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Stephen Robinson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5835
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| Posted: 27 July 2014 at 11:04am | IP Logged | 1
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Imaginary Stories and What-Ifs, when played by the rules, reinforced
the security of the regular stories for the 11-yr-old reader: Superman
wouldn't die, Green Lantern wouldn't go bad, Captain America wouldn't
become infirm... the stories might take our heroes to the brink but the
always came away from it intact. As a child, there is nothing more
reassuring than that.
Imaginary Stories and What-Ifs allowed us to dip our toes into a world
where heroes fail, where they die, where villains win. Or even a world
where our heroes grow old and retire happily. The status quo changes
but not in the "real" stories.
Saying that "all" stories are imaginary is to say that Superman breaking
his vow and killing (as he did in Moore's story) and then voluntarily
giving up his powers and retiring is just as "real" as when he doesn't
stumble. And that I believe is the mistake that has led to the "real"
stories reading like a series of Imaginary Tales.
I imagine that Superman 149 received no media coverage because
everyone knew Superman hadn't really died.
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Brian Floyd
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 07 July 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 8349
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| Posted: 27 July 2014 at 12:04pm | IP Logged | 2
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I used to have one of those DC digests that had a reprint
of that story from Superman #149 in it. Wish I still had
it. Sadly, I don't have it or the Justice League one that
had the stories where a few characters joined the team
anymore.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132239
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| Posted: 27 July 2014 at 12:17pm | IP Logged | 3
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I think JB's reaction to Moore's comment goes way overboard. All Moore was saying is "yes, the Superman continuity is changing, and the Weisinger-era/Schwartz-era stories are no longer canonical, but that doesn't mean that they're any less valuable than the new stories coming up, or that you can't go back and read them and enjoy them again."••• If that's what he meant, I wonder why he didn't say it more clearly? +++ I mean c'mon. Moore loves the Silver Age Superman stories. That much is obvious. ••• I have seen no evidence of this.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132239
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| Posted: 27 July 2014 at 12:24pm | IP Logged | 4
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Lex Luthor can kill Lois Lane and expose Superman's identity before his brainwashed son kills his daughter in a clearly "imaginary tale." ••• One of my great frustrations was that DC insisted on putting an ElseWorlds bullet on GENERATIONS, despite my begging them not to. This was compounded, a while later, when they were stitching together their "Hypertime" nonsense, and presented a montage that included a reference to one of my GENERATIONS stories. sigh This is the echo of Alan Moore's line. If they're ALL imaginary, then even stories intended by the author to belong to NO "universe" get forcibly folded into the mix.
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Brennan Voboril
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 15 January 2011
Posts: 1734
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| Posted: 27 July 2014 at 3:03pm | IP Logged | 5
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Superman #149? Those were the days.
I'm 57 and can also remember getting an Imaginary Tale from DC and having the same reaction as JB. These were stories outside the regular DC comics world. That is what made them so great. DC was a lot of fun when they published Imaginary Tales.
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Roy Johnson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 May 2013
Location: Canada
Posts: 1323
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| Posted: 27 July 2014 at 6:00pm | IP Logged | 6
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I would recommend Alan Moore' run on SUPREME for his views on Superman.
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Jason Schulman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 08 July 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 2473
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| Posted: 27 July 2014 at 8:06pm | IP Logged | 7
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"If that's what he meant, I wonder why he didn't say it more clearly?"
I understood what he meant at age 12, when Superman #423 came out. I don't get why you didn't understand him.
"I have seen no evidence of this."
Moore's words, from some point in the 1990s:
“Superman himself seems to have been a bit lost for a number of years, it’s not the character I remember. What made the character appealing to me has been stripped away in a tide of revisionism. Given that I was somebody who sort of helped bring in the trend of revisionism in comics, I’ve got to take some of the blame for that. But it seems to me that there might have been a case of the baby being thrown out with the bathwater with the original Superman.” “What it was with Superman was the incredible range of imagination on display with that original character. A lot of those concepts that were attached to Superman were wonderful. The idea of the Bottled City of Kandor, Krypto the Superdog, Bizarro, all of it. These are fantastic ideas, and it was that which kept me going back each month to Superman when I was ten. I wanted to find out more about this incredible world with all of these fascinating details.” (source: http://archive.today/gNyI7)
("Original" is not the most accurate word Moore could've used -- I have to presume he hadn't seen the earliest Superman comics at that point -- but his point is clear, I think.)
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 28 July 2014 at 4:47am | IP Logged | 8
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We shall have to agree to disagree, it seems. Obviously you enjoy Moore's oeuvre, as do many. I find it cold, calculated and strangely antiseptic.
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Greg Woronchak
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Joined: 04 September 2007
Location: Canada
Posts: 1631
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| Posted: 28 July 2014 at 7:31am | IP Logged | 9
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I find it cold, calculated and strangely antiseptic.
I'd tend to agree with a lot of his work.
However, his Supreme run does feel like a charming 'love letter' to the character he fondly remembered, and for me, those comics are more fun than any recent DC Superman books.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132239
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| Posted: 28 July 2014 at 9:45am | IP Logged | 10
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Perhaps there is something good in SUPREME, and perhaps if I had done a "blind taste test," not knowing I was reading Moore, I might have enjoyed it. Unlikely, but who knows?But knowing I was reading Moore cast a pall over the whole thing. As I said, cold, calculated and antiseptic. Prepackaged nostalgia by someone whose work on other characters (Swamp Thing, Marvel Man, the Charlton heroes) told me he was from the school that asks not "How can I tell good (fill-in-the-blank) stories?" but rather "How can I use (fill-in-the-blank) to tell MY stories?"
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Stephen Robinson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5835
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| Posted: 28 July 2014 at 9:50am | IP Logged | 11
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Stan Lee might not be able to write "Who's Afraid of
Virginia Woolf" but I wouldn't want to read a story arc
in FANTASTIC FOUR that is basically "Who's Afraid of
Virginia Woolf" featuring Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Alicia.
When I consider Moore's work (e.g. "Whatever Happened to
the Man of Tomorrow?" "For the Man Who Has Everything"
"The Killing Joke"), they don't strike me as great
examples of the superhero comics genre. I don't mind
anyone's personal tastes but it bothers me when stories
like that are considered better than Stan Lee and Jack
Kirby's FF just because they deal with "dark" subject
matters. Also, arguably, a lot of Moore's work "only"
works as a reaction to traditional superhero comics. It's
Batman and Superman behaving differently than we'd
expect. It's a shattering of a world created by others.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 28 July 2014 at 10:25am | IP Logged | 12
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When I was doing Superman, there were fans who would come up to my table at cons, brandishing a copy of "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow," and asking why I didn't do stories "like that."My response was to point out that Moore didn't have to worry about a next issue. I did.
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