This month is the 75th anniversary of Superman debuting. After his first appearance in Action Comics #1, this character slowly grew to be an ubiquitous presence in Western (mostly American) culture.
I went with another montage based upon my favorite images: reruns with George Reeves when I was a little kid; Christopher Reeve from the Richard Donner movie (it remains the best); the Bruce Timm-managed cartoons; awesome comic-book artist Alex Ross; the famous Action Comics #1 cover (recently parodied for Regular Show #1); lastly, the MAD magazine issue my brother and I scoured, read aloud and laughed ourselves silly over, especially when General Zod put Nixon’s image on Mt. Rushmore.
Will I be going to see Man of Steel. Sure. It has promise despite Zack Snyder’s track record being spotty. I’m no fan of rebooting but after how lame Superman III, IV and Returns were, there wasn’t much choice. The damage wasn’t as ridiculous as Burton-Schumacher’s Batman flicks yet Supes is a hard character to sell due to his near-invincible nature. He tends to succeed on the smaller screen like most DC characters. I have never seen Smallville so I have no opinion either way with it. I couldn’t stomach Lois & Clark because it focused on the most boring elements while making Teri Hatcher an undeserved star.
Superman may not be my favorite comic book character (I lean toward Batman) and the only title I buy with him present is Justice League but I respect and understand his place in pop-culture history: Superman was the first big, successful superhero.