Supreme Power and "realistic" superheroes

This post is LONG. And about comics. So for my four readers who are into that sort of thing, enjoy.

So, Supreme Power. Finally read the first trade is Border's the other day. And hey, I really liked it! Those who know me well know I have a deep, deep hatred for J. Michael Stracynzski's earlier, similarly-themed work Rising Stars. Poor Liz especially. One night I got really drunk, cornered her, and ranted about Rising Stars for like three hours. So much so that once Liz left the party, Alan and Doug called her just to say "Hey, Liz. Rising Stars." I get a little worked up sometimes.

Supreme Power is JMS's attempt to do a "realistic" take on superheroes and how their existence would affect us and the world around them. His characters are the Squadron Supreme, Marvel's thinly-veiled pastiche of DC's Justice League. So basically it's JMS writing a realistic take on the JLA, set in a self-contained universe, with a beginning, middle, and end, and a mature readers label. Oh, and Gary Frank's on art. If that's a recipe to honk Jeff's hooter, I don't know what is. Sorry I just talked in the third person there.

An alien baby crash lands on earth, and is immediately seized by the government and raised by two agents who pretend to be the baby's parents as he grows up and develops strange and wonderous powers. Once the boy is old enough, the President begins drafting him on top secret missions for the government, such as ensuring an easy victory in the first Iraq war. Meanwhile, all across the United States, other individuals are displaying unusual powers, and strange phenomena are beginning to appear...

The first six issue focus primarily on Hyperion (the Superman surrogate), as he grows up under the government's watchful eye. There are brief references made to the Whiz and Nighthawk (Flash and Batman, respectively), but the thrust of the story are the developing years of Hyperion. I especially liked the detail that his "parents" are really deep cover agents. When Hyperion is old enough, the government fakes their deaths, and as they depart their secret plane to Europe, the mother tells the father, "Don't take this the wrong way, but I hope I never see you again." Ha!

These are hardly new ideas. If you want superheroes in the "real" world, you're probably never going to do better than Watchmen. And hell, even the original 80's Squadron Supreme series was a radically realistic take, depicting the Squadron taking over America as benign dictators for what they perceived to be the country's own good. The recent Authority relaunch springs to mind.

But for what Supreme Power does, it does very well. This is basically JMS's chance for a "do-over" on the extremely similar Rising Stars, and this time it's looking like he's going to make good. Man, I could go on and on about how Rising Stars blew it, but I won't bore you. Let's just say that every incorrect decision about plot, character, and conflict were made, and leave it at that.

Honestly, the thing that pissed me off the most about Rising Stars was how terribly it wasted its obvious potential. Realistic takes on superheroes is the kind of stuff I eat with a spoon. Bendis' outing of Daredevil's secret identity, or how Peter Parker keeps blowing it in Ultimate Spider-Man; that stuff rings true to me. There's been quite a lot of noise on the messageboards about how Identity Crisis is a good story, but doesn't belong in the DC Universe proper because of how dark and gritty it is. That kind of story doesn't suit those characters, the arguement goes. Hell, that's what I like about it. I don't read comics for mindless escapism. If I wanted that, Chris Claremont is still plenty prolific. Is it so wrong to want that dash of added realism? There's only so much disbelief I can suspend, here.

I'm not saying that I can't accept a straight superhero story. Geoff Johns' Teen Titans and Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men are both proof that you don't need to go grim and gritty to get my adulation. Sure, Whedon brought back Colossus. But he did it in the midst of one of the best X-Men runs ever, so who am I to complain? If the story's good, do what you want. That goes for resurrecting Colossus and killing Sue Dibny. I'm going to talk about Astonishing much more extensively in a later post.

I guess that's why I've always been more drawn to Marvel. Icons don't interest me, characters do. Secret Identity works because it puts a character in the shoes of an icon. It's a nice little story. I'm enjoying Rucka's work on Adventures of Superman, but I still don't give a rat's ass about Superman as a character. Meanwhile, his work on Wonder Woman is playing with her icon status, as she is a goddess among mortals, somewhat alien, but still warm and loving. They didn't name the first collection of his run "Down to Earth" for nothing. Icons just don't have a lot of breathing room for change, is what it seems to me. Meanwhile, there was a great moment in Bendis' Daredevil a few months back. The issue was sort of a "Untold Tales of Bendis' Daredevil" story, focusing on smaller moments over the course of Bendis' run thus far, giving us a better picture of what happened to Matt Murdock after his secret identity was revealed. In one scene, he visits Dr. Strange, and after a bit of conversation asks him, "Can you undo it? Can you use your magic to take my secret identity back?" The Doc's reaction? And I'm paraphrasing here: "What? No! Are you crazy? Change reality like that? No. God, no." I don't know if it was a deliberate dig at Geoff Johns' reclamation of Wally West's secret identity over in Flash, but it gave me a chuckle just the same.

At the end of the day, be it in the self-contained, shades-of-gray universe of Supreme Power, or the "proper" Marvel and DC Universes, I'll take my characters complex, thanks.