[UA] Re: Re:TV shows about kids and monsters

[Tim Toner]

----- Original Message -----
From: Liam Astley <esp.horsepie at btinternet.com>
To: <ua at lists.uchicago.edu>
Sent: Monday, February 26, 2001 11:13 AM
Subject: [UA] Re: Re:TV shows about kids and monsters


> From: Nick Wedig <mrteapot at disinfo.net>
> Subject: Re:TV shows about kids and monsters (was Re: [UA] an idea for UA
> junior)
> >This seems a much more reasonable scenario to me
> >than Superman being told as a kid that he'd have to use his powers for
> good, >and that single statement is enough to make him the most ethical
> being on the >planet.
>
>
> (puts on geek hat)
>
> this may have been the case with the original Superman, but post-crisis
> Supes didn't have any super powers when he was a kid. didn't get them till
> his late teens. so his morality would have been fairly well-established by
> then. and of course, from that point being the most powerful guy on the
> planet probably *helped* him stay so nice as he didn't have to worry about
> half the nasty shit that turns most people into grumpy cynical adults.

Also, even in pre-Crisis Superman stories, it just wasn't a mere "With Great
Power Comes Great Responsibility" speech, but the entire experience of being
found by two people who love you and cherish you, even before they discover
you have super powers, who warn you against others who might try to exploit
your gift.  It's growing up on a farm in Kansas, and knowing you're
different, but living within the accepting nature of the American Dream.
It's always been said that the difference between Batman and Superman,
iconically, is that Bruce Wayne put on a costume, and pretended to be
Batman, while Kal El put on a costume and pretended to be Clark Kent.  But
that isn't present in the original source material, and came much later,
when various creators began to explore the possibilities of his alien
nature.  On occasion, DC has toyed with Elseworld ideas, where Superman
landed Someplace Other Than Kansas (including one chilling moment in Gotham
by Gaslight, where Bruce Wayne enters a government freakshow-type display,
and we see a corpse in a jar of the so-called 'Green Man,' who proved
vulnerable to some glowing green rocks found near the crash site), but they
have yet to do the obvious--what if Kal El fell instead in the Rhineland,
and grew up in Depression-era Germany under a very different ideology.  It
seemed as if they were going this route in a recent Elsewords title (which
depicts a Mystery-Men variant of Batman, Capt. Midnight, and Hourman, going
after rumors of Hitler's Ubermensch--fortunately for us, it's merely Jonn
Jonz, while a corn-fed farmboy from Kansas gets a pep-talk from Gen. Patton
prior to going to battle with the baddie).  I'm sorta glad they haven't,
given the background of his two creators.  I think they wanted to create a
populist hero, born of another world, yet raised in the heartland to become
a moral creature.

ObUA:  There's a delightful book called The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay,
which not only deals with a passel of Golden Age comic book creators, but
also nicely ties in the fact that the first true superhero was the Golem,
who, too, had a vulnerability.  Maybe, a la, the Iron Giant, one of the
golems read a few too many comic books, accidentally gets bit by a wombat,
and does what comes naturally.


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