Greetings and salutations,
I want to start off today by speaking about Paul Walker. While I won't grieve for him because I think there are a lot more tragic losses in our world on a daily basis I do think that it is in explicitly poor taste that Universal is moving ahead with Fast & Furious 7. They waited a whole day to comment on the future of a profitable franchise. "He's our brother, he's our friend, but we're going to go ahead and make millions off of a movie that he was involved in" and then credits roll and a picture of the guy with his DOB-DOD flashes. Just my opinion and if you feel differently that's all well and good.
UPDATE: Universal has indefinitely postponed production of Fast & Furious 7.
Anyway on to the topics I've chosen for today. There will always be divisive issues in any walk of life. If you live life in the comment section long enough you will wonder how compromise ever occurs in our society. I always find the discussion much more riveting than the the topics themselves, so today I've picked two things from recent memory in the comic realm that people either really loved, or that people really hate. This is just my two cents on both subjects. (Beware Spoilers may loom)
Superior Spider-man
A little over a year ago Dan Slott made the controversial decision to "kill off" Peter Parker. Slott decided to have a dying Otto Octavius swap bodies with the able-bodied Parker. While at the outset this sounded like a ploy and a poor idea I have to say that as a comic fan I have been pleased with the results. Initially I was upset that Otto's "heroes journey" was wrapped up within the events of Amazing Spider-man #700 and not carried over into the pages of Superior Spider-man, but after seeing this last year of story lines unfold I have to admit that I have been more than happy with how this has played out.
Consider that in 4 movies and over 50 years of comics Peter Parker has largely remained unaltered. He has always been a character of great unbalance often sacrificing his life as Peter Parker for his life as Spider-man (like a hero should). With this reinvention Slott has presented a Spider-man for the new era a balanced Spider-man that attempts to be a hero without sacrifice. Otto-Parker has used his intellect for the betterment of both sides of his personality. As Parker he has received a Doctorate, built his own technology company, and began dating a little person. As Spider-man he is a hero for the modern era. He is the Patriot Act Spider-man with his spider-bots generating constant surveillance of NYC, his own private army ready at his beckon call, and his own brand of brutal (sometimes capital) punishment.
Different is not always better, but I think if one judges this era of Spider-man as a temporary change it has at least been an entertaining one. One could say that Slott's Otto-Parker is as much a commentary on contemporary society as it is a superhero story.
Man of Steel
I have always had a place in my heart for Superman. Batman is far and away my favorite character to come out of comics. I have always enjoyed the idealism that Superman represents. To me he represents a long passed "pie on the window sill"Americana. An immigrant that came to this planet and showed us that it is possible to be our ideal selves. Times have changed in 75 years though and I can't say with any amount of confidence that an immigrant, even an exceptional one, would be welcomed with open arms by the masses.
That said, with no Bats on the schedule for summer of 2013 this was the movie that I was honestly most looking forward to. I've admitted to in the past being a bigger DC fan than Marvel and that still is true to this day.
I enjoyed the movie, but even though I found it entertaining I found it quite troubling as well.
My first problem and the biggest one that I have with the film is with the end. Initially I did not like that Superman killed Zod. Then I looked through my comics and scanned the history to see that he had killed previously (Doomsday, Zod & co. in the (inferior) Lester version of Superman II, & others).
While I still hold fast that certain characters are not killers I feel that the way that he did it was the biggest problem. Considering that during the course of the film Clark has to learn to ball his fist (because he never fought before) it makes zero sense for him to brutally and violently snap Zod's neck in the film's finale. It was not a passive act like Bale's Batman allowing Ra's Al Ghul to fall in the wreckage of the elevated train, or diving at Two-Face to protect an innocent life but rather the grizzly act of a trained killer.
Writer Max Landis, in a YouTube version of his pitch to DC for a new version of "The Death of Superman" laid out the best possible way to have Superman kill an unstoppable enemy combatant. In his version of events a raging Doomsday has laid waste to Metropolis and most of the top members of the Justice League. Superman, during the final climactic blows, remembers his father encouraging him to mercy kill a wounded cow by merely pushing on his skull. Superman uses this memory to aid him in ending the Doomsday spree, by pushing down on Doomsday's skull effectively killing him.
I'm not saying that Landis's idea would've been a better scenario, but it is better in the sense that it is organic to the farm-boy Superman narrative.
With a Batman-Superman movie on the horizon it is quite likely that the violent, destructive end of this movie was used to set up the narrative of having the very human Batman teach Clark about the preservation of the lives of the innocent and the damned as well.
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That's all I have for today. Like I said I don't expect people to agree with what I have to say, but I'm always happy to contribute to the ongoing discussion.
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