Look, up in the sky...
I’ve been prompted by a friend of mine to once again discuss why Superman means so much to me, and why Superman Returns affected me so. My first impulse was to say: bite me I’ve discussed it to death in my LiveJournal, dig through old posts if you care so much. But then I thought about it for a moment or so… there are in fact so few things I love discussing as much as the twenty plus year journey I’ve taken with the Man of Steel. So here goes, once more with feeling:
There are memories so pure and innocent from our childhoods that they turn us small again and most of mine revolve around movies and toys. I was a child of the eighties, toys were far more prevalent to my generation than playing cops and robbers and the like… and movies were magic back then. My earliest touchstone memories are riding my Dukes of Hazzard scooter in my walking cast after breaking my leg; crying for hours when E.T. died; and tying on my hand-me-down Superman cape to watch Superman: The Movie on TBS. Not too long after I would watch Star Wars every day after pre-pre Kindergarten, but Superman always came first.
The cape first belonged to my brother, and it wasn’t just a piece of red cloth. This glorious piece of property had a red shoelace sewn into the neck so it could be tied on properly and a yellow Superman S stitched onto the back. Years later it would be replaced by a Superman poncho to keep the rain off with blue on the front and red on the back.
But at that ripe young age, the cape was magical. You see it was cooler than all the other Superman capes in the world because mine made me fly. I couldn’t fly as high as Superman, or as fast, but by lying on the carpet and spreading my arms out before me I was airborne. I never went after super villains I just flew with Superman, because to three year old me soaring over Metropolis was more than enough.
And there wasn’t just Superman: The Movie and Superman II, there was the BetaMax tape of Superman the cartoon (70’s version) and The Superfriends were on every day.
I sometimes wonder now at how intriguing it is that so much of my young life is defined by films with scores by John Williams: Star Wars, Empire, Jedi, Superman, E.T., Raiders… but I digress.
I remember being afraid of General Zod in Superman II, and not quite understanding what Lois and Superman were doing in the fortress of solitude (romance being lost on a small child, and sex being a complete wtf.) I remember not liking Gus Gorman because he created Red Kryptonite and that made Superman bad. I remember Superman left earth to go into space and in stepped Supergirl to keep an eye on things.
I remember at age seven, my cousin Christopher and I walking from my grandmothers house (with permission of course) to the 7-11 to get Slurpee’s in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace cups after seeing that movie mere hours earlier. We got brain freeze and dreamed of super powers, and then we played Superman. In a fitting nod to comics we’d never read nor wouldn’t read the re-telling of for many years, there was an accident with kryptonite that split Superman into two entities. I was Superman blue, (basically Superman in his usual get up minus the red shorts) and he was Superman red (all red, no blue anywhere... you’ve no idea how saddened I was in my late teens to discover that the writers of the comic were no more creative than two seven year olds.) The only way we could be re-joined as Kal-El was to find Lex Luthor and stop his nefarious plot. Our parents at the time thought it was cute that we used words like nefarious, and correctly to boot… Plus we’d peeled ourselves away from our Transformers for about three hours to run around in daylight, so they were pretty happy with the notion.
We took advantage of our situation to prove to the world beyond a shadow of a doubt that Clark Kent and Superman were not one and the same. If Christopher was stopping a nuclear missile from destroying Metropolis, I was Clark Kenting my way around The Daily Planet in full view of everyone while TV crews filmed the Man of Tomorrow. Even then, I preferred Clark Kent to Superman and played Superman Blue as being pretty much the same in both roles. When Christopher pointed out that I wasn’t playing Clark properly (and to his knowledge of the films that was certainly true) I blamed it on the Kryptonite transformation.
We ultimately found Lex Luthor, hiding under a tree waiting for us. He’d just launched two nuclear devices, one at the White House and one at the Kremlin. I bolted for Russia while he raced to D.C. Metropolis being so much closer to D.C. he saved his city first and flew as fast as he could to help me stop my nuke. We ran toward each other in the soft grass and slammed together just as the characters we played managed to get the nuke just out of Earth’s atmosphere before it went off. The resulting nuclear explosion re-formed the one true Superman of the era: Christopher Reeve.
We each fell backward to the ground and laid there for what felt like hours dreaming up more and more adventures for the once again whole Superman. I wish I could remember the adventures we set him on, but I can’t and it isn’t important that I do.
It’s enough to know that at that point in time Superman dared two little seven year olds to dream for hours. We came inside when the sun finally disappeared completely, and as always Superman flew off around the planet stopping to wave at us and smile as he disappeared out of view.
That’s what Superman was to us, he was our great hero who couldn’t be bested. Not by Red Kryptonite, not by Lex Luthor, and surely not by a nuclear missile. He was always out there, just out of view: a real entity that watched over us. The cold war, even to seven year olds, seemed frightening but we knew it couldn’t ever really be so bad because if we needed him: Superman would come.
We believed in him just as fervently as we believed in God and the Easter Bunny, and he would always be there for us. I’ve read many a comic, seen many a television episode and more than a few movies… but a lot of my love for the man of tomorrow stems from those magical Christopher Reeve films.
I learned over the years how little I like Superman III and IV, and grown to prefer the modern comics interpretation of the character… but a great deal of my perception of the character is tied into all of this. Over time, the movies faded away for a while but they were never really gone.
But this is just the beginning of my flight with the Man of Steel. Stay tuned for part two where I will discuss how I came to know the comics Superman… and how the Metropolis Marvel’s untimely death affected me as a teenager.
There are memories so pure and innocent from our childhoods that they turn us small again and most of mine revolve around movies and toys. I was a child of the eighties, toys were far more prevalent to my generation than playing cops and robbers and the like… and movies were magic back then. My earliest touchstone memories are riding my Dukes of Hazzard scooter in my walking cast after breaking my leg; crying for hours when E.T. died; and tying on my hand-me-down Superman cape to watch Superman: The Movie on TBS. Not too long after I would watch Star Wars every day after pre-pre Kindergarten, but Superman always came first.
The cape first belonged to my brother, and it wasn’t just a piece of red cloth. This glorious piece of property had a red shoelace sewn into the neck so it could be tied on properly and a yellow Superman S stitched onto the back. Years later it would be replaced by a Superman poncho to keep the rain off with blue on the front and red on the back.
But at that ripe young age, the cape was magical. You see it was cooler than all the other Superman capes in the world because mine made me fly. I couldn’t fly as high as Superman, or as fast, but by lying on the carpet and spreading my arms out before me I was airborne. I never went after super villains I just flew with Superman, because to three year old me soaring over Metropolis was more than enough.
And there wasn’t just Superman: The Movie and Superman II, there was the BetaMax tape of Superman the cartoon (70’s version) and The Superfriends were on every day.
I sometimes wonder now at how intriguing it is that so much of my young life is defined by films with scores by John Williams: Star Wars, Empire, Jedi, Superman, E.T., Raiders… but I digress.
I remember being afraid of General Zod in Superman II, and not quite understanding what Lois and Superman were doing in the fortress of solitude (romance being lost on a small child, and sex being a complete wtf.) I remember not liking Gus Gorman because he created Red Kryptonite and that made Superman bad. I remember Superman left earth to go into space and in stepped Supergirl to keep an eye on things.
I remember at age seven, my cousin Christopher and I walking from my grandmothers house (with permission of course) to the 7-11 to get Slurpee’s in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace cups after seeing that movie mere hours earlier. We got brain freeze and dreamed of super powers, and then we played Superman. In a fitting nod to comics we’d never read nor wouldn’t read the re-telling of for many years, there was an accident with kryptonite that split Superman into two entities. I was Superman blue, (basically Superman in his usual get up minus the red shorts) and he was Superman red (all red, no blue anywhere... you’ve no idea how saddened I was in my late teens to discover that the writers of the comic were no more creative than two seven year olds.) The only way we could be re-joined as Kal-El was to find Lex Luthor and stop his nefarious plot. Our parents at the time thought it was cute that we used words like nefarious, and correctly to boot… Plus we’d peeled ourselves away from our Transformers for about three hours to run around in daylight, so they were pretty happy with the notion.
We took advantage of our situation to prove to the world beyond a shadow of a doubt that Clark Kent and Superman were not one and the same. If Christopher was stopping a nuclear missile from destroying Metropolis, I was Clark Kenting my way around The Daily Planet in full view of everyone while TV crews filmed the Man of Tomorrow. Even then, I preferred Clark Kent to Superman and played Superman Blue as being pretty much the same in both roles. When Christopher pointed out that I wasn’t playing Clark properly (and to his knowledge of the films that was certainly true) I blamed it on the Kryptonite transformation.
We ultimately found Lex Luthor, hiding under a tree waiting for us. He’d just launched two nuclear devices, one at the White House and one at the Kremlin. I bolted for Russia while he raced to D.C. Metropolis being so much closer to D.C. he saved his city first and flew as fast as he could to help me stop my nuke. We ran toward each other in the soft grass and slammed together just as the characters we played managed to get the nuke just out of Earth’s atmosphere before it went off. The resulting nuclear explosion re-formed the one true Superman of the era: Christopher Reeve.
We each fell backward to the ground and laid there for what felt like hours dreaming up more and more adventures for the once again whole Superman. I wish I could remember the adventures we set him on, but I can’t and it isn’t important that I do.
It’s enough to know that at that point in time Superman dared two little seven year olds to dream for hours. We came inside when the sun finally disappeared completely, and as always Superman flew off around the planet stopping to wave at us and smile as he disappeared out of view.
That’s what Superman was to us, he was our great hero who couldn’t be bested. Not by Red Kryptonite, not by Lex Luthor, and surely not by a nuclear missile. He was always out there, just out of view: a real entity that watched over us. The cold war, even to seven year olds, seemed frightening but we knew it couldn’t ever really be so bad because if we needed him: Superman would come.
We believed in him just as fervently as we believed in God and the Easter Bunny, and he would always be there for us. I’ve read many a comic, seen many a television episode and more than a few movies… but a lot of my love for the man of tomorrow stems from those magical Christopher Reeve films.
I learned over the years how little I like Superman III and IV, and grown to prefer the modern comics interpretation of the character… but a great deal of my perception of the character is tied into all of this. Over time, the movies faded away for a while but they were never really gone.
But this is just the beginning of my flight with the Man of Steel. Stay tuned for part two where I will discuss how I came to know the comics Superman… and how the Metropolis Marvel’s untimely death affected me as a teenager.