Is Superman a Republican?, From Chicagotribune.com Options

[Raycheetah]

Here's a list of Supers and their apparent political leanings.

I recall seeing it observed somewhere that Captain America, having been raised in the 1930's, was actually a Hoover Democrat.

=^[.]^=

[MikeTheC]

I recall seeing it observed somewhere that Captain America, having been raised in the 1930's, was actually a Hoover Democrat.

Well, that really sucks...

[Raycheetah]

Well, that really sucks...

Not necessarily. Do you really think Herbert Hoover would be able to identify with the Democratic Party of today?

Times change.

=^[.]~=

[MikeTheC]

Hoover = Vacuum Cleaner = Sucks

It was a joke. You were supposed to laugh.

And no, I don't think Herbert Hoover would be able to identify with the Democratic Party of today. Then again, neither would J.F.K. or Dr. M.L. King, Jr. And speaking of Dr. King, Jr., I don't think he would be able to identify with the NAACP or a lot of other things which are a part of what is called the "black movement". But that's a discussion for whole different area of this message board.

[RaiderDave2112]

By their very nature most so-called "Superhero's" are supporters of fascism and totalitarianism.

[Raycheetah]

By their very nature most so-called "Superhero's" are supporters of fascism and totalitarianism.

Read a lotta comic books, have you, Dave? Peter Parker, aka the Amazing Spider Man, a fascist? The Incredible Hulk? Any or all of the Fantastic Four?

A bit heavy-handed, innit?

=0[.]o=

[RaiderDave2112]

Read a lotta comic books, have you, Dave? Peter Parker, aka the Amazing Spider Man, a fascist? The Incredible Hulk? Any or all of the Fantastic Four?

A bit heavy-handed, innit?

=0[.]o=

Ray, I've read thousands of comic books, how do you think I formed this opinion about "Superhero's" anyway. I started out reading the superhero's Batman, Superman comics but as I grew older they did start to come across as a bit fascist, which is why I started reading things like V for Vendetta, Watchmen, Hellblazer, Sin City, The Sandman etc. If you want to read a excellent superhero story then I highly recomend "Kingdom Come".

[Raycheetah]

Ray, I've read thousands of comic books, how do you think I formed this opinion about "Superhero's" anyway. I started out reading the superhero's Batman, Superman comics but as I grew older they did start to come across as a bit fascist, which is why I started reading things like V for Vendetta, Watchmen, Hellblazer, Sin City, The Sandman etc. If you want to read a excellent superhero story then I highly recomend "Kingdom Come".

Perhapps, but I still have no clue how you formed that opinion, notwithstanding your having read all those comics. What, specifically, comes across from the mainstream supers that strikes you as fascistic? Aside, of course, from any such whose characterization deliberately (The Punisher, Nick Fury, mebbe Iron Man) incorporates that element. I think it would be useful to know what you mean when you say "fascist," to start with, so I can understand to what it is you are referring.

=^[.]^=

[RaiderDave2112]

Perhapps, but I still have no clue how you formed that opinion, notwithstanding your having read all those comics. What, specifically, comes across from the mainstream supers that strikes you as fascistic? Aside, of course, from any such whose characterization deliberately (The Punisher, Nick Fury, mebbe Iron Man) incorporates that element. I think it would be useful to know what you mean when you say "fascist," to start with, so I can understand to what it is you are referring.

=^[.]^=

I am using the term facist in the context of Batman and Superman thinking they are above the law and they can enforce their rules on society anyway they see fit.

Right okay then, Batman I became tired of him beating up the bad guys all the time, lets face in any court room all the villian has to say is that the confession was beaten out off me and batman said that if I told he was going to kill me, he would walk, Batman and Superman seem to ignore the rule of law when it gets in the way of doling out their brand of "justice" How many times have they just jumped on villians and begain kicking ass, they forget that the courts and police represent the people not them, and how many times have they referred to their respective cities as "Theirs" the only other people who do that are crime bosses.

A good take on this is Top Ten by Alan Moore, you should read it.

This post has been edited by RaiderDave2112: Jul 29 2008, 07:08 AM

[Raycheetah]

I am using the term facist in the context of Batman and Superman thinking they are above the law and they can enforce their rules on society anyway they see fit.

Right okay then, Batman I became tired of him beating up the bad guys all the time, lets face in any court room all the villian has to say is that the confession was beaten out off me and batman said that if I told he was going to kill me, he would walk, Batman and Superman seem to ignore the rule of law when it gets in the way of doling out their brand of "justice" How many times have they just jumped on villians and begain kicking ass, they forget that the courts and police represent the people not them, and how many times have they referred to their respective cities as "Theirs" the only other people who do that are crime bosses.

A good take on this is Top Ten by Alan Moore, you should read it.

Ah. So, the core trope of the superhero as vigilante is what you find objectionable. That still doesn't provide me with your definition of fascistic, as applies to these characters and their actions. Certainly, they embody certain male aggression fantasies and do not accurately reflect real world jurisprudence, even where the mechanism for citizen's arrest is concerned. In the real world, their activities would be decried as unlawful and they would be subject to legal sanction.

I still want to know what that has to do with fascism.

='[.]'=

[RaiderDave2112]

Ah. So, the core trope of the superhero as vigilante is what you find objectionable. That still doesn't provide me with your definition of fascistic, as applies to these characters and their actions. Certainly, they embody certain male aggression fantasies and do not accurately reflect real world jurisprudence, even where the mechanism for citizen's arrest is concerned. In the real world, their activities would be decried as unlawful and they would be subject to legal sanction.

Not so much objectionable as unbelievable, it's just that in the comics there was never any follow up with these villians, they just seemed to have the snot kicked out of them by the hero and then the police would show up and say what a fine job they had done, and the villian was going away for a long time this time, it got to the point where I was saying to the comic that no he wasn't you jackass he was just going to complain to his attorney about the treatment he had recieved and then he was going to walk, I realised that I had to look for different comics to get my enertainment from the medium, which I found with different titles a few of which I have already mentioned.

I still want to know what that has to do with fascism.

I know I'm not using the term correctly as I stated in my previous post, I see them as putting themselves above the law and seeming to enforce the rule of "Do as I say, not as I do". I don't know how I can make it any clearer than that.


If you don't mind which comics do you read?

[Raycheetah]

Not so much objectionable as unbelievable, it's just that in the comics there was never any follow up with these villians, they just seemed to have the snot kicked out of them by the hero and then the police would show up and say what a fine job they had done, and the villian was going away for a long time this time, it got to the point where I was saying to the comic that no he wasn't you jackass he was just going to complain to his attorney about the treatment he had recieved and then he was going to walk, I realised that I had to look for different comics to get my enertainment from the medium, which I found with different titles a few of which I have already mentioned.
I know I'm not using the term correctly as I stated in my previous post, I see them as putting themselves above the law and seeming to enforce the rule of "Do as I say, not as I do". I don't know how I can make it any clearer than that.
If you don't mind which comics do you read?

So, it sounds like the unreality of the genre, with its oversimplification, is where the problem lies. However, with the sorts of exceptions which you cited (yes, I have read Alan Moore's work), that is what superhero comics tend to be, unless it is desired to have a story focus on the rather less exciting (to those looking for 4-color mayhem) courtroom drama. Much of TV police drama is guilty of some of the same oversights, albeit on a less grand scale. But Batman is and has always been a vigilante, and if he stopped being that, he'd stop being Batman, and the readers who are still satisfied with the 70-year status quo would stop reading.

I used to read all sorts of comics, Marvel, DC, indies... It's been a long time since I've been more than tangentially aware of what goes on in the comics, but what surprises me is how much I still remember, and more than that, how little has actually changed when I do stick my nose into the arena for a peek.

At any rate, supers are what they are, simplistic and unrealistic (but then, what should we expect from characters who fly, bounce bullets, and otherwise break the laws of physics?), which is why works like The Watchmen can be refreshing.

=^[.]^=

[RaiderDave2112]

The simple answer is that I just grew out of reading superhero comics, for me I wasn't getting enough from the superhero comics I was reading, and went looking elsewhere for deeper storylines and charaterisation.

[larocque6689]

Right on, RaiderDave!

My concept of SuperHeroes is pretty close to Pat Mill's conception of them in Marshall Law. "I hunt Heroes. Haven't found any." That miniseries was just a scream. Mills was a co-creator of a certain fascist Law Enforcer/ Judge over in the UK. I was in full-on anti-Comic book mode when I picked those up, though, and going through a withdrawal from the wave of Grim 'n' Gritty books that were launched in the wake of Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen.

The original Superman was a New Deal Democrat.

[Raycheetah]

An interesting article on the "real" inspiration for Superman:

The crime that created Superman: Did fatal robbery spawn Man of Steel?

"Think about it. Your father dies in a robbery, and you invent a bulletproof man." Author Brad Meltzer, on the origins of Superman.

By David Colton, USA TODAY
On the night of June 2, 1932, the world's first superhero was born — not on the mythical planet of Krypton but from a little-known tragedy on the streets of Cleveland.

It was Thursday night, about 8:10 p.m., and Mitchell Siegel, a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania, was in his secondhand clothing store on the near East Side. According to a police report, three men entered. One asked to see a suit of clothes and walked out without paying for it. In the commotion of the robbery, Siegel, 60, fell to the ground and died.

The police report mentions a gunshot being heard. But the coroner, the police and Siegel's wife said Siegel died of a heart attack. No one was ever arrested.

What happened next has exploded some of the longest-held beliefs about the origins of Superman and the two teenage boys, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who invented America's best-known comic-book hero.

Past accounts suggest Siegel and Shuster, both 17, awkward and unpopular in high school, invented the meek Clark Kent and his powerful alter-ego, Superman, to attract girls and rise above their humble Cleveland beginnings.

But now it appears that the origin might have been more profound — that it was the death of Jerry Siegel's father that pushed the devastated teen to come up with the idea of a "Superman" to right all wrongs.

"In 50 years of interviews, Jerry Siegel never once mentioned that his father died in a robbery," says Brad Meltzer, a best-selling author whose novel, The Book of Lies, due Sept. 2, links the Siegel murder to a biblical conspiracy plot.

"But think about it," Meltzer says. "Your father dies in a robbery, and you invent a bulletproof man who becomes the world's greatest hero. I'm sorry, but there's a story there."

The first 'Superman'

The evidence for such a psychological underpinning is strong.

It was just a year after Mitchell Siegel's death, 1933, that writer Siegel and artist Shuster came up with "The Superman," a grim, flying avenger they tried to sell to newspaper syndicates and publishers for five years. In the oldest surviving artwork, this early Superman, whom they call "the most astounding fiction character of all time," flies to the rescue of a man who is being held up by a masked robber.

Was it Jerry's alter-ego flying to rescue his helpless father?

"America did not get Superman from our greatest legends, but because a boy lost his father," Meltzer says. "Superman came not out of our strength but out of our vulnerability."

The more Meltzer looked, the more intriguing things became. A letter published in The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer on June 3, 1932, the day after the robbery, denounces the need for vigilantes in the harsh days of the Depression. The letter is signed by an A.L. Luther.

"Is that where (Superman foe) Lex Luthor came from?" Meltzer says. "I almost had a heart attack right there. I thought, 'You have to be kidding me!' "

In search of answers

Meltzer was not the only one looking. Comic-book historian Gerard Jones first disclosed the fact of the robbery in 2004 for his book, Men of Tomorrow, after interviews with Siegel's cousins.

"It had to have an effect," Jones says. "Superman's invulnerability to bullets, loss of family, destruction of his homeland — all seem to overlap with Jerry's personal experience. There's a connection there: the loss of a dad as a source for Superman."

Although they never went public, the father's side of the family was told for decades that the elder Siegel had been shot in the robbery. That's the dramatic angle Meltzer takes in his conspiracy novel. Siegel was shot twice in the chest at his store, he writes, and "a puddle of blood seeped toward the door."

In an afterword to his work of fiction, Meltzer concedes that the facts remain murky. In an interview, Meltzer said that some in the family were told "since they were little kids" that Siegel died by gunfire. Others were told he had a heart attack. "It was probably a heart attack," Meltzer said.

And yet Meltzer is not ready to embrace either answer as final.

More definitive is Marc Tyler Nobleman, author with artist Ross MacDonald of this year's illustrated book Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman, who concludes that Mitchell Siegel died of a heart attack during the robbery. The coroner, he notes, reported "no wounds" on Siegel's body, and the gunshot might not have been related to the robbery.

"I spent a long time going after this," Nobleman says. "I believe I have the first accurate account. Jerry's father wasn't shot and robbed. He had a heart attack during a robbery."

A fortune sold for $130

The rest of the saga of Siegel and Shuster is better known, but no less tragic. It wasn't until 1938 that the familiar red-and-blue-garbed Superman appeared on the cover of Action Comics No. 1. The creators got a check for $130. In return, DC Comics acquired rights to the character "forever."

Siegel and Shuster bristled as Superman grew in popularity — on radio, in wartime cartoons and serials in the 1940s. They went to court several times, winning settlements but never rights to the character. By the 1970s, Siegel had been working as a mail clerk for $7,000 a year, and Shuster was almost blind.

"A shameful legacy," says Blake Bell, author of The World of Steve Ditko, a biography of the co-creator of Spider-Man. Comic-book creators "had no pensions, no contracts, no health benefits, and companies didn't even pay for the artists' supplies. When these artists tried to negotiate greater rights for themselves, they were either collectively cast out or made false promises."

After hearing that Warner Bros. had paid $3 million for the rights to make Superman the Movie in 1975, Siegel and Shuster tried again to reap some benefits. This time, though, they had help from the artistic community and from fans who knew their work.

In a landmark settlement, DC Comics agreed to pay the two men $20,000 a year for life. More important, friends say, DC agreed to add "Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster" on all printed and filmed material in the future.

"Having their names listed as Superman's creators was the biggest victory of all," says Steve Younis, editor of SupermanHomepage.com. "It's worth more than any kind of monetary reimbursement."

The man who helped negotiate the Siegel and Shuster deal was artist Jerry Robinson, who co-created The Joker in 1939 but who received little recognition for decades. (He's now a creative consultant for DC Comics in the wake of The Dark Knight film.)

Robinson says he threw a party in his Manhattan apartment when the Siegel and Shuster settlement was announced.

"Kurt Vonnegut, Jules Pfeiffer, Will Eisner, Eli Wallach and his wife were there," Robinson, 86, says. "Walter Cronkite came on, and they showed Superman flying, and he described what had happened. At the end, he said, 'Another triumph for truth, justice and the American way.'

"We opened Champagne. Jerry and Joe were there, and it was a very emotional moment. There wasn't a dry eye in the place."

The struggle goes on

Michael Uslan, executive producer of the six Batman movies since 1989, including The Dark Knight, says there has been a "sea change" in how corporations view comic books and their creators. "Here you have people in their 80s and 90s seeing their comic-book work being taken seriously," Uslan says. "They are deriving economic benefits now either directly or through consultancies."

Shuster died in 1992 and Siegel in 1996, but their legal battles have been never-ending. In March, a court ruled that Siegel's heirs (wife Joanne and daughter Laura) were entitled to parts of the billion-dollar Superman copyright. Because of the ongoing litigation, neither the families nor DC Comics would comment, not even about Mitchell Siegel's death 76 years ago or its implications.

But in an e-mailed response, the Siegel family did say, "It is gratifying to know people want to know about Jerry Siegel, and that he is getting recognition for his creativity."


In effect, Superman's origin story, as far as his creator is concerned, has much in common with the comic-book origin of Batman.

='[.]'=

[MikeTheC]

Wonder where in Cleveland this took place, seeing as how I'm from that area.

[RaiderDave2112]

An interesting article on the "real" inspiration for Superman:

The crime that created Superman: Did fatal robbery spawn Man of Steel?

"Think about it. Your father dies in a robbery, and you invent a bulletproof man." Author Brad Meltzer, on the origins of Superman.

[snip]
='[.]'=

That's strange, I wonder why he never mentioned it, IMO, it would have made the Superman story more, not so much interesting but poignant.

Another thing what made me leave mainstream comics was the Crossovers, which were a pain in the wallet, It was like I would go into my local comic shop and ask for the latest Batman comic and would see a blurb about the story inside saying part 5 of 25 when I would ask for the other parts it would involve 4 other comics and a 48 page special to start the story, I would end up having to spend 5x the amount just to keep up with one story, and all the superhero titles did it, this along with the fact the superhero's had lost my interet mean that I started to look elsewhere going back to 2000ad an US independents was where I found my interest again.

[Raycheetah]

Why Marvel is better than DC comics.

A webcomic.

=^[.]^=

[RaiderDave2112]

Any of you guys and gals read the comics The Authority or Planetary as they are good take on the Superhero tale

[RaiderDave2112]

Ray,

I thought I would bring this thread back to life.

A short story you might be interested in, as it is about superheroes.

Coastal City by Kim Newman,

its in a couple of compilation books The Time Out Book Of New York Short Stories and Kim Newman's own short story collection Unforgivable Stories