Superman

Tuesday

Neal Pollack

Superman takes on the media

Before Superman has to fight with kaiju, robots, metahumans and whatever other nonsense Lex Luthor throws at him, he first has to take on his greatest enemy of all – conservative media pundits. The director of the new Superman movie, James Gunn, said in a Sunday Times of London interview that “Superman is the story of America. An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country.” He also said that the movie is about how “basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.” To the right, this was tantamount to playing politics with God. Sports writer and pundit Clay Travis, the founder of Outkick, tweeted, “I’m going to skip seeing Superman now. Director is an absolute moron to say this publicly the week before release.

Superman

Friday

Ross Anderson

You’re wrong: James Gunn’s Superman looks great

To say superhero films are in a rut is to understate how bad a state they're in. Deadpool 3 was underwhelming, yet it was still the only superhero film released this year that wasn't terrible. Its competition? Venom 3, Madame Web, Kraven the Hunter and Joker: Folie à Deux.  2023 was a bit better, with Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse both being genuinely great. But otherwise? Ant-Man 3 was unwatchable. The Flash was horrific. The Marvels was aneurysm-inducing. Shazam! 2 was utterly forgettable. I did actually forget that Blue Beetle existed until I started writing this list. Oh yeah, and there was another Aquaman movie. It, like most of the films listed here, flopped.

superman

Tuesday

William Newton

Comic Con with a Shakespearean twist

Recently, when I shared that I would be attending New York Comic Con in cosplay, I was met with a mixture of applause and derision. Why would an art critic want to participate in such an activity, let alone write about it? To me the appeal was obvious, since cosplay stems from the same impetus to tell tales, share values and dazzle the spectator that can be found throughout thousands of years of artistic expression. The first comic book conventions, popularly known as “comic cons” or simply “cons,” began as get-togethers for comic book aficionados to share their love of illustrated popular storytelling. Over time, cons absorbed other genres and forms of entertainment to become major social events and trade fairs.

comic con

Friday

Stephen L. Miller

The death of Superman

In 2003, the Scottish comic book writer Mark Millar penned a three-part illustrated series for DC Comics titled Red Son. In it, he creates an alternate Superman universe that hypothesizes what would have happened had the Kryptonian orphan’s rocket landed in Soviet-occupied Ukraine, instead of Kansas, in 1953. Superman becomes a state agent for Joseph Stalin’s Kremlin. Instead of saving the world in the name of “truth, justice and the American Way,” he fights as “the champion of the common worker,” for socialism and the expansion of the Warsaw Pact.

superman

Wednesday

Ben Domenech

Can James Gunn deliver a pro-American Superman?

New DC head honcho James Gunn has found his Superman and Lois Lane, casting David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan in the iconic roles for his reboot of the franchise, Superman: Legacy. The choices seem surprisingly predictable for the off-the-wall Gunn, who reportedly had considered Nicholas Hoult for the cape. Instead, we get a rising star who has the physical look of Henry Cavill Jr. and an established actress in the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning Brosnahan, who seems tailor-made to portray a wisecracking stronger Lois type. Cavill's tenure as Superman was frustrating for many fans and the actor as well. He seemed hampered by the movies built around him — Man of Steel with its controversial death toll, Batman v.

david corenswet superman

Friday

Alexander Larman

Why do films get canceled?

Although it’s not exactly my cinematic bag, I understand why people were looking forward to Batgirl. It is a superhero film (as so many are these days), but with a potentially interesting female lead, namely Barbara Gordon, aka "Batgirl," the daughter of Commissioner Gordon, Batman’s ally. The film attracted a starry cast, including J.K. Simmons as Gordon, Brendan Fraser as the sociopathic antagonist Ted Carson, aka "Firefly," and Michael Keaton gamely reprising his Batman role. It cost $90 million, was directed by the filmmakers responsible for the surprisingly entertaining Bad Boys For Life, and might have been expected to be a modest box office hit: at the very least, it should have provided a couple hours of undemanding entertainment.

Tuesday

Chadwick Moore

Man of Sssssssteel

So — Superman has come out. He’s gay. I know, stop the presses, another figure of the comic book universe is being stripped of his straight, white, maleness and tossed into the volcano of intersectionality. It’s about as edgy and groundbreaking as a consumer-product survey. I was less surprised to learn Superman was getting pinkwashed than I was to find out Superman isn’t Superman anymore. There’s a new Superman, apparently, and it’s Clark Kent and Lois Lane’s son, Jonathan Kent. According to DC Comics sometime this month he’s going to kiss a dude and, poof, be gay, or bisexual, or whatever. It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a pillow-biter! What it isn’t is believable. I mean, have you met any of us gay men?

superman