taylor swift is a climate criminal.

taylor swift is a climate criminal.

taylor swift is a climate criminal.

taylor swift is a climate criminal.

a new album doesn’t change that.

Any particular thoughts on the all star superman version of Superman ?

I actually plan on doing a substantial All-Star-based series of posts later in the year to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its conclusion and Superman’s 80th in general, but the more I thought about it, the more I figured a more focused, isolated look at this guy himself was worthwhile. Because as much as he’s thought of as the broadest possible encapsulation of the vague principle of Superman-ness - as Morrison basically put it, the Superman you see on cereal boxes given his own miniseries - there’s a lot more to this guy in terms of character than he’s typically given credit for.

Above all, there’s that aura of his as the ultimate Perfect, Good Superman people like to talk about, whether praising it as one of the purest takes on him, or ridiculing it as reductive or naive and suggesting this is just a book about how great he is…which fascinates me, because that’s not how he’s textually framed at all. There’s none of the fawning at his feet and monologuing about he’s the best of all the superheroes that’s so often used to prop him up in the ‘real’ DCU - the whole Daily Planet crew is pretty chill around him, Quintum’s concern over his impending demise is rooted in the practical matter of Earth’s ongoing protection rather than the loss of a shining moral beacon of inspiration for humanity, and even milquetoast easily-stunned Clark’s opinion on him only amounts to “I’m fine with him. He’s always been friendly around the office”; when asked about whether or not Superman’s presence on Earth alters or undermines his sense of place in the universe, he dismisses it with a simple “Our jobs don’t tend to overlap”. The only characters who recognize Superman as ‘important’ are time-travelers in the know of his ultimate legacy, Luthor whose obsession with him is blatantly a matter of his own insecurities, the inhabitants of Earth-Q who only have him as an ideal, and the spirit of Jor-El in the final chapter who, living outside existence as we know it, can be assumed to be bringing some otherworldly wisdom to bear. By and large, this is a world where while people like and appreciate and look up to Superman, it’s not one where he’s regarded as a transcendent figure while still among us and treated as such. When we think of him as magnificent in this story, it’s not because he’s sold to us as such, but because he does magnificent things.

He hammers out suns to feed his pets before letting them loose into the universe, answers impossible questions and makes life and forgives those seemingly unforgivable. You can tell he’s putting on the beaming Superman smile every now and again (look at his grin when waving at the train station), but throughout the bulk of the book he keeps his sense of calm and understanding about him in even the maddest of circumstances. It’s a demeanor that’s been so perfected and a temperament so natural to him it’s easy to take that as the summation of who he is, a flat if charming tour guide to the strange world around him and the moral lessons it has to impart. But look closer in almost any given issue and you’ll see the heavier, bleaker emotions wrestling their way out. His awkwardness and guilt in the second issue, his jealousy and nervous tenderness in the third, mortal fear the next, simmering rage and resentment after that, cockiness and utter grief, desperation, awe, fear, exhaustion, and on and on. The roiling emotions we see in him when he’s just starting his career aren’t something he grows out of, but integrated healthily into the day-to-day functioning of his adult life (with Clark in particular serving as something of a release valve for his his worst attributes, at least in what might be considered his own estimation).

For the most part.

The one thing he doesn’t quite have under control - the big emotional throughline of the book for him as a character - is that he has completely fucked up his relationship with Lois, and he knows it. She may struggle with accepting Clark as a valid part of him (though she does in #9 when she’s told the truth about the condition, demonstrating that acceptance in #10 by forcing the issue of his mortality), but the love he has for her and always will can’t in this case overcome time forever nipping at his heels. He has any number of deadly ticking clocks hanging over his head at any point in this book, and it seems likely this has always been the case for him given he seems genuinely surprised when Lois actually lays out how creepy his Silver Age identity shenanigans were. He’s been alone in his power and his perceptions and his mission for so long that sometimes he seems to miss some of the nuances of human relationships, not quite getting that selflessly sacrificing all of himself hurts those who care about him as a person rather than a savior, and it’s only with death hanging over him that that side of his life starts to become a priority along with saving the world, contriving a way for Lois to see things as he does - a move that while well-intended doesn’t actually solve the problem the way honesty manages later on. Among many other things, All-Star is a book about Superman finally being run so ragged that he’s forced to get his emotional shit together in time for the finale.

So why the reputation as the perfect guy even among other Supermen? Because for all that, for all his legitimate issues and outright fuck-ups, he squares his shoulders and does the job no matter where it leaves him at the end of the day. He’s got baggage like the rest of us, but he finds mostly effective ways to cope and places to express himself, and when people rely on him he puts his best foot forward and tries to show and be the best of himself, until he’s finally refined into the gold of a legend that leaves behind all those mortal limitations to shine down forever as an idea that people would go on to think of the way we think of Superman, while still forming a bridge to us through coming together with Lois after all to give rise to a line of Superfolks to look after us. He’s not a god in the sense of being a perfect being without flaw, even once he becomes a golden future man who’s given life to dead worlds he still stammers sometimes, but he does the job and he does it with conviction and he does it right, and that in the end was more than enough.