Apr 25, 2013

What I Learned from Multiple Supermen

Last week seemed like Superman week, and a bunch of stuff happened. It was Superman's 75th birthday (Happy birthday, Superman!), the Siegel lawsuit against DC for the ownership of Superman finally ended, and the new Superman: Man of Steel trailer came out. The most interesting thing to me was what a friend said in relation to that trailer:
I wonder if general audiences are more forgiving of characters that aren't as recognizable. Everyone has a preconceived notion of who Superman and Batman are so if they screw that up, it's much more critical. I don't think general audiences came in with a strong preconceived notion of who Thor, Hawkeye, and even Captain America are. I didn't really, so I was more ready to accept their version. I think it's a unique problem that makes Superman especially harder.

And that got me thinking, because she was right. We do tend to judge fiction by what we've seen before—I know someone who has never read a Spider-Man comic in her life, but judged last year's Amazing Spider-Man movie harshly because (and I'm not kidding about this) it didn't follow the exact same story in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies (never mind the fact that it couldn't have and that would have been storyline suicide), right down to Tobey Maguire's more built body in comparison to Andrew Garfield. And even if we try not to judge by those standards, we still assume people do—a friend told me that I didn't like the Nolan Batman movies because it didn't live up to my views of Batman, which I just thought was weird because I grew up with at least three or four different versions of Batman, and my problems with the Nolan Batman movies are problems I would have with any movies, or any works of fiction, for that matter.

You could make the argument that there is a correct version of Harry Potter, or maybe even Captain Marvel considering that no interpretation of his past the Golden Age has been anywhere near as critically or commercially successful, even if you scale down to relative fan sizes (the most popular hero of a generation, or a backup hero meant to entice hardcore fans? Not a comparison), and even that's already an argument. Don Rosa's Scrooge McDuck may be the closest thing to Carl Barks' Scrooge McDuck, but no one says the Scrooge McDucks not done by Barks and Rosa aren't "real." Cranky, miserly Scrooge McDuck who does whatever he can to not show emotion in the Barks comics is as "real" as the cranky, miserly Scrooge McDuck who's more open with his feelings in Duck Tales.

But for someone like Batman or Superman, it just seems silly. There may be wrong interpretations, but there isn't just one correct interpretation. It's impossible, and it goes against one of the greatest strengths of these characters: their adaptability.

When I was a kid, I was inundated with a lot of Superman material. These included, in no particular order because I actually can't remember the order I got these in, the Christopher Reeve Superman movies (complete with a comic adaptation of III), a digest reprinting Silver Age Superman stories, scattered issues of John Byrne's Superman, the Super Powers Superman action figure with the minicomic, Jack Kirby's Super Powers comic, and a bunch of Bronze Age comics, including Superman vs. Spider-Man: The Battle of the Century. What did these versions of Superman have in common? Well, aside from the suit, him coming from the planet Krypton, the basic power package, his secret identity as Clark Kent, and Lois Lane? Almost nothing.

And when you look at all the different versions of Superman, you can see there are many choices to be made, many aspects to his personality that need defining.  To name a few:

  • Do you use clumsy Clark Kent like Christopher Reeve, or do you use hard-boiled get-the-story Clark Kent like George Reeves?
  • Is Krypton a scientifically advanced utopia, like in the Silver Age, or a too-scientifically-advanced and emotionless planet of detached and disconnected people, like in Byrne's version?
  • Did Superman come to Earth as a baby, as in most versions, or as a full-fledged grownup, as in the radio show?
  • Are Clark Kent and Lois Lane married, dating, or stuck in that Clark-Lois-Superman triangle where Lois doesn't even know his dual identity?
  • Is Clark Kent a newspaper reporter, a TV anchor, or anything else that has to do with the news?
  • Does the S stand for Superman because Ma Kent made the suit, or does it stand for hope in Kryptonese?
  • Does Superman embrace his Kryptonian heritage, as he does a little too much before Crisis on Infinite Earths, or does he, as Byrne established, place the Earth so far above it that Kryptonian culture ultimately doesn't matter to him?
  • What's with kryptonite? Are there multiple colors and are they plentiful, or is there only green and it's rare?
  • Does Superman kill when he has to, as Byrne made him do in a well-received story involving Phantom Zone criminals, or does he absolutely never kill?
  • Are Ma and Pa Kent alive or dead? Or is Ma Kent alive and Pa Kent is dead? Which is it?
  • Can he fly or only jump an eighth of a mile?
  • Was he Superboy when he was younger or wasn't he?

Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, apparently went on record that DC ruined Superman the moment they gave him flight. It sounds so preposterous now, because flight is so ingrained in our image of him, but there was a time when he couldn't fly and apparently that was a big enough deal that at least one person thought changing that power ruined him. And this is a pure preference—that's his version of Superman, the one he thinks is ideal. It's not wrong to prefer it. It can't be.

My ideal version of Superman? The really powerful version with a Fortress of Solitude in the arctic, complete with the Bottled City of Kandor and multiple versions of Kryptonite, who loves Krypton but also loves Earth, and has accepted that the Earth is his home now. Ma and Pa Kent are both alive, and he's married to Lois. Clark Kent is a hard-boiled reporter and not a clumsy act, Lex Luthor is a businessman, Brainiac is from Krypton, and Superman doesn't kill—ever. Other superheroes can kill when they feel they have no choice and their hands are pushed, but Superman will not, and things will be fine, because that's the Superman in my head. He always finds a better way. And guess what? That Superman has never been published, ever. It's just too specific a version. There are too many factors.

Some want a more human, more relatable Superman, and while I don't get the appeal of that at all, it's still what they want, and variations of it have been known to work. Maybe not for me, but they worked. People really love that Byrne run, and Smallville did run for 10 seasons.

And I guess that's what I learned from growing up with multiple versions of Superman. There is no "right way" to do him. There are many wrong ways to do him—I think we can all agree, for example, that the infamous Kevin Smith anecdote where Jon Peters told him to make sure the Superman in his movie didn't fly, didn't wear a suit, and had to fight two polar bears and a giant spider would have been a bad idea.

It's SO funny though.

But for a right way? There isn't one. Superman has at least two classic versions: the very powerful version who's surrounded by fantastic trappings and who lets humanity find themselves, or the less powerful and more grounded version who tackles more social injustice than otherwordly evil. These two versions are not compatible. They cannot coexist at the same time. They could, perhaps, be different endpoints for the arc of the same character, but all those traits all at once? They don't mix. They can't mix. They're contradictory. Superman can't say "We need to let humanity fight its own battles" and then punch a lobbyist. He can't say he misses Krypton and then say he doesn't care about Krypton in the same story. Superman can have diametrically opposite versions and they can work. Superman is an adaptable character, but unlike someone like Spider-Man, who can adapt as the same character over time, Superman has to be rebuilt because his character aspects are so either/or that there really is no middle ground. The same is true of Batman.

I think they key is to hone in on the pulse of your intended audience. That's what Siegel and Shuster did back in 1938, when they introduced Superman as a two-fisted champion of the oppressed who took the law into his own hands and even fought corporate lobbyists, because America was still in a depression and people needed that kind of proactive attitude. It was only a few years later when Superman got turned into the perfect All-American boy, complete with eagle on his arm, which reflected America's role in World War II. Christopher Reeve gave the world a hero to admire in the midst of a time when they were cynical about it, but that same approach didn't work 20 years later when they tried it with Superman Returns. (And what were they thinking putting the star of Action Comics in a  movie with barely any action?) But even Brandon Routh's Superman is a Superman, as valid and as real as the rest of them; he was just the Superman in a really underwhelming movie.

It's obviously easier said than done, and sometimes it'll work and sometimes it doesn't, but I think the phrase "That's not Superman!" should be used in a more sparing fashion. Sometimes it's true, but more times, it's not. There's just no such thing as a "correct" Superman, and liking one version doesn't preclude you from liking the others. There are almost always pieces in any version that you like or don't like. The Man of Steel trailer may not have done anything for me, but I'm still glad he's actually, you know, punching someone in it. I love the zaniness of the Bronze Age Superman, but think it went too far sometimes, like that one time Clark Kent actually ate his costume to hide it and then said at the end of the story that it will come out all right (seriously, ew). I may not have liked what John Byrne did with Superman, but he laid a good enough foundation that I enjoyed the work of subsequent creators, especially Roger Stern's.

There's more than one way to do things. And there's nothing wrong with accepting multiple interpretations of one character. Maybe we shouldn't be so stringent about how we think these characters should be like, and maybe we should learn to let go when a writer doesn't capture our vision—after all, it's his vision, not ours. And there's nothing wrong with liking more than one version. My favorite time to have been a Superman fan since I was a kid was in 2007, when Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely were doing All-Star Superman and Geoff Johns and Gary Frank were doing Action Comics. Both Supermen were different characters, and I loved both and wanted them both to continue. All-Star was the closest version to the one in my head, but Action was the one I was showing non-comics-reading friends, because it just had such wide, primal appeal.

Maybe, instead of sticking hard and fast to our ideal versions of a character like Superman, we should be celebrating his adaptability, and encouraging DC Comics to put out multiple versions instead of pushing one "real" version. Because there is no one real Superman; just a collection of trappings that make up any version of Superman. And as long as those trappings are satisfied, it's all "real."And as long as an interpretation speaks to the target audience, then it deserves some room to breathe. Even contradictory ones, at the same time.

Apr 12, 2013

Interview: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez

Last week saw the release of The Adventures of Superman: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, featuring, as far as I know, the first collection devoted to the man who's likely known best as DC's licensing/merchandising artist. (One of the things he's best known for is the 1982 DC Style Guide, and he still does some of the model sheets today.)

Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez has always been one of my favorite artists, both in terms of drawing iconic poses and in terms of sequential interior artwork. So I grabbed that collection up, and it's some really good Bronze Age fun, with one of my favorite artists drawing one of my favorite versions of Superman.

So I decided to chat with Mr. Garcia-Lopez via Facebook and ask him some questions about his work, what he's proud of, the Superman collection, and of course, what's he's up to.


Comics Cube: You've drawn quite a number of characters over the years. Which one is your favorite to draw?

One of Garcia-Lopez's works
he's most proud of is
Cinder and Ashe, which he
did with Gerry Conway
JLGL: The ones I've created are my favorites for obvious reasons, followed by Batman, Jonah Hex, Deadman, and Wonder Woman.

As I'm sure many of your fans do, I think of you as the "face" of DC Comics due to your licensing work, which, by its very nature, doesn't explictly credit you. One of the comments I got most often when I wrote that article on your work a couple of years ago was "I've seen those drawings all my life, but I never knew who drew them!" Do you ever wish you got more recognition for this aspect of your work from more casual fans, or even from hardcore comics fans?

My comics production has been minimal and even less in recent years, so yes, anything that promotes my work in those licensing drawings are welcome for professional reasons.

What goes into an iconic pose? How do you pose, for example, Superman or Captain Marvel, and say, "Yes, that's it. That's them, and that's the image that should go on a kids' backpack"?

Most of these characters—at least the big ones like Superman, Wonder Woman,or Batman—were around before I was born, so we are not working in a vacuum. We already know what poses work better according to the characters' personalities. Anyway, the rules governing these pieces are different from the comic books. They are not directed to a regular comic fan but to a more general audience, one that is not familiar with the latest changes in comics and looks at these characters as something not different from a Coca-Cola logo, for instance. Usually I do at least three sketches for each pose, and the Art Director, Merchandising Manager, and a bunch of other people have the last word over what pose is going to finish.

An example of Garcia-Lopez's merchandising/pin-up work.
I've also noticed that some pieces of yours incorporate words. Does incorporating words or logos into a graphic take a different kind of mental process, or is it all part of the same kind of thoughts that go into designing?

The only pieces that I did integrating lettering and design elements were the ones I did for the first DC Style Guide in 1982. I presented those layouts as a whole and they were approved without any major alteration. Nowadays I concentrate only in the poses and then they are used with different backgrounds and graphic designs ,mostly digital during the last decade.


What is your penciling process like when doing a full story? While you don't do a lot of interior work, but your layouts and sense of composition are so dynamic without feeling cluttered. You break panel borders and do unconventional things (one of my favorites is the one where Wonder Woman throws Superman to a wall, and all the action is outside the panels — it really gives a sense of kinetic energy). I have to ask, how much thought do you put in when it comes to laying out a page? Do those storytelling decisions just come naturally or instinctively, or is it a more cerebral process?


There's nothing special. When I read the script or plot a couple of times, I can visualize right away the sequences and take note of references I'd need. Then comes the page layout. At the beginning I just concentrate in telling that story sequence in the best possible way. This is a very rough stage. When I feel happy with the way I can "read" the drawings, then I start playing with bigger or smaller panels or taking a character outside the panel lines to give more emphasis to the action. Everything is very intuitive. The basic rule here is no matter the way you do it, never betray the spirit of the script.

Garcia-Lopez is fond of
Twilight,
which he did with
Howard Chaykin
If you had to choose just one comic book that you've drawn that really defines your skills, which one would it be?

I have at least three books I consider my favorites for different reasons. One is Twilight, the others Cinder and Ashe and Road to Perdition. The first has a lot of visual tricks to enhance the some way complicated story, while the others are straight storytelling. No fancy layouts there. You just have to read the books and not being distracted with pin-ups or splash pages.

If the day ever comes that you walk away from DC Comics, what other iconic characters (it doesn't have to be Marvel) would you like to tackle? Would you be interested in creator-owned material?

I've never intend to do "iconic" characters. They just came my way, that's all. So, I'd be open to anything that may allow me to draw and tell stories.

Can you say a few words about the Superman collection that's coming out soon? What are your fondest memories of it? What is your favorite story in it? And how does it feel seeing it in print after all these years?

Well, it's a nostalgia trip showing "the ugly, the bad, and the good." I grew up as an superhero artist doing Superman, and the first works are quite weak, but thanks to editors like Julius Schwartz or Joe Orlando and their confidence on me, I could get, finally, a some way decent Superman. All stories are good, but my favorite is Superman and Deadman. Besides the great Len Wein story, I was more confident at that time with these characters and I think it shows in this particular work.

Garcia-Lopez is also very proud of
his work on Road to Perdition.
Are there any writers in particular you'd like to work with?

I've been lucky to work always with talented writers and if I tell you names I'd risk forgetting some of them.

What can we expect in terms of full comic book work in the foreseeable future?

Not too much, I'm sorry to say. I'm not good material for keeping a schedule in a regular book, so I concentrate more in licensing/merchandising stuff and in comics just one short story here and there. Nowadays I'm working in a couple of Western stories with a character named Madame 44.

Finally, I just want to say thank you again for taking the time to answer my questions. You've been one of my favorite artists since I was a child and I first read the Batman/Hulk crossover, and you continue to be. My friend has what he calls that "Garcia-Lopez Law of Awesomeness," which means that "As long as it's awesome, it's okay if it doesn't make sense," because I once said that I don't care if Batman kicking Hulk in the stomach is ridiculous — you just drew it so convincingly that I still buy into it. So thank you again.

Well, thank you!


Get Adventures of Superman: Jose Luis-Garcia Lopez on Amazon!

Get Cinder and Ashe on Amazon!