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ron bailey
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Posted: 20 November 2024 at 3:38pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

That naive attempt to address an uncomfortable detail of his mythos is adorable :)
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John Byrne
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Posted: 20 November 2024 at 3:51pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

Warms my cockles to see what I think of as the REAL Superman logo on that page, before DC rounded it off and made it look chubby.

I asked for a restoration of that logo when I began my run, but was refused. The closest I could get was Bloodsport blowing it apart.

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John Byrne
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Posted: 20 November 2024 at 3:56pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

That “Terran way” business was super cringe inducing. And insulting to most nations, who did not consider themselves one amorphous mass!
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Robert Walter Auberger
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Posted: 21 November 2024 at 3:36pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

I don't know why people, also here in Europe, get so upset about concepts like the "american way" or the "american dream" . That is about the ideal of America , not the status quo now, or even from the 70s. For me as a kid in Europe ,the american way was quite simple: Fairness, Help the poor and mistreated, work hard and you will get your reward, and do the right thing. Demonstrated in countless movies and Tv series. So I see no problem with Captain America or Superman standing for the americany way or the american dream.
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Robert Walter Auberger
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Posted: 21 November 2024 at 3:39pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

John Byrne: 
Warms my cockles to see what I think of as the REAL Superman logo on that page, before DC rounded it off and made it look chubby.

I asked for a restoration of that logo when I began my run, but was refused. The closest I could get was Bloodsport blowing it apart.


****


That would have been so perfect, I love the old logo. I remember seeing it much later on a post-crisis Superman 2-page origin. I want to say it was pencilled by John Byrne, but could have also been Dan Jurgens. I wondered if they put it there on purpose, or by mistake!

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John Byrne
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Posted: 21 November 2024 at 3:42pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

When Roger Stern and I were working on CAPTAIN AMERICA we used to say he stood for Truth, Justice and the American Dream.

It was the Seventies, and the American Way was on shaky ground. But no one could fault the American Dream.

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Michael Penn
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Posted: 21 November 2024 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

I wonder how much today the "dream" is felt to be unstable?

But whether "the way" or "the dream," when you come from an immigrant background like my own, with your family just narrowly escaping sheer slaughter by dint of sheer luck, to come to this country and find what it had to offer, from that perspective, neither one feel shaky, not one bit.



Edited by Michael Penn on 21 November 2024 at 4:24pm
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Vinny Valenti
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Posted: 21 November 2024 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

I guess we should be glad that Cap hasn't yet been renamed to Captain Terra!
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Mark Haslett
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Posted: 21 November 2024 at 6:00pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

When authoritarianism rises, the guard rails need to hold. But what happens too often is that the powers that be anticipate their own punishment and concede in advance. This change in Superman feels like an early example of this from the last 50 years.

When DC decided to back away from “the American way“ they effectively gave it to the crooks and criminals who represented the negative turns we were seeing during Watergate. I feel safe, guessing that people at the time said something like, if the American way is Nixon, then Superman can’t be for the American way.

And of course, it was not just DC Comics. But, collectively, the choice of progressives to spend 40 years effectively distancing themselves from the traditional iconography of America has contributed to the weird place we find ourselves in now. One of the best parts of Harris‘s campaign was her ability to take back a lot of the “America is great“ rhetoric that has, since Reagan, been generally seen as Republican.

Edited by Mark Haslett on 21 November 2024 at 6:04pm
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ron bailey
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Posted: 21 November 2024 at 6:19pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

Well, since we're all capitalists as well as patriots, and as at the end of the day these were products that were being sold that we're talking about, you can imagine it might be a hard sell to those overseas to embrace something so boldly emblazoned as the "the American Way". I imagine that had more to do with the adjustment than any '70's malaise that the country was experiencing.
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Mark Haslett
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Posted: 21 November 2024 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

Was Superman unavailable overseas until then?
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ron bailey
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Posted: 21 November 2024 at 6:51pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

Sure he was, in many manifestations: tv shows, comics, toys, etc. 
So imagine having to propose a Superman product to say, a French distributor (the French are renowned for working to preserve their national identity). It's not to hard to imagine they might balk at seeing that part of his tag line plastered on the box of a doll that they want to place in stores for the French public. 
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