Iron Age Retrospective

[MichaelBailey]

Well, that Crimson Avenger thing just sounds stupid... getting a vision from the future spurns someone to become a mystery man is such a stretch to have Superman inspire a generation of heroes ti keep up tradition.. just wrong...

And the Earth Two Superman, once he found out he was from Krypton, DID honor his birth planet.  In Action 484, he marries Lois in his Fortress under giant status of Jor-L and Lora... that ceremony WAS a Kryptonian ceremony.  He even adopted phrases like "Great Rao" and whatnot... so he was like his Earth One counterpart in those respects.. he just found out about his heritage later in his life than Kal-El did.

Think about it... when someone realizes he's adopted and can find out about his burth parents, he goes all out.. when someone who had a parent die when he was young (like I did) it become an obsession to find everything you can out about that parent and adopt mannerisms and stuff so you can be like them.  Kal-L and Kal-El did just that pre-Crisis.. the Iron Age Kal seemed to care less..

I'll respectfully disagree with the first point but I remain schooled on the second.  I had momentarily forgotten about the wedding ceremony for Kal-L and Lois.  My overall point was that the "Iron Age" Superman did get around to honoring his own heritage, even though it was the Eradicator that originally built the Fortress.  Superman, along with Steel, eventually rebuilt it in Superman: The Man of Steel #100.

I don't think he cared less, I think it wasn't as big a part of his life as it was the Earth-1 Kal-El.

[davidelliott]

How does a person in 1937 (or thereabouts) see something that hasn't happened yet?  I would LOVE to have a vision of life in the future!

[Gary]

Superman never had angst until the iron age when his parents were alive.

Not true at all. One of the first Superman stories I ever read was an Action Comics three-parter, from 1968 or thereabouts, in which Supey is aged and trapped in a future era that no longer needs him. That story, just as one example, was as angsty as anything in the so-called Iron Age. (After all, how many times do you see Superman bummed out because he isn't able to kill himself?)

I can't understand why people think they have to relate to a character to enjoy a story.

Nobody says you have to, but it is something that can make the difference between a work that's merely enjoyable and one that approaches something more.

Besides, Superman is someone who knows how to handle things.  Not someone who can't get his act together.

The most interesting Superman stories of any age tend to be ones in which he runs into something that he doesn't know how to handle.

[MichaelBailey]

Superman never had angst until the iron age when his parents were alive.

Uh, the Silver and Bronze Age Superman had tons of angst.  Everytime he thought, "Oh no, Lois is about to discover my true identity! CHOKE" he had angst.

And the issue I recently read where he was sitting at the table in the Kent home worrying over Lois and Lana dying from the same disease that took the Kents wasn't angst?

I can't understand why people think they have to relate to a character to enjoy a story.  Besides, Superman is someone who knows how to handle things.  Not someone who can't get his act together.

See, I do need to relate to the characters I read about.  It works on two levels; do I see anything of myself in the character and/or can I relate to what they are going through even if I haven't gone through the same thing?  I need to be engaged on some level and see the character go through something.

There's also the concept of a character evolving as time goes on.  As entertaining as some of the Bronze Age and early '80s Superman stories are the character is pretty much the same at the end as he is in the beginning.  They made some changes (Lois breaking up with Clark, Steve Lombard losing his job, etc.) but for the bulk of it the changes they made were undone either at the end of the issue or story line.

With the "Iron Age" Superman things changed constantly.  Dating Lois led to an engagment to break up to marriage.  He died and came back.  He killed and dealt with the consequences.  Things freaking happened that altered the course of the character's life whereas the Bronze Age Superman remained pretty constant.

I mean if I wanted to read or watch something that had a plot and yet the characters were the same at the end of the story as they were at the beginning of the story then I would watch Star Trek: Voyager. 

[MichaelBailey]

How does a person in 1937 (or thereabouts) see something that hasn't happened yet?  I would LOVE to have a vision of life in the future!

If memory serves he had a vision while visiting some temple in the mountains of Asia.  It was, again if memory serves, part of his training.

And, in all honesty I buy into that as much as I buy Superman (or Superboy) strapping himself into a machine to witness something tjhat happened to him when he was a baby on Krypton.

[SteamTeck]

Actually a lot of my problem with iron age Superman was I couldn't relate to him. He was just to far below my personal standards which frankly I don't think are all that high. I can't relate to a Superman who is so much less than he could be and so far below his reputation. I hate naturalistic takes on heroic genres.

[nightwing]

In a roundtable discussion in the "Krypton Companion," several comics creators are asked to describe Iron Age Superman (though they don't call him that) and the majority of them have the same complaints we do on this site.

Even Byrne pegged him as "a conflicted whiner" and a "parody of the way Chris Reeve played him in Superman II."

Unfortunately I can't remember who gave my favorite response.  Maybe Karl Kesel?  I'll look it up tonite.  Anyway, he says the pre-OYL Superman is "like your sister's boyfriend who hangs around your house all the time.  He thinks he's cool but he really needs a shower and a job."

 

[shazamtd]

Quote from: shazamtd on November 12, 2006, 01:36:51 PM

Superman never had angst until the iron age when his parents were alive.

Uh, the Silver and Bronze Age Superman had tons of angst.  Everytime he thought, "Oh no, Lois is about to discover my true identity! CHOKE" he had angst.

And the issue I recently read where he was sitting at the table in the Kent home worrying over Lois and Lana dying from the same disease that took the Kents wasn't angst?

I stand corrected.  What I meant to say is that at least Superman didn't go on and on about his problems. 

Quote from: shazamtd on November 12, 2006, 01:36:51 PM
I can't understand why people think they have to relate to a character to enjoy a story.  Besides, Superman is someone who knows how to handle things.  Not someone who can't get his act together.

See, I do need to relate to the characters I read about.  It works on two levels; do I see anything of myself in the character and/or can I relate to what they are going through even if I haven't gone through the same thing?  I need to be engaged on some level and see the character go through something.

I do see your point.  I guess I do relate to Superman in as much as he is a character I aspire to be like.
I just don't like Superman to dither and feel sorry for himself.