The free world is under assault by unhinged, power-mad billionaires, and we could use a powerful beacon of justice who’s also a crusading journalist. My friend
joins me to continue my ongoing discussion about Superman, the progressive champion who happens to come from another planet.Yes, Superman Is An Illegal Immigrant
James Gunn’s Superman movie comes out in July, six months into Donald Trump’s fascist revival tour, when “truth, justice, and the American way” will likely seem more fantastic than flying dogs. Gunn insists though that his Superman isn’t a response to any particular “cultural moment.” He
Edited excerpts from our discussion:
SER: What are your thoughts on the Superman origin … the idea that he’s somehow not an illegal alien — even though alien, that term is obviously dehumanizing, but he is literally an alien.
MICHAEL: In every version [of Superman’s origin], the Kents or whoever finds him law entirely to save this baby that they don’t know where he comes from. In one version, they think he might be Russian. You know, instead of sending a dog or a monkey they put a baby in the ship, which says a lot about what we thought about the Russians at that point when we thought it was normal behavior that they would put an infant child in a rocket to test it.
Yeah, in every version, he crashes on Earth and then the Kents forge the [adoption] documents or I think in the John Byrne version, he crashes on Earth but then there's a fortuitous long winter in Kansas that allows them to pretend that Martha Kent was pregnant before the winter started and she gave birth at the house, and after the winter, when hey were able to get back to civilization, they then claim the child is theirs through a natural birth
SER: Objectively, the dumbest version of the origin.
It became this question with the Byrne version where if Superman doesn’t care about his heritage. He’s only an American. Why isn’t he just a mutant? It doesn’t matter. You’ve no longer given any reason for him to be from Krypton. It doesn't define him. Earlier, you were talking about the current Absolute Superman series, which I think has done a good job of asking the questions of why Krypton and showing how [his heritage] influences him.
On a previous podcast, my friend Lee Heidel from Neighborhood Comics and I were talking about with Lex Luthor. I mentioned one of the biggest problems I found with the Byrne version of Luthor … Obviously, I'm not going to say that billionaires can't be corrupt. We know that’s certainly true. But with Batman, the mob running Gotham is shown as bad, and here's how Batman is going to clean it up.
Byrne never really shows how is the world suffering because Lex Luthor is the richest man in the world? He wants to destroy Superman because he is more powerful than he is.
I thought Smallville did a good job showing that LuthorCorp was this corporation that came in and hurt the town, the community, and the Kents didn't like the Luthors as a result. But Byrne didn’t actually show in the Smallville scenes any evidence that Luthor even existed. So what makes him villainous? What makes him a problem?
And that kind of comes up with the modern politics we're seeing now in the world, because if billionaire Lex Luthor hates Superman, that means in our reality now, half the world hates Superman, right? He becomes a 50, 50 proposition.
Luthor would definitely own some sort of media platform that constantly smears Superman. “He’s an alien. We can’t trust him.”
MICHAEL: The writers in the ‘80s and even in the ‘90s who were writing Superman couldn't imagine that you could be outwardly villainous and outwardly just selfish and mean, and it would actually work with the general public.
Now we realize that if they had just written them that way, it would make perfect sense … between [Donald] Trump and [Elon] Musk and even Jeff Bezos who ironically looks closest to Lex Luthor than anybody. They don’t care what the public image is. In fact, they’re too powerful to mostly care about it. They care what the image of their companies are to a certain degree because it affects their stock prices.
But Jeff Bezos doesn’t really care if you think he’s a douche.He just cares if you think Amazon is a terrible company or you think his products are terrible.
As long as you keep consuming, buying your stuff off of Amazon or buying the newspaper, even though [the Washington Post] is kind of like a loss leader for him.
No, Luthor wouldn’t have to put on this benevolent face nowadays.
In the late ‘90s, when they had the storyline of President Luthor, it was seen as too fantastical. Now we essentially have President Luthor, but if he didn’t have the actual intelligence of Luthor.
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