Superman

Just wondering, what are Sup Forums's opinions on what the best Superman is? Between the Boy Scout, law-abiding, pacifist Superman and angry, overpowered, badass Superman; which one do you prefer? Personally, I'm more attached to Boy Scout Superman because I always think of him as more of a symbol of what a hero should be. Kind, loving, hopeful, and honest. All-Star Superman and What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way represent this best desu.

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Yep. That right there. Him being totally at ease w/ himself, not needing to pose and flex. All-Star as well as Moore's Supreme are best Superman.

Boy scout, he doesn't impose his strength on others because he's stronger than us. He uses it to help people and thats that, he has no ulterior motive no desire to become some amazing messiah to bring people forward. He'd like it if people would follow his example but he prefers to show not tell.

I always intended to read up Moores' superman but never had the follow through. How highly would you recommend it?

>I always intended to read up Moores' superman but never had the follow through. How highly would you recommend it?

Well he has a couple Superman proper stories which are pretty great, Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, a finale of sorts for Silver Age Supes, as well as For the Man Who Has Everything, a nice Trinity story.

But I was referring to his run on Supreme, which is thinly veiled Superman. It's brilliant, really plays like a longer All Star. Celebrates the character in all his incarnations. There's a torrent.

You are so right. And I read All-Star just recently and it is phenomenal. Especially Issue #10 "Neverending"

not that user, the other, but agreed, it gives me chills

Best ending. If I were to make a standalone Superman movie, I'd end it there.

Silver age lunatic

You wanna go to a dog forum and ask them if they prefer cats or dogs too?

Clark Kent is the best Superman.
Forget the powers and remember the silly guy just trying to do the right thing.

Golden Age Badass who's out to change the world for the better.

>What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way

I don't get why that story is so overhyped. Superman basically beat the bad guys by pretending he was being exactly the same as them. He didn't make a point really.

He showed how dangerous, stupid, and scary their methods were. It wasn't about beating them, if was about teaching everyone why pacifism works.

Golden Age Superman. He's not a boy scout and he's not angry or overpowered. He just doesn't give a shit.
In Action Comics #2 he leaps into a high rise office of some racketeer and six dudes with machine guns plink away at him to no effect, so he nonchalantly wraps their guns around their necks and tosses them out the window. He hypnotizes Lois out of convenience sometimes just to keep his identity hidden, and he plays the coward around her just to laugh his ass off about it once she leaves the room.

It's like Kingdom Come. A badly written story people like because it aligns with their particular biases and thoughts about what comics are "supposed" to be.

Injustice Superman all the way

Fuck you

Can we all agree that besides Ultra-Man and scant little else, the "evil" alternate dimension/future Superman is played out at this point?

I dunno, the Supernazis in BvS were somewhere between cool and funny.

I agree to that actually, Snyder handled it well, the Nightmare sequence was dope. Just getting sick of Superman as antagonist and not hero.

I like the stories that show the two distances of Superman. How from far away, he's this majestic figure floating above the world as a sign of the inevitability of the power of good in the world, and even though that's not how Clark sees himself, he does his best to maintain that image of himself for the people who need him out there to have something to look up to in hope.
But then it zooms in, and there's someone with a problem that's way too small for the world to even care about, but it's important to them. And suddenly superman is there, and it's important to him too. Because at the end of the day, He's just a guy who wants to help. For all his godly power, what makes him Superman, is that he's a guy who can, and WILL, help out. Because he cares.
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Bronze Age's Eliot S Maggin and Cary Bates stuff is probably my version of Superman. They brought back some of the golden age humor but kept Silver age continuity and overall personality. Their stories had more pages to really fill out Superman's personality

Grant gets close but he made his superman too good where it comes off as being ironic.

As far as I've seen, people really love the more human, emotionally vulnerable Superman, and I'd put him as my favorite too.

But for other worthy nominees I really love the goofy All-Star throwback/60s Superman, where he just sort of seemed bemused at the weirdest shit.

So here's a guy that tanks nukes to the face, chucks planets around like it's nothing and sneezes away galaxies, but there's also all this other cool stuff going on and he felt much more proactive and adventurous. And it extended to other things. Lois and Jimmy were getting up to wacky stuff.

Lex would have batshit insane plans like murdering a woman, cloning her, giving her a disease that he invented, then cured her, hypnotizing himself into falling in love with her and becoming a good guy, all so that come the wedding Superman would kiss the bride, and then this would activate teleportation device inside the bride would teleport her and Superman away to a place he couldn't escape from.

I also really like Golden Age Homage Superman from Morrison's Action Comics run. The design really sells it.

All-Star Superman and Fleischer's Superman are the definitive versions of the character for me. What I really love about Superman is his universality, his appeal, the fact that he is the definitive superhero. He's beloved by writers such as Moore, Morrison, Waid and even Ennis and he's the very archetype of what a hero should be, strong and good.

i love frank's art but this page really made the fortress look kind of bland.

ice with some random garbage thrown around.

Tim Sale Superman is Superman.

Champion of the Oppressed. Fleischer logo god tier. Lex is the best villain, in old school stories because he's just so fucking petty and hateful, and in modern stories because he shows the priority some people have in life. Everybody wants to be lex Luthor (or Batman, but that's not a conversation for right now) when everybody could be superman.

If I could reboot superman right now and try to make him interesting, I would go for a people's champ approach. The reason we see him die and cry so often nowadays is because the general public doesn't like him and we try to get them to sympathize. That's the wrong direction, the way to get an all powerful alien to be interesting to read is if he's the guy we're rooting for.

So honestly I would:
>make him look young, like he looks superboy young. Kryptonians age super slow anyways, now he's easy to connect physically to young people
>make him olive colored ala ASS, because that makes his ethnicity vague and reinforces alien status and relatability rather than stoic, chiseled, white read nothing.
>make the problems social problems, he used to fight corrupt businessmen, gangsters, mad scientists, and wife beaters. The best story we had in recent years was the boy in the red cape, even if it's something small like that, instead of making him ineffective when he saves somebody, make him save the world every time he gets a cat out of the tree.
>Luthor=establishment. I want a dynasty of Luthors like Clintons and Kennedys. From geniuses in the lab or courthouse to back alley dealings and technosuits robbing banks
>Make Braniac digital. He still preserves information, he still bottled Kandor.

Oh forgot the most important characterization:
>make superman fun. If he ACTUALLY existed in the real world, he would be a rockstar. He'd be like the pope doing cool shit everywhere. He'd call out an asshole like Shkreli and everybody would cheer for him. Dress him more like old school Shazam Elvis. Smaller cape, and make the suit either more like a jacket or more like a swimmer with the trunks.

>Don't put Zod in the phantom zone, instead, make him like Thragg and the others in Invincible, or like the Sayains in DBZ. Zod commands a small army of Kryptonians and conquers planets in the name of a new Krypton in Zod's image.
>Just make Darkseid terrifying. End of days type stuff.

Damn, that was heartwarming

I like the superman that, despite his power, is a good man at heart

This. Everything that makes him Superman was there before he ever put on the cape.