Who can save Superman now? KURT BUSIEK!

[Uncle Mxy]

Uncle Mxy, I really fail to see how any incarnation of Superman truly understood how important and inspirational he was to everyone else.  He always seemed to be so modest and just trying to be one of the rest of the super-hero community.

Superman has lots of self-important "if I doesn't do something, all is lost" thinking, that conveniently ignores about all the people around him who could probably fix the problem that he's a commlink away from (usually people in a less precarious position than Superman at the time of the emergency du jour).  One can rarely know to what extent they inspire someone.  Does a parent quantitatively how much they inspire a child, or sometimes vice versa?  Superman certainly knew he was an inspiration in general.  Heck, he reported the news about himself.  And post-Crisis, he's been marginalized further.  

I just don't think that Superman not handling Magog and his ilk, negatively inspiring a defeatist attitude in old-school metahumans is the same as Superman positively inspriring them to be heroes throughout.  The older heroes left the world to rot thinking "darn, if even Superman couldn't handle this new world of crap, how could I" moreso than "the star that I follow has set, I cannot carry on and will fade away".  

I'm using too many words, almost a sure sign that I'm not saying this right, but I hope you get the gist.

[Captain Kal]

How much of the creative process of a book is reliant on fans accepting it vs the publishers/creators/etc.?

I don't really know what that means, sorry.  Fans don't get input on the process.  They can accept or reject the results, but most readers probably don't know whether a book is plot-style or full-script, whether the editor asked for the ending to be changed, whether the artist drew what was written or reworked it...

kdb

Please let me clarify.

If the fan community has a very negative or positive reaction to something published, doesn't that influence whether the creative teams and/or publishers continue with that idea or not?

For instance, mutants are very big at Marvel.  Surely that concept is being mined to death as a result.

If fan reaction to Hypertime seems to be very negative, it does seem to be just a bit of a coincidence that no one else at DC has decided to revisit the concept.  Superman being longhaired, while relatively minor, was eventually done away with since it had such a high rejection rate amongst fans.

I don't care how great the idea is.  If the fans literally don't buy into it, then the publisher tends to do a backpeddle on it or ignore it.  Hey, Byrne's attempted rework of the Hulk's origin was so badly received that Marvel had to backpeddle on that one in a hurry.

So, yeah, fans do have some input if only as part of the marketing feedback process.

I guess my question better worded is how much do creators consider what they think will sell their books as opposed to just writing the best darn good stories they can think of?  The two aren't necessarily the same esp. given that subjective element noted before.

[Captain Kal]

Uncle Mxy, thinking he's the last and best guy for the job is very different from thinking he's an inspiration to everyone else.  The two concepts are very different from each other.

You can be the best darn computer programmer in the world and still be largely uninfluential, uninspiring, and even downright despised.  The same goes for super-heroes.  Batman is clearly supposed to be one of the most competent and capable guys in the heroic community.  Yet, he certainly is not inspiring in anyway to even his own community: He's feared instead.

[Kurt Busiek]

If the fan community has a very negative or positive reaction to something published, doesn't that influence whether the creative teams and/or publishers continue with that idea or not?

Sure, of course.  In the most naked example of that, POWER COMPANY #45 ain't coming out this month.

I guess my question better worded is how much do creators consider what they think will sell their books as opposed to just writing the best darn good stories they can think of?

That's another thing that varies from creator to creator and even from job to job.

kdb

[Uncle Mxy]

Uncle Mxy, thinking he's the last and best guy for the job is very different from thinking he's an inspiration to everyone else.  The two concepts are very different from each other.

I don't think there's any question that pre-Crisis Superman knew that he was an inspiration to others, even to other heroes.  Look at all the LSH, for crying out loud.  (I'm still trying to decide how post-Crisis Superman is inspirational, but perhaps I'm just recalling one too many bad stories in which he's anything but.)

I don't think it's a "weakness" to not know how much you inspire the masses.  That's rarely an easy thing to know beyond broad terms.  It's almost like saying "Superman's weakness is that he's not a telepath".  

I just never thought the other heroes in Kingdom Come would fade simply because Superman stops being this postiive guiding light.  There were lots of other reasons for them to fade, though, and maybe some off-panel ones we never saw.  Superman's effect on others that led to the others fading away was not critical to getting to the story at hand.

[Kuuga]

Kurt, do you think that comics will ever pull out of this obsession with dark gruesome storylines and cheap shock value that have been more or less the norm for so long?

[Captain Kal]

The sad part is that this is better than having Manhunters in Smallville brainwashing the whole town.

Got that right, Uncle Mxy.

As long as Byrne stayed away from the Guardians, GLC, and the Manhunters, his origin in MOS could somehow ignore them and imply they just weren't aware of the situation on Krypton (hey, it's a big universe and they don't catch everything).  Surely, Maggin's explanation for their lack of involvement cannot apply anymore, not only since this is Post Crisis but Byrned Krypton didn't have that wonderful human freedom and initiative that Tomar-Re had to operate in secret.

Once these three GL-related groups were dragged in via the Millenium tie-in, that begs the question why the Guardians expended such efforts for a single mere baby Kryptonian while allowing the rest of his race and even planet to perish.

It just doesn't track.

[Uncle Mxy]

The point of these examples is that at times, Superman resists magic due to some instance when he is no longer thinking about the effects on his body.

The problem with this is that it doesn't explain those times where he has no particular reason to believe something is magical until after it hurt him, like Diana's sword and any number of things where Superman says something like "ouch, must be magic" after the fact.  Perhaps that could be explained as "magic still hurts him a little, but the fact that he feels that it's magic means it could hurt him more makes him hurt more", but that can get convoluted.