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"What I hope is that people take from it the unlikelihood that a piece of paper, with little ink drawings of figures, with little written words, can make you cry, can make your heart soar, can make you scared, sad, or thrilled. How mental is that? That piece of paper is inert material, the corpse of some tree, pulped and poured, then given new meaning and new life when the real hours and real emotions that the writer and the artist, the colourist, the letter the editor translated onto the physical page, meet with the real hours and emotions of a reader, of all readers at once, across time, generations and distance."
I've never really liked Superman as a character. Always had a hard time relating to him, especially contrasted against...well, pretty much anyone, particularly Batman, probably his most common foil. Where Bruce Wayne's alter ego is a product of fantastic wealth, Olympic-level training, peerless deductive skills and deep-seeded childhood trauma, Kal-El is...just an alien, gifted by his inhuman biology to be almost invincible, unless you happen to have a specific green radioactive crystal lying around. He's an easy character to write poorly (as JMS proved pretty handily with his "Grounded" arc, the success of which would fit neatly on a microscope slide), but so damn hard to write in a manner that's true to his nature and still dramatically resonant. By my count, three relatively modern stories have done it well -- Alan Moore hit it twice with "For the Man Who Has Everything" (the animated adaption of which being possibly the only adaptation of his work Moore has ever enjoyed) and "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" which would've served as the perfect end of the Silver-Age Superman.
In the tone of the latter tale came Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's All-Star Superman. Given that Frank Miller's All-Star Batman and Robin gave us a laughably outrageous take on the Caped Crusader that the [ahem] iconic "I'm the goddamn Batman" bit is pretty much the only aspect of that series salvageable, that Frank Quitely's art is an acquired taste at best ("Oh God, it's the potato-faced people again"), and that Grant Morrison's approach to his subjects can be charitably described as "eccentric" (and not-so-charitably as "insane" or "deranged" or "utterly incomprehensible"), I was expecting the title to flicker into obscurity and be entirely avoidable.
It is the complete opposite. It is indispensable. No one who is the slightest fan of the character should be without it. Anyone who considers themselves a fan of the medium should at the very least read it, and if that leads to eventually buying a copy, I wouldn't be surprised.
When I'd heard that there would be an animated adaptation, I was...excited, if a mite worried. It didn't strike me as a good choice for adaptation, if only in that a lot of Quitely's art was powerful in its invocation of motion and continuity while being static images -- some of the majesty is lost in moving it from the printed page. And there's simply no way to compress twelve issues of concentrated awesome (well, okay, ten if you discount the Bizarro issues, but that's my personal preference) into a coherent DVD, and slavishly trying to do so gets you Watchmen, and let's not do that again, okay? I knew that Dwayne McDuffie -- who'd brought us the better moments of the DC animated universe -- was a talented storyteller, but he had a hell of a lot on his plate this time.
Like Watchmen and V for Vendetta, I had one must-have deal-breaker scene that had to be in the adaptation. Unlike those two, my scene didn't make it in this time (yes, it's Regan; what, was it too dark?), and that colored my impression of it greatly. Part of why the adaptation didn't gel for me as a whole is that necessary omission that ran against my personal grain -- lose the Bizarros, fine, I'm all aboard that, but why do we get the two pompous Kryptonians and we lose the Chronovore in Smallville? We miss the Jonathan Kent scene? Thank God the prison break bit stayed in, at least, or else I'd have been no end of pissed off. Adaptation decay's to be expected, I know, but I question the judgment of anyone who'd keep the Kryptonians -- or five additional minutes of punching, really -- and lose the most emotionally effective parts that made the original so brilliant. On whichever level those choices were made, I think they were made poorly, and the whole product suffers as a result.
Which is not to say I didn't like it -- the Sun-Eater, the aforementioned jail break, Ed Goddamned Asner, Alexis Denisof, Luthor's super-powered realizations -- I just didn't like it as much as I think I could have. The animation for Solaris in particular (and some of his fight scenes) was awful, the new Luthor/Quintum ending rang hollow, and I don't blame anyone for being disturbed by Jimmy Olsen's perplexing peripheral inclusion in this little endeavor. Maybe I'm just too close to the original work to be entirely objective -- if it leads more people to hunt down the original comics, it's a worthwhile endeavor, but I see this movie as a seriously flubbed opportunity, and that's kind of crushing.
"In the one Mythic moment we’re all united, kissing our Lover for the First time, the Last time the Only time, honouring our dear Dad under a blood red sky, against a darkening backdrop, with Mum telling us it’ll all be okay in the end. If we were able to capture even a hint of that place and share it with our readers, that would be good enough for me."
I've never really liked Superman as a character. Always had a hard time relating to him, especially contrasted against...well, pretty much anyone, particularly Batman, probably his most common foil. Where Bruce Wayne's alter ego is a product of fantastic wealth, Olympic-level training, peerless deductive skills and deep-seeded childhood trauma, Kal-El is...just an alien, gifted by his inhuman biology to be almost invincible, unless you happen to have a specific green radioactive crystal lying around. He's an easy character to write poorly (as JMS proved pretty handily with his "Grounded" arc, the success of which would fit neatly on a microscope slide), but so damn hard to write in a manner that's true to his nature and still dramatically resonant. By my count, three relatively modern stories have done it well -- Alan Moore hit it twice with "For the Man Who Has Everything" (the animated adaption of which being possibly the only adaptation of his work Moore has ever enjoyed) and "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" which would've served as the perfect end of the Silver-Age Superman.
In the tone of the latter tale came Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's All-Star Superman. Given that Frank Miller's All-Star Batman and Robin gave us a laughably outrageous take on the Caped Crusader that the [ahem] iconic "I'm the goddamn Batman" bit is pretty much the only aspect of that series salvageable, that Frank Quitely's art is an acquired taste at best ("Oh God, it's the potato-faced people again"), and that Grant Morrison's approach to his subjects can be charitably described as "eccentric" (and not-so-charitably as "insane" or "deranged" or "utterly incomprehensible"), I was expecting the title to flicker into obscurity and be entirely avoidable.
It is the complete opposite. It is indispensable. No one who is the slightest fan of the character should be without it. Anyone who considers themselves a fan of the medium should at the very least read it, and if that leads to eventually buying a copy, I wouldn't be surprised.
When I'd heard that there would be an animated adaptation, I was...excited, if a mite worried. It didn't strike me as a good choice for adaptation, if only in that a lot of Quitely's art was powerful in its invocation of motion and continuity while being static images -- some of the majesty is lost in moving it from the printed page. And there's simply no way to compress twelve issues of concentrated awesome (well, okay, ten if you discount the Bizarro issues, but that's my personal preference) into a coherent DVD, and slavishly trying to do so gets you Watchmen, and let's not do that again, okay? I knew that Dwayne McDuffie -- who'd brought us the better moments of the DC animated universe -- was a talented storyteller, but he had a hell of a lot on his plate this time.
Like Watchmen and V for Vendetta, I had one must-have deal-breaker scene that had to be in the adaptation. Unlike those two, my scene didn't make it in this time (yes, it's Regan; what, was it too dark?), and that colored my impression of it greatly. Part of why the adaptation didn't gel for me as a whole is that necessary omission that ran against my personal grain -- lose the Bizarros, fine, I'm all aboard that, but why do we get the two pompous Kryptonians and we lose the Chronovore in Smallville? We miss the Jonathan Kent scene? Thank God the prison break bit stayed in, at least, or else I'd have been no end of pissed off. Adaptation decay's to be expected, I know, but I question the judgment of anyone who'd keep the Kryptonians -- or five additional minutes of punching, really -- and lose the most emotionally effective parts that made the original so brilliant. On whichever level those choices were made, I think they were made poorly, and the whole product suffers as a result.
Which is not to say I didn't like it -- the Sun-Eater, the aforementioned jail break, Ed Goddamned Asner, Alexis Denisof, Luthor's super-powered realizations -- I just didn't like it as much as I think I could have. The animation for Solaris in particular (and some of his fight scenes) was awful, the new Luthor/Quintum ending rang hollow, and I don't blame anyone for being disturbed by Jimmy Olsen's perplexing peripheral inclusion in this little endeavor. Maybe I'm just too close to the original work to be entirely objective -- if it leads more people to hunt down the original comics, it's a worthwhile endeavor, but I see this movie as a seriously flubbed opportunity, and that's kind of crushing.
"In the one Mythic moment we’re all united, kissing our Lover for the First time, the Last time the Only time, honouring our dear Dad under a blood red sky, against a darkening backdrop, with Mum telling us it’ll all be okay in the end. If we were able to capture even a hint of that place and share it with our readers, that would be good enough for me."
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From:
no subject
So, thank you for writing this.
Also, what did you think of the show "Heroes" when it was airing?
From:
no subject
If I'm just starting out with a character, whether it's my view of karma or the natural order of the universe or whatever, I just think everything bought must be paid for, every advantage comes with an equal and opposite disadvantage. There's just a harmony in that equilibrium that appeals to me. You can be the world's greatest detective and an unparalleled martial artist, but you go to bed each night (or morning) with your dead parents' blood on your hands. You can be the most powerful entity on Earth, but you are bound by the expectation from everyone -- including yourself -- to be the living icon of justice and virtue, or to disguise yourself as a bumbling cornfed fool.
And ultimately I think every character, no matter what their background or ability, needs to have something they want which they can't have. Understanding what that is, what obstacles they face, and what they will do to get it sometimes makes all the difference.
From:
no subject
I do recommend the first couple of seasons of Heroes. The other seasons were good for continuing the evolutions of the characters, but not so good for the evolutions of plotlines. The show ended on a cliffhanger that wound up being cyclic, echoing the first episode in a way.
From:
no subject
Deep down, he's just a big softy farmboy doing right. Best example is in All Star Superman, where Krypto suddenly returns. He becomes this big kid who goes off to play with his dog. Or the Christmas episode of Justice League where he tries peeking at his Christmas presents with x-ray vision.
It's that kid-like nature that makes him relatable to me and why I love All Star Superman so much. It takes all those silly Silver Age ideas from his mythos and just runs with it, untethered. Superman is all about being a kid. The child's imagination of tying a towel around your neck and running around the house going "Whoooosh!"
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
I HATE Quitely's artwork. And Super-Lois irked me. :(
Blarg.
From:
no subject
And the Super-Lois bit I just took as a pastiche of the Silver-Age Lois/Superdickery that was so common between those two. In the comic it's jarring, true, but in the movie, even more so.
From:
no subject
Honestly, I thought everything just felt...stiff and by the numbers. The voice acting was particularly stiff, especially if you compare it with other DC animated movies or even Justice League and other DCAU shows.
My biggest beef was when Supes was finishing off Solaris. In the comic, he has the great line about Solaris' rehabilitation beginning now. When Solaris begs for mercy, Superman says "You'll live." In the movie, however, the rehabilitation line is removed and his only response is "I think I'm out of mercy." So, he's essentially a killer.
From:
no subject
I'm glad the flower made it in, but for me what makes that work is where it came from -- which 21st-century Superman obviously doesn't recognize. And I can understand how that might throw off the narrative and the tension. But that's part of the original story's elegance, and losing it diminishes the rest.
From:
no subject
Though I generally like both Morrison & Quitely, so that does help. I'm kind of more surprised that people don't care for Quitely -- I can see how Morrison isn't for everyone, but I find Quitely's art very appealing. I suspect that I'm looking at comics differently from those who grew up reading them -- there's a lot of stuff that seems to be highly regarded where my reaction is more like, "This is... fine, I guess?"
Anyway. I saw a trailer for the movie a while back and was intrigued but skeptical -- largely because the voice acting seemed so flat, even in the short clips. The reaction I've seen is similar to yours -- relief that it's not terrible, but annoyance that the omissions and changes sort of lose heart of the book. Right now it seems like something I'll rent eventually to show to my nephew, but I'm in no rush.
From:
no subject
My first exposure to unbridled Quitely was in The Authority, and that was problematic not only because I think his style was not nearly as refined as it is today (his faces were shrunken to the very center of heads that were just rounded cubes), but because he and Mark Millar had just replaced Bryan Hitch and Warren Ellis (respectively, though it might've been more successful had they traded roles), and that's a hell of a hard act to follow. And it didn't help that Millar didn't give me much to become emotionally invested -- or really even interested in.
And you picked up something else -- works that call back so much of the Silver Age as All-Star Superman definitely have a different effect on someone who's been saturated in the four-color universe since birth as opposed to new arrivals. It's a tiny bit appreciation of details and a whole lot of raw, unrefined nostalgia right in the vein, and it's a giddy rush.
There's so much lost that I can't unabashedly recommend it -- I forgot Earth Q, mainly because it never occurs in the film, and, like, why the hell not? -- but it's interesting. I still think I liked it more than any live-action Superman movie save Superman II, but, well, that's damning with faint praise. I've seen fawning reviews and slightly less excited reviews, but that seems like an acceptable spectrum to me.