Let's Read All I wanted was to put an end to all wars and famines (LR: Red Son)

[Zero Credibility]

Now that was a good read. But I too find the ending unconvincing, especially the message. The problem imo was that Luthor was at least partially responsible for the city in the bottle in the first place, so with this message he is opening himself wide for the following answer: "If that's what it takes to keep it safe from people like you." After all, over the years Luthor has most likely racked up quite a body count of innocents through his attempts to destroy Superman. And all because of his obsession to prove that he is smarter then him. I get that Superman doesn't want to run the world by himself any more, but why the hell would he think that having Luthor take over is a good idea?

Plus, comrade Superman is awesome (unlike the boring vanilla version).

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Plus, comrade Superman is awesome (unlike the boring vanilla version).

You oughta read more Superman comics.

 

[Zero Credibility]

Not really into comics. But I did like your LR-s.

 

[Mangoose]

Damn, that was good. Only thing is that Kal-L should've landed in Smallville at the end instead.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

It's an idea worth consideration, but I think it all depends on whether or not you think the time paradox angle is important.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

The time paradox is a bit boring. Him landing in Smallville would have been more of a mindfuck.

 

[commie]

Sorry for the necro as I only had a chance to see this now, but there was a particular bit and some inconsistencies that I disliked. I know the KWAns here love the fact that the USA triumphs in the end, but personally it was like they got the Bethesda writers to do a President Eden 'change your ways as they are bad' type of reversal. There also was a disturbing amount of relativism here justifying resistance to the Soviet state based on nothing more than lack of 'freedoms'(most of these were due to reprogramming of obvious offenders) which are actually just as curtailed if not more so, in the real world in 'democracies'. Why is a killer like Luthor and his regime celebrated as something different when his own control of the economic situation is the same type of thing that Superman was vilified for? I guess it's all to try and make a subtle jab at xenophobia alluded to with Pyotr showing that people will accept living under their 'own' killer rather than an 'alien' protector, but that idea is diluted by the success of Luthor at the end.

I find Superman dull and stupid, but this was actually interesting. The ending was of course completely retarded. Superman running the world as a benevolent autocrat is wrong because communism!!, but if Lex Luther does it, it's awesome and he's a hero and Global America fuck yeah? :eyeroll: Let's not even talk about the silly magic sentence bs ...

Yeah this.

Not because it was communism, but because he was as far as everyone knew an alien. And of course, unlike Lex's, Superman's rule was based on total control, albeit benevolent, and a totalitarian system. The whole point of the "magic sentence" was that it showed Superman he was no different from Brainiac.

\

Well I thought that maybe the whole 'alien' thing had something to do with it as I said, but even so it was pretty fucked as Luthor still had a command planned economy( he was in charge of every dollar remember?) and who knows what true lack of freedom. 101% of the vote? How can that not be 'totalitarian'? AS for Superman's 'totalitarianism', well we only have people like Batman talking about how Stalin's regime did this or that. What has their problem with that got to do with Superman as he's running the nation in a totally different way? It would be akin to someone blowing up parliament house because King James did something 500 years ago.


Maybe the idea was to try and show that people can be capable of their own extraordinary feats but that idea falls down as only Luthor and later his line are capable of such things. The rest of humanity are subservient ants just as they were in comparison to Superman, who of course is a Luthorian himself.

Maybe it was all to show the irony of the whole thing with Luthor pretty much being at war with himself and this 'war' actually driving human progress towards an ultimately bad end whereby the people get just as complacent with Luthor's world(and thus ignore Earth's imminent destruction) as they were under Superman? This is actually a message I like, and coupled with the naive hope of Luthor's descendants who send the boy back to 'change' the world and inadvertently just create the conditions for it's eventual demise, it's really quite good.


All in all, a belated thanks for this Vaarna.

 

[Guido Fawkes]

Marxist faggotry that preaches benevolent dictatorships are the way forward.

What a bunch of mumbo jumbo.

 

[abnaxus]

I still don't get how Batman managed to tie up Wonder Woman with her own lasso, and how breaking the lasso turned her senile.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I still don't get how Batman managed to tie up Wonder Woman with her own lasso

Because she's into that kind of thing. (joke)

and how breaking the lasso turned her senile.

I guess Millar tried to be symbolical or something with it, since she breaks the Lasso of Truth.

 

[Tigranes]

Good read. Confirms what I generally think about these comics - entertaining and absorbing, but the 'message' and 'commentary' is poorly thought out crap held together by convenient waffle (e.g. post-Superman world = all is well for a billion years).

 

[commie]

Good read. Confirms what I generally think about these comics - entertaining and absorbing, but the 'message' and 'commentary' is poorly thought out crap held together by convenient waffle (e.g. post-Superman world = all is well for a billion years).

Yeah. A lot was made of Luthor's achievements(they also seemed a bit too bogus, why couldn't Superman do those things since he was the ultimate expression of Luthorian 'evolution'?), and it all was made to show how perfect it all was yet the father at the end was lamenting not only not being believed about the Earth's fate, but the nature of this world itself. Perhaps the ultimate tacked on message is that no matter the good intentions, people will always find a way to fuck up the most perfect of systems. The problem in this comic though is that it's all poorly and contradictorily expressed, so any meaning is lost. The worst was the unnecessary triumphalism of the USA giving its name to the new world order. Why couldn't it just be 'Global Union' for example? Why was there no resistance to it like there was to Superman's 'socialist' regime when objectively at that point and time they were pretty much identical in what they did for the people, the economic prosperity etc.? Why go with a deliberate 'America Fuck Yeah!' even though Luthor couldn't really give a shit anyway? Why would Luthor, who killed his own people in a mad obsession to destroy Superman all of a sudden become a benevolent leader working for the good of all mankind when nothing earlier in the comic gave him any character traits beyond the sociopath 'mad' scientist? Hell even on his death bed all he was proud off was 'defeating' Superman, highlighting that his character had not changed!

A better ending would be to have the world turn to shit there and then, Luthor becoming a crazed recluse, now that his whole reason for existing was gone etc. Instead we get a billion years of progress and triumphalism yet then all of a sudden with virtually the last sentence someone admits that the world is actually pretty shitty and hopes that by sending his boy into the past he'll be able to change it somehow.

Sorry, but that's Bioware/Bethesda level of writing. Shit, the first thing they teach you in scriptwriting class is not to introduce new elements in the last act and certainly not make a big reveal of the true state of the world in the last sentence.

 

[Haba]

Yep. I found this one pretty intellectually insulting, for many of the reasons stated above.

 

[CaptainAwesome]

I thought the main message was that Superman tried to stay true to his original ideals, which is why he was so horrified by what he had ended up doing.

Whereas Luther was just a power hungry mad scientist who was the human version of what Superman was, thus he didn't give a shit he was doing the exact same thing.

So, basically, only humans should lead humanity, aliens need to fuck off. Though technically Superman was a human, which kinda dilutes the racially charged message of human supremacy.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Good read. Confirms what I generally think about these comics - entertaining and absorbing, but the 'message' and 'commentary' is poorly thought out crap held together by convenient waffle (e.g. post-Superman world = all is well for a billion years).

Well, that's Mark Millar for you. He tends to be very heavy-handed and hamfist things. Keep in mind that this is among the best he reached. Nowadays he's mostly noted for being that asshole who wrote the Civil War shit.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

Civil War shit? It's that Marvel crap, innit? Read about it on the Daily Raider, but I'd still like to know more. Enlighten me, Aarne.

 

[abnaxus]

The absolute low of Civil War was when they ripped off Jack Ruby.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Civil War shit? It's that Marvel crap, innit? Read about it on the Daily Raider, but I'd still like to know more. Enlighten me, Aarne.

Basically, Civil War was an extremely hamfisted attempt at doing the "superheroes are dangerous because they are untrained and unaccountable" shtick. However, right from the start the whole thing gets fucked up:

1) What sets things off is when a reality TV superteam gets into a fight with supervillains, one of whom promptly uses his powers to kill a bunch of people.
2) Notice that the event that supposedly proved superheroes are dangerous is primarily caused by a supervillain.
3) And it's a pretty chickenshit disaster compared to just the shit Magneto alone pulls every six months or so.
4) A hysterical woman who lost her son manages to convince Tony Stark, ostensibly one of the smartest people alive, that her biased viewpoint is 100% correct and superheroes should register with the government.
5) It all gets even more stupid. Retardation apex is when a cop, an ambulance driver, and a fireman tackle Captain America.


Basically, they tried to do what had been done already several times, and a lot better (see, StormWatch: Team Achilles had a lot about superhumans being untrained and dangerous because of it). The only good thing that came out of the event was Warren Ellis' take on Thunderbolts.

 

[tuluse]

So Wonder Woman's powers, lasso and bracelets are all gifts from the gods. She's basically like a DnD paladin where she has to follow her gods' edicts for her powers. It's not quite that cut and dry, but breaking the lasso is p big fuck you to the gods who gave it to her. So I guess getting old and senile is her punishment.

 

[Kukulkan]

Enjoyable read but riddled with the dumb simple Kwan understanding of Communism.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The writer's Scottish.

 

[Kukulkan]

The writer's Scottish.

Where did I say he lived in the kwa?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The writer's Scottish.

Where did I say he lived in the kwa?

Enjoyable read but riddled with the dumb simple Kwan understanding of Communism.

 

[Kukulkan]

The writer's Scottish.

Where did I say he lived in the kwa?

Enjoyable read but riddled with the dumb simple Kwan understanding of Communism.

I used Kwan as an adjective.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Suit yourself then, and let me sperg.