The nearest thing to All Star Superman I can think of in terms of style and quality is Alan Moore’s run on Supreme, which is collected in two volumes: Story of the Year and The Return. While it’s not technically Superman, you’ll find that the only real differences are in the names and appearances of the characters. Below the surface, it’s vintage Superman, through and through.
Beyond that, I put together a pair of entries on my blog that catalog a number of different Superman titles, covering most of the media in which he’s appeared. You might take a look at them and see if anything sounds interesting to you.
I do realize this thread makes me come across as a Batman hater, which I certainly am not. Batman is a good character, but he simply doesn’t work well in the Justice League scenario. He’s a human character, and is at his best when dealing with situations on the human scale. He’s a crime fighter who wrongly gets pigeonholed as a superhero.
When he’s in Gotham City doing the detective thing, he’s in a certain context where the problems he’s dealing with and the villains he’s up against are within the human scale. On that level, once you’ve accepted the basic conventions of the character, you don’t have to stretch your imagination much to imagine his quest going either way–death, or living to fight another day. When you immerse him into the world of aliens, superpowers, and futuristic technologies, you’ve removed him from that context and placed him in a new one, where he is utterly out of his depth. Writers compensate for this by giving his capabilities a ludicrous buff that blows the human scale to smithereens.
In the majority of situations, this isn’t acceptable. DKR is the only story I can think of off the top of my head where it works, mainly because DKR plays by a different set of rules than those that govern the regular Batman mythology. It’s somewhere between fever dream and satire, far from the sense of sober reality that suits Batman best. It gets away with it because of the strength of its themes and the quality of Frank Miller’s storytelling.
Superman needs to be put up against enemies that make him look more human like Darkseid , Mongul people that dwarf him . He has to be seen as just a " super " man he is the greatest being of earth but not of the universe.
I understand perfectly people don’t like “Batgod”, but I can’t help but love him. I think he’s much like Superman, showing that unattainable perfection that humanity can’t achieve but can try to strive for. He’s the world’s smartest ninja, Jack Bauer of steroids, the ultimate special forces badass. And I think that works with the JLA, the Gods of the DCU, the people that you wish you could be.
Thats why I thought Batman: RIP worked on a core level. Its crazy, its all over the place, it has the great fanboy moments, but more importantly than the surface idea of “Batman beats the Devil because he’s fucking Batman, bitch”, but he is “human”(in the loosest sense of the world), and even in the face of the Devil himself, you can win. And in his death, his legacy is so grand and his core theme of what he represents, that he has inspired people to take up his mantle in his absence.
But again, I do really like the idea of Batman beating the Devil at his own game because he’s fucking Batman, so whatever.
I don’t know about that - those stories have never been good ones.
What ends up happening is that Superman just out-supers the villain in the end anyway. Every new villain that’s introduced as a guy that Superman can’t hang with physically just ends up getting beat up by him straight up in the end anyway in a boring slugfest.
Death of Superman, he just out punches Doomsday. Apokolips Now, out punches Darkseid. Our Worlds At War, he goes into the sun and out punches Imperiex. Infinite Crisis, he goes into a red sun and out punches Superboy-Prime. Literally, just boring physical slugfests…I don’t even think he throws a kick in any of those fights. They’re all like shitty Hulk stories - you think you stronger than Superman? SUPERMAN IS THE STRONGEST ONE THERE IS
All the good Superman stories play off the idea that he is the most powerful guy in the world already (or DCU Earth, which since it’s full of superheroes, by logical extension, makes Superman the most powerful guy in the universe essentially). The appeal of the good Superman stories is always how he juggles the more moral or intellectual issues concerning responsibilities and sticking to his ethics, versus just engaging in straight up fist fights. Even though his identity as the most powerful guy on the block is constantly at odds with the type of person he wants to be.
Although my favourite Superman story of all time, Action Comics #775, has a bit of all that. Although even the physical slugest at the end isn’t as boring as all the other ones that just go PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH REPEAT.
Yes, that was indeed fantastic. I don’t think he even used any of his other powers, he just punched him real hard until he won. Classic Supes!
But my favourite part of that whole thing was the Wolverine vs. Lobo fight, which was so absurd that they couldn’t even figure out how to show it on panel. They had to disappear back behind the bar and the whole thing ended with a Looney Tunes cloud of dust fight with Wolverine somehow walking out. HAS to be one of the top five stupidest moments in all of comic book history.
The Captain America vs. Batman fight was actually pretty fun though, and accurate - Batman would win because he is a dirty, dirty cheater.
But that would be the only way he could win - Cap would kick his ass SO HORD in a straight up fist fight. Like most of Batman’s rogue gallery would, actually.
Captain America’s another guy that, according to the official line, has no super powers at all. But honestly, it’s a matter of silly semantics. No one should be able to do what he does “at the peak of human ability.”
Random example…
He throws a woman 15 feet directly up in the air, which I’m pretty sure is impossible for a human being to do. And then he jumps 15 feet himself from a standing position.
The standing long jump world record in real life is like less than 2 metres…so like 6 feet.
EDIT: And again in a recent comic!
What the fuck Cap, honestly. Stop bragging that you have no powers.
That I defend that giant mess that is Final Crisis. Superman is so awesome throughout the book, and it full of cool superheroic shit like Superman destroying the God of Evil with the POWER OF LOVE AND SONG, or building a wish machine from memory, and then him wishing for a happy ending. Just crazy, imaginative stuff on every page. It also has one of my favorite metafictional moments when Superman writes his own epitaph “To Be Continued”, getting right down to the essence of superhero comics. That was brilliance.
I’m also enjoying the New Krypton storyline right now. Superman is actually “normal” on these planet, and is just as fast and powerful as everyone else. Very good stuff, focusing on what separates Superman from every other superhero ever made.
Well it would have been exactly like Clint was complaining about. Just another “Punch the guy in the face until he’s dead” thing we’ve seen a billion times. Plus, Darkseid had the body of Dan Turpin, and to kill him would go against everything Superman stands for.
And seeing Darkseid inadvertently kill himself by firing the God bullet is too damn funny(which goes past Superman, kills Orion, is chased by the Flashes, which leads the Black Racer and the bullet right back into Darkseid’s face). The Black Hole of the DCU implodes into itself.
Supes has parallels guys that have power that go to far Supes foes are damn near on useable because they are just to super. Darkseid is smarter stronger and just as ruthless as the joker even more so Darkseid is a god amongst freaks . They gotta make him out to be Sauron . Only show the omega sign put his symbol on peoples body stuff like that. Eventually he is go nah that sucks it makes him look like jesus if they had a lex luthor story where lex starts making super powers making a world where superman is not needed would be dope.
Supes is so used to being the go to guy even amongst people as strong as he is.
In a world where supes powers are not only no longer astonishing they are mundane like they are in real life supes would have to show more emphasis on his inner strength than anything.
i agree with this. justice league batman is the definition of a broken character. although i do enjoy the times when the world is literally going to hell and they’ll remark, “oh he’s busy in gotham so we gotta figure this out on our own!” but most of the time he’s essentially the quarterback and tells everyoen what to do…as the JLA got full of the new gods, steel, etc… it became more obvious that batman needn’t be in that book.
but as to what you were saying before, most bat stories don’t end with him pulling some deus ex machina bs to save the day. batman stories are usually detective/conspiracy stories bcuz for the most part, like supes in a physical fight batman is bringing more firepower to teh show…recently (not that recently consider i’m SUPER behind on my comics) every bat story is devolving into batman vs. the world and he’s relying more on teh bat family to help him out, which i kinda like.
Yeah they’re probably just blowing up an ‘insider’ text message (“Nolan wrote up some ideas on a napkin for WB”) into some OMGWTF revelation (Sir Christopher Nolan is executive producer!!!)
I’m starting to think that “come up with a Christopher Nolan rumor” is on the daily action item list for everybody in the Hollywood reporting business.
This just in: Christopher Nolan has signed on to direct the prequel to Hot Tub Time Machine, according to nobody in particular.
All this debate about Superman vs. Batman is kind of silly.
There should only be one reason you don’t like superman and that is his god complex. Everyone knows he gets away with BS and most of his conflicts are solved by BS fist fights where he out punches his opponent. That is just how Superman rolls.
