Byrne´s Man of Steel could really use and update, but, as ideas go (not all), the Byrne´s one are much better than Birthright and it´s "invasion of the Kryptonians" crap.
Sandman138 said:
REAL characters? REAL CHARACTERS? A self-loathing jerk who just wishes he could be a normal guy... when the hell did Superman start hanging out with Spider-Man?
Yeah, that´s one of the bad ones, but, not totally and i understand where that idea came from.
It´s been a while since i read MoS, so i don´t remember all that much, but, every kid wants to be accepted, which, in Kal-El´s case, he wants to be normal, be one of the guys.
The thing that makes it one of the bad ideas is that, with the parents he had, to be normal would not be one thing that Kal-El misses, because he doesn´t feel any less human.
A poor kid from the toughest slum in the city who killed his own parents to get rich and is now a CEO who secretly runs the world... could we make him a bit more of a one sided bastard?
Yeah, i agree, it´s veru one sided
Superman comes from a planet with people who are colder than Spock so why the hell do we care for them when they are feeling their flesh boil off of their bones? It's not like they were ever really alive.
That, i don´t agree.
Byrne´s take on Krypton is very good (sure, needs some update)...you have to look at Krypton´s past to understand why they got to that point.
Lex Luthor of the Golden Age was an evil genious, a man with an intense hatred for Superman not because he was just a ruthless jerk, but because he was too proud. He saw himself as above Superman and resented the love that others showed Superman because Lex felt underapreciated.
Byrne´s Luthor is not all that diferent, one can even say it´s more of an update on that character.
Why does Luthor hates Superman?
Because, before Superman arrived, he was the center of attentions in Metropolis and the world, when he arrived, he lost it, people started to look at the man in the sky.
Luthor lost his city to the only man who doesn´t want it.
Besides, he was the first man with the guts to arrest him, and Luthor can´t accept that humiliation.
He loved Einstein more than anybody in the entire world (and in fact this formed a bond with him and Superman because it was Einstein himself who Jor-El wished to be Superman's foster parent) and would never harm a soul on the good proffesor's birthday.
IMO, that´s just stupid.
Pre-crisis at it´s finest.
He is the Christ figure in a world filled with too many jerks, sleazebags, bigots, zealots and self-made martyrs. He shows us what we were meant to strive for, making him such a repressed and morose guy makes it very hard for him to be that shining beacon of light.
Please, stop with the Jesus nonsense, i can´t stand it anymore...
If Superman was that Christ figure, showing us what we were meant to strive, and all that, he would be Gandhi in a cape and give lectures.
Superman is an altruistic being, because that´s the way he was raised to be, and he looks at himself as someone that can make a diference.
The fact that he is an alien, in a world that accepted him, gives him the unconscious that he is, somehow in debt, and so he makes the best he can to pay that debt.
Moreover, because Krypton was such a crappy place to begin with, Byrne eliminates any kind of dramatic conflict of identity that is so prevelent in adopted children. That feeling of not really belonging in either place and thus having to make a home for yourself (one that is almost always lonely, cold, and lacking in comfort in case you never understood the metaphor for the Fortress of Solitude) is totally lost because that hack Byrne gives Superman every reason to hate his heritage and turn his back on his blood without even a moment of remorse or seconed guessing.
In Superman´s case, he was raised as human, he only knew his true heritage years later, when he was 27, that´s one the big reasons why he chosed to became Superman.
How can he have the feeling of not belonging, when he lived for
27 YEARS as a human?
If that was the case, the moment he put of the costume, say goodbye to Clark Kent, because he would be Superman forever, 24/7.
He created the Fortress to pay respect to his heritage, not to have a place to call his own.
If that was the case, he would never return to Smallville or even live in Metropolis, he would live in the Fortress, only coming out to make his good deeds.
And about the "
(one that is almost always lonely, cold, and lacking in comfort in case you never understood the metaphor for the Fortress of Solitude), you are watching STM way to much, because it never was a lonely and cold place until Donner made the movie.
The original Fortress (1958) was a Batcave-like, with a laboratory, a giant steel diary in which he wrote his memoirs, communications equipment, specialized exercise equipment, trophies of his past adventures, and even a fricking alien zoo.
