#truth justice and the American way | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lightningarmour · 1 year

Text

SUPERMAN: MAN OF TODAY or SUPERMAN: FOR A BETTER TOMORROW

Every 10 years or so they do some kind of retelling of Superman's origin story to reestablish the details of his mythos but updated into the modern day. This is simply a symptom of serialized comic books with 80 years of continuity, sometimes things get old and you need to update them. I'll admit I haven't paid much attention to DC comics since the end of Doomsday Clock, which actually uses Superman's origin as a kind of meta-narrative thing in which the entire DC Universe specifically changes itself around Superman, which I thought was a kind of neat idea, though that event was a let down. So I have no clue when the last time they did a major overhaul or update of Superman's story. They did one during DC Rebirth, There was Superman Earth One, Superman Secret Origin, but my personal favorite is still Superman Birthright because I'm a Mark Waid fanboy. For all I know maybe DC has done a Superman retelling recently and maybe it even does all the things I'm about to suggest, but as far as I'm aware they haven't.

I've been thinking a lot recently about how best to bring Superman into the modern day. To make him feel alive in this current political and cultural moment. Superman recontextualized for the 2020's. A big debate that rears up now and then is whether Superman is relatable, if he's marketable, if audiences want to go see a movie about him. In recent years it's been a lot of hand wringing from DC/WB because they just don't know how to make a Superman movie that people will like! But I think that Superman is almost perfect to meet the moment and really engage in stories that people can connect with.

I was late to find this article about DC changing Superman's motto from "Truth, Justice, and The American Way" to "Truth, Justice, and A Better Tomorrow," but I was instantly in agreement with the message being expressed. Now obviously the article is not doing any in depth political analysis of the concept of "the American dream" and while the material I am brainstorming is intended to be much more overtly political, I don't want to get too bogged down in this with a bunch of like, Marxist analysis of US Imperialism and the role of Liberal Democracy as a facilitator of Bourgeois society and yadda yadda. Suffice it to say for the purpose of this giant rant about Superman I am doing, America is a shithole and has been for basically it's entire history. It's like probably the worst place on Earth, full offense.

I bring this all up because I think that for Superman to really remain relevant in this modern age, he cannot exist as an apolitical character. If you think of the words "truth" and "justice" are those apolitical terms? For many people, myself included, things have been feeling increasingly more and more "political" over the last number of years, and many people who previously could blissfully ignore the world around them are finding it harder to do. The Hitherto history of the world is the history of class struggle, and as the contradictions of capitalism become more and more irreconcilable, greater and greater social and economic issues arise, and people try so hard to confront those issues. Racial Justice, climate justice, social justice. I think that for a character like Superman who we understand to be someone who wants to use his powers for good, for truth, for *justice,* there's no way he can do so without getting involved in the struggle.

I'm already rambling too much, this is supposed to be about Superman, so let's talk about him. Most of this is going to be broad ideas covering various elements of the superman mythos.

SUPERMAN: MAN OF TODAY or SUPERMAN: FOR A BETTER TOMORROW

A young, socially conscious Clark Kent goes on a journey of political awakening, and we see how Superman must grow and adapt to his increased understanding of politics and the way he can affect change in the world. He must develop and evolve tactics for combatting major social issues such as wealth inequality and climate change. We are in a time when there is a growing awareness of the ways in which the working class is exploited by the wealthy & how capitalist industry is primarily responsible for the damage to the environment so the public perception towards billionaires and the like is turning sour. Superman is an immigrant who fights for equality and his most iconic nemesis is a Rich corporate CEO. I feel like it is not too much of a stretch to have him meet this moment.

This is by no means a well constructed story pitch so I have sectioned off the various areas of Superman’s mythos below and my thoughts on how you would incorporate them into a left-wing Superman reboot.

MAN OF THE PEOPLE

If we accept that Superman's space pod lands in the United States of America, and he is raised as a US citizen, I think it is necessary to reevaluate his relationship with the nation. I think the only way to do justice to the character is to write him from a left wing perspective. Social Justice Superman, if you like. I will take a moment to recommend the recent series IMMORTAL HULK written by Al Ewing. It does a lot of things with the Hulk that I am basically saying should be done with Superman. Recontextualizing the character in a modern framework. In it, the Hulk becomes a kind of eco-warrior who wages a terror campaign against an oil company and like, protects protesters from being shot by the police. Obviously no art made under an American publisher is going to be truly revolutionary but it can still say *something.*

Now Superman doesn't necessarily have to become a terrorist, but this is the kind of shit I want to see. Clark Kent, raised by farmers. Working class. Salt of the Earth. You adjust his background somewhat so that he has a strong influence of labor solidarity in his upbringing. Maybe the Kents are part of a farming co-op? Maybe they had to sell the farm because they were being squeezed out by some corporate agrobusiness, and Pa Kent goes to work in a factory and tries to Unionize his workplace and gets bumped off, or maybe he dies on the job and Ma Kent then becomes a labor organizer or etc. There are many ways of going about this. When Clark grows up and decides he wants to be a journalist, he's interested in being a labor reporter, or doing human interest stories. Writing about social issues. Poverty, LGBTQ rights, racial discrimination, migrant rights, so on and so forth. If this were ever a story that got published it would have to be non-canon so we can assume this all is a world that can be changed by Superman's actions. The story could start out with Clark being a plucky socdem kind of self described "progressive" leftist, but as he learns more and shifts further down the line until he's a full on Marxist Leninist. You see him struggle along the way with how he can best use his powers to try and help and whether it is ultimately necessary for him to employ violence and lead the workers of the world in a proletariat revolution and yadda yadda.

A scene that has been running through my mind is something along the lines of: Lexcorp employees are trying to unionize, but Luthor calls in the cops to bust up their drive, or maybe it's a full on walk-out, whatever. Superman sees these workers being beaten by the police and so he flies down and joins the picket line, standing shoulder to shoulder with striking workers, almost daring the cops to fuck with him. Then later you have Lois Lane, labor reporter, typing up a piece about how Superman's presence at the picket line ultimately undermines the workers power which is derived from withholding their labor, not simply by being strong and able to shoot lasers to intimidate their way to victory, and Clark is left feeling confused and kind of embarrassed. He's coming to terms with how he can use his powers as a force for good in the world without invalidating the class struggle that he believes in.

I find it funny to think about Superman engaging in leftist twitter discourse. Like, in the course of his superheroics, maybe he stops an armed robbery or some kind of small scale, but still potentially deadly crime. The perpetrator ultimately ends up being arrested & Superman sees a bunch of posts online calling him a tool of the carceral system, claiming that he's basically nothing but a cop, etc. So he starts like, engaging with people earnestly. Like "Hey yeah it's me @therealSuperman I'm sorry that I am contributing to the further subjugation of impoverished people to the unjust prison system, I'm really just trying to help out however I can, does anyone have any advice on how I could better handle these kind of incidents in the future?" But then he is just like, utterly overwhelmed by responses and realizes that very few people have actual actionable advice for him that doesn't involve him waging literal war on the United States.

I am picturing Superman having a youtube channel where he addresses things that people yell or tweet at him like "hey superman why don't you end world hunger if you're so powerful!" and he does like a response video explaining the like, historical and material reasons why world hunger is a thing and that it's not just as simple as flying a giant bag of hamburgers to the third world and tells his followers to read How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.

CLARK KENT: MILD MANNERED REPORTER

A common element in a lot of Superman retellings is the Daily Planet struggling to survive in the internet age which I think has been fairly overdone by now, and doesn't really reflect the current state of like, major American newspapers. The whole "Internet is killing print media" thing doesn't really apply to the big publications like NYT or whatever and we are assuming the Daily Planet is like, one of the biggest papers in the country so they're doing fine. The difference is that Lois & Clark wouldn't be on-staff there. They met while both applying at the Planet, but neither landed a job. They'd probably work freelance at best, and I'm picturing them maybe operating their own like, independent left-wing substack blog or podcast or whatever, & obviously through being superman Clark is able to get them good scoops and they break some decent stories and get their work featured in the Planet from time to time. Jimmy Olsen is the Daily Planet's social media manager, but moonlights as Lois' producer on her podcast.

ORIGINS

I've already touched a bit on the background with the Kents, the farm, etc. Those are the things that are most important to who Clark is as a person. His upbringing. See, Superman's personality and mannerisms and whatnot are all things that can vary from writer to writer, actor to actor. A character who has existed for 80 years will have been interpreted differently. But the truth and justice, the ideal, the values. Those are the things that inform the character. You start with those and work backwards. We know what Superman believes, now what led him to those beliefs. So the important part is in the Kents, in Smallville, in how his life has developed. Krypton is less important to *who* he is, but has everything to do with *why* he is. Krypton. The Doomed planet. Doomed how? It doesn't matter, really. It's been done a dozen different ways. Sometimes it's the sun exploding, sometimes the planet blows up? Sometimes it's destroyed by war, sometimes it's a natural disaster. The Planet's core is unstable or some shit. Ultimately it doesn't matter WHY the planet is destroyed, only that it has to be so that Jor-El can put his baby in a rocket and fire his ass into space.

I think that, thematically it would make sense if the destruction of Krypton was ecological in nature. You recontextualize Kryptonite as an energy source. Highly unstable, dangerously radioactive, that sort of thing. Kryptonian society devastated their planet to mine deeper and deeper for more kryptonite, the waste from which was toxic to the people and planet. Extinction events occurred. Perhaps Kryptonite is volatile, and some kind of mining accident triggered a chain reaction that caused an enormous geological fracturing that split the planet into pieces or some shit. Could be even Phantom Zone related. Or that at least leaves a door open for later Kryptonian survivors to appear. Like in the dying gasps of the planet, people were evacuated to the Phantom Zone. Could lead to possible Zod, Mon-El, etc.

However it happens, it has to be predominantly man-made. It must be understood in no uncertain terms that the destruction of Krypton was brought on by the people and their unsustainable resource extraction. This information is, as usual sent with baby Kal-El in his space pod so he knows where he comes from and can keep the legacy of their race alive. It could serve as an extra super special motivation that makes both Clark and the Kents far more conscious and sensitive to climate change, and maybe you could even work in some little details about how the Kent farm is operated as sustainably as possible & yadda yadda. Either way it leads to Clark being passionate about climate change from a young age and as he gets older and sees more & more how bad the world is getting it drives him to want to use his powers to help fix it all.

ANTAGONISTS

LEX LUTHOR

Lex Luthor is a challenge because he is a character that can only reinforce the mythical figure of the genius-billionaire-inventor-industrialist who is so rich and powerful because he is just so darned smart and developed groundbreaking technology on his own that clearly deserves to be rewarded with riches. So while this is comics and you can certainly have super-intelligent people as like, a thing that exists, I would want to recontextualize Lex Luthor's villainy as inherently bourgeoisie. By that I mean everything he does that is "evil" should have material motivations. He does not want cartoonish things like "world domination" or whatever, at least if he did it would be more in the sense that he wants to dominate the global market to increase his own wealth and influence, and whatnot. It should be made explicit that Luthor comes from money, generational wealth, and that the reason he continues to get richer is through the exploitation of the working class and natural resources. The kinds of crimes he commits would largely be the kinds of crimes that real life capitalists commit, but with some like, killer robots and whatever thrown in for flavor.

Lex Luthor should be the stand-in for the Bezos and Musks of the world, representing the insidious ways that the bourgeois destroy people and the world for their own enrichment. Rather than being the kind of mad scientist schemer he typically is, Lex should be just a cold, bloodless machine of capital and his "villainy" is represented in the way he uses capital to exploit people, resources and the media. Less maniacal genius, and more ego driven and relentless because he has never had to face real hardship in his entire life. He's had the money that he's basically been able to get everything he wants and Superman represents a threat to him because he is the first obstacle Lex has ever faced that he cannot simply buy a solution to. This gets wrapped in with the typical xenophobic angle that is common in portrayals of Luthor. He hates Superman for being powerful in a way that Lex can never be, and finds it repulsive, and uses Superman being an alien as the object of his hatred. By making all of Lex's wealth and privilege much more pronounced and explicit, you get the nice little irony of Lex hating superman because having all that power must make it so easy for him, not like, me, a Human who has to strive and struggle to succeed, but of course Lex would never reflect on the self and see that his wealth makes him to an average person what Superman is to him.

CYBORG SUPERMAN Hank Henshaw is a hot, young charismatic astronaut, and he is also the poster-boy for the commercial spaceflight department of Lexcorp. (SpaceLeX)(lol) He is piloting a new Lexcorp rocket launch and due to cost-cutting measures, something fucks up and Superman has to save the day. In the whole catastrophe, Henshaw is still seriously injured. He is like missing an arm and an eye and whatever. Maybe it's actually not like, *that* bad initially even, but either way it ends his space career. That coupled with Lois & Clark doing an investigation into the faulty spacecraft which results in Lexcorp losing it's space contracts, Henshaw's reputation is also ruined. He blames it all on Superman, and Luthor says well if you want to fly again, maybe I can help you out. He augments Hank's body with cybernetics, possibly needing to like, remove more parts of his body than he was even missing before in order to fit all the tech in there, so like, because of his thirst for revenge, he is willing to sacrifice MORE of what he thinks made him human in the first place for the sake of being powerful enough to destroy superman.

So Henshaw is now a cyborg and Lex outfuts him in a rip-off costume and presents him as like, the Lexcorp brand Superman. Superman isn't like, a legal citizen or whatever, so it's not like he can trademark his S symbol or sue for infringement or whatever. So Lex very specifically dresses him to look like superman but uses him as basically private security and as like a publicity tool. Eventually that'll go tits up when Hank loses his shit and kills a bunch of people & all that stuff.

MR. MXYSPTLK Now honestly I don't think you really even need to change him up because being a 5th dimensional trickster genie or whatever is just a premise that can work for any tone. But I recently re-read the Jasper's Warp arc of Captain Britain by Alan Moore and I thought wouldn't it be interesting to kind of do a twist on Mxysptlk where he initially appears in the story as just a regular looking guy. He's a politician who is on a kind of Anti-Superman crusade, and as the story goes on it becomes clearer gradually that this guy is manipulating things on more than just a political level but he is actually changing reality too. There would be an eventual reveal where he transforms into the little gremlin with the hat that he normally is, and when Superman asks why he did it, he just kind of laughs and says because he was bored or whatever.

MAXWELL LORD Not traditionally a Superman exclusive villain, but I figure a rich entrepreneur who wants to use his money to like, buy his own personal superhero team and also he can mind control people? Seems like an easy villain to work with.

CREEPER Once again not traditionally a Superman villain, but thinking about him from a different angle, Creeper would be more of an antagonist to Superman as Jack Ryder than as Creeper. Part of all of my ideas is that Lexcorp would be the parent company for some kind of FOX News style media outlet that exists entirely to launder Lex Luthor's image and shift the overton window in America so that rich fucks like him can influence reactionary policies. So Jack Ryder exists as a kind of Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity figure in this version of Metropolis and his number one goal is to make people hate Superman. Any fucking outlandish bullshit accusation he can make against Superman he will. He could also serve as like, the antithesis to Clark Kent as the upstanding journalist with integrity! Ryder is the like, dark side of the news and holds a candle to how it is a tool of the bourgeoisie to control the working class. I can see Jack Ryder like, going on tv and making salacious claims that Lois is whoring herself out to Superman for interviews and shit.

RANDOM PLOTLINES AND STUFF Now all of this is incredibly loose brainstorming, it's not like I am sending this as a pitch to DC comics or anything, so I don't know if this would all theoretically be part of one ongoing story or like, chapters of a limited series or whatever so this is all just random fluff to make me feel like this version of superman could exist.

Lex Luthor is strong arming the Metropolis city council to give him the permits to transform Metropolis into a Smart City and Lois and Clark have to dig into the corruption in city hall as well as the unethical business practices involved in the Lex city project, surveiling residents and harvesting their data and blah blah blah. Then somewhere along the line Superman has to punch a robot or something.

Facing greater scrutiny for the role of corporations in causing and accelerating the climate crisis, Lexcorp releases data that suggests , based on his approximate age, that global average temperature has increased every year since Superman first arrived on Earth, and suggest that since his powers are the result of absorbing solar radiation that it is in fact Superman who is drawing more heat from the sun into earth's atmosphere or some shit, and the media starts a campaign of demanding that Superman leave Earth. There's a hashtag. Superman decides to step away from the spotlight for a bit while the bad press is on him and it's up to Lois & Clark to disprove Lexcorp's claims

Superman defends an all-ages Drag show. Superman Disrupts a proud boys rally. Superman vandalizes a US Senator’s car or other property after the senator refuses to pass a social services bill Superman sets fire to a KKK clubhouse May add more as I come up with them.

So yeah, I dunno. I have just had this all on the brain and needed to get this all expelled out of my head or I wouldn't be able to sleep. DC, feel free to DM me.

10 notes · View notes