Comments on: Towards A Modern Superhero Canon: “Beware My Power”

By: Travel Offers

Travel Offers — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 18:58:11 +0000

Man I love your article and it was so fabulous and I am gonna bookmark it. One thing to say the Superb analysis you have done is trully remarkable.No one goes that extra mile these days? Bravo.. Just one more tip you shouldinstall a Translator Application for your Worldwide Readers …

By: calvin frank

calvin frank — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 18:08:01 +0000

Wow, its so realistic.Thanks for your great post.

By: johnny zito

johnny zito — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:45:48 +0000

‘What’s so Funny about Truth, Justice and the American Way’ – Superman 775 by Joe Kelly perfectly embodies super hero cannon in the face of modern tropes.

Text book.

By: Todd

Todd — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:49:58 +0000

Great list so far Tom, it’s nice to see “Nobody Dies” make it as Loebs Flash run was truly suberb. I’d also recommend the 3 part Despero saga (JLA #38-40)from the Giffen and Dematteis era of the Justice League. Were you a fan of L.E.G.I.O.N. or the Alan Grant Demon series?

By: Shaun

Shaun — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:19:23 +0000

Well, I do disagree with Tucker about “the only Green Arrow story you need,” as I’m a huge fan of Mike Grell’s entire GA run, and the classic O’Neil/Adams run of GL/GA too.

I don’t know if either of those would qualify for the “canon” or not, although I have a feeling GA/GL might since it was so groundbreaking for its time.

By: Tucker Stone

Tucker Stone — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 22:38:54 +0000

Thanks for taking up the fight Tom. My super-hero library isn’t extensive to pull off the task, and I’m looking forward to checking out these books you’re talking about. Who knows? Maybe there’s something in the Green Lantern catalog that won’t make me cry bitter, snark-ridden tears.

By: eaglesfillthesky

eaglesfillthesky — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 21:59:11 +0000

not for nothin’, but to omit stories because you’re “heavy” on the author is kind of silly in this type of exercise, it would be akin to leaving off a midsummers night dream, because you already have hamlet, macbeth and othello, and you don’t want to be too “heavy” on the shakespeare. just doing a little research on the “western canon” of literature, finds that some authors are represented by a single book, while other authors are represented by their entire body of work.

By: Tom Bondurant

Tom Bondurant — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:41:02 +0000

I appreciate the suggestions, and I did think about Golden Age classics like the first Superman story and the original “Batman vs. the Mad Monk.” They may well be on my final list, whenever I get around to finalizing one.

Again, though, I’d like to see lists from a bunch of different people, so that we can all compare notes and arrive at some common ground, regardless of what that common ground ultimately looks like.

By: mikesensei

mikesensei — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:13:35 +0000

I think you’d have to include the first Siegel/Shuster Superman storyline. Not only because it set the pattern for all that followed, but because it is vigorous storytelling even now. When I first read it (probably in the “Superman, from the 30s to the 70s” hardcover) it was such a departure to what the character and storytelling had become by the seventies that it was mindblowing. This was also my response to many of the stories Feiffer collected in “The Great Comic Book Heroes”–one felt that anything might happen. The tropes were still being created, and the characters seemed less formulaic as they did in the contemporary comics of my 1960s-70s youth. I’ll never know how a reader felt in 1938, reading Action #1 off of the shelf, but I know how I felt reading it a quarter-century later. That first Superman story is memorable not only as its role as the historical template, but for its imaginative, energetic storytelling–which holds up.

By: Nick Marino

Nick Marino — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:59:18 +0000

Tom, I think you make a good point about seeking out the best small stories from the big chunks. In some ways, I would want to see that concept go even further. For example, I personally regard the Dark Phoenix Saga as a wonderful story that operates better during some moments than it does during others (basically I’m saying it’s great but it’s also uneven). I think it would be an interesting exercise to try and find a single issue within the arc that best represents the quality of storytelling that was achieved by the creators. Is that digging too deep or thinking too much like I’m trying to publish a “greatest hits” collection of single issues?

As for selecting what belongs in the canon, I think that’s a fascinating and almost impossibly subjective notion. I don’t know if I can differentiate what belongs in a universal superhero comics canon from my own favorite superhero comics.

By: Tom Bondurant

Tom Bondurant — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:27:31 +0000

Ben: I’m heavy on the Morrison already, and I have a couple of reasons for favoring the Starro story over “World War III”; but I’ll get into those when the time comes.

Dick: Yeah, it’s hard not to go with big chunks of material. However, I think it may be more useful to look at the smaller stories within the chunks. This is not to say one couldn’t make a case for the Fourth World or the Lee/Ditko Spidey as a huge (albeit unfinished) single story — I think Steven Grant argued that the Lee/Ditko Doctor Strange worked in just that way — but it just seemed easier to arrive at standards when working in smaller portions.

With that said, I picked the one New Teen Titans issue because I thought it incorporated all the soap-opera stuff well enough to work on its own. There are more meaningful issues in the Wolfman/Perez run, like Terra’s death and Donna’s wedding, but they depend heavily on the reader’s long-term investment in the characters. “Crossroads” is so heavily leveraged by subplots that it doesn’t really belong to any one storyline.

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:25:49 +0000

You should add the “World War III” storyline from Grant Morrison’s run on JLA. And I also suggest the Deus Ex Machina storyline from Animal Man. And Kingdom Come. And Princes of Darkness from JSA.

By: Dick Hyacinth

Dick Hyacinth — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:07:04 +0000

When I read Tucker’s call for a superhero canon (a good idea, and something I’ve sort of skirted the edge of discussing before), I was thinking more in terms of chunks rather than single stories. I totally agree that the Master Planner story is the best single moment of the Lee/Ditko ASM run, and possibly the greatest single moment in the history of superhero comics. But, to me at least, its impact depends on the preceding 30 or so issues. Likewise, I’d probably lump together all of Kirby’s Fourth World material, even though the specific stories you point out were arguably the best of the bunch.