quote:Originally posted by Dave: One of the reasons I so enjoy Lucifer is because although he is the second most powerful creature in the universe (second only to God - he can dispose of powerful magicians like the Silk Man with barely a wrinkle on his brow), his is a very complex character. The powers are the window dressing - what matters is the craftsmanship in the story, and one of the essential elements of good writing is good characterisation.
Thank you! :)
Ah, but don't thank me yet.
Lucifer is one thing: Superman is another. Lucifer might easily be dead, damned or deposed by the end of the series (Mike Carey predicts it will end around issue 60, from memory). Superman will continue to be published day in day out, no matter what. It takes away a lot of the suspense of the story. I have no envy for writers of such characters. They're not really writing most of the time: they're perpetuating a commercial franchise. They will never be able to write a Superman story with an end (unless its an "imaginary story"): there will never be literary closure.
Further, with Superman, you have also got someone who is unbearably and somewhat unbelievably humble given his powers. Sure he was a country boy from Kansas, and read too much Horatio Alger as a kid, under the guidance of two nice folk. I find nothing appealing about him whatsoever. He has no panache. The boyscout thing has been played to death. Editors will never change it because they like the idea of Superman being a goody-goody schmuck from a farm, the representative small-town American: the worse thing is that it will keep going ad infinitum.
Ostrander had more room to move with the similarly powered character, Martian Manhunter. I didn't read the series, but I've been told it chronicled the Martian's various lives (including one as a cat). That sounds innovative to me. Superman cannot be innovative so long as the character is used to sell lunch boxes and kid's sleeping bags: at the end of the day, whatever changes are made will be reversed to preserve the status quo and perpetuate the commercial exploitation of the character.
