DC Comics has a serious problem with their #1 hero...
I'm talking about SUPERMAN.
Oh, wait, you thought I was talking about BATMAN?
No, I wasn't. And that's really part of the problem.
The current hierarchy in the DC/Time-Warner seems to forget which hero made DC Comics. Which hero captured the imagination and hopes of people of all ages around the world. Which hero inspired presidents and athletes.
They seem to forget all that and instead focus on the grown-up traumatized billionaire-trillionaire crime victim dressed up like a bat.
I get it... Batman is human. He may dress the part of a bat-shaped demon, but he's still human. He has no powers. Everything he has is brains and trickery and endless training. Oh, and an endless bank account. Can't forget that whole millionaire-billionaire-trillionaire thing. Can't have the toys if you can't afford them. But even then, "Batman: Earth One" showed what he'd be like dirt poor, and he'd still be Batman.
Superman, on the other hand, DC would rather kill off than support. Except for that nasty little part of him being too well-liked by fans for generations.
So what DC does is they pervert him, corrupt him, and otherwise destroy him.
DC gets rebooted... Superman no longer has his adopted parents. He doesn't have Lois. He starts out not even able to fly. He wears jeans and a tee. Eventually we see him flying and getting his super-suit. But he still doesn't have Lois. Lois is making whoopee with a blond-haired douchebag. Supergirl wants nothing to do with her cousin. Superboy is still a clone of Superman, but he's messed up and sometimes swapped with an alternate-future child of Superman and Lois Lane. Lana Lang, his childhood girlfriend, is now sleeping with John Henry Irons, aka Steel.
One of the first storylines from the reboot has Superman being killed off by an alternate universe version of himself. And then they do it again, and again. And then we see an Obama-like Superman in charge of things. And they seem to like bringing in the Obama-like Superman because they "own" this version.
Doomsday is no longer simply a destructive being... he's a virus that kills everything around him. Oh, and he infected Superman so now the public doesn't trust him and it gives the United States government a green-light to poison the Earth.
They hype the fact that Superman now supposedly has this "new power", the first since the 1940's (if you forget about super-ventriloquism and all the other abilities he got during the Silver Age), and what does he do? He continually uses it until it messes with his system and now he's more "man" than "super".
They actually pair him up with Wonder Woman, which was something that had been hinted at and toyed with since the 1980's, but if you read "Superman - Wonder Woman", you'd find they're more of a "relationship" in name only. (And now in the recent issue, he's dumping her.)
Trust Lois Lane with his secret identity and what happens? She exposes it to the world. And at a time when he's lost most of his powers. So now his private life is dead, he has no job left (because they turned Perry White into J. Jonah Jameson without the Hitler-stache and Brillo-hair), he's pretty much broke, cops want him arrested because... well they're cops and they're now the biggest @ssholes in Metropolis, and every villain now knows who he is and how to really hurt him.
The very first issue of "Earth 2" has the "Trinity of Wonders" being slaughtered by Darkseid's parademons, then they bring back "Superman" as an evil acolyte (who later is a Bizarro copy) and then they kill him off again and again and again. But they do have yet another Obama-like Superman named Val Zod... yes, Zod is now Superman.
The recently-rebooted "Justice League of America" (version number infinity-plus-seven) starts out with Superman dying. Over and over again.
They pretty much make it clear that they don't like Superman.
It's so bad, in fact, that there is a new series called "Superman: Lois & Clark", which has a pre-reboot Superman and Lois Lane in the "Earth 0" world living in the shadows, watching how bad things are getting, and even they are scratching their heads about this.
And the "new" series they're hyping makes it clear "THIS IS NOT A SUPERMAN COMIC", but it's about re-telling Clark Kent in yet another way that makes you wonder just why they're still in DC Comics if they don't like the guy that made DC Comics.
On the other hand, DC reboots Batman, and very little is different about him. He's still messed up, but he still has "family" of Robins, Alfred, Batgirl, Batwoman, and Catwoman. The only difference is that Tim Drake is no longer part of the "Robins", but now he's "Red Robin", who is and yet isn't part of the "family".
They do a big storyline with the Joker, explain why he keeps coming back seemingly from the dead, they have a supposed "final battle" with Batman, and now the Joker is gone, Bruce Wayne is no longer the traumatized crime victim, and Jim Gordon is operating as a government-sanctioned Batman owned and operated by Wayne-Powers. But he still has his whole "family". He still has his adopted sons and his real one. At some point he'll be back as Batman.
What the hell?
Thoughts?
