Left’s Crusade to Destroy Our Heroes Marches On: Superman Renounces God, American Citizenship
by HollywoodlandSuperman renounces his U.S. citizenship in Action Comics‘ record-breaking 900th issue. But that’s not all the benevolent alien refugee does in the sprawling special issue, which hits stores Wednesday.
The Man of Steel throws down in outer space against a continually misguided Lex Luthor, who’s finally rewarded for his boundless ambition by becoming a petulant god. Supes also throws a pizza party with Lois Lane for his Kryptonian pals, who crowd his couch while chowing grub and chewing scenery. He talks cosmology and philosophy with an interstellar deity beset by guilt over civilizations he was perhaps too selfish to save, and goes head-to-head with a one-time pro athlete who’s become a superheroic show-off.
It’s just another day in the life of Earth’s most recognizable comics immortal, in a landmark issue penned by all-stars from film, television and comics. Previewed in the gallery above, Action Comics No. 900 features stories penned by Doctor Who’s Paul Cornell, Lost’s Damon Lindelof, Superman: The Movie director Richard Donner, The Dark Knight screenwriter David S. Goyer and DC Comics’ chief creative officer, Geoff Johns. …
It’s a sobering moment, as obvious as it is revolutionary. Superman’s conscientious creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who dreamed up Superman for Action Comics‘ 1938 debut, positioned their deathless hero as an American heartland warrior battling tyranny and evil.
But Superman has always been bigger than the United States, and not just because he was inspired — directly or indirectly is still subject to debate — by Friedrich Nietzsche’s polar-opposite Übermensch.
In an age rife with immigration paranoia, it’s refreshing to see an alien refugee tell the United States that it’s as important to him as any other country on Earth — which in turn is as important to Superman as any other planet in the multiverse.
The genius of Superman is that he belongs to everyone, for the dual purposes of peace and protection. He’s above ephemeral geopolitics and nationalist concerns, a universal agent unlike any other found in pop culture.
The finest moment in Action Comics No. 900 comes when Goyer makes that exquisitely clear to everyone.
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220 Comments
Superman renounces his American citizenship?
So that's what the scraping of the bottom of a barrel sounds like.
"Truth, justice, and the…. yeah what ever…"
Bye bye Superman.
Oh cool, so we can create a superhero with the motto: "Truth, Justice, and the American Way!" And DC can't do anything about it, right!!!???
Awesome!!!
It's upsetting and distressing that it's become so commonplace to dislike America and all she stands for. Next it will be "Lies, Unequality and Sharia Law"
Comics used to be for the young and the young at heart.
Now they're for the left and dead of heart.
Wait, he is not a natural born American and I don't recall him ever becoming naturalized. How can he renounce what he never had?
Just stop already! This is just pissing me off. I want to know who thought this was a good idea? Superman is the ultimate immigrant. We love him because he left a hostile world then used his gifts and talents to better this one! Want to know why he did this? Because of his AMERICAN values! What other country in the world could there possibly exist a superhero like a Superman? Anyone?! Not only am I pissed, I'm also very sad…
Oh, so a we've finally got a black man as President and NOW Superman wants to renounce his US citizenship? Obviously he's a racist! The Leftists at DC have turned Superman into Supercracker!
This is how the Left thinks, right? Since BO is POTUS anyone who says anything negative about the government is a racist?
The S on his chest now stands for socialism.
In the next issue, he gets a sex change operation.
Superman was aligned as an American hero simply because he was a force for global good, as is America. The current slate of writers are either unaware of this initial reasoning or, more likely, they don't believe that America is a force for global good. His battles to bring freedom and peace and goodwill to all mankind aren't synonymous with any country other than America. Certainly he's not fighting for the French way or the Saudi way or the Russian way (although there was Red Son). It's all just so damn nonsensical. Unless he's no longer fighting for truth, justice and the American way. Well, I guess it's pretty obvious that he isn't anymore.
He'll have to submit to a TSA sponsored testicular pat down in Atlanta!
The only people who are shocked and outraged by this are people who don't follow the comic book world. As a fan of different heroes, you quickly learn that a fair amount of writers and contributors for these characters are liberal and from time to time incorporate silly social and political commentary into their products. It's never stopped me from being a fan of Superman or any other hero I grew up with; instead it just makes me avoid junk like this and wait for better content down the road.
OK, it's now official…
My innocence is lost.
I can see that DC has gone down the path of Marvel … we do not have to rehash there slip into oblivion.
I'll be honest. I stopped reading DC a while ago when they brought the original Captain Boomerang back from the dead. Seriously. Captain Freakin' Boomerang. The man with the power to throw boomerangs at the Flash. The man who tied the Flash to a giant boomerang.
As for this storyline, because the arts have a large number of liberals pursuing those activities, a lot of liberals get into comic art and comic writing. This sort of storyline has more or less been par for the course lately.
I don't care because I haven't read comics since I was 12. But I think this is cool. Doing something like this shows their true colors. But if I liked comics, I would stop buying them.
What a bunch of impotent wacko's we have in high places!
Yep, no more Krypton …no more birth certificate.
Just wait until they write him out of the closet.
You know, the trolls will come out soon and laugh at us for taking such a thing seriously.
But I have learned in my relatively short life that the "little things" are the most important. They are the canary in the coalmine. If they can do this to a Superhero that is known across this country, and even around the world as an AMERICAN HERO, what else will they do?
When I look back now at how the Left behaved in this country in the 80s (which is about as far back as I can remember politics in any great depth and detail), I see now that they were already infected for a long time with statism and hatred for this country and what it stands for. For so long I believed that the Left and the Right were just arguing 2 legitimate POVs on the Constitution and that the 2 could co-exist. For so long even squishy people on the Right will tell us that we shouldn't question the Left's patriotism, etc.
But I can't help it. How can you say you love a country when you attack everything it was founded upon, and even twist those things it was founded upon in order to gain more power? It's one thing to say you want to make it better and we had some things we needed to make better (women's right to own property, be her own person, vote; freeing the slaves and ensuring their civil rights; better treatment of Native Americans).
The thing is, for the most part we did those things by taking away the INSTITUTIONAL discrimination. But that wasn't enough. And that's because the underbelly of the Left is unicorns and rainbows. It's power and control. Women are used; blacks are used; Muslims are used; gays are used. And that is clear especially for blacks because you see that once they became the pet project of the Left, their situation has NOT improved but gotten worse. They traded one master for another.
So the Superman thing may seem small and insignificant relative to all the other things we have going on in this country and around the world right now. But it is another canary in the coalmine, another symptom of what has been wrong with this country for a long time. And what's wrong is not respect for the Constitution, respect for our Founders (warts and all), respect for our founding principles, love of this country and the recognition that when seen as a whole, is the Shining City on the Hill.
What is wrong is that all those things have been polluted and destroyed. We lost our honor and our moral compass and we will pay the price if we don't get back on track. Actually, not only WE now, but our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, etc. etc. etc. What did Reagan say? We'd send ourselves into a 1,000 years of darkness. A wise man. Very wise man. Just like our Founders.
As the reason Big Hollywood was founded, they realize that politics is downstream from pop culture. The only reason they'll come here to ridicule us is because they don't want us to believe that is the case. Otherwise, they lose their stranglehold on the culture and I think they're starting to notice their fingertips are slipping away.
For far too long we have abdicated so much to the Left because they started with the small things and we brushed them off. It's that Overton Window idea. And the Window keeps getting shifted and shifted and shifted, and we keep letting it.
When will we really draw the line in the sand? As much influence as the Tea Party has had since its inception and during the 2010 election cycle, I feel like we can be doing so much more. I don't think the politicians think we're serious enough; I don't even know if the rest of America thinks we're serious enough.
I'm not advocating acting like the Left, but we need to be seen more, whether it be the "flash mobs of kindness" that Beck suggested, or something else. We need to stop preaching to the choir and start preaching to the moderates, independents, fence-sitters and apathetics.
We need to be MORE active than ever or this country is lost.
Because, you know, it worked so well for them when they tossed that into "Superman Returns" – the only movie I've ever seen that wanted me to file a class-action lawsuit to recover the 2 hours stolen from me.
In a swift reply to DC Comics "media stunt" with Superman renouncing his citizenship, Marvel will be going one-up on PC Comics by renaming The X-Men as The X-Lifeforms.
That is, until he becomes the Rainbow Coalition Lantern!
sad
I'm not a comics person, but this sounds like DC's grasp of their audience is right up there with Hollywood's when it comes to American and traditional values. Nonexistent. It will be fun to watch their confused reaction when their readers abandon them over their neutering of Superman.
Point of fact, the phrase was used mainly on the old 40's radio & 50's tv shows. (reflecting WWII/Cold War sensibilities) Was only spoken by Christopher Reeve in the 1st Superman movie (1978). It hasn't been regularly used in the comic books, movies, tv shows since. Not really as central to the modern character as people seem to think. So use it all you like, but I'll bet Time Warner still owns the phrase.
Next thing you know he'll join the communist party. Too bad the left wants to inject their poisonous agenda into every point of youth that they can infiltrate. Superman jumped the shark when he went schizophrenic and joined the dark side.
My teenage daughter always bought the Archie comic books at the supermarket because of the clean humor, and because I told her I read them when I was a kid (Archie, Miss Grundie, Jughead etc. were all friends to me). Then suddenly they started introducing homosexual characters. She hasn't bought one since, and I applaud her choice.
Maybe these comic book writers have enough leftist readers to keep them going, or they don't care about profits because they have a "progressive" agenda to push. But they'll push it without our family's money or help, at least.
Superman: "I'm here in the name of Truth, Justice and the United Nations Human Rights Council. So which third world village do you want me to destroy?"
I don't give the writers that much credit. They're just trying to shock their audience, increase profits. Too bad they don't stop to think about the audience they're going to lose over this.
So he's what? For "Truth, Justice and the marketing whims of a multi-national, multi-media corperation such as AOL/Time Warner Comics"?
May the comic book industry collapse and implode on its smugness.
The writer of this little anti-American, pro-World tale is David Goyer, who's also developing the story for the next Superman movie. So that's encouraging.
Anyway, yeah comics and comic book superheroes don't seem significant to a lot of people when you're considering the real problems of the world. But they are our pop culture, and – as they are often read by younger people – they can and do influence readers when they're used to promote a Progressive agenda (as they have for a good 30-40 years now). So I'd argue something like having Superman renounce his American citizenship is significant, and not a development that should only be made fun of.
Goyer is a Hollywood screenwriter, producer, director – I'm assuming, based on that, a Liberal – so it goes deeper than comic books, anyway. His story reflects an all-power-to-the-U.N., One World Government stance, basically, with Superman as Citizen of the World. I don't exactly see how America's values and interests and the world's values and interests need to be mutually exclusive, but Goyer does, apparently.
With Justice Brother Jeese Jackson shouting, "No Justice, No Peace!" and my personal favorite "Hymie Town" when he talks about the Jewish people.
He was adopted after he was found by his human parents.
Once the US is no longer the Beacon of Democracy than we can join other coutries to form a national union without borders. you know, like Europe. Because Europe is so much better then the US. They have culture, which most of them can never see because it's swamped by US tourists. They have an international understanding of other groups, but the Italians who lecture us about how we treat Mexican Illegals will not think twice about spitting on an African illegal in Rome or Milan. They have open borders so that their citizens can travel freely from country to country, well those who can afford the train fair for trains that may or may not be running due to strikes. On and on and on….
Spent two wonderful weeks driving around Northern Italy a few years ago. Loved the people, the food, and the scenery. All the italians loved to tell me what is wrong with their country, more importantly what is wrong with AMerica today, BUT would then tell me they can't wait to come and visit and see America for themselves and maybe stay here.
America is still the place to strive to be like for the average European. Only the upper classes who have all the money and the status look down on us. The average person still believes in the AMerican dream.
Superman wasn't weakened by Kryptonite-it was liberalism that got to him. Sad.
Thank God Christopher Reeves doesn't have to see this.
When the establishment becomes anti-American… the Independent Publishers will be able to push radical ideas such as Truth, Justice, and the American way!
(Seriously, i see it in some of the new Punk rock teenagers. They're against the establishment of socialism and communism pushed onto them in High School, and look towards the ideals of Individualism, vs collectivism.)
Ouch! You really hit the nail on the head! Mind if I use that line myself?
What readers are left, you mean. During WWII and even into post-war years, a popular comic book routinely sold as many as a million copies a month. These days, the hottest titles sell less than 100,000 copies a month. Most comics sell 20,000 copies or fewer.
Pushing the Progressive agenda – at least in part – has helped comics right to the brink of extinction. But they just keep on going, regardless.
Does anyone else see this as ab obvious ploy for publicity? As long as there is buz about it – the writers/producers wil get what they want.
Though I do like HollywoodRon's comment about another hero using Supe's famous tagline.
Superman can be superman, but he cannot be president.
Gary Larson was prophetic about what the S stood for.
I don't believe in Superman anymore since he was castrated by Lois Lane in the last movie so let him move to another country who really gives a crap
I haven't read comics in decades but the man raised in America's heartland by Ma and Pa Kent would never, NEVER!, renounce his American citizenship for any reason. I read the article link attached and found out that he was protesting the Iranian government and the US government told him to stop. So, I am sympathetic with his reasons. It almost comes across as anti-Obama because he was the President who stood by and did nothing when the Iranian people took to the streets. But still, it is more unbelievable that Superman would renounce his citizenship than it is having the concept of a Superman himself. They have abrogated their ownership of his legacy and they need to turn him over to some patriots who know what he means and what he stands for. They have obviously lost all perspective on his character.
This is what happens when you let the lawncrappers and cat-piss boy take over the comic book industry.
We officially live in a anti-american, American world. Superman was always for the red, white and blue. I remember a comic book of Superman where the greastest debate was who was he going to marry, Lana Lang or Lois lane?(back when I was a kid) Now we need edgy, dark, anti-american super heros. sad very sad.
Of course DC will counter with the introduction of "Superperson" an individual who resembles one of those androgynous anime characters.
My comics days are long behind me, but Superman has always been my favorite character out of all the DC and Marvel universe characters. For those of us who grew up with the character, he represents an ideal — one that isn't going to change just because of one writer's misguided politics in one issue.
Truth.
Bye bye American pie……………………………..the market's bigger elsewhere
That's why I stopped reading comic in the late 90s for the reasons you stated and the trend to make all heroes a bunch of angst ridden "dark" heroes.
Superman is always going to be American to me. Just because some jerks wrote one story doesn't discount decades of comics.
show me the long form of your bc supes .
rumor has it that next superman going black . i can see some childish rightwinger's heads mutate and melt .
comics ? really ?
hahahahha
There was a comic called Red Son that speculated what it would have been like if Superman's escape pod landed in the Soviet Union instead of the US. It wasn't a bad read and was a mainly experimental "what if" type of story, but yes they have toyed with the idea.
Don't even get me started with the many things wrong with Superman Returns. Even Quest for Peace, the worst out of the Reeves Superman films, had more dignity than that steaming load.
What's just as stupid is the Wired article where the author comments how refreshing it is to see Superman now ranks America as just one country among many. May I say how not surprised I am that this fool would think that. By the way that just one country among many way of doing things seems to be working great in Libya.
In the next issue, he gets a sex change operation.
Wait, so the mullet they gave him after he rose from the dead wasn't a consequence of neutering sex change? Damn it.
It's sad to see DC go the way of Marvel, by which I mean "stick politics in absolutely every story and beat readers over the head with it." Ever since Geoff Johns left the book, the Superman comics have been really watered down.
If you want to see how God-awful it is now, look no further than the current "Grounded" arc. What's left of the story has been building up to him feeling like he doesn't do enough for regular Americans and that his powers scare them. It's understandable, but it's going the whiny X-Men route. It's basically just Superman walking through different US cities and then stopping by to lecture "life lessons" random bystanders in the loftiest, most presumptuous way possible. Observe: http://readrant.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/super...
Ironically, he's supposed to be walking around because he wants to understand the problems and lives of middle Americans…while talking down to most of them like a smug prick. That's not my Supes. :<
And if you look up the writer of this tripe, Joe Michael Stracyznski, his political leanings are pretty much what you would expect.
Unfortunately, I have to concede that you're right. Usually if you know which writer it is, you know what you're in for.
Up until now, I felt Marvel was mostly guilty of it, especially with Civil War, where lefty Ed Brubaker tried his damndest to portray Iron Man as a jack-booted fascist. I stopped reading Marvel for retconning Mary Jane and Peter's marriage, turning her into a depressed alcoholic and Spidey into a pussified manchild that sleeps around and mooches off his aunt. I'm not even going to get into specifics, because it's too outrageously ridiculous (even for a comic book) and I'll just get pissed. Anyone that's morbidly curious can look up "One More Day"; I warn you, the explanation for the retcon pretty awful.
get over it . there are other countries , some are as good and some are even better
the myth of american exceptionalism http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifameric...
Clark Kent's parents would take him out back and shove a stick of kryptonite up his ass if he tried this sort of crap. Want to make it realistic? Then show THAT side of this decision.
Maybe they can have Superman beat to death a 14 year old rape victim in Pakistan for her crime of being raped. That will show us how great being multicultural really is.
You can let DC Comics know what you think about this at: http://www.dccomics.com/dccomics/about/?action=co...
(unless this website removes links. In that case just go to dccomics.com and use their Contact link).
I couldn't agree more other than we may need to start acting like the left.
You should have seen the last issue of the "Brightest Day" saga that came out yesterday too! the Swamp thing came back revised to be the new ultimate hero-god of the world, KILLING corporate CEO's for polluting the planet.
He said that similar fates are waiting anyone who dares contribute to anything anti-green.
I'm not making it up. I was revolted!
They are deep within us…they need removal.
Sorry it's not a myth as Libya has proven. Where are these so called better countries and what have they been doing to make things better? All they seem to be able to do is talk. By the way quoting a liberal trashing America in a foreign liberal newspaper, BTW how is the U.K.'s socialist paradise doing these days?, doesn't cut it. It's funny when liberals lecture on getting over things..yeah you guys got over George W. Bush and Sarah Palin didn't you?
No, no, no! WTF??? Superman is truth, justice and the American way! And the American way is the american dream, not only for U.S. citizens but also for all the people in the world. I was born in Madrid, Spain, so I am not an US citizen but I believe in the beloved USA. I am not going to buy more comics of Superman since this terrible editorial decision. Please, Geoff, come back to Superman. Geoff is not a liberal.
Did you read the end of Brightest Day?
In risk of spoiling something ….
the story becomes this touchy-feely environmental trap that seems like it as written by Al Gore. Even in some of his other Superman works, Geoff Johns promotes one-world, global garbage. He's one of the better writers, but he's drifted into looney leftist zones a couple times, too.
Wow, I wonder what the leftist Jerry Seinfeld thinks of his hero now…????
Okay … this sounds like a huge PR trap, but that doesn't make it right. Superman was raised in Kansas — I mean, come on, man.
HOWEVER … without reading the story, I can't say I blame Superman.
Before I start, let me say that I believe I am blessed for having been born here — there simply is not another place like the U.S. in the history of the world … period. The mere idea that the Founders incorporated natural rights in our government is STILL light years ahead of its time.
BUT … can anyone say we are a country of natural, God-given rights right now?
-Look at your paychecks. Half of my wealth is being confiscated by force and spread to a welfare state overseen by a blatant Marxist White House.
-Our tax dollars have been sent to Hamas and Fatah, and Palestinian terrorists.
-Some of my money goes to the slaughter of babies in the womb — to Panned Parenthood, a group started by a Nazi pig.
-Our Justice Department bows to the feet of Islam.
I LOVE my country, and am working to help change it, but we have little moral superiority left, and are a small sliver of what our Founders gave us.
So Superman shrugged … In a way I don't blame him … even though I still think we can save ourselves.
"The genius of Superman is that he belongs to everyone…"
Genius? I don´t know everyone and neither do you.
That´s like your older brother telling you that he cares as much about your classmates as about you. To which the proper response is: Screw you.
Video games are today's comic books for kids. That's what they spend hours with, not funnybooks.
Actually it was used in "Lois and Clark". In one episode in particular, during a lovers' spat, Clark/Superman tried to explain to Lois why he wasn't available to save her from a booby trapped treadmill when Lois said, "Oh don't quote truth, justice and the American Way to me. I coined that phrase if you'll remember."
I had a roommate when I first joined the Corps who said Green Lantern was racist because John Stewart (the black Green Lantern) didn't have the same logo on his chest that Hal and Guy Gardner did.
Was Superman's origin influenced by WWII and the Holocaust? I thought that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster wanted to portray America's greatness when the US entered WWII.
Great. If Superman is not American (the way Schuster and Siegel created him), why bother? Who cares about Captain UN? This is all prep for making Superman into a character with 100% less America, to pursue foreign sales in the upcoming movie.
And it will sell like a Tofu-burger, or "tofurkey." Which is what it is. Ironically, Liberals by taking America out of the culture, pretty much guarantee "Neo Confederism" which is not Cartman re-fighting the Civil War but individual "secession" from the very idea of America. With all that implies. If America is just a place on a map where a bunch of "citizens of the world" live, who cares about it? No one will fight, die, or pay taxes for it, withdrawing into very tight associations based on locality, tribe, religion, ethnicity and so on.
I'm wondering who is effected by this? I lost interest in comic books in 1969–and even then I was more interested in Betty and Veronica than the pedestrian Superman. My kids never read page one of a comic. Perhaps there is some narrow segment of society where adults have a lot of energy around what's going to happen in the next issue that comes out, but a very small segment at that. I suspect this is one of those stories which will only generate interest to the degree that conservatives make it an issue.
Wonder Woman no longer wears the Stars & Stripes. The origin of Woman Woman is influenced by American patriotism.
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2010/06/29/new-wond...
They were planning for Captain America to be black, not Superman, moronic dink. I really don't care if he goes black or gets a spray-tan, it's really you asshats that obsess over race.
If you're going to play the race card, at least get your facts straight…not like your lot likes to do that anyway. From reading your posts in various threads here, I can see where the progressives get their position of the "we am the smirtist" group on the spectrum.
It started at the beginning of the twentieth century. The marxist takeover of our universities was complete in the 1950s.
Meh. Its a marketing gimmick. In a few years it'll be retconned out. After all, Marvel did the same thing with Captain America a while back, too.
I was never much of a Supes reader, tho, so it doesn't bother me all that much. Another reason not to care for him. The bigger news for me this week was that Constantine is now back in the regular DCU.
OK so Superman renounces his American Citizenship….then Americans should renounce Superman. Time to stop buying all Superman products, movie tickets, DVD's, comics and any other Matel product. Hit 'em in the pocketbook people. THEN maybe they'll get it. http://www.thefedupamerican.com
I'm reminded of an essay Doctor Zero wrote last year, regarding superheroes as a libertarian ideal: http://hotair.com/archives/2010/05/08/men-of-iron... I'd actually check it out, it's a fantastic read.
At least we still have The Governator. Ahnuld will fight for truth, justice, and the American way!
This is the nail in the coffin for why i stopped buying comics three years ago. I had seen everything done umpteenth times, most of the old legends were pale comparisons of the past and none of the new titles were any better. I finally looked at my wallet and the $4 cover price that most comics are now and said, enough is enough, what I am spending is not worth what I am recieving.
Hell the market is so bad for comics now that I cant even sell my collection for a fraction of what I paid for them all.
Feel free (until Obama puts a tax on free thought).
Kryptonite scalpels are rationed under obamacare.
Sorry Superman. You will find that there is no such thing as a World Citizen. And when you want back in, well, the door might be closed.
We still have Captain America. And no way he's going to become Captain UN.
The entire story idea is stupid…
but the depressing part is this 8 pager was written by the screenwriter of the upcoming Superman reboot.
Savages!
My Superman was an American.
They will try and change that soon enough,,,, I'm seething with rage. I wish their stock holders luck as the sales plummet.
None of my kids read ANY comic books, though I devoured them as a youngster. The left is pathetic.
Next, watch Superman partake in the Folsom Street Festival in San Fran Sicko
I have to assume that English is not your native language.
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