Hey,
I don't follow the comic books nor the animations any more so can someone please explain to me why Superman has suddenly become so evil?
1) Since when is Superman the private one-man-army of America?
2) Why does Superman work for the President?
3) Why is Superman OK with killing non-American soldiers AND killing Batman?
4) When did Superman become stupid to the level of 0 IQ?
If anyone can explain this to me, I'd be really grateful :D
Because Frank Miller who wrote The Dark Knight Returns hates Superman
I got your restraining order right here, RESTRAIN THIS!
He was supposed to have become a tool of the Government. Remember what he also did to Oliver's arm.
shareI was never a Superman fan and this story just reinforced my dislike for him. Making him a conservative/republican "tool" was brilliant.
shareDark Knight Strikes Again answers whats going on with Superman and well everyone else as well. Id recommend looking at it
Asparagus makes your pee smell bad. I wonder what happens if you give asparagus to a cat?
Like a previous poster said, it's mainly because Frank Miller hates Superman. This work in particular is extremely over-rated as they give no plausible explanation as to why Superman would ever do such a thing.
shareI totally disagree...they give EVERY reason why.
Superman: "Its their world Bruce...and they don't want us in it."
Superman: "They don't like to be reminded that giants walk the earth."
In both instances, these lines reference "They" and that means the normal people of the world. This is not a story about an evil Darth-Reagen who has his private little Superman working for him, its a story about when two heroes finally come at odds over their personal idealism.
Clark's idealism is serving "Truth, Justice and the American Way" and when the American public got fed up with the collateral damage of the supers, they outlawed them. Superman, accepts that decree and moves on, helping the American people secretly while pushing anyone who doesn't want to follow suit into "retirement".
Bruce's idealism is "being a symbol to teach the common man" and, as such, he can not simply fall into the shadows and become invisible because doing so only helps one person at a time and doesn't teach or inspire (aka LECTURE).
The brilliance of Miller's work is that he give us two untarnished heroes who are absolutely true to their character and then changes the environment they exist in until the ideals the two fight for become mutually exclusive.
Superman may be the antagonist but he is not the villain. The villain is an apathetic public who demands social order (less crime) but is too squeamish to actually accept what actions that sometimes requires.
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There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who get binary and those who don't.
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I dunno, what he did to GA and trying to kill Batman for the sake of being a government tool actually makes him as bad as the Joker.
share"As bad as the Joker"
Really???
Superman cuts off Green Arrow's arm and functions as an enforcer to an elected representative of the United States.
Joker poisons cub scouts at a fair.
Superman kills hundreds (thousands) of Russian solders within a theater of war defending his country's interests and protecting his country's solder's lives.
Joker kills hundreds of common citizens in a television studio for the fun of it (and as a challenge to The Batman).
Superman weathers the force of a nuclear weapon to protect the citizens of the South American country they are fighting in.
Joker has NEVER done anything for anyone that wasn't in his personal interests.
Superman serves...
Joker tyrannizes...
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Look,
Regardless of how badly you dislike Superman's role in this work, you have to understand that Superman may be the Antagonist but he is NOT the Villain.
Superman is doing what the American public has instructed him to do...he is obeying the law and there are tons of clues throughout Miller's work to support this. Batman, on the other hand, is absolutely breaking laws and civil liberties hand over fist at every opportunity. What's more, Batman's real agenda is to "inspire the common man to take charge of his life" whereas the average citizen (represented by Robin's parents, Joker's psychiatrist, and several "man on the street" interviews and a couple of the news commentators) wants the public to remain passive and have "authority" deal with problems. Ironically, they also despise and distrust "authority" but they are ultimately unable or unwilling to really do anything about it.
And the truth is, we all rally behind Batman because we understand that "Batman's mind is in the right place" and that he is doing "a job that the police can't do." But the poor citizens in this story don't know that...they see a crazy man dressing up as a bat and crippling cops and criminals alike in his vendettas. They don't know that Batman's speeding around in his batmobile isn't going to run a child over, they don't understand that he doesn't kill and they have no understanding that everyone he beats up is, by definition, "guilty" of something. We know this because its a story and its written that way.
Superman is unpopular with us in this story because we already know and love The Batman and, therefore, we understand that anyone resisting The Batman's wishes is obviously either a criminal or someone who doesn't deserve his protection.
But what you have to do to really get into this story is to understand that this story doesn't have a villain. It has a bunch of washed up villain's that make appearances not understanding that the world has passed them by in the same way that the heroes have all left and gone. President Reagan is just another nasty manipulative politician who was elected by a populace who were tired of the Supers and wanted them gone (not a Darth-Reagan as most first time readers assume). This is a story about two friends who have radically different ideologies which finally become incompatible with each other forcing them into conflict.
Superman is all about Truth, Justice and the American Way and, in this story, America has told them to go away...they don't want to be reminded that Giants walk the earth.
Superman is just doing what we, the people, told him to do.
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There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who get binary and those who don't.
This is like a drug dealer saying, "well at least I'm not a killer"
shareYou cutting a very fine line there.
You want to compare The Joker to Superman because they are both killers??? Superman, in Miller's work, is a solder. He fights for American interests the same way the Russian solders fight for Russian interests. Whereas criminals like the Joker fight and kill for their own interest alone.
So Batman IS saying, "...at least I'm not a killer!"
So what?
Superman has every right to say, "...at least I'm not a criminal."
Batman is a criminal and even goes as far as to say that in both the cartoon and graphic novel. He admits that he functions outside of the law breaking civil liberties as readily as bones in his quest of "justice". And yet we accept Batman's brutality and savagery because his fight is "for the right reasons." We accept everything he does under a blanket of "bad things are acceptable for the greater good" justifying his actions with a caveat of "NO KILLING" as if that line in the sand is somehow acceptable. So spying on innocent civilians, assaulting police and military, bribery (Alfred has on more than one occasion paid police officers for confidential information), conspiracy, computer hacking at the highest levels (Oracle hacks police, CIA, FBI, etc. databases all the time), ignoring sovereign borders and even war crimes (Batman uses Scarecrow's gas on cops in the comic book) are all OK... so long as he doesn't kill.
Superman, in Miller's work, will kill... but will not break the law. He also breaks subway trains and automobiles to save people in their paths, dives in front of bullets and even looks the other way when he realizes that Batman isn't dead. He also shields an entire country (I think its Brazil) against nuclear Armageddon, using his own body, showing us that he is completely willing to die defending those innocent people in the country below.
...And he is no better than the Joker???
Seriously???
We venerate Batman in this because...and its just this simple...because we like Batman beating the crap out of bad guys and we have the privilege through 3rd person omniscient narration to know that Batman is good and that he is selflessly breaking these laws for us (and will never make a mistake).
The conflict of this story hinges on the very subtle difference between Clark's and Bruce's moral interpretations on the lesser of evils...nothing more. And to throw Superman into the same pool as the Joker seems grossly unfair and shows a complete lack of understanding of each of the character's motivations.
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There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who get binary and those who don't.
In no way did he illustrate a hatred for Superman. Certainly he did illustrate him as "the pretty boy", surrounding him with butterflies and horses and scenes of nature... But there was a purpose to that.
Hatred for a character would suggest having him behave in a way that goes against his character, or has him literally become a villain. Miller has done neither here.
Not to mention for a guy to hate Superman so much, he certainly painted him in a positive light when he
a. Had him sacrifice himself to detonate a nuclear device away from people, and
b. Nearly died a horrible death while doing it, setting him up for the final battle with Batman
I don't think it's fair to say he hated Superman based on this book alone. Even if, somewhere outside of it, he actually stated that he hated the character, I would think you have to give him props for portraying him so accurately and respectfully here.
My thoughts: https://xanderpayne.blogspot.com
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You didn't come here to make the choice, you're here to understand why you made it.
Honestly, even in the first comics he's kind of an a**hole. LOL
There's one I think in number 4, he decides a neighborhood is to bad to live in and evacuates the whole area and destroys the whole neighborhood feeling the tax money can used to make the neighborhood better.
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Ummmm, are you talking about Superman #4, as in 1940???? That Superman would never have done anything of the like!! It's only the newer bastardizations of the Superman lore that have done this to an iconic hero, as they've also done to Batman, and many other of the superheros of the past!! That's why I don't read the comics any more, it's hard to see what they've done to true heroes of the past!!
shareI didnt like what they did to his character in this.
Lose the Game!!!!!!!
He's more used as a metaphor for political themes in the book over being a fully drawn character, TDKR is very high concept and Miller writes in broad strokes.
He doesn't like Superman and used that to explore fascism, it's something you have to go with if you wanna like the book and at the time it was epic for fans to see the two fight like this.