Posted: 19 April 2018 at 10:56pm | IP Logged | 3
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The early Superman who fought for the common man against the forces that sought to profit from his various miseries; miseries those in power readily assisted in spreading; That Superman speaks to me. The game he played keeping Lois in the shadows as to his identity was only a small part of his role as Clark Kent. As Kent, he worked just as hard if not harder than Superman did to bring injustices and bad policies to light. He wasn't taking time off from doing good as Kent. Kent was an essential part of what he hoped to accomplish, as was Lois and the Planet. Journalism was a tenet he fought for and a weapon to be used in rooting out evil.
I still find much to appreciate in the character as he moved from social reformer to science fiction hero. His fundamental decency and insistence upon thinking problems through were a source of constant inspiration for me as a kid. I read all that exposition and found it compelling. A Superman for whom things come easily didn't show up until the mid-80's and I had no use for him when he did. Blather on about sneezing suns out and all of those others fallacies you never read but know exist because, well, Stan and the other Marvel writers said they did. For every unfortunate instance of Superman threading a system of planets together to move them out of harm's way, there are many more where having super powers isn't the answer to the problem or finding the correct means of fine-tuning them is what's required. By the way, how did Thanos kill half of everything that lived again...? Oh, right, I remember now... Marvelites don't really dislike omnipotence. They just want it under the correct corporate umbrella.
I read enough stories of Superman dying alone on a baseball field, being run to ground by telepathic hounds, or nearly perishing under a red sun to tell you that omnipotence wasn't the constant story element your corporate masters and their Bull**** Bulletins tell you it was.
The Batman of the 70's and early 80's was a favorite of mine, but mostly in stories in which he worked alongside others. The team-up Batman was a constant source of admirable character exchanges and cleverness. Despite whatever differences may have separated him from his partners, together they worked to overcome them, usually in stories with a far broader and more worldly range than the disaster porn and sadism suppliers are capable of today. Both humane and human, Batman nevertheless worked at the top of his game all the time to see that right was done, and his companions did no less as they worked alongside, or sometimes against him. His confident, assured, and driven nature brought out the best in everyone and made him a constant pleasure to read.
There used to be a point to Wonder Woman. There hasn't been for decades, unfortunately, but long, long ago, the character stood for something. There was just enough of a hint of it in the 70's for me to want to go back and read those earliest stories and I was constantly surprised by what I found in them. If all you want to do is count the number of times she's tied up and roll your eyes knowingly, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more, say no more, you can do so, but the consistency of the message she's sending with her dialogue and the differences in her demeanor when she's in no danger and when she knows she is, inevitably through her own overconfidence, is striking. She's a far more human super-being than many others, yet a more effective exemplar for being so. She represents escape and progressive thought through the turning of those who would cruelly impose their will upon others for the sake of it and destruction of their means of imprisoning us, which are often our own insecurity and the lack of belief we have in ourselves. The target of her message wasn't just little girls, although they certainly had the most to gain from embracing its power and asserting themselves, peacefully, into society. It was also to educate the bullies and assure the boys who felt everything was out of balance in the current system somehow. Things don't just have to change. They will change. It's up to us to make certain those changes occur for the better.
Or, y'know, she could just hack and slice, kill and maim, snap people's necks, show comfort women how to butcher their attackers, spit in the faces of the walking sperm banks, and make out all the time with super hot guys who pointlessly dress in form-fitting ceremonial armor. (Shrug.) Either way.
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