This is the opposite of “Yes we can.” This is the American dream remixed and gerrymandered by the 1%. This is all that a small town boy can hope for in 2013. Wal Mart Classic, an image by Windsor street/mixed media artist Daniel Bombardier (aka D3N!@L) floored me at yesterday’s Super Super Show at Parkdale’s Super Wonder Gallery. The themed group show was a wonder of copyright and trademark bending that featured dozens of Southern Ontario Artists taking on the quintessentially american genre of superhero comics. While there was much eye candy on display, this riff on the iconic image of Christopher Reeve transforming from Clark Kent into Superman drew me from across the room. And what a riff it is. Hidden under the drab couture of the mild mannered reporter is the shocking blue of a Walmart employee’s vest and behind the Man of Steel, emblazoned in bold yellow letters is a call to SAVE, SAVE, SAVE—not the world but money.

D3N!@L subverts Superman’s cheery optimism with a dose of harsh reality. There is no longer a vector from Smallville to Metropolis. Ma and Pa Kent are working for Wal Mart, earning minimum wage and barely enough to feed young Clark, let alone to save up for his college tuition. And if he does make it to Metropolis, Clark Kent is likely to discover that it’s impossible to work as a reporter because the Daily Planet has either lost ground to Huffington Post or is betoken to the media conglomerate that now owns it.

Superman’s candy-coloured idealism is stripped. Clark is rendered in greys. Like so many Americans, all he can look forward to is a lifetime of wage slavery, diminished buying power, and a lack of significant opportunities to better himself or society as a whole. Devoid of the aspirational qualities of his 20th century self, this Clark Kent is emblematic of early 21st Century America. He is destined to fail. He is crushed by forces far bigger than he. And there is nothing super about him.

Wal Mart Classic is priced at $1,100. As of my departure last night, it was still up for grabs.

I’ve yet to see the Baz Luhrman’s cinematic take on it, but I’m certain that the shirt scene will be spectacular in 3D. However F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby still leaves me mostly cold as a novel and as an artifact of the rise of celebrity culture in the 1920s. Perhaps it is because, reading it with the hindsight of 90 years of our fame-obsessed society, it isn’t all that shocking anymore. On the whole, we are far too immersed in the kind of vapidness that Fitzgerald condemns. Thanks to the marvel of social media, the high jinx of the rich, the famous and the infamous can be shared on a planetary scale in a matter of seconds. And it doesn’t take money or talent to acquire celebrity anymore. A stranger with a smartphone can capture the dubious behaviour of a fellow unknown and share it with the world in an instant. Voilà! Spontaneous fame.

However, it is not my familiarity with the trope of the fame monster that bothers me about The Great Gatsby. It is rather the action in the first three quarters of the novel, or rather, the lack thereof that concerns me.

Nothing much happens in The Great Gatsby. People drink, party and gossip. This foreshadows reality shows like Big Brother and Jersey Shore. Bored out of their minds, the cast members sit around speculating about what is fuelling others’ behaviour. This can be quite compelling if the characters are interesting. but quickly grows stale if they’re not.

Now, Fitzgerald does go to great lengths to detail the ennui of the lives of the inhabitants of Long Island in the 1920s but he does so at the expense of my sympathy. Daisy is a vapid naif whose star-eyed wonderment at Gatsby’s riches leaves me indifferent because she is an insubstantial character. She resembles a placeholder for Fitzgerald’s condemnation of fame and wealth. The same goes for title character Jay Gatsby. He is presented as nothing more than a con man, a bootlegger whose instant wealth is a magnet for those who worship his notoriety and who want to partake of his generosity as a host. But even Gatsby is a shell. He is a caricature who calls everyone “old sport” as a way of connoting his rightful place in the upper echelons of society, and who is ultimately revealed to be a poor boy who simply wanted to win back the rich girl who got away.

It is near nigh impossible for me to latch onto Fitzgerald’s ephemeral characters. There is no real humanity behind their ennui. They have no vitality. They lack souls struggling to free themselves from the boredom of their wealth and privilege. Thus, when everything falls apart, it is left to narrator Nick Carraway to explain to us why these people are reprehensible and why Gatsby’s life was such a tragedy. The sheer horror of it all sinks in when Gatsby’s father finally appears. As one of only three people to attend Gatsby’s funeral, he is more moved by his son’s acquired wealth than by his death. It is in these final pages that Gatsby rises to the rank of a tragic figure and Nick finally accedes to the adulthood of his thirties, as he looks behind the veil and finally understands the roots of his hatred for the East Coast celebrity class.

But do the final pages make The Great Gatsby a great novel? Do they redeem a book that, despite its beautiful writing, suffers from superficial characterization and a failure to elicit reader sympathyP? I encourage you to read it and decide for yourselves—-and since it is in the public domain, you can download a free version for your eReader–but to me, The Great Gatsby feels like an overly long prologue that dovetails directly into a shattering epilogue. It feels like an overly long introduction that never evolves into a first or second act but leaps directly to a climax and its consequences. Whether it is a journey worth taking is entirely up to you, but it is not the road less travelled and there are far better books that deserve to vie for the title of Great American Novel.

Lawrence Krauss, Richard Dawkins and filmmakers Gus and Luke Howlerda at Unbelievers world premiere

If Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss are the rock stars of the so-called New Atheism, then Gus Holwerda’s The Unbelievers is its Truth or Dare. This tour documentary follows the pair as they they travel the world, spreading the gospel of science and atheism. While it is by no means an exhaustive treatise on science and atheism, or an in-depth profile of its subjects, it is a testament to the poetry and the passion that Krauss and Dawkins bring to promoting science and the rational world view.

The film is begins and ends with black and white interview footage of various celebrities—Woody Allen, Werner Herzog, Ricky Gervais and Cameron Diaz, among others—talking about the wonders of science and the harm of religion. It follows evolutionary biologist Dawkins and theoretical physicist Krauss as they bring their unmoderated conversation about science, reason and atheism to an international audience. The bulk of the film takes place in Australia and features the pair on stage and in conversation, behind the scenes and separately as they make various media appearances and, in Krauss’s case, debate a group of Muslim students in a forum that is advertised only to the Muslim community. It also takes us to the 2012 Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne and, a few weeks later to the 30,000 strong Rally for Reason at the National Monument in Washington D.C., which—stretching the rock star metaphor—might be considered the Woodstock of atheism.

The rockumentary aesthetic comes courtesy of brothers Gus and Luke Howlerda who, on top of respectively writing/directing and producing/directing the photography of the project are also founding members of the alternative rock group Smokescreen, whose music dominates a soundtrack that also features luminaries like R.E.M. and Radiohead. And true to the genre, the film’s focus is on performance and the tour rather than the private lives of its subjects.

At its core, The Unbelievers captures the power of Krauss and Dawkins’ live performances. It is as much about their riffs on science and reason as The Song Remains the Same is about Jimmy Page’s guitar prowess. It dazzles the audience with its stars’ oratorial and intellectual audacity, but more importantly, it packs an emotional punch because the thing that has brought Dawkins and Krauss to the fore is their artistry. Like consummate musicians they weave their extensive theoretical knowledge into a tapestry of sound that engages the heart as it does the mind. They ask their audiences to ponder the possibility that without religion and viewed solely through the prism of science and reason, the universe becomes more wondrous and life more meaningful.

The Unbelievers is not without its flaws. The tilt-shift cityscapes at the beginning of the film are somewhat gimmicky and a narrative break from Australia to Arizona then back is somewhat jarring, but these are minor quibbles. The film is propelled by the beauty and strength of Dawkins and Krauss’ arguments, as well as by their charm and authority. It enthralls the viewer with by the immensity of the universe and the minuteness of the individual human being. It not only asks the viewer to take a stance in light of these realities but also provides a vector from which to build an edifice of meaning free of the yoke of religion. It is poetic. It is brave. It is eminently entertaining. And it totally rocks.

The film had its world premiere last night at Hot Docs, with Krauss, Dawkins and the Howlerda brothers in attendance. The stars and filmmakers were greeted with a standing ovation and a spirited Q&A ensued. All remaining screenings are sold out and if yesterday’s rush line (which started at noon for the 6:30 PM showing and snaked around the block) is any indication, The Unbelievers is this year’s hot tickets. I hope this bodes well for a theatrical release.

I started reading Sheila Heti’s novel What Should a Person Be? after several friends shared on Facebook her piece about generosity in the Canadian arts scene in response to a Globe and Mail article about Canadian artists having to make a splash in the UK or the US before being acknowledged here. I quickly realized that many of the persons that she thanks in her article are characters in the book, some of whom I’ve met and photographed. I have to admit an initial thrill at realizing this. Although my contact with Ryan, Misha and Margaux was limited to a photo shoot, it was still bizarre to see them rendered in print. But my initial delight faded as I slogged through the book, but perhaps this is the point of the exercise.

The core of What Should a Person Be? is a series of taped conversations that chronicles that emerging friendship between Sheila and her artist friend Margaux Williamson. It is a conceit that is lifted directly from reality television genre. Heti has admitted being influenced by the MTV dramatized reality series. She has also said that creating characters and writing dialogue is difficult, so why not simply lift them from the real world and be done with it?

The taped segments aren’t the only trope taken from reality television. The novel starts and ends with Margaux and Misha competing to make an uglier painting. There are long confessionals. And, the book itself, is self-referential, it is a book about trying to write a play that ends up becoming the book you are reading. How very post-modern.

Heti’s writing is admirable at times. A conversation with her Jungian analyst early in the book sizzles with wisdom and a dream sequence near the end is a brutal depiction of the conflation of sex and violence. At other times, it plods, especially when she is being introspective. And then there are the e-mails presented as lists. Text is often presented as bulleted or numbered lists on television. And while presenting the e-mails in this manner is a meta-textual trick that may serve to alert readers that these are instances of transcribed writing within a written text that consists of transcribed speaking, doing and thinking, it makes for tiresome reading.

Then there’s her relationship with Israel. One of the threads of the novel is Heti’s reflection on her Jewish heritage and the events of Exodus, which are set against her relationship with an abusive boyfriend named Israel. Perhaps the metaphor is a tad too thick and the resolution of the relationship rings false.

Like many artists before her (filmmaker Stanley Kubrick comes to mind), Heti tries to enoble a popular genre by subverting it, but in doing so, she also falls into the traps of the tropes she adopts. As a result How Should a Person Be? fizzles out long before it concludes. Like its television counterpart, Big Brother, it is mostly a book about people sitting around talking and being self-referential because they are cut off from the rest of the world. Yes, this is a powerful metaphor when applied to a community of young artists. And yes, the sense of ennui they experience is tragic, but at the same time, this is why reality shows inevitably lose their audiences. After the initial shock of being dropped into the quotidian of a group of strangers, these people eventually become all to familiar and their conversations stop entertaining the audience. If Heti meant to provoke ennui in her readers, then she succeeded. If not, then perhaps it is a matter of taste. After all, I find fiction about metahumans far more entertaining that metafiction about humans and Superman beckons.

In this backup story, writer Sholly Fisch and penciller Chris Spouse have the present-day Superman time travel back to the night of his prom to encounter his adopted father, Jonathan Kent, who asks two simple questions of his son: “Are you happy?” and “Are you helping people?” Satisfied that both are true, the senior Kent is reassured that his son is living the good life.

There’s no question that Superman represents an ideal. He is pure and unwavering in his commitment to truth and justice. He will always do the right thing and he will always save the day. Anything is possible for a man from the stars who possesses extraordinary strength and the ability to fly. How does this apply to the rest of us, especially in these hard economic times when putting food on the table often requires ordinary folks to sacrifice their dreams for the sake of survival?

A raft of experts will tell you that the gold is within your grasp, that you are the architect of your dreams, and that you can achieve personal power. Most of their advice is feel-good bunkum that evaporates a few minutes after you put down the book, click off the television or walk out of the conference room. But there’s no secret formula, no thirty-day plan, no set of easy-to-learn habits that you can adopt that will ensure success. It takes hard work to embody your dreams—10,000 hours of practice at your chosen skill, according to many experts. That’s not something you can acquire by going to a seminar or reading the latest self-help masterpiece on the NY Times Bestseller List.

So let’s get back to Jonathan Kent’s two-part career quiz. Are you happy? Are you helping people? In an ideal world, you should be able to answer yes to both. Practically, we can all claim that we are helping people. By the virtue of being social animals everything that we do is bound to benefit somebody (unless we are ruthless corrupt asshats) but many of us are stuck doing things that we’d rather not.

So what is it that makes you happy? Simply this: it is something that you cannot help but do. Superman can’t help but use his powers to fight evil. He is wired that way. He is compelled to take on the fight against all odds. It is what makes him pure. It is this purity that ensures his single-mindedness. But Superman lives in a fantasy world. You and I don’t have the benefit of writers who can impose a tidy three-act structure with a resolution on our lives.You and I are messy and our lives are far from perfect, but if we can gather up the courage to spend a little time doing what we can’t help doing and building it into a career, we just just might make it, but with 10,000 hours of practice and a lot of hard work, and not just by fitting ourselves into the pre-fabricated straightjackets tailored by self-help gurus, employment consultants and HR specialists.

The questions asked by Jonathan Kent are binary. You can only say “yes” or “no.” But there are many possible routes and just as many outcomes that will allow you to arrive at an affirmative answer. Sadly, many of us will not end up succeeding at that which we cannot help but do. However, we won’t know unless we try and—unless we do—we can never be the authors or the stars of our very own personal superhero stories.

Never before has this disconnect been more in evidence than last night. Before we turn to McFarlane, let’s turn to the way that the ceremony chose to celebrate the long-running and highly profitable James Bond franchise, first with a highlight reel of the series’ best moments introducing Dame Shirley Bassey singing the iconic Goldfinger theme song, then again with Adele belting out the theme from this year’s Skyfall. Yet Skyfall—the latest and possibly greatest Bond flick and possibly the year’s best actioner—was not even in the running for best picture. Is there any better way to say thanks for the money but you don’t rate?

Same thing for Star Trek. The Oscars gave us William Shatner in full James T. Kirk regalia during the opening sketch, and just in case we forgot that the second installment of J.J. Abram’s Trek reboot is due this spring, current Kirk Chris Pine co-presented the clips from the technical awards that were held earlier this year.

Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe and Twilight’s Kristen Stewart also put in appearances. Again, to remind us of Hollywood’s moneymaking machine, and please, would those under 30 please stay tuned in despite the musical numbers for bluehairs?

Let’s get back to host Seth MacFarlane. Best known for the satirical Family Guy and American Dad cartoons, MacFarlane’s schtick is satire through frat boy humour. It’s not high art and it perfectly reflects the language and tone that the movie industry uses to draw fifteen year-olds into cineplexes and to make them sit still for ninety-minute stretches while dazzling them with exploding vehicles, sparkling vampires and potty jokes. Add some nudging and winking to suggest to cynical older viewers that Hollywood really is the den of wolves that they imagine it to be and you’ve got the makings of a hit.

True, some of MacFarlane’s jokes were tasteless, and some may even be construed as offensive, but his so-called misogyny and racism were not attacks on vulnerable populations as some of the more politically-correct commentators have suggested, they were in fact sending up Hollywood. Women, minorities and queers continue to  get short shrift in Tinseltown despite some progress and the glittering liberal wrapping. MacFarlane was simply doing his job as a satirist in justifiably hoisting the industry on its own petard and sending it up in the language of the lowest common denominator, i.e. the bottom line.

As for those who didn’t get the joke and who continue to bemoan the broadcast’s lack of class; you got Streisand for crying out loud. Streisand! Stop tweeting your discontent and maybe just maybe consider that your idea of class may be at odds with everyone else’s idea of entertainment.

A few weeks back, in a similar vein, a lawyer who had contacted me about a possible photo shoot sent me a promotional e-mail about an artist whose work he had purchased. The lawyer in question had ended up not commissioning my services, but he’d kept my contact info and kept sending me e-mail, most of which I ignored up to that point. I politely asked him to take me off the list, and said that I didn’t particularly appreciate receiving unsolicited contact information about somebody else. Also could he kindly not add my name to any other mailing lists as I did not wish him to share my contact information without my permission. Again, an angry response. Despite the please and thank you tone of my request, I was called a philistine and told that I was a rude troublemaker. As far as I know, this was the first time I’d contacted the gentleman in question after we’d gone our separate ways post our failed attempt to work together.

I realize that in this brave new world of instant online communication, it’s easy to go overboard but a little common sense goes a long way. Despite the any publicity is good publicity mantra, pissing people off is a lousy way to build your brand, especially if you’re a small-time operator who can only afford a grass-roots/word-of-mouth campaign. I shouldn’t need to have this conversation with anybody. And I certainly don’t need the aggravation of the belligerent communications that always follow. Also, trying to guilt or shame me for getting annoyed is not going to keep you in my good graces. I get enough spam from Russian mail-order brides, the families of Nigerian princes and pharmacists concerned about my manhood. If you manage to put yourself on the same footing as such fine folks, were you really much of a friend to begin with?

If you do want to get my attention without being a pain in the ass here are some ways you can do it:

• A facebook event invitation
• A personalized private message or e-mail
• A phone call

You can even create a group chat on facebook and invite me, and if I accept your invitation, feel free to do it again because a) I like you and b) I am interested in the event you’re hosting. But if I tell you I don’t appreciate this or any other form of invitation, please don’t take it personally and please don’t do it again. I have a limited time on this planet and so do you and I would much rather spend it with people and at events that I like. Wouldn’t that be better for all of us?

Hey, look! It’s Douglas Coupland. The “Generation-X” author and mixed media artist was in Toronto last week giving a talk to students at Ryerson’s Faculty of Communications and Design about life beyond art school. He had plenty to say about how your twenties are the worst part of your life. (Thank goodness I’m in my forties!) And how making it past thirty and still doing what you started off wanting to do means you will be taken seriously by others. He also pointed out that less than two percent of people who graduate art school or embark on a creative career ever publish, exhibit or produce any work. What a relief. That puts me ahead of the curve.

But perhaps the best advice Coupland gave all night was, “If it feels like homework, don’t do it.” It’s not a new idea and it echoes Joseph Campbell’s “follow your bliss,” but it sounds a lot more practical. We’ve all been there. We’ve started a project—a novel, a screenplay, a series of photographs—and somewhere in the process it stops being fun and becomes a chore, the equivalent of the dreaded What I Did All Summer essay upon returning to school or filling out tax forms.

When a project becomes a chore, it’s a sign that something has gone terribly wrong. Just flash back to childhood and how quickly you’d dash off your homework so you could then concentrate on the serious business of watching cartoons, reading comic books, drawing or riding your bicycle. Except for that one time that you had to write about your favourite sci-fi book or actually draw a comic book in which you were the hero, did you ever enjoy doing your homework? Then why would you allow a project to become the same thing?

Sure there are constraints imposed from without. A gallerist wants a cohesive narrative line running through your next exhibit. Your publisher needs your next manuscript on time. You have to post to your blog while your rant is still topical. But these deadlines are part of what we do. When we deliver is often out of our control. But what we deliver always is. And that’s why we choose to be writers, painters, musicians, filmmakers and photographers instead of office drones. This is why we thrive when our commissions are perfectly aligned with our loves and our values.

One student asked Coupland what he feared the most, and the quick response was, “Having a job.” It makes sense, when you think about it. Being an artist, while it may be a profession, is not really a job. It may resemble a job in that it requires work to be done, and “handed in” but it is ultimately the artist who decides what goes where and what to reveal about oneself and one’s obsessions. And although there are skill sets involved in the arts that may overlap with those required by various jobs, the key difference is revelation. After all, nobody would accuse an accountant of being inauthentic for not revealing oneself more in the numbers.

So what does it all mean? Simply this. Go ahead. Make art. Hope for the best. And even if you’re doing something creative for a living, don’t confuse it with art. Your ad copy and your commercial photographs may involve your artistry but ultimately they are homework assignments and you do them dutifully. It is what you do when you’re playing

Do you feel ennobled now that you’ve contributed your five cents worth to this glorious initiative? Are you basking in the glow of your saintliness? Does this feel as good as that time you paid two-hundred dollars to see U2 when Billionaire Bono brought out on stage a whack of school kids wearing cardboard cutout masks of then-jailed Burmese president Aung San Suu Kyi and you cried for democracy?

A lot of good you’ve done for the planet.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with clicking on links, tweeting, or sharing on Facebook. Those precious few seconds in all our busy days do add up to one sizable donation and it is a fine example of corporate crowdfunding. But at least be honest to yourself: you are taking part in a public relations stunt. The money raised amounts to small change for a company like Bell and is worth far less than the goodwill toward the company that it generates. Because, let’s face it, bitching about Bell is second only to hockey as a national pastime. Bell is one of the most hated businesses in the country and the online chatter about the company is mostly negative. Clearly, Bell Let’s Talk Day is as much about changing the conversation about the company (if only for a day) as it is about promoting mental health awareness and research.

But let’s be honest. No matter how much or little charitable giving or volunteering you may do, campaigns like this one, Pink Ribbon and Product (RED) work because they blunt the burden of consumerism. They make it okay for you to waste your time on Facebook and Twitter where you’re bombarded with ads; to pay hundreds of dollars a month for your cell phone, cable and internet service; to lust after the latest iPhone or iPad; and to bitch about not making enough money at your nine-to-five job to support your spending. They allow you to bitch about Bell’s high prices and lousy service and the raw deal that Canadians are getting while you find ways to rationalize your extended satellite channel lineup as an essential purchase. They allow you to feel that all can be good in the world by surrounding you in the fuzzy glowing language of a marketing campaign.

Bell Let’s Talk is marketing of the most manipulative sort. It guilts and shames you into groupthink and gives you a maximum payoff in self-worth for a mininum investment. For the price of a click and the time to type out the official #bellletstalk hashtag you’ve made the world a better place, you belong. You’ve raised awareness, through a simple action by people just like you. You’ve opened a conversation with people who, unlike you, are misinformed. You’ve destigmatized the suffering of the less fortunate. And it was all made possible through Bell, the company that cares as much as you do. As you bask in the glow of accomplishment, you bathe the idea of Bell in the same wash of endorphins that accompanies your increased self-esteem. For the next few minutes or hours, you forget that you’re locked into a three-year cell phone contract, and when that friend messages you that he spent six hours on the phone with tech support, you tell him to cut them some slack. Hey, after all, Bell helped you fight mental illness. So you did end up raising awareness, but of what?

It started on Friday over a cup of coffee. I was telling my friend Jonathan about my disappointment in J. Michael Strazcynski’s Superman: Earth One, an alternate origin story that set up the Man of Steel as an instrument of revenge for the destruction of planet Krypton by a warring alien race. I complained that it robbed Superman of agency and ruined that crucial moment when the hero (super or not) decides to take action and thus accepts destiny. I said that it was possibly the worst take I’d ever read on the birth of Superman. Jonathan chuckled and said that I’d obviously not read True Brit. “What’s that?” I asked, unprepared for the sinkhole that was about to open. A Superman origin story set in England and co-written by John Cleese of Monty Python, was the reply. And it’s really bad. I had to read it. Was it guilty pleasure bad? Or just bad? I had to know.

Naturally, I couldn’t leave well enough alone, so I didn’t stop at True Brit. After a really bad week that included a basement flood and a touch of food poisoning, I wanted to take it easy, and thus settled in with a whack of Superman titles for what I hoped to be a fairly entertaining weekend.

First off was True Brit, co-written by Cleese and Monty Python historian Kim “Howard” Johnson and draw by John Byrne and Mark Farmer. My first clue should have have been Johnson’s bio, as the world’s foremost (only?) Monty Python historian. I should have known better than to trust a collaboration between a comedic icon and his number-one-fanboy because True Brit is one long series of running and intermittent gags that start to fall flat within a few page turns. Imagine if you will, baby Kal-El (Superman’s alien birth name) being adopted by two humdrum Brits who want to avoid ruffling feathers or upsetting their neighbours. They are justifiably worried that their son will upset the applecart and cause them major embarrassment. What a great set-up, right? What an obstacle for young Superman to overcome! Except he plays into it and the result is some 90-odd pages of gags about how inefficient, undemanding and unimaginative Brits are. It’s Superman rendered as Basil Fawlty, but with none of the charm, wit or inventiveness. Supes just plays along, trying to get the trains to run on time, and repair the economy all the while butting heads with an ersatz Rupert Murdoch, who also employs his alterego.

As for Byrne and Farmer’s cartoonish artwork, the less said the better. It accompanies a story that goes nowhere and its depiction of bucktoothed Brits borders on the offensive. It might have worked as a counterpunch to a tale that played it straight. Instead, it merely magnifies the insipidness of Jones’ and Cleese’s narrative.

To cleanse my palate, I moved on to what I hoped was a sure winner, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s classic tale For the Man who has Everything, which appeared as Superman Annual #11 in 1985. This was the penultimate pre-Crisis Superman annual (i.e prior to the reboot of the entire DC universe during the 1985-86 year-long crossover, Crisis on Infinite Earths). As always Moore manages to blend pulp with politics and the story unfolds during a visit by Batman, Robin and Wonder Woman to the Fortress of Solitude on the occasion of Superman’s Birthday. The cheesy set-up has the trio finding Superman immobile and wrapped in the tendrils of a Black Mercy, an alien plant that creates an immersive fantasy from its victim’s fondest wish.
As we can well imagine, Superman’s greatest wish is for his home planet Krypton to have survived and for him to have been raised by his birth family. But all is not well in Superman’s fantasy life. Having been proven wrong about the impending destruction of Krypton, Superman’s father, Jor-El, has become a right-wing extremist who is widely criticized for the inhumanness of his Phantom Zone method of punishment, and who has taken up with religious fanatics who are promoting visions of ethnic purity. As the story unfolds, Superman frees himself and combats Mongul, the alien supervillain who gifted him with the Black Mercy in a standard punch-up. But the heart of the issue is Superman’s imagined life on Krypton. Why would Superman imagine such strife? Perhaps because his deepest fantasy is not being raised by his biological family on his home planet, but exactly what he is doing here on Earth: fighting injustice and intolerance. This is the tantalizing insight that Moore provides in this excellent tale.

I followed this up with another Moore project. Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow comprises the final pre-Crisis issues of Action Comics and Supermanon Infinite Earths. The story is pencilled by Curt Swan, the legendary artist most associated with the Man of Steel, and is inked by George Perez (Action Comics) and Kurt Schaffenberger, two greats that had never inked Swan’s papers. The covers were done by Swan and penicled by longtime collaborator Murphy Anderson.

This imaginary story (Aren’t they all? asks Moore) is a coda of sorts to 48 years of Superman stories and recounts in flashbacks the titular hero’s last Battle. Ten years into the future, Lois Elliott (née Lane) is long retired from journalism and a recent mom. She sits down for an interview with the Daily Planet on the ocassion of the tenth anniversary of Superman’s disappearance. The final stand happens at the Fortress of Solitude and story features a rogue’s gallery of Superman’s greatest foes, including Bizarro, Braniac, and Lex Luthor. Also along are Perry White and his wife Alice, Lana Lang, Jimmy Olsen, the Legion of Superheroes, and Krypto (aka Superdog).

This is a gorgeous book. It is beautifully drawn by Swan and Moore restrains his politics in the service of a story heavy on the whiz-bang smile-inducing elements of Silver Age comic books even though it is peppered with tragedy. At the same time, Moore does put Superman’s morals to the test and the choice that the Man of Steel must make has irrevocable consequences. Twenty-seven years after its release, it is still a pleasure to read.

I wish I could say the same about John Byrne’s The Man of Steel. This six-issue run of Superman immediately followed Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow and reset the mythology in the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths. Byrne, who wrote the whole thing and also did the artwork, stretched a very thin story over several issues. He reduced the extent of Superman’s powers, eliminated the Superboy phase of Clark Kent’s existence, and recast Lex Luthor as an industrialist. He also recast Krypton as a society of artless, emotionless, sexless superscientists who were an amalgam of Star Trek’s Vulcans and the test-tube spawned future humans of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. At one point, Jor-el tells admits to wife Lara,
“From the moment I was first shown your holo-image and told your seed and mine would be mingled in the Matrix, I have felt an unknown emotion stirring in my heart.”

Vomitous dialogue aside, how forgettable is this reboot? I pulled it from the pile over the weekend thinking it was new-to-me but, as it turns out, I’d already read it, not knowing it was the post-Crisis reboot and barely remembered it. The teenage Clark Kent, as drawn by Byrne looks forty-five. Ma and Pa Kent look like clones of a future Robert Fripp. The six-issue run also retools Bizarro as an imperfect clone of Superman whose destruction by the Man of Steel results in a flurry of ash that cures Lois Lane’s sister of blindness.

What?

The whole thing concludes with a completely unnecessary issue in which Clark returns to Smallville to discover his origins as the last son of Krypton and decides that it doesn’t matter where he came from because he’s American. In the process, Byrne totally ruins Lana Lang by making her a neurotic recluse who never got over the trauma of Clark taking her for a flight over Smallville before leaving to pursue his destiny in Metropolis.

Again: What?

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of Superman’s first adventure in Action Comics No. 1. The longevity of the character is a testament to the genius of co-creators Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, who birthed him as a super-powered advocate of the working class at the height of the Great Depression. Through the years, various writers and artists have taken on the responsibility of perpetuating and expanding the myth of the great hero, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

Despite his many ups and down, Superman persists as a symbol of hope and also of the American imagination. He’s been down more than once but he has always risen to inspire generation after generation of comic book lovers. Like any other symbol, he is only as good as how we interpret him. Thankfully, we are blessed with more than seven decades of Superman stories and we have the luxury to go back and cherry pick only the best. If only we could say the same about the real world without becoming delusional pollyannas.

As for my next Superman weekend, Grant Morrison will next month conclude his tenure on the rebooted Action Comics. At some future point I’ll have to read the entire trippy run and hopefully make sense of a tale that blends time-bending sci-fi with a fresh take on Superman’s origins as a working-class folk hero. It should be fun and hopefully the only flooding and poisoning I encounter will be fictional.