thevindicativevordan

[thevindicativevordan]

Does it ever bother you when Superman fans have really strange double standards towards the treatment of the Kents vs the Els ? Like, the Els (especially Jor-El) are allowed to be as flawed as is necessary for the story, with the new movie going as far as to make them cartoonishly evil. And not only are fans ok with it, but will vehemently defend it. Meanwhile, those same fans refuse to accept it if the Kents are ever written as even slightly less than perfect. Really doesn't seem fair.

The Kents are typically the ones who writers attribute Superman's morals to ever since the Post-Crisis Era. So in the public's mind, if the Kents are evil there's no reason for Clark to be Superman. It's funny to me that for all the deconstructions Superman has undergone either directly or via his expies, the one low hanging fruit that has yet to be deconstructed where Superman is concerned is the very concept of rural Kansas farmers being morally upstanding people. Post-Trump that's laughable at best. I suppose Johns did take some aim at it in his Legion arc, and Zack Snyder kind of deconstructed it, but that was unintentional on Snyder's part, he thought he had made them "realistic" moral paragons. I was hoping Absolute Superman would go the route of having the Kents be MAGA, because realistically that's totally what they would be. It's the one deconstruction of Superman left that I would be interested in reading, especially if they went the route of Clark rebelling against his crappy adopted parents and choosing to better himself.

[thevindicativevordan]

Thoughts on the Kryptonian A.I. The Eradicatior?

Works better as a villain for Kara.

[thevindicativevordan]

What do you think of the Frank Miller Batman/Wolverine comic? I can't stop laughing at people hyped for it as if it's 80s Miller not NOW Miller

No interest, no clue why anyone would be excited for a crossover written by current Miller.

[thevindicativevordan]

I absolutely loved Superman 2025! But the Jor-El and Lara retcon is a hard pill to swallow. I've gone back and forth on it a bunch, so I'm curious: what would be your preferred way for James to build on it for future projects? If you even want it be built on? Or would you rather move on from it?

Alright so I've seen a lot of people say that Gunn is having Superman reject his heritage, and I disagree. Clark is rejecting his Kryptonian parents, which still sucks, but he's not rejecting everything Kryptonian. He still is wearing his parents' crest, he's still using the Fortress and the Robots, and most importantly he has a relationship with Kara (and Krypto). Superman has another El family member he can connect with, one able to connect him with his heritage! How I would handle this side of things going forward were it up to me is I would make Superman 2 a Kal + Kara team up against Brainiac. Over the course of the movie, Kal would learn to see the good side of Krypton through Kara while she sees the value of Earth through Kal.

Brainiac meanwhile would serve as a foil to Kal in that he attacks Superman from the opposite direction that Lex did. If Lex attacked Superman for being too alien, Brainiac should attack Superman for being too human. Brainiac wants to "save" a portion of humanity in his collection and he believes that Superman is too compromised by humanity to take the necessary steps to save them from themselves. Humanity is on the path to self-destruction and Brainiac, unencumbered by emotion or human weakness is the one person who can see it. To beat Brainiac, Superman has to embrace his Kryptonian side via bonding with his cousin and deploying the technology left to him by his parents in ways neither they nor Brainiac could predict (with plenty of superpowered fights of course).

I think that would be a good way of building on what Gunn did, the Els were still bad, but not all of Krypton was.

[thevindicativevordan]

So, anything to say about this year's SDCC (a tad underwhelming I think) ?

Not really, as you said it was pretty underwhelming. Disappointing that DC basically didn't announce anything other than Absolute GL and DC KO. Marvel is currently in one of their worst periods ever imo, I was scanning last month's solicits and other than Hickman and Camp I'm not reading anything they're putting out, nor is anything grabbing my attention. NYCC or even the Retailers conventions seems to be the place where DC makes bigger announcements. I still am hoping for details on that Zod story that's coming for Williamson, and I think the first big tease for that will be in Action 1100.

[thevindicativevordan]

What do you think of the J.J. Abrams and Ta-Nehisi Coates Black Superman movie now stuck in development hell? How do you feel about a race-swapped Clark?

I think it's never happening. It's prime backer was Hamada who is gone, Zaslav already dismissed it, and there's zero indication that anyone is actually making progress on it. Everything about the project screams of the already distant-feeling era of the BLM protests. Setting it in the Civil Rights era, changing Superman's race, getting Coates of all people to write it, it all feels of an era when "woke" wasn't a dirty word in Hollywood. Our current era is one where a jeans company uses a blonde blue eyed white woman to advertise her "good genes" and Disney leans on it's animation teams to scrub every hint of queerness from it's movies. It's not getting made, not under Zaslav who wants to stay on Trump's good side so he can sell to, or merge with, some other company and get his golden parachute. Especially not with superheroes entering their decline era, the days of superheroes printing easy money is over. They're going to be a lot more conservative about what gets made going forward. I expect while they'll never officially cancel it (why take the PR hit?), it will simply sit in dev hell forever.

[thevindicativevordan]

As a fan of both Superman and fantastic 4, how did you feel about the box office comparisons

Feige is an idiot who succeeded at hurting Superman's legs at the cost of crippling his own. Some might give him a pass and put the blame entirely on Iger, but I'm not in any mood for excuses. F4 should have moved into August or to the Fall. Projections now have the F4 barely crossing $500 million, enough to break even but hardly the kind of win the MCU needed. For Superman, I hope WB is smart enough to take him crossing $600 million soon as a win. Coming off of a string of DCEU bombs that didn't even break even, this movie has done it's job of taking the first steps to repair DC's toxic brand. Gunn is already working on a "semisequel" which I'm guessing will either be Superman & Supergirl (plus maybe some other heroes) vs. Brainiac or Superman teaming up with the Authority. I'll take the first option happily enough, the second depends on the execution, but I badly need a proper Superman solo sequel.

[thevindicativevordan]

Comics this week ?

Absolute Superman #10 - I frigging love the panel where Kal’s cape makes it look like he’s got Angel wings. Auraman indeed haha. One thing I really enjoyed about this issue is Jor choosing to kill and having justified reasons for doing so… but even then Kal chooses not to do the same. Superman’s code against killing is an interesting thing because while it’s typically attributed to the Kents, rarely do we see why the Kents would instill in him a code against lethal force no matter what. It’s just taken for granted. Here we see the opposite, Kal’s moral guide providing him reasons to kill, and yet even deprived of alternate moral guides Kal makes his own choices. I like that a lot, it shows Superman being his own man and not blindly following others examples.

Oh and I totally called Primus being Talia! No clue what Brainiac's long term game plan is or why he's working for Ra's, but he is totally going to backstab Ra's after that comment from Ra's about Brainiac being "weak". Can't wait, I like Brainiac more than Ra's. Gotta say again, I wish that Smith was Corben as Metallo because that comment about him delusionally thinking he's the hero is exactly how I think Metallo should be characterized.

Resurrection Man #5 - Is Ram going to make the Phantom Stranger another version of Resurrection Man? Had to reread this a couple time to keep track of the plot.

Ultimate Spider-Man #19 - VENOM TIME! Richard is way too horny and naive, he should've been waaaaay more pissed off at Felicia during their reunion. I tend to give Hickman a pass for his weak character work since his focus is on the plots, but that was too egregious for me to ignore. Glad MJ is finally having an emotional breakdown but it's the kind of thing I wish had gotten more focus earlier.

Ultimates #14 - Didn't work for me. Camp is also struggling with the time skips at this point, he doesn't have the issues to really flesh out this huge cast he's been given beyond the basics. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are non-entities here, maybe they get fleshed out over the next issues, but given Shang-Chi is also set to make his debut, and we still have the Janet as a spy plot thread to deal with, I can't help suspecting some of the cast simply won't get that much characterization.

[thevindicativevordan]

Frankly, I’m not sure if this success was worth it. Yes I’d like Superman to be respected, but something about the first Jewish guy to play Superman being the version who’s parents wanted him to enslave humanity and get a harem just gives me so many bad vibes. Should we really be so accepting if it comes at that cost?

Well that means the only Superman that achieved mainstream success would be Injustice Superman. S&L Superman pretty much came and went with no impact. I like MAWS Superman a lot but I dunno if he’s going to leave much impact either. So decide for yourself if Gunn’s Superman is worse than letting NRS define Superman for the next decades.

[thevindicativevordan]

Superman is a BIG hit in the box office and online in spaces like Twitter, Tiktok, and Tumblr.

As a fellow fan who’s suffered through the DCEU’s efforts to “””””fix”””” Superman, it’s nice a movie came out that proved no, Superman was never “boring”, he was a damn icon for a reason. Its sweet that people who always hated the character don’t get to control the narrative anymore.

I was interested in how it feels for you that Superman is much more popular again with MAWS, S&L, and now Gunn’s film.

It's gratifying that there is finally something for the general audience to experience that will show Superman in a positive light. I've been thinking what the takeaways will be, both good and bad, from the general audience about who Superman is. What I've come up with:

Superman has finally shaken off the stoic bore default personality. Corenswet gets angry, sad, horny, but also maintains the compassionate and idealistic nature of Superman. Yes the speech to Lex at the end was as subtle as a brick to the face, but people needed to hear that I think

No more invincible god Supes either. MAWS, S&L, and Corensupes all get banged up pretty bad with and without kryptonite in play. A nice change from Cavill not having a single hair on his head out of place after destroying the city fighting Zod

Something I didn't praise Gunn for in my review and want to do so here is that Corensupes actually is pretty smart. Engineer tries to chain herself to him to cripple his fighting ability? He just uses her as a club against Ultraman! Can't make it to the Fortress by himself? Call Krypto! Cavill's approach to everything was to punch it harder, Corensupes shows more brains in his fighting style

On the downside, a bunch of people just got converted to the Post-Crisis mindset with regards to Krypton (i.e. it's a negative place with negligible impact on Superman and the real thing that matters is his upbringing by the Kents). At least he does have the Fortress, Krypto, and Kara to somewhat alleviate that. I've said before I think Kara's arrival should be the inciting incident for Kal to connect more with his heritage, and we can still get that even with his biological parents being bad, especially if my hopes that the "semi-sequel" is Kal and Kara teaming up come true

On the whole I can live with that. Especially keeping in mind the era this is replacing where he was constantly going evil. Speaking of which, video games alas remain a negative for me since the next game he'll be in will be Injustice 3. Hopefully the movie and MAWS are enough to counterbalance that, and reports that people are actually being inspired to check out his comics is thrilling no matter what. After losing out on the millenials and zoomers, maybe Gen Alpha will be the start of Superman reconnecting with the kids and thus ensuring a new generation of fans.

[thevindicativevordan]

Thoughts on Absolute Wonder Woman and Manhunter this week?

Absolute Martian Manhunter #5 - Holy crap I did not think Darkseid would show up in this Absolute book first of all places! So did making contact with "Bad Idea #0" cause the White Martian to go insane? Or is it the Martian Manhunter who is the "deviant" whereas the White Martian is what Darkseid intended for them to be? All I know is that page reveal packed a hell of a punch!

Absolute Wonder Woman #10 - The scenes with young Diana were fantastic. I love the push and pull of how the goddesses are trying to shape Diana into a weapon while Diana’s own nature rebels against that. Makes for an interesting relationship between this Diana and her patrons. For the present day stuff I’m curious what the deal is with Clea and the scientist but I can’t say I’ve been converted into a Clea fan yet. She’s still fairly one note thus far, need to learn more details about her.

Superman #28 - Prime time baby! Our favorite toxic fanboy returns! I'll admit I was nervous about this, I thought Johns gave him the perfect sendoff. It makes sense to bring him back however, the Retroboot's last big story was facing down him in Legion of Three Worlds. A reformed (maybe) Prime vs. an evil Legion is a fun way to turn that on it's head. I'm honestly excited to see him and Supes go explore the Darkseid dominated future together. Assuming he doesn't die, he is almost certainly going to be in DC KO. Maybe even the final fight will be E0 Superman vs. Prime.

[thevindicativevordan]

Since she kills a leader in a pretty casual way in Superman and the characters are similar do you think the maybe replacing Swift/Shen Li-Min with Hawkgirl in The Authority film? *Embarrassed I just thought of this morning tbh lol

I'm expecting that to be the case.

[thevindicativevordan]

Why do people don't like tom king's wonder woman so much? Is it just because of king or is there something special there?

Like me with Superman, a lot of Wondy fans are not happy to have Supes and Bats shoved into their books, and King really loves dragging them in

His voice for Diana can feel excessively formal or stoic (I actually don't mind this for an "in her prime" Diana, I think it suits her as an ambassador)

Some people hate the idea of giving Diana a child

And yes, the whole CIA background does nothing to endear him to a foreign/left-wing audience, especially since he was literally in the room when they began to invade Iraq (and hell even the right has a long history of disliking the feds)

These seem to be the main gripes.

[thevindicativevordan]

How would you say the plot of Superman barely holds together? Just curious on your thoughts about it

It's streched reallllllly thin amongst all the characters it has to juggle, and has to move fast because the 2 hour runtime demands Gunn be economical. For example we never get to see how the Daily Planet apart from Lois feels about the reveal regarding Superman's parents. How does Jimmy or Perry feel? There's not enough time to show us. Also in the ending, the people seemingly flip back to loving Superman again, even though the message his parents sent is in no way disproven. If that caused controversy surely there would be hold-outs who hate him still? Oh and don’t forget Hawkgirl murdering a foreign leader/ally of the United States which is skipped over entirely. These could easily be addressed elsewhere, like in the semi-sequel Gunn is making so I'm not picking at it just yet, but it's there.

[thevindicativevordan]

Very glad to head you enjoyed the new Superman movie! One bit in particular really stuck with me

“KILL HIM!”

“Good luck with THAT!”

Its so awesome Clark is allowed to be cocky

That and "eyes up here!" had me cheering in my seat. Supes doesn't need to be a full blown quipper like Spider-Man, but having him show some spirit and cockiness in his fights goes a long way to endear him to the audience.

[thevindicativevordan]

Is there any independent minor DC hero, not associated or affiliated to any superhero families or team, that you wish DC would showcase and elevate ?

Vixen! I need to finish the post I had on here sometime, but she is so cool and I wish she was a League mainstay.

[thevindicativevordan]

You're prob gonna disagree, but if they bring back Conduit in a real way, I want them to lean into how goofy his deal is. Even rewriting his backstory in Smallville to be less ridiculous, this guy became a supervillain, with his own evil organization, mainly to destroy what as far as he knew, is just an ordinary reporter, who he then tries and fails to murder, because he just happens to be the world's greatest hero. He's a supervillain Steve Lombard.

I love how over the top his backstory is, that's some peak hater stuff.

Only thing I would change is his powerset (because I'm bored of the overuse of kryptonite and think he would be better suited with something else) and I think his history with Clark needs to be adjusted to account for Lex being there + Clark no longer being a football star. I'm up for either Waid or Jurgens doing more with him.

Also he better keep calling Supes "Clarkie", it's hilarious how petty he comes across doing that. Ever the high school bully.