Grant Morrison, you sly devil.
Sep. 7th, 2011 06:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinGoing on what I've gleaned from previews and reviews:
In Morrison's brand-new Action Comics #1, Superman catches a speeding bullet, overpowers a train, and leaps over a tall building in a single bound (how do you do it in more than one bound, I wonder? Does it involve landing on a set-back and then leaping again, or some kind of video-gamey "double-jump"? I'd think the latter case would be more impressive than a single bound. But I digress*.)
It's not at all lampshaded. Nobody says the words "faster than a speeding bullet!" or "more powerful than a locomotive!" It's just... there. It happens.
That's the sort of thing that anyone might slip into a Superman comic. But it seems Morrison doesn't stop there. Somewhat more obscurely, his Superman is injured by nothing less than a bursting shell. By a bursting shell, in fact. Morrison has made no secret of the fact that he wants a Superman who can bleed, but his choice of weapons is not accidental. The artillery shell is every bit as much of a classic Superman power benchmark as the other three, though it ceased to be repeated as his invulnerability grew.
(Strangely, the one about leaping stayed even as he became capable of gravity-defying flight.)
So, yes... I think it's safe to say that Morrison is taking Superman squarely back to his roots here.
In Morrison's brand-new Action Comics #1, Superman catches a speeding bullet, overpowers a train, and leaps over a tall building in a single bound (how do you do it in more than one bound, I wonder? Does it involve landing on a set-back and then leaping again, or some kind of video-gamey "double-jump"? I'd think the latter case would be more impressive than a single bound. But I digress*.)
It's not at all lampshaded. Nobody says the words "faster than a speeding bullet!" or "more powerful than a locomotive!" It's just... there. It happens.
That's the sort of thing that anyone might slip into a Superman comic. But it seems Morrison doesn't stop there. Somewhat more obscurely, his Superman is injured by nothing less than a bursting shell. By a bursting shell, in fact. Morrison has made no secret of the fact that he wants a Superman who can bleed, but his choice of weapons is not accidental. The artillery shell is every bit as much of a classic Superman power benchmark as the other three, though it ceased to be repeated as his invulnerability grew.
(Strangely, the one about leaping stayed even as he became capable of gravity-defying flight.)
So, yes... I think it's safe to say that Morrison is taking Superman squarely back to his roots here.