In what before was the norm and now is a rarity, the premiere for Bryan Singer’s “Superman Returns” is today, July 14. Almost two weeks after the American premiere, when stuff like this happens it’s a little more difficult to come into the movie unspoiled, something I’ve managed to pull off relatively well amidst the online and media coverage on some of the topics that the movie addresses, as well as the approach the director has chosen in order to reboot the Superman franchise after getting shotgunned in the chest with 1987’s “Superman IV: The Quest For Peace,” where he fights The Nuclear Man after addressing the UN while double-timing Lois Lane and Lacy Warfield. It’s shit. Don’t even think about it. This new update, done almost 20 years later after many a hiccup including failed scripts and directors and casting calls that had people like Kevin Smith, Ben Affleck, Tim Burton, Nicholas Cage (ugh) and many others spending almost $200 million dollars without a single frame shot, takes places chronologically after the events of Superman II, where he battled the evil General Zod and his henchmen from Krypton. Superman (and his alter ego, reporter Clark Kent) has disappeared, leaving Earth in order to find the remains of his home planet of Krypton. It has been many years since he left and Metropolis (and the world) has learned to live without him when suddenly, he returns (hence the title, duh). This sounds like a bloated episode of “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman” but with a whole lot more of budget… I’m excited to see it, though. I’ve been catching up sporadically with the director’s video blogs over at the Blue Tights Network where there are featurettes showcasing the different aspects of production and there was a moment in time where I was rather skeptical (as was most people, actually) but what sold me was the video log of how they were going to make Superman fly. They rented out hangars and rigged them with this crazy technology that allows the filmmakers to shoot the Man of Steel flying without the use of digital effects/stand-ins and be able to move and rotate him with full control by using an X-Y axis setup which spanned all over the hangar. They could go forward, back, to the sides and make the actor twist and rotate at will, with seamless velocity. That was it. I was sold.

Brandon Routh takes over the tights left behind by Christopher Reeve and plays Clark Kent/Superman in what I can see is a carbon copy representation of the former. It’s sort of freaky, actually. This guy has acted in a few soap operas, and for playing Superman as his first film role is quite an accomplishment. From the trailers and snippets I’ve been able to see I can tell the guy has the chops to be a believable, competent Superman. Kevin Spacey plays Lex Luthor, and I can see the scenery chewing from a mile away… it looks like he’s one of the finer points of the flick. Kate Bosworth plays Lois Lane, and since she’s my type I could watch her knit for 2 hours and I don’t think I’d get tired. The rest of the details are sketchy to me at best and I like it that way; If I could survive the Episode III onslaught then I can take on this crap, dammit!

From the awesome folks at Wikipedia:

Superman is a fictional character regarded as the most famous and popular superhero of all time. Created by Canadian artist Joe Shuster and American writer Jerry Siegel in 1932 while both were growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective Comics, Inc. in 1938, Superman first appeared in Action Comics #1 (June 1938) and subsequently appeared in various radio serials, television programs, films, newspaper strips, and video games. He has since become one of the world’s most recognized superheroes and pop-culture icons. Today the character’s adventures are published in a number of comic books.

As portrayed in Action Comics #1, Superman was born on the planet Krypton as Kal-El, and rocketed to Earth as an infant by his scientist father moments before the planet’s destruction. The rocket landed on Earth where a passing elderly farm couple found the baby and adopted him. As the child grew to adulthood he discovered that he possessed powers far beyond those of mortal men and resolves to use his powers to help others. To keep his identity secret when not fighting the forces of evil as Superman he lives among humanity as “mild-mannered” Clark Kent, a reporter for The Daily Star (later changed to The Daily Planet). Clark works alongside reporter Lois Lane, with whom he is romantically involved — and married to in current comics continuity.

Some of his nicknames include “The Man of Steel” (his most famous), “The Man Of Tomorrow”, “The Last Son of Krypton”, and “Metropolis’ Favorite Son”.

Action Comics #1 was published in June of 1938 by DC Comics (”DC” standing for “Detective Comics,” where Batman would originate in “Detective Comics #27″ in May of 1939) and now, even though the character is almost 70 years old it’s still as recognizable as Mickey Mouse and the Mario Bros. After many revamps and updates to keep the character fresh, the Superman you know of today is very different than the one that started it all. In 1938, Superman could punch planets out of orbit, reverse time (much like he did in the “Superman” movie) and other otherworldly shit that made the imprint realize they had to make him “more human.” Thus, the Golden Age of Superman came to an end and in the 1960’s the Silver Age of Superman began, bringing to the table the origin story that would be injected into pop culture. You know the deal: Kal-El, son of Jor-El, is sent on a spaceship out of his home planet of Krypton, which was set to explode, when he was a baby and accidentally fell into Earth’s orbit, crashing on the Kent farm. The Kent’s would treat him as a son and made of him an exceptional man, when his powers began to manifest almost immediately and threw everyone out on a loop. DC took things a little bit out of hand, though:

After the establishment of DC Comics’ Multiverse in the 1960s, it is established retroactively that the Golden Age version of Superman lives on the parallel world of Earth-Two and is named Kal-L, while his Silver Age counterpart lives on Earth-One and is named Kal-El. While the Multiverse allowed for DC comics to bring Golden Age stories back into continuity, it also created problems. There had been no break in Superman stories between the Golden and Silver Ages; the character had been published in one ongoing story since his debut. Additionally, DC had dropped the name Kal-L in favor of Kal-El before the end of the Golden Age.

A series of stories in the 1970s establish that the Earth-Two Superman had married his version of Lois Lane in the 1950s (Action Comics #484, (1978)) and had become the editor-in-chief of the The Daily Star. In the late 1970s, Kal-L discovers a Kryptonian rocket that contains his cousin Kara Zor-L. After acclimating to Earth, Kara becomes the superheroine Power Girl. Kal-L also continues to serve with the revived Justice Society; he is revealed as a founding member of the group in the team’s origin story in DC Special #29. In the early 1980s, Kal-L is also shown as a member of the All-Star Squadron during World War II.

During the 1985 limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths, the various parallel Earths combine into one, retroactively eliminating some Earth-Two heroes from existence. Kal-L, the Earth-Two Superman, his wife Lois Lane of Earth-Two, the Superboy of Earth-Prime and Alexander Luthor, Jr. of Earth-Three, have no reality to call their own, and they enter a “paradise dimension” at the end of the series. This Superman isn’t seen again until the limited series The Kingdom, in which it is revealed that he has found a means of exiting his dimension, but chooses not to do so yet.

DC Comics retired the Silver Age version of Superman in 1986 after the publication of Crisis on Infinite Earths. Just before the character’s revamp, the Silver Age Superman is given a sendoff in the two-part story “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?“, written by Alan Moore with art by Curt Swan. Although the new Modern Age version of Superman is said to have already been active for many years, most previous Superman appearances and elements are rendered out of continuity by John Byrne’s Man of Steel. Later stories such as Superman: Birthright bring many of the Silver Age elements back into continuity.

The modern version of Superman told by John Byrne in the “Man of Steel” miniseries is the current, accepted version of the character, and it’s used to full effect on many recent shows about the character, most recently “Smallville.” Superman “died” in 1992 after a battle with Kryptonite-bearing Doomsday and it made the world news. Of course, he eventually returned but not before introducing a new Superboy, created in Lex Luthor’s labs from DNA samples of both Kal-El and Luthor, as well as 3 others who, as characters, who see varying degrees of success. If you’re thinking about jumping into the comic book bandwagon now then it’s a good time to do so… if you like it when things are out of whack. I won’t say much about what’s happening on the DC Universe at the moment, but rest assured that you’d be on a jumping-on point after a very significant event that “will rock the very foundations of the metahumans living in the DC Universe” and other assorted bullshit. Distrust, mind wipes, rape, murder and destroyed realities are the order of the day when if you want to know what happened in the recent “Infinite Crisis” storyline, expanding all across the main DC titles.

That’s it for the history lesson about one of the prime Superheroes of the 20th century. If you’ve seen “Superman Returns” I hope it met your expectations, and if you haven’t then please go out and watch it. I like my comic books treated with respect, and when you have movies like “Spider-man,” “X-Men” and its first sequel (don’t get me started with X-3), “Batman Begins” and apparently this one, then we’re on the right track with comic books and the graphic novel world to be taken farther inside the mainstream.

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