Patrick Gerard
12-13-2010, 07:24 PM
This is something I spitballed with a Superman creator back during my pitching days but seeing some of the Twitter memes that cropped up lately, including the Lois Lane meme, it just seems ripe to talk about.
Imagine Superman's rocket crashed decades earlier and he debuted before a stunned world in 1938. Now also imagine we aren't bound by the standard "Earth-2" scenario.
Superman captures Stalin and the Axis leaders just like that brief LOOK magazine piece Siegel and Shuster did. World War II and the Cold War are averted. The Manhattan Project is convened not to end the war but to develop a counter-measure against Superman. He stops the Kennedy assassination in Dallas. The space race happens at Superman's urging, as he fears humanity is losing its will with him as a counter-example, rather than as a race between rival countries. He stands floating deferentially over the lunar landscape, allowing Armstrong to leave his footprints first.
This is a world where the culture and the counter-culture are shaped by a man who can fly... But also by a man who fears he was born too soon, a man of tomorrow who was born yesterday, who feels he belongs more in a future where he will be an old man by human standards.
I've had my own vision of this mapped out for years but I am keenly aware that it will probably never happen.
Still, there are all these iconic visuals that spring to mind. Superman walking in a civil rights protest. Superman catching a bullet above Kennedy's convertible. Superman hovering over the moon, leaving the dust undisturbed as man leaves the first footprint. Catching Abin Sur's craft. Saving Steve Trevor's plane. Pushing Barry Allen aside as lightning strikes. Zooming into view to deflect the bullets intended for Thomas and Martha Wayne. Trying to dissuade the JSA from retirement as they walk out on a Senate hearing. Pleading with Hippolyta to join the United Nations. Thwarting a young Lex Luthor's attempt on his parents' lives and teaching Lionel never to lay a hand on his son in anger again.
Trudging through Graceland one August morning to check Elvis into rehab. Saving John Lennon's life in '81. Setting Marilyn Munroe up with a new life in '62. Staging a bloodless coupe in Cuba.
Meeting a young reporter named Lois Lane, decades late.
So many images. It's like having read a comic that nobody else has and wanting to talk about it. But it's also one of those things I know now I'd never write, even if anyone was listening. Too political. Too personal. At best, I could maybe tap it for something creator owned and then I'm uncertain it would have the iconographic punch. But I hope it at least conjures up some neat images.
Imagine Superman's rocket crashed decades earlier and he debuted before a stunned world in 1938. Now also imagine we aren't bound by the standard "Earth-2" scenario.
Superman captures Stalin and the Axis leaders just like that brief LOOK magazine piece Siegel and Shuster did. World War II and the Cold War are averted. The Manhattan Project is convened not to end the war but to develop a counter-measure against Superman. He stops the Kennedy assassination in Dallas. The space race happens at Superman's urging, as he fears humanity is losing its will with him as a counter-example, rather than as a race between rival countries. He stands floating deferentially over the lunar landscape, allowing Armstrong to leave his footprints first.
This is a world where the culture and the counter-culture are shaped by a man who can fly... But also by a man who fears he was born too soon, a man of tomorrow who was born yesterday, who feels he belongs more in a future where he will be an old man by human standards.
I've had my own vision of this mapped out for years but I am keenly aware that it will probably never happen.
Still, there are all these iconic visuals that spring to mind. Superman walking in a civil rights protest. Superman catching a bullet above Kennedy's convertible. Superman hovering over the moon, leaving the dust undisturbed as man leaves the first footprint. Catching Abin Sur's craft. Saving Steve Trevor's plane. Pushing Barry Allen aside as lightning strikes. Zooming into view to deflect the bullets intended for Thomas and Martha Wayne. Trying to dissuade the JSA from retirement as they walk out on a Senate hearing. Pleading with Hippolyta to join the United Nations. Thwarting a young Lex Luthor's attempt on his parents' lives and teaching Lionel never to lay a hand on his son in anger again.
Trudging through Graceland one August morning to check Elvis into rehab. Saving John Lennon's life in '81. Setting Marilyn Munroe up with a new life in '62. Staging a bloodless coupe in Cuba.
Meeting a young reporter named Lois Lane, decades late.
So many images. It's like having read a comic that nobody else has and wanting to talk about it. But it's also one of those things I know now I'd never write, even if anyone was listening. Too political. Too personal. At best, I could maybe tap it for something creator owned and then I'm uncertain it would have the iconographic punch. But I hope it at least conjures up some neat images.