I have returned - fresh from a big weekend and ready for the week ahead. Okay, scratch that. What I mean is, totally exhausted from a big weekend and ready to collapse on my bed and shrivel into a ball of protoplasm. This week marks the long, Long, LONG awaited premiere of Superman Returns, and despite all of my skepticism, frustration, and disagreement with the direction that this franchise seems to be taking, I am at the point now where I am simply putting all of that cynicism aside and just letting myself be enveloped by the sheer hype of THE FIRST LEGIT SUPERMAN MOVIE OF MY LIFETIME. What can I say - I'm a fanboy, through and through. We live for this stuff, and all we really want is to just get swept away in the hype and believe that a man can fly. So I'm doing my best right now to suppress whatever prejudices I have about the direction of the movie and just let my inner ten year old be in control from this point until Thursday night. The best part is that my tix are locked and loaded to see the movie in 3-D IMAX, so no matter what, there are bound to be action sequences that simply amaze and dazzle due to the sheer sensory overload of being assaulted from all sides by Superman doing super stuff in full IMAX 3-D. Yeah, it's game time baby.
But before I get to the Superman stuff ...
- This weekend, yesterday in fact, myself and six others decided to put aside other obligations and spend our Sunday immersed in Walt Disney-approved fun - that's right, day at Disneyland~! Although a large part of my brain told me not to wake up so early on a Sunday, I somehow did and the day was a go. All of us had a great time. We hit up all the big rides - Splash, Big Thunder, and (WHOOO!) Space Mountain - The Haunted Mansion, the Matterhorn, Indiana Jones, and darn it all, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Buzz Lightyear, Star Tours, Honey I Shrunk The Audience, and the Jungle Cruise. The only missing piece of the equation was Pirates of the Carribean, still closed for one more day until it reopened with incorporated bits of movie-inspired animatronic action. It would have been cool to check out the newly refurbished Pirates - but alas (and ahoy!) it wasn't meant to be. They actually did open the ride up briefly for a test run or two, but the line was so long that we went elsewhere, not realizing that it was only open temporarily. Oh well - Pirates or not, we still had an awesome time, even in spite of the suffocating heat. I know that I for one, while not quite the hardcore Disneyland afficionado like some of my NBC colleagues, am a huge fan of the artistry that spills forth from every crack and corner of the Disney theme parks, and enjoy just going to Disney and soaking in the atmosphere and appreciating the craftsmanship. As I've said before on this blog, rides like the Haunted Mansion truly are akin to four-dimensional works of art, and the effects on even an aging ride like the Mansion still invoke awe and wonder for their sheer artistry and "how-did-they-do-that" factor. I will say though that even as the classics like the Haunted Mansion and Pirates remain ageless, some of the "newer" stuff is very dated. Star Tours, for example, sorely needs an upgrade, and its noticably outdated technology really stands out to all but the youngest and undiscerning of Star Wars fans.
In any case though, I love what Disney stands for and I am almost always up for a trip to a Disney Park. Well, at least generously spaced-out trips - a day at Disney is friggin' exhausting! I barely made it through work today and was counting the minutes until I could head out and head home. But Disney was good times -- Thunder Mountain, hoooo!
- Speaking of work, whoever stocks our fridge needs to fill er up with some cans of Diet Coke asap! When I was paging it up in development, a poorly-stocked fridge would have meant certain doom.
- Also, it was good times this weekend partying at a Adam Blumenfeld-sponsored event. Adam's friend hosted a huge-ass party in West LA, and after so frequently reading Adam's hyperbole-laced away-messages describing the events he's attending on any given night (the man never rests), it was a thrill to finally be a part of one of Adam's trademark insane events, where pages old and new let off steam and brought the party to the party.
- Anyways, let's talk SUPERMAN:
- The Superman festivities kick off TOMMOROW - as I will be personally hosting my inaugural Summer Movie Night of the Week with a double-feature of the classic Superman and Superman II. Kneel before Zod, indeed. While I have my issues with those movies (can you say turning back time by reversing the planet's rotation?!?!), watching them again should be an excellent primer for Thursday's 3-D IMAX big-screen quasi-sequal.
- Now, a few weeks back I did my Best Superman Stories of All-Time mega-post. But what I DIDN'T talk about in that post was the high quality of Superman material being published RIGHT NOW. So for anyone riding the wave of Superman hype and looking for some quality ongoing Superman reading, you are in luck, because the ongoing adventures of the Man of Steel are currently more exciting than they've been in a while. Let me fill the uninitiated in:
As of now, there are two mainline in-continuity Superman comics. You have your Superman, and your Action Comics. Yep - Action Comics, where Superman made his first appearance back in 1938. Right now, one giant storyline is running through both comics - "Up, Up, and Away," an epic tale of a Superman who has lost his powers in the midst of an earth-shattering crisis. A year passes, and Superman has disappeared. The world doesn't know it, but Superman has actually become content with just being plain old Clark Kent, spending time with Lois and doing good not by superheroics but by the noble power of crusading jounalism. But when Lex Luthor resurfaces, so too do Superman's lantent powers, and Superman must return whether he want to or not because only he can stop Lex's latest deadly plot. Written by uber-scribe Geoff Johns and Kurt Busiek (writer of Superman: Secret Identity - one of my Top Superman stories EVER), and expertly pencilled by rising star Pete Woods - this is a great jumpin on point for Super fans. And when this story arc is over, never fear - Busiek continues as writer of both Action Comics and Superman, where in one book he is joined by one of the best artists in the biz - Carlos Pacheco, and on the other, a legend in his own right and member of the most respected family of comics -- Adam Kubert. This is gonna be good stuff.
But forgetting the mainline Superman comics, there's something else going on now that is must-read for ANY fan of Supes. I'm talking about the bi-monthly ALL-STAR SUPERMAN by mad genious Grant Morrison with art by the insanely talented and unique Frank Quietly. Anyone who knows comics knows that Morrison is the real deal - a writer who brings a Kirby-like imagination and an almost overwhelming density of ideas to everything he writes. And man, Morrison is bringing his magic touch to ALL-STAR - essentially a reinterpretation of the Superman mythos that draws upon all of the classic elements of the past. But it's no secret what era Morrison loves most - his Superman is like reading a modern update on all the trippiest, craziest, most completely whacked-out Superman sci-fi stories from the 50's, 60's, and 70's. The recent All Star # 4, featuring Jimmy Olsen, was a kind of tribute to Jack Kirby's psychelic Jimmy Olsen stories mixed with 50's science fiction and modern fan-favorites like Doomsday. Quietly's art is suitably stylized, yet ultra-detailed and brimming with little touches that make every scene overlfow with motion. All-Star Superman is out now, and it's fun as all hell. Check it out.
And now ...
While the reviews have been good thus far for Returns, even if it tanks, it still can't be worse than THESE all time low moments for the Man of Tommorow ...
THE WORST SUPERMAN MOMENTS OF ALL-TIME:
5.) Electro-Superman - Following the runaway sales success of The Death of Superman, DC in the 90's kept looking for outrageous, publicity-grabbing storylines to put Superman through. While some of the event-driven stories were fun, others were just godawful. Take for example the time when DC, to much fanfare, CHANGED SUPERMAN'S COSTUME from the classic suit to an Image Comics-style electric blue leotard. Superman's powers were changed as well - he now had no powers as Clark Kent, but could "turn on" his Superman powers - where, as the blue-skinned Superman, he could , wait for it .. manipulate the electro-magnetic field. Aside from a few good self-contained stories and one great issue of Grant-Morrison penned JLA, this whole ill-conceived concept was an electric-blue bomb.
4.) Supergirl: The Movie - After the success of the Donner Superman movies came this bomb - starring Helen Slater as the Girl of Steel. Lacking any of the quality of the first two Superman movies, Supergirl went down in history as a big-screen bomb that is now something of a B-movie cult classic, a high-profile low-point in Superman's big-screen legacy.
3.) The Superman Movies that Almost-Were: Nicolas Cage As Superman?!?! - Whatever reservations fans may have about Superman Returns, these fears are nothing compared to the sheer horror that might have been had Tim Burton's odd vision, or later, those of other Warner Bros. producers and directors of a possible Superman movie, ever come to light. There were many almosts in the storied history of preproduction on this latest Superman movie, but none, even McG and Brett Ratner as possible directors, were as terrifying as the prospect of Nicolas Cage as Superman, a gay Jimmy Olsen, a see-through, translucent Super-suit, a Kryptonian Lex Luthor, or any of the other misguided attempts at modernizing an icon. Luckily we were spared these abominations, but the ten year period in which fans could do nothing but cringe at each new news bit about the upcoming Superman movie was a low point in and of itself.
2.) The Milking of Doomsday: Like I said in my Greatest Superman Stories Ever post, the Death of Superman, in my mind, was a classic tale. And even its followup, Hunter / Prey, was pretty cool in its own right. But then what happened - Doomsday, the most effective villain introduced into the Superman mythos in years - became a joke. Every other month after the Death, Doomsday seemed to retuen, each time less effective and more of a joke than before. In countless stories - the Doomsday Wars, Day of Doom, Our World's at War, The Last Laugh ... every time you turned around Doomsday was back ad infinitum ... and each time fewer people actually cared. Kind of sad, really.
1.) Superman IV: The Quest For Peace: While not QUITE on the level of the Joel Schumaker Batman films in sheer craptitude, Superman IV was close. Vindicated to a degree only by Christopher Reeve's still-iconic portrayal of Supes, this movie nonetheless remained a campy franchise-killer, pitting Superman against, wait for it ... Nuclear Man, in what amounted to a heavy-handed and just plain bad anti-nuke message-movie. After this movie, it would be two decades before the Superman franchise could return to the screen. And it truly takes somethin' awful to kill the Man of Steel.
The SUPERMAN -- UNDERRATED LIST:
5.) Justice League Unlimited - Season 2: Maybe the overall coolest TV adaptation of Superman ever, the second season of Cartoon Network's JLU series showed a Superman who kicked so much ass that he was clearly the top dawg even when in the midst of a literal batallion of hundereds of fellow heroes. This season saw Superman duke it out with Captain Marvel, fight the U.S. government, and even driven to madness in a sweet adaptation of Alan Moore's "For the Man Who Has Everything."
4.) The Kents: Superman in a Western ...? Well, not exactly. But in this 12-part epic written by John Ostrander, we follow the lineage of the Kent family as they live through the Civil War, the wild West, and the turn of the century. Structured as a series of letters written by Jonathan Kent to Clark, this is a gripping, dense, and yes, even educational look at the American West, with a slight nod to the Superman mythos and the DC Universe at large. Mixing historical figures like Buffallo Bill with DC Western characters like Jonah Hex, the Kents is a great read that tells us something about the West, the Kents, and Superman himself.
3.) Superman: The Animated Series - Season 2: Superman vs. Darkseid, an alternate reality where Supes is an evil dicator, fun, action, great voice acting? Yep, Season 2 of Dini and Timm's spinoff of Batman: The Animated Series was huge improvement over Season 1, and contained some of the best Superman stories ever put to screen.
2.) Superman fan films - Grayson and World's Finest: Go to YouTube.com, and look up Grayson and World's Finest, respectively -- two Superman fan film trailers that will make any fanboy salivate with the possibilities that these brief trailers put forth. Imagine a world where Robin seeks to avenge Batman's murder, and ocmes face to face with a government-agent hellbent on concealing the truth - an agent by the name of Superman! Imagine a Batman-Superman movie. Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, Lex Luthor, The Joker, Two Face, Catwoman, Lois Lane ... man, this trailer wil lget your adrenaline pumping. These are only trailers for fake movies, but the tantalizing promise of the ultimate fan-friendly Superman films makes them must-sees for any fans of superman.
1.) Karl Kessel and Tom Grummett on SUPERBOY: Right now, nobody by the name of Superboy lives in the DC Universe, or in any other universe, for that matter. Lawsuits by the estates of Siegal and Shuster are currently preventing DC or WB from using the name or likeness of Superboy. But back in the 90's and early 00's, the new version of Superboy - a teenaged clone of Superman introduced during the Death of Superman storyline, had his own series that was an awesome mix of humor, action, and imagination. Writer Karl Kessell made no secret of his love for all things Jack Kirby-created, and every issue of Superboy deliberately channelled the infectiously whimsical and imaginative spirit of Kirby with a modern twist. Superboy was surrounded by Kirby-created characters like Guardian and the Newsboy Legion, Project Cadmus and the Hairies, Dubbilex, Dabney Donovan, Darkseid, and the Zoomway. New characters like Tana Moon, Roxy, Knockout, and a great new villain in Black Zero won the series a cult following. And Tom Grummet's ultra-smooth, always consistent, Disney-like art made the series pop off the page like a classic cartoon series come to life. The series' high point was probably the multi-part Hyper-Crisis story, where Superboy breached the dimensional barrier and went on a twisting adventure though hypertime. Superboy, or Kon-El as Kessel eventually named him, became a fan-favorite character thanks to this great series (he even had his oen brief spinoff, Superboy and the Ravers) , which made fans all the more saddened by his recent death in the Infinite Crisis series. But while SUPERBOY never achieved huge sales, it was an awesomely-illustrated, imaginatively written, and highly underrated series.
Alright - that's it for now - back later this week with more. Until next time ...
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