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    Superman

    This is fairly contrary of me as it's been prompted by "Superman and Lois" which is on TV. Has Lois Lane's dad alway been in the military or is this a new thing?

    I quite like that there is a non metaverse TV series about Supes. Not everything has to be one intergalactic soap opera

    #2
    Lois Lane made her debut in Action Comics #1 (June 1938) the first published Superman story. Lois is the daughter of Ella and Sam Lane, in earlier comics, her parents were farmers in a town called Pittsdale. The modern comics depicts Lois as a former Army brat, born at Ramstein Air Base with Lois having been trained by her father, a US Army General, in areas such as hand-to-hand combat and the use of firearms.

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      #3
      Well that's just wrong!

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        #4
        My thoughts as well

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          #5
          I was somehow unaware of her earlier backstory. As far as I know, since the 80s, it’s been like this. It’s part of the contrast between her as the city-wise seen-it-all reporter and Clark Kent who tries to come off a bit naive and just off the turnip truck. She calls him “Smallville.” That wouldn’t work if she had a similar background to him.

          Of course, in the 30s, most respectable whites people thought they should only marry other people like them, or something.

          Making her dad a general is just a way to link up top secret bases with alien technology and what not. It’s mostly just a plot device.

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            #6
            If they were writing it now, Lois's father would be an Internet tech billionaire who turned out to be a villainous enemy of Superman.

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              #7
              One of the main baddies of this TV series is an Internet Tech Billionaire who is investing in renewables etc. and now owns the Daily Planet where there are daily layoffs.

              I'm giving up on it, it's far too Smallville, and apparently part of the Arrowverse.

              I can see Lois having a similar background to Clark working. It shows how she's dropped her country ways and fully assimilated while Clark still has that Iowa touch to him. The whole military thing is just a bit sad. It's binding Superman to being American and part of the MI complex.

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                #8
                I know it's heresy on here, but Superman is a boring superhero and by now his many stories have been troped out in almost every other direction (and put to the sword in Megamind). There are much more interesting superhero stories out there but they keep coming back to Superman.

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                  #9
                  Superman represents the genesis of the genre though. There'll always be someone wanting to touch the hem of his cape and re-imagine him. It's kinda like saying Sherlock Holmes is a boring detective and there have been, and are, way more interesting private eyes. Whatever your age and interest, the first time tends never to be forgotten

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                    #10
                    Originally posted by Levin View Post
                    One of the main baddies of this TV series is an Internet Tech Billionaire who is investing in renewables etc. and now owns the Daily Planet where there are daily layoffs.

                    I'm giving up on it, it's far too Smallville, and apparently part of the Arrowverse.

                    I can see Lois having a similar background to Clark working. It shows how she's dropped her country ways and fully assimilated while Clark still has that Iowa touch to him. The whole military thing is just a bit sad. It's binding Superman to being American and part of the MI complex.
                    He is American and in the newer versions he pushes back against the MI complex. That’s the point. He needs an adversary that is both very powerful and also at least as popular as he is. That’s why Luthor is now imagined as a kind of Elon Musk type.
                    Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 06-12-2021, 03:33.

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                      #11
                      Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post
                      I know it's heresy on here, but Superman is a boring superhero and by now his many stories have been troped out in almost every other direction (and put to the sword in Megamind). There are much more interesting superhero stories out there but they keep coming back to Superman.
                      He’s only boring when the writers are bad.
                      What makes him interesting is his relationships and how he tries so hard to be human. There can’t be a Superman without Lois so it makes sense that the latest show imagines the older version of them with kids.

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                        #12
                        It’s probably not my place to complain, of course, as someone who doesn’t read the comics and isn’t a big fan of the genre - but the idea of Lois being trained in hand-to-hand combat and firearms, basically being kick-ass and bad-ass feels wrong. Superman clearly has all that stuff covered. What Lois brought to the table, I thought, was a reporter’s brain and social contacts and so on. Maybe that’s some dreary gender-role stuff - man brawn women brains - but if your superhero was conceived nearly a century ago, then that’s probably to be expected. And reverse engineering it to try and give your woman some of the fighting skills but still a tiny fraction of the alien bloke’s seems to just try and get everyone capable of doing everything, and a bit boring. Arguably, the fact of Lois’s vulnerability is really Superman’s, erm, kryptonite. Making her less vulnerable feels like it undermines that.

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                          #13
                          Every character in comics has to be able to fight. It's in the union rules.

                          The more modern comics and media imagine the world in which The Daily Planet is dying like most newspapers, so she's off doing all kinds of remarkable investigative pieces in wartorn countries, etc. So she has to be able to "handle herself."
                          Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 06-12-2021, 23:30.

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                            #14
                            The death of papers like the Daily Planet is what's making these kinds of investigative pieces much rarer irl.

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                              #15
                              Originally posted by Lang Spoon View Post
                              The death of papers like the Daily Planet is what's making these kinds of investigative pieces much rarer irl.
                              Yes. I mean, she's doing TV and what not now, I think.

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                                #16
                                Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post

                                He’s only boring when the writers are bad.
                                What makes him interesting is his relationships and how he tries so hard to be human. There can’t be a Superman without Lois so it makes sense that the latest show imagines the older version of them with kids.
                                Also when he can drop the World of Cardboard and let rip against someone who offers him a challenge. Anyone who doesn't enjoy ridiculously overpowered superheroes knocking seven bells out of each other is kind of missing the point of superhero comics.

                                E.g. when Carol Danvers, (now powered up as Binary thanks to being tortured so much by the Brood that they accidentally unlocked a god tier set of powers lurking in her), meets Rogue again for the first time since the power vampire drained Danvers of all of her Captain Marvel powers, and Danvers hits Rogue so hard she achieves orbit from the blow, and Rogue reflects that she probably deserves it as she starts back down to Earrh.

                                Comics should have absolutely stupid fights in them. Byrne neck lifts. Regular humans involved in the sort of daily fisticuffs that would give them CTE before they hit 35 in real life. People not being dead except Uncle Ben. It's why I really hate the Snyderverse and its endless grimdark wangst, drooled over by the sort of people who view Judge Dredd as a role model and not a satire.

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                                  #17
                                  Well, since the 80s, at least, Superman has mostly taken on foes in his own weight-class - Darkseid, Brainiac, Zod, etc. Luthor is interesting because he's clever and knows where to get kryptonite and now to negotiate with the alien powers.

                                  Of course, in the old TV show and radio show, he mostly just took on average thugs with guns because that was the limit of their special effects.

                                  The first Donner film works as a romance and intro to Superman, but in order to make that version of Luthor a worthy opponent, they had to have Superman bend the laws of time and space. That was just....weird. But we talked about it a lot at school and it was certainly memorable.

                                  Superman II worked ok because he took on Zod. The Singer film was basically just a remake of the first Donner film and served no purpose at all. Man of Steel had the right idea by using Zod and Krypton and the big fights, etc, but it was just way OTT and lacked much nuance or heart. As the Flash says in the Snyderverse films - looking forward to sequels we're probably not going to see - Lois Lane is the key. She's the key to Superman as a character.

                                  The Snyderverse mostly has the wrong tone.
                                  It doesn't need to be silly or campy, but it needs to be a bit more, um, zippy, for lack of a better term. It could still have sad bits like the death of Superman, but those parts would be so much more powerful if the whole thing wasn't a dirge.

                                  And yet, as you say, there are a ton of dudes who think that shit is cool.

                                  I say "mostly," because, fortunately, a few of the actors decided they were in a different movie with a better director and those parts were good. Momoa does a good job reviving Aquaman and Jesse Eisenberg is a great Luthor for the 21st century. Affleck and Gadot had smouldering chemistry, but it doesn't go anywhere in the films. Maybe they should have cast her as Selina Kyle instead.



                                  I've long said that the problem with both the MCU and DCU is they need to just break them up.

                                  One universe for more or less grounded characters - Batman, et al, Green Arrow, et al. for Marvel, that would include Wolverine, Daredevil, Hawkeye, Black Widow, maybe Spider-Man and Iron Man.

                                  Then there'd be a universe with lots of aliens and stuff that sounds scientific but isn't. So that would include Superman, Green Lantern, the Flash, the Atom, etc and in Marvel that would include Hulk, Captain Marvel, maybe Iron Man, Venom, most of the X-men, etc.

                                  Then there'd be a magical/mythical universe. In DC, that would be Aquaman, Wonder Woman and Dr Fate and in Marvel it would be Namor, Thor, and Dr Strange.


                                  The latter two universes would occasionally find ways to cross over into each other and maybe very rarely find a way to contact the "real" universe.


                                  But we wouldn't have Batman existing in a universe with actual gods or Hawkeye shooting arrows at intradimensional spaceships.

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                                    #18
                                    That kind of happened with Marvel with the Agents of Shield series, plus Netflix Daredevil Universe, but I personally prefer it as all or nothing. We need Hawkeye giving a pep talk to the nearly limitless powered Scarlet Witch by saying he's a non-powered bloke with bows and arrows whilst Thor and the Hulk smash.

                                    The old Avengers comics covered the disparity, after the first team went their own ways, they were left with Captain America, Hawkeye, the Scarlet Witch (old school non universe bending era and a woman) and Quicksilver as the total roster. Cap bemoaned the lack of a Thor or Iron Man to counter the heavy hitters, but it was worse. The whole team got taken out by The Swordsman whose power is "I am a Swordsman with a sword that has a few gizmos like stun gas and electric shock generators built into it." I think they got the muscle in with Hercules and Hawkeye briefly becoming Giant Man.

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                                      #19
                                      I notice HP has missed out Superman IV with Nuclearman and Milton Keynes standing in for New York. And the 80s movie of Supergirl which I watched as a kid on holiday in Cornwall. Memorable only because it was pouring with rain as we queued outside the cinema and the manager wouldn't open up early to let people shelter in the lobby.

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                                        #20
                                        I figured the less said about those films, the better.

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                                          #21
                                          Originally posted by Eggchaser View Post
                                          That kind of happened with Marvel with the Agents of Shield series, plus Netflix Daredevil Universe, but I personally prefer it as all or nothing. We need Hawkeye giving a pep talk to the nearly limitless powered Scarlet Witch by saying he's a non-powered bloke with bows and arrows whilst Thor and the Hulk smash.

                                          The old Avengers comics covered the disparity, after the first team went their own ways, they were left with Captain America, Hawkeye, the Scarlet Witch (old school non universe bending era and a woman) and Quicksilver as the total roster. Cap bemoaned the lack of a Thor or Iron Man to counter the heavy hitters, but it was worse. The whole team got taken out by The Swordsman whose power is "I am a Swordsman with a sword that has a few gizmos like stun gas and electric shock generators built into it." I think they got the muscle in with Hercules and Hawkeye briefly becoming Giant Man.
                                          Ha ha! I'd totally forgotten that Hawkeye briefly became giant man!

                                          Talking of the swordsman, I'm assuming because of his appearance on the TV programme, that he's in the fraction run of Hawkeye which I've never read but, yes, I've read his first appearance that you mention, when he comes up against 'Cap's kooky quartet' in an early issue of the avengers by Stan Lee and Don Heck.

                                          I read this article about it just the other day about it and it made me laugh.
                                          In their latest look at inexplicable comic book plots, CSBG sees how the Avengers let Swordsman join after he threatened to murder Captain America.

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