Something I don't understand

[james_davis_nicoll]

Why the change from having Jonathan Kent support Superman's career as a hero to opposing it?

Supergirl, as I recall, has always had someone trying to discourage her. In the old days it was Superman. And I cannot recall if the Danvers had any idea she was Supergirl; they may not have had the option to support or discourage her.

Not that comic book characters age in real time but if she was 16 in her first 1959 appearance, Supergirl would have become an adult at a very interesting time for women's rights in the US...

Comments

[carbonel]

As it happens, I just finished watching the first episode of the new Supergirl TV show. In that, Kal-El placed Kara with the Danvers. They were scientists, and helped him understand his powers, so they always knew about Kara's. Kara made the decision to downplay her powers and be "normal," until one day she wasn't. It also turns out that her (normal) sister was recruited by a government agency in charge of dealing with alien threats -- originally because of her connection to Kara, but she kept the job because she was good at it.

I'm not sure I'm going to keep watching -- it's awfully comic-booky. And I'm assuming there was some trademark issue, because the word "Superman" is never mentioned. It's always "my cousin" or "Kal-El."

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

Well, it is a comic book show.

I also commented on the lack of "Superman" -- but they did say "Man of Steel." And "Supergirl," of course. I have no idea why they aren't saying it -- the contortions were fairly clumsy and obvious.

I'll keep watching for a bit, but I also still watch Arrow, so you know I've low standards.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I'm also watching Arrow, and think it's fairly good (unlike The Flash, which is at its absolute best mediocre). Arrow also gives me hope for Supergirl. The Arrow premier was impressively dire, both because of way too much voice-over narration and also an abundance of clumsy storytelling. Supergirl also definitely has clumsy storytelling, but was considerably better than the Arrow premier, and like Arrow and in fact a great many recent shows that got better after the first (or sometimes first few) episodes, I have some hope that it might become better.

[jcfiala.livejournal.com]

My wife was amused to note that Mr. Danvers was played by Dean Cain, who played Superman in an earlier TV show.

[timgueguen.livejournal.com]

Interesting that he may be on his way out of direct to video/bad fundie religious movie purgatory.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

And Mrs. Danvers was played by Helen Slater, who played Supergirl in the 1984 movie.

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

Sure they don't mention the name. Except when they do. Like right at the start.

"When I arrived I was still a 13 year old girl but in that same time my cousin Kal-El had grown up and revealed himself to your world...as Superman."

[carbonel]

As it happens, I just finished watching the first episode of the new Supergirl TV show. In that, Kal-El placed Kara with the Danvers family. They were scientists, and helped him understand his powers, so they always knew about Kara's. Kara made the decision to downplay her powers and be "normal," until one day she wasn't. It also turns out that her (normal) sister was recruited by a government agency in charge of dealing with alien threats -- originally because of her connection to Kara, but she kept the job because she was good at it.

I'm not sure I'm going to keep watching -- it's awfully comic-booky. And I'm assuming there was some trademark issue, because the word "Superman" is never mentioned. It's always "my cousin" or "Kal-El."

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

I blame Smallville for that, and due to both that, and the horrible Man of Steel, there's an entire generation who think Pa Kent was an asshat.

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

I don't know whether the Danvers knew what they were getting into from the start, but by the 1962 story "Superman's Super-Courtship" (notable for an early appearance of the adult Legion of Super-Heroes, and for establishing that Krypton didn't allow first cousins to marry) she was able to discuss Supergirl matters with them openly.

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

People aren't supposed to _want_ to be heroes nowadays.

Also, anyone displaying special powers will be squirreled away by the Secrit Gubment down under Area 51 next to the freezer full of dead alien babies.

(I wonder: does Area 51 change hands from Evil Conservatives to Evil Liberals when there is a change of administration?)

[heron61.livejournal.com]

No, it's just evil government, because crypto-libertarian ideas have become deeply embedded in US mass media. Some of this started in the 1970s, but along with the rise of reporters being mostly depicted as evil &/or corrupt, government as mostly evil became big in the 1980s - I honestly think it was a right-wing plot to remake the US in their image.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Something I've never understood: why do so many who are against big government run for office? Aren't they just adding to the problem, one candidate at a time?

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Grover Norquist and his ilk seem to believe that politics is only acceptable if its used to destroy the government. Of course, now 35 years of propaganda against politics and politicians have now caught up with the US right wing, both in the mess surrounding the Speaker of the House and the even more hilarious mess that is the Republican presidential nomination process.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

To a large extent it's a grift. And it's a self-sustaining one: you defund, obstruct and generally sabotage government, then when it malfunctions, you point to it as an example of how government sucks as justification for more sabotage. And privatize everything in sight, so your buddies can cash in.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Right-wing suspicion of government usually carefully omits military and security organizations from bad-guy status, though... more strongly when there's a Republican President, and with the exception of some harder-core libertarians and paleocons.

I think post-Watergate cynicism about authority figures, which was at least as much left as right, actually had a lot to do with it.

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

It's not just anti-government, there's a lot of more general "the world isn't ready" to it as well. Just generally people not being good enough to deserve a hero. Given the hamhandedness of Snyder's messiah imagery in particular, the takeaway is that there needs to be some kind of John the Baptist figure first.

The flip side of this is that the stories then say that the whole world is counting on these individual superfolks as shining examples, their only hope, etc., which completely breaks my suspension of disbelief in a way that flying doesn't. The entire real-world Internet is constantly celebrating hero memes, from courageous kittens, to firemen, to actual people who dress up as superheroes; the idea that "we" "need" the Man of Steel to look up to or we'll just feel hopelessly bad about ourselves forever is just weirdly out of touch with the human race.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

The original version of Pa Kent must've been a Klan member and thus saw vigilantes as a natural and good part of American culture, whereas the modern version is a good and upstanding citizen who realizes that extra-legal law enforcement violates fundamental civil liberties and must be discouraged in all circumstances.

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

The thing about classic Superman, though, is that his powers operate on such a scale that he's really wasting them on law enforcement. He should be dealing with natural disasters, including helping with search & rescue after the fact, building or repairing necessary infrastructure, stuff like digging wells in areas without running water, de-land-mining mined areas, saving sinking ships & crashing planes, etc. Surely there's enough floods and fires in the world to keep him pretty busy; it's a frivolous use of his time to deal with purse snatchers. From that perspective, preventing him from operating in the world to help people can really only be a sociopathic choice (as indeed in "Man of Steel" when Pa Kent advised it would have been better for him to let a school bus full of children drown rather than reveal himself.)

[glaurung-quena.livejournal.com]

1960's and 1970's Superman was almost never doing petty law enforcement, most of the time he was too busy fighting alien invaders and megalomaniac sociopaths like Lex Luthor.

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

You need to take a moment to read this: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2305

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

How does Zack Weinersmith escape doom when he draws a (pretty good) comic about S*p*rm*n?

Is it protected as a parody? How, exactly?

Can I draw my own comic about S*p*rm*n as long as I make it sarcastic?

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

There are early 40s Superman animations that are out of copyright, so the straight-up image of Superman is probably defensible without the parody defense.

Then you've got the parody defense and it being a one-time thing only indirectly for sale. Making a habit of using Superman's image would (I expect) be a problem, but going after this particular comic in the US strikes me as impossible.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

Doesn't work that way. Copyright and trademark are separate things, and a particular work dropping into the public domain doesn't undermine the trademark holder's rights. You can put out a Blu-Ray of Max Fleischer Superman cartoons, you can even use images from the cartoons on the cover, but you can't commission your own original art of Superman, because that's still protected by DC's trademarks -- and trademark holders are actually required to defend their mark if they want to maintain their rights, which is why you get Disney suing preschools for painting Mickey and Donald on the walls.

I'd guess the comic is relying on the parody defense. But it's important to note that parody only applies if the derivative work is commenting on the original. If you stray too far and use the original work for general social commentary, you put yourself at legal risk.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

It's probably relying more on DC's general goodwill. They've been famously lawsuit-crazy in the past, but these days they're more likely to try to co-opt good cartoonists who do sufficiently interesting things with their characters. Kate Beaton made those sketches of surly Wonder Woman and ended up doing one or two short comic stories about her for a DC indie collection.

Of course, it's playing with fire.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...am I right about that? Perhaps I am not right about that. I thought that was the case, but Beaton's work for the Big Two seems to have been for Marvel.

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

I think you're thinking of Noelle Stevenson (her webcomic is Nimona) -- she draws a lot of fanart as well, and has also done Wonder Woman stories for DC.

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

Actually, according to this article, the Superman radio serial had an anti-KKK storyline in 1946 that had a profound impact (I'm dubious of the claim that it "singlehandedly thwarted" the Klan, though).

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

Nonetheless, the message of Superman, like all non-deconstructive superhero stories, is "Hooray for vigilantes! They can catch criminals that our law enforcement system can't handle," which has roots in white supremacy and ties to fascism. Superman's just a cleancut version of Dirty Harry.

[ian wright (from livejournal.com)]

No, that's a simplistic interpretation. Superman started by fighting the wealthy and powerful and getting into fights with the National Guard. Batman started at a time when minorities had even better reason to distrust the cops than they do now, and many city officials in New York were either flat-out racist and classist or openly corrupt. Captain America was a premature anti-fascist who punched Nazis back when a lot of Americans thought the Nazis had the right idea. These are progressive revolutionaries, not fascists.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

Vigilantes are vigilantes even if they wear spiffy suits. The idea of extra-legal law enforcement to either reinforce impotent police or enforce societal rules beyond the bounds of actual laws is inherently fascist.

[ian wright (from livejournal.com)]

They weren't "extra-legal law enforcement". They were revolutionaries who attacked governors, cops, and the military. If striking back against the power structure of the day is inherently fascist, what does that make Idle No More or environmental protestors?

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but that is so out of touch with the origin of Superman that it's funny. The character was created by two leftish Jewish men. The first people he fought were corrupt businessmen and politicians.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

I think much of this disagreement is confusion of tenses. One side is correct about what Superman WAS, when created. The other is (IMO) correct about what Superman IS, and has mostly been since the 1950s.

[glaurung-quena.livejournal.com]

1960's comics canon had it that Kara was 15 when she came to earth, and there was an issue in which she celebrated her 16th birthday. Also, IIRC, the Danverses learned that Linda was Supergirl shortly after they adopted her, again in the 60's comics.

I worked up a timeline of when, publication schedule-wise, significant events happened in Supergirl's life (high school graduation, etc), but it's on my other computer, I'll post it here in the morning.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Back at the start of the Silver Age, when Kara arrived on Earth, her cousin Kal-El helped her set up her identity as Linda Lee (complete with a long dark wig in plaits) living at an orphange. She was then adopted by (as I recall) a very ordinary couple called Danvers - and she was Linda Lee Danvers at that point. Not only was her identity secret, but Supergirl only operated behind the scenes until Superman decided she was ready and announced Supergirl to the world. I used to own that comic, but then we sold those DCs to buy Marvel.

P.S. So far, so normal. But Supergirl had two animal companions - Streaky the supercat and Comet the Superhorse. Comet was actually the result of a bit of Circe's magic gone wrong - he was actually a centaur who had fallen for Supergirl and asked the witch to make him wholly human so he could court her. Unfortunately, after the failure, there was this period where Supergirl's horse was in love with her... Bet they don't do that on the TV!

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

"there was this period where Supergirl's horse was in love with her"

Oohh myyy.

*wonders about fanfic of that*

*wonders about fanfic of that*

[ian wright (from livejournal.com)]

Don't.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Streaky wasn't even Kyptonian; he was an ordinary Earth house cat which spent too much time next to a plot gimmick that granted superpowers. That's the kind of thing you'd expect somebody to notice when it's laying around the house, but no...

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Don't ask me why the change (which started mildly enough in Smallville, but was ramped up off the scale in the Man of Steel film) to Jonathan's role in Supe's life occurred, except for the horrible US habit of having parent/child issues everywhere. The Kents were a very functional family in the comics, particularly after John Byrne reconned the origin to make them survive well into Clark's adulthood.

Sorry for the multiple edit. I really should not reply to stuff at 6:20 am...

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

They were also functional and supportive of his career choice in Lois and Clark, and in the various animated series where they showed up.

Smallville you can sort of-understand because the first few years when Jonathan was alive, Clark was still in high school and he did want him to have a relatively normal life and not go running off since he was a teenager, but yeah, Man of Steel took it way over the top.

[jayblanc.livejournal.com]

This, along with about half of any questions about why someone made some dumb plot decision in any movie, is answerable by "Someone read 'The Elements of Screenwriting' when learning to write screenplays, and no one told them to ignore all the parts of it that are not to do with formatting a screenplay". Generating artificial conflict as being more important than realistic character depth is pretty deeply rooted in Hollywood writing because of the 'this is the correct way to have your plot' sections of that book.

[glaurung-quena.livejournal.com]

Supergirl timeline (by publication date):

May 1959, Kara comes to earth, Superman gives her a secret identity as Linda Lee and puts her in an orphanage, because the writers were aiming more for exactly paralleling the story of Superboy than they were trying to write anything that made sense. Superman also instructs her to keep her existence as Supergirl secret from the world so she can be his "secret weapon."

Over the next several issues, various foster parents consider adopting her, but on Superman's instructions she avoids getting adopted.

November 1960, Supergirl turns 16. To celebrate, Superman subjects her to a series of hazings, because he's a jerk. No other birthdays being commemorated in the comics before this, geeks who obsess about this assume she was 15 when she came to Earth, but she could also have been 14 on her arrival and her 15th birthday went unremarked, just like all the birthdays that followed.

August 1961, Linda is adopted by the Danverses. She does not avoid this adoption because at the time, she has lost her powers and thus is no longer required by Superman to remain at the orphanage. She gets her powers back a couple issues later.

February 1962, Linda tells her foster parents that she is Superman's cousin, and later in the same issue Superman reveals Supergirl's existence to the world.

February 1964, Kara learns that her biological parents did not die along with everyone else in Argo city, but escaped into a phantom dimension (just like but not the same as the phantom zone, because that place is full of Kryptonian criminals and we can't have her parents forced to survive among such reprobates, now can we?). She frees them from the phantom dimension and they take up residence in the bottle city of Kandor.

November 1964, Linda graduates from high school.

May 1971, Linda graduates from college

Linda's post-college careers were quite varied and paid little attention to any kind of plausibility in terms of her resume or qualifications:

May 1971: Clark Kent helps get her a job working for the news crew of KSFTV in San Francisco.

November 1972: Quit broadcasting and enrolled in a (presumably post-grad) drama program at Vandyre University, near San Francisco.

June 1974: Quit drama school and became a counselor at the New Athens Experimental School in Florida.

July 1981: Became the star of a soap opera, "Secret Hearts," in NYC.

November 1982: Linda quits showbiz, is suddenly declared to be only 19 years old, and enrolls as an undergrad in Lake Shore University in Chicago.

[w. dow rieder (from livejournal.com)]

Relevant to the changing portrayal of Superman: 'the CCA prohibited the presentation of "policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions ... in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority."'

CCA was the Comics Code Authority in the US, and most outlets would not distribute comics that didn't have its seal from the 50s through the 80s or so.

Now an interesting twist would have been for Pa Kent to oppose Superman's career if he was going to be a code-compliant hero...

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

If the CCA had still had power, DC could never have run that long arc about Lex Luthor being President. Which would have been a pity, because it was fun.