lot of it is nostalgia, I won't lie, but also history. Superman and Batman are the only two superheroes who span the entire history of the superhero genre AND essentially the medium of comics. But it's not just that: like any other superhero, Superman is about action and as such, it's fun to see him fight characters like Darkseid and Metallo. That may be shallow, but it's true. I like the blue costume with the red cape, I love how he has heat vision and can blast stuff, and he has a lot of catch phrases. A lot of this "deeper meaning" stuff is great; but it's not all there is to it. For whatever reason, some people just love to complain when it comes to the character. Even fans. Superman III, the NES game, later seasons of all the live action TV shows (except Superboy) and even the comics over the past X years... they're not just disappointing, they're an insult to humanity. The perfect example is the death & return. Growing up, that defined the character for me. Not only that, but at a time when DC was unwisely pushing him as the opposite of the most popular superhero around, that saga basically saved him. Yet, SOMEHOW it not only "ruined" him in the revised history, but it "ruined comics." The diminution of sales, the feeling that everything's been done, the inability to tell self-contained stories within one issue; it's that one saga's fault and nothing else. In short: you're right.

April 10, 2012 9:08 pm Not only has it been done before, but it's been done quite often. Seriously: where did this, "oh, Superman doesn't have any flaws" thing come from? I mean, at the very least, the very storyline the article is criticizing has him recklessly threatening random businessmen. The kind-of anti-hero antics he was all about prior to World War II. But yeah: he quite often gets mad is quite often at odds with others. In fact, for about a decade DC tried to force every team-up with Batman as some "we're at odds" story about the power of dark and light or something (usually Superman scolds Batman for doing something Supes probably did three issues earlier) and there's been plenty of stories--especially lately--about the government not trusting him and stuff. I'm really starting to wonder what some people think happens in a typical Superman comic.

April 10, 2012 9:00 pm Not just trolls. The words of someone who's never read a Superman comic in his life and only claims to be into the medium because he sees them as either a hipster thing or as glorified concept art for upcoming movies.

April 10, 2012 8:36 pm I actually like the regular Superman because it is more-or-less a return to focusing on those things after so many years of, "I... bigshot writer... am reinventing the wheel!!!" Yeah, his costume's different and okay they introduced a few new characters; but it just felt more like classic Superman, including the deletion of his marriage to Lois Lane.

April 10, 2012 8:20 pm Yeah we would. I don't think he has such bad rogues gallery. The problem is that, for some reason, Superman inspires the worst in people. From haters who regurgitate the pathetic old, "oh, he's too powerful, so he can't be challenged," (cuz they expect us to believe that they read Batman thinking every issue might be the last) to this gloating mentality of, "see, I told you DC doesn't know what they're doing. Of course it failed, whereas if I could write my story, it'd be a monumental success," to, "oh, they're ruining him. Superman used to be X, now he's Y." And yeah, overly defensive fanboys like me... but I'm not about to change.

April 10, 2012 6:57 pm "Why don’t a lot of people like Superman? I think it is because he comes off as having no personality. If I were to hang out with Peter Parker, I could easily paint a picture as to what it would be like. He’d talk about photography, science, girls and make a lot of funny jokes. Superman on the other hand? You can’t pin his personality down as well." Since when does being a three-dimensional character mean, "you can pin his personality in a couple of sentences?" I'm a fan of the old Adventures of Superman TV show (no, I'm not that old, my parents had tapes of it) and in that show, he was a pretty rugged guy with a good sense of humor. My biggest complaint is that they often forget that he's supposed to make jokes and stuff. Hopefully they'll rectify this in further Earth-One books (if nothing else) but I do think that would be a better angle than the angry dude we see these days.

April 10, 2012 6:48 pm "Superman always “worked” pre-1986, when comics were generally “kids’ stuff”. After Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, however, people wanted more of a sense of realism in their superhero comics, and within that context Superman could often see lame and silly." That's because when Superman DID tackle "realistic" issues like gang warfare and stuff, it wasn't high-profile enough and nobody gave him credit. Again, DC's mistake of playing Superman and Batman as "polar opposites," (not just having a dynamic, but "POLAR OPPOSITES") was a huge mistake and they're still paying for it.