#also you both have not gotten to Lex and Lana yet and also have already missed some of it haha

[francesderwent]

Cate!! :D as the local authority on Smallville what are the Clark and Lois Smallville Taylor and Maisie songs? (I haven’t gotten to Lana and Lex at all yet)

okay so Taylor songs were a lot easier for me, and I think what's driving that is that I think "White Horse" and "The Archer" are both very much Lois songs, and hearing that old heartbreak and loneliness in the background of love songs is what makes them ring true! the love songs which feel right for Lois and Clark are the songs that are about being surprised by the goodness of love and by the fidelity of the beloved - and therefore the single most perfect song for them is "Daylight"!! which gets even more bonus points of making me cry because the daylight is precisely what gives Clark his powers!!! "maybe I've stormed out of every single room in this town, threw out our coats and our daggers because it's morning now, it's brighter now" "I once thought love would be burning red, but it's golden like daylight" "I don't want to look at anything else now that I saw you" "I've been sleeping so long in a twenty-year dark night, but now I see daylight"!!!

second place pick goes to "Labyrinth" because of the Most Episode Of All Time 8x05, and third place goes to "Gorgeous" because of "you should take it as a compliment that I got drunk and made fun of the way you talk" and bc Lois is so mad about Clark's Everything from basically the moment she meets him. fourth place is "That's When" because when it looks like this thing between them might be real Lois gets scared but Clark is so patient!! fifth place is "Stay Stay Stay" because of the bridge (you took the time to memorize me, my fears, my hopes, and dreams, I just like hanging out with you all the time. all those times that you didn't leave, it's been occurring to me, I'd like to hang out with you for my whole life), and sixth place is "invisible string" because of the prequel of it all! we can see the string but they can't!!!

a few more Taylor songs I picked off of vibes: "Stay Beautiful", "When Emma Falls in Love", "State of Grace", "Treacherous", "Out of the Woods", "How You Get the Girl", "Me!", "Snow on the Beach", and "Sweet Nothing" 

Maisie songs are more difficult, both because she has fewer love songs but also because I think Lois precisely doesn't have that supportive community in her background - she has a sister but she's not sisterful because she was more in the position of parent!

the top pick from Maisie's catalogue, though, is definitely "Feels Like This". like "Daylight" it's full of that grateful awe: "like you were always meant to be right here next to me in your faded denim jeans, like we were always meant to be. to think I never knew it ’til now. when it feels like this, like a light came on, when you look at me like I'm all you want".

"Maybe Don't" goes on the list, for the same reason as "That's When"! and we could also make an argument for "Architecture": "you're the biggest and the brightest that this place has ever made, and I can't ask you stay. you'll go and I'll know I owe you all the love you showed me I deserved, the gold that I was worth. you built me up like architecture, boy, you'll break my heart, I'll let ya, 'cause no one nowhere knows me better than you"

[thevindicativevordan]

whacha think of that superman 2000 pitch? seems like a mixed bag honestly, not sure if gutting the marriage would have been worth it

Personally I think it could've been the shot in the arm the character needed.

For those people who have somehow found this blog but aren't obsessed with every bit of info on Superman they can find, what Anon is talking about was the Morrison/Waid/Millar/Peyer pitch on how to reboot Superman for the 21st century. No doubt the creative names behind this have peaked your interest, and I promise the pitch itself is fascinating. You can read the pitch as well as an article that analyzes it and gives some of the background. Note that there were at least two versions of the pitch, Superman 2000 which is what we have a copy of and was more Waid/Millar's brainchild, and Superman Now which was the final pitch and more Morrison's baby. Far as I know we have never been able to read the Superman Now pitch but we do know a few details about it.

Revamping pretty much every corner of Superman's world, from the man himself, to his supporting cast, to his Rogues, this was basically an attempt at rejuvenating the character who was already starting to show signs of stagnation at the tail end of the Triangle Era. For Byrne fanboys this pitch is the blackest heresy because it pretty much goes scorched Earth on Byrne just like he did to Pre-Crisis. All the soap opera storytelling is gone, replaced with much more high concept scifi adventures. "Grounded" Superman is gone, his power levels were going to rocket up, including his intelligence which would have been nice. Trunks on the costume were gone too, Superman would've gotten a new costume with a new S-shield. The Fortress would've been massively expanded and fleshed out. Unsurprisingly a lot of these ideas are 100% up my alley. Big dealbreaker for a lot of people is that the Superman 2000 version would have dissolved the Clois marriage.

Must confess to being a bit of a hypocrite here: while I'm adamant that Peter and MJ should be married, I'm indifferent to whether Clark and Lois are. It's hypocritical because Millar was on the team, and he is rumored to have passed along some of the pitches ideas to Quesada, who used the basic premise of a trickster dissolving a marriage with magic in One More Day. So this pitch may have helped contribute to the Spider-Man story I hate with a passion, yet I still think overall it's great.

Why am I not so upset about the Clois marriage getting dissolved? Well for one the 2000s were some of the worst writing for that relationship ever. Grounded had Superman implicitly threatening to break Lois' arm if she didn't bury a story because it would've put people out of work. Earlier in the 2000s you had Lois being written as a "bitch" who was "unworthy" of Clark, with Clark getting romantic teases with Lana, when both of them were married to other people! Only Busiek and Johns wrote the couple to my liking during the 2000s. Fundamentally I care more about whether Clark and Lois are written well than whether they're actually married, and I think we would've gotten much better writing for both if this pitch had gone through rather than what we got. However you should know that the final pitch apparently kept the two of them together anyway.

Love telling people about this pitch because it spits in the face of the idea that Morrison and Waid are just Silver Age nostalgia fanboys. They wanted to take the trunks off of Superman decades before Jim Lee did it! The Daily Planet is a 21st century media company that doesn't sell newspapers?!?!? Red Kryptonite as a tool for horror stories instead of funny throwbacks to Pre-Crisis?!? Weisinger would be rolling in his grave. No question that those two really like a lot of Pre-Crisis stories, but they aren't interested in returning to that status quo. Morrison also apparently wanted to keep the marriage (I've heard contradictory accounts about whether they are pro or anti-marriage, but Waid/Millar are both on record as being against the marriage) and Clark & Lois stayed together in the final version of Superman Now.

Lot of ideas for how to revamp the Rogues as well, my favorite is the Mxyzptlk pitch. Making him more of a serious threat to Superman is something I've wanted done for a long time, and it's part of my own take on where he should go. Bringing in Solaris and making him a threat to Superman in the present would've been awesome, I still have hope that Solaris will be one of Jon's foes. Rest of the ideas are solid, I am curious if they had plans for other foes beyond the ones listed, and what those ideas would've been.

Overall a lot of ideas that are present in this pitch would go on to form the basis for individual stories, acclaimed stories at that. Morrison used their ideas for All-Star Superman and Action Comics. Waid used his for Birthright and presumably some will also show up in his project with Hitch coming next year. Millar used a few ideas from this pitch in Red Son, particularly the ideas for Lex. Could all four working together on weekly comics done as well as they did working individually? Morrison and Waid working together on a weekly got us 52, but that was a miracle in execution that left the 52 team pretty burnt out at the end. Doubt they could have kept up the energy for weekly Superman comics for long, but I do think it absolutely would've gotten people excited and interested in Superman. Also am sure that at least some of the comics would've been legendary, and the 2000s would've been overall a much better decade for Superman. Might have even put him on better footing to challenge Batman in popularity.

The pitch is one of the ultimate "what ifs" of comics and Superman in particular. Impossible to say if the execution would've been able to deliver on the ideas, and many of those ideas got turned into stories anyway. Still, can't help but sigh and imagine 4 of the hottest creators at their peak who love Superman working on his main books. Doubt there will ever even be a chance of anything like that happening again.

[frankendykes-monster]

@ligaratus asked me for Superman recommendations, which presents the rare opportunity that someone other than my girlfriend has provoked me to pull out my extensive knowledge of great Silver Age (1956 - 1969) Superman stories. Now, Superman has been in publication nonstop since 1938, but if we're being realistic, if you want the best of the best with the character, you're just going to be reading that decade of comics from beginning to end, but here are my highlights:

Action Comics #162 (November 1951) - "It!": Superman fends off a seemingly incomprehensible fourth-dimensional entity. This one gives a solid basis for what Silver Age Superman is like, in that he lives in a world where hes already taken extensive measures in making it a better place, and so you really arent going to see him fending off the various forces of evil, but rather do increasingly weird and complex problem solving. Of course that sort of status quo gets us to now, where the only half-decent Superman villains are Lex Luthor, Brainiac, Bizarro...Mr. Mxyzptlk...Metallo...?...yeah.

Superman #76 (May 1952) - "The Mightiest Team in The World": This one is a pretty easy recommendation, as it's the very first team-up between Superman and Batman. Even though we had been getting Superman and Batman stories since World's Finest Comics started publishing in 1941, we had never gotten a story starring both of them until a decade later. This one is mainly interesting for historical reasons, but I'm not going to mention any more stories involving DC characters outside of the Superman mythos starting now.

Superman #101 (November 1955) - "The Rainbow Doom": Superman has a rainbow stuck around his body that causes whatever physical objects in his close proximity to turn to glass. This one is pretty solid because it's an early example of how engage in incredibly preposterous hoaxes to get the edge in an ongoing battle, which is to say that this is a story that involves Superman tricking everyone into thinking he's turned Lois Lane into glass i.e. killed her as one of the steps that allows him to win.

Adventure Comics #247 (April 1958) - "The Legion of Super-Heroes": This isnt a Superman story, rather a SuperBOY story. Which is to say that Superman started his heroic adventures as a child in Smallville. Anyhow, I motherfucking LOVE the Legion of Super-Heroes. This story is their first appearance, and essentially they're a club of children from the 30th century that love and adore Superboy, and go back in time to put him through arbitrary trials to see if he's cool enough to hang out with them, which they intentionally sabotage, because these are the shenanigans that elementary schoolers frequently engage in. I'm not going to bring up any other Legion appearances here because honestly I'd say read every Silver Age Legion story.

Action Comics #242 (July 1958) - "The Super-Duel in Space": This is the first appearance of Brainiac, and he's a great science fiction/horror concept of a super-intellegent computer that must learn everything and shrinks down organisms so as to extensively study them, that also just happens to fight Superman on a regular basis. This is also the first appearance of the Bottled City of Kandor, the last piece of Kryptonian civilization, and it presents one of the great dilemmas of the Silver Age, in that Superman cant figure out how to restore it in size.

Action Comics #252 (May 1959) - "The Supergirl of Krypton!": This is the first appearance of Supergirl, and she's going to occupy a similar niche as the Legion of Super-Heroes on account of the fact that I have an intense love for the character and am not going to mention any more stories involving the character because then I'd have to mention all of them.

Superman #129 (May 1959) - "The Girl in Superman's Past!": Clark reminisces about a girl he was in love with in college, Lori Lemaris, which makes the third ongoing love interest of his following Lois Lane and Lana Lang. The difference being that Lori is a mermaid from Atlantis.

Action Comics #254 (July 1959) - "The Battle With Bizarro!": This is the first appearance of Bizarro, there's not much more to it.

Superman #141 (November 1960) - "Superman's Return to Krypton!": Superman travels through the time barrier and ends up being stuck on Krypton and struggling to find a way back before it explodes; basically one of the great tragic stories of this era.

Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #48 (November 1960) - "The Mystery of The Tiny Supermen!": Jimmy Olsen's solo series is ANOTHER case of me having to restrain myself from mentioning every issue, but this is a special case for introducing an important part of the mythos, the Superman Emergency Squad, which is where a group from Kandor all dress up like Superman and do his regular duties while he's incapacitated.

Superman #143 (February 1961) - “Bizarro Meets Frankenstein!”: Now THIS is a great Bizarro story.  Bizarro sees in a television broadcast that Frankenstein’s Monster is referred to as “The World’s Scariest Monster” and seeing as that title should belong to him, he decides to do something about it.  Which manifests in Superman having to protect the actor that plays the Monster from Bizarro.

Superman #147 (August 1961) - “The Legion of Super-Villains!”: I know I said I wouldn’t mention the Legion again but I’ll make an exception for here, where Lex Luthor travels to the future to get the assistance of their counterpart team.

Superman #149 (November 1961) - “The Death of Superman!”: This is the first Imaginary Story I’m bringing up i.e. one that isn’t “canon”.  As much as I’m not a giant fan of this incarnation of Lex Luthor, I can’t deny that this is the character at his very best.  Luthor pretends to have finally reformed so as to get an opportunity to get in close to Superman and kill him, which he actually does, leaving the rest of the world to pick up the pieces.

Superman #156 (October 1962) - “The Last Days of Superman!”: All the wacky shenanigans I’ve already written own aside, this is without any doubt the best single-issue Superman story ever written.  Superman is infected with Virus X from Krypton and given 30 days to live, and spends that time carrying out all the missions he planned to officially make the world a better place.  The moment where he carves his final words into the Moon?

Action Comics #300 (May 1963) - “Under The Red Sun!”: This is another great tragic story.  The Superman Revenge Squad (I’m not getting into them after talking at lenght about Comet) sends Superman into the year 1,000,000 A.D., with him being unable to return to the past on account of how the now red sun has stripped him of his powers.

Gets me every fucking time.

Action Comics #293 (October 1962) - “The Secret Origin of Supergirl’s Super-Horse!”: Yeah I just wanted to take this opportunity to talk about what is undoubtedly the strangest comic book character I have ever seen, Comet the Super-Horse.  He was first introduced as one of the Superpets, a legacy that got started with Krypto the Super-Dog, but here we, uh.  Learn that Comet was actually a centaur named Biron from ancient Greece who was accidently turned into a horse by Circe who tried to make up for it by giving him the powers of “ Jove, Mercury, Athena, and Neptune”, and then he’s sent into the distant future (our present) and outer space by an evil wizard.  Also sometimes a comet comes by the Earth that turns him into a complete human with amnesia that goes on to date Supergirl even though most of the time he’s a horse that she owns.  Yeah.  Any time someone tries to bring up how weird comics are without knowing who Comet is, they ain’t seen shit yet.

Superman #162 (July 1963) - “The Amazing Story of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue!”: This is probably the most famous Imaginary Story, with Superman being fed up that he can’t solve all the world’s problems, so he uses a machine to increase his intelligence that ends up splitting him into two separate Supermen that are now capable of doing everything Superman wanted.  Also one marries Lois and one marries Lana.  It’s great.

Action Comics #304 (September 1963) - “The Interplanetary Olympics!”: This one is pretty simple, Superman is chosen as Earth’s representative in the Interplanetary Olympics where it seems everyone is stronger than he is.

Superman #164 (October 1963) - “The Showdown Between Luthor and Superman!”: Another simple one; Superman and Lex Luthor engage in a boxing match on a planet with a red sun.

Superman #167 (February 1964) - “The Team of Luthor and Brainiac!”: Says it in the title.

Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #51 (August 1964) - “The Three Wives of Superman!”: Last Imaginary Story, and this one’s a doozy.  Superman marries and becomes widowed to Lois Lane, Lana Lang, and Lori Lemaris in a quick succession.