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While we’re at it, the post-Crisis Superman was also too dumb to realize that using his powers to beat the crap out of humans at football was wrong until Pa Kent gave him a lecture and too dumb to realize that drunk driving was bad until he was involved in someone getting killed. :rolleyes:
Fenris
He’s killed at least once since then: Doomsday. Yeah, it turns out Doomsday didn’t die, but not through Superman’s lack of trying. There was also an earlier issue where Superman pulled the plug on some sort of psychic hive-mind thing. Again, they/it didn’t die, but Superman was willing to snuff them. Once that line’s been crossed, it will be crossed again.
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Wanna bet?
Byrne waltzed off the book as soon as Superman snuffed the three Phantom Zone criminals. He dropped his little bombshell then left 'cause it might take work to deal with the consequences. There was about a year-and-a-half gap, then Roger Stern tried to clean up Byrne’s mess (as so many other writers end up having to do on other books) with the aforementioned storyline (it’s the one where Supes starts sleepwalking and dressing up like Gangbuster and then exiles himself into space. All Stern (and, IIRC Perez as co-plotter), no Byrne.
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Yeah, as opposed to saying “I’m not so stupid that I have to kill to figure out it’s wrong” like the pre-Crisis Superman and so many other characters (and real people) did. How many people d’ya suppose that Ghandi had to kill before he decided to go his non-violence route?
Gee, maybe we should have an issue where Superman decides to test the waters to see if…say…rape is wrong. He can rape someone THEN decide he doesn’t like it.
Hey, it was his method for murder, drunk driving (or allowing people to drive drunk) and cheating.
What’s sad/funny is that a few years before Byrne took over Superman, when he was brilliantly reinventing the Fantastic Four, there was an interview with him in (IIRC) Amazing Heroes where the interviewer asked if Captain America ever killed. Byrne says “Of course, he was a soldier. Mr. Fantastic never kills, however.”
The interviewer asked “Well, what would happen if Mr. Fantastic was placed in a situation where it was kill someone or innocents will die?”
Byrne replied that “Mr. Fantastic was smart enough to figure out a third option. And if a third option wasn’t available,” Byrne said “I’d simply assume the writer was incompetent. Mr Fantastic doesn’t kill. It’s that simple.”*
Amazing that a guy who’s got such a good grasp of Mr. Fantastic’s character can be so horribly wrong about another, very similar character.
Fenris
*These are paraphrases, not direct quotes: I don’t have the issue in front of me.
Hmm, I had no memory of Byrne leaving the book after that fiasco. Probably because I did too for a while. Thanks for the correction.
Hey, my original suggestion is an even more transparent Galactus knockoff! He even has a color/watersport herald, the Scarlet Skier!
Actually the most powerful entity in the DC universe is Giordano the Magnificent.
Or Imperiex. Although Mr. Nebula was a great character.