Superman #702

[lordultimus]

Comments

[thornsilver]

Are we... supposed to approve Superman's actions in this one?

[coldfury]

Wow, Superman comes off as terrible in this one. The aliens have a point, he's just as illegal as they are, they aren't hurting anything, and they're refugees. Then he blackmails them into sharing their advanced technology with the US...

oof.

[owlbrigade1]

This is kinda racist, and by kinda I mean very. So you can only immigrate somewhere if either it wasn't your choice, or if you are 'one of the good ones' and must make sure your life is spent in service to the new country? Yeah, screw you Superman.

[zylly]

I remember really liking this low-stakes, wanders the Earth story arc when it came out.

With reflection, Clark comes off really badly in this ish.

[icon_uk]

IIRC this was when Superman was coming from a very, vey dark place (Was this just after the New Krypton thing?) and he'd publicly renounced his American citizenship (kinda) and decided after being challenged by a sort of straw-man argument about "Why aren't you curing cancer?" that he neded to walk the country to better understand the needs of the populace.

So I think the intent was he DOES start out like this, making bad, simplistic and judgemental decisions and as he started out, then as the story progressed he's realise his true nature again... but JMS unexpectedly left the title before the story could get anything like that far so it was sort of unresolved.

Probably mis-remembering a chunk of that, but I think that was the gist of it.

[lordultimus]

I never really got the "renounced his citizenship" thing. Not that it's unpatriotic, but are we really saying that Superman, not just Clark Kent, is a registered American citizen? Like, does he pay taxes? Does the Fortress of Solitude count as American soil? Does he have to flash his ID whenever he flies over the border?

[strejdaking]

I see absolutely nothing implying here that this isn't supposed to be a happy ending brought in by Superman's wisdom. And wouldn't those experienced have the precise opposite effect on him? Why would him thinking he may have become too american centric and out of touch with the common man make him LESS sympathetic towards refugees minding their own business?

[strejdaking]

Yeah, this... Yeah. And the implication of him not having "decided what to do about you". Like, was he gonna inform the government? The same one that allowed Sam Lane commit genocide on people of New Krypton like a week ago? What would that possibly achieve except for putting these guys in danger for, all things considered, an entirely victimless crime. A misdemeanor, assuming US immigration laws apply here.

Like, maybe if one of the aliens was actually dangerous, there could be a discussion, with Superman being sympathetic but having legitimate concerns and them arguing it's not fair to have them all pay because of this one asshole, that would be a discussion worth having. Because this... Is this even a problem? Like, I know JMS doesn't think immigrants have life saving technologies, but is the immigration problem that they don't contribute to the society? Because most of them have nothing to offer except doing jobs and they get tons of shit for that.

Reading this, you can kinda see why Grant would wanna bring back the "FUCK DA POLICE" take.

[tripodeca113]

J'onn J'onzz better watch out.

[bradygirl_12]

Yeah, not happy with Clark here. Those aliens were doing no harm and had a legit reason to emigrate here. Forcing them to make their tech public in a way isn't right, but at least the whole situation looks promising.

Sometimes Superman gets a little too self-righteous.

[shakalooloo]

So Superman decides to walk across the US, the eyes of the world upon him, yet still manages to find time to duck out and do a little Clark Kent-ing on the side?

[strejdaking]

I dunno where was it established, but they say that eventually reporters jsut stopped following him, which is stupid.

[joetuss]

Good Lord, Superman works for ICE.

[thanekos]

Superman, exceptionalist.