You missed it, big time. You also forgot too much history that some of us didn’t forget. Superman is and always should be an American citizen. This isn’t a discussion about socialism or politics in general. This is about a boy and his comic book hero. I do not dispute that Superman helps with crisis around the world. What you forgot is that he doesn’t get involved in politics. This isn’t Watchmen!
Superman doesn’t renounce his citizenship anymore than does the Statue of Liberty! He is a symbol of American ideals. This is what countries aspire to be, democratic and free. I read where a journalist said that we are making too much of this. As a true comic book fan I have to disagree. Here are a few things that I would like to bring to the table:
The comic book is historically an American medium. We fostered it. We nurtured it. It's way of telling stories graphically that has been adopted the world over. There is some dispute over the genesis of the actual paneled work that we call a comic book (Shirrel Rhoades, A Complete History of American Comic books, p. 3) still, history shows that the comic book is at its core a patently American vehicle.
Superman shouldn’t HAVE to renounce his American citizenship. An American soldier doesn’t have to renounce his citizenship to fight in another country. What you screwed up was treating Superman like he is a vigilante. Superman never would have gone to Iran in the first place! You have forgotten so much history it’s frightening. Does he have to quit the Justice League of America? (Note: “America”)
The Justice Society of America storyline (Note: “America”) (JSA #45 thereabouts) stopping Black Adam from interfering in his country of Kahndaq’s politics was a huge storyline for defining that American superheroes were just an offshoot of America and that we didn’t belong in other countries because it did give us an unfair advantage.
Take a look back at the “52” storyline. There are plenty of heroes that, if done properly in the true spirit of comic books and realism (such that you can), are from other countries (See 52 - Week 10). The Great Ten of China and Russia’s Rocket Reds are examples. A distinctly outside of the box storyline would be for Iran to create its own superhero team. Let Superman be an ambassador for America to go into other countries. To renounce his American self actually goes more against his character than treating him like some political pawn. Ma and Pa Kent raised him better than that. Superman/Clark Kent would never renounce anything. He wouldn’t feel he had to.
Superman was created by two Americans. Siegel and Schuster were immigrants, of course, as were we all. Yet, they were proud to be Americans. The boy who created Superman not just as a comic book hero but perhaps as a way of getting retribution for his father’s death, would be rolling over in his grave. This renunciation is such a slap in the face of America, the American comic book reading public and Siegel and Shuster that it’s frightening. We have been touting “Truth, Justice and the American Way” not just for the America of today but for the very ideals that our forefathers fought the British empire for 235 years ago.
To quote Joe Simon, the artist-writer who co-created Captain America, “…our work carried with it a particularly American slant. After all, we were Americans drawing and writing about things that touched us. As it turned out, the early work was, you might say, a comic book version of jazz. In the sense, that is, that jazz too was a uniquely American art form (Dan Whitehead, “Kapow! A Talk with Joe Simon,” The Web, simoncomics.com). Superman has always been a uniquely American persona. The ideal that children the world over would aspire to. If we believe in ourselves as Americans then Superman epitomized the hope that we would one day “leap tall buildings in a single bound”.
DC, do the right thing and fix it because I won’t be buying anymore Superman comic books until you do. I am sure that my chump change won’t make a difference but it’s the principal of the thing. I have 20 years worth of comics that I painstakingly collected and found in dusty comic book shops. Superman is my hero. My AMERICAN hero.
Written By: Jerry Browning
Twitter: @Endless102
