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**Nowhere Man** · 07-14-2012, 02:18 PM

So is anyone else keeping up with Action Comics at the moment?

Because WTF is up with--

SPOILER: show

And while I'm thinking about it, I'm gonna take a second to rant about the one-shot in Action Comics #9:

SPOILER: show

The stand-alone story about the Superman of Earth 23.

Okay, so on Earth 23, Superman's a black guy, and is also President of the United States. While his secret identity is 'Calvin Ellis,' it's implied that this Superman is basically a stand-in for Barack Obama. And Lex Luthor has to vociferously defend his enmity toward Superman by yelling "I'm not racist! It's everything else about you that I hate!" Now, I'm not going to go on a big lengthy political diatribe here, because I don't wanna make a big 'thing' out of it, but..........come on, really? I mean, it's admittedly not a very deep parallel since they don't bring up policy or anything other than "he's the President and he's black," but it's still there, and IMO it's meant to bait people into an argument over it.

Under Superman's administration, everything is awesome, and even when he's solving problems in-costume, he has a robotic double (controlled by Brainiac) handle crises as President. So yeah, Superman is in a position of essentially supreme power, with a cowed and obedient Brainiac as his servant. Where have I seen this before?

We've seen stories with Superman or a Superman-like figure in positions of total authority before, and it's always shown that that's a bad thing, that even the best man is prone to the corrupting of absolute power, and that even a well-meaning tyrant is still a tyrant. Here, though, it's celebrated, and a universe-hopping Lois Lane goes so far as to call him "Superman done right," basically stating that seizing power under false pretenses (his identity as Superman is still a secret), running a powerful shadow-government (since he has Brainiac running the show in secret), and using the Justice League to flat-out invade other countries (they're shown flying into Qurac and destroying their nuclear program) is perfectly okay--and not just okay, but ideal--as long as he's "on our side." At least Wonder Woman points out how hypocritical they're being, but still willingly goes along with it anyway. Who Watches The Watchmen, indeed.

Maybe it's just the rabid Libertarian in me, but I find that whole concept incredibly disturbing.

However, once I get past that (which isn't easy), there's another part of this comic that I thought was actually really clever. There's a parallel-universe version of Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and Clark Kent who are traveling from universe to universe to escape their world's version of Superman, who was created by a thought-powered doohickey to be the peak of human ideals, but then was twisted into an evil and violent mockery of itself by their corporate backers to be more 'marketable.'

This was a pretty entertaining deconstruction of the typical "Superman needs to be dark and gritty" bitching about how they should tone down the character's idealism to make him more relatable and cool, and how doing so betrays everything that the character is meant to represent. Of course, they kind of overdid it by then making that Superman a big 90s robot-thing and having his symbol resemble a Swastika, but it was still a rather neat idea.

07-14-2012, 02:18 PM	#2314
Nowhere Man Now. Here. Man. Posts: 8,370	So is anyone else keeping up with Action Comics at the moment? Because WTF is up with-- SPOILER: show Clark Kent being 'dead' and Superman starting a new secret identity? I mean, I get the in-character reasoning for it (bad guys might go after the people he cares about, so he wants to sever ties with them to keep them safe), but it doesn't work. First off, his new identity (a firefighter named 'John Clark') doesn't even bother wearing glasses; his new disguise is a hat. And the whole reason Clark Kent works is because he's kind of a drip, to the point that no one would ever seriously suspect that such a dweeb could possibly be Superman. But 'John Clark' is running around saving people anyway, so that should make it even more obvious who he really is. And secondly, Action Comics takes place a few years before the main Superman comic, right? And in the main Superman comic, he's still Clark Kent. So we already know in advance that at some point he's going to give up the John Clark identity and go back to being Clark Kent. Which renders this whole thing totally pointless. I really liked the initial arc in Action, with Superman's origin and the re-design of Brainiac and all of that. But this arc is already putting me off because there's no reason for it. Also, "Nimrod the Hunter?" Somewhere in the Marvel Universe, the Kravenoff family is preparing a hefty lawsuit. And while I'm thinking about it, I'm gonna take a second to rant about the one-shot in Action Comics #9: SPOILER: show The stand-alone story about the Superman of Earth 23. Okay, so on Earth 23, Superman's a black guy, and is also President of the United States. While his secret identity is 'Calvin Ellis,' it's implied that this Superman is basically a stand-in for Barack Obama. And Lex Luthor has to vociferously defend his enmity toward Superman by yelling "I'm not racist! It's everything else about you that I hate!" Now, I'm not going to go on a big lengthy political diatribe here, because I don't wanna make a big 'thing' out of it, but..........come on, really? I mean, it's admittedly not a very deep parallel since they don't bring up policy or anything other than "he's the President and he's black," but it's still there, and IMO it's meant to bait people into an argument over it. Under Superman's administration, everything is awesome, and even when he's solving problems in-costume, he has a robotic double (controlled by Brainiac) handle crises as President. So yeah, Superman is in a position of essentially supreme power, with a cowed and obedient Brainiac as his servant. Where have I seen this before? We've seen stories with Superman or a Superman-like figure in positions of total authority before, and it's always shown that that's a bad thing, that even the best man is prone to the corrupting of absolute power, and that even a well-meaning tyrant is still a tyrant. Here, though, it's celebrated, and a universe-hopping Lois Lane goes so far as to call him "Superman done right," basically stating that seizing power under false pretenses (his identity as Superman is still a secret), running a powerful shadow-government (since he has Brainiac running the show in secret), and using the Justice League to flat-out invade other countries (they're shown flying into Qurac and destroying their nuclear program) is perfectly okay--and not just okay, but ideal--as long as he's "on our side." At least Wonder Woman points out how hypocritical they're being, but still willingly goes along with it anyway. Who Watches The Watchmen, indeed. Maybe it's just the rabid Libertarian in me, but I find that whole concept incredibly disturbing. However, once I get past that (which isn't easy), there's another part of this comic that I thought was actually really clever. There's a parallel-universe version of Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and Clark Kent who are traveling from universe to universe to escape their world's version of Superman, who was created by a thought-powered doohickey to be the peak of human ideals, but then was twisted into an evil and violent mockery of itself by their corporate backers to be more 'marketable.' This was a pretty entertaining deconstruction of the typical "Superman needs to be dark and gritty" bitching about how they should tone down the character's idealism to make him more relatable and cool, and how doing so betrays everything that the character is meant to represent. Of course, they kind of overdid it by then making that Superman a big 90s robot-thing and having his symbol resemble a Swastika, but it was still a rather neat idea.