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Post by driver1980 on Mar 1, 2024 10:52:29 GMT -5
Let me add to this that a major advantage Superboy had over Superman was that he wasn't perfect. He could make mistakes that Superman would never be allowed to make, and having a supporting character who was sometimes smarter and braver than he was, and yet still believed in his potential, was a powerful way to emphasize that point. I doubt the writers ever thought about that idea too much, but it's implicit all the same. BUT HE COULD NEVER DIE. He could never be in any real peril, of death, revealing his identity, etc. He will always still be around , status quo intact, in Superman's adulthood. In my opinion, that applies to 95% of fictional characters. There are always exceptions - a long-running character dying in a film series, for instance - but most of the time, we know a character isn’t going to die. A certain tense scene in Goldfinger had me wondering if there was a slight possibility that Bond was going to die, it certainly had me on the edge of my seat. As did seeing Superman affected by Kryptonite in the first and third movies. In the moment, it felt bleak, but I knew there’d be other films - and that the heroes would survive. I certainly understand why Superboy’s exploits might seem devoid of peril, but the same could also apply to almost any other character. |
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Post by amerigo178 on Mar 1, 2024 11:49:30 GMT -5
I have a problem with Superboy just operating in the 31st Century with the Legion. I can’t believe that after he comes home from a Legion adventure he doesn’t do any “ heroine” in his own time. Also, why be public in the 31st Century and private in late 20th-early 21st Century?
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Post by Prince Hal on Mar 1, 2024 12:28:59 GMT -5
I have a problem with Superboy just operating in the 31st Century with the Legion. I can’t believe that after he comes home from a Legion adventure he doesn’t do any “ heroine” in his own time. Also, why be public in the 31st Century and private in late 20th-early 21st Century? Back in the day, at least through part of the 70s anyway, Superboy was a very public hero in Smallville and the world while also having adventures with the Legion. |
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Post by zaku on Mar 1, 2024 19:16:39 GMT -5
I have a problem with Superboy just operating in the 31st Century with the Legion. I can’t believe that after he comes home from a Legion adventure he doesn’t do any “ heroine” in his own time. Also, why be public in the 31st Century and private in late 20th-early 21st Century? Back in the day, at least through part of the 70s anyway, Superboy was a very public hero in Smallville and the world while also having adventures with the Legion. I think he's talking about the current incarnation. Superman now had a career as Superboy, but it was secretive in the "present" but public in the 31th century |
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Post by Prince Hal on Mar 1, 2024 20:03:23 GMT -5
Back in the day, at least through part of the 70s anyway, Superboy was a very public hero in Smallville and the world while also having adventures with the Legion. I think he's talking about the current incarnation. Superman now had a career as Superboy, but it was secretive in the "present" but public in the 31th century Right. Just providing a bit of context. |
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Post by zaku on Mar 2, 2024 3:20:03 GMT -5
I think he's talking about the current incarnation. Superman now had a career as Superboy, but it was secretive in the "present" but public in the 31th century Right. Just providing a bit of context. Yep. If you're curious, it happened after the events of Doomsday Clock   |
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Post by zaku on Mar 2, 2024 5:48:37 GMT -5
If anyone is curious: as you know (do you know?!?) the New 52 universe was the result of Doctor Manhattan tampering with the DC Universe timeline. One result was the removal of the JSA from the timestream (there was no active Justice League during WWII in the New 52) and the Legion of Super-Heroes. After the events of Doomsday Clock, the JSA was reintroduced into the main DC Universe. One of the effects is that the young Clark Kent, instead of trying to hide his powers, inspired by the example of the JSA embarked on a career as Superboy. The Legion was therefore born inspired by the example of the Boy of Steel. His career as Superboy was more or less secret (he didn't actively try to hide but neither to advertise himself) but he still had his adventures with the Legion in a similar way to his Earth-1 counterpart
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Post by chadwilliam on Mar 2, 2024 10:40:32 GMT -5
After some thought, I think Byrne ought to have done something similar to what Grant Morrison did later ... and I bet he would have had he thought of it! That is: Clark has no adventures as Superboy. He lurks in the shadows, helping people secretly, a la the Smallville tv series. THEN ... in his early teens ... he gets enlisted by the Legion of Super-Heroes. He has adventures as Superboy in the future! SO ... when he appears as an adult Superman for the first time when he moves to Metropolis ... he already has years of experience fighting super-powered opponents and is well adept with the use of his powers. Didn't Byrne come very close to this? As I recall, didn't Byrne create a gap for Clark Kent to have adventures between the time he left Smallville and the time he came to Metropolis? Isn't that what Man of Steel set up? Clark finds out he can fly, his powers kick in, he says good-bye to Lana and leaves Metropolis and while I think we only got a snippet of what he was up to during this period in one of those World Of... mini-series, we do learn that he got up to enough to fill half of Ma Kent's scrapbooks. "Titanic Raised!", "Boy falls from mountain and credits 'Guardian Angel' for saving him", "Mystery Figure seen pulling family from Fire!" - a lot of headlines like that. It would also have been nice to have seen a younger Superman with something of Siegel and Shuster's original swagger. If Byrne wanted his Superman to rescue kittens from trees and lecture people on how loud their boom-boxes were playing he could have still done that while leaving the door open for those wanting to tell stories of a Superman with a bit more grit. |
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Post by Prince Hal on Mar 2, 2024 11:23:50 GMT -5
If anyone is curious: as you know (do you know?!?) the New 52 universe was the result of Doctor Manhattan tampering with the DC Universe timeline. One result was the removal of the JSA from the timestream (there was no active Justice League during WWII in the New 52) and the Legion of Super-Heroes. After the events of Doomsday Clock, the JSA was reintroduced into the main DC Universe. One of the effects is that the young Clark Kent, instead of trying to hide his powers, inspired by the example of the JSA embarked on a career as Superboy. The Legion was therefore born inspired by the example of the Boy of Steel. His career as Superboy was more or less secret (he didn't actively try to hide but neither to advertise himself) but he still had his adventures with the Legion in a similar way to his Earth-1 counterpart So much less confusing than the concept of multiple earths.  |
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Post by zaku on Mar 2, 2024 11:59:17 GMT -5
If anyone is curious: as you know (do you know?!?) the New 52 universe was the result of Doctor Manhattan tampering with the DC Universe timeline. One result was the removal of the JSA from the timestream (there was no active Justice League during WWII in the New 52) and the Legion of Super-Heroes. After the events of Doomsday Clock, the JSA was reintroduced into the main DC Universe. One of the effects is that the young Clark Kent, instead of trying to hide his powers, inspired by the example of the JSA embarked on a career as Superboy. The Legion was therefore born inspired by the example of the Boy of Steel. His career as Superboy was more or less secret (he didn't actively try to hide but neither to advertise himself) but he still had his adventures with the Legion in a similar way to his Earth-1 counterpart So much less confusing than the concept of multiple earths. Well, now there are those too. And even Hypertime! Everything is now canon. EVERYTHING. |
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Post by zaku on Mar 2, 2024 14:12:05 GMT -5
So much less confusing than the concept of multiple earths. Well, now there are those too. And even Hypertime! Everything is now canon. EVERYTHING. Incidentally, I like how DC gave up on making sense of its continuity and totally embraced chaos. Has a writer decided that Zebra Batman's adventures are in continuity? Sure, as you prefer, whatever. Just remember to make it a 6-issue saga while we have a dozen alternative covers drawn. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2024 12:58:05 GMT -5
I think about the question this way. I don't think it was "wrong" per se for Byrne to try something different. So at face value, I don't think he violated a "sacred rule" or anything, however to discard such a tremendous volume of the Superman mythos right out of the gate, I think he put himself in a tough position to offer up something creative that made it "worth it" at the end of the day. Though one could argue Byrne's task at hand was to give the character a boost in popularity again, and he basically did.
For the record, I generally like Byrne a lot, though some of his creative decisions I've found infuriating along the way. But overall he's a favorite I grew up with, and I enjoy him as a storyteller and as an artist. I think his Fantastic Four run overall did honor to the series (with some exceptions) including some great storytelling and visuals. And I'll use the Alicia/Johnny example to address the question at hand. I hated to see the breakup with Ben and the thought that she would just switch to Johnny. It just seemed contrived, a seemingly more shallow relationship versus the depth of Alicia seeing past the Thing's exterior to the complex and tormented man within. However, She-Hulk brought a very fun dynamic to the team, so in that instance I felt John had something to "offer up" creatively to make the change in dynamic still interesting.
With the absence of Superboy, along with Supergirl, the Legion as we knew it, etc., I think he lost a lot of potential creative ground that did not have a similar tradeoff. Having Clark become a superhero as an adult was not really essential to those stories, and while I generally enjoyed some of Byrne's Superman run, it wasn't like like FF situation where I think he really did anything groundbreaking. Also in fairness though, I think the appetite to depict more "gentle" hero/character life in the classic Smallville setting was out of sorts with audiences by that time. Would we have gotten "angsty" 80's Clark, straight out of a John Hughes film? So maybe lost potential creative ground, but not without challenges at that point.
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