The Great Detective: The Amazing Rise and Immortal Life of Sherlock Holmes, by Zack Dundas (2015)

Few figures have loomed across the cultural landscape more largely – more constantly – than Sherlock Holmes, the brilliant consulting detective of 221B Baker Street.  From his first appearance in A Study in Scarlet (1887) until today, his cultural currency has been remarkable.

The profile, deerstalker cap (not really part of the original canon), the curved pipe (ditto), and ever-present “elementary, my dear Watson” (ditto-ditto-ditto), are recognizable the world over.  “Sherlock Holmes” has become shorthand for many things, from “detective” to “intellectual” to “smart ass.”  He is the first fictional character to inspire a slavish fandom, predating such masscult figures as Dracula, Superman and Harry Potter.  Now, 129 years after his initial appearance, Sherlock Holmes is the lead character in one American television series, one (infinitely superior) UK series, and a string of (negligible) international blockbuster adventure flicks.  And I have the sneaking suspicion that he’s only just starting…

Novelist-physician-adventurer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) wrote the first Holmes novel in just three weeks at the tender age of 27.  The initial book was well-received in the UK and did fair business; American audiences, however, ate it up, and made the novel a great success.  Doyle followed it with an even better book three years later, The Sign of Four, and literary detective fiction has never been the same since.

Many of us (Your Correspondent included) first find Holmes in our adolescence.  For the vast majority, Holmes is a milestone passed on the way to greater, broader reading.  But for many, Sherlock Holmes becomes a defining figure in the cultivation of the self, a guidepost to a life of the mind, intellectual acquisition, and moral conundrums.  One of my dearest friends, the New York-based Sherlockian Susan Rice – a woman of remarkable intellectual attainments, generous instincts, expansive humanity and great good humor – credits all the many good things that have come to her in life thanks to her association with Mr. Holmes.  I could think of no higher accolade for a work of art.

In The Great Detective: The Amazing Rise and Immortal Life of Sherlock Holmes, Portland-based writer Zach Dundas tries to capture the immensity of the impact Conan Doyle’s creation has had upon the culture, and upon the many individuals who actively take part in the Sherlockian experience.  And while he does not quite succeed in his expansive brief, he provides a journey that is engaging, amusing and informed.

For Dundas, the beginning and end of all essential knowledge about Holmes can be found in the four novels and fifty-six short stories by Doyle.  But, he also believes that Holmes is a never-ending work-in-progress, a cultural and imaginative construct that is revised and refitted to meet the needs of succeeding generations.  There has been no shortage of Sherlock Holmes pastiche since nearly the beginning (Doyle actually read some knock-off stories written by both fans and celebrated professionals, like J. M. Barrie), and all of this material has built the decades-long conversation we have had with Holmes. 

Dundas first got the bug while a young man, starting his own Sherlock Holmes society and exchanging letters with other young fans around the world.  He later returned to Holmes, attending the Baker Street Irregulars annual dinner in New York, chatting with people in the Holmes societies around the country, and even tracing the great man’s footsteps throughout London and the English countryside.

Through it all, Dundas returns to what it all means to him – the individual stories and novels, the fandom, the experience of immersion in the Sherlockian world.  There are few efforts to put the Sherlockian phenomena in a larger context, but within the realm of personal experience, his anecdotes sparkle.

He is also laugh-out-loud funny.  Here is a footnote about Jude Law (the recent big screen Watson): Law makes a terrific Watson, whatever one thinks of the movies.  (I enjoy them in the same I enjoy cotton candy, roller derby, and dubious pop music.)  Or, better still, the end of a longish footnote on following Sherlockian leads on YouTube: This can lead, algorithmically, to the hour-long English language cartoon version of Hound from 1983 (with an incredibly fat Watson), not to mention a funky fan-made remix of clips from the splendid 1981 Soviet film adaptation.  Be careful.  You can do this all day. 

Writing about his early infatuation with the tales, and the worlds they opened up for him, Dundas says, I had arrived too late, doomed to be part of a generation clad in oversized Quicksilver T-shirts and sweatpants, fated to live behind a chain-link fence.  A gasogene?  A tantalus?  New Coke had just come out.

Dundas is perhaps at his best detailing the explosion of Sherlockian fandom in the wake of the BBC’s popular Sherlock series.  Historically, Sherlock Holmes devotees have been remarkably different from, say, science fiction buffs or Tolkien geeks or those sad people who obsess over Dark Shadows.  Once a high-camp joke shared largely by New York’s literary elite, Sherlock Holmes fandom has become remarkable inclusive.  It has gone from upmarket game to masscult fandom.  This once all-male preserve has successfully been mined by women (starting with the organization The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes, begun by Evelyn Herzog with a cadre of brilliant college-age women in the 1960s who may be ultimately responsible for keeping the movement alive at all), and now includes people who know only the films, or the various television shows … or the contemporary novels featuring an elderly, married (?) Sherlock Holmes.  This seismic shift has shaken some longtime Sherlockians to the core, and Dundas makes hay with various ‘scandals’ in the Sherlockian world. 

Dundas has written a book that is alternately discursive and solipsistic, as well as endlessly funny and often insightful.  However, it is also ultimately a little … thin. He presents us with all the materials necessary to create a fascinating mosaic, but ultimately fails to be them into a beguiling sequence.  I kept waiting for the defining moment, the passage that put it all – Holmes the man, the friendship with Watson, Doyle, the devoted fandom, the nearly unending fascination with this character – into some kind of final context, and was left wanting.  Dundas has no cohesive argument; he just has stuff.

Perhaps the problem isn’t that twelve decades of Sherlock Holmes is enough Sherlock Holmes, but that the saga is really only just beginning.  That it is too early in the creation of the Sherlock Holmes myth to put it into any type of perspective.  There are many literary creations that were as large a presence as Holmes that have fallen by the wayside (think Tarzan or Buck Rogers or Fu Manchu and, to an extent, James Bond); but Holmes has outlasted all of them with a vengeance.

I recall thinking that, while reading the recent novel about an elderly Holmes facing dementia, A Slight Trick of the Mind, that Holmes will continue to resonate.  Not only resonate, but actually be the lynchpin for champion literary novels in the future. 

Perhaps the story of Sherlock cannot yet be told because it’s only just begun.  Maybe … the game is afoot.

Superman: The Unauthorized Biography, by Glen Weldon (2013)

A few weeks ago, we looked at Glen Weldon’s delicious The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture.  We enjoyed it so much, we moved onto Weldon’s earlier book on the world’s first superhero, Superman: The Unauthorized Biography.  With Batman, Weldon had hoped to put nerd culture into some type of larger perspective; his Superman book is less ambitious, but more focused and successful a production.  If you are a Superman buff, it is highly recommended.

We here at The Jade Sphinx have always much preferred Superman to his darker counterpart.  This is a prejudice we suspect that Weldon shares, as his book on Superman is relentlessly amusing, affectionate and reverential.  Superman’s creators, Siegel and Schuster, says Weldon, saw their creation as quite simply, the ultimate American: a Gatsby who’d arrived on a bright new shore, having propelled himself there by burning his own past as fuel.  The Old World could no longer touch him, and now it was left to him to forge his own path.  Throughout the book, Weldon’s prose seems charged with a powerful nostalgia for a simpler, and perhaps wiser, America.  One that still believed in heroes and other symbols of hope; and, we suspect, one where childish delights were viewed in perspective by adult fans, and not with the soul-crushing scrutiny of today’s Perpetual Adolescents.

One of Weldon’s strongest passages concerns science fiction writer Larry Niven’s 1971 essay on the possible outcomes of Superman having sex with Earth women.  The essay, Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex, made excruciating (and amusing)  conclusions, and it can still be found and makes for great reading.  But Weldon places this now 45 year old work in contemporary perspective:  The gag, of course, is the deadpan, painstaking manner in which Niven lays out his thought process.  This is where you end up if you take this stuff too seriously, he seems to say: killer sperm from outer space.

Looking back on Niven’s humorous essay today, it’s impossible to see it as anything but a chilling harbinger of the high-level weapons-grade nerdery that would seize comics in the decades that followed.  All too soon, legions of fans and creators adopted Niven’s let’s-pin-this-to-the-specimen-board approach and proceeded to leach humor and whimsy and good old-fashioned, Beppo the Super-Monkey-level goofiness out of superhero comics, leaving in their place a punishing, joyless, nihilistic grittiness.

Weldon sees Superman as an ever-changing figure, who always reflects a constantly evolving America.  The New Deal crusader of the late 1930s is different from the patriotic boy scout of World War II, and very different indeed from his Jet Age counterpart.  What Weldon sees as the core of Superman is not his persona, but his motivation.  And that is, simply, that Superman always puts the needs of others over those of himself, and he never gives up.  That is the definition of a hero.

Weldon also posits that Superman has long ago transcended the various media that deliver him to us: he has become an idea that is bigger than the comic books, cartoons, TV shows and movies that feature him.  It is an idea that has weathered 75 years, and Weldon predicts that will last at least another 75 more.

It is this protean quality that makes Superman much like Sherlock Holmes, Dracula or even Ebenezer Scrooge: each generation can find something new and vital to say about him, and, in doing so, say something about their own era.

Fortunately, Weldon is also laugh-out-loud funny.  We had the giggles paging through most of this book.  Here he is on the sexy aesthetic of Legion of Super-Heroes artist Mike Grell: Detractors have dinged Grell’s designs for their Ming-the-Merciless collars, bikini bottoms, and pixie boots (and that’s just on the men) – and it’s true that in some panels, Legion HQ crowd scenes seem more like the VIP lounge at Studio 54, but his designs made the book look like nothing else on the shelves.

Here he is on Superman writer Marv Wolfman’s prose: Wolfman proceeded to slather on the pathos, gilding the emotional lily so fervently it makes Dickens’s death of Little Nell read like an expense report. 

It would be hard to imagine a better guide through Superman’s complex history, and we look forward to hearing from Glen Weldon again.

Batman Breeds Thoughts on Culture High and Low, Along with Musings on the Current Cultural Crisis

Yesterday we looked at Glen Weldon’s wonderful new book, Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture, and that got us to thinking.  (Before we get to thinking, though, let’s reiterate that Weldon’s book is quite terrific and highly recommended.)  Is Batman art?  And is a deep engagement with Batman (or other facets of Nerd Culture) a worthwhile endeavor?

Before we start exploring, let’s set some ground rules.  We here at The Jade Sphinx have given serious consideration to pop fiction and film, along with kiddie books.  We have also examined literary, artistic and musical works by great masters.  Clearly, we think that pop fictions are worthy of serious consideration … but the mistake this discussion often makes is equating serious consideration with serious art. 

But that is not the case.  Kiddie lit and pop fiction can be crafted with varying degrees of artistry, but that does not necessarily make it art.  Oh, it can be art, but it does not transmute into art simply through virtue of its examination.  A doctoral thesis on Batman, for example, may result in a diploma, but the intrinsic quality of our pointed-eared friend and the body of work about him remains unchanged.

Now, the call to canonize kitsch is a relatively new phenomenon.  From the 1930s through the 1960s – a time of unprecedented media saturation – junk art for children was enjoyed by children.  In what seems was a more innocent time, there were whole industries creating art for children: comic strips and books, movie serials, radio shows, animated cartoons and hosts of literary options created expressly for everyone from beginning readers to teenagers.  Adults could sometimes dip in an appreciative toe to remember the sweet currents of youth, and may even enjoy much of the material, but to become an avid consumer of such was a sign of feeble-mindedness.

Pop fiction for adults also fully realized (and embraced) its limitations.  One well remembers Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s dedication to his 1912 novel The Lost World (a masterpiece of its kind): I have wrought my simple plan/If I give one hour of joy/To the boy who’s half a man,/Or the man who’s half a boy.  That lovely and poetic preamble is suitable for so much that came before and after, everything from Fu Manchu and Tarzan, to James Bond and Indiana Jones.  Good pop fiction can be terrific stuff: insightful, bracing, engaging and amusing.  It is not to be sneered at; nor, however, is it to be overestimated.

We are not saying, to be clear, that it is impossible for a piece of genre fiction or popular entertainment to elevate into the realm of higher art.  Wind in the Willows, The House at Pooh Corner and Peter Pan are magnificent books, transcending the designation of mere kiddie lit to soar to literary heights.  And one need only to think of Poe, of much of H.G. Wells and Robert Louis Stevenson, of Graham Greene or Dashiell Hammett, to realize that many classic novels could also be shelved in the genre sections of your local bookstore.  But, again, such company doesn’t elevate a genre en toto.

But over the last few decades what has changed in the culture at large is a flight from adulthood and complexity, from the challenges of great art and great beauty, and a retreat into comfortable and childish enthusiasms.  Worse than that, consumers of pop culture are demanding that attention not only be paid, but that entry to the Canon is fair and just.  And, in so doing, they debase the wonderful raw power of pop fiction, and the innocence of kiddie lit.

In the 1990s, I was frankly amazed at the adult craze for Harry Potter books.  This is in no way to say that these books were bad, but they were written for children, and a deep identification with them signifies a lack of seriousness.  Worse still, as more and more adults read them, the books lost more and more of their grounding in a child’s world, ending with what was to be the Gotterdammerung of kiddie books.  It became almost impossible to read the last novel in the corpus and remember that it all started with some kids playing ball from atop some brooms.

Much the same thing for adults who obsess over Batman.  It is adults (of questionable maturity) who have demanded the darker, brooding, psychopathic Batman.  It was the same adults who have consigned the sunnier, smiling, and more optimistic Superman into oblivion, insufficiently violent or complex and now hopelessly passé.

What these adults playing with children’s toys forget is that amusements made for children cannot bear the weight they wish to impose upon them.  We are supposed to move on from the amusements of our youth to more challenging, complex and elevating fare.  Enjoy them as palette cleaners, but then get onto the main meal.  The answer is not to make Batman relevant to adults (an impossibility), but to embrace the challenge of real adult art. 

And, again, read and look at what you want.  But a steady diet of aesthetic and cultural junk is much like a steady diet of junk food: it will significantly impair your physical and mental health, greatly diminish your quality of life, and, in the long run, it will kill you.

Now, we make our children’s entertainment for adults.  I can think of few more damming condemnations of us as a culture and as a people that we actually make Batman or Superman movies that are so violent … that children cannot see them. Stop for a moment and ponder how … impossible that would have been as little as 50 years ago.  The idea of a “serious” Batman movie would have been met with well-deserved derision.  But not today.  The cheapening of our culture since the 1960s (and the concomitant tenets of aesthetic relativity), have made this dumbing down not only possible, but inevitable.  The highest grossing films of the year are blockbusters based on 40 year old superhero comics.  This lack of adulthood has poisoned our language, our music, our political discourse. 

This corruption has bled into everything.  For example, in the just-released Against Democracy, a political screed published by Princeton University Press (!), author Jason Brennan breaks the body politic into three classes:  hobbits, hooligans and vulcans. 

Hobbits…?  Vulcans...?  Really?  Is that what 21^st Century adulthood has become?

I love pop fiction.  And when pop fiction is working on all cylinders, it can be wonderful, terrific and … art of a kind.  But it’s like a twinkie: I’ll eat them, but it’s not my sole diet.  And if the very notion of adulthood is to survive, we have to get back to the business of serious art, or our emotional, intellectual and philosophical selves are finished.

Tomorrow: James Bond – it aint art, but nobody does it better.

The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture, by Glen Weldon

We should start, as most any writing about Batman must start, with a confession.  As I write these words, I am wearing a Batman watch.  And, perhaps more to the point, I own two pairs of Batman socks.

Batman socks.

I know.  I know.

So it is with more than a touch of self-awareness that we read Glen Weldon’s funny, insightful and lacerating look at Batman and Batfans, The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture.  If you are going to read only one book about Batman and the fanatical devotion he inspires, make it this one.  Weldon is the perfect guide through the world of Batmania: erudite, accessible, and more than a little snarky.  Even if you have only a fleeting interest in either Batman or the hermetic world(s) of fandom, you will find this book irresistible.

Weldon shares my sense of discomfort, as well as my submission to delicious junk.  While Your Correspondent has railed against cultural decay with a Batman watch on his wrist, Weldon looks at his toy reproduction of the 1960s Batmobile upon his desk, and wonders what his hardworking grandfather would make of a 45 year old man gloating over a Battoy.  Weldon justifiably dubs us The Lamest Generation, but the good humor of the jest does not sponge away the indictment.

Weldon works his way through the gestation of Batman, showing the many influences he co-opted en route to his final realization: The Shadow, Dick Tracy, and more than a bit of Flash Gordon.  He also takes a no-prisoners stance on the contribution of Batman “creator” Bob Kane (1915-1998), who, it seems, did little more than come up with the name.  Then, stealing art and layouts and harnessing the talents of various writers (and more gifted draughtsmen), Kane managed to mint a fortune in coin through his creation and ceaseless self-marketing. 

Weldon is crystal clear in his assertion that, as conceived, Batman is a protector of Moneyed Interests; it is not just tenor and tone that made early Batman the antithesis of Superman, but inherent philosophy, as well.  Kane, a poor Jewish boy from the Bronx, dreamt of a world of socialites, supper clubs and celebrity, and Batman delivered that to Kane in spades.  Oddly enough, Batfans tend to find Batman more “relatable” than Superman, arguing that most anyone can become like Batman though application, discipline and hard work.  Weldon dismisses those risible fantasies, arguing that one of Batman’s key superpowers is his incredible wealth.  Without it, the entire world of Batman would be impossible.  (Left unsaid: the strange irony that Superman has steadily diminishing cultural currency in a world of growing economic inequality.)

Weldon manages to touch upon every era and incarnation of Batman, from grim avenger in his first-year, to smiling scout master in the 40s and 50s.  His affection for the 1960s Batman television series is sincere and well-placed; and he chronicles how much of the Batman material to follow in comics and movies are a response against that show and its astonishing success.

The 80s saw the most dramatic change in Batman: he was more than just a grim avenger of the night, but an out-and-out violent psychopath.  The comics grew increasingly dark and nihilistic and, strangely, this is the stuff that hardcore Batman fans seemed to relish the most.  Batman fans were serious, and Batman was serious, and what better way to demonstrate seriousness of intent than a wallow in testosterone-driven, adolescent nihilism?  Or, as Weldon so wonderfully puts it:

What these fans saw when they looked at Batman was the object of their childhood love legitimized.  It was as if Winnie the Pooh had escaped the Hundred-Acre Wood and run amuck on the mean streets of New York.  Where he brutally mauled Piglet.  And ate Christopher Robin’s face off.

Because that would be real.  That would be badass.

His assessments of the Batman films are largely spot-on, though Your Correspondent disagrees with his dismissal of Tim Burton’s Batman Returns (1992), an arch gothic fantasia that seems to get better every year.  Weldon finds most of the Batman films of a piece – all rather dark and somber, but not necessarily good.  His affection for the animated Batman series is as great as his love for the 1960s show, though motivated by different aesthetics.  Weldon finds the animated Batman series to be the perfect fusion of obsessive, fannish desires, and the good, uncluttered story-telling necessary for non-obsessives.  More importantly, the animated series gave Batman back to the children, an audience that the comic book industry turned its back on long ago.

Weldon argues that Batman is very much an inkblot, and readers and viewers see in him what they bring to him.  He also posits that Batman changes with the times, and that the Batman of each succeeding era is both a reaction to, and a comment on, the times that generate him.  (In this regard, Batman is very much like Sherlock Holmes and Dracula – a core idea that can be continually reinterpreted in changing times.)  It is this protean quality that has ensured Batman’s longevity; and it is a crucial fact that hardcore Batfans seem to miss.

The key beauties of Weldon’s book are his chronicle of fannish reactions to each new incarnation of Batman, and how the Internet harnessed fannish power to be a powerful cultural force.

Weldon calls fans Nerds (a handy shorthand), and non-fans Normals (not quite so felicitous).  Nerds see the object of their affections as a deep and murky pool in which they happily swim, looking for inconsistencies, searching for new insights in the darker eddies, and creating little fiefdoms within the turgid waters.  Normals want to swim in a clean pool in which they can see bottom, then get on with their normal day.

For Nerds, Batman (or Star Trek or Dr. Who or ….. insert the nerdish obsession of your choice here),is more than a comic book and movie property, but a way of life, a religion.  And while they delight in his cross-cultural (and out-of-fandom) successes, there always remains an undercurrent of resentment.  A Nerd loves indiscriminately, but jealously.  Weldon argues that when mainstream culture appropriates a source of Nerd-love, he feels as if someone is telling HIS joke in a roomful of strangers, telling it badly, and still getting a better laugh.

Filmmakers now attempt Batman at their peril; as scripts, costume choices and plot points will be endlessly debated and the film judged (and often executed) on the Web before it’s released.  The proprietary feeling Batfans have for the Caped Crusader has been largely responsible for the manner in which the character has been stewarded over the last 35 years or so.  In short, the fans have been making the creative choices, and most of them have been dire.  Weldon believes this is finally beginning to correct itself as greater diversity in fandom is leading to a wider range of “acceptable” Batmans … but time will tell.

Perhaps my sole criticism of this involving and amusing book is that Weldon chronicles the rise of fandom, but fails to put it into any kind of perspective.  The first Comic-Con in 1970, for example, had some 100 attendees.  In 2015, that number was 170,000. What happened to us as a culture and a people to drive those numbers up so high, and what does it mean today to be a fan of anything?  And if we all love junk … do we have any passion left for weightier material?  Has online technology enabled us to trap ourselves in a perpetual adolescence?

Tune in tomorrow [same Bat-time, same Bat-channel; sorry, can’t help it] while we try to answer some of those questions.

Batman The War Years: 1939-1945, Edited by Roy Thomas

This stunning companion volume to Superman The War Years: 1938-1945 is equally satisfying to buffs of vintage comic books and antiquated super heroics.  Once again, comics historian Roy Thomas provides a thoughtful and provocative introduction, as well as overviews of each section, sharing historical context and insight into various editorial decisions taken at the time.

Batman The War Years: 1939-1945 shares the same powerful design (this is one beautiful book), and also contains about 20 original comics, covers and newspaper stories.  While much of this material has been reprinted elsewhere and more authoritatively, this volume provides an excellent overview of this period in Batman’s life.  It is also a delicious look at the world of comics during the War years -- if you are interested in the world of 1940s heroics, look no further.

While Superman could not obviously join the war effort because of his superpowers (how could writers, even in the realm of comics, maintain a fraction of plausibility when Superman could end the war in moments?), Batman and Robin were excluded by virtue of their secret identities.  Beneath the cowl and mask, Batman and Robin were mere mortals – their efficacy as crusaders would be lost.  Additionally, as masked vigilantes working largely at night, they were invaluable to the home front, tracking down spies, saboteurs and Fifth Columnists.  (One wonders what Robin discussed with his friends during recess…)

When not battling Nazis and “Japs,” Batman and Robin had more recherché adventures, such as preventing Atlantis from allying with the Nazis or appearing before the U.S. Senate to provide hardened criminals a chance to work on the war effort.  (Even the Joker contributed his own brand of twisted genius against the Axis Menace; your ideology is uniquely twisted if the Joker finds it objectionable.)  I must confess that I was delighted by the selection of stories, and charmed by the fearless storytelling.

Several writers and artists contributed to these tales, including Batman creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson, Dick Sprang, George Roussos, Don Cameron and Jack and Ray Burnley.  And the stories and art have not been altered to appease our Politically Correct times, so if you like your vintage entertainment unadulterated, look no further.

Finally, a brief word on the Batman to be found in this volume.  Few figures loom larger on the pop cultural landscape than Batman.  But it’s important to remember that Batman, like Superman before him, are not fictional constructs created – and closely held – by an individual author.  Rather, these are corporate entities, fashioned to morph and change over time to remain culturally relevant.  There has been much hoo-haw over the years about which depiction of Batman is the truest or most correct, but such an idea is silly and pointless.  The Batman of the War Years is already dramatically different from the earlier Batman of the late 1930s, who will also be different from the Batman of the 1960s, and the 1980s.  There is no correct representation of Batman, as Batman is, more correctly, a representation of his times.

The Batman in this book is a smiling, scout master Batman who was friendly, capable and accessible.  If you are looking for the psychotic bully that is popular today, look elsewhere.  Despite a world war, global catastrophe and real challenges here on the home front, the America of the 1940s was a much more optimistic place than the America of 2016.  There’s a reason it’s called The Greatest Generation, and that optimism and can-do attitude in the face of extraordinary adversity may well be the reason.  Perhaps it’s time we got Bat to basics…

Superman: The War Years 1938-1945, Edited by Roy Thomas

We’ve spent so much time with Superman this week that I couldn’t resist a look into a book I picked up at the New York Historical Society’s exhibition, Superheroes in Gotham.  It is Superman: The War Years 1938-1945, edited by comics historian Roy Thomas.  It is, in short, terrific.

This deluxe, coffee table book has design style to spare, and one has to get past how wonderful looking it is before making any effort to read it.  It may be crammed with kid’s stuff, but it’s glorious kid’s stuff, and can by savored by all and sundry without any shame.

The War Years collects about 20 comics, mostly culled from Action Comics and Superman, along with covers, comic strips and even some ads.  All of this is divided into four sections, each with an introductory essay by Thomas, putting the tales in their historical context.

The comics themselves are great fun.  The art would be considered crude by today’s standards, but it had an energy and brio that is sadly missing from today’s product.  Some of the stories are drawn by Superman co-creator Joe Schuster, and this steely-eyed, square-jawed avenger is quite a change from the softer, more sensitive Superman of today.  Other artists included in this collection are Ed Dobrotka, Fred Ray and Wayne Boring, each of whom brings something unique to the table.

The real challenge for Superman’s writers during the 1940s is how to position a near god-like figure who can do no wrong in the context of a world conflict, without having him in some way resolve it.  Included here is the classic strip where Clark Kent fails his enlistment eye-test, thanks to his reading the chart in the next room.  In other stories, the Man of Steel explicitly states that he did not join the world war because America’s soldiers could do the job without him, and he was better utilized fighting saboteurs and scientifically-created monsters at home.  This, of course, is simply another example of how America at the time prized the concept of the Everyman, the average American Joe who was equal to most any occasion.  This figure – so central to the American psyche of the time – has been lost, thanks largely to Identity Politics, Political Correctness, and other cancerous notions born of the 1960s.  In the 1940s, Superman was a projection of our best selves, in 2016, he is a tragic reminder of what we once were.

The Superman found in these pages – so soon after his creation – is part social reformer (Kent is a militant FDR Democrat), and part super-soldier.  He pulls no punches, and the stories are stronger for that.  Also fascinating is Lois Lane.  While Feminism would like to claim that images of strong women did not exist before the likes of Gloria Steinem, Lane was a strong-minded career woman who was Superman’s equal in nearly every department.  Talented, smart, fearless and adventuresome, Lane is another reminder of perhaps how we had it right before the social upheavals of the 1960s.

While the comics and others materials are themselves quite wonderful, the other great delight of this book (other than its champion design) is the commentary by Thomas.  Informative, casual, and complicit with the reader, he pulls off a wonderful balancing act of great insight and lack of pretention.  The whole book is a fun read, and Thomas is an important part of the experience.

Highly Recommended!

Hollywoodland (2006)

Our recent trip to the New York Historical Society and our glimpse of the costume George Reeves (1914-1959) wore during his titular stint on The Adventures of Superman (1952-1958), got us thinking about that noteworthy and rather sad talent.

There are many today who sneer at Reeve’s performance as Clark Kent/Superman, most of them too young to have seen the show during its original run, or even in reruns.  A quick view at the comments section of science fiction junk-news site www.io9.com, for instance, would reveal pimply basement-dwellers labeling Reeves as creepy, fey, lightweight or overweight.  This is, of course, a sad commentary on contemporary science fiction buffs.  In a world where Superman films are grim, ponderous affairs, where superheroes are treated with a weight and reverence denied even the greatest of literary classics, certainly the talents of a man like Reeves would be unwelcome. 

However, sometimes it’s the times, and not the levels of artistry, that are off track.  Reeve was the perfect Superman for what was fundamentally a different (and better) America.  In the absence of identity politics, and buttressed by an intelligent and informed middle-brow, middle-class, it was possible to attack comic book material with both sincerity and fun without slipping into pretention and flummery.

Reeves was a player with an easy smile (indeed, a high-octane smile), a gentle demeanor and a true Everyman accessibility.  His Superman was decent, kind, concerned and engaged.  He was also distinctly American, back when American idealism and values actually, to some degree, existed.  One well remembers Reeves as an angry Superman chasing away a mob of rednecks who wanted to murder some rather child-like people from the Earth’s core.  “You’re acting like Nazi Stormtroopers!”

Better still was Reeves’ take on Clark Kent.  Rather than the high-voiced milquetoast heard on radio, and later essayed by his successor, Christopher Reeve (1952-2004), Reeves’ Kent is a confident, capable investigative reporter, more than equal to most any occasion.  One often wondered why Superman was needed at all – with this Kent on the job, things were already on track for a just resolution.  (This is essential if one is going to understand Superman rather than, say, Batman.  The benign, decent and crusading Clark Kent is the real human being, and Superman merely the disguise.  Batman, though, is the real human being, or what is left of one, and Bruce Wayne merely a convenient fiction.)

The great tragedy of Reeves was his untimely death, deemed a suicide, though clouded by mystery to this day.  This incident has haunted many Baby-Boomers for decades, (for instance, Frank Dello Stritto writes about it eloquently in his recent book, I Saw What I Saw When I Saw It), and has fueled the speculations of countless armchair detectives.

So it is no surprise that Hollywood would eventually attempt to tell the story itself.  The resulting film, Hollywoodland, written by Paul Bernbaum and directed by Allen Coulter, is a hit-and-miss affair, but it does manage to remain affective and poignant.

To tell the story, Bernbaum creates a fictional frame to tell the actual facts: a down-on-his-luck private eye named Louis Simo (Adrien Brody) is hired by Reeves’ mother (Lois Smith).  She is convinced that Reeves would never have killed himself; Simo takes the case to win back the affection of his ex-wife (Mollly Parker) and son (Zach Mills). 

The trail leads him into the world of Hollywood high-rollers Eddie Mannix (Bob Hoskins), general manager at MGM, and his wife Toni (Diane Lane), who was Reeves’ longtime lover.

Brody is miserably miscast as the gumshoe, a part more suited to the melancholy talents of someone like the late Robert Mitchum (1917-1997).  (The framing device of Simo never really takes off, either, and one wonders why Bernbaum thought it necessary.)  Hoskins maintains a dangerous edge of menace and animal cunning … it would be an intrepid (or stupid) man who tangled with him.

Lane is nothing short of magnificent as Toni Mannix, a bottomless pit of doubt, need and self-pity.  Her hungers and humiliations are uncomfortably real, and it’s stunning for an adult actress to allow herself to appear so naked and vulnerable.  Why this performance wasn’t considered Oscar-worthy is a great injustice.

However, the film belongs completely to Ben Affleck (born 1972), who plays Reeves in flashback.  While not as winning or innocently charming as Reeves himself, Affleck successfully channels the late actor’s nonchalance, his easy manner and his doughy sensuality.  An inherently decent man in an indecent place, Reeves’ life spirals out of control as he loses his career, his self-respect, and his own self-image.  It’s a complex and ingratiating performance, and Affleck has never been better.

Finally, the reason Hollywoodland works so well is the reason so many superhero films are disappointing: this film relies upon complex human relationships and often contradictory emotional attachments.  It’s an internal drama, rather than an empty spectacle, and it details the inner turmoil of a real super man.

Superheroes in Gotham at the New York Historical Society

The oldest museum in New York City is also one of its finest: The New York Historical Society.  This terrific venue on the Upper West Side just across the street from Central Park routinely creates stunning exhibitions, all of them in some way connecting to New York.

The museum also regularly provides film shows (the life’s blood of any museum – there is nothing better for cultivating a crowd of ‘regulars’), free lectures, and special events and days for children; it is, in short, as much as a cultural center as an exhibition space.  The smartest museums have come to realize that even the finest exhibitions draw only so many people; it is continuing programs and attractions that drive membership and attendance, and the NYSH has managed this balance with a savvy mix of dignity and razzmatazz.

There is a terrific show at the NYHS right now that shouldn’t be missed.  Regular readers of The Jade Sphinx know of our interest in the history of comic strips and comic books, as well as our soft-spot for those Titans in long underwear, superheroes.  Deftly curated by Debra Schmidt Bach and Nina Nazionale, Superheroes in Gotham argues that superheroes and New York are inseparable.

The show opens, of course, with the first and greatest of them all, Superman.  Created by youngsters Jerry Siegel and Joel Schuster, Superman’s adopted base of operations, Metropolis, is clearly a stand-in for the Big Apple.  (In fact, some of the earliest stories are set in New York, rather than Metropolis.)  We move quickly onto Batman, where Gotham City is certainly New York’s seedier sections, at night.  (An old DC Comics editorial guide used to insist that writers think of Metropolis as New York around Rockefeller Plaza, and Gotham as New York, under 14^th Street.)

The show then charts the rise of heroes who are explicitly New Yorkers, including Brooklynite Captain America, Queens-boy Spider-Man and Iron Man, with his Manhattan home and Lone Island offices.

For a small show (three good-sized rooms), Bach and Nazionale have densely packed their treasures.  On hand is the original costume of George Reeves (1914-1959), worn during his run on television’s The Adventures of Superman (1952-1958), as well as Julie Newmar’s Catwoman suit from the series, Batman (1966-1968).  There is stunning production art created for the Batman series, original drawings of Superman by artist Schuster, pages of original Spider-Man art (by controversial artist Steve Ditko), as well as Jerry Siegel’s typewriter, incubator for the very first superhero stories.

Also on hand are original animation cells, film posters, schoolbooks featuring doodles and/or finished drawings by comic artists while still schoolkids themselves, and a host of other treasures, including the Batmobile used by Adam West (born 1928) in the television series. 

It’s not surprising that the genre was born here in Gotham.  This Metropolis was the home to many of its creators; in fact, of the first generation of creators, Will Eisner (1917-2005), Stan Lee (born 1922), Bob Kane (1915-1998) and Bill Finger (1914-1974) had all attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx.

The exhibition underscores beautifully how essential to the overall myth of the superhero New York City has become.  Larger-than-life heroes need a suitably large background canvas, and New York has so often been shorthand for the grandiose, the dramatic and, sometimes, the absurd.

There is also a raw energy on hand here that comics (and superheroes) no longer seem to possess.  It is as if the cauldron of the Great Depression, a gleaming art deco city (home to the world’s tallest building), and a still-possible American dream galvanized a legion of First Generation Americans to actually create our myths for us.  These have since been corrupted into mere corporate commodities, made slick and unmemorable by loud, over-produced films and stridently-seeking-relevance comic books.  But that crude power found in the original works is astonishing to behold.

If comics and superheroes are both as exciting and oddly poignant to you as they are to us, then this is a show not to be missed.  It runs until February 21, and more information can be found here:  www.nyhistory.org.

Oklahoma! at Bard SummerScape

Most Jade Sphinx readers will have seen the film version of Oklahoma! or, perhaps, a Broadway revival or regional production.  Oklahoma! is not only a classic Broadway musical, it is perhaps the key musical, in that it was the first to incorporate song and dance into the story arc.  Prior to Oklahoma!, the plot of musicals went on hold while songs took center stage; it took the genius of Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) and Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960) to realize that music and dance are also a form of narrative.

So it was with great interest that Your Correspondent saw the new, much-lauded revival at Bard SummerScape, on view till July 19.  Most people remember Oklahoma! as one of the sunniest of musicals, and most people would be in for a surprise with this production which is being touted as gritty and darker.  For Your Correspondent this would normally mean stay away.  But though there is a great deal here to offend purists, it is a worthy and thought-provoking production that is not to be missed.  The change in tone succeeds in making Oklahoma! a more thought-provoking than toe-tapping experience, and patrons leave discussing motivation rather than just humming familiar standards.

Directed by Daniel Fish, Oklahoma! is staged in the round, with the audience seated at long deal tables in a room decorated for the show’s  closing neighborhood social.  (Chili and lemonade are served during intermission!)  The score – usually lush and orchestral – is strategically reduced to a country band to increase regional flavor.  And Curley, played winningly by Damon Daunno, often accompanies himself on guitar to smart effect.  (This also helps the real deficiency in his singing – Daunno has a charming lilt to his voice, but the demands of the show are beyond his talents as a vocalist.)  Daunno is perhaps too insinuating a leading man, with an extremely lanky frame that seems to slide into each scene rather than dominate it.  We expect good things from him in the future, and he is suited to the darker reimagining of the show, but somehow he never completely convinces.

A bigger disappointment is Amber Gray as the heroine, Laurey.  Gray is a spare and astringent presence, and her Laurey strives to be powerful and independent, and comes off merely as strident and sullen.  Gray, fortunately, has an impressive voice and sings her songs effectively.

Several of the performers, however, are everything one could wish for, and more.  Ado Annie – often depicted as a coy vixen – here is reimagined as a backwoods slut by actress Allison Strong.  Her brazen sensuality while singing I Can’t Say No! leaves nothing to the imagination, and she has a wanton heat that adds considerable sizzle to the proceedings.  She is evenly matched by the delightful James Patrick Davis as Will Parker, who makes hay with an exuberant rendition of Kansas City, and plays with energy and panache.  Benj Mirman as peddler Ali Hakim (always our favorite character in the show) is a pleasing presence, with an understated handsomeness that contrasts well with the all-American he-men surrounding him.  And though not a singing role per se, he has a pleasing baritone and an easy stage presence; we would happily see him again.

Other players, such as Mitch Tebo as Andrew Carnes and Mary Testa as an unusually slatternly Aunt Eller, also appoint themselves successfully.

However, the real revelation of the evening is Patrick Vaill as the villain of the piece, Jud Fry.  A brooding, sullen presence filled with quiet menace and a palpable, latent sense of evil, Vaill nearly walks away with the production in a scene played, surprisingly, completely in the dark.  When Curley comes to Jud’s room to learn more about him, director Fish blackens the stage, recording the conversation between the two with an infra-red camera and flashing the results on the wall monitor.  The effect is unsettling, creepy and other-worldly, and with his listless eyes and slack carriage, Vaill is a spectacular boogeyman.  He is an actor who will deliver great things in the future.

However, poor Jud’s death at the end of the play is more execution than self-defense: an out-of-context anti-NRA commercial that completely up-ends the normally happy ending of the show.   In addition to the anti-gun message, we also get a battle of the sexes that may delight even today’s feminists.

These days, when we are given the paradoxical dark and gritty Superman, it is perhaps no wonder that Fish serves a light tuneful show as a more real-life dark vision of rural America.  The singing of the signature tune is oddly … defiant, and many of the choices may leave people with a history of the show scratching their heads in dismay.  But if you are adventurous, and want to see a daring, thoughtful and mostly-successful reimagining of a beloved piece of Americana, then the new Oklahoma! is for you.

We Visit Barnes & Noble

When your correspondent lived on the Upper West Side of New York, one of the happiest places on earth was the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble.  Many an hour (and many the dollar) was spent there in satisfied bliss.  Few things are more wonderful than browsing the stacks of a major bookstore, discovering new authors, or finding books by already beloved names. 

Being Barnes & Noble, there was also an extensive remainder section, for those interested in cheap books (and who isn’t?), as well as one of the most elaborate children’s books sections in the city.  What bliss.

Sadly, that Barnes & Noble was closed to make way for a Century 21, a clothing store.  Sigh.  I suppose we must have clothes, too, but they are a poor substitute for books.  (Indeed, one must be careful before some entrepreneur creates wearable books…)

After moving uptown – aesthetically and culturally the greatest mistake of your correspondent’s life – bookstores became scarcer.  It was only by zipping through other parts of town that I could dip into the Union Square Barnes & Noble, or, better still, Books of Wonder in the West Village or the Strand in the East.  (Both stores should be consecrated, and rest on hallowed ground.)  So, it was with a great deal of anticipation that we prepared to head to the Barnes & Noble on West 82^nd to hear a talk presented by the authors Grand Opera: The Story of the Met.  The presentation was wonderful.  Sadly, the bookstore was not.

Though I am willing to admit that I am cranky and out of touch, I was amazed at how bookstores have morphed and degraded into high-end junk shops.  Don’t believe me?  Well, there on the parlor level of what is now, probably, the flagship B&N store, book-buyers can select Batman, Superman or Green Lantern figures.  Fortunately, Dickens doesn’t take up too much space.

Nearby, there are rows upon rows of Party Games.  Beyond that, Jigsaw Puzzles.  Standing silent sentinel in a center aisle are Star Wars light sabers and Dr. Who toys.  Not to mention a whole section of This Season’s Must-Play Games.

The café on the top floor does a brisk business, and yards of space has been cleared away to make room for a Nook kiosk, to sell the Barnes & Noble Kindle knockoff. 

And room for actual books shrinks…

I know that the book world has changed, and that the Internet and books to download have altered the landscape forever.  Bibliophiles and aesthetes are a dying breed, and New York’s book-culture is a shadow of its former self.  (New York was once the epicenter of the book world; no such place exists any longer.)  But we here at the Jade Sphinx are always too well aware of what we lose with every technological gain.  And the death of the hard-copy book trade – which was, for all intents and purposes, just abandoned by both the industry and book-buyers – may be a cultural and intellectual blow from which we may never recover.

While I love Manybooks.net (and own two Kindle devices), there is less serendipity book-shopping online than there is in a physical bookstore.  How many readers have browsed through the stacks only to find just the ‘right’ book ‘magically’ fall into their hands?  Or, have run into authors, neighbors or other interesting people?  (Two of the most interesting conversations I’ve had in bookstores were with actors David Warner and Richard Thomas, both of whom I ran into at the now-gone Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble.)  Or make a realization paging through a random volume that left shockwaves rippling through life for years to come?

Better yet, who does not get a thrill running a hand over a new book, holding it close and inhaling its heady ink and new binding smell?  Or marveling at brightly colored illustrations in a new children’s book?  Or just being surrounded by books – a sensation both sensual and homey.

Geraldine Brooks wrote:  for to know a man's library is, in some measure, to know his mind.  As the once-great bookstores of our once-great cities recede before dwindling away completely, can the same be said for our minds?

Repulsive Ads and Ridiculous Covers

We here at The Jade Sphinx are often … well …, shocked by what we see plastered on bus and train walls, and in our bookstalls.  Movie and television show ads are often much too grotesque to actually see the light of day, and I am unsure why we as a people need to be bombarded by ugliness.

Mind, this is not Mrs. Grundy speaking.  My objections are not moral; morals are out of the scope of our ongoing discussion.  We deal in aesthetics, and as aesthetes we must rebel against revolting images.

Take the ad above, which I photographed on the side of a bus traveling across Central Park South.  It is for a film or television show called The Strain – but the strain is entirely on any innocent confronted with this repellent and gruesome image.  I ask with candor – are the people responsible for this ad criminally insane?  Reprehensively irresponsible?  Morally bankrupt?  Knaves and fools?

Then, upon closer examination, we see that the ‘brains’ behind The Strain is “auteur” Guillermo Del Toro, who has made an entire career of ugly and unsettling images.  At least he has the charm of consistency.

Then, we are greeted by the new cover for the Penguin Modern Classics edition of Roald Dahl’s children’s classic, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  Isn’t this something you want to buy for your child?

The cover has already created something of a furor, with many customers (and potential customers) wondering why a great children’s classic has been tarted up as a cheap publicity stunt.  Penguin has already been doing damage control, pointing out that this is the "adult" edition, and have released a statement on their blog:  the Modern Classics cover looks at the children at the centre of the story, and highlights the way Roald Dahl's writing manages to embrace both the light and the dark aspects of life.

We here at The Jade Sphinx have been in public relations long enough to detect the heady, sweet odor of bullshit when we smell it.  I’ve read Charlie both as a child and an adult, and I’m not sure that “dark” is the adjective I would use.  But “dark” has become a marketing buzzword, bandied about usually when marketers want adults to buy children’s material without feeling any guilt.  It is this ridiculous argument that has resulted in various frauds, illiterates and numbskulls wanting to call everything from The Wizard of Oz to Superman “dark.”  I am waiting for the “dark” version of Beatle Baily….

Do we really need to see these things?  To marketers really have to pander to our basest selves?  And isn’t it time that we ask, don’t we deserve better?

It’s a Turd! It’s a Pain! It’s the Man of Steel!

It sure isn’t Superman…

It was with a mix of elation and trepidation that I realized two iconic Pop Culture figures from the previous American Century would be resurrected this summer: Superman and The Lone Ranger.  Though such figures do not normally fall under the purview of The Jade Sphinx, both have had such a long-lasting and profound impact on the way we view ourselves and our culture that attention must be paid.

But the America of 1933 (the birth of the Lone Ranger) and of 1938 (the debut of Superman) are very different places from that of 2013.  Could both figures survive the transition into what we laughingly refer to as modernity without losing some vital essence, the very things that made these figures what they were?

Well, in the case of Superman, the answer, sadly, is no.  We do not often go to big budget junk pictures, and it is rare that we find them satisfactory.  However, Man of Steel, directed by Zack Snyder, must hit a new low for a genre with a decidedly low bar.  Never have I seen a blockbuster film so cynical in its conception, so ham-fisted in its execution or so bleak in its worldview.  What should have been an exhilarating romp that left one with a sense of wonder instead is a grim and dour computer game, devoid of life, sentiment, wit, intelligence or fun.

This creates an interesting aesthetic conundrum.  For those who know the core of the Superman mythos (and surely he is as mythic to modern America as Theseus was to the Ancients), the story runs thus: on the planet Krypton, scientist-statesman Jor-El realizes that the planet will soon explode.  He unsuccessfully tries to convince the powers that be that doom is imminent, so he builds a rocket to send their infant son, Kal-El, to the distant planet earth.  The ship leaves just before the planet explodes and lands in the cornfields or rural America (usually Kansas, in most tellings).  He is raised by the rustic Kent family, given the name Clark and taught American virtues and a sense of honor and of duty while growing to manhood.  He moves to the big city (literally a Metropolis) and becomes a great protector and savior, a symbol of courage, honesty and purity by which all humanity can aspire.

The aesthetic conundrum at the core of The Man of Steel is simply this: how can Snyder and his producer/writer (Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer, respectively) take this same material and fashion out of it a film so grim, so lacking in warmth, so devoid of hope and so ugly to look at?  Every artist brings something of themselves to whatever theme they approach, but surely some themes are, at their core, immutable?  Surely the fundamental message of great myths – be it hope or despair, transcendence or degradation – would shine through?

Apparently not.  Every choice made by Snyder and company was calculated to leech Superman and his mythos from any sense of grandeur, any sense of fun, any sense of transcendence.

First, let’s look at Krypton.  In both the comics and the films, the planet is often presented as a kind of paradise.  The comics showed us a primary-colored super-science wonderland worthy of Flash Gordon.  And the latter Superman films with Christopher Reeve opted for a futuristic Greco-Roman splendor, with a sparse purity often associated with Greek drama.

In Man of Steel, Krypton is as ugly as the nightmares of H. R. Giger.  Its inhabitants wear gray latex drag while moving through what looks like a massive digestive track.  Snyder and company have Jor-El die when he is stabbed in the gut by the film’s villain, General Zod – saving the explosion for Superman’s mother.

We then see the grown Kal-El finding himself while bumming through the US.  Reporter Lois Lane has a run-in with him, and soon investigates the story of the mysterious man with strange powers.  But soon General Zod and his cadre of Krypton survivors come to earth, looking for Kal-El because it seems that Jor-El downloaded all of Krypton’s genetic information into his infant son.  With this information, Zod hopes to recreate Krypton on earth… leaving no place for humanity.

Where to begin?  First off, Snyder shoots the film with a near complete de-saturation of color.  Imagine a black and white film poorly daubed with a waxy crayon and you get the effect.  Worse still, the thudding, repetitive and unpleasant score by Hans Zimmer is more reminiscent of the antics at a stoner’s rock concert than a glorious science-fiction romp. 

As for the special effects – they are not that special.  When Superman and Zod battle at the climax (seemingly forever), it is blurred motion and fast-cutting, more computer flummery than cinema.

The performances are nearly invisible.  Henry Cavill may be the handsomest man to don the blue-and-red suit, but he lacks the charisma of Brandon Routh or Christopher Reeve.  (Or George Reeves!)  His Superman is a cypher.  No one else manages to make any impression at all except for Kevin Costner as Pa Kent – and a film is in trouble when the most energetic player is … Kevin Costner.

But the fundamental problem with the seething mess that is Man of Steel is one of tone and artistic vision.  It seems that Snyder and Nolan wanted to do an “adult” take on Superman, but to them “adult” can only mean gloomy, negative and nihilistic.  I weep for the intellectual and emotional maturity of both men if that is indeed their yardstick of adulthood, because it is both horribly restrictive and blinkered.  Transcendent joy is as much an “adult” aesthetic as the cheapest form of tragedy, but try telling that someone with the emotional sense of a 15 year-old.

The filmmakers nail their own coffins finally with their vision of Superman, himself.  For more than 70 years, Superman was the “good guy;” the man we looked up to, the person we all aspired to be.  This vengeful, glum and, finally, not terribly bright man may be many things, but he will never be … Superman.

Tomorrow, a special Fourth of July message.