Things you like to read/don't like in Superman comics?

[nightwing]

Julian Perez writes:

My Marvel Zombie older brother scared me away from DC comics (which he called "Dunce Cap comics") for years and years with horror stories, told in a hushed whisper, about the existence of a dog that has Superman's powers and wears a cape.

Even at age seven, this struck me as the most retarded thing I've ever heard in my life.

Ha!  Dunce Cap, that's cute.  Well, at age seven I thought a super-dog was an awesome idea, although I knew plenty of 7-year-olds who shared your disdain.  It'd be interesting to study just what it is in the way a person's brain is wired to make them respond one way or the other; whether they embrace silly concepts or are repelled by them.  Apparently it's decided very early on in life.

Personally, the Marvel fans I grew up around made me nervous.  They tended to be the more rebellious kids, the trouble-makers, the kids who were always in a hurry to be percieved as older than they were.  In extreme cases, they were the kids who somehow managed to acquire a copy of Penthouse magazine or a pack of smokes and whip them out to shock "squares" like me.  Marvel Comics had an edge to them; they came off as daring and risky and mature and kind of anti-establishment.  The kids who read them tended to listen to Alice Cooper or KISS, watch "Saturday Night Live" and read Rolling Stone magazine, while I listened to Beatles, watched The Hardy Boys Mysteries and read Boy's Life.  To my young mind, Marvel comics were books about disgruntled misfits FOR disgruntled misfits. In contrast, DC books were about as "daring" as Boy's Life magazine; they were reassuring, sometimes educational and just generally supportive of authority and the establishment. 

Of course as I got older I came to appreciate a lot of Marvel books, but I've never totally overcome my original take on the company and its fans.  I'm still a square.  And I still think a super-powered dog is cool.  (Though I draw the line at horses and cats). 

In all fairness, the Kents have not been written this way for at least a decade.

No, but a lot of the other things on my lists haven't been in play for years, either. 

Who's your favorite artist? Neal Adams.

Who's my favorite artist? Neal Adams!

Neal was a god to me as a kid, but the older we both get, the more the bloom is off the rose.  I don't dig his politics, his current art style or his efforts to tamper with his old stuff.  But Neal brought comics to life for me in a way no one else ever has, and he was the only artist who ever made me dream of being one myself.

You think Kirby's seventies stuff is terrible. Guess what? So do I.

Wow, what are the odds?     I don't think we're in a very small demographic there.

You like the Englehart DETECTIVE COMICS, and I really, really, really like the Englehart DETECTIVES! Ditto for the Englehart/Brunner DOCTOR STRANGE.

And Englehart/Rogers DOCTOR STRANGE.  And Englehart JLA.  Other than that, I don't really follow Steve around with you and the other groupies.

We both prefer realistic artists - guys like John Buscema and Kubert - over cartoony, stylized artists.

As a kid, I'd have said yes in a heartbeat. Adams and his spiritual forefathers Lou Fine, Mac Raboy and Reed Crandall were my faves.  But as I've aged, I've developed great affection for "cartoony" work from guys like Dick Sprang, Chester Gould, Howard Sherman, EE Hibbard, CC Beck Steve Ditko and early Kirby.  Or guys whose work is not really "cartoony" but is quite stylized, like Mike Golden, Marshall Rogers, Howard Chaykin and especially Walt Simonson.

I think what Duke Ellington said about music is applicable to comic art: there's only two kinds, good and bad.

We both believe (mostly) comics exclusively for kids are a waste of time.

If you mean superhero comics, yes.  I think they should be accessible to all audiences, not dumbed down for kids by adults who underestimate their intelligence. 

If I was forced to choose between being either a Bat-Mite fan or a pedophile...I'd have to give the matter serious thought.

I don't think you can "choose" to be either one.  Like all mental illnesses, you're either afflicted or you aren't. 

[Uncle Mxy]

Neal was a god to me as a kid, but the older we both get, the more the bloom is off the rose.  I don't dig his politics,

Weren't his poltiics a key factor in Siegel and Shuster getting the time of day from DC in the '70s?  I don't like the fact that he's hollow-earth loony, but most artists are loony, and probably ought to have separate writers for the good of the world.

[MatterEaterLad]

What a comic for kids means is an interesting question.

Seemed to me like a good story is one that involves the imagination and maybe teaches a few things along the way (parrots have two reversed claws in a Batman story, a 60s JLA reference to the location and story of Mount Rushmore, etc). In the end, is a dog with super powers and that thinks in English any more ridiculous than gamma rays causing a scientist to have every cell in his body alter back and forth based on how angry he is?

I never saw the Marvel kids as that rebelious, mainly i saw them as kids so into it that they would probably never give it up.  For all my interest in DC comics, its still mostly how the stories bring back memories of my thinking when I was a kid.

[JulianPerez]

Personally, the Marvel fans I grew up around made me nervous.  They tended to be the more rebellious kids, the trouble-makers, the kids who were always in a hurry to be percieved as older than they were.  In extreme cases, they were the kids who somehow managed to acquire a copy of Penthouse magazine or a pack of smokes and whip them out to shock "squares" like me.  Marvel Comics had an edge to them; they came off as daring and risky and mature and kind of anti-establishment.  The kids who read them tended to listen to Alice Cooper or KISS, watch "Saturday Night Live" and read Rolling Stone magazine, while I listened to Beatles, watched The Hardy Boys Mysteries and read Boy's Life.  To my young mind, Marvel comics were books about disgruntled misfits FOR disgruntled misfits. In contrast, DC books were about as "daring" as Boy's Life magazine; they were reassuring, sometimes educational and just generally supportive of authority and the establishment.

Amusingly enough, your “forensic profiling” is spot on when it comes to my brother. He loved heavy metal music and left the house when he was sixteen.

Wow, what are the odds?      I don't think we're in a very small demographic there.

You’d be surprised, actually.

The pendulum has swung back the other way, and we’re now living in the comics age of “everything that Kirby does is great.”
 
I mentioned before that Chris Priest retconned the Kirby Black Panther out of existence…but much more typical to pattern is somebody like Kurt Busiek, who treats the 70s Kirby stuff with bizarre veneration. Arnim Zola and Machine Man played big roles in THUNDERBOLTS, for example.

And I heard they’re re-releasing CAPTAIN VICTORY. You know, the book with the Fighting Fetus?

In the end, is a dog with super powers and that thinks in English any more ridiculous than gamma rays causing a scientist to have every cell in his body alter back and forth based on how angry he is?

Yes, yes it is.

Because one you can take seriously in an adventure story context, the other you can’t.

[Daughter of Krypton]

In the end, is a dog with super powers and that thinks in English any more ridiculous than gamma rays causing a scientist to have every cell in his body alter back and forth based on how angry he is?

Yes, yes it is.

Because one you can take seriously in an adventure story context, the other you can’t.

Julian, if you can't take something seriously, then the correct way to state it would be, "one I can take seriously in an adventure story context, the other I can’t."

Some of us aren't as limited as others in our thinking.

One of the best intelligent dog characters I've read is in Spider Robinson's Callahan series.  Although intended to be predominantly humorous, the stories strike me as extremely well done adventure tales.  Ralph is a mutant dog whose mutation granted him human-level intelligence.  Through a bizarre coincidence, he was selected as an experimental subject by a scientist who was attempting to implant vocal cords in animals.  The doc was pretty surprised when his first (and last) experiment immediately started talking to him.

[MatterEaterLad]

I thought Krypto had some ripping good adventures.

Superbaby did as well, even though I personally was not as attracted to those.

[JulianPerez]

Well, if there was one thing I left out it was this: "...in the world Superman inhabits."

A talking dog that solves mysteries, if it is played up as bizarre and surreal instead of something "cute" is something that might inhabit the gonzo world of DOOM PATROL, for instance. Knowing Arnie Drake, he'd probably be a snotty, accented upper-class Bavarian dog, too.

I love Ralph (and Spider Robinson - how can I dislike a fellow Heinlein fanboy?) however what must be remembered is, strictly speaking, Ralph's stories were not adventure tales in the mold of something like David Brin's UPLIFT books (another series with talking animals), but they're surreal, entertainingly incomprehensible stories set in and around a magical bar. I mean, that's very, very different than Lex Luthor fighting a dog with a cape that flies.

Incidentally, I believe Ralph was based on Phillip Jose Farmer's surgically altered talking detective dog from VENUS ON THE HALF-SHELL. Or vice-versa; it's hard to tell with a fanboy like Farmer sometimes.

There is one dog I like: Ace, the Bat-Hound. He made sense: the police use trained dogs and their sense of smell in crimefighting, so why not Batman? I love the take seen in BATMAN BEYOND, where he was a surly, unfriendly kind of dog.

"Limited in our thinking?" Yeesh, that was surprisingly harsh. From my point of view, let me describe another intellectual limitation: the inability to distinguish between something for children and something that's childish. Another limitation is so totally internalizing irony that it no longer becomes possible to distinguish between true appreciation and ironic appreciation.

[TELLE]

Another limitation is so totally internalizing irony that it no longer becomes possible to distinguish between true appreciation and ironic appreciation.

One of my favourite Simpson's moments: those two 90s slackers in Homerpalooza who are no longer sure if their sarcastic appreciation for a fat old guy catching a cannon ball in the stomach is genuine, genuinely ironic, or an ironic approximation of sarcasm.

I think at one point, and at a certain level this is still true, my appreciation for things like 70s Kirby, Bat-Mite, Silver-Age plot holes and sloppy writing was an ironic appreciation borne of a genuine bafflement and anxiety over the difference between, say, a well-written Weisinger-era story, or a mid-60s Stan-and-Jack FF tale, and a Bob H. or Kamandi tale.  They seemed worlds apart. 

On the other hand, I grew up with a northern Ontario, long-hair, 70s KISS aesthetic that included the grunge of 70s Marvel, Peanuts paperbacks, and the gleaming tv idols of Superfriends and Filmation's Tarzan.  When you are a Marvel fan as a kid, all of Marvel is hyped as of equal value, and the inkers try to impose an aesthetic order that the editors cannot.  At least this seems to be the case with 70s Marvel.

Of course, as an adult, with more of a perspective on art historical matters and am appreciation for more forms of narrative, Kirby has so much more to say than the contents of most pop cult entertainments.  They are still assembly-line escapist fantasies (a form that I love) with a few dollops of philosophizing and a few original neat narrative effects (not to mention an almost unparalleled potential for visual wonder).  But Kirby, because of what he did historically and the stamp of personality he brought to even the most mediocre, warmed-over concepts, is in a league of his own.

This doesn't mean I'm buying the collected Silver Star this week.  I'd buy Devil Dinosaur but I already have all the issues and I'm thinking of getting them bound.