Twisted Men of Steel: Five Gritty Superman Stand-ins

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Everybody knows Superman. He’s an iconic character and the poster boy not only for DC Comics, but for the entire superhero genre of entertainment.  Representing “truth, justice, and the American way” he’s not only revered as the ultimate patriot and paragon of virtue, he’s the standard of what makes a true hero.

That said, wouldn’t it be awesome if he was a total psycho instead? DC has shown surprising flexibility with their big blue boy scout by allowing him to be portrayed in alternate universe stories in a darker light. Superman has been everything from a megalomaniacal villain to Reagan’s bitch to a Communist in various “what if” universes, but what was missing was a fuller exploration of the possibilities of a being with god-like power who is less than perfect. Thankfully, there have been several independent comics that have picked up on this and used the Superman archetype to launch their own explorations into the more sinister aspects of the Man of Steel.  Here are a few.

The Sentry

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Okay, Marvel isn’t exactly what you’d call “independent”, but they still have a twisted version of Supes that was introduced in a miniseries depicting him as a kind of forgotten Marvel hero. Robert Reynolds possesses the over-the top power of “a million exploding suns” and a truckload of mental illness to go along with it.

Turns out that Sentry erased the entire universe’s memories of him which is why he seems to not have existed prior to 2000 even though he was there alongside all of the classic heroes in their classic era struggles.  He is discovered by the reformed Avengers locked away in a supervillain prison called The Raft, having voluntarily committed himself there. Reynolds suffers from agoraphobia and split-personality disorder, believing the dark half of his psyche, The Void, is an all-consuming evil always descending on the world.

There are some really great concepts to be explored there, what with an all-powerful being being mentally frail and literally terrified of his own power and all, but Marvel had kind of made a mess of the character and has used him as an ill-advised Deus ex machina device. If you need something to beat the unbeatable, just have Sentry get his shit together for long enough to save the day and there you go. Still, he’s the highest-profile example of what I’m talking about here so I thought I’d include him.

 

The Star

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From mainstream Marvel to utter obscurity we go. Arch Enemy is a story of grey morality where the protagonist is a sympathetic criminal and society itself along with its heroic defender of law and order is the antagonist.

Tired of being a cog supporting an unconscionably corrupt system and getting less than a living wage to sell his soul, Marvin Kazinsky takes on a life of crime to earn the money to get his mother the life-saving surgery she desperately needs. But, as the posters in the city point out, The Star is always watching. The hero flies in to interrupt the heist and tears Marvin’s partners limb from limb, a feat which earns chuckles from the newscasters who report it.

The interesting thing here is the idea that the brutal ending of a human life is considered heroic so long as that person is believed to be “bad”. The use of a nigh-omnipotent being to enforce the law as judge, jury, and executioner appears to have led to a fascist state where the well-off can simply brush off the murder of criminals as a joke since it adds to their personal feeling of security.

But what if you aren’t well-off and society will not consider giving you the helping hand you need? Is becoming a criminal to get money and save a life wrong and is a “hero” killing them for it right? This comic only has a few issues out so far, but it’s well worth a read, especially considering the first two issues are free.

 

Plutonian

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One under-discussed aspect of Superman is that fact that he can hear EVERYTHING. Like, everything in the entire world at once. When he is referred to as a god, it’s no hyperbole. Now picture being able to hear every conversation in the world; all of the shit talk, all of the ignorance, all of the whining and pettiness and other things that make human contact borderline intolerable at times for anyone with a triple digit IQ being constantly broadcast into your ear canal 24/7. Well, in Irredeemable, the big guy finally snaps and decides that humanity is not only not worth saving, but has got to go.

The Plutonian was a hero who saved countless lives, and in return he was treated the way people treat any other public figure. Superpowers have two sides, though. As handy as they are for saving people, they are typically even more effective for destructive purposes, and it’s a pretty terrifying concept having a being with almost infinite power bent on killing you.

Irredeemable shows us another side of the Superman mythos that was almost certainly lingering in our subconscious all along, and that’s what makes it so great. It’s too easy to assume that a being of such enormous power would have perfect morals and mental stability to match. It’s much more interesting to envision what would happen if such a person turned against us.

 

The Homelander

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In The Boys, superheroes are created by a corporation called Vought-American, which licenses them for everything from defense contracts to, of course, comic books. The comic is a brutal satire of all things comic industry and features all of the familiar archetypes of the Big Two (including some real life figures) in a rather unsavory light. Naturally, there is a Superman character involved and that character is The Homelander.

For an example of how untethered this story is, in The Boys’ universe The Homelander and his superteam, The Seven, caused September 11th.  The Homelander himself is held up to the public as the representative of American values, but in truth he is a classic sociopath who sees others as beneath him and often uses them to feed some pretty perverse desires.

The idea of metahumans being used for profits or even sold as weapons is a solid one that hints at the logical eventualities of genetic engineering while mocking the comic industry’s apple pie portrayal of its classic superheroes.

 

The American

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This one comes from a comic miniseries/graphic novel called Cla$$war which brings together aspects of some of the other examples I’ve used here and puts them together into something that’s been described as a “political thriller with superheroes”.

Joe Kelly once asked a question in the title of the famous Superman story What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way? Cla$$war gives a strong implied answer in that those three things are far from the same thing, and not necessarily even related to one another. When the American government’s policy becomes injustice and misinformation, what’s a patriotic superhero to do?

Well, if you’re The American you start off by protesting with a public mid-air sit-in in front of the White House and/or use your heat vision to burn the word “liar” into the president of the United States’ forehead. Not the subtlest possible way to get your point across, but it seems like it’d do the trick.

Suffice to say that Cla$$war is pretty controversial in its subject matter. The disillusionment of the American people being expressed through the deeds of a single superhuman representative is pretty fertile ground for storytelling, and this one even throws in genetic tampering experiments to create metahumans soldiers as a bonus.

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It’s not really likely that DC is going to want to explore the concept of Superman decimating the human race or assaulting the president over his inhumane foreign policies.  That’s why it’s good to have independent publishers to take our favorite comic book archetypes and push the concepts into places that the mainstream just doesn’t want to go.

Obviously, I love the idea of taking the concept of America’s most iconic superhero and twisting him into something a little more in step with reality as opposed to the usual boring black and white morality that most comics have historically fall into. But does anyone prefer the traditional takes where the good guys are always perfect and the bad guys were pure evil to the modern publications that make us question the very concepts of good and evil? Sound off.

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19 Comments

  1. “But does anyone prefer the traditional takes where the good guys are always perfect and the bad guys were pure evil to the modern publications that make us question the very concepts of good and evil?”

    Yes.

  2. I have to say that while I enjoy the “gritty” and “realistic” take from time-to-time, it can also wear out its welcome. I know people aren’t perfect, all I have to do is wake up in the morning or turn on cable news to see that. I like my entertainment, whether it be comics, movies, books, video games to sometimes portray something a little larger then life. Heroes that, even if they struggle, always end up taking the high road. I don’t see anything wrong with having a higher ideal to live up to. So, I like both but lately I’ve had enough with everyone taking the “gritty” route and would like some good-old fashioned heroes.

  3. @Zimmerman- And there’s nothing wrong with that.

    @BB- No U.

    @Morales- I hear you. I don’t by any means think that all stories need to take that approach, and it takes a high caliber writer to do it well. But when it’s done right, it can be my favorite thing.

    I had quite a time even finding an image to use for Arch Enemy (ended up taking a screenshot). I wasn’t kidding about the obscurity of it. Here’s a link to the first issue if you have a Kindle:

    http://www.amazon.com/Arch-Enemy-1-ebook/dp/B00AESB35Y

    and here’s where you can read them online in a really cool format:

    http://graphicly.com/octopulp/arch-enemy

    There’s only three issues so far, but issue 4 is due in November. Still, it was a decent read and a great concept.

  4. With regard to taking heroes down a notch; showing them for the flawed beings they “are,” I agree with what Grant Morrison is saying here:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99GfjpuzHf8

    Though I don’t think that there are only the two ends of the spectrum you described, either. If we said that the black & white “paragon of virtue” stuff was a 10, and the pure deconstruction, “everybody sucks” stuff is a 0, my sweet spot is somewhere around… oh, 6 or 7, with allowances for variety.

  5. Dude, I read the first two issues of that Arch Enemy comic book . . . yeah, no. If everyone lived by the excuses that Marvin character used, most of us would be criminals. As a matter of fact, I’d hazard that many actual criminals do justify their actions in exactly the kind of manner Marvin does. I hate to sound harsh but the world doesn’t owe you a happy existence just because you’re alive. Granted, I feel for his condition and in a perfect world, such a thing would never happen. And yes, The Star character doesn’t seem to be a good guy from what we’ve seen of him so far. Still, the issues seem to be trying too hard, if you know what I mean? I mean, there is no single shred of goodness in this character’s life? None at all? I’m supposed to believe all police are like the guys who interrogated him? People would just be perfectly okay with a superhero murdering criminals willy-nilly? Eh, to each their own I guess but what I’m seeing from Marvin in that series does not endear me to his character. Anyway, that’s my opinion. I’ve always been a straight-laced law-and-order type. I play Mass Effect pure paragon, I play Paladins in RPGs, etc etc etc 🙂

  6. Modern superheroes are never perfect. As soon as comics started lasting more than 3 panels, to maintain dramatic tension, you have to introduce the possibility of failure. The longer the story, the more imperfect the character needs to become…

  7. Nah, I prefer Superman the way he is. And frankly I get real tired of people hating on him because he’s “perfect”, because he’s not, and that’s the point!
    Superman makes mistakes, he gets angry, he loses his temper, just like all of us. But the point of Superman is that he shows us that, while we’re all imperfect, we can choose to be something better.
    If I want a grim and gritty superhero I’ll read Batman, or The Punisher, or Ghost Rider.
    This is one of the reasons I hate The New 52. They’re trying to pour some Batman into Superman, and like oil and water, the two go great together, but work best when separate.

  8. @David- All things work on a spectrum. I’m not a black and white guy either, and didn’t intend to imply that comics need to be that way. I was just exploring some darker takes on the Superman archetype.

    @Morales- It’s just a story. Obviously the world there is darker than the one we actually live in, but there are more than enough nuggets of fact to warrant examination of our present social situation. For instance, universal health care as a human right as opposed to the “be rich or pray you don’t get seriously ill” mindset of the privileged.

    @Josh- I’ve heard good things and will definitely check it out at some point. Thanks.

    @Turner- That’s cool. Supes is pretty close to perfect, usually. When he loses his temper, it’s typically over something anyone should lose their temper over; the death of an innocent or the like. But a normal person would not be able to handle his powers, so his morality is clearly beyond human. A real person would almost certainly turn out like The Plutonian or The Homelander because in real life with great power comes… great abuse of that power.

  9. Nick, I think Hyperion is more Marvel’s Superman than Sentry is but I do recognize that Sentry was made specifically to serve as a “evil Superman” plot device.

    Also, you need to grab DC’s Injustice. I can assure you, Superman crosses come graphic lines in that series.

  10. Call me old fashion but I do like my heroes to be heroes and by bad guys to be bad guys. I love some of the more realist takes on these characters and they do make for some great stories but at the end of the day I want to be inspired by my heroes for all the right reasons. They are called Superheroes because they are lager then life depictions of real heroes. I like that. Again nothing wrong with the gritty and down and dirty but if I wanted that I would watch the news.

  11. Have you heard of “To Be A God”?
    I haven’t read it, but it’s about a guy who gets turned into superman and then snaps with his OTT powers and goes crazy.
    I always thought superheroes with almost limitless powers would either turn into Dr Manhattan or a raging psychopath, and this one goes with the latter.

    1. I have not heard of it, but obviously it’s something I’ve be interested in. Thanks. Watchmen is arguably the most truthful look at what superheroes would really be like. That or Kick-Ass.

      1. Black Summer had a cool angle, I thought; what if the world’s most powerful superhero (though no “Superman” by any stretch) executed POTUS for crimes against the people? What if that same superhero was also your former teammate?

  12. Reading this article again after several years, I would now say that Steelheart (from the novel Steelheart) would be another great example. When a mysterious comet appears and gives thousands of people superpowers, every single one of them turns evil and goes rampaging. Fast forward ten years and the world has been divided into thousands of small fiefdoms where gangs of superhumans (or Epics) rule as dictators. Steelheart is one of the strongest, as he can fly, is invulnerable, shoot beams of energy out of his hands, has super strength and can turn everything around him into actual steel.
    The whole trilogy is a great subversion of the usual superhero tropes, and Steelheart is iconic as an evil Superman.

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