The death of Superman

[scarfman]

crossposted from a comment at multi_genre_fan

...what's up with Clark? In every format I've ever seen for the character of Superman, his hair is usually hanging loose when he's in the cape & tights and slicked back when he's in the suit & glasses. So why is it that Lois & Clark reversed this?

I wondered about that at the time. I saw it as symptomatic of the dekryptonianization of the character that started or at least was foreshadowed with the first Reeve movie, as I discussed in the 90s (in the voice of Archy the Cockroach) here. To summarize: Jules Feiffer's assertion, that Superman is the only hero who assumes his true identity when he takes his mask off, is no longer true. So, in Lois and Clark, the reason his hairstyles were reversed was, I suspect, because someone wanted it said, "The sensitive nineties guy, not the muscleman, is who he really is."

Comments

[dave-iii.livejournal.com]

I never bought that "true identity when he takes his mask off" thing. He may have been born Kal-El, but he was raised Clark Kent (Even if you go way back to when "Kent" was the name of the orphanage Baby Kal arrived at). Not having ever been an orphan, I can't really speak to this, but it seems to me that (all things being equal) the environment you were raised in does more to define who you are and what you become than the place or people you were born from. A man with Chinese parents and born in China but raised to adulthood in Canada (without the benefit of access to any Chinese culture) is, odds are, going to be a Canadian in all relevant terms. (Well, maybe not legally, but you know what I mean.

If Kryptonians didn't get super powers on Earth then Clark would have been Clark all his life, and the fact of his birthright would have been an academic feature. Yes, he's an alien-- and those features that make him different need to be disguised in order for him to blend in-- but in his heart of hearts, he's Clark of Kansas, period.

The different versions I've seen don't seem to agree on Ector's treatment of Arthur in the pre-Merlin days, but assuming Ector did right by the boy, is he any less Arthur's dad?

That's just my two cents anyway. ^_^

[athelind.livejournal.com]

That's really how the character's been written since '86.

Back in the Early Silver Age, though, Superman was very much the Real Guy and Clark was the beard mask. He regularly referred to the Kents as his "foster parents" or "the people who raised me"; even Superboy comics would have the Boy of Steel thinking about "Pa Kent" and 'Ma Kent', rather than just "Pa" or "Ma".

[scarfman]

The Silver Age Superman, or the Earth-1 Superman when there was still a multiverse, retained babyhood memories of Krypton and the Els. As much as he loved the Kents, they were not the first and only parents he knew, and were always his foster parents. That's a facet of the difference between now and then.

[scarfman]

That's true too. Still, where your analogy doesn't stretch is, Arthur doesn't spend his workday and a portion of his social time pretending to be what he isn't, for practical and personal reasons, including his social and mental health.

Have you ever read Eliot S! Magin's novel Miracle Monday, released as a tie-in for Superman II? Quotation approximate: "Everyone has a demon. Lois Lane has a novel-in-progress locked away in a dresser drawer. Jimmy Olsen disc-jockeys at a college radio station under a false name on Saturday mornings. Superman's demon is Clark Kent. Superman loves Clark Kent so much he gave him his own demon: Clark videotapes his favorite tv commercials and shows them to visitors."

Compare the character in that with the character in Lois & Clark who said, "Clark is who I am. Superman is what I do."

The character in the first quotation is who Feiffer was talking about, and the character in the second is not.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

A very similar topic came up on one of the innumerable comic book blogs that I read (though I can't recall which ONE, exactly). It wasn't just Superman who flipped his "real self" for his "mask" -- BATMAN did the same thing, during the same period.

In the Post-Crisis universe, as you've noted, CLARK went from "Superman's Mask" to "The Real Personality", and the guy in the cape was the adopted persona. Over in Gotham, though, it became increasingly clear that BATMAN was "The Real Guy", and BRUCE WAYNE was just a convenient fiction maintained to further the Batman's goals.

The consensus of the thread was that both characters have started to move past the "A is Real/B is Not" model. The "Real Person" is neither Superman, Last Son of Krypton, nor Clark Kent, Mild-Mannered Reporter; both are masks. We see the REAL person when he's at home with his wife, or visiting his parents.

And the real Bruce? Neither the Grim Avenger Striking Terror Into A Superstitious And Cowardly Lot, nor the Billionaire Playboy. The real Bruce is best captured in an image oft-seen in the '70s: sitting in the Batcave, in full costume, with the hood thrown back to reveal his face. "Batwayne". The World's Greastest Detective.

[scarfman]

The consensus of the thread was that both characters have started to move past the "A is Real/B is Not" model. The "Real Person" is neither Superman, Last Son of Krypton, nor Clark Kent, Mild-Mannered Reporter; both are masks. We see the REAL person when he's at home with his wife, or visiting his parents.

And this is the character Christopher Reeve played in his scenes with Margot Kidder in Superman II. And did a great job.