I honestly had high hopes for Mark Millar and Leinil Yu’s Superior. I know Mark is an avid Superman fan. He had a great run on the Superman Adventures in the late 90’s, he wrote one of the best Modern Age Superman tales in Superman: Red Son, he was part of the brilliant Superman 2000 pitch with Grant Morrison, and he even has his own Superman movie trilogy developed just in case he’s asked to do it one day. Plus Leinil Yu is one of the industry’s top artists and was my favorite New Avengers artist. I figured I was in for one of the best non-Superman Superman stories ever written. However, so far I’ve been a bit let down. We are four issues into Superior and I can’t help but feel the pace is a bit slow. I’m also often experiencing sensations of déjà vu as I read the pages of Superior. In fact, it sort of makes me feel like I’m back in the 80’s.
The satellite catch from Superior #3 was my first big time warp moment. For those who haven’t read the issue, Superior’s big reveal to the world comes in issue #3 when he stops a falling Space Station from crashing into New York City. I didn’t think much of it at the time past the fact that it was a cool thing for Yu to draw. Not long after reading that, however, I was flipping through an old copy of Mark Gruenwald and Bob Hall’s Squadron Supreme #1 from September of 1985 and in the first few pages was treated to a scene of Hyperion (another Superman clone) struggling against a falling satellite. I was dumbstruck with how similar the scenes were. In both comics we have two caped strongmen pushing in vain against burning space stations plummeting towards Earth.
I started to wonder how many other times the satellite problem has popped up for Superman or one of his many clones. The first time I could find it happening for Superman was in Adventure Comics #247 during the first appearance of the Legion of Superheroes. Superboy gets diverted from his contest with Cosmic Boy because of an Earth-satellite that’s just about to crash. Superboy catches the blazing satellite and tosses it into a volcano crater. I also remembered that he caught a Satellite as Superman in Grant Morrison and Howard Porter’s JLA #34 in a scene much like the Superior/Hyperion catches. The most notable moment, however, was Superman’s satellite catch in the opening scene of 1987’s Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. Superman rights a spiraling cosmonaut space station and catches a wayward cosmonaut who had been left floating in space because of it. This satellite catch may be the key to understanding why Millar used the scenario as his Superior reveal. Mark Millar is known to have loved the Richard Donner Superman films to the point where he bought Christopher Reeve’s cape. Though Superman IV wasn’t directed by Donner, it was part of the film series and I wouldn’t be surprised if it stuck with Millar enough to subconsciously turn into a scene for Superior.
Also, interestingly enough, I discovered a few more Superior coincidences during my satellite search. Take the powers test from Superior #2 for instance. After revealing his Superior identity to his best friend Chris, Simon and Chris go out into the woods to test Simon’s Superior powers. Chris has a stack of comic books with him for research and watches as Simon tests his super powers on the surrounding environment. Where have I seen this before? I asked myself. The answer was Alan Moore’s Miracleman Chapter 7 (printed in 1982’s Warrior #7 and 1985’s Miracleman #2). In this scene, Superman-clone Miracleman goes out into an abandoned field with his wife, Liz, to test out his superpowers on the surrounding environment. Liz carries a stack of comic books with her for research. Both scenes carry a similar feel to them as both heroes try to discover their limits for the first time.
Then there’s the near-death feint that Madeline Knox just recently pulled on Superior in issue #4. Desperate to grab an exclusive interview with Superior before anyone beats her to the punch, Maddie drives off a pier and into the river hoping Superior would save her. He does pull her from the water and she ambushes him with a camera crew and does a live-television interview. This is the exact same thing that happens in John Byrne’s 1986 Superman: The Man of Steel #2. Finding it impossible to track Superman down for an interview, Lois Lane drives her car off a pier hoping that Superman would save her. Superman pulls her from the river and flies her back home where she starts her interview (though Clark Kent beats HER to the punch by writing a story about himself). I’m sure John Byrne nearly $#!* himself with rage at the scene in Superior #4 because it’s THE EXACT SAME SCENE as in Man of Steel #2.
Why am I telling you all of this? Is it because I’m trying to tear Mark Millar down and out him as being unoriginal? No. Honestly, I never expected a series starring a Superman clone to be all that original in the first place. I also genuinely like Mark Millar. He’s perhaps one of the best comic writers still working and he always produces something that’s fun. I also really enjoyed Squadron Supreme and Miracleman back when these types of stories were still a novel idea. What I’m really trying to point out with all of this is that superhero deconstruction can only take us so far and to so many places. Part of what Mark Millar is trying to do with Superior is take the Superman mythos into a modern world that looks and feels a lot like our own. Millar is asking himself, if there was a guy like Superman then how would he interact with the world and how would the world respond to him? These are the answers he came up with and some of them happen to be the exact same answers that Mark Gruenwald, Alan Moore, and John Byrne came up with for their Superman deconstruction stories. Why do we have Superman figures catch so many satellites? Because it’s a realistic problem we could use a guy like Superman for. Why do we have modern Supermen test their powers in front of loved ones reading comics? Because that’s what we would probably do and because we’re aware that if a real superhero appeared then all we’d have to compare him to would be comics. Why do we have female reporters driving off piers for attention? Because we’re very cynical of the media these days and think they’d do about anything for a story (and they probably would).
I don’t think Mark Millar is necessarily ripping people off so much as he’s thinking about what his characters would realistically do in these situations in the real world and he’s either consciously or subconsciously taking himself back to 1980’s superhero deconstruction as a result. That’s, honestly, what disappoints me about Superior. In a lot of ways, it does feel like the same kind of Superman story we’ve been reading since the beginning of the modern age and that’s because it’s the exact same approach writers have taken to comics since then. The preoccupation of trying to make these stories more realistic delivers the same stories to us time and time again because our own world only changes so much. I was hopeful that Millar would be able to ignore this impulse and take a trip into the imaginative and the fantastic much like he did in his Superman Adventures run. Instead, we get another synopsis of what things would be like if Superman lived in the real world. Personally, what I want to see is Superman back in his own world: The world where anything and everything can happen so we’re not just watching him and his clones catch satellites over and over again. It disappoints me that Superior was not this project.
