To Grant Morrison, Mark Millar and Mark Waid...

To Grant Morrison, Mark Millar and Mark Waid, the definitive interpretation of the Superman/Clark Kent dichomoty is the Silver/Bronze Age one, particularly the works of Elliot S. Maggin.

Clark Kent is a fiction created by Superman to fit with human beigns and do the things he can't do as Superman. He's a work of art created by a superman with his own personality tics, neuroses, things he likes, hobbies, etc. There's something beautiful and ironic in the idea of a superman idealizing human life. It's almost like a Goddard thing.

But there's no disdain from Superman to Clark (like they say on Kill Bill), Superman really loves Clark. And Clark loves Lois. And Lois loves Superman.

For Millar, this was something truly beautiful and deep, and this is why he thinks DC broke the character when Byrne did the whole "Clark Kent is the real identity", essentially turning him into Peter Parker and taking away a lot of the loneliness and the dichomoty that made him so compelling. It was a very DC concept and what they did was basically Marvelizing it.

Even though you may like the "Clark Kent is the real personality" better there's no denying that this is the original interpretation of the character, the one that lasted the most (50 years) and the one the general audience is familiarized with the most. Clark Kent as the real personality is just something relatively very recent (from the last 30 years).

I think Morrison made it very clear with this quote:

>That “S” is the radiant emblem of divinity we reveal when we rip off our stuffy shirts, our social masks, our neuroses, our constructed selves, and become who we truly are.

Clark becomes who he really is when he becomes Superman.

What do you think?

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Here's what Elliot S. Maggin himself had to say:

slate.com/blogs/quora/2016/08/11/does_clark_kent_become_superman_or_does_superman_become_clark_kent.html

>Answer by Elliot S. Maggin, principal writer of the comic book series, 1971–86:

>Most of the latter-day Superman writers, and several of my own contemporaries, come down on the side of the notion that Clark is the real person and Superman is just what he can do. I don't agree with that at all, and here's why:

>The hero must be the character's best self. When Odysseus appeared at home disguised as a beggar, the big resolution was that he was “really” Odysseus. When young Arthur yanked the sword from the stone what that revealed, even to himself, was that he was the king and always had been. When the prince of Egypt, for just his own sense of rage and righteousness, killed a taskmaster and was banished for taking the side of the slaves, only then did his real origin become clear to those around him. In every classical setting the hero first arrives in disguise, and Superman is, at the very least, our own age's quintessential classical hero.

>Superman is, among many other things, an artist. When the rest of us create a character, that character is as well-defined as we can make him. The comic-book medium gave birth to our own classical hero because only in a medium that crude, whose end product is that apparently unfinished, can a creator so effectively suggest a concept of such endless potency. Clark is a complete creation of Superman, so complete that he's effectively real. Clark is a natural-born citizen. He votes. He has jealousies and shortcomings. He has opinions, real ones that occasionally diverge from those of Superman. They have altogether different spiritual beliefs, for example. Clark has appropriately nerdy hobbies. He scrapbooks, for heaven's sake. He collects his favorite classic TV commercials on DVD. His favorite is the one for the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce where the old man skips out of the retirement home to meet his grandson in the parking lot (“Hey, Boo-boo”) and rides off for a weekend of gambling and debauchery.

>Superman can't do the stuff Clark can do. Not that he wouldn't if he didn't have a sacred duty to perform, but he can't. So not only is Clark a construct for the purposes of guarding what measure of privacy he requires for his own emotional self-preservation, but Clark is the outlet that allows Superman to do the things that Superman can't do in public. Clark can, and that makes him Superman's saving grace. Clark, the character, doesn't need Superman, but Superman, the real deal, absolutely needs Clark. That's why Superman created Clark and not the other way around. He created Clark and re-creates him every day.

>Every day the president of the United States wakes up and puts on the raiment once worn by Lincoln, and who he really is during the period of his presidency is the president of he United States. And you call him “Mr. President” for the rest of his life.

>When he gets up in the morning, the heavyweight champion of the world, whoever he was when he was born, embodies the mantle once carried by Ali and Louis, and from the moment someone says, “Good morning,” that's who he is, really. I once lost an arm-wrestling contest with Jack Dempsey on the sidewalk outside the 21 Club. He was 76, and I was 22, and do you think the old man would let the swaggering kid win and impress the girl he's with? He couldn't possibly. What he did was damn near break my arm and then said, “Winner gets the redhead, OK?” He was so profoundly “the Champ” that not even his closest friends thought of him as just Jack.

>I once created a thing called Lexcorp. It was just a throwaway word in a story I wrote. But I thought about it for a long time and I was very happy when I came up with the name. It's my name, and every time someone uses it I take a measure of pride in its use. I get to be the guy who first said that eventually Luthor evolves from a super-villain in a prison jump suit with a collection of wacky gizmos in a hidden basement somewhere into a big badass industrialist. Obviously other people have done more with the concept than I ever did. Lexcorp has evolved into a major institution in Superman's continuity and that was through no doing of my own. But I do insist that whenever someone, somewhere mentions the “creation” of Lexcorp, I get the credit, as properly in the continuity Martha and Jonathan Kent certainly get the credit for first creating the concept of Clark Kent. But it is others who refined and continue to build Lexcorp. And every day that he gets up in the morning and goes to work, Superman goes far beyond the Kents' original germ of an idea to build Clark.

>Clark is real. That's the whole brilliance of the concept. But the concept is even more “real” within the context of the storytelling than the storytelling can represent. That's why the character is and thinks of himself as Superman.

I find that their take on it is terrible. Clark is Clark. The Kents raised him as Clark. Superman's a job. Super-powers don't make him what he is.

I hate this take where Clark Kent is a mere mask and Superman is more Kal-El than anything.

could someone storytime Superman #247? its one of my favorite issues ever

also, Millar writes a better Superman than Morrison and Waid

Lois & Clark is the best interpretation of Superman, even Byrne said so

>To Grant Morrison, Mark Millar and Mark Waid, the definitive interpretation of the Superman/Clark Kent dichomoty is the Silver/Bronze Age one, particularly the works of Elliot S. Maggin.
Why don't they write him like that, though?

>To Grant Morrison, Mark Millar and Mark Waid, the definitive interpretation of the Superman/Clark Kent dichomoty is the Silver/Bronze Age one, particularly the works of Elliot S. Maggin.

I think it's definitely true for Millar, but Morrison kind of changed it by the time he was writing All Star Superman and said this in an interview with Newsarama:

"'Superman' is an act. 'Clark Kent' in Metropolis is also an act. There are actually two Kents, at least - one is a disguise, a bumbling, awkward mask for Superman. The other is the confident, strong, good-hearted Clark Kent who was raised by his surrogate Ma and Pa in Kansas and knows how to drive a tractor. I think he's the most 'real' of all. 'Kal El' is where he goes when he wants to escape from his human nature and see things from outside."

And here's Millar's take on Clark and Lois at the time:

"Clark is a pair of glasses. Superman doesn't need glasses. He puts on the glasses for no practical reason; just to dress up and pretend to be this mid-westwern guy he's not as a means of rubbing shoulders with the people on this planet. Superman would have thought he was human until puberty. Until maybe 12. The easiest way to understand it is to think of Jesus in the temple and the moment where his mother has to tell him the truth. He always knew he was different and alone. This is when it was all explained to him. He could still love his parents, but Clark is him trying to understand what humans are all about. As Elliot Maggin puts it, Clark Kent is a living, breathing work of art."

"Superman doesn't love Lois. Clark loves Lois and Superman tries HARD to love Lois, but he can't because she's the wrong species. But he tries. Again, Maggin sums it up beautifully. It doesn't have to be complicated... Clark loves Lois, Lois loves Superman, Superman loves Clark [...] Perfect. This is also one of the reasons Superman shouldn't be married to Lois. It's just stupid. It makes no sense and destroys the whole dynamic. Superman is God, Jor-El is the Holy Spirit and Clark Kent is Jesus. The Kents are Mary and Joseph and Lois is Mary Magdelene. She's the NYC girl who's fucked her way around the city and found nobody who measures up. She's just had it with men and is focusing on her career... then Superman shows up. This is why Margot Kidder was perfect for the role and why Lois should be played by someone around 30 even if Supes is being played by a 25 year old. You'll see what I mean when we fix it."

Every time i see writers or readers saying Superman is the real deal and Clark Kent is a mere mask that he uses to fool everyone around him from his obvious chadness or to enjoy the little things that normal humans do i feel that they feel that way because they don''t like the idea of Superman being just a regular dude at heart. They want Superman to be the real deal, the real macho man. Nothing of this lame Clark Kent bullshit.

That's how i feel.

I think being lonely or feeling like an outsider NEVER made Superman compelling. The Snyderverse is a pretty solid testament to that.

My Superman will always be the '85-'99 one, and I find takes like Millar's to be deplorable.

>Lois is Mary Magdelene. She's the NYC girl who's fucked her way around the city and found nobody who measures up. She's just had it with men and is focusing on her career... then Superman shows up.
It sounds more like Millar is in love with Superman and doesn't want that slut Lois getting together with his husbando.

>"Superman doesn't love Lois. Clark loves Lois and Superman tries HARD to love Lois, but he can't because she's the wrong species. But he tries. Again, Maggin sums it up beautifully. It doesn't have to be complicated... Clark loves Lois, Lois loves Superman, Superman loves Clark [...] Perfect. This is also one of the reasons Superman shouldn't be married to Lois. It's just stupid. It makes no sense and destroys the whole dynamic. Superman is God, Jor-El is the Holy Spirit and Clark Kent is Jesus. The Kents are Mary and Joseph and Lois is Mary Magdelene. She's the NYC girl who's fucked her way around the city and found nobody who measures up. She's just had it with men and is focusing on her career... then Superman shows up. This is why Margot Kidder was perfect for the role and why Lois should be played by someone around 30 even if Supes is being played by a 25 year old. You'll see what I mean when we fix it."

Jesus fuck, man. This exactly the kind of take i hate. It makes Superman out to look like a sociopath. Real American Psychopath kinda of stuff.

>You'll see what I mean when we fix it

THANK GOD the Superman 2000 pitch was turned down at the time. This would have been worse than Spider Man's One More Day,

This. I want to say look at the Justice League, especially the Christmas Special. He goes home and he isn't Superman. He's Clark Kent, the only son of the Kents, born and raised farm boy. Superman is Clark Kent's responsibility.

>THANK GOD the Superman 2000 pitch was turned down at the time. This would have been worse than Spider Man's One More Day,

That wasn't in the Superman 2000 pitch. Millar's stuff mentioned above is the one he was working on after the 2000 pitch got rejected:


>On the previous pitch Millar had made with Grant Morrison, Mark Waid and Tom Peyer: "The pitch we did was very late 90s and all the things I WOULDN'T do if Superman was being revamped now. It was nice, but it was the whole retro 60s thing that Grant's into as opposed to what I'd want to do myself. This thing was pretty good, but would be absolutely wrong for now. It still had Superman married to Lois and all that shit. There was another draft Mark Waid added with Earth getting a mind-wipe to forget that stuff and it had some nice touches, but I'd just start from scratch."

When he said "we" in this case, he meant him and Bryan Hitch.

>tfw you like both versions

Man, Mark Millar has a real problem with Lois Lane.

This. Clark is not a mask. Clark is Kal El, Clark is Superman.

>"Superman doesn't love Lois. Clark loves Lois and Superman tries HARD to love Lois, but he can't because she's the wrong species. But he tries. Again, Maggin sums it up beautifully. It doesn't have to be complicated... Clark loves Lois, Lois loves Superman, Superman loves Clark [...] Perfect. This is also one of the reasons Superman shouldn't be married to Lois. It's just stupid. It makes no sense and destroys the whole dynamic. Superman is God, Jor-El is the Holy Spirit and Clark Kent is Jesus. The Kents are Mary and Joseph and Lois is Mary Magdelene. She's the NYC girl who's fucked her way around the city and found nobody who measures up. She's just had it with men and is focusing on her career... then Superman shows up. This is why Margot Kidder was perfect for the role and why Lois should be played by someone around 30 even if Supes is being played by a 25 year old. You'll see what I mean when we fix it."
The problem wth Millar is that he is very, very, very, very, VERY catholic and projects Superman into Jesus big time.

To him, seeing Superman flirting is akin to seeing Jesus flirting. Superman having a night with Lois is like Jesus having a night with Magdelene. Superman being just one guy doing good because his parents taught him is like Jesus being just someone with a good heart. He doesn't want that. He wants the son of God, truly above anyone else.

Maggin's take is contradictory.

>Clark is a construct

>Clark is the outlet that allows Superman to do the things that Superman can't do in public" like have hobbies

>"The President" or the "Heavyweight Champion" is ALSO who those people really are and who they were before suddenly becomes fake

The side of you that has hobbies in private is the real fucking you, Elliot. Masks are for public. Jesus Christ.

Seriously, though, i find the whole Kal-El very stupid. It's something for Clark to be aware that this was the name his biological parents gave him or not to correct people when they call him that, specially his kryptonian cousin because she got to first meet him as that. But Clark himself thinking of him as that? That's stupid.

Clark has nothing to do with that name. That name is meaningless. I was adopted. I probably had another name. I have no care for that. I have no care for who i might have been. I am what i was raised to be. What i grew to be.

It's like an American guy who his great, great, great grandparents were German or Spanish or something, and out of nowhere he's starting to he's German or Spanish as well. Like those idiots that always say they're 1/4 Cherokee or somesuch despite being blue-eyed fuckers.

It's the same thing with Batman and Bruce Wayne. If Batman is the "real" person than Batman is insane and why the fuck would you want that?

>This exactly the kind of take i hate. It makes Superman out to look like a sociopath
It doesnt.

It means that being Clark Kent it's him trying to turn down his senses, his mind. Every future superman has superman going as kal el when Lois finally dies. He leaves earth, he explores space, etc. Superman it's his potential, Clark kent it's nothing but the personality he grew up to have. Eventually he will have to leave everything behind.

He isnt just a farm boy from Kansas, that's his system of values, his memories, his humor, and even his accent, he will EVENTUALLY leave all that behind.

Nope, Kal El and Clark are different and always had been, ESPECIALLY in the silver age

so he is a sociopath who cares for nothing and is fucking with everyone for fun

>Every future superman has superman going as kal el when Lois finally dies. He leaves earth, he explores space, etc.

Those stories? Those fucking stupid Elseworlds? They fucking suck big time.

>He isnt just a farm boy from Kansas, that's his system of values, his memories, his humor, and even his accent, he will EVENTUALLY leave all that behind.

That's now how it happens. As you get older what you miss the most are you formative years. What you cling to most are those very first years. The rest is just a fucking blur with a few best moments here and there.

ailver age was shit

Also I'd forgotten he'd said this about the Superman 2000 pitch:

>"It still had Superman married to Lois and all that shit. There was another draft Mark Waid added with Earth getting a mind-wipe to forget that stuff and it had some nice touches, but I'd just start from scratch."

And then years after that there was an interview with Morrison around the time All Star Superman was wrapping up:

>I’ve read a few speculations over the years about how we were going to use that proposal to end the Supeman/Lois Lane marriage. In fact that was actually something we decided we didn’t want to do. I remember Mark Waid and the guys and all of us sitting around thinking of ways to end the Superman marriage – and we talked about it for a long time, and we got to where we were talking about things like “memory molecules,” and we finally said, “This is ridiculous! The only way to do this is to keep the marriage and make it work!”

>It was the only thing we could do with what I still think was a bad idea. The marriage damaged the dynamic of Superman comics quite severely, but if we broke up the relationship of these two great fictional lovers, Superman would immediately seem ineffectual and ultimately beaten by his foes, walking around for the rest of his life not knowing Lois was ever his wife or whatever.

I know around the time the Superman 2000 outline first leaked in 2000 or 2001 (but not up on the internet yet; probably just leaked to industry insiders or something at the time) that people were saying that they were going to get rid of the marriage (which was probably true at one point) but then Waid denied that was going to happen (which was probably true if you go by what Morrison said).

>Those stories? Those fucking stupid Elseworlds? They fucking suck big time.

Don't be stupid.

No, it means that him being from a different species means he eventually will embrace that, Just like petting baby tiger won't stop him from growing up into a tiger, sure, a tammed one but still a fucking tiger. Clark it's who his parents rised, but that will eventually end, it's not intentional, and he will always try to keep being that one, but if you have german heritage, you don't learn german if you don't want to embrace the german in you.

I think it's an interesting conversation to have, OP.

The idea that Clark can do what Superman can't is a good play on the secret identity thing. (He's always Superman underneath but, has to pretend to be Clark). However, it seems contradictory to the character's history. He was raised as Clark Kent. He nor his adoptive parents knew he was going to be Superman from the get go.

I'm having trouble expressing it in writing but, Superman is also a construct in the same way as Clark is. He's the person who can exemplify all the teachings of the Kent's. He does as much as he can because only he can. If anything, his role as Superman is the logical end to his morality.

Fuck no. That interpretation intermediately suggests that Clark doesn't care about humans at all. Fuck that idea.

>He isnt just a farm boy from Kansas, that's his system of values, his memories, his humor, and even his accent, he will EVENTUALLY leave all that behind.
You know, I never thought of that.

Superman will both outlive and outgrow humanity. What we know of him is just the first half-century of a being who will live millenniums.

> and this is why Millar thinks

Stopped reading here
No one cares what the product of Mark Waid's ghostwriting thinks.

I am going to turn 50 this year, remember the bronze age well, read a number of Silver Age stories I cherish but John Byrne did nothing wrong with rethinking the character. You can complain about other things he did on his Man of Steel run, but his interpretation of the character was fine and not a condemnation of Elliot S! Maggin's work (excellent in its own regard).

Stop being a purist, Birthright was a bigger shit on the character.

Obsession is a huge part of Batman's character. He's devoted his entire life to fighting crime, he only has any social life outside of the cave at all because he HAS to, to keep up his responsibilities as the owner of a company.

>As you get older what you miss the most are you formative years

He doesnt blur stuff, he will live for 1000s of years. He isnt human, he doesnt think or feel like we do.

I'm being honest. For example i hate Kingdom Come and the influence it had on subsequent Superman and Wonder Woman characterization.

These stories where Lois is killed off just so a writer can explore how Superman would deal with the loss of his humanity are fucking trite.

What a fucking idiot, as usual.

>but if you have german heritage, you don't learn german if you don't want to embrace the german in you.

This makes NO fucking sense.

>He isnt human,
Correct, he's an alien.

>he doesnt think or feel like we do
He was raised by Kansas farmers and always thought and felt like we do, that's where the contradiction takes place. You're thinking of Martian Manhunter.

But that's is his most important years and the one he'll hold on to the most. Go talk with old people. Ask them about their life's stories. Most of them talk about their childhood, their teens, their every first, and so on. They hardly remember shit that happened when they were 50 unless something really major happened.

>What do you think?

Clark Kent and Superman are the same identity.

There's no problem with cognitive dissonance or deception any more than there's a problem with the way you talk to your friends and the way you talk to your boss being different - Clupermakerman just chooses to show different sides of himself, though he, like you, is aware that there are ways he can behave around certain people, and things they can know about him, that he can never reveal to the people who know him as Suclerment.

Someone once said that what stands out about Christopher Reeve's performance even in the shitty later movies is that he's not playing Clark Kent playing Superman or Superman playing Clark Kent, he's playing the guy who plays them both. The differences in his expression, his physical changes, the affectations he puts on to strengthen each image, are as much Reeve as they are the character's own, and that's what makes it believable - you're never quite sure that they didn't really find an impossibly good man with super powers to play Superman and Clark Kent, who was *so good* and believed in you *so much* that he was willing to let you in on his secret, and that's why he works and why people find those movies so memorable, even though most people alive now have only ever known them as tv movies.

>The idea that Clark can do what Superman can't is a good play on the secret identity thing

Well for one thing Clark can actually have opinions on things.

Luthor. What the hell are you doing in Sup Forums?

Kingdom Come did nothing wrong.

Supes was still Supes, he returned, he saved humanity, he lived all the 1000 years of his life on Earth, protecting and rebuilding it, till the Legion of Super-Heroes could carry his legacy.

>Someone once said that what stands out about Christopher Reeve's performance even in the shitty later movies is that he's not playing Clark Kent playing Superman or Superman playing Clark Kent, he's playing the guy who plays them both. The differences in his expression, his physical changes, the affectations he puts on to strengthen each image, are as much Reeve as they are the character's own, and that's what makes it believable - you're never quite sure that they didn't really find an impossibly good man with super powers to play Superman and Clark Kent, who was *so good* and believed in you *so much* that he was willing to let you in on his secret, and that's why he works and why people find those movies so memorable, even though most people alive now have only ever known them as tv movies.
This, so very this.

Kingdom Come was a bad comic that damaged more characters than Watchmen or Dark Knight Returns could ever do.

I agree.

Superman doesn't affect multiple personalities, he's just code switching like real people do all the damn time.

Both Batman (the one striking fear into criminals) and Bruce Wayne (The bumbling billionaire playboy) are masks. The real Bruce/Batman is the one you see talking to Alfred/the Robins/allies like Catwoman and Superman when there's no one else around and they're not on a mission.

>i hate Kingdom Come
I feel sorry for you.

>because baawww Lois
You missed the point entirely. The thing that anchored a god to humanity was taken away from him, he let humanity pass judgment on the situation and it chose edgy vengeance over justice. Kal said fuck this and disappeared to mourn in private.

>That interpretation intermediately suggests that Clark doesn't care about humans at all

No, it implies that he cares, it's just that eventually he will stop having a human life.

>The thing that anchored a god to humanity

And that. Right there. It's one of the flaws of many people writing Superman. He is no "god" and should never be interpreted that way.

If he will just stop having a human, why care about having one to begin with? This is not a dichotomy, it's a contradiction.

Superman is not a god. Powers do not make one a god. Immortality does not make one a god. Those are two different fucking things.

A god creates life or is the personification of an element of the natural world.

>Kingdom Come was a bad comic that damaged more characters than Watchmen or Dark Knight Returns could ever do.

Watchmen inspired a number of writers to miss the story's point (if you introduce realism into cape books you get rapists, murderers, sociopaths and destruction). KC was about regaining hope and getting past 90s excesses.

DKR gets a bad rap for being gritty but it's self contained and didn't irreversibly change comics forever.

Christ I hate people who think art has the magical power to make everything that comes after terrible somehow.

I know what the point was, stupid. I still dislike the point it was trying to make and the characterizations of the characters therein it.

>The real Bruce/Batman is the one you see talking to Alfred
Right here. Because unlike the rest of the batfamily Alfred can talk down to him, Bruce will take it, and they both know it.

>The thing that anchored a god to humanity
This is a terrible interpretation of the character. The thing that tethers Superman to humanity is the fact that he was raised in Kansas; it's baked into who he is.

You're confusing Superman with Dr Manhattan.

This. Fucking This.

>KC was about regaining hope and getting past 90s excesses.

KC completely fucked the future characterization of many DC characters. Wonder Woman specially has been completely fucked by it.If we today have Wonder Cunt is because of it.

Because he loves them and wants to be around them. But he will outlive them all.

He will not abandon his human side. He will allow himself to be more.

Don't try to pretend you're two different people.

>He is no "god"
Fine, "superhero."

A man who always believed in a solution saw a societal rejection of his values at a time of need and he was disillusioned enough to walk.

>He will not abandon his human side.

If what you are saying was true. Then that means he is being a condescending asshole that deep down never really believed in a single word that his father told him. Then it means he is just another Kryptonian that pities humanity and that Lex Luthor was right all along.

That shit is wrong and it goes against absolutely everything the character supports and represents.

Superman is not a god and should never be one.

More what?

Either way you're using a version of Superman that never forgot Lois, his very human wife, and traveled throughout the universe for centuries trying to find a way to bring her back and getting depressed as fuck with his failure to find a way. That because of it decided to seclude himself inside the sun like a hikikomori with Lois pillow, only to come out once he finally managed to find her DNA and clone her.

Basically a man that clung to his past and most happy years like a starving African.

>Watchmen inspired a number of writers to miss the story's point

>implying it wasn't time to shit

Not to mention, that it's a reaction to extreme comics aimed at a younger crowd and its core statement is "stop liking what I don't like and get off my lawn!"

Human beings get disillusioned and walk away from careers and loved ones all the time.

The "Real" person was Clark before Superman.

When he started to be Superman, he divided himself into Fake Clark and Superman (fake clark existed before Superman to hide his powers in smallville) and the only people that knew his true self were his parents (Martha and Jonathan) and Lana.
Later he revealed himself to Lois and she knew the real Clark.

So, you have Real Clark, Superman and Fake Clark

Sorry. We are.

Doesn't supes do it to? Granted, his are usually aligned with justice.

>Christ I hate people who think art has the magical power to make everything that comes after terrible somehow.
It's just dumb casuals, they have no idea. Watchmen and TDKR never had ANY negative impact on the industry, for fucks sake we got JLI not long time after.


The idea watchmen harmed the industry comes from idiots. The whole rebirth shit really messed the head of many casuals and johnsfags here


Exactly. He always keeps being Superman after lois is gone, it's just that he doesnt have a reason to be clark kent anymore.

>he was disillusioned enough to walk.

Humans do that shit all the time.

I prefer to stick to it being somewhere in the middle.
Superman is Clark puffing out his chest, being brave and heroic.
Clark Kent is Clark accentuating his dorky human side.

Like a sliding scale, where who he really is is in the middle, Superman is on the right, and Clark Kent is on the left.

More than human.

Nope, he recreates her as something more than a human

Being Superman is like being a politician. You're basically trying to put out the best image possible to gain sympathy and trust because you're trying to do this job that is very important and depends on others rallying behind you for you to accomplish it.

Superman will never be a real person.

>KC completely fucked the future characterization of many DC characters

> future
KC doesn't take place in the future. It takes place in the year it was published, in a continuity where most of the DC heroes have aged in realtime since the 1970s, using characterizations from the Bronze Age. Super Friends is canon in it, both by Marvin's appearance and the reuse of the Hall of Justice as the United Nations building. On top of that, Green Lantern is still Alan Scott.

It's not a template for anything and it's a writer's decision to pull from it or not.

When Superman gives him opinion on something he's basically giving his endorsing of it or asking others to do as well.

By future he meant in stories that came after KC. Writers were influenced by Waid and Ross's take to make Wonder Woman more militaristic and more romantically attracted to Clark and those are both dumb things.

>Doesn't supes do it to? Granted, his are usually aligned with justice.
The last thing he endorsed was Metallica. Einstein once built a telescope from scratch because he knew if he was seen purchasing one that the press would take pictures and then the manufacturer would trumpet "As used by Albert Einstein"

Are you retarded? I said the comic had a bad influence on what followed.

>using characterizations from the Bronze Age.

HA! No. Those characterizations were taking out of Waid and Ross asses. Waid specially was said at the time he had never read a Wonder Woman comic and couldn't understand the character. He thought her being an amazon warrior who fought for peace was stupid and contradictory. That's why her stupid characterization in it.

>The idea watchmen harmed the industry comes from idiots.

It inspired BAD writers to amp up the edge. It didn't FORCE anyone to write differently, like some editor rejecting a script and saying "this needs more rape in it."

>The whole rebirth shit really messed the head of many casuals and johnsfags here

I'm not pleased that Johns' invisible hand as the "villain" of Rebirth is another writer's creation when most of this was his own fault. That's low.

>It's just dumb casuals, they have no idea. Watchmen and TDKR never had ANY negative impact on the industry, for fucks sake we got JLI not long time after.

No, they did have some negative influence. Identity Crisis is pretty obviously influenced by Watchmen and many of the Image founders list Miller as an influence. But at the same time blaming them for darkening comics is severely myopic and ignores how there were other things going around in the 80's. I mean I'm fucking sure Wolverine and Punisher would've still become popular even if DKR and Watchmen never existed.

>Writers were influenced by Waid and Ross's take to make Wonder Woman more militaristic and more romantically attracted to Clark
Writers chose to be influenced by it. Other writers did not. It's still a matter of free will, not a fucking party line based on what was functionally an Elseworlds.

Even Waid's description of them kissing makes it sound inhuman (steel scraping marble, someone correct me here) and it's in the context of two generals agreeing to go to war rather than pure romance.

As far as "more militaristic" is concerned, go read runs of WW that predate Perez. It was always there in the background, sue Waid for daring to put it to the fore.
> he never read WW and she didn't make sense to him
Yeah, that's dumb of him but let's be honest she's been a difficult character to comprehend since Marston stopped writing her and interpretations routinely change.

The idea of Wonder Woman and Superman being attracted to each other isn't a new one, and it certainly didn't start with Kingdom Come.

Even guys like Alan Moore had them kiss and laugh it off in the very same story

Every time people say that Superman is like a god because he has this enormous powers or because he'll outlive everyone i think of Lex Luthor. Because let's be real. If Superman was really this almighty being Lex wouldn't constantly outsmart his powers with his genius and inventions. And in the far future Lexcorp is still a thing. Lexs descendent are still giving a time-traveling Superboy headaches.

So what really means to be a god? It's meaningless bullshit to feel self-important. The kryptonians wrecked their own planet with their stupidity. They're no gods.

>when most of this was Diane Nelson, Bob Harras, and Jim Lee's fault

ftfy

This "Johns was a Nu52 architect" meme has to stop eventually, man. He's been against it in every fucking interview. You want to blame everything on his godawful writing in JL? Maybe the reason it's so bad is because he didn't care, he was disenfranchised until they finally let him fix it.

>Identity Crisis is pretty obviously influenced by Watchmen and many of the Image founders list Miller as an influence
Again, a personal choice.

>I mean I'm fucking sure Wolverine and Punisher would've still become popular even if DKR and Watchmen never existed.
And both were intended to be killed off except for fantards who ate them up YEARS before Watchmen was published. Punisher was a genrebender, an expy from pulp paperback series like Mack Bolan's. They can't be blamed on Watchmen.

>As far as "more militaristic" is concerned, go read runs of WW that predate Perez. It was always there in the background, sue Waid for daring to put it to the fore.

No it wasn't. Try mentioning one fucking issue. Waid himself said that he didn't really knew nor liked much Wonder Woman at the time.

>Yeah, that's dumb of him but let's be honest she's been a difficult character to comprehend since Marston stopped writing her and interpretations routinely change.

Now you're just finding excuses for Waid's own stupidity.

>This "Johns was a Nu52 architect" meme has to stop eventually, man. He's been against it in every fucking interview. You want to blame everything on his godawful writing in JL? Maybe the reason it's so bad is because he didn't care, he was disenfranchised until they finally let him fix it.
Then thank you for correcting me here and I won't repeat that again.

>go read runs of WW that predate Perez

Sir, I've been coming here for almost a decade and that's easily the worst thing anyone on Sup Forums has ever told me to do.

>Now you're just finding excuses for Waid's own stupidity

No, I'm putting it into context. She's a Golden Age character of batshit proportions that doesn't belong in modern comic books and has to be reinterpreted every generation to make her sort of fit. Getting upset over one interpretation inside a single graphic novel and claiming it became canon thereafter is nuts.

Yeah. Deep down, Bruce never really left that alley.

yeah but its boring as batshit. now dc one million superman, thats a good story. injustice superman too

>No it wasn't. Try mentioning one fucking issue
Amazons going to war with Ares during O'Neil's run

>It inspired BAD writers to amp up the edge


Bullshit.
And neither watchmen or TDKR are "edgy".

Image had nothing to do with those stories. The edgyness from comics related to the LEGACY of the action movies of the 80's. Mortal Kombat or Street Sharks had nothing to do with Watchmen either. Legends of the Dark Knight? Animal Man? Sandman? Sure... all that it's the legacy of Watchmen/TDKR. The RADICAL/ATTITUDE years were just reflection of the pop culture of the time. Terminator 2, Blast Processing, Doom, Spawn, all the same.


>Identity Crisis
This is a singular case but it's a fair one, but watchmen wasnt the first story of the style or the last one, just the biggest one. We had grim shit, prostitutes, realism, rape before watchmen. Capecomics are not the only comics.

>They can't be blamed on Watchmen.

Did you read what I wrote?
>I'm fucking sure Wolverine and Punisher would've still become popular even if DKR and Watchmen never existed.

As in, Wolverine and Punisher would've still been popular even if there was no DKR and Watchmen.