The Superman 2000 Pitch: Table of Contents

Since someone asked, here is how the actual pitch was structered as Tim and I posted sections out of order and jumped around a lot. Well, I jumped around a lot more than Tim did, as you'll see:

"The Pitch"
--My post on "Cycles"
--The last paragraph in my post on "History"
--The very end of my post on "Origins, Family, Friends and Adventures"

"The Concept"
--Tim's post on "The Concept"

"The Characters"
--Tim's post on "Superman"
--The beginning of my post on "History" for "The Costume" and "The Lost Years"
--The beginning of my post on "Origins, Family, Friends and Adventures" for "One Last Detail"
--Tim's post on "Clark Kent" and my post on "Clark Kent, Vegetarian" (overlap)
--Tim's post on "Lois Lane, Mrs. Superman"
--My post on "Origins, Family, Friends and Adventures" for "The Kents," "the Daily Planet" and "the Adventures"

"The Fortress"
--Tim's post on "the Fortress"

"The Villains"
--My two posts on the "Anti-Supermen" with the second one going
first and my first post going second

"The Writing Process"
--Tim's post on "The Writing Process"

And that is the entire pitch in proper order. Nothing was left out in Tim and my discussion. I hope you've enjoyed our look at this lost pitch and what might have been.

The Superman 2000 Pitch: Origins, Family, Friends and Adventures

[The final post in my and Tim Callahan's look at the Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, Mark Millar and Tom Peyer "Superman 2000" pitch. And, yes, the entire pitch will have been quoted and examined by the end of this post. Tim or I will put up a "table of contents" in the next few days so there's an idea of how the Quartet laid out the pitch. Enjoy.]

Today, I'm going to look at the supporting cast of the books, but we'll begin with "One Last Little Detail":

It’s always bothered us when Jor-El is shown to have knowledge of Earth's existence and even to have pictures of our planet. There's something so much more powerful about the infant Kal-El being hurled into space with only the slim chance that he might find a safe haven out them. The cosmic drama of Superman’s arrival on Earth is diminished, we feel, by Jor-El's aiming the rocket at Earth. There’s something mythical about the seemingly hopeless plight or the tiny alien child through merciless space. What cosmic destiny allowed the escape ship's computers to finally seek out and home in on a planet with the optimum conditions for survival of the Kryptonian infant--the computer, programmed by Jor-El to locate the best possible environment for the development of the child, finally giving up the ghost as it shuts down everything but survival systems and crash-lands on a primitive, technologically challenged planet. By sheer million-to-one chance, Jor-El’s last, desperate attempt to preserve his world, his bloodline, his people, this quite un-Kryptonian act at hope, is validated by Earth and by Superman’s arrival there. For Jor-El to know of Earth seems to strip away this sense of miraculous fate; he's simply posting his kid off to a world where he knows he’ll be great.

The Quartet doesn't take all of Jor-El's agency out of Superman's origin, but makes it more passive: he programs the ship, which then finds Earth. I agree that this does give Superman's arrival on Earth a more mythic and miraculous air, that fare somehow played a role in the whole thing. Like Superman was meant to be Earth's champion.

Although, there already was an element of chance in his arrival on Earth, because the place where he landed played a big part in how he turned out. Millar explored that in Red Son, and the Quartet discuss the role of his adoptive parents, the Kents:

Ma lives on to play an important role as the connection to Superman’s lost past, his own "golden age."

Pa should die. It seems right somehow that his death should mark Superman’s passage into a grander, more iconic phase of his career. Pa gave Clark his values and Superman will carry them to the stars.

Superman needs a little bit of tragedy here. The character works best and stands most tall when he’s forced to deal with things even his powers cannot help with. Frankly, the post-’86 Superman, death aside, has had a pretty sweet life, and the greatest heroes of myth and legend are always shaped as much by adversity as by triumph.

Moreover, as nice as it’s been to have the Kents around as supporting characters, when used poorly, they have a tendency to actually weaken Superman by making him less independent. We’d like to see him wrestle with moral and emotional struggles on his own without always being able to so easily talk them out with the infinitely wise Jonathan and Martha over a piece of rhubarb pie.

This is a compromise between the pre-Crisis and post-Crisis versions of Superman; in the former, the Kents died, while in the latter, the Kents lived. I do wonder about having Pa die, because it reminds me of Spider-Man where Uncle Ben dies while Aunt May lives. There's an obvious point there, of the missing father figure, the constant challenge to live up to that expectation, that yardstick that isn't there anymore. Morrison implemented this idea in All-Star Superman and also showed how Pa could die without Clark's intervention.

As well, from my experience (and I could be wrong, of course), when Clark has needed advice, he's gone to his father mostly, so his death would put him a position where he would need to figure things out for himself more. I do think it raises another level of dependency, though, as having only his Ma alive could make him visit more often and feel the need to take a more protective role.

The other major supporting characters are Clark's colleagues at The Daily Planet:

It's no longer a newspaper--or, if it does publish papers, it does so as an ancillary gesture to the faithful. The Daily Planet becomes the world's preeminent global internet news service, read worldwide. For the first time, the citizens of Fiji can read Clark Kent's exclusive on how Superman capped their erupting volcano. Not nearly as drastic a move as making Clark a TV reporter, Clark (and Lois and Jimmy and Perry) maintain their exact same jobs; only the venue changes, to something a lot more exciting, accessible, and identifiable to young readers.

PERRY WHITE remains the editor-in-chief.

JIMMY OLSEN keeps doing what Jimmy does with a new emphasis on his role as Superman’s Pal and a new way of looking at what that means now that Superman has changed. Part of the fun of Jimmy was that he was the guy who always got to enjoy the same kinds of wild adventures Superman enjoyed but without any of the incumbent responsibilities; we won’t forget that.

Jimmy has a special and unique respect for Clark as well as Superman, since Clark is less dismissive of him than the other staffers. To borrow from the old radio show, Clark is the only person alive who calls Olsen not "Jimmy" but "Jim," and that small gesture--the notion that there’s at least one Planet staffer who treats him like a peer and not a dweeby kid--is not lost on him.

CAT GRANT moves in on Clark while Lois is away. She doesn’t get it. Lois and Clark always seem to be sparring, so why does Clark keep her at arm’s length? Cat should now be the character in the book who suspects something about Clark. Truth is, she can’t figure out why she’s so powerfully attracted to this klutz. It’s like he’s got super-pheromones or something...

STEVE LOMBARD returns to the Sports Page as part of a nostalgic effort to bring back old readers. His column is a huge success. He can’t help trying to bully Clark, who can’t help enjoying thwarting Steve’s pranks. We suggest bringing Steve back mainly because his role in the office was a very distinct and useful one which hasn’t been taken by anyone else since.

Outside of Lois and Clark, those should be the main Planet characters. Banter and interplay at the Planet offices should be succinct, sharp, and to the point, carrying us from Clark’s short scenes into Superman’s adventures. Complex soap operas about the tertiary characters are sometimes interesting in small doses, but the trials of Lucy Lane and Ron Troupe (for example) can too often run the very dangerous risk of pushing Superman out of his own series. On that note...

A strange combination of throw-backs and updates for the 21st century here. The idea of updating The Daily Planet to an internet news service is a bit obvious and, in a way, cynical. Granted, like they've done over in Amazing Spider-Man with "The DB," the internet would play a role, but it's ten years since this pitch was written and newspapers haven't exactly died out yet. A little too forward-thinking? But, it is also less of a drastic step than shifting the cast to television, as was done in the books in the '70s.

I really like that the Quartet places emphasis on the role of Clark here rather than Superman, particularly in relation to Jimmy Olsen, where we'd expect him to be played up as "Superman's pal" given the fondness of the writer's for pre-Crisis Superman stories. Although, they do seem to be scaling back Jimmy's place within The Daily Planet because he was more of a peer by this point in the books, I believe. No longer the "kid," he was a photographer and has since grown in that role to full reporter (again, I could be wrong).

Besides the shift from print to online, the biggest change is the reintroduction of Steve Lombard, who does play a useful role in the interoffice politics. It is interesting that Ron Troupe gets mentioned a few times in the pitch, but doesn't warrant a spot in the Quartet's Daily Planet (or, at least, a mention of what they would do with him--although, there is the possibility that he'll become the new Kryptonite Man, as mentioned later in the pitch).

This section leads into a short bit on "The Adventures":

While, as with the current run of books, there will always be time for subplots and secondary character development, our take on the SUPERMAN titles is that they aren’t "group books" or "ensemble pieces." Even more than now, we want the focus to be on Superman himself as he takes part in grand, world-shattering, star-spanning adventures which tap into the same sense of awe and wonder we strove to invoke with JLA and KINGDOM COME. Superman is the Man of Tomorrow. He mustn’t stay mired in the fast-passing trends of yesterday’s post-WATCHMEN comics. Superman’s world isn’t the life-sized, realistic world outside our window. It’s a world of limitless wonder, a thrilling circus of amazement in which absolutely anything can happen.

Given the magnitude of the changes we’re prepared to put him through, we can’t imagine running short of Superman-centric ideas once the spotlight is once more firmly focused on him. Once we’re up and at it, there’ll be room to check in on the Ron Troupes and Alice Whites as necessary, but for now, if the kids are going to be laying down two bucks every week, let’s give them the star of the show--saving the planet, defending the weak, and whenever he gets a breather, exploring the mysteries of... [The Fortress]

Here, we'd expect a few plots, but the Quartet discuss Superman's adventures in abstractions, in the general tone they want to achieve. I find this interesting, because if you look at the pitch, as a whole, very little plot is mentioned. The only story we really get is the Luthor/Brainiac one that results in the dissolution of Lois and Clark's marriage. Clearly, the Quartet is interested in telling stories, but want to make it clear what lies behind the stories, what their objectives are, how they view the world that Superman inhabits. Of course, I am interested in what some of their other plot ideas would have been.

***

And that about does it. I will leave you with the final two paragraphs of the pitch's initial section, which outlines exactly what Morrison, Waid, Millar and Peyer wanted to achieve and you can judge if they would have succeeded:

Our intention is to restore Superman to his pre-eminent place as the greatest super-hero of all and to topple Spawn and every Marvel comic that’s currently in his way.

We don’t think this will be much of a problem.

The Superman 2000 Pitch: More Anti-Supermen

[Another in my and Tim Callahan's look at the Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, Mark Millar and Tom Peyer "Superman 2000" pitch. New posts by Tim on Thursdays and by me on Fridays.]

Since Tim discussed the Quartet's plans for Lois Lane and the "big storyline" of their run, I figured I'd follow-up on last week's post by looking at the plans for the three remaining villains. First, they had a few words on the villains in general:

In short, we have a new blanket take on Superman’s foes. We’ve recast many of them as cracked-mirror reflections of the Man of Steel himself, aspects of his character taken to a villainous extreme. Brainiac represents Superman’s alien nature without his human compassion. Luthor is the only man on Earth capable of being Superman’s equal but has squandered his unlimited potential on evil. Prankster fights for Truth and Justice in a demented way, and Bizarro...well, read on...

As I noted last week, the plan was for each to reflect Superman and his weaknesses in their own way, something which has popped up since as well, particularly in Morrison's All-Star Superman run where Superman continually encounters various versions of himself (although not just villains). The first of the three villains for this week will sound somewhat familiar because of Morrison's All-Star Superman as well... Bizarro:

Taking the already existing Bizarro character and spinning off from Peyer's 80-Page Giant story, we can restore the creepy, demented, unnerving quality of the old Bizarro World stories. A little funny still...but somehow, a lot more scary.

Imagine a living planet which hunts through space. The entire world is a sentient system and it preys on other planets like a cancer. This self-aware--but not particularly intelligent by our standards--macro-entity has learned to imitate its prey and does this in order to "sneak up" on a victim in a pleasing, non-threatening shape. Its method is to transform itself into a crude copy of its target, sail in close and then strike by launching self-replicating parts of itself.

Now it's coming our way and it's scanning for life as it prepares to imitate and destroy the juiciest planet in its path.

And the first thing it scans, the first living creature whose mental activity is as sluggish as the killer planet's own...is Bizarro. Bizarro, whose diary, transmitted into the galaxy, attracted the killer world across the void.

And from its rough scans of Earth, combined with the flawed synthetic substance of Bizarro (who has crash-landed on its surface and found himself immune to its assaults), the planet recreates its entire form. It becomes a grotesque, rough-hewn cube with vast distorted continents and oceans in the form of our major continental landmasses.

Dull-witted synthetic creatures, using Bizarro as their model, form in the millions, billions. Odd, unfinished, cities rise. Things break easily and run down and go wrong...everything is topsy-turvy.

Bizarro has at last found his dream world and can't wait to show Superman.

The Bizarro Planet, the Cube Earth, attacks by firing parts of itself at its target world. These parts then infect any life form on the host world and reduce it to the same state of imbecilic hunger as the killer world itself. Plagues of Bizarros shuffle through city streets, making everything like themselves, reducing scientists to drooling halfwits, tearing down streetsigns and replacing them with dangerous gibberish. Suddenly the Bizarros are nightmarish, unstoppable plague carriers...who also happen to be a form of life which is only trying to exist on its own terms and which Superman knows he cannot simply destroy.

The Cube Earth shouldn't attack often, but we know it's out there and we can visit again with or without Superman. Bizarro #1 himself is the only one of the Bizarro creatures who is not himself a contaminant to humans. He is the Cube Earth's crazy ambassador.

The Bizarros should have a Cronenberg/Lynch quality of blackest humor and gut-wrenching dread, mingled with the sad, sinister charm that Tom's story worked to evoke.

I'm not familar with Peyer's story, but it's typical of the Quartet to build upon previous stories, to use what has already happened rather than simply start from square one. As well, at this time, these four writers were very friendly and often bounced ideas off of one another or did projects that led to one of the others taking over. Millar wrote the Zauriel mini-series, Peyer wrote Hourman after Morrison introduced him in JLA, Morrison and Waid came up with Hypertime, Waid was the go-to fill-in writer on JLA, Morrison and Millar wrote a year of Flash while Waid took a break, plus the various stories contributed to the 80-page giant books that were fashionable at the time. In a way, these four working together on the Superman titles would have been the culmination of years where they worked closely but separately.

This version of Bizarro is familar to anyone reading Morrison's All-Star Superman where he gave the concept two issues. The idea of the Bizarro World imitating as a means to pacify wasn't accomplished quite as planned, but the rest is there, pretty much.

For our next villain, most of his role is discussed in the portion of the pitch related to Lois, but the Quartet included a few more words on Brainiac:

Lex Luthor builds a green-flesh computer brain and body to house the dying Brainiac. The space-villain becomes Luthor's Frankenstein Monster, a heartless machine whose intellect and cosmic reach dwarfs even his creator's genius. Unlike Luthor, Brainiac hasn’t a shred of compassion and is the only enemy whom Superman genuinely fears.

Not explicitly stated, but the Quartet implies that Brainiac is what Jonathan Kent feared Clark would turn into in Elliot S. Maggin's novel Miracle Monday: a cold, detached superbeing without any compassion or morals, viewing all living things as specimen to be studied and used for his own purposes. Since Superman is defined by his compassion and devotion to life, Brainiac is very much his opposite number.

And that leaves us with Lex Luthor, Superman's arch-enemy:

We see Luthor playing chess with twenty grandmasters simultaneously while reading untranslated Il Principe and teaching himself Urdu via a Walkman he made for himself in five minutes back in 1962. Luthor is so smart we don't even have a WORD for what he is yet; calling him a genius is as insulting as calling him an imbecile.

Here’s a secret about Luthor no one yet knows. Despite his born ruthlessness, he was once salvageable, once redeemable--until Superman arrived. Though even he doesn’t consciously realize it, every iota of Luthor’s self-esteem was pinned to achieving that most lofty goal: to be considered the greatest man who ever lived. And he was on his way--until Superman appeared and outclassed him, triggering the scattershot sociopathic tantrum that is his criminal career.

Here’s another secret. Luthor's Lexcorp empire? All the corporate-baron stuff we see him doing routinely? Six minutes of his day, maybe less. He’s not the Kingpin. He only pretends to be. Luthor the businessman is the tip of the iceberg, a smokescreen generated to give the public and his enemies a false, easily digested persona which masks his true depths. In other words, Luthor conquered the financial world largely in order to project a "secret identity" designed to make people underestimate him. Lexcorp is but one of a thousand projects Luthor attends to every day.

In time, once Superman learns of Luthor’s depth, he will come to understand Lex as a tragedy of wasted potential. Though he realizes he could not have handled his earlier, formative encounters with Luthor any differently, Superman carries a new weight around in his heart. He knows now that Luthor, but for the path he chose, could have been his equal, his only true peer on this earth. And though Superman’s greatest priority will always be to stop Luthor’s schemes, his greatest frustration will be his continuing inability to rehabilitate Lex for the good of all mankind.

Not just Superman's arch-enemy, Luthor is also his foil: a superior being who never reaches his full potential because of emotional weakness. In Superman's case, his desire to be humble and fit in; in Luthor's, his desire to be the best. Both are limited by opposing desires related to pride, but Superman channels his to better the world, while Luthor focuses only on destroying Superman, the only obstacle to achieving his goal. There's an irony here, that he will team up with Brainiac who is not only more powerful physically, but mentally as well, to defeat someone who is only more powerful physically. There's no question that Luthor is Superman's better intellectually, but all he focuses on is Superman's physical abilities.

I'm actually not a fan of the idea that Luthor only spends "six minutes of his day, maybe less" on Lexcorp, but I've always found that aspect of the character to be far more interesting than Luthor as supervillain. One thing I thought the creative team of Jeph Loeb, Joe Kelly, Joe Casey and Mark Schultz did right was making Luthor president since that demonstrates the level Luthor plays on, which is one entirely different from other villains. He can attack Superman in ways no one else can, but I seem to be in the minority with my preference since the character has since reverted to wearing his green and purple armour and acting rather mundane. Even in Morrison's All-Star Superman, he isn't much more than a regular supervillain--which is where the character began, so there's just cause for that. Even in Morrison's JLA, he was a supervillain, but he employed means (particularly in "Rock of Ages") unlike those of other villains. Part of what makes him so frustrating is that Superman and the other heroes are the only ones who know the true Luthor, that he always walks away with a smile and clean hands.

The idea that Superman is trying to rehabilitate Luthor is fantastic and adds another level to their confrontations: the goal isn't simply to thwart Luthor's schemes but to make him see the error of his ways. This is almost similar to what Casey eventually did by turning Superman into a pacifist: since the character is one built on providing inspiration and hope, wouldn't Superman try and rehabilitate every criminal he encounters? Would that be a logical point of evolution in the character?

Until next week.

The Superman 2000 Pitch: Some Anti-Supermen

[Another in my and Tim Callahan's look at the Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, Mark Millar and Tom Peyer "Superman 2000" pitch. New posts by Tim Wednesday-ish and by me on Fridays.]

In exploring Superman's villains, the Quartet (as I call them) wanted a healthy mix of old and new--of honouring the history of the character while also moving forward. For Metallo, they wrote:

The Man with the Red Kryptonite Heart. STAR Labs’s experiments on a fragment of Green K result in it emitting radiation at a lower, cooler frequency. It turns red, and its new wavelengths temporarily cause weird, resonant changes in Kryptonian molecular structure. No gorilla heads, no silly transformations into a 1956 Buick. Instead, painful mutations. Frightening intangibility. An eerie expansion or dampening of the senses. Disturbing chemical changes in the brain’s communication centers. When Luthor learns of this new Red K and realizes its potential, he steals it to revamp the largely ineffective, one-note Metallo, exploiting his terrifying potential as a dangerous John-Carpenter's-Halloween-type Super-stalker.

They stay true to the character, but also bring back an old Superman plot point with the red Kryptonite while updating it. As they say, the transformations caused this time will really mess Superman up instead of leading to "wacky adventures." It also makes Metallo a new sort of threat and plays on the concept of Kryptonite a little. By giving him the red variety, it allows for something different, especially if they plan on bringing back the Kryptonite Man...

An evil, cagey rock-like monster with a body reminiscent of The Thing's, a primal green-glowing personification of Superman's death, the Kryptonite Man is, in reality and unknown to Superman or even to himself, a supporting cast member (Ron Troupe?) who turns into Kryptonite Man against his will in a Wolfmanlike transformation. It’s a rare event; kryptonite will never be used as a writer’s crutch. What won’t be a rarity is the writing team’s continual watchdogging to make certain the familiar touchstones of the Superman Legend are used as opportunities for creativity, not ways around it.

The original Kryptonite Man was a normal looking man who glowed green pretty much, but this again adds a new dimension to the character, giving reason for him to be evil. I remember Kurt Busiek and Geoff Johns created a new Kryptonite Man in their One Year Later arc and that version was alright.

Throughout the proposal, Ron Troupe is sort of the whipping boy for the Quartet, partly because he is the most notable supporting character from the previous era of the book. The four want to honour what came before, but seem critical of elements of the previous run... while trying not to. Of course, it's easy to criticise what just happened, especially if you didn't like it. Turning Ron Troupe, the key supporting character from that period, into one of Superman's opposites is both an insult and, well, a way to pay tribute, I suppose. He doesn't become evil, he becomes something he can't control.

The next two villains revolve around sunlight in their own way. If the previous related to Superman through his weakness, these two relate through his strength, in a way. First, Solaris:

The Tyrant Sun from DC One Million is back, fulfilling his destiny as one of Superman's most deadly and persistent foes. This will be his first appearance after One Million, returned from deep space, with a bad grudge, for his first-ever encounter with the Man of Steel.

Not much added here that we didn't already know, but I really do think Morrison's concept here is fantastic. If Superman gains strength from the sun, why not have him fight an enemy that can counter that? That can make sunlight deadly? For the new Toyman, it's more of a play on Superman's gaining strength from the sun:

The late Winslow Schott's spirit possesses a GI-Joe size figure which lies in a toybox all day and comes to life when the sun goes down. By day, he’s just another action figure in a kid's bedroom. By night, when the moon comes out and the kid is sleeping, Toyman wakes up and sneaks out of the house to run his criminal empire. Creepy, utterly ruthless, and in charge of an army of killer toys, Toyman's Achilles Heel is sunlight, which renders him motionless.

Note that where Superman is most powerful in sunlight, the Toyman is only powerful in darkness. A nice little twist on the concept, I think.

The new Prankster plays with Superman's beginnings:

He fights for Truth, Justice and the American Way in a manner diametrically opposed to Superman's. He's an anti-corporate prankster, like Michael Moore in TV NATION. He wants to show people the strings and wake them up from their blind acceptance of a S.T.A.R. Labs playing with DNA in the middle of a densely populated area, or a Watchtower on the moon monitoring our every movement, or a Lexcorp secretly taking tax breaks to build Bizarros. The Prankster stages elaborate, humiliating, destructive public hoaxes that mess with people's heads. As astute and perceptive as he is out of control, Prankster is the one earthman who actually worries Luthor.

Joe Casey played around with the Golden Age Superman in Adventures of Superman #612, but the Quartet does it here, too. When Superman began, he fought for the working class against corruption and those who would exploit them. Over the years, his mandate shifted towards the majestic and grand, from directly tackling problems to merely acting as an inspiration. This Prankster is built on the origins of Superman in our world, another tip of the hat to the character's past. The Prankster attacks Superman on an ideological level rather than a physical one.

Finally, Mr. Mxyzptlk who attacks Superman on a spiritual, psychological or emotional level:

A Loki-ish prankster who uses people's lives as his game pieces. Mxy employs his awesome, five-dimensional reality-warping powers to trap Superman in dangerous, unreal scenarios... a high-stakes upgrade of the Elseworlds concept. No longer content to make buildings sprout wings, Mxy warps the facts of Superman's life in a sustained effort to test and break the Man of Steel's spirit (because the imp's fifth-dimensional intellect rightly understands that Superman's pure soul is his true power). Sometimes aware that he's been thrust into warped histories and sometimes not, Superman can only win these games by rising above the Mxyworlds' temptations to be less virtuous, less positive, less dedicated, less effective than we know he can be. Superman's own inner strength is the key to making Mxy disappear.

I like how they reference Elseworlds and plan to integrate that idea here, perhaps building on the concept of Hypertime. But, it's also interesting that each villain attacks Superman through a different weakness that all get around his invulnerability and, many, get to the root of the character, what he believes, what he places his trust in. Clearly, each villain's role was thought-out.

You'll note that I left out two biggies: Lex Luthor and Brainiac, the two ultimate Anti-Supermen, each representing a different facet of the character. Well, Tim or I will get to them eventually, but since they're very important to the Major Plot, best to save them for that post.

The Superman 2000 Pitch: History

[Another in my and Tim Callahan's look at the Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, Mark Millar and Tom Peyer "Superman 2000" pitch. New posts by Tim Wednesday-ish and by me on Fridays.]

In last week's post, I discussed the concept of cycles and how it not only informs some of the writing of Grant Morrison and Mark Millar, but also informed the approach taken by the two with Mark Waid and Tom Peyer in their "Superman 2000" pitch. Building on that and my discussion of evolution, I'd like to look at two sections of their pitch, "The Costume" and "The 'Lost Years.'"

First, the Quartet's take on Superman's costume:

We’d like to tweak the costume by finally getting rid of the red underpants. This gives us a new look which somehow recovers the more classic, Golden Age, "primal" Superman look and feels like an update. This move also has instant media appeal: Finally, Superman’s smart enough to wear his shorts UNDER his pants.

Now, the fact that Superman wears red "underpants" over his costume is a constant joke that everyone would like to rectify, but no one does. Obviously, it would be an evolution in his costume, a step forward, but note that the Quartet specifically references Superman's Golden Age costume in explaining this change. It is not just a step forward, but a tribute to the character's history. This is the only time I've ever seen someone argue for this change by citing the character's original costume and I find that connection inspired.

Continuing with that, the Quartet want to give Superman a different sort of Golden Age connection and tie his existence into the history of the DCU a little bit more during his "lost years":

During the "Lost Years" of Clark Kent after he left high school--if he still has any room left in there--we’d like to establish that he met and was given training by a member (or members) of the Justice Society, possibly Al Pratt, the Atom. Since Superman in our currently-operating timestream wasn't the first super-hero, we’d like to restore his prominence by reaffirming that he is most certainly the greatest. We see Doctor Fate, near the end of his group’s life, telling the JSA that their work is all but over. That the first age of heroes was but the prelude. That soon, the greatest hero of all will arrive from the stars and it will it will be the task of the entire JSA to find him and teach him about the world of the costumed crimefighters. This little addition to the past gives Superman a new grandeur, a fresh religious dimension, and ties him more directly into the development of superheroics in the DCU (although having said that, we want to keep Superman's adventures on the periphery of the Universe, in the sense that we don't really mention the JLA much or refer a great deal to other heroes. The JSA should be seen as some misty Olympian group of supermen from the past, guys who are now dead, gone or replaced by the greatest hero of all. At least in his own book, we want to reclaim that old feeling that Superman is the only super-hero). It also seems mythically right that Superman should, at some point before he dons the cape, meet his predecessors, his John the Baptists, who have awaited his coming and now have a few lessons for the fledgling hero.

This idea of Superman trained by Al Pratt adds a lot to the character by, firstly, putting Superman within the larger context of the DC universe and not simply acting as an independent agent. In the current continuity, the JSA came long before Superman, so it's only natural a young Clark Kent would seek out a member (or members) of the group and look for training. With that resource at hand, why would he simply jump into superheroics? As well, it gives him a parallel to Batman that the Quartet doesn't mention; since Bruce Wayne was taught to box by Ted (aka Wildcat), Clark Kent trained by Al Pratt gives the sense of these two fitting into the generational aspect of the DCU (throw in Wonder Woman's mother as a member of the JSA and the entire "trinity" is represented). Since the need for Superman to be young and relevent must be upheld, providing him with historical context only makes sense. There's a tip of the hat to the Superman from Earth-2 who was a member of the Justice Society of America, and keeping that connection alive.

The invocation of the religious and the mythic is nothing new, but this is a fresh way to further the concept of "Superman as Christ" by providing him with a group of prophets that act as harbingers for his coming. As well, I do enjoy the idea of both entrenching Superman within the DCU while, at the same time, moving him away from his fellow heroes (as a solo title should). It's a clever way to keep Superman's adventures focused on him, while still ensuring the reader recognises his place within the larger universe.

This attempt to fit a contemporary into the historical context of the DCU is fascinating, particularly as it acts both as a means to propel the character forward, to add new levels of meaning, and to tie him to his roots in older continuity. It certainly fits with a concept the Quartet mention at the beginning of the pitch:

The Superman relaunch we’re selling bucks the trend of sweeping aside the work done by those who came immediately before. Unlike the "cosmic reset" revamps all too prevalent in current comics, our New Superman approach is an honest attempt to synthesize the best of all previous eras. Our intention is to honor each of Superman’s various interpretations and to use internal story logic as our launching pad for a re-imagined, streamlined 21st century Man of Steel. The "cosmic reset" notion has been replaced by a policy of "include and transcend" with regard to past continuity.

As Tim mentioned in his first post, we can see this concept applied in Morrison's current Batman run, but it's great how it comes up in subtle ways throughout the pitch as the two cases above show.

The Superman 2000 Pitch: Cycles

[Another in my and Tim Callahan's look at the Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, Mark Millar and Tom Peyer "Superman 2000" pitch. New posts by Tim on Wednesday and by me on Fridays.]

Grant Morrison and Mark Millar are both big believers in what Warren Ellis calls their "joint theory of industry cycles." In the interview with Millar where that description is taken, Millar says, "I'm a political buff and have watched with interest as the Western parties have swung from left to right every fifteen years in the 20th Century. Comics seem to work in twenty year cycles and Superman always seems to get popular when they're at their lowest ebb. Maybe we just turn to the more inspirational and outlandish characters when things are in a slump."

Later in the same interview (which, by the way, is taken from Warren Ellis's Come in Alone, which you should all own), Millar adds, "Imagine the industry as a human-life span. The Golden Age Boom was our crude infancy. The Silver Age Boom was the playfulness of childhood. The Dark Age boom was angst-ridden, sexually fucked-up adolesence where we were embarrassed about the physical stuff. The next boom is maturity/adulthood where anything goes. What comes next is death and transformation."

Now, this "joint theory of industry cycles" even made it into a Morrison/Millar comic, The Flash #134, which focused on Jay Garrick, the Golden Age Flash, who was filling in for an injured Wally West. In one scene, Jay and Wally are having lunch with Nightwing, and wind up discussing these "heroic ages" that we've used as convenient labels for periods of comics as real things. It's really quite interesting that this concept is applied directly to the world the heroes live in by Millar and Morrison with Wally explicitly stating that the ages last twenty years "ACCORDING TO JONES AND JACOBS" (Gerard Jones and Will Jacobs--referencing their book The Comic Book Heroes, I believe).

However, at the beginning of that conversation, Jay says something that I think applies to what Morrison, Millar, Waid and Peyer were trying to do with "Superman 2000": "THE SUPERHEROES WHO ARE ALWAYS GOING TO BE IN DEMAND IN THIS BUSINESS ARE THE ONES WHO KNOW HOW TO ADAPT TO THE MOOD OF THE TIMES." At the very beginning of their pitch, the quartet discuss cycles and state their intention to have Superman "adapt to the mood of the times," basically:

Historical record tells us that every fifteen years or so, Superman is re-imagined to address the wants and needs of a new generation. Fifteen years ago, John Byrne recreated Superman from the ground up. Fifteen years prior to that, Julie Schwartz and Denny O’Neil engineered the biggest shakeup since Mort Weisinger began bringing in all his familiar lore fifteen years previous.

That fifteen year cycle is upon us again. With all due deference and heartfelt thanks to the creators of all the fine work done since the Byrne revamp, it seems that many of the social trends and historical currents which made those comics so appropriate and so successful in the ‘80s and early ‘90s have now been replaced by newer, different trends and currents. Sadly, sales would seem to reflect our contention that new times demand fresh approaches.

We believe that the four of us understand the new face of Superman: a forward-looking, intelligent, enthusiastic hero retooled to address the challenges of the next thousand years. The ultimate American icon revitalized for the new millennium as an aspirational figure, a role model for 21st Century global humanity.

What I find interesting is that the comic book industry apparently operates on a twenty-year cycle, while Superman operates on his own fifteen-year cycle. Why is that? Millar claims that Superman is never more popular than at industry low-points, which would mean that those low points don't necessarily occur at the same point in every cycle. For instance, "Superman 2000" would have came at the end of the so-called "Dark Age" and the beginning of what people seem to be calling another Golden Age. But, if these cycles continue as discussed, the low-point woul happen five years before the transition from one age to another. Of course, this isn't really scientific in any real way, but still interesting that the cycles don't quite match up.

Now, a "generation" is usually around 15-20 years in rough cultural terms, so the concept of cycles there makes a lot of sense, as does the idea of reimaging Superman "to address the wants and needs of a new generation" every 15 years. And Superman alone doesn't operate like this, of course, most enduring characters do, as Millar and Morrison had Jay Garrick point out: it's about adaptation and evolution--something I discussed in my first post on "Superman 2000." Really, the idea of cycles is secondary to the idea that Superman must continue to adapt if he is to remain relevent, something which the Quartet recognised enough to state at the very beginning of their proposal.

But, I do find it very interesting how, during this time period, this "joint theory of industry cycles" played a big role in not just how Morrison and Millar (along with Waid and Peyer here) approached books, but also became an explicit part of the DC universe in The Flash #134. One wonders if a similar commentary would have shown up in the "Superman 2000" books.

The Superman 2000 Pitch: Clark Kent, Vegetarian (and Superman's Evolving Morality)

When discussing Joe Casey's final year on Adventures of Superman, I described his decision to make Superman a pacifist as "probably the biggest leap forward for the character in decades." I see Casey's decision to do such a thing as a character-defining moment quickly ignored because it is too tough to write and conflicts with how we like to view the character--after all, can we have Superman comics where he doesn't punch things? Perish the thought.

Casey has also said he regrets Superman explicitly stating his pacifism, wishing he had simply had Superman not use violence, but not discuss it. I found that wish very interesting as that's the exact opposite reaction I had at the time: I wish the idea had been taken up by DC and made an integral part of the character. Use The superhero as the agent of change and really explore the next stage of superhero comics where, maybe, superheroes don't have to use violence. It's not a new idea, as the old Captain Marvel comics often had him simply take punches and bullets until the criminals simply gave up.

Casey's regret at stating it explicitly also reminds me of part of the Morrison/Waid/Millar/Peyer "Superman 2000" pitch where they also wanted to take Superman's character to its next logical step by having him be a vegetarian:

One final little note, which has nothing to do with the fact that Grant wrote "Animal Man" and Millar’s a veggie, but is a matter for pure logic. Clark eats bouef bourginon? The man with a code against killing eats murdered animals? Regardless of his farm upbringing, can we justify a Superman this aware and attuned to life in all its forms being a carnivore? Though there’s no need to make a direct, on-stage issue of it, file this thought away; his diet would be beans, pulses and windfall, if anything, and his body would be capable of extracting maximum energy from these simple foods if not solely from the sun’s rays.

Like the pacifism, it makes perfect sense with who Superman is--he respects all life and would continually alter his behaviour to be more in line with those morals. But, the four also mention that they don't want to state it explicitly. I can understand why, as didactic stories are rarely good--and do you want to turn readers off by having Superman of all characters preach about the evils of eating meat?

At the same time, why not? Shouldn't Superman contain elements of didacticism? His comics always have--his role has long been the moral guiding post for youth and inspiring others to act to his level. Shouldn't he be a pacifist and vegetarian, state those things proudly--not preach, not try to convert, simply put that knowledge out there and hope that others follow his lead?

Or, is it reluctance to enact any meaningful change in the character, because it can and will almost certainly be undone by the company within a couple of years? Despite being a forerunner among superheroes, the leader of them, is Superman incapable of meaningful leadership because of corporate influences and goals? Is bleeding the trademark for all its worth impeding the logical evolution of the character?

Shouldn't Superman be an agent of change and progressive morality that alters how we view superhero comics--and how superheroes view themselves? Isn't that the best way to make the character relevent and interesting? Isn't that exactly what he needs?

Update: Tim Callahan discusses The Concept portion of the "Superman 2000" pitch over at his blog. Go read that.