Mega Double Dog Exclusive Preview of Superman: Doomed #1
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Sorry, as I was writing it I couldn't remember who had said it. I just wanted to make clear that I didn't think the person I quoted (Draco) had said it, because I knew it wasn't him.
But my question was always why... WHY was Doomsday so intent on causing as much destruction as possible? What's his motivation? The grafted-on history might explain why Doomy wants to beat up Kryptonians (by the way, it wasn't even original... it's plagiarized rather heavily from Paul Kupperberg's Kryptonite Man story in Superman and Supergirl from the early 1980s... they changed it slightly, in ways that made it stupider). But it doesn't explain why Doomy wants to kill us (earthlings). If you read Peter David's book on how to write comics, which I recently did, David makes this very clear. Everyone knows the motivation of the hero, because the hero is a well-worn character, especially when it's Superman. Nobody is wondering what makes him tick. So to make the story work, to make it believable, you have got to nail the villain's motivation. WHY does Lex Luthor want to kill Superman? WHY does Darkseid want to occupy Earth-2's space with Earth-1? WHY does the Anti-Monitor want to consume all the positive-matter universes? If you don't get that right, the story doesn't work. And they didn't get it right with Doomsday. They made him essentially a wild berserker, unreasoning, full of rage, with an impossible-to-believe origin, and no good reason for doing what he was doing. A mindless, rampaging brute is not a good villain, except as a peon to serve the true master (e.g., Nom in Superman II, who is referred to by Jor-El as a "mindless aberration", and who served Zod). Now, if Luthor had created Doomsday and used him to kill Superman, then, maybe, OK. Because the real killer is then Luthor, who is intelligent, crafty, and cleverly evil, not mindless, and Doomsday then becomes a weapon (and maybe even, if written cleverly enough, just as much Luthor's victim as Superman). But they didn't do that. The start and end of the story was this repetitive, drawn out, mind-numbing, STUPID battle between a raging, foaming-at-the-mouth imbecile, and Superman. How is that the way for the Man of Steel to go out? Superman should have been beaten by an evil mastermind. Instead, he was beaten by an empty-headed lummox. It was laughable. And literally, I laughed at it. Yes, I admit it. The story was so stupid, the final blow was so incredibly contrived, idiotic, and badly executed (not to mention horribly drawn) that I cracked up, put the comic-book down, and said, "Wow, that was stupid. What a waste of my money." Compare to the death of Jason Todd at the hands of guess who -- the Joker. That was epic, and incredibly well-written. Clearly if someone is going to kill a Robin, it needs to be a villain like the Joker. Not some guy Dan Jurgens made up 20 minutes ago who has the IQ of a grizzly bear. |
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I do agree that Doomsday was basically a plot device when he was created but I won't lie when I was a kid in the 90's that Doomsday was a scary walking force of nature to be contended with. Plus the one good thing about the Death Of Superman was that it gave me Reign Of The Supermen which was arguably my favorite Superman story ever. |
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But this, in a way, makes my point. Superman was killed by... a force of nature? (And you're correct, that is how Doomsday was, in a sense, portrayed, although even that part of it was executed very badly -- with the mindless fury of a force of nature). They might just as well have Superman be killed by an actual force of nature, like a super-nova or an earthquake. They're equally senseless, and equally unsatisfying as endings for the Man of Steel. If you could go back in time, to right BEFORE Doomsday appeared, and talk to people, especially non-comics fans but probably even comics fans, and say to them, "DC is going to kill Superman. Guess who does it," you would probably get one of two answers: Luthor, or Zod. Luthor would be picked because he's Superman's long-time arch-enemy. He appears not just in the comics but in TV shows, movies, etc, about Superman. Everyone knows he hates Superman, and we know he knows about Kryptonite. So one would figure that he somehow uses the K to kill Supes. Zod would be picked because he is another Kryptonian, and thus has exactly the same power level as Superman. Plus he is well known from the 1980s movie and the comics, among other things. Zod is an evil version of Superman in a way -- Superman without the morals. So that fits. What NO ONE would say is, "Oh he should be killed by a mindless force of nature." Not because "no one is expecting it," but because it makes no sense. The greatest hero of all time should be killed by the greatest villain of all time... not by a force of nature. I understand, you were a kid, and things look different to a kid than they do to an adult. But in a way that actually makes my point -- you have to look at the story with the uncomplicated mind of a child to find it satisfying... or even interesting.
But as I have said, Reign of the Supermen, which I agree wasn't all that bad (and way better than the death story itself) would have happened regardless of who the killer of Superman was. It would have happened if Zod killed him, or Luthor, or Darkseid, or Lois Lane, or anyone else. The Reign story does not hinge on Doomsday being the guy who takes down Superman. One has nothing to do with the other. It only depends on Superman being pseudo-dead, which would have happened not matter who the villain was. |
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Then I grew up. I now know better. |
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Sure you do......... |
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We respectfully agree and disagree and some issues but overall I have no interest in rehashing this concept in the New 52 so far. |
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You think Doomsday is cool. You lost all credibility when you said that. |
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And you will parlay this into a 90's comment, right? ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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You already did it for me ![]() |
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Anything for a fellow 90's fan. LOL. ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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That is a really interesting way of putting it. It's the "New" 52, right? So why are they rehashing old concepts? Doesn't that make it the old 52? |
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Pretty much. Whether or not anyone liked Death Of Superman, it served its purpose in the 90's and don't see the need to revisit it. |
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Its apparent purpose this time is to kill, not Superman's body, but people's confidence in him as a hero. If you read the solicit, Superman has to unleash "so much power" to stop him, that people come to fear (and probably eventually hate) Superman. This pattern has been teased and hinted at (or maybe more than that) since the start of the New 52 -- that Superman is going to turn into the mistrusted, misunderstood hero that people run away from instead of applaud. Basically, they seem to have been trying to turn Superman into their version of the X-Men. Here's a question, though: Didn't Morrison say that the Doomsday stuff had already happened during that "5 years" about which we know so little? And if so, is this now a SECOND appearance of Doomsday? Or are they wiping Morrison's continuity and making this the FIRST appearance? It kind of looks like they are. The one thing that is pretty well undeniable is that the DCnU is a mess, whatever else they are doing with it. What a stupid way to do a reboot -- to reboot the universe and make it MORE messy than the one you rebooted from. Ugh. |
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And hence one of the main reasons why I have no interest in this story arc. As I said before, the smartest thing they could have done with New Coke 52 was to make it a separate reality but no they chose not to. |
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