First End Credits music for Superman.
Best line of the movie, referring to kindness – “maybe that’s the real punk rock.”
Some of the people who are roughed up by this boisterous outlaw are pistol-packing racketeers, but usually they are a less glamorous brand of villain – a domestic abuser, an orphanage superintendent who is cruel to children – and the majority are so wealthy that they don’t need to rob banks: there is the mine owner who skimps on safety measures, the construction magnate who sabotages a competitor’s buildings, the politician who buys a newspaper in order to turn it into a propaganda sheet. Rather than being a typical costumed crime-fighter, then, the Superman of 1938 was a left-wing revolutionary.
James Gunn’s new Superman film will be flying into cinemas next week, but ever since the first trailers were released, superhero fans have been having online debates about whether the Man of Steel played by David Corenswet is true to the one in the comics. Is he too gloomy? Is he too woke? Should he still be wearing red swimming trunks over his blue tights? Underlying these debates is an agreement that a few details are non-negotiable: Superman should be faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive. He should come from the planet Krypton and live in a city called Metropolis. And he should be in love with Lois Lane. Beyond that, he should also be noble and wholesome – and perhaps a bit of a bore. While the likes of Batmanand Wolverine are popular because they break the rules, Superman has to be a law-abiding, upstanding all-American Mr Nice Guy.
But that hasn’t always been the case. The first Superman strips were written by Jerry Siegel, drawn by Joe Shuster, and published in Action Comics magazine in 1938 by DC (or National Allied, as the company was then called). And in those, he was a far more unruly, and in some ways far more modern character. He was “a head-bashing Superman who took no prisoners, who made his own law and enforced it with his fists, who gleefully intimidated his foes with a wicked grin and a baleful glare”, says Mark Waid, a comics writer and historian, in his introduction to a volume of classic Action Comics reprints. “He was no super-cop. He was a super-anarchist.” If this rowdy and rebellious Superman were introduced today, he’d be hailed as one of the most subversive superheroes around.
Just found the official video featuring Iggy, below.
Commenting on super hero entertainment: This was a really cool topic when I was reading comics (er, Graphic Novels) as a teenager, but became very lame when the campy versions hit TV and the movies. That all changed this side of Y2K with the Batman trilogy by Christopher Nolan, Spiderman by Sam Raimi, and various things by Zack Snyder, but everything else usually a waste of time. For adults today who want a comic-book like experience (you put your head down and totally lose an hour of time), you’ve got to watch all seasons of “Daredevil”, “Jessica Jones”, and “Luke Cage” on Disney+