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The second trade back of JMS' Supreme Powers, Powers and Principalities, arrived yesterday via mail, making me a very happy fangirl indeed. As I mentioned some months ago, this is the best take on the "what would superheroes in a 'realistic' world be like?" question I've read since Moore's Watchmen. It's also better than JMS' own Rising Stars with which it shares a few themes (for starters, Rising Stars has this leading character with the initials J.S….), and a brilliant twist on one of the oldest and most basic of comicverse stories, the Superman lore.
Now, I'm no Superman expert, unlike![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
searose. I've seen the Christopher Reeve movies, I've read about three or four comics, I've watched Lois & Clark, and a very few episodes (about four of season 1, and two of season 2) of Smallville. Based on that limited knowledge, it seems to me that Lois & Clark gets the credit of swinging the emphasis from Superman to Clark Kent as the "real" identity, and making Clark more engaging and interesting than Superman to boot. (Whereas Smallville's contribution to the overall myth was the reinvention of Lex Luthor, not something quintessentially new about either Clark Kent or Superman.)
What JMS does with the Superman equivalent, Mark Milton, aka Hyperion, is something else altogether, because, as described in the first volume, that wonderful Kansas background with loving parents and a Norman Rockwell home which formed Clark Kent's character in Supreme Power is a lie, a set-up by the government, so Mark develops into the kind of person they can control. Frank Miller, in Return of the Dark Knight, used the Superman-as-the-tool-of-the-government premise already, but in a manner unsympathetic to Superman. Whereas you can't help but feel sorry for Mark Milton. While understanding why the various American governments did this to him in the first place; another great achievement of Supreme Power is that the military and secret service doesn't consist of moustache-twirling villains. A child with unlimited power is a frightening thought; an adult even more so. Anyway, there is no mild-mannered/tongue-in-cheek reporter identity for Mark, lonely, isolated and growing ever more suspicious of his surroundings as he is. In relation to the Superman myth: this, I'd say, isn't Clark Kent, it's Kal-El. And Kal-El, the alien in a human world, is the aspect JMS explores.
( Cut for length... )
Now, I'm no Superman expert, unlike
searose. I've seen the Christopher Reeve movies, I've read about three or four comics, I've watched Lois & Clark, and a very few episodes (about four of season 1, and two of season 2) of Smallville. Based on that limited knowledge, it seems to me that Lois & Clark gets the credit of swinging the emphasis from Superman to Clark Kent as the "real" identity, and making Clark more engaging and interesting than Superman to boot. (Whereas Smallville's contribution to the overall myth was the reinvention of Lex Luthor, not something quintessentially new about either Clark Kent or Superman.) What JMS does with the Superman equivalent, Mark Milton, aka Hyperion, is something else altogether, because, as described in the first volume, that wonderful Kansas background with loving parents and a Norman Rockwell home which formed Clark Kent's character in Supreme Power is a lie, a set-up by the government, so Mark develops into the kind of person they can control. Frank Miller, in Return of the Dark Knight, used the Superman-as-the-tool-of-the-government premise already, but in a manner unsympathetic to Superman. Whereas you can't help but feel sorry for Mark Milton. While understanding why the various American governments did this to him in the first place; another great achievement of Supreme Power is that the military and secret service doesn't consist of moustache-twirling villains. A child with unlimited power is a frightening thought; an adult even more so. Anyway, there is no mild-mannered/tongue-in-cheek reporter identity for Mark, lonely, isolated and growing ever more suspicious of his surroundings as he is. In relation to the Superman myth: this, I'd say, isn't Clark Kent, it's Kal-El. And Kal-El, the alien in a human world, is the aspect JMS explores.
( Cut for length... )
