Stark reminder of the difference between DC 1965 and DC 2010:
Destroying a planet? Wrecking a city? They actually executed Superman XXX for that stuff??
Hell, if he pulled that these days, they'd just say he was possessed by the color yellow, or had been replaced by "an immortal and mutable manifestation of the prime universal force of life and passion," or have him reboot from a back-up memory that didn't include any of his crimes ("I did what now?!?"), or have him just shrug and say, "Gee, guys, I really don't remember. Can I get a mulligan?" Yes, I'm looking at you, Captain Atom...
Oh, yeah, that dude in the helmet is Luthor's descendant in the year 3446, and he's just punking Superboy with his "3-D Mirage Materializer." Superman XXX was really a righteous dude. So Superboy doesn't have to figure out how to "live down" the fact that 29 subsequent generations might produce one bad apple.
But all those creators who want to regress DC to the Silver Age? Perhaps they might want to actually read some Silver Age comics, because back then, heroes were expected to pay the price when they went bad. None of this morally and creatively lazy "Oops, sorry, wasn't me" crap. I'm just sayin'...
Destroying a planet? Wrecking a city? They actually executed Superman XXX for that stuff??Hell, if he pulled that these days, they'd just say he was possessed by the color yellow, or had been replaced by "an immortal and mutable manifestation of the prime universal force of life and passion," or have him reboot from a back-up memory that didn't include any of his crimes ("I did what now?!?"), or have him just shrug and say, "Gee, guys, I really don't remember. Can I get a mulligan?" Yes, I'm looking at you, Captain Atom...
Oh, yeah, that dude in the helmet is Luthor's descendant in the year 3446, and he's just punking Superboy with his "3-D Mirage Materializer." Superman XXX was really a righteous dude. So Superboy doesn't have to figure out how to "live down" the fact that 29 subsequent generations might produce one bad apple.
But all those creators who want to regress DC to the Silver Age? Perhaps they might want to actually read some Silver Age comics, because back then, heroes were expected to pay the price when they went bad. None of this morally and creatively lazy "Oops, sorry, wasn't me" crap. I'm just sayin'...
5 comments:
You mean that they didn't just create a crisis event and say that it was a parallel-universe-evil-twin that did the terrible acts, and then ret-con the story back to kittens and lollipops?
Wow, you really are learning a lot about comics...
Come now, wouldn't we all like to pretend that Countdown: Arena never happened?
Not to be a spoiler, but it's actually VERY silver age to ignore consequences and come up with outlandish excuses for how the "hero" is not guilty of crimes. It's just that back then it was for an issue long thrill, where as now, it's to do unpopular characterization changes (Captain Atom, Iron man), or in GL's case, bring back a much loved (by some) iteration of a classic character. Only in the Bronze age did continuity even begin to have consequences.
Welcome, Math!
If I might quibble slightly, from my (admittedly incomplete) Silver Age readings, 80% of such times the "crime" never actually occurred ("What, Superboy? You didn't really destroy that planet? You were just using your heat vision to convert them from solid matter to their normal gaseous state? Oh, that explains everything!"). Any "real" crimes you usually just mind-controlled bank robberies and similar minor dickweedery.
That's a smidge different from the current crop of stories, where actual planets and actual races and actual entire dimensions are actually wiped out, and the genocidal maniac is welcomed back into heroic ranks with a shrug and a wink.
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