Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: action comics, america, dc, iran, superman

So I've Just Been Talking To The Washington Times For Half An Hour About Action Comics #900

Published Thu, 28 Apr 2011 13:46:09 -0500

Last updated Thu, 28 Apr 2011 13:50:53 -0500

Do you have your copy of Action Comics #900? Good. I get the feeling it will be disappearing from shelves pretty shortly, even at that $5.99 cover price.

As the headline says I was called up at home by a reporter on the Washington Times to talk about the events in Action Comics #900 I wrote about earlier today.

I think DC expected the big attention to be on Paul Cornell's massive story with Superman fighting Lex Luthor as a God with the power of words and the Superman family fighting Doomsday – all of him. Maybe something on Lost co-creator Damon Lindelhof's back up story or the Richard Donner Superman script in storyboard form.

But no, it's all about Batman Begins screenwriter David Goyer and his Anti-American Superman story. Despite it being anything but.

My line was that this was not a top down decision but a story by a guest writer that while having to be approcved by editorial, will have come from David Goyer rather than Dan DiDio. That it wasn't some big liberal media conspiracy, otherwise they may have marketed it better. And that it wasn't an anti-American story but that Superman's decision to revoke the American citizenship bestowed upon him (by President Kennedy I think it was) as a recogniton of the pragmatic realties of modern international politics and a sign of more complex storytelling.

But also that the headline response was going to be an interesting one.

Let's see what happens shall we?

Fox News has updated their article with a little more vitriol, quoting Angie Meyer saying "Besides being riddled with a blatant lack of patriotism, and respect for our country, Superman's current creators are belittling the United States as a whole. By denouncing his citizenship, Superman becomes an eerie metaphor for the current economic and power status the country holds worldwide"

The New York Post runs a quote from Dan DiDio and Jim Lee saying "Superman is a visitor from a distant planet who has long embraced American values. As a character and an icon, he embodies the best of the American Way. In a short story in ACTION COMICS 900, Superman announces his intention to put a global focus on his never ending battle, but he remains, as always, committed to his adopted home and his roots as a Kansas farm boy from Smallville."

While the Examiner reports on a "growing boycott of DC Comics" which will no doubt be filled by people who… don't buy DC comics anyway. And ones that do will find themselves buying #901 just to see what happens next.

And Entertainment Weekly… concentrates on the Lex Luthor/Superman battle. Heh.

I'm also interested to see what happens next, in more ways than one.

Second print, anybody?

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