Friday, November 12, 2010

Recommended Reading: Siskoid's Reign of the Supermen



I mentioned this on the Twitter, but it's cool enough that I'll point it out here too. Having caught up with his Star Trek reviews, Blogger Extraordinaire Siskoid has taken on a new project that I'll let him explain in his own words:
Every day for at least the next year, I'll be presenting a different Superman. Different eras, alternate costumes, Elseworlds, Red K transformations, Bizarros, pastiches, alternate futures, replacements, tv and film versions, you name it.
I'm not a huge Superman fan, but I'm fascinated by the project. Superman's such an iconic character that there's a lot of room to tweak the details and still have him be Superman, though I suspect there would be disagreement about what's crucial and what can be gotten rid of. Can he be Superman without Jimmy Olson and Perry White? What about Lois Lane? Does he always have to work for a newspaper and fight a bald villain? Which of his powers does he absolutely have to have? How important is it that he have a weakness? It's extremely interesting to see the choices that storytellers have made over the decades and I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.

3 comments:

Kal said...

Siskoid is a genius at this sort of thing. I have always been interested in the 'Elseworld' (terrible name) concepts right from 'Gotham By Gaslight'. The strength of these characters is in the way they so easily transfer to different times or situations.

The best of these, in my opinion, is the Soviet Superman from 'Red Son' by Mark Millar. He got every character just right from the smiling Batman to Lex Luthor actually being the hero of the story. Without the ability for him to battle Superman one on one all those years, he had to think LONG TERM if he wanted to defeat him and by gum he DID.

One of the most satifying graphic novels ever.

Michael May said...

I haven't read Red Son yet, mostly because I'm not a big Mark Millar fan. Everyone agrees that it's good though, so I need to get over the writer and just read it.

Siskoid said...

Thanks for the praise!

You know, I'm not a huge fan of Superman myself. By that I mean, I would never put him in any list of favorite superheroes.

And yet, I read Superman from '86 right up to the Electric Superman storyline, and I was back on board these last couple years even with the Superbooks sending Superman away to New Krypton.

Maybe it's just that I don't think I could do such a series with, say, the Flash or Hawkeye.

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