A Darker Superman–Comic Book Writers React

Ah hah! Here’s Superman’s dark side! 

Last week we all heard about Warner Brothers plans to refocus their energies on the DC characters they own, including a reboot of Superman (yes, again) that will be modeled after the dark-in-tone Nolan-Batman movies. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought there seemed to be something wrong with the concept of a newer, darker Superman.

The MTV Splash Page (which is the page about comic related things attached to their movies blog) checked in with several well-known comic book writers/fans to get their reactions to the idea…and they were not good.

Buffy and Hellboy writer Christopher Golden said:

“How stupid is that? That announcement made my head spin. ‘Iron Man’ isn’t dark. ‘Iron Man’ worked because Favreau brought in all the best Iron Man creators and had them read the script and asked them, ‘Tell me what we did wrong?’ — and it worked because it had all the best things about Iron Man boiled down into the best movie they could make. ‘The Dark Knight’ was really good because it had all the best things about ‘Batman’ boiled down into the best movie they could make. Making a dark and gritty Superman movie because Dark Knight made a ton of money is incredibly stupid.”

Director and comic book aficionado Kevin Smith also weighed in:

“You always have to always keep Superman very distinct from Batman,” he related. “Batman can be brooding and bleak and dark but Superman — if you want to take a realistic approach to him that’s fine, but I don’t think you can turn him into an angry character. Superman is about the hope in people, the good in people, whereas Batman is about the more driven, hungry for justice angry side of us. [So] I don’t know if doing a dark Superman is the approach, but I’m all for a reboot.”

Jeph Loeb, writer of A Superman for All Seasons had the same point:

“Superman, the character, inspires hope, as opposed to Batman, who inspires fear.”

And Mark Waid, DC Comics writer, said:

“I [focused] on the part where they’ll make the films as dark as the characters allow us to go,” he said. “Hopefully they realize that Superman is not a dark character, but that doesn’t mean the story can’t be darker or more threatening. What makes Superman hard to write in the 21st century is that he’s a creature of hope and he lives in a brighter, more optimistic world than, say, Batman.”

(Read the rest of the article for other reactions.) 

When I wrote the post last week about the plans for a “darker” Superman, I immediately checked in with my friend who’s a comics expert. She said essentially the same thing as Smith and Loeb, that Superman is supposed to be uncomplicated good, which is what I had always thought. Waid, in that last quote, had maybe the best solution–keep the character good and light, but put him into a difficult, more complex world. It’s not an easy juggling act, but if you get the right people, it could happen. And if it doesn’t work, well…reboot 4.0 (or 12.0, or whatever we’re up to).