Heroes Never Rust #68: Lex Luthor: The Thin Line Between Good and Evil

19 Wednesday Nov 2014

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Jeph Loeb, Superman: For All Seasons, Tim Sale

Heroes Never Rust #68 by Sean Ironman

Lex Luthor: The Thin Line Between Good and Evil

In a comic, you know how you can tell who the arch-villain’s going to be? He’s the exact opposite of the hero.

– Elijah Price, Unbreakable

Superman: For All Seasons #3 is from the point of view of Superman’s arch-nemesis, Lex Luthor. He opens with, “This is a love story. Not between a man and a woman. But between a man and a city.” Luthor is the smartest man in the world, and if Superman didn’t exist, he might have done amazing things for the world. “I poured my life into this city. I gave it a personality. A look. A kind of elegance. She was my fair lady. I’ve grown accustomed to her face. And yet…I was betrayed.” Luthor is not a crazy person like the Joker. He’s not above causing the deaths of others, but he has to gain something from it. He wants power. He built Metropolis. He gave his lift to building the city (Of course, not without becoming the unofficial ruler), and now Superman has stolen the attention Luthor feels he deserves.

In issue three, Luthor releases a virus into the air, a virus that knocks out the city, except for Superman (and a scientist who had been in a controlled atmosphere when the virus was released). But, he doesn’t kill the city. He could. If he made the virus deadly, Lois Lane and the rest of the city would be dead. Superman would have had to watch them die. But, Luthor just knocks everyone out, and he even creates a hero, a woman Superman saved in the last issue, who is a biochemist and has the antidote. Luthor gives the woman to Superman, who flies her around the city to release her antidote. Lois wakes up. The city is saved.

Luthor could have killed everyone. He could have built a giant robot or created a monster to fight Superman. Defeating Superman in a physical match is not enough. Killing everyone wouldn’t get Luthor what he wants. Luthor doesn’t care much about actually defeating Superman as much as he wants to prove that he is just as powerful as Superman, if not more so. Luthor wants to be thought of as great. When Superman comes along, Luthor needs to show that he and Superman are the same.

Superman goes to Luthor to find a way to stop the virus, not to attack Luthor. He knows that if he strikes at Luthor, his hope for finding a cure will be lost. Luthor lords that fact over him and takes the time to accuse Superman of being the cause of the virus due to his alien origin, even though Luthor knows Superman had nothing to do with it. He just wants to make Superman alone. He wants Superman to need his help. And, after Luthor so kindly gives Superman a hero that will administer the cure, the hero dies. He wants Superman to watch someone die, to watch someone and not be able to help, as a way to put Superman in his place.

As Superman kneels over the dead hero, Luthor approaches. He holds an umbrella keeping him dry while Superman soaks. “They say you can change the course of mighty rivers. But, you have so little understanding of how fragile the human condition is. How easily a life, all life, can be lost. Being the most powerful man in the world means nothing if you are all alone.” Luthor has a point. What can Superman understand about mankind? He can do whatever he wants. He’s invincible. And, of course, Luthor just has to get one more line in there to make him seem more powerful. “No one knows that better than I.” Once again, Luthor is trying to bring himself to Superman’s level.

But, even though Luthor has a point about Superman being too powerful to understand mankind, he doesn’t know that Superman grew up in Smallville. This series is about the effect Smallville, Kansas has had on Superman. Luthor’s final words to Superman are “Go back to wherever you came from before you fail us all…” and Superman returns to Smallville at the end. Ma and Pa Kent wonder what brought him home, and he says, “I think I need to stay here. In Smallville. For a while…” Smallville is why Superman does understand mankind. The town grounds Superman, gives him humanity. Superman isn’t a god. Yes, he’s more powerful than a human being, in the physical sense, but he has his limits. He can’t help everyone, but he’ll do whatever he can.

_______

Photo by John King

Sean Ironman (Episode 102) earned his MFA at the University of Central Florida. Currently, he teaches creative nonfiction and digital media at the University of Central Arkansas as a visiting professor. His work can be read in The Writer’s Chronicle, Redivider, and Breakers: A Comics Anthology, among others.

Heroes Never Rust #67: The Power and Humility of Superman

12 Wednesday Nov 2014

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Bjarne Hansen, Heroes Never Rust, Jeph Loeb, sean ironman, Superman: For All Seasons, Tim Sale

Heroes Never Rust #67 by Sean Ironman

The Power and Humility of Superman

Issue two of Superman: For All Seasons covers the summer from Lois Lane’s point of view. It opens with Superman flying through Metropolis over Lois’s narration about Perry White, Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Planet, telling her not to believe what she sees and hears. But then Superman came and now she doesn’t know what to believe. With all the super-powered characters, along with other fantastical creatures, to which readers have been exposed, I think many of us forget, I know I do, just what it would do to see someone like Superman. We have learned certain things in our lives. We cannot fly without a machine. We cannot outrun a train. We cannot be shot or stabbed and remain unhurt. We cannot do the impossible. And then Superman comes along. He does all of it easily. He’s not like Batman, who trains for years, or one of the X-Men who have to focus their powers. He flies and runs and lifts as if the laws of physics mean nothing.

Halfway through the issue, a terrorist holds a gun to Lois in front of Lex Luthor and Superman. Lex, ever so full of himself, says, “I’ll handle this, Lois. I can negotiate with anyone, even terrorists.” Displaying the speed of Superman in still images is a tough act. Motion lines don’t really get the job done. Loeb and Sale show his speed by cutting Lex saying terrorists into three panels. He gets one syllable across in each panel. In the first, Superman stands beside Luthor. In the second, Superman is just a blue, red, and yellow blur. And in the third, Superman has the terrorists gun and stands beside Luthor once again. The other three characters haven’t realized what happened.

Superman does a lot in this issue. He dives into the deep waters and pulls a submarine full of terrorists up onto land. He stops a missile from hitting Metropolis. He puts out a fire and beats back robots Luthor created so that the city wouldn’t have to depend on Superman. He does the impossible throughout. Many people have commented on in the past that if Lois Lane were such a good reporter, she would recognize Clark Kent as Superman. Something I guess that the new movies have chosen to do away with by having Lois know his secret identity. But people are missing just what Superman does to Lois. Here is a woman who has grown up to be, in kind words, a realist. Like she states in the opening, she doesn’t believe what she sees and hears. She tells readers that, along with her sister, she once believed in Prince Charming. Then, she grew up. None of the men she met were Prince Charming. Until Superman. A man in a cape, who with all the power in the world chooses to help people because…well, he wants to do good. She can’t understand this. Superman, to Lois, doesn’t do the impossible by lifting heavy things or being faster than a speeding bullet—he’s a representation of the impossible because he’s good-hearted, and she hasn’t had much experience with that.

After she’s rescued, she narrates over Clark Kent alone in his apartment, “Where does he go when he’s not keeping a bridge from collapsing? Or stopping a train from derailing? Or answering a child’s cry for help?” The reason she doesn’t recognize Clark as Superman is because she can’t understand that Superman can be human. And, yes, he’s Kryptonian, I know, but he’s a human being at heart. A being with all this power pretending to be a reporter at The Daily Planet is too far out of her realm of thinking. Superman isn’t off in some castle somewhere. He’s not a god. He goes home to Smallville to visit Ma and Pa Kent, and when Ma Kent asks why he came, he says, “I don’t know…lonely, I guess.” Lois wouldn’t be able to understand that about him. To her, he has everything. He can take on whatever physical challenge there is and he doesn’t take shit from Luthor. He’s confident and capable. But that doesn’t mean he has no wants, no desires. Superman has done a lot of good for the world, but he’s lost. On the porch at night, he admits to Ma Kent that even Smallville doesn’t feel like home anymore. He went off to find his life, but he hasn’t been able to build a new home yet. He’s caught between forces, Kryptonian and Human, Smallville and Metropolis, helping people and living a nice life.

The issue ends with Lex Luthor tracking down a woman who was saved by Superman earlier in the issue. He comes into her apartment and she has shrine to Superman. Candles, photos, and newspaper clippings cover the walls and tables. To some, he is a god. Luthor wants to bring Superman down because Superman existing takes away from Luthor’s greatness. Lois is love with Superman because he’s everything she can’t find in a regular man. But Superman is so simple, and I don’t mean dumb. He just wants everyone to be good to one another and to help as many people as he can. He doesn’t want to see the evil in the world push around the good. He’s what we’re supposed to be, what we should be striving for. But he represents something that is so far away from where humanity is at that people either want to drag him down or raise him up, when they really should just follow his example. Maybe then he wouldn’t feel so alone.

_______

Photo by John King

Heroes Never Rust #66: Superman, A Man’s Son

05 Wednesday Nov 2014

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Bjarne Hansen, Heroes Never Rust, Jeph Loeb, sean ironman, Superman, Superman: For All Seasons, Tim Sale

Heroes Never Rust #66 by Sean Ironman

Man of Steel: Superman, A Man’s Son

One of the complaints that I hear about the superhero films made in the last few years is that they are origin stories. How many times must we get Spider-Man’s origin? Superman’s origin? I must admit that I have made the same complaints. Superman, after all, has been around since 1938. There is a reason why he has lasted so long, and it is not because he only has a great origin story. These characters have a lot of potential and have many great stories and ideas that can be adapted to film. Is the answer to stop crafting stories that deal with the character’s origin? No. A character’s past can be an important aspect of a story. When I am writing memoir, I may use an event multiple times. I find that different parts of one event are important at different times. The trick is to not write the same scene again and again and again. In Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s Superman: For All Season, Superman’s origin is given, but told through events that differ from the usual approach.

Superman is well known, especially his origin. Krypton explodes. Superman is sent, as a child, in a rocket ship to Earth. Ma and Pa Kent find the ship and raise him as their own. Some people may remember other characters such as Lana Lang, a love interest in Smallville. Loeb and Sale don’t repeat these events. Too many people know about them. And let’s face it, who is reading Superman comics? Well, people who read Superman comics. People who are familiar with comics, or perhaps familiar with the character from films. How many readers come to Superman: For All Seasons and have no knowledge of the character? I doubt very few, if any at all.

The comic skips Krypton and skips the Kents finding the rocket ship. The story even begins after Clark Kent has discovered his abilities. Where’s the tension and conflict in him discovering his abilities? For All Seasons is not about Superman finding his powers—it is about why Clark Kent must become Superman. The first issue, “Spring,” deals with Clark during his final months in Smallville. It is about a boy who must leave the only home he has ever known because he has the ability to be more than he is.

The first issue is narrated by Pa Kent. It wastes no time to reveal Superman. Narration opens with a close-up of the S on Superman’s chest. Pa Kent goes down the line of what Superman can do. Leap tall buildings. Change the course of rivers. Outrun a bullet. “Believe it or not, there was a time before all that. When he was just…a man’s son.” The page is laid out in three panels. In each one, the “camera” moves closer and closer to Superman’s chest, until the last panel is mostly yellow. But the next page is what sets the tone and focus of the issue. We get a large two-page layout consisting of two panels. Both are two-pages wide, with the top two-thirds consisting of a shot of Clark Kent in overalls just off his porch in Smallville and the final third of the spread being a close-up of Clark shouting for Pa Kent. Instead of a page showing off what Clark is capable of, or even focusing on Clark, the panels leave so much room for the background, for Smallville. In the largest panel, Clark is far to the right and far from the camera. The porch takes up most of the panel. We see boots, a barrel, a porch swing with pillows and a blanket. We see the family dog and chickens, and there’s a red barn a few yards away. The second panel is mainly the yellow sky darkening in the evening. Clark is out on the very right, calling for his father. The focus is not on Clark but on what made Clark Superman (and I don’t mean his superpowers).

Clark Kent leads a comfortable life, for the most part. His family has a nice little farm, he has friends and a girlfriend, he knows the town people, and they are kind to him. Clark can spend his whole life in Smallville and lead a happy life. But that wouldn’t be best for the rest of the world. Clark can help people. He saves a man from a tornado and Pa Kent reflects back on it. “There are so few things a person can be really sure of. But, I believe, in the wild trouble of that moment…our son…became a man.” After, Clark looks out at the destruction and says, “I could have done more,” and Pa Kent thinks back that thinking he could have done more will continue to haunt him. They raised him right, and now they have to let him go out into the world. Superman: For All Seasons is more about a father having to let his child leave home than Superman battling some supervillain. It’s one of my favorite Superman stories. Pa Kent says it best on the final page of the first issue, “At the end of the day, I’m not sure we’re all that different from any other parents. We worry about our son. That he’s eating right. That he’s making friends. That he’ll stay out of harm’s way. Even if he is Superman.” By focusing on Pa Kent’s reflections and staying away from the obvious points of Superman’s youth (the discovery of his powers), Superman: For All Seasons allows an entry point for the reader. Haven’t we all felt we’ve had to move on, move away from our family and friends, from the place we are safe, so that we may have chance to reach our own potential?

_______

Photo by John King.

Heroes Never Rust #29: Filling in the Gaps

19 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Graphic Novels, Heroes Never Rust

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Gwen Stacy, Heroes Never Rust, Jeph Loeb, sean ironman, Spider-Man, Spider-Man Blue, Tim Sale

Heroes Never Rust #29 by Sean Ironman

Filling in the Gaps

One of the more frustrating aspects of comics in the 1960s is how fast-paced they seem. Each issue has a villain rise, fight the hero, and then get defeated. At times, at least by today’s standards, there’s no room for the story to breathe. Within a few issues, characters like Spider-man seem to have a handle on being a superhero. Weeks and months pass between issues. Relationships go from being good to bad and back again in no time. But, what that approach has given us in modern comics is the ability to fill in the gaps. Comics today can go back and tell previously untold tales in a character’s early years to connect events and relationships, and even add a new dimension to the comics.

Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale have worked on the Color Series (although I don’t think that’s an official name) for Marvel Comics. The series focuses on relationships in a character’s early years. There have been three mini-series so far—Daredevil: Yellow, Hulk: Grey, and Spider-Man: Blue. (A fourth, Captain America: White, was announced but never released.) Spider-Man Blue, I believe, is the greatest of the series. I’ve used it on many people to show them what superhero comics are capable of. The series is memoir-like in that Peter Parker from the current day reflects back on his relationship with Gwen Stacy, his first love who was killed while Spider-Man battled with the Green Goblin.

The comic begins with the present-day Parker testing a recorder device. It’s Valentine’s Day. He’s speaking to someone, but we don’t know whom, not yet. “I remember the first time. How you sent me a Valentine that wasn’t signed. You just drew in one of those happy faces.” Spider-Man, in a blue tint, swings toward the George Washington Bridge. He places a rose—the red color sticking out from the blue tint background—on the bridge. When he swings off, the rose falls into the water. “Hello, Gwen. My funny valentine.”

Then the comic jumps back. Spider-Man in the ‘60s has been captured by the Green Goblin. This isn’t when Gwen died, though. Spider-Man breaks free and defeats the Green Goblin. “At first, I thought he was dead. And I’m ashamed to say, Gwen, in that moment, I was relieved. It could have ended right there…all my worries…gone. And Maybe you would still be…” The Green Goblin lived. Spider-Man helped him out of a burning building. Norman Osborn was the Green Goblin and the father of Peter Parker’s best friend. Trying to help his friend cost Peter Parker his first love in the end.

Throughout the six issues, we get a balance of Mary Jane Watson and Gwen Stacy. For a while in the comics, Peter Parker had his choice of beautiful women. Gwen Stacy was the nice girl type. Mary Jane was the wild one. By showing the balance between the two loves of his life, there’s sadness in the story. In the final interactions Peter has with Gwen, there’s another woman—another woman taking him away. Many of Spider-Man’s enemies show up—Rhino, the Lizard, the Vulture, Kraven the Hunter. Aunt May, of course, is used wonderfully. In a breakfast scene halfway through the story, Peter looks at Aunt May, and in the captions from the present day, Peter says, “I never, ever, though I would be burying you before her. It’s just no the way life is supposed to work.” No matter where the comic goes, Gwen stays the focal point.

The greatest strength of the comic, though, is that it never shows Gwen’s death. The story doesn’t exist to capitalize on a past story—to repeat what has already been done. While reading, I expect to see Gwen die in the end—to have Spider-Man fail. The Green Goblin doesn’t return, though. Kraven is the final villain of the piece. It turns out the Green Goblin had previously hired Kraven to kill Spider-Man. Even in defeat, the Goblin still had reach. “I look back on my life as Spider-Man, and God help me, there are days when all I can think of is how much time it’s taken away from my family…and from everyone I’ve loved.” In the end, the cost of being Spider-Man comes back to Parker—a theme that reoccurs throughout the early years of the comic.

The final shot we get of Gwen is of her kissing Peter. “That’s when you had me, Gwen Stacy. All of me.” It’s a full-page shot, usually reserved for big battles. The last few pages catch up on the present. Peter’s in the attic of the home he shares with Mary Jane, his wife. He talks into a recorder about trying to find something he could call good that came from Gwen’s death. “But something happened that night. I think now your death was MJ’s wake-up call—that we weren’t all going to live forever and the party was going to end.” The comic, which is still about Gwen, becomes also about Mary Jane, and even Peter growing up. The comic doesn’t just repeat Spider-Man’s past, or even just show previously untold parts. It helps characterize the current timeline. It’s important to the characters in the present. In class, I’ve heard professors go on about how flashbacks can be bad for a story because they end up stopping the present-day story from moving forward just to explain things the reader never needed explained. But in Spider-Man: Blue, we get an understanding of Peter, Gwen, and Mary Jane that goes beyond the traditional love triangle into a story about how there’s always something good, something hopeful, even in death.

___________

Sean Ironman is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida, where he also serves as Managing Editor of The Florida Review and as President of the Graduate Writers’ Association. His art has appeared online at River Teeth. His writing can be read in Breakers: An Anthology of Comics and Redivider.