I write a lot of stories featuring Superheroes. I have two books out of short stories dedicated to them and have written several one-offs that explore what it might be like to be bestowed with abilities beyond those of normal people. As I am almost always writing something about Superheroes I tend to studiously avoid media with Superheroes in them. I don’t collect comics with any regularity, I don’t watch Superhero TV shows, I don’t generally watch Superhero movies unless there is a really compelling character. There are some exceptions to this, Captain Marvel (Shazam!) and Superman are two that will generally get my attention at least for the first of whatever movie series they are anchoring.

As a Superhero fiction writer I struggle with creating and maintaining characters that are effectively all-powerful because it makes for difficult storytelling. How do I put a character with no physical weaknesses in danger? Either they are omnipotent or they aren’t, know what I mean? Then I have to define lesser and greater omnipotence and before long I am creating a system that is very much like I’d need in a fantasy story and I don’t like fantasy stories. That said, my two favorite Superhero characters are pretty much omnipotent, Superman the last son of Krypton and Captain Marvel the world’s mightiest mortal.

I’ve written stories that obliquely feature or are inspired by the presentation of these two characters. In Mighty, George’s cape is exactly Captain Marvel’s cape and I tried to capture images of Captain Marvel as drawn by the amazing CC Beck in my narrative of his fighting the tornado. 

In my story Jobber I created Crimson Splash as a third-tier type Superhero who interacts with a mix of thinly disguised Justice League and Avengers characters, one of which, “The Big Guy” is modeled on Superman. While The Big Guy is a secondary character, his existence is one of the drivers of Crimson Splash’s journey. 

There have been ample deconstructions of Justice League, Superman, Batman, and even Captain Marvel that are generally called out as the best written comics of all time and those who set the tone for decades to come for how that character is presented in any format. 

Superman has been deconstructed in several titles, stuff like Mark Waid’s Irredeemable where a Superman type character goes nuts and starts killing the other heroes on Earth, none of whom are as powerful as he. Grace Randolph’s Supurbia presents a Superman character who has captured his main enemy, Hella Heart, and made her his sex slave. Robert Kirkman’s Invicible presents another evil Superman character, and finally Alan Moore’s Watchmen presents Doctor Manhattan who is both omnipotent and growing more and more distant from any connection to humanity and its people. Grant Morrison’s The Boys does this too with Homelander. Even DC comics got into the act with the Superman character in Injustice: Gods Among Us where a vengeful Superman rules earth after the Joker kills Lois Lane. Superman in the modern age is ripe for this kind of storytelling as comics have moved from entertainment for children to entertainment for more mature audiences. Don’t believe me? Go back and watch the old George Reeves Superman shows from the 1950s, or the second two Superman films featuring Christopher Reeve. But Superman had to evolve through several stages to the point where he could be deconstructed. He was mostly unchanged through the early 1980s until the end of the Superman comics line where Alan Moore wrote out the final issues including possibly the best Superman comic of all time “For the Man Who Has Everything” in which Superman is poisoned by an alien plant that shows him his deepest desires, which is to be married on Krypton and to have never known of or been sent to, Earth. It’s both beautiful and sad and transitions Superman from a character who defines super heroism into one that is trapped in super heroism such that his more subliminal desire is to be someone else who isn’t super.

Captain Marvel is my favorite superhero of all time. He’s a ripoff of Superman created in the 1940s by publisher Fawcett Publications who wanted a “flying strongman to complete with Superman” and they got it via CC Beck. His one real difference at the superficial level is that Captain Marvel only half exists, swapping time/space with human boy Billy Batson after he utters the magic word “Shazam!” He has been dissected in possibly the best comic I’ve ever read, Miracleman by Alan Moore. Known as Marvelman in the UK where this book was published first after Fawcett Comics could not be imported because Captain Marvel was tied up in a really long plaigarism lawsuit from DC Comics that prevented Fawcett from publishing. (DC eventually acquired the Captain Marvel character and released new titles as “Shazam!” as Marvel Comics had capitalized on the gap in publication and created their own Captain Marvel.

Marvelman written by Mick Anglo copied the lore of the Captain Marvel books with the same sort of family of Marvelman, Marvelman Jr. and Kid Marvelman. The stories were goofy just like the Captain Marvel stories were and geared to younger audiences. But in the British comics fandom Marvelman had a robust fanbase for the few years it was offered. Alan Moore being one of those fans.

Alan Moore takes up the character of Marvelman in 1980 and writes original comics for a British magazine. These were then compiled and released after coloring by US company Eclipse Comics as Miracleman. In this book, Miracleman, released him from a decades long swap with his human half, Mickey Moran into a world that has no superheroes. What deconstructs here is that there is a fine line that the story crosses between the superhero tropes of the original Captain Marvel/Marvelman stories and reality all of which is determined by the villain of the story. It’s complex and fun and weird and scary.

Captain Marvel has some fun film depictions as well, a serial in the 1940s has Captain Marvel machine gunning soldiers to death…

It was a different time.

In the 1970s there was as weird Saturday Afternoon live action show where the Wizard Shazam who bestowed the powers of the gods onto Captain Marvel was replaced with a pantheon of the God’s themselves. These were a lot of Captain Marvel rescues people who made idiotic decisions and get-themselves-into-trouble storytelling that was really popular at the time. See also, Super Friends… 

Shazam! spun off another character, a female version named Mighty Isis. They are fun and goofy and make the best of 1970s effects technology. I like them quite a bit as they are very similar in tone to the original CC Beck stories. The Shazam! film in 2019 starring Zachary Levy is a pretty good representation of the character as portraid in the New 52 era of comics with Captain Marvel being a scaled up Billy Batson bestowed with the powers of the Gods but still mentally a 14 year old boy whgo has to adapt to his abilities and identity. It’s not bad. Zachary Levy was pretty good as Captain Marvel. I dunno, the second film crashed really hard and Zachary Levy made some bad PR for himself which pretty much doomed the series to two films.

Anyway, I am getting way off track here. What I want to talk about, albeit briefly, is the 2025 Superman film directed by James Gunn.

The long way around to this is that for Superheroes to be a popular culture phenomenon as they have been it requires darkening them up to make them palatable to adult audiences and as a way to downplay the overwhelming goofiness of the presentation on its face. This led from Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman Forever to Blade to the Deadpool movies etc until we get to the DC universe as envisioned by Zach Snyder. Say what you want about the guy but he is consistent if nothing else, and as someone who writes dark superhero stories I have a lot of respect for his vision. Even if, like with the Justice League, I don’t agree with it, because not everything has to be Watchmen. Not everything has to be Miracleman.

Superheroes can be fun and colorful and be written to inspire us as readers/viewers to be better people. That is what makes them fun and what makes the morality tales that provide their foundation so prescient. 

Anyway, that brings us to James Gunn’s Superman.

Go see it. It’s great. It is so light and airy and embraces the morality plays that underpin comics from the golden age and still manages to be complex and gripping. 

There, that’s my review. 

No really, I don’t really want to spoil anything. I’ve seen it twice now in the cinema and I may go to see it again tomorrow (July 26). The cast is great, the writing is crisp, and the special effects are to be expected in a big budget studio superhero movie.

There are a lot of great themes in the film that include now only right and wrong, but the place of immigrants in society, the role parents play in how we develop as adults, what sacrifice means etc… There is so much to unpack that i can’t even pretend to do it here.

Go see it.

As  for me. Well, I’m still writing lots and reading lots too. My books and stories aren’t selling other than the couple of art fairs I do each year. I tried Amazon marketing but that didn’t get anything sold, it didn’t get stuff clicked through either. So, at least on the upside, it didn’t cost me anything other than a week of wondering what to do next. I’ve seen people on TicTok shilling their books but the thought of having to do that fills me with dread. My podcast has a small audience too. Tumblr, not matter what I do, is mostly followers who are porn bots. I can’t even get anyone to jump on the Self on the Shelf 100 Page Challenge. So far no one has pitched their book so I haven’t bought any. Tumblr, even on Communities for original fiction writers, is silly with fanfic writers. 

What’s a writer like me to do? Send me your ideas for better marketing? Should I do the TicTok thing? Youtube? Yelling at the sky? Naked performance art?