Thursday, June 22, 2006

Always thinking of others ... eventually.

Ah, the legendary selflessness of Superman...Oh, and, a couple billion people died too, along with all vestiges of their civilization and biome. But what matters is that we're orphans again.

I suppose we'll have to go live on one of the countless other worlds that adore us, most of which have superior technology, more stable societies, and better fashion. *choke*!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Still, he's sensitive to his dog's feelings. Gotta love him for that.

Anonymous said...

>awp<, just...>awp<.

Rob S. said...

Well, Krypto's not really an orphan, is he? (Counting Superman as his master, I mean.) He's just homeless.

And come to think of it, his and Kara's orphan status hasn't changed, either. So really, he's choked up because he lost his phat antarctic crib.

Anonymous said...

That is weird!

I sometimes think that back then the cover dialogue was written almost exclusively by someone out to sabotage the product. Or who at least hated the characters.

(If so, the decline of the word-balloon on covers had more than just aesthetic advantages!)

Remarkably enough, the whole story actually belongs to the Silver Age canon! Well, sort of. And, granted some assumptions and conventions typical for 1961, makes a certain amount of sense.

It is available in all its nine pages of increasingly bizarre, and seemingly arbitrary, narrative at "Superman Through the Ages," http://superman.ws/tales3/orphans/?page=0 (and following).

Jerry Siegel really crammed in a lot!

I suspect Edmond Hamilton would have insisted on the full book in which to explore such a theme. And any modern writer would have demanded a mini-series in which to explore all the ramifications.

Scipio said...

The story is also now available in the recently release "Showcase Presents: Superman".

Marc Burkhardt said...

And, truth be told, it's a damn good story!

Angst, death, destruction and Green "Earthite" in a mere 10 pages.

It'd be a three year arc, "Planet Superman" perhaps, in a modern writer's hands.

Anonymous said...

What I find interesting (in a vaguely off-topic sorta way) is that when Earth explodes, the continents retain their basic shapes while big chunks of seawater seem to be what's flying off into the void.

So it wouldn't be "Earthite" so much as "Oceanite".