To continue my (and apparently, CandidGamera’s) thought:
Superman usually has a very good reason for doing whatever is making him look like a dick, and, it turns out, usually isn’t being a dick.
Growing up, I used to watch the Captain Marvel cartoon, and I always wondered why I didn’t see him on the newstands. Then I found out what Marvel comics did to him. Grrrrrrrrr :mad:
That, plus the fact that none of his Rogue’s galler will really hurt him, (Toyman, The Prankster, Ali Baba, etc.) makes me think he is an overconfident jerk.
I think you mean DC instead of Marvel.
THIS ONE seems to be from Dr. Frued’s Dream Journal comics.
Only Germans would come up with something that weird.
To add to the answers, apparently then-DC-editor Julie Schwartz[sup]*[/sup] would commission an outrageous cover, then challenge the writer(s) to craft a story around the premise.
[sup]*[/sup] a man whose sexual prowlness gave hope to bald Jewish men everywhere 
Only a Brit, actually. Grant Morrison. And I call foul on them using Grant. Too darned easy. His books are full of weird crap like that.
After his death, DC did a tribute where 8 of those covers had current writers taking up the same challenge, as well as modern artists redoing the covers.
This is my favourite cover of the bunch (although Mystery In Space had my favourite stories), and either it or the original cover would fit right in. (Batman is a dick, too.)
Peter Milligan, actually actually. (Morrison’s last issue was #26, IIRC.) Both are Her Majesty’s subjects, although I believe Morrison, who is a Scot, might blanche at being called a Brit. (And yes, both frequently include the absurd in their work.)
To jump on the bandwagon, the idea behind all these covers was that they were misdirection. Everyone knew Superman was actually a good guy, so the reason to buy the book was to find out the solution to the mystery of why Superman was apparently behaving improperly. Inevitably, it was a ruse to smoke out some villain, or the effect of red kryptonite, or the set-up for a surprise party, or a Superman imposter, or something similar. (Additionally, sometimes the covers would just be an exaggeration of what was really going on.)
–Cliffy
To provide a counter point to the people defending him with those goofy silver age stories there are plenty of instances where Superman really is just a big, patronizing jerk who treats his so-called friends pretty badly. The best example that comes to mind off the top of my head is where he arranges to use a super-science ray to make Lois put on about four hundred pounds as part of a plan to make her too embarassed to go outside. Yeah, Superman really could be a jerk.
It wasn’t to make her too embarassed – it was to disguise her so she wouldn’t be recognized and killed (she was a witness in an upcoming trial IIRC). She had the bad luck to be standing in front of a funhouse mirror that “reduced” her at the same time one of the hit men happened to be nearby, however, so it almost didn’t work. Superman got there just in time.
It’s still a bit high-handed, but, like most of these examples, it was something done for someone else’s good. Sherlock Holmes used to pull tricks like that all the time, too.
Ach! That’s right. >_<
In my defense, Milligan’s arc was in much the same vein as a Morrison book, with the reality hopping, dreamscapes, and crazy-assed characters.
Is it just me, or does Lois Lane have a disproportionate number of stupid covers?
The folks at DC had no idea what to do with Lois Lane, so they tended toward bizarre story ideas, usually based on sexist notions.
You mean DC, and they are only peripherally responsible for the Captain’s demise. They sued Fawcett, but the case was never decided, and Fawcett decided that comics were dying anyway, so just folded – which probably would have happened without the lawsuit.
DC later reprinted the adventures of the Big Red Cheese in the 70s (they got the rights when Fawcett quit comics), so they deserve credit for that, though demerits for trying to darkknight him in the 90s. The Big Red Cheese was the most comic and childlike (Billy Batson was, of course, a preteen) of superheroes, and his adventures were never meant to be taken as anything but humorous fun.
The site is amusing, but am also somewhat distressed at the snideness of it all. The phony superiority is what often passes for humor nowadays. And often is it just plain wrong – like in this panel. The comment comes from complete ignorance – that woman had just confessed to murder and was being left for the police to be picked up.
Granted, there were a lot of “teaser” covers that look a bit silly nowadays. And Julie Schwartz loved putting gorillas on comic covers, since issues with those covers tended to sell well. But I’m sure there will be plenty of things that you do that will look just as absurd to people in 40 years.
That site is like crack.
I was in tears from laughing so hard. Of course, my wife thinks I’ve lost my mind (so what else is new?)
Wow, I never knew Superman was such a dick.
If you get deeper into the site, you’ll find that Batman is also a dick.
If those things seem as over-the-top silly as those Jimmy Olsen covers, then they deserve to be laughed at. I don’t think its anything to be defensive about. DC made lots of stuff even older than some of the comics on the site that stand up well today. It’s not the age of the comics really (most of the comics on the site aren’t the top-line comics of their time), its more the bizarreness and repitition of ideas and teases and the cumultative effect of these that make them humorous. The site is like MST 3000 (though not as great as that masterpiece).
I’ll see your Superdickery and raise you a Gone & Forgotten. Updates are once in a blue moon, but the archives are still worth going through.
To keep with the Superdickery theme, here is a career retrospective of Krypto for starters. But most of the site is just riffing off some really bad, bad comics. For example, here’s the G&F page on Skateman, the worst comic I ever spent money on.
You obviously had limited access to crap comics where you grew up.
Have some Captain Canuck. 
