Scans: Superman Unchained #2
Superman Unchained #2: written by Scott SNYDER; Art by Jim LEE (main feature) and Dustin NGUYEN (backup)
Superman Unchained is shaping up to be a pretty decent Superman book so far, and in the second issue we had an interesting exchange between Clark and Bruce. Clark has come to visit (in civilian clothes, walking down from the Manor, I note), to find that Bruce is working on a problem for him:
From here it leads to basic (but very pretty, as Lee's art always is) infodump, but this is the key relational exchange.
Now, when I first read this, I felt a bit sad at the "You're going to get RID of it, now that you DO know me." / "Of course. Any day now." exchange, which seemed rather hostile to me. I was trying to find a way to understand/rationalize the exchange, and I thought that maybe it would make some sense that they might joke about it, since it's such a fraught topic. Maybe this is a sort of running gag between them. "Hey, Bruce, come up with any new ways to kill me this week?" "Only three, I was busy with an Arkham breakout."
So I was pretty tickled to get to the end and find this little epilogue, in which Bruce muses on the nature of his relationship with Clark (the scenes of the person waking up in bed are unrelated to the Bruce/Clark relationship, just providing a thematic counterpoint with the main storyline):
"That person, of course, is you." Which is pretty much confirmation that indeed, the snark at the beginning is exactly that, a joking sort of smokescreen where Clark kind of pretends to be offended at the idea Bruce has these failsafes, just to defuse the worry and tension of the possibility he'd ever have to use them.
And I think that's pretty sweet.
P.S. If anyone wants to write a ficlet of Clark sneaking back to find Bruce standing shirtless and sweating in front of that forge, contemplating destroying the damn suit, I would support such a thing...
Superman Unchained is shaping up to be a pretty decent Superman book so far, and in the second issue we had an interesting exchange between Clark and Bruce. Clark has come to visit (in civilian clothes, walking down from the Manor, I note), to find that Bruce is working on a problem for him:
From here it leads to basic (but very pretty, as Lee's art always is) infodump, but this is the key relational exchange.
Now, when I first read this, I felt a bit sad at the "You're going to get RID of it, now that you DO know me." / "Of course. Any day now." exchange, which seemed rather hostile to me. I was trying to find a way to understand/rationalize the exchange, and I thought that maybe it would make some sense that they might joke about it, since it's such a fraught topic. Maybe this is a sort of running gag between them. "Hey, Bruce, come up with any new ways to kill me this week?" "Only three, I was busy with an Arkham breakout."
So I was pretty tickled to get to the end and find this little epilogue, in which Bruce muses on the nature of his relationship with Clark (the scenes of the person waking up in bed are unrelated to the Bruce/Clark relationship, just providing a thematic counterpoint with the main storyline):
"That person, of course, is you." Which is pretty much confirmation that indeed, the snark at the beginning is exactly that, a joking sort of smokescreen where Clark kind of pretends to be offended at the idea Bruce has these failsafes, just to defuse the worry and tension of the possibility he'd ever have to use them.
And I think that's pretty sweet.
P.S. If anyone wants to write a ficlet of Clark sneaking back to find Bruce standing shirtless and sweating in front of that forge, contemplating destroying the damn suit, I would support such a thing...