An Alternate Superman

[starblaze]

There was the Stan Lee's present Supeman story were he is an alien cop hunting down a fugitive. He ends up getting a PR agent to help publicize his powers by the name of Lois Lane and calls himself Clark Kent simply because he needed a name to use.

[ProfessorM@ss]

Re: must keep topic alive!

 

Originally posted by Hermit

Maybe we should ask our friends and neighbors to the North what they think would have happened if young Kal-El had crash landed in Canada?

 

He wouldn't have been much different: polite, well-educated, liberal, caring of his fellow man, and a bit of a stickler for following the rules.

 

Oh, and he would probably be doing a lot less promotion of "the American way" and a lot more "is it me, or is Dubya a nutcase?"

 

 

--->M@ss

[Tom McCarthy]

A Canadian Superman ?

 

It's pretty hard to imagine, despite the obvious reasons for doing so.

 

He'd probably hit that huge patch of grain called Saskatchewan but wind up moving to a huge metropolis like Toronto and working for some daily paper called the Star (or maybe the Globe).

 

"Superman" is an awfully bold and strong name, so I'm thinking he'd be something more like Defender, Protector, Commonwealth, or Kind Of Impressive Man.

 

Depending on the time frame, his powers may or may not be stretched to the limit. Firearms are seen less frequently in Canada, but locomotives are fairly common. Tall buildings can get pretty tall (CN Tower is close in height to Sears Tower, I think) in Toronto.

 

Politically and socially, there's big differences between the US and Canada which cannot be ignored. The US's wild west was tamed by rugged independent men with six shooters, while the Canadian frontiers had RCMP, who were more like soldiers than vigilantes. Would an unsanctioned Canadian superhero be as broadly accepted as an American ?

 

Internationally, Canada's always been closer to the UK and never gone abroad in force except for peacekeeping and defence of the Commonwealth. America has a history of sabre rattling, international adventures in empire building, and more. Would a Canadian Superman be more of a stay at home or be more active internationally as a result ?

[TheEmerged]

Originally posted by starblaze

There was the Stan Lee's present Supeman story were he is an alien cop hunting down a fugitive. He ends up getting a PR agent to help publicize his powers by the name of Lois Lane and calls himself Clark Kent simply because he needed a name to use.

 

/humor on

 

Just my opinion, you're certainly welcome to yours, but if Stan Lee were ever to be up for the death penalty he'd better hope the prosecution doesn't use that issue as evidence against his character...

 

/humor off

[Blue]

Superman lands in France... teaches the French new unheard of speeds at which they can surrender.

 

No? Okay, then maybe he lands in the wilderness and is raised by wolves. Maybe I'm thinking of somebody else...

[sinanju]

Re: An Alternate Superman

 

Young Kal-El rockets to earth from the doomed planet of Krypton, where he is found and raised by...

 

1. Joe Kennedy, growing up as young Clark Kennedy and going on to be elected as the nation's first bulletproof President!

 

2. Eric Von Strakenberg of the Domination of the Draka. He grows up as Clark Von Strakenburg, and goes on to show the world what happens when a REAL superman with a will to power comes along....

 

3. Raised by the apes who raised Tarzan. The mind boggles...

[FenrisUlf]

Re: An Alternate Superman

 

Back when Chris Reeve's first "Superman" movie came out, Saturday Night Live did a "What if Superman had landed in Nazi Germany" parody. Dan Akroyd donned the tights of "Uberman", defender of the Fatherland and National Socialist ideals. They showed newspaper headlines like, "Uberman Levels London" and "Uberman Drains Pearl Harbor".

 

When explaining his powers to Hitler and a couple of reporters, one of them (a surrogate Lois Lane) asked with obvious nervousness, "You mean you can see right through our clothes?"

 

Uberman replied, "Yes," and turning to her male colleague, added, "And through his. He's a Jew."

 

That sounds a bit too edgy to be all that funny.

 

But dang, imagine the Elseworlds story where that happened. Be even worse than the one where he grew up on Apokolips as Darkseid's chosen.

[FenrisUlf]

Re: An Alternate Superman

 

Is it just me, or wasn't there an Elseworlds in which Supes crashes in the jungles of 19th century India, and basically becomes Mowgli? With the difference that, unlike Kipling's Mowgli, he crushes Shere Khan to death with his bare hands...

 

And the Supes in ancient Greece: he could also run into Aquaman. Lord of mighty Atlantis, and Super-Spartan is the only one who can stop the fall of all Greece, aloong with the hero of fallen Egypt, Heru (Hawkman).

[Guest Worldmaker]

Re: An Alternate Superman

 

The Guardians Universe has a villain based on my one day musing "What if Superman had crashlanded in Iraq or Libya or one of the other Islamic Terror nations?"

[Sketchpad]

Re: An Alternate Superman

 

They kind of had this in a JSA Elseworlds ... Unholy Three IIRC ... I won't spoil the story too much, but I will say that it's a great read

[oroborous]

Re: An Alternate Superman

 

3. Raised by the apes who raised Tarzan. The mind boggles...

 

There was already an issue where this happened. I picked up a copy at a BX while I was in Iraq. He learned ape speak and protected their tribe from a sorceress and her minions who are looking for some artifact in the jungle. Somehow Lord Greystoke came to be down there along with Lois Lane and they all meet up and defeat the sorceress. Greystoke finds himself at home in Africa and decides to stay. Lois Lane takes a liking to the man-ape and brings him back to civilization to show him off as a curiosity. In the end he becomes a crime fighter wearing the House of El colors and the "S" symbol, but in a Rocketeer-style outfit and no secret identity.

[wcw43921]

Re: An Alternate Superman

 

Elseworlds Rant! Why is it that in every elseworlds were Batman is the main character, Superman is played as the villain (or a tragically mis-guided character)?

 

I think this goes back to Frank Miller's first Dark Knight series, when Batman was very much against the Establishment and Superman was taking orders from it. You see this attitude in almost all the DC comics, where Superman is out there doing what he thinks is right, and Batman sort of hangs back like he's waiting for Superman to screw up.

 

That's what it looks like to me, anyway.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: A Canadian Superman ?

 

It's pretty hard to imagine, despite the obvious reasons for doing so.

 

He'd probably hit that huge patch of grain called Saskatchewan but wind up moving to a huge metropolis like Toronto and working for some daily paper called the Star (or maybe the Globe).

 

"Superman" is an awfully bold and strong name, so I'm thinking he'd be something more like Defender, Protector, Commonwealth, or Kind Of Impressive Man.

 

Depending on the time frame, his powers may or may not be stretched to the limit. Firearms are seen less frequently in Canada, but locomotives are fairly common. Tall buildings can get pretty tall (CN Tower is close in height to Sears Tower, I think) in Toronto.

 

Politically and socially, there's big differences between the US and Canada which cannot be ignored. The US's wild west was tamed by rugged independent men with six shooters, while the Canadian frontiers had RCMP, who were more like soldiers than vigilantes. Would an unsanctioned Canadian superhero be as broadly accepted as an American ?

 

Internationally, Canada's always been closer to the UK and never gone abroad in force except for peacekeeping and defence of the Commonwealth. America has a history of sabre rattling, international adventures in empire building, and more. Would a Canadian Superman be more of a stay at home or be more active internationally as a result ?

 

Didn't Siegel and Shuster originally intend to mdodel metropolis on Toronto rather than New York? If so, than a Canadian Superman wouldn;t be that hard to imagine, and he would probably behave in muhc the same ways as his American counterpart.

 

Keep in mind nationality is not neccesarily the main factor in developing a character's personailty. It may define certain things (like what side he fights on in a war), but some thing are indpendent of nationality -- incluidng most fo the things that make Superman Superman. It's not like Superman is the mebodiment of a country -- he isn;t like Captain America in that regard.

[Acroyear]

Re: must keep topic alive!

 

Why is it in most Superman else-if stories, if he lands anywhere but America he becomes extra-patriotic enough to include their symbology or whatever on his suit?

 

Supes aint wearing the stars-n-stripes as it is. They usually have to pose him with a flag (and not infrequently a bald eagle) just to get that part across. Anywhere else, he slaps the flag on himself somewhere.

 

This becomes extra confusing with the changes to his chest logo in history, anyway, which is not a roman "S" as we know it, really, but some kryptonian symbol.

[Cheiro]

Re: An Alternate Superman

 

If he had landed in Boston, the Sox would STILL never win a World Series.

Could not resist.

Sorry Red Sox nation.

I'm a life long Yankee hater myself.

[freakboy6117]

Re: A Canadian Superman ?

 

michael hop croft im not sure if they did plan on modeling it on toronto but toronto was ceertainly the location chosen for the metropolis scenes in the various superman movies.

[KawangaKid]

Raised by Farmers

 

Oddly enough, I'm surprised that they don't discuss Supes current politics that much. I kinda assumed that he'd be kinda partial to both the leanings of the "farmers of america" political blocs as well as the metropolitan city folks....

[Korvar]

Re: must keep topic alive!

 

This becomes extra confusing with the changes to his chest logo in history' date=' anyway, which is not a roman "S" as we know it, really, but some kryptonian symbol.[/quote']

 

I belive that was a Movie thing (and now a Smallville thing), but it's never been that way in the comics as far as I'm aware. It's always been a styalised "S".

[drnuncheon]

Re: A Canadian Superman ?

 

Keep in mind nationality is not neccesarily the main factor in developing a character's personailty. It may define certain things (like what side he fights on in a war)' date=' but some thing are indpendent of nationality -- incluidng most fo the things that make Superman Superman.[/quote']

 

You're right, he's not the embodiment of the nation per se - but in some ways, he is. He was raised by the most average, even stereotypical middle-America couple you can imagine, especially for the time. They were decent folks and believers in all the things Superman stands for. The Kents are, in many ways, the idealized embodiment of America itself, and so the child they raised became that as well.

 

A Kal-El raised in another country, with different ideals and a different population, but in an analogous situation (raised by the classic stereotype) - well, that Kal is going to be raised very differently, and the adult Superman is going to turn out very different as well.

 

J

[Vondy]

Re: An Alternate Superman

 

That sounds a bit too edgy to be all that funny.

 

I have to admit - it is funny in a kind of perverse way.

[Guest Worldmaker]

Re: An Alternate Superman

 

I have to admit - it is funny in a kind of perverse way.

 

 

Is this the skit where the next line is "No, no! I am not a Jew... my parents just believed in personal hygiene!"

[Rene]

Re: An Alternate Superman

 

I think this goes back to Frank Miller's first Dark Knight series, when Batman was very much against the Establishment and Superman was taking orders from it. You see this attitude in almost all the DC comics, where Superman is out there doing what he thinks is right, and Batman sort of hangs back like he's waiting for Superman to screw up.

 

That's what it looks like to me, anyway.

 

There is this decade-old kinda-silly-but-fun story written by Dan Jurgens as a Armageddon 2001 tie-in (yes, I know the ending sucked, but the individual stories were kinda cool), where Jurgens more or less reversed Dark Knight. After seeing a big piece of Metropolis levelled by an Intergang nuclear device, Superman becomes much more proactive and obsessed, and it's Batman that is contacted by the Establishment to bring him down. Or something.

 

Anyone here reading "DC: The New Frontier"? At the risk of spoiling a minor point of the series, it was kinda cool how the writer used the cliche of Superman/Batman rivalry in other elseworlds as a red herring in this one.

[Supreme]

Re: must keep topic alive!

 

I belive that was a Movie thing (and now a Smallville thing)' date=' but it's never been that way in the comics as far as I'm aware. It's always been a styalised "S".[/quote']

Yes, originally it was a stylized "S." Byrne made it official when he did "Man of Steel" and showed how and why he and Jonathon Kent designed it the way they did. When they made the movie the Donner and Mankewitz came up with the idea to have all Kryptonian families have symbols that resembled letters (makes you wonder how the Phoenicians got all the way out to Krypton ). So the idea that the symbol came from Krypton, not Clark's imagination, caught on with others --like Bruce Timm. Now since Waid did "Superman: Birthright" it's become official DC canon. I think it's really stupid, and is probably the result of executive interference, but there it is.

[Supreme]

Re: An Alternate Superman

 

To me the point of Superman being raised as humble Clark Kent in rural Kansas is a demonstration of our unspoken cultural belief that Urban America is morally bankrupt and that the rural heartland of America is where we get our morals and values. I'm not a big fan of that idea, so I'd like to see a story where Kal-El is adopted by a middle-class family from New York or Chicago or even Atlanta.

[Archangel Gabri]

Re: An Alternate Superman

 

To me the point of Superman being raised as humble Clark Kent in rural Kansas is a demonstration of our unspoken cultural belief that Urban America is morally bankrupt and that the rural heartland of America is where we get our morals and values. I'm not a big fan of that idea' date=' so I'd like to see a story where Kal-El is adopted by a middle-class family from New York or Chicago or even Atlanta.[/quote']

 

Full disclosure: I was born and raised in Kansas

 

I both recognize and agree with the observation about the unspoken cultural belief, but I don't think that's the reason they put Kal El in Kansas.

I think the reasoning was that life in Smallville was simple, making simple moral values usable and the simple issues of Good vs. Evil more believable.

Perhaps there is a chicken and egg issue here, but this is the same reason The Shrub is so popular in rural America. His moral compass is simple and straightforward and that matches the mindset of most of the rural folk I know.