You kind of have to feel bad for Superman’s writing staff. He’s an invincible hero with perfect morals and a profound sense of justice. He’s got zero failings. He’s apolitical. In short, he’s as boring as superheroes get.
Unless a writer decides to get all political, in which case we get into the realm of stupidity really, really fast. Like “Superman with a quadruple Gatling murdering Hitler’s evil twin clones” stupid (and yes, that happened). That story was supposed to say something about gun control!
So, needless to say, DC letting David Goyer start tossing around a political grenade like “Superman renounces his American citizenship” didn’t quite work out how they expected.
The basic plot: Superman flies down to participate in a demonstration in Tehran. He gets bitched out for this. He states he’s pretty sick of everything he does being construed as an American action. He considers renouncing his citizenship.
Unsurprisingly, most of the world yawned, but, equally unsurprisingly, the conservative blogosphere picked it up to whine about it, meaning comics fans get to experience a little taste of what it’s like whenever a video game shows a booby and Fox News fills its Depends in terror over TEH BEWBEH! TEH DIGITAL BEWBEH!
Go on, check out the report on Comics Alliance; best laugh you’ll have all year.
[ via the fighting Americans and honorary Americans at Bleeding Cool and Comics Alliance ]