20 years ago today, this blog launched. It started as a group blog, but, quickly, became smaller and bigger with me taking over as the eventual sole writer. I wasn't sure how I wanted to mark the occasion and debated various options. I landed upon the following long essay written in the summer of 2020 for other purposes. It's been sitting on my laptop for over four and a half years, something I've always thought was a shame as I'm quite proud of it. It's also something a bit reminiscent of the early essays that I did here, like the one on Marvel Boy or the one on another Joe Casey comic, Codeflesh. I have updated it with a short section at the end that may feel grafted on a bit... because it was. Please, enjoy. And thank you for reading for the past 20 years.
Introduction – The Man of Yesterday vs.
the Man of Tomorrow
Kevin Nowlan’s cover for Adventures of Superman #612 demanded
that I buy the comic. I was a fan of Joe Casey’s writing, having lucked into
being a subscriber of Cable when he
took over the title from James Robinson with issue 51 in 1998. That Cable issue
was cover dated February (the same month he took over Adventures of Superman in 2001) and this Adventures of Superman issue was just five years and one month
since his debut. For whatever reason, I hadn’t gotten his Adventures of Superman to that point despite following his other
work like Wildcats (which, by this
point had evolved into Version 3.0)
and Automatic Kafka in a fairly
obsessed manner. But, the cover for issue 612 changed all of that.
With a striking two-toned green background
featuring ‘rays’ of green emanating from an unseen point, the image was simple:
the current, modern Superman has just been leveled by an uppercut from what
looks to be the Golden Age original Superman. The caption reads “The Man of
Yesterday vs. the Man of Tomorrow!” Nowlan adapted his style for the Golden Age
Superman, with a cleaner line, less shading, the use of Benday dots for
colouring the skin tone; the posing is stilted and somewhat forced. It’s a
striking (no pun intended) image that remains one of my favourite covers.
It also got me to pick up the comic.
And that’s how I began reading the best 12
issues of Superman comics I’ve ever read.
I’ve since gone back and gotten the rest of
Casey’s tenure on Adventures of Superman,
but, aside from the odd issue or scene, those issues have never held the same
appeal as Casey’s final year on the title. Joined by Derec Aucoin on art (with
Charlie Adlard stepping in for a two-parter), those 12 issues are a different
sort of Superman comic than I’ve read before and since.
Casey has spent much of his career trying
to figure out what happens after. His Wildcats
tried to answer what happens after the war is over; Automatic Kafka is all about what happens after superheroes stop
being superheroes (or, after their comics stop being published); Gødland is about a series of
never-ending attempts to answer what happens after enlightenment. If superhero
comics have spent decades showing what happens, Casey wants to show what
happens after.
In that final year of Adventures of Superman (and in a spattering of issues leading up to
it), he tried to write a Superman comic about what happens after he stops using
violence to solve problems. What happens if Superman doesn’t throw a single
punch for an entire year’s worth of comics? Is he still Superman? Are the
stories still interesting? Is there still drama and conflict and high stakes?
Is it still satisfying?
I sure thought so – and still do.
The idea that the premier superhero, known
most of all for his fantastic strength, could forego violence is an exciting
one. After all, one of my strongest associations with Superman in comics comes
from when I was nine and he died at the hands of Doomsday after an epic
multi-issue brawl that leveled Metropolis and much of the surrounding area.
It’s not my earliest memory of Superman by any means, but it’s one that took
hold. How could it not? Costume ripped, bleeding, bruised, slugging it out with
this monster of muscle and jagged bones that could someone slice open
Superman’s skin... That sort of imagery tends to leave a mark.
And Casey spent a year going entirely
against it. Not only that, but, five issues in, he announced his intent by
making Superman’s pacifism explicit. While Casey would later say that having
the character state outright that he’s a pacifist was, perhaps, going too far,
I’ve always thought it key to the experiment. It’s part declaration of intent,
part insane challenge, and part gotcha. After all, Superman didn’t become a
pacifist in the panel where he announced himself as one; he had been one for
over four issues, at least. By announcing it that way, Casey was reassuring
readers that nothing was really changing, because it already changed and no one
noticed.
The road to Casey’s pacifist Superman
didn’t begin with issue 612. It didn’t even begin with his first issue of Adventures of Superman. And it didn’t
end with his last. In this essay, I will show how the seeds for this version of
Superman began with one of the most unlikely characters and, then, has
continued in Casey’s work since departing Adventures
of Superman. I will also explore that singular year of Superman comics
where he renounced violence and showed the logical next step for the character.
The year when Superman truly became the superhero of tomorrow.
Part 1 – Remember When Superheroes Could
Move Planets?
One of the best Superman stories I’ve ever
read doesn’t actually feature Superman.
Instead, it stars one of the many analogues
of the hero and not necessarily the first one that would spring to mind. Mr. Majestic #1 by Joe Casey, Brian
Holguin, Ed McGuinness, Jason Martin, Comicraft, and Dan Brown tells the
decades-long story of the eponymous hero literally transforming the solar
system in order to disguise it from a cosmic predator of unimaginable power. It
begins with “You won’t find this story in the history books...” and attempts to
position this Superman rip-off at the top of a scale that the DC hero once
occupied before dying, returning, transforming into a being of pure energy,
getting split in two, and returning to normal. As the promo piece for Mr. Majestic read: “Remember when
superheroes could move planets? We do...” Rooted in some real life science, the
story has the hero moving planets, dismantling Saturn’s rings, adding a smaller
binary sibling to Sol, among many other changes. The work takes over a decade
and requires a ton of scientific support for the alien hero to accomplish what
needs to be done. But, the hard work pays off and the world is saved.
And not a single punch is thrown.
Mr. Majestic debuted in WildC.A.T.S. #11 as Kherubim warlord,
created by H.K. Proger and Jim Lee as a Superman-like hero who was not afraid
to use his powers. Coming from a military background, Majestros (his true name)
is more direct and violent than Superman typically. Not as bloodthirsty as the
other major Image Comics Superman analogue, Rob Liefeld’s Supreme, the
character used violence more freely, including killing enemies when necessary.
Colder and more distant than Superman, his status as a third-tier knockoff has
rarely been disrupted despite the attempts of Alan Moore and the solo series
currently under discussion.
The approach of writers Joe Casey and Brian
Holguin to Mr. Majestic was not
entirely in line with the depictions of the character previously, most notably
with regards to violence. While they maintained his more distanced persona,
over the course of the nine issues of the series, the character rarely used
violence to solve problems, preferring to find a more effective solution.
Superficially, this is out of line with the character, but it’s a clever take
on Majestros’s military background where efficiency would have a premium. Why
get into a long drawn-out fistfight when there is a more elegant and efficient
solution available?
Over the nine issues, there are roughly 12
panels (give or take) that have the hero performing physical violence against
another being, with none occurring in the final three issues. Part of this is
because the types of problems that Mr. Majestic faces over these nine issues
are the kind where punching them won’t actually solve them. When a little girl
becomes a temporal singularity or a man becomes a black hole, no amount of
physical force will resolve the issue. Instead, Majestros, with his cyborg former
boy genius sidekick Desmond, must come up with alternate solutions. Even when
violence is called for, like when time-displaced Vikings raid a small English
town, the amount of force used is enough to retrain the invaders and deposit
them in a jail cell until they can be returned to their own time.
When robotic religious fanatics attack his
friend, Maxine Manchester (Ladytron), in the third issue, his restraint and
attempts to protect innocents is a sharp contrast to her over-the-top violent
approach. His one moment of violence has him noting, “They seem to be easily
affected by brute force,” a calm and rational assessment of the situation. He
then pauses to further assess the situation, realising that with all of the
bystanders out danger and Maxine “dispatching these adversaries in an efficient
– albeit bloodthirsty – manner,” that he can begin to take another approach to
end the conflict.
The one instance of Majestic using physical
violence in larger doses comes in the fifth issue where a prison ship passes
near Earth and the inmates break free. Faced with the inmates, there is no
clever response to stop them from leaving the ship and landing on Earth except
for restraining them physically. It’s the closest the entire series gets to a
big superhero brawl and ends, not with Majestic triumphing through his might,
but when the ship crashes and the inmates are all knocked out. Majestros is
then free to return them to their cells and launch the ship back into space
where it belongs.
The contrast between expectations and
reality with Mr. Majestic is made greater by Ed McGuinness’s line art that
depicts a particularly musclebound version of the character. But, more shocking
is the way that, until it’s pointed out, that contrast between expectation and
reality isn’t obvious. Reading Mr.
Majestic, his lack of violence doesn’t stand out in any way. He doesn’t
come off as less heroic or feeble or ineffective. If anything, the tone of the
writing and art all point to him being a more traditional type of hero; the
kind that can move planets and solve giant problems like cosmic planeteaters
and temporal anomalies. A cursory reading of the first six issues of the comic
make it seem like a modern update of the Silver Age Superman with big ideas and
very few moral ambiguities. Casey and Holguin adding characters like Desmond, a
Mt. Rushmore Sanctuary, and doing single-issue stories add to that perception.
The final three issues are a departure in
that the faux-Silver Age pastiche is cast aside in favour of a story that bears
more resemblance to many of Casey’s other subsequent works. Majestros is called
to shift from being a mortal (albeit long-lived) hero into a member of a group
of cosmic beings who seemingly exist on another plane of existence. It’s a
position that his father formerly occupied and seeks to take the hero away from
Earth. While there is conflict in these final issues, much of it takes place
beyond violence, up to and including the ‘enlightened’ Majestros confronting an
evil version of himself (an after-effect from his travel to the place where the
cosmic beings meet).
The story is framed through one of the
cosmic beings acting as a father telling the tale to another of the beings, a
child, and, when this confrontation is about to occur, the child exclaims,
“Oooo... this is it! The big confrontation! A titanic slugfest to end all
slugfests!” The ‘father’ explains that this sort of resolution will not be
coming, as “the hero is not what he was.” Dismissing such a battle as ‘genre
conventions’ that Majestros is no longer concerned with, the ‘father’ indicates
that there is resolution of another kind coming. The ‘child’ mutters a response
that no doubt echoes the thoughts of some readers who tuned in to see this
militaristic Superman punch bad guys in the face: “No slam-fest then...? No
visceral release...? No satisfaction...?”
Despite this explicit statement of Mr.
Majestic no longer being your typical cape-wearing hero (in fact, he sheds the
cape at the end of the issue as part of his ascension), he was never that in
this series. When his solution to this evil after-effect doppelganger is to
inhale him, he explains in a very ‘Superman’ sort of way: “There is a trace of
darkness in every sentient creature. Every being that would claim a soul can
also claim that which might corrupt that soul. It’s a necessary ingredient. Do
we deny it? No. Do we ignore it? No. We triumph over it.”
Are the violent conflicts the darkness in
the soul of the superhero comic that must be triumphed over?
Nine months after the final issue of Mr. Majestic came out, Joe Casey took
over the writing duties of Adventures of
Superman from JM DeMatteis. In typical fashion, it meant wrapping up the
in-progress story that DeMatteis had begun before delivering the second part of
a month-long “Return to Krypton” story that would take place across the four
monthly Superman titles. This first stage of Casey’s tenure on Adventures of Superman is marked by
these sort of interruptions. His first ‘proper’ issue, 590 would be followed up
by one written by someone else before he would get one more in before the big
“Our Worlds at War” event would begin, which would take up another four months
(including an epilogue issue) before taking part in “Joker: The Last Laugh,” a
loose month-long event across numerous DC titles. It wouldn’t be until 11
months after his first issue that Casey would have a span of eight
uninterrupted issues before more crossovers and skip issues. All of which is to
say that delivering a consistent story that spans more than a single issue was
no doubt challenging for the first year that he was writing Adventures of Superman.
The cleverness and eagerness to find
solutions to problems that didn’t involve hitting was only periodically evident
over that first year. After all, there are only so many ways to deliver a
satisfying read as part of “Our Worlds at War” without Superman fighting
someone. However, there were glimpses of Casey’s vision of Superman that would
peak out during the non-crossover issues. In the two issues Casey wrote between
crossovers (590 and 592), the amount of violence used is minimal, something
that would reoccur for five of the eight post-crossover issues. In some cases,
the stories don’t necessarily lend themselves to violence (in issue 592,
Superman’s solution to Jimmy Olsen being trapped in a video game is simply to
reset the game, but one can imagine a version of the story where he enters the
game and smashes their way out); but, in others where violence would be more
organic, Casey often has Superman act in a passive manner, absorbing violence
that does him no injury and resolving the conflict through discussion.
Mixed in with these issues, though, were
things like “Our Worlds at War” where Superman fights alongside Doomsday to
tear a path through alien invaders or a three-parter involving Ultraman and the
Crime Syndicate of Amerika that has almost two solid issues of fight scenes.
While Casey clearly had a vision for a Superman who didn’t solve all of his
problems with violence, one that would confront a group of angry workers misled
into dressing up in costumes and attacking the Daily Planet not with clenched
fists but an open hand of compassion and understanding, this was also a
Superman that solved problems with his fists when need be. Much of the time,
it’s reminiscent of the Casey and Holguin Mr. Majestic: a hero that looks for
the best solution to the problem he’s facing. If it’s talking the aggressor
down, that’s what he’ll do; if it’s knocking them unconscious, well, that
works, too.
The final time Joe Casey writes a Superman
willing to hit someone in his Adventures
of Superman tenure is part of the “Ending Battle” crossover where Superman
is targeted through Clark Kent. The second and sixth parts of the crossover
took place in Adventures of Superman
and Casey’s first contribution to the crossover (issue 608) is a clever attempt
to present his version of the character within the confines of the crossover’s
mandate. Teamed with artist Derec Aucoin, who had drawn periodic issues of
Casey’s run to that point (including his first ‘proper’ issue of the title
post-DeMatteis and “Return to Krypton) and would go on to be the primary artist
of Casey’s final year on the book, the issue has Superman saving numerous
people connected to Clark from various low-grade villains.
Using a 16-panel grid as the base template,
the issue implies violence more than it shows it, mostly through the effects of
the violence. A typical sequence has the villain threatening an innocent
person, a small panel indicating some part of Superman to signify his arrival,
and, then, the villain suddenly hitting the wall or something similar. In only
a select few panels do you see Superman performing an act of violence, the most
explicit of which came near the end where Superman’s fists hitting King Shark
in the mouth are shown in two separate panels (between which he allows the
villain to try to bite down on his arm, breaking several teeth in the process).
While this issue is not the final one that
Casey would write with Superman using physical violence (that would be the next
issue, which is almost a throwback of sort, where Superman spends most of it
fighting Marvel analogues), it feels like a final statement by Casey and Aucoin
on Superman’s violence. It is quick, efficient, and carried out only to save
innocents put in harm’s way due to their unknowing association with him. As
he’s racing to save as many people as possible, there is no lingering and glorifying
in any of the physical conflict. Superman uses the minimum amount of time and
effort required to subdue the villains before moving on. If anything, it points
to the best version you could hope for of a Superman who hits. But, that also
means it is a Superman who hits taken as far as he can go, leaving only two
choices: keep repeating that or go further.
Joe Casey would choose to go further.
Part 2 – No Violence
Adventures
of Superman #612-623 comprise the final year of Joe
Casey writing the book, an uninterrupted year unlike any he had been given
previously. Up until this point, he had managed eight issues in a row without
the interruption of a skip issue to accommodate another writer’s story or some
sort of crossover. It’s tempting to include issue 610 in with this batch as it
fits thematically, but so do many of the previous issues in his run on the
title. Issue 610 is a ‘quiet’ character issue where Clark Kent goes undercover
to expose President Lex Luthor’s illegal mining, leading to him having to
rescue the miners from a cave in, and, then, Superman comforts a small boy
whose mother died. It’s a reset issue after the “Ever Ending” two-month
crossover, but, then, any possible connection and momentum is stopped by issue
611 being turned over to Joe Kelly for a month-long story that spanned all four
Superman titles.
Moreover, we, as comics readers, are
conditioned to think of 12 issues as a unit. It makes up a single year of
monthly comics, and is often used to designate a singular story or stories that
make up a larger story. These 12 issues are a single thematic unit made up of
many smaller stories that don’t have any direct or overarching link beyond Joe
Casey writing them and Superman not using violence in any of them. That they
would have this shared concept is not apparent until the fifth issue.
Looking at issue 612, there’s nothing to it
that would suggest that it’s the beginning of one of the most unique year of
Superman comics ever published. As I said in my introduction, it features a
wonderful Kevin Nowlan cover that dares you to not pick it up, and has Superman
confronting a version of himself very much like what we would call the Golden
Age Superman. That version of Superman shows up unexplained, righting social
wrongs like stopping the execution of a wrongfully convicted man, preventing
the police from assaulting protestors, or attacking some racist police officers
beating a handcuffed immigrant for the fun of it. In reality, he’s a character
from a novel come to life, written by one of Clark Kent’s journalist heroes,
Ben Conrad. Conrad was a syndicated journalist who focused on rural reporting
and, while proud of Clark, is somewhat critical of his career in Metropolis,
thinking it a betrayal of his roots as Kansas farm boy. In this issue, he has
just finished his first novel in decades, a work inspired by Superman called
“Champion of the Oppressed.”
As he explains to Clark, “The more I
researched Superman, the most I felt... I don’t know. He’s a bit too civilized,
isn’t he...? All that power... and look how he uses it... Wrestling with aliens
and taking meetings on the moon doesn’t exactly speak to the common man. He’s
just a bit too detached for me. So, my fictional champion does things a bit...
differently.” Somehow, his fictionalised version of Superman has entered the
world and is acting as Conrad wrote him. It allows for a direct examination of
who Superman is and who the character began as. The ‘problem’ of this
Superman’s existence is resolved when Conrad is convinced to delete his manuscript,
but the criticism remains.
Less than a direct criticism of Superman,
Casey is highlighting the progression of the character and some blind spots
that have arisen. Nothing is resolved for Superman; he’s left watching this
version of himself, one that challenges his ideology and methods fade away,
begging for its ideals to be remembered, while he exclaims, “Your time here was
not irrelevant. What you represent... is not inconsequential.” While you would
expect this to inspire Superman to become more of a socially active hero, what
it seems to do is clarify his position. If his methodology is primarily based
in inspiring people, in setting an example, then what sort of example does he
set?
Ben Conrad’s Superman is a violent hero
that is so involved with the lives of people that he sees it as his duty to
break into a house to stop domestic violence or openly attack police officers.
That is no longer (and most likely never will be again) Superman. Instead, this
incident calcifies his choice to stand at a remove and be an example of what he
thinks humanity should be. If Superman was not consciously a pacifist before,
he was now. None of this is stated outright, but, based on the ensuing issues and
the declaration of pacifism to come, this is the logical outcome of this issue.
While introducing, in a way, the thematic
point of these 12 issues, this issue also introduces the antagonists that take
up the first five issues: the Hollow Men. “Champion of the Oppressed” was not
Ben Conrad’s first novel; published in the late 1950s, “The Hollow Men” was his
only novel, a piece of social fiction about a trio of colourless ‘Hollow Men’
that make everything the same, eliminating all differences. It was a commentary
on the McCarthy hearings and the witch hunts against superheroes at the time, a
warning of what excessive conformity could bring. The trio first show up in the
opening pages of issue 612, having sucked all of the colour and will to live
out of Major Victory. They would continue as a subplot through the first three
issues until becoming a larger problem in issues 615 and 616.
The Hollow Men make for an ideal threat to
this Superman, acting not as a physical obstacle, but an emotional,
psychological, and ideological one. They don’t pound their victims into
submission, they take away everything that makes them unique, vibrant beings.
When they threaten a secret government experiment called Heroville, which is
like a ‘50s small town where everyone is a superhero, Superman charges in
blindly to confront them and save the patriarch of the town, Dr. Camel, and
finds himself their target. The ensuing shock of their attack leaves him barely
able to mutter, “I... didn’t even want to try...” To battle the Hollow Men is
to assert his will of life, of the belief that everyone is special and unique,
and should be cherished, celebrated, and protected.
To win that sort of battle with punches
would be impossible. You can’t beat an ideology with violence. It’s shocking,
in issue 616, when Superman is asked, “Is this it? The big showdown? I’ve
always wanted to see you punch out the bad guy...” that he responds, “No
violence. I won’t resort to that. I’m a pacifist, Dr. Welbourne.” Within the
context of the story, it makes complete sense that he would say that. He
immediately explains, “If we’re going to save their victims, I need to confront
the Hollow Men on their terms. They think they can take away my hope... my
idealism... my faith in the future...? Let them try.” His pacifism extends
beyond this story, but it’s the only way to respond to a threat of this sort.
The Hollow Men may not attack with fists,
but they do perform violence on their victims. To combat that ideology of
forced conformity, Superman needs to be radical and different. What’s more
different than a superstrong superhero who refuses to hit?
With the help of Ben Conrad adding to his
original novel (which ended with the Hollow Men succeeding in their goals),
Superman defeats the trio, able to withstand their attack thanks to his
beliefs, specifically his love of his wife, Lois Lane. Lois acts as partly an
inspiration in these 12 issues and partly as a contrast/foil to an extent.
No one would necessarily call her a
pacifist, except she does so much good, particularly in her husband’s eyes,
without violence. In issue 613, Superman is a supporting character in his own
comic to her taking the lead when Funky Flashman opens a store devoted to
selling Superman merchandise. Disgusted at him trying to make money off her
husband, she tries to foil his plans and, is able to, when, after he expands
his store to selling merchandise devoted to other heroes, she suggests that he
also sell products based on villains. This results in a nasty visit from
Captain Cold, which, along with Superman shutting down the sweatshops that made
the merchandise, puts Flashman out of business.
Lois stops Flashman with ideas, not
violence. This foreshadows how Superman is able to defeat the Hollow Men, not
by using his superstrength, but with thought and a contrary idea to their
worldview that is simply more powerful.
Each progressive threat post-Hollow Men
challenges the idea of Superman’s pacifism a little bit more. The first, a
revamp of Mr. Mxyzptlk as the Mxy Twins, Dale and Doris, who has updated
himself into something more modern to keep up, in a manner, with Superman.
Their particular form of mischief here is selling sets of the Encyclopedia
Universal, kidnapping Lois and Superman for a fancy dinner, and removing the
Earth’s gravity. Issue 617 has a moment that suggests Superman resorting to
violence in a panel where he’s flying towards the twins, fist cocked back,
ready to punch. It’s difficult to tell if it’s genuine, a bluff or a case of
guest artist Charlie Adlard not being completely aware of the hero’s pacifist
stance.
Counterintuitively, I think this moment of
panic at the mind games the twins play with him reinforces the pacifist ideals
that Superman strives to over this year as it shows the conscious choice he
makes. His instinct, at some point, remains to lash out; he chooses not to. A
brief glimpse that this instinct remains demonstrates the self-awareness at
work in his choice to not use violence. As he seeks to set an example, that
involves denying some elements of his basic nature. It’s more heroic if there’s
some element of struggle in his stance, reminding us that he could punch them
and has made a purposeful decision not to do so. This is also a reminder that
having that initial reaction isn’t wrong. It’s okay to want to hit someone
bothering you, even Superman wants to; what’s not okay is actually doing it.
Instead, Superman solves the Mxy Twins
problem with some help from the Justice League, a little science to give the
planet some temporary gravity, and the simple elegance of dispatching them by
purchasing a set of the encyclopedia they’re selling. The next antagonist tests
his pacifism a little bit more in the form of an alien called Assassin Lad. An
insect-looking armour-wearing creature, he comes to Earth to assassinate ‘the
Candidate,’ a quasi-Biblical third-party presidential candidate, who is both
the target and client of Assassin Lad. The confrontation between Superman and
Assassin Lad is brief, but he believes that killing for money is a religious
calling, something completely antithetical to Superman.
Assassin Lad is also, ostensibly, someone
that could only be beaten through violence. That is his stock in trade, after
all, and, again, Superman comes close to using violence himself. When Assassin
Lad tries to kill the Candidate, Superman interferes by blocking one of his
shots and, then, removing him from the room by grabbing his armour. How much
you define this as violence will vary person to person. It is definitely force,
but as passive as possible. He doesn’t hurt Assassin Lad, merely stands in the
way of his target and then creates additional distance. With the ‘hit’ botched,
Assassin Lad makes a quick escape. In a way, Superman lucks out in avoiding
further confrontation.
The two issues that comprise this story
also provide some additional instances of Superman adhering to his pacifism,
first by defeating the Hand of Osiris, god of death, through sheer force of
will. The will of the Hand on behalf of death, while Superman acting on behalf
of life. This repeats Superman’s victory over the Hollow Men, though compressed
and distilled down to the basics.
The other major victory is over the
Cannibal Planet that Assassin Lad sets loose on the sun to distract Superman
from interfering with his plans. The Cannibal Planet is reminiscent of the
cosmic threat that Mr. Majestic saved the solar system from in the first issue
of his series, except Superman fights it without any time to plan. He dispatches
its attempt to eat the sun by giving it a literal case of ‘brain freeze,’ and,
then, repairs the temporary damage to Earth’s temperature through a massive
output of heat vision.
The method in neutralising the Cannibal
Planet is a debatable one with regards to his pacifism. Using his super-breath
to freeze the planet’s brain (or cool it enough to stop it) is seemingly an act
of violence. However, the scale on which he’s operating puts the actual amount
of violence into question. After all, if Superman is battling something the
size of a planet, how much does he hurt it? Does it actually hurt it or merely
put it to sleep? Again, the struggle for Superman to maintain his pacifist stance
shows through and is put into a position where, possibly, he acts against it.
This wouldn’t be the case in the next
story, involving bug-like creatures from another dimension who turn
Metropolis’s children into bugs as part of a mating ritual. Superman teams up
with a new superhero, Minuteman, who has been training for this moment. His
claim to fame is that he can defeat his opponents in under a minute and uses
various ‘new age’ techniques in his training. Bugs from another dimension is
typically the sort of threat that devolves into a brawl, often even more
violent than typical superhero stories. Take Marvel’s Secret Invasion event where the invading Skrulls were met with
lethal force that the heroes normally would never use without even the token
debate about the morality of heroes killing. Aliens, whether from space or
other dimensions, are usually portrayed as less than to the point where
excessive or lethal violence is tolerated. Yet, here, the conflict barely gets
to the point where Minuteman needs to fight the aliens, on panel, at least.
A single moment in issue 622 stands out as
another instance where Superman reaches his limit. With the children of
Metropolis transformed into bugs and encased in egg-like bubbles, he flies at
the bug aliens, arms outstretched, saying “I didn’t want it to come to this...”
Is this him admitting that he is about to attack them with force? It certainly
seems that way. No answer is given as the aliens trap him in a similar bubble.
Like the other suggestions of possible violence, none actually occurs and the
question is left hanging.
In the final issue of the year, Superman
tells Lois about various threats he faced, including one where every other hero
was controlled into attacking him. In none does he use violence, nor point out
the lack of it. The closest he comes is attempting to tackle a phantom football
player to restrain the ghost. This issue is also one of the rare times during
this year where Superman shows any self-doubt over who and what he is. As the
year-long experiment in ‘no violence’ comes to an end and Joe Casey and Derec
Aucoin depart the title, the validity of how they portrayed Superman is up in
the air. And Casey knows it.
Speaking of Aucoin, his contributions to
the idea of Superman as pacifist are mostly subtle. How does one draw pacifism?
Instead of trying to show that side of Superman, he does the best thing you
could do: he doesn’t change anything. Superman is never shown in weaker
postures or framing than normal. He looks just as heroic in these issues as any
others. By maintaining the normal look of Superman, it reinforces the idea that
he can abstain from physical violence and still be Superman. He looks like a man
who utterly confident in himself and his abilities.
Despite the progression of the threats over
these issues, Superman’s pacifism is never put to a proper test. He comes close
several times to violence and never quite gives in. What Casey never does is
present him with a threat that is a purely physical one. Every enemy in these
pages is defeated through will or brains (or some combination of the two). This
demonstrates how Superman is an effective hero without using his fists,
granted; it also isn’t playing entirely fair. The threats that Casey writes in
these issues are ones that are meant to be defeated through will and
intelligence, not physical strength. He never gets around to having Superman
face an enemy like Doomsday or Darkseid or Mongul where will and some clever
ideas may not be enough to stop them. Perhaps, given more time, antagonists of
that sort would have made appearances to demonstrate just how far pacifism
works.
Superman’s pacifism fits into the other
large theme of these dozen issues: what makes up Superman? Most of the stories
define Superman against some element of the character: his violent hands-on
involved origins, the commercialised side of the character, the quaint middle
America smalltown Superboy, the updated ‘edgy’ villains meant to match up with
a modern Superman, the alien Assassin Lad that’s like a dark mirror to the
Legion of Super-Heroes, the progressive hero so adept at solving problems with
his fits that no fight ever lasts more than a minute, and, then, the absentee
husband.
Each of these stories and the connections
that run through them are part of an attempt to distill Casey’s view of
Superman and what the 21st-century version of the character is, with the
explicit pacifism being one of the more obvious signifiers. The closest Casey
gets to defining his Superman is in issue 619 where Superman’s will defeats the
Hand of Osiris. One of the bystanders, a fireman, tells a child that “Superman
is the personification of life. He is a pure being of light and warmth.”
It’s hard to disagree with that assessment
and, in those terms, how could the character not renounce violence?
Probably the largest surprise of Casey’s
work here is that, while you can point to his meeting his Golden Age
doppelganger as a moment where, perhaps, Superman decides to be a pacifist,
there is no large, overwhelming moment of enlightenment. There is no singular
moment or talk from the character about how he has ‘peeled the onion,’ and is
no more or better than he was. Typically, Casey’s characters undergo an obvious
and radically life-altering experience if they are going to be so self-aware
and different from what they were before. But, as Casey himself has said,
Superman was already a fairly self-aware and confident character. He entered
these 12 issues knowing who he was and was unafraid to be that person. While
the final issue highlights some of his self-doubts, they very rarely come through
in the moment. His doubts are reflective moments that help shape his confident
approach to helping.
Moreover, as the issues leading up to these
12 periodically showed, Superman always flirted with pacifism. As Casey wrote
him, violence was usually the act of last resort or expediency. At some point,
he decided that neither of those were good enough excuses. The lack of that
decision is, perhaps, the biggest hole in this run, and one of the larger
aberrations in Casey’s career. In the future, his characters would not make
similar leaps without the reader seeing exactly what experience drove them.
Part 3 – Protecting the World from
Itself
While he was writing Adventures of Superman, Joe Casey explored related ideas about
superheroics in Wildcats Version 3.0
and Automatic Kafka for DC’s
Wildstorm imprint. Both comics involved pacifism, of a sort, although from
different perspectives. Neither were explicit in that ideology like Superman.
Instances of non-violence from his characters were side-effects of the specific
aspect of superheroes he explored in those titles.
In Wildcats
Version 3.0, Casey explored the idea of a corporation being a superhero
with the Halo Corporation helmed by an alien robot set on using the massive
resources of the company to make a better world. While Jack Marlowe (as the
robot calls himself) has many abilities comparable to Superman, he also doesn’t
act violently over the course of that series, having outgrown the clichés of
being a typical superhero. He does, however, delegate such tasks, again
exposing the limits of a set ideology like his. He may not don a costume or use
his fists, but he’s more than willing to pay others to do that for him. As
progressive as his use of the Halo Corporation is, he’s an elitist hypocrite by
placing himself above those things while demanding others do them.
Automatic
Kafka, conversely, explores the idea of superheroes
from another angle: what happens to adult superheroes after they stop fighting
crime? Focused on the eponymous robot lead (another robot), the series views
the world of superheroics through the lens of celebrity, sex, and drugs. Some
members of Kafka’s former team, the $tranger$, still dress up and live out
violent power fantasies, but most don’t. One member, Saint Nick, the gun-toting
‘wild card’ member of the group, has given up the life entirely for a ‘normal’
life of a regular job and family.
In an issue where Kafka discovers an old
enemy of the group, Galaxia, coming to the house of their rich benefactor for
assistance, the former hero and enemy go to dinner. There, as the conversation
progresses, Kafka reaches a tipping point, standing up with fist clenched, and
asks, “Should we start fighting now...? Toss this table aside and start
pummeling each other like it was seventeen years ago...?” Galaxia, holds up a
hand, dismissing the idea, “Heavens, no. That would be sophomoric.” They have
outgrown the need for that sort of conflict and Casey is more interesting in
exploring how these two characters relate to one another at this point in their
lives.
Beyond these books, Joe Casey has written a
very small amount of Superman-esque characters since departing Adventures of Superman. Kino for Lion Forge, as part of their
Catalyst Prime line, could qualify, but that’s definitely more of a Miracleman riff than Superman. He did
return to Superman for a brief Superman/Batman
story that took place in the aftermath of “Our Worlds at War” and suffered from
heavy editorial interference to the point where another writer is credited
alongside Casey on the final part. The first part of the story does include
Batman making reference to Superman’s “pacifist beliefs,” but that is the
extent of that idea in the story. If anything, that mention comes off as
sarcastic and is, perhaps, Casey poking a bit of fun at the last time he wrote
a Superman comic.
Casey wrote numerous superhero projects and
all approached the concept from an unexpected place or revolved around moments
of ‘enlightenment.’ Unlike Superman’s progression to pacifism, which had no
clear and obvious catalyst, the ‘enlightenment’ in Casey’s other books is not
just shown, it’s often over-the-top and takes up a sizable amount of
storytelling space. His epic cosmic title with Tom Scioli, Gødland, is incredibly focused on the ideas of progression and
enlightenment, and the idea that it is an ongoing process, a struggle without
end, where there are fits and stops, regressions that lead to progress, and so
on. That method is what would guide Casey’s only true foray into a
Superman-esque story since departing Adventures
of Superman.
In 2013’s Catalyst Comix for Dark Horse, Casey wrote a trio of features over
nine issues where each block of three had one of the features as the lead with
the other two as back-ups. They all centred around a huge end of the world
threat on December 21, 2012. The comic was an update of a shared universe
superhero concept that Dark Horse published in the 1990s. The story that was
the main feature of the first three issues, “The Ballad of Frank Wells” focuses
on the Superman-esque Titan and the fallout of his seemingly saving the world.
In the first part of the story, he appears to stop the “ultimate death concept”
Nibru from destroying the world, and the ensuing eight parts deal with the
fallout of him finally living up to his potential. The joke is, as he learns
later, that it was actually Amazing Grace who stopped Nibru at the same time he
attacked the being. He saved nothing.
The final panel of the first part of “The
Ballad of Frank Wells” has the lead sitting on his bed, thinking, “So... I
saved the world... now what...?” This existential dread drives him to finally
stop being complacent about his heroic identity, first as he struggles with the
lack of adulation for his efforts and, then, with the assistance of a guru of
sorts, the Baba Lama. His meeting with the Baba Lama coincides with an attack
by a supervillain who mixes lust with death and violence, bringing to a head
the various superheroes clichés that Frank has struggled with. He’s faces with
a possible ‘relationship’ of love and hate that could continue for years as
they alternate between sex and violence, or, through the Baba Lama, he can
break out of this pattern of existence.
The journey Frank Wells undergoes is one
that Superman could not. Where the DC hero was confident and self-assured when
Casey wrote the title, Frank is the opposite. He’s not the beloved hero of the
world; he’s a failure who doesn’t know what he should be doing. Where Superman
would save the world from a threat like Nibru and move on to the next crisis,
Frank Wells wakes up in cold sweats from dreams of celebratory parades. He’s
not Superman, but his journey to ‘enlightenment’ leads him to some similar places
to that final Casey-written year of Adventures
of Superman.
Through Wells, Casey is able to synthesise
both the modern Superman and the ‘champion of the oppressed’ he faced in Adventures of Superman #612. Wells,
looking for a clear direction, frees a child labour camp in the third part,
tackles a variety of ‘social justice’ issues in the fourth part, imitates John
Lennon and Yoko Ono by very publically staying in bed at a Montreal hotel in
the fifth before, in the sixth, going after the CEO of the company that
employed the child labour camp he freed. None of this feels ‘right’ to him
exactly. He swings wildly between the pacifist Superman and the ‘champion of
the oppressed’ models, and, in every instance, faces nothing but resistance.
While he accomplishes good in the third and fourth parts, each act is limited
and is almost insignificant in the larger picture of injustice throughout the
world, so he swings wildly to the other extreme with a non-violent sit-in
that’s more publicity gimmick than effective mode of action.
It’s only when Frank looks inside and
explores who he is truly, in the eighth part, that he’s able to finally find
his way. Ironically, the key moment of ‘enlightenment’ is learning that Amazing
Grace stopped Nibru, not him. Learning that he was not the global saviour frees
him, in a way. When he thought he saved the world, he gained an overwhelming
sense of responsibility. With that gone, it’s almost like a burden is lifted
from his shoulders and he’s able to see what the Baba Lama has been guiding him
towards: “One more threshold to cross. Step outside of the boundaries that have
always boxed you in. No more pro wrestling. No more hot spot hopscotch.”
In the final part of “The Ballad of Frank
Wells,” the hero confronts the global community in a series of meetings where
he outlines his plan to inspire change through the threat of enforced peace. He
basically tells the leaders of the world to begin making things better, because
they no longer have to worry about the threat of one another. Frank Wells will
keep the peace and get involved when needed; otherwise, he’s there as the
implied threat of superhuman force to keep things in line. The idea isn’t a new
one to superhero comics, one of “protecting the world from itself,” yet it
feels like a satisfying way to combine the competing instincts that Wells was
struggling with.
He acts on a global level to effect change
and does it without any actual violence. He’s able to, perhaps, inspire the
Powers that Be to begin making the world a better place on a large scale and
maintain a pacifist stance, for the most part. It’s a balancing act that feels
more satisfying and complete than Casey’s pacifist Superman. While bold for the
character, that version of Superman never truly confronted the questions raised
by his ‘champion of the oppressed’ doppelganger. Here, Frank Wells is able to
be at the same remove as Superman and focus on threats of a similar level,
while his mere existence is enough to cause some social change in the world.
After Casey left Adventures of Superman, no one else has attempted to repeat his
experiment with a pacifist Superman. It’s not quite a forgotten anomaly, but
it’s also not referenced or spoken of by the writers of the character. Instead,
one push has been for the character to return to his Golden Age roots a little
more. In the 2011 ‘New 52’ relaunch of DC’s line, Grant Morrison wrote a young
version of Superman in Action Comics
that tackles social justice issues like corrupt politicians and unethical executives.
He was brash and unafraid to ‘solve’ those sorts of problems with his fists. In
comparison to Casey’s pacifist Superman, it felt like a regressive, which,
admittedly, it was since it was drawing upon the earliest days of Superman for
inspiration. It also felt progressive, because it was Superman finally
addressing issues that affect regular people, not dealing only with superhuman
or extraterrestrial threats and allowing basic issues of human immorality to go
on unchecked in the name of ‘non-interference.’ This Superman actually lived in
the same world as the people he was trying to protect.
“The Ballad of Frank Wells” manages to
balance that desire with the progressive idea of a superhero who doesn’t need
to save the day through violence. How long he would be able to maintain that
balance is unknown. It’s a very efficient approach to what a Superman sort of
hero can do, reminiscent almost of the way Casey and Holguin wrote Mr.
Majestic.
The most correct and efficient method for
the problem at hand.
Conclusion – The Ordinary Made
Extraordinary
The idea that as superhero could spend an
entire issue or more not actively engaging in violence isn’t that unusual and
happens far more frequently than anyone notices. That’s part of what makes Joe
Casey’s final 12 issues of Adventures of
Superman so exciting: he does something completely normal for superhero
comics, but in a purposeful manner made explicit.
I don’t think he succeeded in presenting a
pacifist Superman as a completely viable option. The character never faced a
threat that would normally only be solved through violence. Nor did it address
a failing many saw in Superman of being too removed from the world, focused
only on setting a good example, not truly fixing things.
It was a start. A shot across the bow to
say that there is another way to approach a character like this. It began
before Adventures of Superman #612
with various issues earlier in Casey’s run where Superman didn’t use any
physical force to solve problems. It began before his time on that title, in
the pages of Mr. Majestic with
co-writer Brian Holguin with an ostensibly more violent version of Superman who
suddenly only used violence when it was the best course of action before
evolving to a higher plane and eschewing violence as a viable method of
conflict resolution.
How successful issues 612 through 623 of Adventures of Superman are at proving
that Superman should only exist as a pacifist isn’t the point. Part of the
point was to do something new and different with a character that had long been
locked in a single vision. Part of the point was to take a superhero whose
basic ethos was conflict resolution through violence and take that away to see
if it was possible for the character to still go on. Part of the point was to
show that it could be done, if only for a year.
For me, it forever changed how I perceive
the character. I’ve read many Superman comics since Adventures of Superman #623 and that none have seemed to take up
Casey’s challenge to take the character to its logical endpoint of love and
compassion where he would do everything he could to not hurt another living
being has frustrated me. But, I also know that more of those issues haven’t had
a punch thrown than I think.
“No violence. I won’t resort to that. I’m a
pacifist, Dr. Welbourne.”
Those three sentences are the most radical
published in a superhero comic in the 21st century. They are
revelatory and revolutionary. They fly in the face of one of the biggest genre
conventions using the biggest character of the genre.
The most radical part of what Casey did in
those issues wasn’t having Superman not use violence. It was having Superman
say he wouldn’t. He took something completely ordinary, a superhero comic that
lacks violence, and he made it stand out. He made it extraordinary.
Whether or not you agree with the idea that
Superman can or should be a pacifist doesn’t matter. It’s a part of the
character now and always will be. Throughout the reboots and revamps and
creator changes, the character always has that potential to rise above the
violent power fantasies of superhero comics and do something different.
I know that, because my favourite Superman
comics star a pacifist.
Epilogue – Bellicist of Steel
In 2023, Joe Casey returned to the Superman
corner of DC Comics with the announcement of Kneel Before Zod, a planned 12-issue series starring the Kryptonian
enemy (and, sometimes, ally) of Superman. Reunited with “The Ballad of Frank
Wells” artist Dan McDaid, the series began in December 2023 with a preview
story in Action Comics #1060 before
the series proper debuted in January 2024. While originally sold as a 12-issue
series, it ended after only eight, resulting in an incomplete story, which is a
pity as it also cut short the very character-driven journey that Dru-Zod was in
the middle of without a clear indication of where he would be at the end of the
twelfth issue. This is of particular note here because of Zod’s specific
relationship to violence, which is in diametric opposite to the pacifism on
display in Casey’s Adventures of Superman
run. Yet, while a comic featuring Zod as a violent force that stands in stark
contrast to Superman is an obvious approach, when you dig into Kneel Before Zod, there’s a more complex
relationship with violence at play that suggests, at minimum, a dialogue with
the earlier work.
The premise of the series is that Dru-Zod
and Ursa rule over a planet along with their son, Lor, who was raised in the
Phantom Zone while the couple was trapped there. While Zod builds up the
planetary defences, Ursa manipulates the genetics of the native beings of the
planet to be warriors to serve under the banner of Zod, and Lor chaffs against
the peaceful nature of the world – and the boundaries set by his father.
Quickly, the series devolves into Zod exiling Lor (as he was once exiled by his
father), the planet coming under attack by aggressive aliens sent by Lor to
obtain the ultimate weapon Zod has built, Ursa dying, Zod destroying the
planet, and, the final issues, having Zod take over a prison ship, forcibly
drafting the inmates into his new army. A status quo is quickly established
and, then, smashed, giving way to a new one that, had the series completed its
final four issues, may have been left behind for a new one. Everything unfolds
at such a breakneck pace that it seems like untapped potential is left in the
gutters almost, but it all serves the purpose of exploring the push and pull of
Zod’s violent nature and how that reconciles with his desires.
The opening four issues (and prologue) take
place on New Kandor with the central conflict not being the eventual war with
the Khunds that results in the death of Ursa and Zod abandoning and destroying
the planet, but with the Zod who was and the Zod who is. Both Zod’s wife and
son treat him as an object of derision, a weak, petty tyrant playing at king on
this backwater world rather than being the aggressive conqueror that he’s been
up until this point. The breaking point between Zod and his son is over the
weapon that Lor discovers Zod building in a cloaked part of the planet, one
that Zod says has “the capability to deliver – against a force of any size –
nothing less than complete annihilation.” While Lor thinks this weapon is best
used as an offensive tool to conquer the universe, Zod envisions it as the
ultimate deterrent against aggressors. His desire isn’t conquest, but the
creation of a new, better version of Krypton. He mulls over the bottled city of
Kandor with its miniaturised citizens in stasis and dreams of the day when he
can awaken and restore them, giving them the world of New Kandor to inhabit.
Not a man of peace by any means, he’s also not a man of war.
Lor sums up the conflict in the prologue:
“[Zod] has us preparing for war, but does not share his vision.” Ursa and Lor
think that this is all preparation for war when it is a foundation of peace. Despite
his previous violent actions – perhaps his very nature – Zod’s actions on New
Kandor all point to an effort to only use violence in the defence of what he’s
building. His family thinks that he’s still a man of violence, of war and
conquest, when he’s settling into the role of a protector instead. Zod’s
visions of Jor-El represents the internal conflict over who he is (or thinks he
is) and his desire to rebuild what’s been lost. However, as the phantom Jor-El
tells Zod in the first issue, “You don’t possess the capacity to create... only
to destroy.” Prior to the physical destruction of New Kandor, Zod had already
destroyed the initial step towards his final vision of a reborn Krypton, his
family. Exiling his son and driving his wife (pregnant with another son) away
through his inability to be who they think he is or to share his true desires,
Zod breaks his family before the Khunds arrive. The actual physical conflict is
more an effect than a cause. Could this fate have been avoided had he been
honest about his actions and goals?
The second half of the series has Zod,
after destroying New Kandor, taking his revenge on the Khunds, nearly killing
himself in the process. If what he desires is no longer possible, he defaults
into what he sees as his true nature. He destroys the force that attacks him
and, then, kills his would-be rescuers when his revenge nearly kills him too.
His rescuers are the crew of a prison ship that travels a set orbital path at
the furthest reaches of the civilised galaxy to ensure that the inmates are
kept as remote as possible. Zod killing the crew and taking over the ship
faintly recalls the plot of Mr. Majestic
#5 with a similar prisoner ship. Instead of a crash that a hero must contain,
it’s Zod taking the ship as his property and ruling over the inmates,
ostensibly to be his new army.
In the aftermath of his destruction of the
Khunds and near death, Zod is barely recognisable as himself. He looks almost
like a zombie, drawn by Dan McDaid as something of an inhuman monster, showing
just how far he’s fallen by giving in to his ‘true nature.’ Destroying New
Kandor (after sending the bottled city of Kandor out into the stars, recalling
the same rocket that saved Kal-El from Krypton’s destruction) and, then,
hunting down the Khunds and blowing up their flagship was a lapse into Zod’s
most violent tendencies. It’s a dramatic swing from the life he was trying to
live on New Kandor, and gives the impression of a man flailing about, unsure of
how he should be. His ‘command’ of the prison transport is much more in the
mode of a ‘petty tyrant’ than anything we saw on New Kandor.
There’s a sense that what Zod is reaching
for is something beyond his capabilities. His continued hallucinatory
conversations with Jor-El and his efforts to build New Kandor into a better
version of Krypton suggests that he wants
to be more than the violent conqueror. He wants to build and to be a man of
peace. He wants to be his enemy’s son, except better. An element running
through the series is his view of the United Planets as a corrupt, hopeless
institution that is doing little to bring order and peace to the universe. The
United Planets was founded, in large part, through the actions of Superman
during Brian Michael Bendis’s tenure on the Superman titles and Zod’s weapon
is, in part, meant to help establish that missing order and peace through
mutually assured destruction. New Kandor is about doing what Jor-El and his son
couldn’t do: save/restore Krypton and bring stability to the universe. But, in
striving to be both a man of peace and a statesman, Zod is unable to forego his
violent nature or his desire to be in absolute control. That demand that he be
unquestionably obeyed fractures his family and led to the destruction of New
Kandor.
Issue eight of the series gives something
close to a conclusion as Zod confronts something of a kindred spirit in
Sinestro, now a Red Lantern. While the two do fight, they soon realise that
conflict will lead nowhere and cooperate in repairing the prison ship. During
their conversation, Sinestro alludes to a life of service for his people
similar to what Zod seeks, a possible role model of someone once overcome by
violence and rage that has become more. As a Red Lantern, Sinestro is able to
harness his inner rage into something external, to direct and control it. Zod
lacks that outlet and practically scoffs at Sinestro’s advice. The series ends
with Zod in command of the ship and his army of criminals, set to wage war on
the Khunds. Despite this seemingly to be an extension of his initial revenge on
those that killed his wife, there’s also a possibility that this is actually an
effort to direct his rage and violence in a positive direction. He views the
Khunds as a warlike race that will always pose the threat of unchecked
aggression on the rest of the universe and, perhaps, by eliminating that
threat, it will make the universe a safer place.
There’s a hint of pushing the boundaries
beyond the typical ‘anti-hero’ sort of role where the former villain dedicates
himself to ‘good’ while retaining his edge. Just as Casey pushed Superman to
the limits of his ideology through pacifism, there’s a suggestion of Zod going
to the further extremes of violence in the service of a greater good. After
failing to bring about peace and order through the threat of violence, he would
embrace the role of conqueror and tyrant to accomplish the same goal. Would it
have been different from any other story of fascism? Perhaps.
What interests me is the journey that
continues to reiterate that Zod is incapable of being anything like Superman.
At his core is a fire of rage and violence that, even when he was attempting to
build a peaceful world for his people, continued to burn. It wasn’t just that
he was no longer acting like the Zod that his wife and son knew, it was that he
seemed to project his self-hatred and self-loathing, and continued on only out
of ego, unwilling to admit that he had set himself on a path that wasn’t right.
Kneel Before Zod isn’t the match of that final year of Adventures of Superman, partly because
it was cut short of its full story – partly because it’s a work about a
character less confident in himself. It’s an interesting companion piece that
tries to set Zod in opposition to a pacifist Superman, exploring what that
could mean.
