cbishop

Okay, 6 pages into the thread, and I haven't seen any questions answered, just debated. So how 'bout it? Pikahyper had a good list of questions I'd like to see answers to. And beyond those, what does this mean for free members? I just got back into CV this month, after a year or so of inconsistent 'Net access. Am I just getting geared up again, only to find that I'm about to be denied access? I haven't seen where anyone has said that, but I haven't seen it addressed at all, so I'm wondering.

@drgnx said:

I think the families own Jor-L, Laura-L, Kal-L. I don't think they also own "-EL". But an option I see is Jor-L being a short form. They could adopt on old naming system where your name is part of your family history, and Kal-L is the implied short-form.

The daily planet is now a "news channel" as opposed to a paper, so we will see how that goes.

Finally, no clue what they can do about "Louis Lane" and "Clark Kent". I'm surprised that the judge separated Clark and Superman.

I'm saying they don't even need to use Kal-L / -El etc. at all. With something like the suggested misinterpretation of the language, they could simply make up new names for all things and personas Kryptonian. That would suck a little, but it could be done if necessary.

Replacing Clark Kent is easy - do a story where a building falls on him in plain view of the public, and say they "never recovered the body." Then Supes invents a new name (heck, make it a contest for readers to rename him) for his secret ID, and we move on.

Out of all of it, Lois Lane is the hardest to replace, just because she IS "Superman's Girl Friend." But y'know... <shrugs> Lana Lang is an easy enough replacement. It's actually kind of perfect - the high school sweetheart is his one true love. And better, it'd resonate with any fans who were drawn to Superman comics by Smallville.

This isn't really a huge issue for me. I think DC screwed up Superman long before the lawsuit, and he is in serious need of reinvention. He needs better villains (or more pointedly: a return to what his villains were before COIE, but with modern storytelling taking them seriously). His personal relationships are what keeps his title alive in a lot of ways, but c'mon, it's SUPERMAN - his stories should be absolutely epic. I point to Tom Strong, Moore's Supreme, and early Mr. Majestic as what the epic feel of Superman stories should be like. All-Star Superman was a good try, but fails in my view, because it wasn't canon.

I haven't been excited about anything DC has solicited for the New 52 Superman - early or current days - but I would love to see them succeed in reinventing the character to excite today's audiences. I don't think this version is going to do it, but I'd like to be wrong.

@ReVamp said:

Yeah, but I find that replacing Krypton would be kind of hard and perhaps wouldn't be done easily.

Daxam?

The thing is, you don't have to replace it, you just have to rename it. "Wait a minute. All this time, I've been missing these three little symbols, and therefore misinterpreting my Kryptonian. This changes everything I knew about Krypton - even that the planet wasn't named 'Krypton!' It was Radon! I've even had my parents' names wrong all this time! It's not Jor-El and Lara, it's..." and so on.

They could even change the nature of Krypton Radon, from science to sorcery, saying their "science" was enhanced by sorcery, which would link Superman's two major weaknesses, kryptonite radonite and the supernatural/mystical. In fact, maybe it's the mystical properties of radonite that Superman is really vulnerable to, since he doesn't show weakness around other radiations, outside of red solar rays.

If that were the case, maybe a huge green chunk of mystical radonite floated free in space, until it was discovered and called the Starheart, which a single lantern and ring were carved from to eventually fall into the hands of Green Lantern Alan Scot. Alan eventually met the Guardians, who wanted to study his ring. He mystically made them a copy of it, and challenged them to unlock its secrets with their science. They did, but observing from afar the effects of radonite on Superman, and wishing to protect all life in the universe, the Guardians developed a version of radonite called gold radonite, that removed the harmful effects of green radonite, and it became a necessary impurity added to the green rings, to keep them from harming Superman or any other Kryptonians Radonians that might be out there. It's in such low quantities in the rings though, that Superman doesn't lose his powers being around it...

...I could tweak details like this all day. It's not even hard. As much as I hate the idea that DC could lose core elements to Superman, they're really not losing anything of importance - all that stuff can be replaced easily, without much change to the character. Adding the mystical element could only give Superman a link to characters he has traditionally not interacted with very much, and would probably bring along some villains that actually pose a threat to him. That would seem like a major change, but is actually not that hard to explain, with just a few tweaks to the history.

That Abyss and The Squid are making a reappearance from the 80's series excites me to read this book. They met a rather horrible fate (albeit unintentionally) at the hands of Chris & Vicki. They may hold a grudge for whomever has the dial now. And if that's the case, I'd love to see them revisit Blackjack the Death Dealer. I mostly passed on the previous series, but this one seems to hold some promise.

I want the Chris & Vicki Dial H released in a full color TPB (or a few, more likely) - that was a fun series. I wanted an "I Dialed 'H' For Hero" T-shirt so bad back then lol.

@ReVamp said:

Of all those it would be troublesome if they lost the Origin imo. Lois is important too, but another character can be created to replace her (with a similar history and personality.)

That's not troublesome at all. That's what the New 52 is all about: reinventing Superman's history. No single character has been touched to the extreme that he has.

Other than the familiarity of it all, I don't know why DC is even fighting this. Let them have the original elements - DC has reinvented, redesigned, and added to Superman so much, the original elements no longer matter. Would I miss Perry & Lois? Absolutely. But the thing is: Superman is over 75 years old - there's a chance that he could slip into public domain anyway, and then all of that stuff is back up for grabs.

@daredevil21134 said:

Yeah the DC Reboot lol

This, very nearly.

But seriously, the 9-11 tribute issues did it for me, but that was emotional for everyone. I do recall Marvel's "Heroes" magazine sized tribute, with sketches by various artists. There was one pic of people on a plane, walking up the aisle towards the reader, the lead guy rolling up his sleeve and a determined look on his face... that one choked me up. It makes the hair stand up on my head thinking about it now.

@pikahyper: Yeah, I knew you were serious. I just thought it was funny that you thought that Greek you spouted two posts back would make total sense to the tech challenged here. ;) It made enough sense that I can experiment though. Thanks much. :)

@pikahyper: You're just having fun with me now, aren't you?

No, seriously, thanks. I'll experiment a little and see what happens. ...a lot of supervillains started off with those words, didn't they? hm...

@pikahyper: I'll try <br> again, but last time, I tried replacing </p> with <br>, and when I hit "post blog," it automatically changed it back to </p>. Do I have to remove all <p> and </p> to get <br> to work? (See? Told you I was tech challenged.)

I did try Parchment v1, but it doesn't have the "more" button, to even look at the code. It didn't change anything to edit in Pv1.