Keyser Soze
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Reading Supergods will probably give people insight into what Morrison's approach to Superman is likely to be. Here are a few quotes:
Superman made his position plain: He was a hero of the people. The original Superman was a bold humanist response to Depression-era fears of runaway scientific advance and soulless industrialism. We would see this early incarnation wrestling giant trains to a stanstill, overturning tanks, or bench-pressing constructio cranes. Superman rewrote folk hero John Henry's brave, futile battle with the steam hammer to have a happy ending. He made explicit the fantasies of power and agency that kept the little fellow trudging along toward another sunset fade-out. He was Charlie's tramp character, with the same burning hatred of injustice and bullies, but instead of guile and charm, Superman had the strength of fifty men and nothing could hurt him. If the dystopian nightmare visions of the age foresaw the dehumanized, mechanized world, Superman offered another possibility: an image of a fiercely human tomorrow that delivered the spectacle of triumphant individualism exercising its sovereignty over the implacable forces of industrial oppression. It's no surprise that he was a big hit with the oppressed. He was as resolutely lowbrow, as pro-poor, as any savior born in a pigsty.
...
The Superman who made his debut on the cover of Action Comics no. 1 was just a demigod, not yet the pop deity he would become. The 1938 model had the power to "LEAP 1/8th OF A MILE; HURDLE A TWENTY STORY BUILDING... RAISE TREMENDOUS WEIGHTS... RUN FASTER THAN AN EXPRESS TRAIN... NOTHING LESS THAN A BURSTING SHELL COULD PENETRATE HIS SKIN!" Although "A GENIUS IN INTELLECT. A HERCULES IN STRENGTH. A NEMESIS TO WRONG-DOERS," this Superman was unable to fly, resorting instead to tremendous single bounds. He could neither orbit the world at the speed of light nor stop the flow of time. That would come later. In his youth, he was almost believable. Siegel and Shuster were careful to ground his adventures in a contemporary city, much like New York, in a fictional world haunted by the all-too-familiar injustices of the real one.
...
And so it came to pass that our socialist, utopian, humanist hero was slowly transformed into a marketing tool, a patriotic stooge, and, worse: the betrayor of his own creators.
Superman made his position plain: He was a hero of the people. The original Superman was a bold humanist response to Depression-era fears of runaway scientific advance and soulless industrialism. We would see this early incarnation wrestling giant trains to a stanstill, overturning tanks, or bench-pressing constructio cranes. Superman rewrote folk hero John Henry's brave, futile battle with the steam hammer to have a happy ending. He made explicit the fantasies of power and agency that kept the little fellow trudging along toward another sunset fade-out. He was Charlie's tramp character, with the same burning hatred of injustice and bullies, but instead of guile and charm, Superman had the strength of fifty men and nothing could hurt him. If the dystopian nightmare visions of the age foresaw the dehumanized, mechanized world, Superman offered another possibility: an image of a fiercely human tomorrow that delivered the spectacle of triumphant individualism exercising its sovereignty over the implacable forces of industrial oppression. It's no surprise that he was a big hit with the oppressed. He was as resolutely lowbrow, as pro-poor, as any savior born in a pigsty.
...
The Superman who made his debut on the cover of Action Comics no. 1 was just a demigod, not yet the pop deity he would become. The 1938 model had the power to "LEAP 1/8th OF A MILE; HURDLE A TWENTY STORY BUILDING... RAISE TREMENDOUS WEIGHTS... RUN FASTER THAN AN EXPRESS TRAIN... NOTHING LESS THAN A BURSTING SHELL COULD PENETRATE HIS SKIN!" Although "A GENIUS IN INTELLECT. A HERCULES IN STRENGTH. A NEMESIS TO WRONG-DOERS," this Superman was unable to fly, resorting instead to tremendous single bounds. He could neither orbit the world at the speed of light nor stop the flow of time. That would come later. In his youth, he was almost believable. Siegel and Shuster were careful to ground his adventures in a contemporary city, much like New York, in a fictional world haunted by the all-too-familiar injustices of the real one.
...
And so it came to pass that our socialist, utopian, humanist hero was slowly transformed into a marketing tool, a patriotic stooge, and, worse: the betrayor of his own creators.
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