Guest post by T Campbell.
Can the soul of Western civilization be found in a pair of red briefs? Was our first great superhero at his strongest, his noblest, his superest, before modern interpretations stripped him of his underwear? Is there a connection?
A generation ago, when those red briefs were an inseparable part of Superman’s design, he was the most familiar superhero by a wide margin, leading the field in film adaptations,[1] headlining cartoon shows,[2] and even winning over famous media critics who were fiction writers in their own right. Even now, if you believe superheroes have anything to say to American culture or the human experience, you sort of have to start with him, because he’s the prototype.
Umberto Eco called him “the representative of all his similars” [3] and Harlan Ellison described him as one of “only five fictional creations known to every man, woman, and child on the planet.”[4] Born in the early hours of a visual, easily reproduced medium, he was popular enough to codify most of what being a superhero meant. The Oxford English Dictionary even mentions him by name in its definition of “superhero”:
Millennials, can't live with 'em, can't get a vanilla soy macchiatto without 'em. Among the many charges levied against these lazy, disengaged kids is that they ever grow up and read too many comic books. BUT IS THAT TRUE? Commentator Kevin Drum—who I normally adore—does some back of the envelope calculations and concludes that only 2% of millennials are comics readers. For the numerically inclines out there (translation: Torsten) here are his envelope calculations:
The comics news website Broken Frontier has announced the winners of its annual awards, as chosen by readers and industry professionals. Image Comics was a winner, as you might expect, but female creators won in 5 of the 13 categories, suggesting that the arrival of talented and noteworthy women in comics is a thing that is here and now and not some hoped for future event. The winners are as follows:
It's a time of consolidation and retrenching, and some don't make the journey to the next phase. One such entity is the Detroit Fanfare convention, as announced on this Facebook post. A planned February is being cancelled, a Kickstarter cancelled (and pledges not charged) and the event is not going to be held again.
At NYCC Retailer Day, Marvel's new Editor in Chief Steve Wacker spent more than half an hour telling store owners what they can expect from the new Marvel
On a special one-off podcast revisiting the 2021 film, James Gunn suggests the movie's canonical status may be up to Margot Robbie, and provides an update on casting the DCU's Batman.
