The best and the worst of people...

"He learned to his delight that he could Hurdle skyscrapers...leap an eighth of a mile...raise tremendous weights...run faster than a streamline train...and nothing less than a bursting shell could penetrate his skin!"*

Krypton was a planet of super developed humans, millions of years of evolution to take them to peak physical perfection.  This is the man of steel, this is why he has the abilities he has.  No flight, no X-Ray, laser vision, super hearing, no travelling at near the speed of light and having nothing to do with powers from a yellow sun.  It wasn't long before that changed, before he gained flight, before he gained a lot of other silly powers that no one really talks about anymore. 

Fascinating comics, really truely amazing to read from the 30's and early 40's.  One comic caught my eye, where Superman flies to Germany and captures Hitler, takes a quick pit stop to Russia to pick up Stalin and a quick hop leap and jump to switzerland to drop them off in Geneava where a trial is held for "unprovoked aggression against defenseless countries..."  Superman came into existance shortly a year before the start of WWII, the first Superman comic just a few months before the official accepted declaration of the World War. 

Imagine a man during that time with abilities like that of the original Superman.  Imagine the difference he could have made in a war.  Also imagine the mentality of people back then and think about how the world would have actually reacted.  I think it would not have gone so well and he wouldn't have been accepted like he is in the comics. 

I would love to write that story, to write that movie.  Superman arriving on the scene in 1940, allowing the events that shaped the world of today to change with the addition of a Super Man.  The visuals of a Superman movie set in the early 40's, during a War stricken world are amazing. A retro-futurism aftermath, building a Utopian Society with his help.  I'm not talking about something completely hookey and campy, but something more real, leading up to something more like the Superman cartoons I've seen. 

An exciting prospect, but I think the world wants a more modern twist.  They want to see what Superman would really be like in our world, in life as we currently see it. Would a man always known to have such virtue and moral fiber be able to stand for justice in our world?  Drugs, violence, political and religious wars, gangs, disease, people who would rather walk by a person in desperate need because they are too busy trying to get to the grocery store so they can get home in time to fight with their spouse.  That's an awefully cynical view of the world, well I did work in TV news for 5 years.  The world needs to take a good hard look at itself and ask itself, why? 



* Superman #1 June 1939 Copyright DC comics.