Oscar Wilde once said memoirs were written for two reasons – self justification and revenge. He might have added therapy while he was at it, had he been living in a post Freudian age. Regardless on whether the people in question are interesting in themselves, there are not that many compelling autobiographies (telling your own life is messy in a way fiction isn’t; not coincidentally, Dickens only wrote fragments of straightforward autobiography, didn’t finish them and wrote David Copperfield instead), and/or if the it’s one of your average celebrity memoir written and standardized by a ghost writer.

When last year I heard that JMS would be publishing his autobiography, I was interested because Babylon 5 remains one of the most important and beloved things in my life of imagination and fannishness, and I liked and/or admired in varying degrees many other of his works – a lot of his Spider-Man run, the ill-fated Crusade, Changeling I thought was impressive, Supreme Powers for the first three volumes fascinating, and Sense8, of which he’s one of the three „parents“ (along with the Wachowskis) was something I got really fond of. Also he’s a writer with strong opinions, so no danger of standardized ghost written blandness. About his personal life, I didn’t know anything, so I had no expectations in terms of what kind of story he’d tell. In the lead up to the publication, which happened yesterday/today (depending on your time zone), I gathered he’d had what is euphemistically known as a „tough childhood“, and being a B5 fan, I knew about the various production travails (Did Paramount pinch the concept for DS9? Controversy, Michael O’Hare’s departure and the reasons, last minute grant of a fifth season and so forth). But that was about it.

( Spoilers suspect JMS of being a Stephen King character )

In conclusion: dark story compellingly told. Not just for fans. But definitely not if you’re easily triggered. (Honestly, how that man ever made it out of childhood coherent, I don’t know.)

My inner mule balking at assumed wisdom, fannish consensus and my inner rooter for the fannish underdog kicked in with a vengeance yesterday. You know, I hadn't looked forward to the planned Superman & Batman film, since I had severe ideological and storytelling problems with Man of Steel, though I liked the cast, and basically thought The Dark Knight Rises was rubbish, except for Selina/Catwoman, who was fabulous. Since the production team behind both would also be responsible for the proposed Batman & Superman thing, I was (and still am) suspecting exactly the same problems that annoyed me in the former two films in the future effort. Also, hearing Frank Miller's name thrown about does not inspire confidence.

However. The near universal reaction to the casting of Ben Afflek made me decide at once that come what may, I will see this film in the cinema instead of waiting for an accidental tv viewing, as I was intending to. Because good lord, you'd think they'd cast Tony Blair. Or Mel Gibson. Personal feelings about Ben Afflek: never saw Daredevil or Gigi which I take it are the basis for Afflek loathing, however liked him as an actor in Shakespeare in Love (where he had a blast as Ned Alleyn) and more importantly in Hollywoodland where he played George Reeves. (I also very much like him as a director, but that's irrelevant as to the casting, I know.) Neither performance would put him on my "best current actors" list, but they were enough to give me positive feelings about his abilities. Now given the scripts for both Man of Steel and The Dark Knight Rises, I don't think the Batman/Bruce Wayne this particular production team writes will someone I can be fond of. But then again, he just might, because as I said: the more comments like "The thought of Ben Afflek as Batman makes me throw up a little in my mouth" I read, the more I'm starting to root for Afflek!Batman. Not just because of my inner mule but because I just don't see what Ben Afflek has done to deserve that kind of animosity. He was in a few turkeys a decade ago and also had the tabloids after him and his then girlfriend. This is true about how many actors? I mean, have you seen, say, Michael Caine's resumé? Sean Connery's? On the other hand, Afflek also acted in a couple of enjoyable films, produced some highly watchable, interesting films as a director, he can write scripts, his current marriage and family seems to leave the tabloids endlessly frustrated by being a non-scandal, and he never, whether he was popular or disliked, used his status du jour as an excuse to be an ass to people, let alone violent (which sadly still makes him an exception among celebreties). This makes me like him or at least his public persona, since I don't know the man, more than I liked most incarnations of Bruce Wayne/Batman in any medium, to tell you the truth.

Lastly: the award for best reaction to the Afflek casting goes to Kevin Smith, though. Who, if you recall, put Ben Afflek & Matt Damon in a couple of his films and upon hearing the news graced us with this quote: "Do you know what that means? I've seen Batman naked!"

So, next month, there will be a new Superman movie. The first trailer of which made me fear the worst with its GRIMDARK aura and Pa Kent seemingly suggesting his son should have let people die rather than show his powers, the second was better, putting more emphasis on hope, and also, it had Lois Lane, and the third has that advantage as well but still seems to go for a lot of Wagnerian pathos, not that surprising given we're talking about Zack Snyder as director and Christopher Nolan as producer. Which, um. Is not exactly how I like my Superman story told, with one particular exception.

Back in the 90s, when I first started to get into superheroes, Superman was the one who took a regular beating in discussions as the one who's boring, impossible to update because he's good and not ambiguous, only palpable in combination with someone who is ambiguous, like Batman, and what not. I can't say I had strong feelings on the subject - I had seen the first three Chistopher Reeve films in the 70s and 80s, but only once each, with no more emotional echo than mild interest. I had also read The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller (aka the first one to feature Miller's Superman-is-a-tool-for-the-establishment interpretation). However, then came the tv show Lois & Clark, and lo and behold, affection was ignited. Looking back, not least because of one significant change Lois & Clark made in comparison to the Richard Donner films and also what bits and pieces of comics I'd read. While keeping the 40s screwball comedy set up of Clark Kent competing against himself-as-Superman for Lois' affections, it jettisoned the idea of Lois disdaining Clark while adoring Superman in favour of a narrative where while Lois initial' reaction to Clark is irritation (and initial reaction to Superman is being wowed), the two become (bickering) best friends and partners (as journalists) independent from Lois' Superman crush (and flirtations with other guys). In fact, looking back, Lois & Clark is perhaps the most successfull tv story with a falling-in-love-with-your-best-friend arc, not least because it shows us the the two of them becoming friends first. Lois and Clark sitting on the floor of her apartment eating pizza and talking their ears off is one of the images from the show that sticks with me and sums up the type of relationship they have.

Now, if Dean Cain's character is firmly anchored on the "Clark Kent is real, Superman is the mask" side of the interpretation (and also very unangsty; he's got no issues with being adopted or being an alien, and while he is in love with Lois before she's in love with him, he's not pining or stalking), this is, in fact, not the only only Superman interpretation which really managed to impress me and capture my fannish affections. And the other one which did is exactly on the opposite end of the spectrum, it's extremely dark and yet utterly plausible at the same time. Though the name Superman is not used at all, because we're talking about JMS' short lived Supreme Powers series which used some half forgotten Marvel characters which were transparent takes on the Justice League and rebooted them. The Superman character in Supreme Powers, Mark Milton/Hyperion, is basically the best take I can imagine if you really want to go for hardcore angst and a dark interpretion of "what would really happen if a superpowered alien baby crashlanded on Earth. He's found by a kindly couple, alright. Who keep him for all of a few hours before the goverment - who of course have registered the vessel he came in - take him. And the "kindly couple" who actually raises him in a Norman Rockwell idyll are goverment agents supervised on tv all the time, with the idyll taking place in a confined environment. (The emotional horror there for all parties is considerable. Because raising a toddler who could pulverize you with a look - not because he means to, as an accident in the course of a childish tantrum - is deeply scary, and so you understand why the agents who are Mark's "parents" are too afraid of him to love him, and are faking it all the time, which in turn when makes for a horrible truth waiting to be realised as Mark grows up.) Mark absorbs all-American-values and the idea that it's his duty to save the world not because he grows up in Kansas but because he's brainwashed and deliberately indoctrinated on a daily basis. Not just so he'll end up as the perfect goverment weapon but because - and this is important, as it makes things not black and white but complicated - the idea of a child, and later an adult of nearly unlimited powers is frightening, and so the generals arguing for this program aren't evil supervillains (though you can call them cold-blooded bastards), they have a point.

In the course of the series, Mark finds out his entire life was made up of lies, tries to quit working for the goverment, with the result that due to a calculated smear campaign, he goes from being the beloved superhero Hyperion to an evil Alien in the public's eye, and finally gets a team of other meta humans sent after him, survives various assassination attempts and finally arrives at the conclusion that beneficent dictatorship (of himself) is the only way to go; in short, the generals have created exactly the nightmare they were afraid of (not for nothing does JMS use quotes from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as mottos for individual chapters). It's a pretty relentless tragedy, very compellingly written. (The Supreme Powers series then peters out in various spin-offs, but the first two trade volumes plus the Hyperion miniseries really are great storytelling.) It's also the ultimate in Superman-as-Alien-with-a-capital-A interpretation. (Also it probably says something about pop culture's response to the present that Superman for the longest time was the quintessential American dream - the stranger who arrives as a child and loves his country/planet of adoption wholehearteadly - and the closer we get to the present becomes the American nightmare - immigrant child ends up danger precisely because he was distrusted and contained from the start.) So yes - I'm able to go with that end of the spectrum, too.

However, based on the trailers and, um, the repertoire of the people involved, in seems to me the latest film might want to have the angst without thinking through the whys, wherefores and logical consequences. Or rather: do that annoying thing Nolan's Batman movies did where they seem to question the superhero premise but do really just the opposite. I.e. the problem isn't that the citizens of Gotham idolize the late Harvey Dent, it's that they don't idolize Batman, and once they do, the idolizing is just fine. So if Man of Steel is about how everyone responds paranoid to the idea of a superpowered alien but then once he's proven he's really a good guy everything is fine, well, that strikes me as a somewhat hollow compromise between the two different extremes of how you can tell this story.

Also: I'm about the 4045664th person to observe on this, I know, but one reason why the Marvel movies so far by and large are more enjoyable than their DC counterparts to me is that for all that Marvel delivers the angst, too, their heroes get to enjoy their superpowers as well. Now Batman being Batman, it's understandable that we don't have Bruce Wayne geeking out about how nifty he's made the Batmobile. But if there is one DC superhero who is really ideal for showing someone enjoying the their powers in between world saving, it's Superman. (Unless, again, you go for the superpowered-kid-could-accidentally-kill-us emotional horror of the Mark Milton interpretation.) There is one scene in the trailer where Superman takes flight which makes me hope they'll do at least a bit of that. But the rest of it makes me fear angst will outweigh the enjoyment by far.

And there is no reporter partnership in the trailer at all, woe. The scene with Lois in it intrigues me, but she's talking to not-yet-christened-Superman here, not to Clark. And with all the rest of the trailer emphasisizing the danger/shock of discovering there is an alien among us, I doubt the film will go for the Clark Kent, Reporter at the Daily Planet part of the myth at all. Which in turn makes me realize that what I really want from a Superman movie, and am not likely to get, is a big screen version of the first two seasons of Lois & Clark, not a superhero movie at all but the tale of two bantering reporters, one of whom has superpowers, fighting crime together. And that's my problem.

...during the last ten or so days:

1.) The "birther" hysteria culminates in Obama producing his birth certificate (longer version, as apparantly the White House already released a shorter version eons ago). My possibly unfair thought on this was "only in America". More seriously, I also thought about our last president (note: German presidents are only heads of state, not heads of goverment, i.e. they're only there for representation, not for actual governing, that's what the chancellor does), who flounced off (it can't be expressed differently) because he thought the media was too mean to him. I kid you not, and thus forced Ms. Merkel to come up with an emergency replacement. And he never, ever, would have been asked to present his birth certificate.

2.) Then I gathered through fannish osmosis and newspaper articles that there is now a new Superman story in which he - not Clark Kent, Superman in his Superman persona - renounces his American citizenship, because people around the globe keep blaming the US goverment for his actions and see him as a tool of same. Well, if you drape yourself in the flag colours, they would, Supes. (Also, ask Dr. Osterman and Mark Milton about this.) Anyway, so Kal-El, immigrant from Krypton, is no longer an American. Apparantly this was the second most talked about thing after Obama's birth certificate and caused much indignation. Again: only in America. I don't mean that in a negative way. As a comic book reader (though more Marvel than DC), I find it endearing they care that much.

Footnote: now the Doctor, despite also being an alien with an exploded home planet, does not have British citizenship to begin with despite mostly hanging out on the island. And our own most successful sci fi hero in Germany was originally American to begin with (in the 60s, when the pulp fiction series Perry Rhodan started), not German, and immediately renounced American citizenship once the plot kicked in with a vengeance and he discovered an alien ship with high tech that no single nation on Earth should have. Basically: aliens and nationaless cosmopolitism are a very European thing.

3.) And then a high profile terrorist died after, I'm told, more than 500 billions of dollars were spent on a decades long manhunt. To no one's surprise, he hadn't gone very far, just to the neigbouring country from where he was last seen before ordering the death of about 3000 people in the World Trade Centre. The way this event was presented in the media felt a bit as if Obama was an action hero played by Samuel Jackson, at last firing the decisive shot that kills the film's villain. And then there is a happy ending. It occured to me that if Osama bin Laden had been captured alive, it would have been incredibly inconvenient and messy for all parties concerned. Would he have ended up in Guantanamo? Would he have gotten a trial? If so, would he have used all the money from his very rich (and quite familiar with American business) family to hire a team of lawyers, or would it have been a military tribunal? What would the defense have brought up? It was all Mohammad Atta's idea, and our client can't be judged by any unbiased jury because there can't be any? The US was fine with our client as long as he was busy agitating against the Russians in Afghanistan? Or maybe he'd have insisted on defending himself and would have behaved as contemptously of the court as Slovodan Milosevic did when they tried him in Den Haag.

There is a reason why so many films prefer to kill off their villains. (Unless they're already planning the sequel.)

But. I can't help but remember. Fiction, again, one of Terry Prattchet's Discworld novels, one of the darker ones, Night Watch. At the end, our hero, copper-turned-watch commander Sam Vimes finally has caught up with the story's main villain. Who is a repellent individual, responsible for many deaths. Both directly and by influencing other people, showing them new ways to torture, more ways to kill. And as a last act, once he figures out he's well and truly caught, he tries to provoke Vimes into killing him. It would fit his own narrative: that they're really not that different, that it just matters who has the upper hand, is the better killer. But Sam Vimes does not. He's making an arrest instead, grimly sure that this man will face what he did - in a trial.

Well, you know. That's fiction. Out of this world.

Following a recommendation from londonkds, I've read Mark Millar's Red Son, aka the Superman AU in which his pod crashes in the Soviet Union instead of Kansas. Which was interesting to read and shared several elements with JMS' more recent Supreme Power, notably of course the idea of the Superman character raised to love the state and being driven towards the idea that assuming power might be the only way to deal with humanity's problems once the state starts to show its colours. I appreciated the twist on Batman's origin story (and Soviet! Batman coming complete with ear muffins both made sense and cracked me up), and the fact Lex Luthor is and remains an utter jerk throughout the story - defeating Superman as his only goal just becomes one sanctioned by (American) society and thus makes him everyone's hero instead of everyone's villain. Lastly, considering that likeadeuce found out, in Ultimate X-Men, that Millar seems to believe Das Kapital was written in Russian, I wasn't suprised on the, err, vague take on communism (though points to Millar for not just going the communism = bad, capitalism = good route, he just doesn't seem to have much of an idea how communist economy actually is supposed to work if he thinks Superman can make it a world wide success with superpowers.

His take on Superman goes the lonely Alien route, not suprising as this one doesn't have a Clark identity as such, either fake or real, and despite the red-headed girl from the colchose he was raised in, no real human ties. The way Lex defeats him fits completely, though one element annoys me, which is something I had problems with throughout the story - to wit, why the hell does Lois remain married to Lex Luthor? Because other than that she has to be there for the climax of the story so she can hand over that paper on which one devastating sentence is written, I can't really see a reason. No, he's not a supervillain in this universe but as previously mentioned an utter jerk, they hardly spend time together, so why? It's not that she needs the alternative of another man. Lois Lane in any incarnation should have enough spine to get divorced (in the 60s at the latest in this saga) because of herself.

I'm also not sure where Millar was going with the Luthorism at the end, because it sort of negates the point about the hubris of the assumption any one person, no matter how powerful and/or benevolent, can "save" humanity. As with Lois and her marriage, it seems more for the sake of a cool revelation (in that case, the final pages) than anything else.

In between fun Multiverse readings - and an observation here, one really notices both Battlestar Galactica and Dr. Who have "arrived" at American shores by the increased input in those fandoms - I watched more first season Lois & Clark, and I can't help myself, I had to aquire an icon. To demonstrate just why they're adorable and why the dialogue of this show is such fun, here are some of my favourite quotes, re-heard again on this rewatching (now I must admit I only watched the pilot and some s1 plus two s2 episodes of Smallville, but I must say, the scriptwriters on the older show were better at banter):


Lois: And let's get something straight, I did not work my buns off to become an investigative reporter for the Daily Planet just to baby-sit some hack from Nowheresville! And another thing, you are not working with me, you are working for me. I call the shots, I ask the questions. You are low man - I am top banana and that's the way I like it, comprende?
Clark: You like to be on top. Got it.


Lois: Partners?
Perry: You and Kent. The experience of the battle-scarred veteran paired with the hunger of the exciting, fresh talent.
Lois: I am not that scarred, and he is not that exciting.
Perry: Your tenacity. His tact. Believe me, Lois, the two of you, there's chemistry there. It's gonna make for great stories.
Lois: But, Perry, partnership, it's like marriage.
Perry: That's right. You've got to work at it.
Lois: It takes patience and understanding, a willingness to be supportive.
Perry: I know, honey. Fake it.


Lois: Poor woman.
Clark: Who?
Lois: Your wife. She's married to Mr. Right. Mr. Always Right.


Lois: Found? You mean stole, don't you?
Clark: Well, I . . .
Lois: You took advantage of a privileged interview situation to grab
potentially incriminating evidence from an unsuspecting subject. Oh, I love that.


Lois: Superman is in the shower? Did you see him? I mean, does the outfit come off?
Clark: I didn't look.
Lois: Of course not. No, I wouldn't either. Mmm, mmm.


Lois: I only know how to make four things, and this is the only one without chocolate.


Lois: I win, you lose, we're both happy.


Clark: We flip for the bed.
Lois: How about I get the bed, I lend you a pillow?
Clark: How about we alternate nights?
Lois: How about we don't.
Clark: Well, it's a big bed, how about we share?
Lois: How about we alternate nights?
Clark: Deal.


Lois: Kill or be killed.
Clark: Lois you're talking about war... this is journalism.
Lois: See, your problem is you think there's a difference.

Clark: You are really high maintenance, you know that?
Lois: But I'm worth it.


Lois: Tell me the biggest secret you have.
Clark: What?
Lois: Tell me the biggest secret you have. Something you'd never reveal to anyone.
Clark: Why?
Lois: Because I'm about to tell you mine and I need blackmail material.