Andy Fish over at Fishwrap wrote quite eloquently about the fate of the creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. As famous and iconic as their creation became, they never saw a dime of residual income for years. It finally took legal action to get anything resembling a pension, leave aside royalties which would have made the two men wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.
Now, as the current owners of Superman, the corporate heads at DC have decided to re-boot the character, along with the entire DC cast of characters. As anyone who has followed this knows, when it comes to signature characters like Superman, re-boots don't always take and it's sometimes best to leave well enough alone. In fact, as a matter of history, changes have been made to the character with varying degrees of success. The last attempt to change Superman's costume was met with howls of outrage.
The moral of the story? Sometimes re-boots for the sake of re-boots are just a bad idea. But DC is attempting a wholesale re-invention of its entire line-up, including Superman, and this is after various revisions, history changes and so on in order to keep it all fresh (and to boost sales, lest we forget). It's hard to imagine Siegel and Shuster disagreeing with the need for an update from time to time. They certainly re-booted. Superman started off as a bad guy. Then they tweaked the character till they got it right. In this case, Jim Lee and his mates are playing for all the marbles, exercising the artist's prerogative to rip out the page and start all over again. It's always a bold move, and not an ill-considered one. When you get to the point that you have to do that, it's a recognition that the current course is not getting you where you want to go, and it's time for a do over. It'll be interesting to watch.
More Later
KCD
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