Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?: Part 1 of 2

[lordultimus]

Comments

[alicemacher]

So many tearjerker moments in this part and the next... "Everything, him go dark... Hello, Superman. Hello." "You... you grew up beautiful, Kara." "Right now, Supergirl... Supergirl is in the past." It's like comics Oscar bait... and it works, damn it. *sniffle*

It was an unusual choice to have Luthor completely robbed of his agency for pretty much the entire story. I imagine Moore felt that Lex's personality normally looms so large that he could easily drown out the other characters.

[locuatico]

I think it could be a hint that, whoever is responsible for this, it is not Luthor.


I also think that it fits. someone like Luthor, who craves power and control over all else, completely loses any control or agency over himself, becoming little more than a minion.
Likewise, as someone who is constantly trying to reaffirm himself as THE superman villain... what more shameful way for him to go out than to be completely inconsequential to the event that finally ended Superman? For all that he has done thoughout the years, when the history books look back on this defining moment... he will be just a footnote.

[laughing_tree]

I think it's more that there was less of an A-list, B-list sort of mentality back then. So not having Luthor play a more active role in the final Superman story wouldn't have seemed as odd as if done today. Consider that the coterie of superpals that try to go to Superman's rescue include such major luminaries as... Elliot Maggin's Superwoman and Vartox.

[tcampbell1000]

I sometimes think Alan felt a little bad about how shafted Silver Age Luthor got in this story, given how much loving attention he gave to this Luthor's descendants: Mylar Age Luthor, Darius Dax, and Tom Saveen. But it follows the same ruthless logic that Alan was applying to Watchmen, where the godlike and demigodlike figures grow less and less interested in treating the more ordinary folks in the business as "peers."

The only real sense in which this Luthor and Brainiac are "peers" is that they were the #1 and #2 most popular villains with the readership, and if we're turning out the lights on this version of Superman, that doesn't really matter any more.

[mazway_75]

The "you know what radio waves look like" scene is so damn awesome.

[lego_joker]

I think I'll be the odd man out here and say... I don't really like this story that much. Individual parts ("Hello, Superman. Hello.") work like gangbusters, but the overall product tries to cram so damn much into so limited a space I can barely give a damn about most of it. It's like, "Hi Pete! Bye Pete! Hi Jimmy! Bye Jimmy! Hi Lana! Bye Lana!"

But maybe I'm just letting my general apathy toward the Legion of Super-Heroes cloud my judgment (it's reasonable clouding though, dammit! How am I supposed to find suspense in any Superman story when the Legion confirms that life and legend alike still flourish in the 31st century?).

I remain impressed by Moore's choice of Big Bad, though. IIRC, up until that point no other writer had played him even remotely seriously as an antagonist.

[laughing_tree]

That Big Bad bit is taken straight from the novel SUPERFOLKS, apparently.

[lordultimus]

Well, Grant Morrison believes so. Moore has always insisted that SUPERFOLKS was never a big influence on him, instead insisting that the MAD magazine parody SUPERDUPERMAN was a bigger influence.

[alicemacher]

Specifically, Moore has said, somewhere, that "Superduperman" was a big influence on his dark revision of Johnny "Kid Miracleman" Bates.

[lordultimus]

Yeah, the destruction in the battles in Superduperman were supposed to be played for serious with the Kid Miracleman battles.

Moore has also stated that Watchmen's focus on the relationship of the secret identity was also inspired by Superduperman ("yer still a creep!").

[laughing_tree]

"Moore has always insisted that SUPERFOLKS was never a big influence on him, instead insisting that the MAD magazine parody SUPERDUPERMAN was a bigger influence."

On this story or on his work in general? Because I'm specifically talking about how the identity and nature of the Big Bad plays out, which is just like how it does in SUPERFOLKS.

[lordultimus]

From a 2011 interview:

PÓM: Right, the first thing I wanted to ask you, actually, before I get into your own work is, I wanted to ask you about Superfolks. […] Grant Morrison was at one stage intimating that you’d read Superfolks and based your entire output on it.

AM: Well, I have read Superfolks. […] But it was by no means the only influence, or even a major influence upon me output. […]

PÓM: […] I mean, when you read Superfolks, what sort of influence would it have had on you?

AM: I can’t even remember when I read it. It would probably have been before I wrote Marvelman, and it would have had the same kind of influence upon me as the much earlier – probably a bit early for Grant Morrison to have spotted it – Brian Patten’s poem, ‘Where Are You Now, Batman?’, […] and that, which had an elegiac tone to it, which was talking about these former heroes in straitened circumstances, looking back to better days in the past, that had an influence. […] I do remember Superfolks and finding some bits of it in that same sort of vein. […] Like I say, it probably was one of a number of influences that may have had some influence upon the elegiac quality of Marvelman.

[laughing_tree]

Incidentally, Grant Morrison hates that final page because, in his opinion, "Superman doesn't cry."

[arilou_skiff]

Dafuq?

Reminds me of Gene Roddenberry at his weirdest.

[alicemacher]

Apparently Morrison has forgotten that Superman cried, a lot, as Kara died in his arms in Crisis on Infinite Earths #7. And not just on the cover, either.

And even if Superman hadn't cried in that work...the hell kind of criticism is that, anyway? Does Morrison think Superman's too "macho" to cry? I doubt it. Does he think Supe's too stoical for tears? I doubt that too.

Frankly, considering how saintly the character has generally been (apart from the "early Golden Age hardass vigilante" and "Silver Age superdick" periods), and how much of a burden he takes on every day, I'd think it far less appropriate if he never cried.

[tcampbell1000]

Plenty of examples of him crying in the earlier Silver Age comics, too, and not just the Red Kryptonite ones.

I generally find Morrison to be mellower than Moore, except when one of the two is talking about the other. The weird Oedipus complex Morrison carries around there is not his best look.

[locuatico]

Well. If I were to be fair, I could see him meaning it more in Superman being a fundamentally hopeful character shouldn't "cry" in his last moments. There shouldn't be sadness, but hope.

To use Morrison's own work, All-star shows how Morrison thinks Superman's last moments should be. He doesn't cry, he welcomes death, and does so at the same time he saves the world.

[mastermahan]

I don't read this as Superman crying for himself, but for Kara. He's figured out what's coming, but it's seeing his beloved younger cousin for the last time, knowing what's going to happen to her, that really gets to him.

And even if he was? A Superman who doesn't want to die but faces the end anyway is more hopeful than one who never felt sadness.

[locuatico]

You are missing the point. If superman is supposed to be on the high-end of the idealistic scale, then such a scene is not coherent with that.

Yes, it is hopeful still, but Superman stories, as I think Morrison is describing them, are about acomplishing the impossible and having a happy ending. Bad things can happen, but tragedies can be stopped.

[mastermahan]

So if the issue is that a tragedy couldn't be prevented, then isn't the problem Kara's death in Crisis? Superman crying here is a just a reaction.

If there's a loss of hope in this story, it's later, when Superman loses friends, his dog, and is forced to take a life. I don't see that in this scene, though.

[locuatico]

well, I could see two reasons why Morrison may not openly criticized that scene. Either he doesn't necessarily consider it a "superman" story as much as a "DC Comics" story, or it's just that he doesn't openly criticize Mark Wolfman nearly as much as he does Moore.

On top of that, Morrison probably dislikes this story BECAUSE Superman loses his friends, his dog and is forced to take a life.
That "superman doesn't cry" is just a way of saying that such elements shouldn't be part of the "last" superman story, because, to Morrison, the ideal "final" superman story should be on the highly idealistic side of things, one which still ends with Superman saving everyone.

[teresa_rollins]

I can't imagine the pain I would feel at my core if a younger (then adult) sibling had just died and suddenly appeared on my doorstep as a child. The emotions would be a tidal wave. The fact that he didn't cry until later shows his strength.

[laughing_tree]

"Apparently Morrison has forgotten that Superman cried..."

I think he's being prescriptive, not descriptive. From ALL-STAR, we can see that he has no interest in making Superman an exact replication of the pre-Crisis version.

[alicemacher]

You're probably right. And yeah, All-Star does pay tribute to "classic" Superman (mainly, but not limited to, the Silver Age), but Morrison manages to make the character his own.

[mazway_75]

That's...just bizarre. I mean, a guy who understands the character so well, gave us one of the best takes ever in "All-Star" and yet he holds to a "REAL men don't cry" attitude is just weird.

[bradygirl_12]

This whole thing's a heartbreaker. Poor Clark! And time travel sure can hurt. :(

[tcampbell1000]

Five thoughts I haven't seen yet on this story.

As far as I'm aware, this was the only time Curt Swan worked with George Perez, which is kind of a shame because they complement each other wonderfully. Traditionalists probably preferred getting Murphy Anderson for the second part, but as a Perez fan who also grew up with the Swan stories, I find this art close to my platonic ideal.

One part of the story that gets relatively little attention is Perry and Alice's marital strife, which had been a long-running plot in the Cary Bates stories that Bates, to be honest, either didn't seem to know how to resolve or didn't want to resolve. Moore's treatment of it is a bit cursory, granted, but it works pretty well within the larger tableau.

Although it's sometimes presented as doing so, the story doesn't get anywhere close to featuring Superman's ENTIRE rogues' gallery, even if you leave out the enemies who appeared only once. Terra-Man and the Parasite get written out before the story begins and Mongul, a memorable figure in another Moore Super-story, doesn't even rate a mention. (Zod and his fellow Phantom Zone villains get a one-panel cameo.) Even Moore recognized there was only so much that 46 pages could hold.

Todd Klein, probably the most widely recognized letterer in the business today, lettered both parts of this story. He is best known for his work on Sandman, and here and there (especially on the first page) you can see the flair he'd bring to that work when the occasion called for it. His relationship with Moore's work would continue with Supreme and the entire America's Best Comics line, as well as a special "Alphabets of Desire" print.

"Whatever Happened To" stories were a semi-regular feature in DC Comics Presents for a couple of years. They featured relatively obscure characters by the standards of the day. The title still carries a lot of meaning without this reference, but contemporary Superman fans would appreciate the twist on this old format, which along with the rest of the front page implies a future where even Superman's memory is starting to fade a bit.

[wizardru]

Motto.

Part of the appeal with Swan's work here is the essence of continuity. It'd be like having Kirby do a 'whatever happened to the FF' story, to some degree. Swan was the default Superman artist of my youth...and reading this again now, I'm impressed by his draftsmanship. Solid artwork, great flow and expressive characters.

I remember being amazed at the full-on ability of this story to basically go full apocalypse prior to the reboot. Yes, we know it was coming and that this was basically 'an imaginary story', but it was just an amazing one.

[bradygirl_12]

I like Lois' observation of Superman flying so fast, his red-and-blue merges into violet.

[wizardru]

Those are the kind of observations that Moore was always great at. His description of the Justice League in Swamp Thing was another such moment. Describing the Flash as a man who basically viewed the rest of the world as a giant museum full of statues was an amazing idea (and kind of chilling).