{"id":835,"date":"2006-02-08T09:30:16","date_gmt":"2006-02-08T14:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/from-buttman-to-superman\/"},"modified":"2006-02-08T09:30:16","modified_gmt":"2006-02-08T14:30:16","slug":"from-buttman-to-superman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/from-buttman-to-superman","title":{"rendered":"From Buttman to Superman"},"content":{"rendered":"

VM contributor and all-around good guy Tom Spurgeon recently posted a neat review of a Superman comic<\/a> on his comicsreporter.com site. I don’t read much in the superhero genre anymore, but I’ve been a comics reader since I was a little kid. I’ll flip through issues on the newsstand, trying to figure out what happened to characters I used to read about, but that’s about it.<\/p>\n

What I found interesting about this review was Tom’s discussion of writers’ tendency to approach superheroes from an ‘adult’ viewpoint. As he puts it:<\/p>\n

I’ve long wondered if the problem with Superman is that his creators, going back to John Byrne twenty years ago, have written from what intrigues them about the character as adults rather than what might have interested them as a child. [. . .]\n

I think of all the big, iconic characters, Superman might suffer most for that now decades-old shift in approach. The other popular, franchise-bearing superheroes — Batman, the X-Men, Spider-Man — at their conceptual core all traffic in emotional states that are of interest to teenagers, to those who fail to outgrow the teenager’s worries and concerns, and to those who don’t mind revisiting them. Beyond the spectacle he provides, Superman’s appeal rockets past adolescence to more of a little kid’s boundary-driven view of the world. Superman is the strongest. He’s the fastest. He’s the toughest. Kids grasp at Superman for the reason they read biographies about LeBron James and Alex Rodriguez and wish to visit the observation deck of the Sears Tower. Superman is the best, and the world gets filled in between what we know about ourselves and what we can figure out about him. It’s a much longer trip to see things from point of view starting out in our adult world than it is to get to the teenager’s insecurities and feelings of omnipotence. This may be one reason some of the best Superman stories are almost automatically written, or, as legend has it, penned by those working through some basic issues in therapy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think this is a nice companion to the Stagliano piece below. Go visit Tom’s site<\/a> somedarntime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VM contributor and all-around good guy Tom Spurgeon recently posted a neat review of a Superman comic on his comicsreporter.com site. I don’t read much in the superhero genre anymore, but I’ve been a comics reader since I was a little kid. I’ll flip through issues on the newsstand, trying to figure out what happened … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “From Buttman to Superman”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-dt","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":475,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/no-two-ways-about-it","url_meta":{"origin":835,"position":0},"title":"No two ways about it . . .","author":"Gil","date":"February 18, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Superman is a dick.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1245,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/if-only-they-had-bizarro-king","url_meta":{"origin":835,"position":1},"title":"If only they had Bizarro King","author":"Gil","date":"December 12, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm not a gamer. This isn't because I think video games are beneath me, but because if I had a game console I would play obsessively and ruin my life. The only console I've owned was a Sega DreamCast that was a hand-me-down from my dad. I played NBA2K on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Comic books & strips"","block_context":{"text":"Comic books & strips","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/comics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3120,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/lost-in-the-supermarket-milk-of-the-bizarros","url_meta":{"origin":835,"position":2},"title":"Lost in the Supermarket: Milk of the Bizarros!","author":"Gil","date":"December 23, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Bizarro Superman #1 say, \"Drink KLIM! If you am know what's not good for you!\" See the whole Lost in the Supermarket series","rel":"","context":"In "Lost in the Supermarket"","block_context":{"text":"Lost in the Supermarket","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/lost-in-the-supermarket"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3510,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/0-fer-of-the-week","url_meta":{"origin":835,"position":3},"title":"0-fer of the Week","author":"Gil","date":"February 25, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"What better day of the week than Wednesday to show off my lack of erudition? In an act of Godelian irrelevance, I'll try to post a significant 0-fer (as in, \"I've never read a book, play, story or essay by [x]\") every week. This week's 0-fer is\u00c2\u00a0 . . .\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "0-fer"","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2936,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-nov-21-2008","url_meta":{"origin":835,"position":4},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Nov. 21, 2008","author":"Gil","date":"November 21, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I took yesterday off to recover from my biz-trip to Atlanta. When I got back to my home computer, I discovered a mere 1,600 items in my RSS feed. So here's a new set of links, all freshly pressed for you! Just click more! Huxtable! Lopate! It's on! * *\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4867,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-jan-15-2010","url_meta":{"origin":835,"position":5},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Jan. 15, 2010","author":"Gil","date":"January 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Yeahyeah: \"Make with the links, Gil!\" Fine. Just click \"more\"! Said it before and I'll say it again: it's the quiet ones you gotta watch out for. * * * My brother & I used to listen to Art Rust, Jr. on the radio all the time as kids. He\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}