Improving Superman #701
July 16th, 2010 by Gavok | Tags: irredeemable, jms, ruin the moment, supermanThese days, Superman is strolling through the country, acting like a smarmy douche to most people he comes across. I think it has something to do with how people slip in the shower and Superman’s not there to help them because he’s too busy making sure monsters from the planet Apokalips aren’t enslaving all existence. You know, minor, self-serving stuff like that. So when a random citizen asks him about why he’s essentially focusing on saving people from slipping in the shower and letting the cosmic threats go unchecked, he quotes Henry David Thoreau for the sake of saying, “Because I’m Superman. You go deal with Doomsday, Poindexter.”
Not good enough, I say.
“What’s that mean? Hey! I asked you a question! What does that mean?”
That guy’s lucky, though. Imagine if he tried the same badgering on the Plutonian.
Yikes.
Similar Posts:
- Can Superman lie to Lois Lane and still be Superman?
- Comics That Should Be, But Shan’t Be
- Soooooooopergirl
- Black History Month 01: A Man Is Just A Man
- Pete Woods and Pete Milligan
Have you no decency? This is a very serious story by J. Michael Straczynski. It makes reference to Ghandi and John Lennon, even.
How can you hate Ghandi? The terrorists have won.
Emo Superman makes the baby Jesus cry. I sure hope that KINGDOM COME Superman comes and kicks some sense into him.
Hahahaha. Oh, Three Doors Down.
That was lovely. My subconscious recognized it before I did and started reading it in time with the imaginary music.
@Adam Farrar: Glad I wasn’t the only one that caught himself knowing the words and not realizing where it was from
JMS is making Jeph Loeb look good
IS THERE NO LIMIT TO THE DEPTHS OF PERVERSION THE UNIVERSE CAN ENGAGE IN!?
you know, it’s entirely possible that song helped inspire this story.
When I came here to the comments section, that’s when I realised this was shopped – not before.
After “Tune your ear to the frequency of despair and cross-reference by the longitude and latitude of a heart in agony” I will believe he’d come up with anything.
And I hate to be that guy, but JMS totally ripped this plot off from an episode of Deep Space 9. Will he never learn?
Al, that comment about JMS and DS9… is that a joke? You do know the history there, right?
And fuck it, I liked the comic. JMS really seems to get Superman’s roots. There’s some great messages of universal humanitarianism there, and Superman made it clear in the beginning that he WOULDN’T ignore a crisis. He straight up said that he’d fly to the problem, take care of it, and continue where he left off.
The dude lost his planet, friend, and adopted son, AGAIN. Let him take a walk for god’s sake.
I don’t know why but I find myself distracted by the fact that the only guy to have the cojones to ask Superman what the crap he’s doing is walking a poodle.
A poodle with a blue bowtie.
In Philly.
???
@Dane: Yes, that was a joke at JMS’ constant whining that Paramount ripped off Babylon 5 by doing a tv show about a space station – a concept JMS apparently invented – with recurring story threads – also a JMS invention – about war and intolerance and aliens not getting along – also something never done before in a science fiction series in the history of ever.
It’d be funny in an ‘inverting the trope’ kind way if Brian Wood did the same thing and started whining that he already did a 12 issue comic book set in a different city each month that took its cue on settings from readers.
Al, it was more than that. It was that JMS shopped Babylon 5 to Paramount months before and left them the series bible, and then later on there’s this very similar show that now has the benefit of being part of the Star Trek franchise. It was like Paramount was hedging its bets with JMS’s idea and then doing Babylon 5 ANYWAY, which made it an even harder product to survive because it was competing with something so similar. No one is saying JMS invented those themes, but if I was the guy I’d be sore over Paramount too.
The only thing I would like to know… Why is there dutch text in the last picture? “Dat gaat sterven” means “That’s going to die”.
@Dane: Paramount didn’t make both shows, it made DS9: Warner Bros (through subsidiary networks) made Babylon 5.
“Very similar show” is also slightly misleading – there’s a more convincing argument that most similarities are the result of dumb luck at best, and at worst simply shit thrown at the wall of a pretty basic premise: “spacestation, wormhole, recurring aliens”.
I think Peter Jackson also saw this alleged series bible of which you speak – that movie trilogy he made totally ripped off JMS like you wouldn’t believe.
@Boris: Plutonian is a Superman archetype and has the same super hearing. He’s able to hear cries for help 24/7 from all over.
@WillTF – The poodle in the bowtie is there so that we know the guy is a douche who doesn’t deserve an answer from Superman. Otherwise, we might wonder how Superman knows the guy ISN’T out trying to make his community a better place. We don’t know if that guy’s a cop or a firefighter, if he’s a surgeon who just got back from doing pro bono work in Haiti, whatever. But he has a poodle, so he must be a bad person.
Good job, Gavok. That definitely improved the comic. This is best if you are reading it to the rhythm of the song.
Funny stuff about JMS. My guess is Al is right and the ‘series bible’ he left at Paramount was a copy of LOTR with various names crossed out and the ‘sci-fi’ instead of ‘fantasy’ substitution.