Great Caesar's Ghost! Superman renounces American citizenship

reply to post by ModernAcademia


What's the point of Superman speaking at the UN ??

The US would just veto anything he said like they always do..

It's a freaking comic book, people. If you don't like it, don't read it. All you self proclaimed conservatives who want government out of your stuff sure seem irked by something you probably don't purchase anyway.

I think it's kind of lame...

I'm a huge comic book reader, and love Superman...and he's supposed to be pretty old-timey folksy in his beliefs. I just don't see his character going along with a more liberal mindset. He supposedly grew up on a farm and adopted the values of Ma and Pa Kent...it seems like he'd be disappointed in the current direction of the country.

Wonder Woman is different. She has her own "country", Themyscira...so it's pretty stupid for her to go around basically wearing an American flag as her outfit. She is more of a "liberal" thinker...but would probably view America as just another crumbling empire.

Originally posted by TechVampyre


[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/ae8c65a12340.jpg[/atsimg]

Who would you trust?

Never trust ANYONE with a Tribble on their head.

As powerful symbols, superheroes etc are of course targets of the NWO.

Also, recently:

1) Superman will be played by an English guy. The entertainment media won't allow much of any negativity to be expressed about this, partly because the entertainment media is paid to hype and there is no money in hating on product...

...but can you imagine if an American were cast as James Bond or Dr Who? It would be completely unacceptable to the UK. They've floated that balloon a few times and it's always clearly an outrage and even their mass media gets rebellious about it. And that should tell you something about who the 'NWO' really is.

Personally, I'm just going to ignore the English Superman BS until it goes away.

2) At Wrestlemania 27 just a few weeks ago in Atlanta, Mexican luchador (mask wearing pro-wrestler) Rey Mysterio Junior came out dressed as Captain America, except with an M on his head.

Rey is pretty popular and has been for a ~decade, and he will generally wear some unusual outfit for Wrestlemania, and has worn superhero outfits in the past, but I think the only fair interpretation of the crowd's reaction was that it "killed his heat" i.e. made them ambivalent about rooting for him in his match against Cody Rhodes.

And I guess you could throw in

3) the ongoing attempts to make G.I. Joe 'a real international hero' or whatever.

Here's the real question: How did Superman retain residency for so long if he lives in the Antartic? I smell tax evasion.

Will Clark Kent still be a citizen? If not, where will he live?

reply to post by 11andrew34

...but can you imagine if an American were cast as James Bond or Dr Who?

An Australian was cast as James Bond so I don't see why not..

reply to post by LazerTron


Its out of character, but this is David Goyer writing.

He took Blade from being basically Shaft fighting Dracula and made into some super samurai character fighting rip offs of White Wolf's Vampire Houses.

Superman is supposed to be the consistent classic hero. In character, he wouldn't renounce his citizenship, but stand up to the government and protect the people if it started to act crazy. This happened in the comics when Luthor was elected President and within a year after doing all kinds of illegal things, Batman and Superman lead a coup forcing Luthor out office.

It's true... "Truth and Justice" are not the American Way anymore. It's all Spin, which use to be referred to more accurately as bulllsh*t. I would say "Bullsh*t, and Greed, are the American Way.

Originally posted by the owlbear
It's a freaking comic book, people. If you don't like it, don't read it

That is completely irrelevant
Superman advocating interventionism to young kids is not small deal

Superman,
the new UN propaganda tool.

Originally posted by backinblack

An Australian was cast as James Bond so I don't see why not..

Hmm actually, it occurred to me like 10 minutes later that they did have Robert Downey Jr as Sherlock Holmes recently. But then again, even a lot of Americans thought that was "dodgy." That and it was more of an action movie than a detective story.

But as for Bond...if the Australian you had in mind was Timothy Dalton, apparently he was born in Wales? I thought he was Australian but apparently he's not. According to wiki, born in Wales to an English father and American mother. So Lazenby was the only Australian.

Bond was actually largely based on Canadian(of Scottish decent) William Stephenson...and of course Sean Connery is Scottish, Lazenby is Australian, and hmm it turns out Pierce Brosnan is Irish Catholic. Roger Moore and Daniel Craig are both English (Stockwell, London and Chester, Cheshire respectively).

So you've mostly got Commonwealth aka empire countries...and Ireland which England has often thought of as theirs anyway hehe...although I get the feeling a lot of people would be mildly surprised to discover Brosnan was Irish.

Anyways, perhaps you just aren't the sort of 'bloke' to care much either way, but plenty of people obviously do. Why they do and whether or not they should could be a whole thread unto itself. But you might as well ask 'cricket...what's the big deal?' etc.

In Other News...

METROPOLIS (Daily Planet) - Former American comic book icon Superman announced his intention today to file suit in federal court against the United States Transportation Safety Administration, alleging "inappropriate contact, racial discrimination and retaliatory harassment" in response to his recent decision to renounce his U.S. citizenship.

"Come on!" Superman said, speaking to reporters, "Do they honestly think that I, Superman, am some sort of terrorist? And even if I was, how the heck is some guy sticking his hand up my crotch going to protect America?"

He added that he was detained for three hours at Metropolis International Airport because officials claimed to have found his name on a terrorism "no-fly list". "Yeah right," Superman quipped, "as if a typo on some lousy piece of paper is going to keep me from flying."

"The truth is that they harassed me because I look Kryptonian. On top of that, they told me they couldn't accept my Krypton passport," Superman added. "What the blazes! That passport is good enough for interplanetary travel, and they're giving me grief about it on Earth?"

Superman refused to respond to followup questions regarding his decision to renounce his U.S. citizenship, deferring to his attorney, who concluded the press conference by stating his client sought unspecified damages and remedial compensation. A spokesman for the TSA declined comment, citing ongoing litigation.

Originally posted by AlreadyGone
Now we know why he wears a RED cape...and a RED S...and RED boots....let's see...the color of the USSR flag was RED...the color of the Chinese COMMUNIST Flag is RED....Hmmmmm, see a pattern developing here.
Even good ol' Adolf had as the back ground of the NAZI flag was RED....

DC has an awesome line of stand alone books called "Elseworlds" where the concept is 'parallel universes' and all the sorts of little 'what if ______ was different' stories you can come up with. Marvel has a similar line called "What if" but that was a monthly title whereas the Elseworlds books tended to come out just whenever.

Sometimes it is/was completely stupid stuff, like 'what if Batman was a pirate in the 1700s.'

But one of the WOH amazing ones is like, 'what if Superman's space ship had crash landed in the USSR?'

en.wikipedia.org...:_Red_Son

edit: I can't get that url to work right. The wiki page is "Superman:_Red_Son"

I want to say (and I wish I could find the source to back this up) that his original motto was just "truth and justice" and that the "American way" part was added later.

My first thought is this is very significant. The whole idea of American exceptionalism is called into question by our most beloved super hero.

My second thought is so what? He's a cartoon character. Superman is not real. It's like saying Bugs Bunny or Space Ghost renounced their American citizenship.

My third thought is this. If we are a capitalistic society then simply stop buying the comic strip and stop going to the superman movies if it bugs you that much. I'm not quite sure why it would bug someone that much considering superman is not a real person.

My fourth thought is this. They probably did this so they can make a movie and the entire country will buy a ticket to hear Superman renounce his citizenship and embrace Sharia Law.

It's time everyone realized this country is about making money. We could care less about the long term implications of something like this. I'm willing to bet this is all about making money. Has nothing to do with love or hate of country.

Sad world we live in where cartoon characters have to carry around their papers. Folks...we need to move past petty nonsense and start to solve real problems. Superman renouncing his citizenship is not a real problem.

In 20 years superman will anounce his father was born on Farpoint Station and not Krypton. Therefore, he is not actually Kryptonian.

20 years after that he will announce he is gay.

It's a cartoon folks. It's all about making money.

reply to post by LosLobos


You're the most recent to say it, so I'm picking on you:

While "Superman" is a cartoon - to say it is "just" a cartoon is a bit silly.

Superman has always been an action hero - particularly of younger generations. Children are exposed to more principled ideals from cartoons than they are from school.

Perhaps there's more of a plot mechanic going on here - but the character of superman is being a whiny little douche, to put it bluntly. "I don't like what's going on. I'm going to quit." On one hand - it adds a human element to an otherwise god-like character... and perhaps that is the real point of this arc in the story - it's too early to tell.

The point is - Superman has always been principled in not just being about Truth and Justice - but in arbitrating that Truth and Justice. His character should be: "Is this what America is? Is this what we're supposed to be about? ... No - we should be doing things this way: [insert] - and this is what I'm going to do about it."

Of course, the slide in which he tells the agent that he is rescinding his American citizenship can simply be taken out of context.

The problem, as Superman sees it, is that everything he does is being seen -by other nations- as the actions of America. Every time he beats a bad-guy - it's because America saw him/her as a bad-guy, along those lines. In which case - he is trying to make the point that he is his own individual and not an instrument of the U.S. Government or necessarily representing America with everything he does.

Which would put Superman's rescinding of his U.S. Citizenship in a completely different tone and context from what it has been presumed to be in the discussion so far.

In that sense, I think Superman has often tried to keep real-world politics to a minimum (the entire cartoon) - while some things may get an abstract reference - the history of the cartoon usually tries to avoid "superman says this about Afghanistan"

Although it does seem to indicate there may be a push towards him being a "citizen of the world" - or whatever, but I really think the intent, here, is that Superman is simply getting tired of being regarded as America, itself.

Though I could be missing the point, too.

reply to post by ModernAcademia


I think you can strike the "Academia" part from your name.

Now, you think that a comic strip actually mirrors reality.