May/June 2024 Edition of Devin's Chicago Comics Book Club Digest

Superman Smashes the Klan by Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru

Happy AAPI Heritage Month, everyone! I really tempted fate with all that talk about what we’d do in the event of not meeting the minimum threshold of attendees for a decent discussion, as only one person showed up this month. Lol Thankfully, we still had a fun time! I understand life happens, and it can be difficult when there isn’t a digital copy for people to access. I sent an email out to every official Comics Book Club member, and the majority of respondents were in favor of sticking to the schedule instead of pushing this back a month. Here’s hoping DC gets its act together and this book returns to hoopla soon!

This was the winner of our Special Superman Survey by a wide margin! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s exactly the kind of Superman story I’ve always wanted. Besides the strong moral and social conscience, there was a sense of awe and wonder that I find is often missing in iterations of the character. There’s a moment when Superman gives his cape to a little girl that felt quintessential. The other person in attendance was impressed that it was originally told so long ago, and we both admired the care taken to craft something entertaining with a strong anti-racism message. Kellogg’s faced boycotts over its sponsorship of the original radio program, a lesson retailers of today would do well to learn (looking at you, Target!). Gene Luen Yang’s essays that accompanied each issue were thankfully also collected in the trade paperback and provided more historical and personal context. Beyond all that, it was a very well-told story. I liked how the different experiences of the main characters were contrasted with and helped deepen Superman’s own “immigrant” story, and how his powers developed throughout the comic that mirrored how they developed in continuity. The other person in attendance admired the art style, and I recommended My Adventures with Superman. One person emailed that the first couple of acts reminded them of the coming-of-age part of Brightburn (though that took a much different direction! Lol). The writer/producer of that movie will be directing the next Superman movie. Our next meeting will be Wednesday, June 19 to discuss Bitter Root, Volume 1: Family Business.

What We're Reading

June 19 - Bitter Root, Volume 1: Family Business by David F. Walker and Sanford Greene

July 17 - It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth by Zoe Thorogood

August 21 - The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel

Next month’s selection is available in print as a trade paperback and an omnibus. If you borrow the latter, please note that we’re only reading the first volume, which collects issues 1 through 5.

Shameless Self-Promotion

Have I mentioned that the anthology with my first published comic, CyberSync, is available for purchase? ;) While I wait for the print copies to arrive, I’ve got a few other projects going on that I hope to share more about soon. The Comic Collaborator Connection at C2E2 was a lot of fun!

I wrote another one-page comic for The Comic Jam! The theme for April 29 was “Public Domain Characters Return!” I was excited for this topic because I’m constantly falling down the rabbit hole of Public Domain Super Heroes. One character that’s always caught my eye is Blackout. Honestly, if he didn’t share a name with a Ghost Rider villain and require research into WWII-era Belgrade, I would probably try to pitch a Blackout series. Fun fact: Blackout was created by Don Rico, the same guy who created Captain Free Enterprise! XD

If I did do anything further with this concept, I definitely would want to see if artist Michael Howe was available first. He took my script and somehow translated exactly what I saw in my head and made it better! Check out his work and follow this link. Would you like to see more of Blackout? Let me know!

About What We’ve Read

Superman Smashes the Klan won the 2020 Harvey Award for Best Children’s or Young Adult Book, the Mike Wieringo Spirit Award at the 2020 Ringo Awards, and Best Publication for Kids (ages 9-12) and Best Adaptation from Another Medium at the 2021 Eisner Awards.

One of my favorite comics critics, Ritesh Babu, wrote this excellent essay examining Gene Luen Yang’s body of work and how he became “the best modern Superman writer.” Two of my other favorite critics, Caitlin Rosberg and Oliver Sava, had a discussion for the AV Club back in 2020 examining Superman Smashes the Klan with regard to history and contemporary superhero comics.

You can listen to the original radio adventure in its entirety here, but it is almost three hours long. You can read about how that radio adventure came to be in the book Superman Versus the Ku Klux Klan by Rick Bowers.

The latest NEWS digest is available here. The next NEWS digest will be posted in two weeks.

Some Thoughts on Superman

Superman is my favorite superhero. I know, I know. At best, that’s a cliche and at worst, it’s a troubling power fantasy. My reasons for liking Superman have more to do with his personality than his power set, and I wanted to take this opportunity to articulate them. Honestly, I could write a whole book on this topic but I’ll try to keep it simple.

When a friend of mine in college asked me why I liked Superman, the best I could come up with at the time was that he was “an American icon.” Everyone laughed, because, as my friend put it, the reasons to like Superman are “because he’s strong, because he has heat vision, and because he can fly!” But Superman is my favorite superhero not because of his powers, but because of what he represents.

I’ve written before about the religious extremism I embraced in my college years and shortly thereafter, and that misguidedness probably did play a role in my Superman fandom (though if anything Superman is Moses, not Jesus). This includes making him a symbol of jingoistic patriotism, a departure from his time standing up for workers and going after slumlords. (I’d very much like to see a return to such humble adversaries, another reason I enjoyed this month’s selection so much.)

The derision I experienced in that college dorm room is something I’ve encountered frequently, especially in fandom spaces. Superman is corny; Batman is cool. The common criticisms against Superman are that he’s boring, that he’s a Boy Scout, and/or that he’s overpowered. To me, these criticisms betray a lack of imagination on the part of those offering them.

Boring? He’s the last of his species raised by an adoptive family! There’s inherent drama in that. Whether his stories are cosmic or personal in scale, there should be enough action or stakes to satisfy the most jaded reader.

Boy Scout? We can agree to disagree on that being a negative, so how about a story centering the other characters and the effect Superman has on them? There’s an argument to be made that’s the best way to approach a Superman story. More often than not, this does not appease the “Boy Scout” naysayers because they’d rather prove how edgy they are.

Overpowered? That’s part of the point of the character! He lives in a world made of cardboard and takes extra care to protect the people closest to him. What he chooses to do with so much power at his disposal is part of why Superman is so interesting. This is why I find so many “evil Superman” stories so uninteresting. We already know power corrupts! The evidence is everywhere. The world is full of incompetent, unintelligent would-be Lex Luthors making life miserable for the rest of us.

Heck, I’m posting this essay on a platform shared by Nazis after typing it on a machine powered by unethically sourced materials that was built using child labor. I want a Superman who punches those Nazis, shuts down those mining operations, and frees those laborers! Reading such a story can inspire us to do the same, regardless of how insurmountable the task might appear.

And therein lies the real power of Superman: the ability to inspire. Not super strength or heat vision or flight. He wields those powers in service to others and to help the people around him want to be better. I think that’s a fundamental part of his personality that the best stories about him capture. The world will always need people like that, which is why he’s such an evergreen character. And it’s why he’ll always be my favorite superhero.

That’s all for today. Feel free to share any thoughts or comments below! Who’s your favorite superhero and why? What do you think of Superman? Please subscribe if you haven’t already. Thanks for reading. See you next month for Bitter Root, Volume 1: Family Business by David F. Walker and Sanford Greene!