Superman Versus The Elite
Mainstream comics have a strange sort of an affliction; on the one hand the producers are constantly looking out for innovative new ideas and story lines in order to sell books to an increasingly jaded and cynical audience, who also fear change1. The result tends to be that any work that challenges the status quo does incredibly well to begin with, before being quickly buried. 2
I was remind of this after watching Superman versus The Elite, which is an odd sort of cartoon. It’s an adaptation of a comic book which in itself was a reaction to another comic book that had nothing to do (directly) with Superman. The plot of Superman versus The Elite can be summarised as something along the lines of this; “Superman encounters a new team of heroes who, lead by a Union Jack Flag wearing Englishman3, go out of their way to directly take on tyrannical regimes. Superman’s public approval is suffering due to his boy scout image, and he goes on to teach this team, known as The Elite that killing is wrong, and that violence is scary.” The behaviour of the characters make little sense, Superman comes across as a grumpy old bully and the plot fails on every level, even as a possible parody.
Jenny Sparks; the spirit of the last century, wrapped up in the Union Flag.
Or to put it another way, the cartoon is a boring bag of rubbish, and it’s based on an equally boring Superman story, What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way?. That story was written as a response to The Authority, a comic book series created by Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch. The initial run of book asked the question “If you literally had the power to overcome tyranny, then would you accept the moral responsibility to do so?” Thought provoking and deliberately provocative, it was crammed with some lovely ideas, such as the spirit of the age, the soul of cities, super heroes as a pantheon, and iconic heroes being part of a much older story.4
It didn’t last, of course. DC comics bought Wildstorm, who published The Authority. After an initially amazing run, with some great talent involved, it was quietly taken out round the back and shot.
The fact that Superman versus The Elite exists is just odd; it’s as if someone at DC felt so threatened byThe Authority that they wanted to ensure that it was stomped on thoroughly. What it actually did was remind me how good the original work was, and not only dig them all out again, but recommend the back-issues to friends. Maybe that was the plan, but I doubt it.
1: Perhaps because the audience is getting older. Recent research (article here) suggests that over a quarter of the readership is over 65.
2: The good but over-rated Watchmen is not the exception to this rule you may think it is. The work has been pretty much seen as a one-off, its innovations taking decades to filter into mainstream books. They recently launched spin-off books based on the original work, causing much outrage from the comic book reader community, who mostly failed to consider that had this happened sooner, it may have triggered all sorts of interesting ideas.
3: Oh, and they have a magician, a super strong guy, a winged girl with techno-organic powers and a reality hopping space ship that can generate teleportation portals. The Elite are a strawman parody of The Authority, such much so that it’s kind of sad.
4: Apollo and Midnighter where direct references to mainstream characters Superman and Batman. One was the Sun, the other night. Where one was kind, the other was vicious. They were also lovers, which made every homophobic comic book fan who read the book spit out their dummies so fast that the sound barrier was breached. Seriously, the day that book came back you could hear the sonic booms.
Ed Fortune 