Clark Becomes A Blogger

[espanolbot]

So DC in their wisdom have decided to have Clark Kent leave the Daily Planet, 'cause print newspapers are a dyin' medium as I am too well aware (bitter journalism graduate), and start up his own blog.
http://geek-news.mtv.com/2012/10/23/clark-kent-quits-daily-planet/

Amusingly, David Willis of Shortpacked fame actually made a joke about this before the reboot even happened...



Now I kind of want Clark to become a producer on Channel Awesome now, he can have a show about examples of bad journalism or something (note, not intended as a slight, I like CA's content).

The funny thing about the preview for Superman 13, where said quitting happens, though is two things:
- one, Lois seems to have gone from being one of the more hardcore "the truth is what matters" kinds of reporters to being a "ratings and sales are more important than stories" sort.



- and two, Clark appears to have gone from Lois' unrequited love interest into a creeper that hacks her emails to read her conversations with her actual boyfriend.



Y'know if they wanted Clark's newspaper reporting to seem like anachronistic then they could just rework the books to give them a retro 30s/50s vibe, like BTAS, It's Superman! and Death by Design. Though that might just be my personal bias towards that style of entertainment...

Comments

[morwen]

They did this before, of course. Before the first Crisis, he'd stopped being a press journalist and had started being a TV anchor.

[icon_uk]

Yeah, though I always had a problem when he did that, and had his time as a roving reporter in the GBS "Flying Newsroom", and became TOO high profile for him to successfully vanish off as Superman three times an issue (Well, IMHO at least)

[wizardru]

Yeah, but this was back in the 'so fast I super-speed between chairs and interview myself on national TV without creating a whirlwhind so take that Walter Cronkite' era.

Confession: I have an unreasonable love for a pre-crisis story where Kobra makes Superman vacuum clean the city of Metropolis from this time.

[glprime]

I caught a bit of an interview on NPR with the author of an upcoming "Superman biography"*, where he summarized it as "...so if you were caught in a catastrophic emergency between the hours of 6 and 7 pm, you were on your own..."

*Go, go nerd cred!

[jaybee3]

He also left to be editor of Newstime magazine in the 1980s....and he was a best-selling novelist in the 1990s. This is hardly bold in comparison.

[icon_uk]

It's one of the things I miss from the Man of Steel revamp. That Clark had a reputation as a world traveller, adventurer and crusading author BEFORE he started at the Planet. Not Indiana Jones level of adventurer, but enough to explain why he wasn't the milquetoast that Silver Age Clark had been, and why he was taken on in such a high profile post without any real surprise, his writings spoke for him, and the Planet getting him was something of a coup.

[jaybee3]

I think this new/old idea of Clark really started pre-reboot when Geoff Johns started to get significant editorial power. Remember Johns started as Richard Donner's assistant in films and to him the Chris Reeve Superman films (where Clark is a mild-mannered bumbler) are sacred. That's why we saw Waid's Superman Birthright origin (which was fine) overturned in just a few years with Johns' Secret Origin where Clark was a bumbler and was always drawn (by Gary Frank) as looking exactly like Chris Reeve.

[arbre_rieur]

Thankfully, Grant Morrison's brought that back. The Clark we see in ACTION COMICS is very much the crusading idealistic firebrand, more so than Byrne's, in fact. Like I said somewhere in these threads, he was headhunted by the Daily Star because the editor-in-chief caught sight of his news blog.

[arbre_rieur]

"and he was a best-selling novelist in the 1990s."

I hear this a lot, but was he? I thought the novel he wrote got remaindered.

[jaybee3]

That was a throw-away line in one comic but most of the time (including in the official bios DC put out at the time) he was said to be a successful novelist. I even have the comic-ization of one of the novels he wrote (he supposedly wrote more than one) "Under A Yellow Sun". It was pretty good, back in an era when Superman was running on all cylinders (this was during the Death, Reign, Return part of the 90s).

[espanolbot]

He wrote some science fiction novels based upon his knowledge of Krypton, from what I remember.

[drexer]

With a stalker entitled Clark like this I'm starting to prefer Lex Luthor.

There is truly nothing else to say of the derailment of Lois and Perry other than facepalm to myself because I see no way in which they might write a story that properly explores the elements they raised with their straw men.

[icon_uk]

In fairness, a retro vibe would be really hard to make work when you're dealing with Superman, one of whose subtitles is "The Man of Tomorrow", and you have to interact with the rest of the high-tech DCU. It risks making him look quaint, and that's not really what you want your flagship hero to be when you're desperately trying to push him as "hip".

[morwen]

On the other hand, the idea of being "The Man of Tomorrow" is inherently retro, these days? That sort of far-seeing futurism is sadly, a thing of the past.

[icon_uk]

Don't tell Grant Morrison that! :)

[mrstatham]

This. I think the concept's incredibly hard to play with in modern comics, partly because there's no way that the comics companies will actually let the scientifically advanced characters advance the state of their world, whereas the likes of Reed Richards and Tony Stark should've ostensibly changed the world a million times over, now.

It's like Matt Fraction calling Tony Stark a 'futurist', and yet all it's amounted to throughout Fraction's run is that Tony is basically branching out and making electric cars and other stuff that run on the same energy as his armour. And a new armour that doesn't look quite as nice as his previous one which they claim is advanced beyond the Extremis stuff but really amounts to little more than the armour emerging from his body entirely rather than just the undersuit. And the top villain who claims to be 'smarter than Tony' still ended up in a one on one brawl in armour with Tony, just like any number of other fights Iron Man has had.

[morwen]

And that stuff that was being done in the second act of AvX about bringing water to the desert and energy to cities, half of that could have been done without the Phoenix.

[mrstatham]

Well, yes. Given the kind of people who exist even on the side of the heroes in Marvel - Richards, Stark, Pym, T'Challa - between them, the world's problems should be solved, frankly. But as it is, Marvel seems to prefer to turn these things into dick-swinging contests.

[silverhammerman]

Well if they did actually change the world comics would cross the barrier into straight fantasy/scifi, losing relatablility. The idea of superheroes actually changing the world is interesting though, and one that I think hasn't been explored that much. The only stories in that vein that I can think of are maybe Alan Moore's ABC Comics stuff, some small elements in Astro City, that one Fantastic Four: Big Town story, and the very end of Planetary, but it's never really been used as a status quo.
Personally I just assume that superhero technology is so dangerously unstable and incomprehensible to most scientists that even if a hero did fork over their gear, know one would actually understand how it works. Which I think is the explanation they used in the 90's Starman series for why the one from the 40's never shared his super-tech, leading his son/successor to call him out on it.

[espanolbot]

It is kind of sad that Ted Knight seemingly died before his research could be used to help the world, though DC decided to use Knight's work as the basis for where Libra got his powers...

So the only two uses his work have had in the DCU were a) the staff Stargirl inherited from Jack Knight, and b) a machine that enabled a supervillain to beam himself to the Fourth World, where Darkseid made him even worse.

Hrrmph.

[dr_archeville]

That's sort my personal theory for explaining why Reed Richards is Useless: the stuff the super-brains come up with can't get patented or even peer reviewed, because the stuff's so advanced the only ones who can peer review it are other super-brains, but they're too busy doing superhero (or supervillain) stuff to review/vet other people's stuff.

[arbre_rieur]

That's really only a problem when you take the long view, though, and when you do that, other problems crop up, like "Why hasn't anyone killed the Joker?" and "What's the point if the Thing will never really become human?" and even "How did they celebrate twenty Christmases but only age zero years?"

If you just focus on the present, then you get a character who's working towards building a better future, and that's enough.

[mrstatham]

I personally think that after some point, though, the long view becomes incredibly important. Batman, at this point, has been fighting the Joker on and off for about seventy years, and the only time I've ever seen a distinct switch-up or anything that felt genuinely different was when they removed Bruce Wayne from the equation.

But even if you do what you say, Fraction's run has still failed to be futuristic; His proclaimed advancements are, again, an electric car. And a villain who engineered his own Iron Man-style gear using his own body - including some awesome mono-filament powers - but quickly devolved into just.. A guy in armour. There were none of the real advancements Fraction talked about, and a third of Fraction's run ostensibly worked as nothing more than a reset button rather than have Tony actively work through his failures in Civil War and as SHIELD director.

Again, it's a distinct problem I have with the way comics play out; There should be some way of maintaining a status quo without the characters never really accomplishing anything.

[arbre_rieur]

"I personally think that after some point, though, the long view becomes incredibly important."

Yes, and that point is where you either learn to ignore it or stop reading the Big Two. Marvel and DC are what they are, always have been.

I wish there was a way to maintain the status quo without the characters never accomplishing their lofty goals, but I don't see any evidence it exists.

[grazzt]

Actually, the Christmas thing is easily explainable. It's not 20 Christmases, just a single really busy Christmas.

[jeyl]

"I hate myself for doing this."

And I hate it when the writers think that a character's actions can be excused so long as they recognize it as being wrong. No. If it's wrong and they know it's wrong, I'm not going to have any sympathy towards them if they're just going to do it anyways.

[md84]

At least the Superdickery stuff on the covers of old comics almost always turned out to be fakeouts or brainwashing or something.

This is like every bad joke concerning X-ray vision. I'd accept it if anyone but Superman pulled something like this.

[wizardru]

Except sometimes the fakeouts were one step shy of psychological abuse or worse than the thing they were meant to prevent, but yeah. It's hard for Clark to hold the moral high ground when he does something like this.

[leoboiko]

Economically Healthy 'Daily Planet' Now Most Unrealistic Part Of Superman Universe (July 2012)

[his_spiffynesss]

You know, I was about to mention that!

[arbre_rieur]

Grant Morrison already made Clark a blogger. That's how he got hired by the Daily Star. Editor George Taylor headhunted him after reading his news blog and liking what he saw.

[nyadnar17]

While I will miss the daily planet, I have no problems with him being an internet journalist now. 90% of the news I actually trust and the reporters who actually do investigative journalism now(the other 10% being 60 minutes) are web only. I think this could be a good move.

I don't know why he had to be a "blogger" though. There are so many online only news organizations now that solo blogger seems a bit retro.

[mrstatham]

Given Clark states his distaste for the man running the company, and he's also grumbling at Lois and Perry for the kind of stories they're being made to report, I could see him feeling rather anxious about working for someone where he might still run the risk of having stories and assignments he doesn't consider worthwhile being handed to him. The best way to write just what you want to write? Solo blogger, I guess.

[jaybee3]

But how can you make a living at that. Drudge does - but it took him years and a the perfect storm of the Lewinsky scandal to build him up. Anybody else that can do it without million-dollar/corporate support?

Why not just have him leave for the Planet for a new media start-up company of Bruce Wayne's? Less questions would be asked.

[mrstatham]

Think Peter Parker/Spider-Man. If Clark starts stating he and he alone has exclusives with Superman, people will read his stuff.

[espanolbot]

Heh, it is funny considering Bruce actually owned the Daily Planet up until the reboot happened.

What, that technically means that Superman is Batman's employee? Weird.

[atom_punk]

In the old DCU, didn't Lex Luthor buy the Daily Planet at one point? After he got tired of being slapped with reports about his countless shady dealings?

In fact I thought that purchase in turn caused Batman to use Wayne Enterprises to buy out the Daily Planet, to keep it free of Lex's influence.

Or is this headcanon just merging with actual canon?

[espanolbot]

I do remember Lex buying the Daily Planet (in exchange for being getting veto power over any story of his chosing in the future), though I think that it was Perry White or Lois having to make a last ditch attempt to save the company from bankrupcy or something.

...I think, Superman canon isn't really my thing.

[jaybee3]

Lex bought out the Planet, fired all the employees (except Lois) and merged it with his LexCorp news-service. Then when Lex ran for President he had to divest himself of his holdings so he made Talia (for reasons I still don't get) who he barely knew CEO of LexCorp and sold The Daily Planet to Perry for one dollar - knowing Perry didn't have the financial resources to run it.

Bruce Wayne then swooped in and bought it from Perry so it wouldn't be shut down with Perry in complete charge of Editorial. Then Talia (this was pre-Winick and Morrison Batman-hating Talia) sold off LexCorp holdings to her "Beloved" and Wayne Enterprises leaving Lex basically to have to start over (which he did) with a much less powerful LexCorp after he was impeached or whatever they did to him.

All of which made for more interesting dynamic then the present situation.

[jaybee3]

Bruce also owned the building where Lois and Clark lived after they got married (it was in fact a wedding present). That's the problem with removing so many of these relationships the characters had established. They want to make Superman/Clark an anti-social loner and yet Superman (even in the Silver Age when he hung with the Legion) was never a loner and outside of Dick Grayson, had the biggest social circle in the super-hero crowd (remember Lois casually stating she had the JLA members on speed-dial?)

[arbre_rieur]

Actually, the new 52's already firmly established both the Batman/Superman friendship and the Superman/Legionnaires friendship.

[filthysize]

The role of Clark Kent in that scan will now be played by Jeff Daniels.

[auggie18]

Okay, I really don't want to be "that guy," but I have to say it. Not a huge fan of this take on Lois and Clark. A Lois that doesn't care about hard news and spends time doing gossip stuff. (And seriously, "Lookie?" You can say Snookie's name. It's not like if you do, she'll appear and steal your soul.)

And Clark, learn to respect some privacy. This is not the Silver Age. You can't just mess up everyone's lives for fun.

[silverhammerman]

If this was the Silver Age it would turn out that Lois' new boyfriend is actually Superman in disguise, having taken up the new identity to draw a mad scientist out of hiding.

[silverhammerman]

Well hacked is kind of strong word. Still not a very good scene though, I think they probably should have gone with Lois stepping out to take a phone call and Clark's superhearing picking up the conversation, at least that would be inadvertent on his part. Instead of y'know, creepy.
This has been a long time coming though, so I can't say I'm surprised. It's hardly a new idea but if they do want to keep up with the times I guess it's necessary. Not sure about making him a blogger though, I wonder why the can't just have The Daily Planet as a sort of multimedia thing, that would help to get around the issue of newspapers losing business.

[donnblake]

Here's the thing- in pretty much all depictions, Superman is violating everyone's privacy, all the time. Whenever he uses his superhearing to search for someone, whenever he uses his X-ray vision to scan the city, etc.

[benuben]

That's stupid. Hearing or seeing something you don't wanna hear or see, when you are trying to catch criminal is hardly the same thing as stalking your co-worker for no reason.

[jlroberson]

I love how this is being hyped as "Clark Kent Quits The Daily Planet" when in fact his ass gets fired. Not EXACTLY the same statement.

[robinzegblu]

Clark gets called out later for wearing jeans to the office, but Lois, in a management position, gets away with dressing like that? I'll believe a man can fly, but show me an office that doesn't get crazy about jeans.