Some Brief Thoughts On: "Superman: Red Son" · 10:39pm Jun 4th, 2021
After much hemming and hawing over whether or not I should buy this thing, I finally bit the bullet and got it. Initial thoughts...
Well, I'll be honest. I'm hugely critical–or at least wary–of the evil or dark Superman-type story, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't irritated by the seeming rise of twisted pastiches like Homelander, Omni-Man, or Brightburn. That being said...I think this comic explores the idea of a Superman not necessarily raised on the same values as the prime version pretty well. Mostly because even for how much of a different approach he takes, however many mistakes he makes...he's still at least trying to be a hero. His heart's in the right place, but he ended up doing the wrong things for what he earnestly believed were the right reasons. And even then, even after all the mistakes he made...he still ended up going out like the Superman we all know and love.
I think if there was one thing I don't really like about the book, it's the ending. I don't like the stable time loop thing. Just feels like it's there for surprise value and not much else. It doesn't really do much for the story as a whole other than just being there for a last minute surprise. You could cut it out entirely (as the animated version did, which I liked), and the story as a whole would be pretty much unchanged, I think.
But anyway, other than what I thought was an unnecessary twist ending, I liked it.
IMO, I don't think Invincible really belongs alongside The Boys and Brightburn. Even if it does feature an evil Superman expy, Invincible is ultimately a reconstructive love-letter to the superhero genre, whereas the other two are pure deconstructions of it.
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Eh, fair.
Even so, it's another addition to the "evil Superman" expy roster, and I honestly think that whole thing has gotten old by now. I'll give a bit more credit to Omni-Man's character knowing what little I do about where the comic leads, but it still comes at a time where I think the trend has been worn down to death.
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Fair enough. Personally, I've enjoyed The Boys and Invincible (and I probably would've liked Brightburn too if I wasn't so squeamish), so I'm obviously biased in that regard, but I can definitely see where you're coming from.
For what it's worth, I think the Netflix adaptation of Jupiter's Circle is the last time we'll see a new "evil Superman" enter the public consciousness for quite some time*. What we have now is probably all we're going to have for a while.
*Assuming Disney doesn't do anything with the Irredeemable license they got from 20th Century Fox. Personally, I can't see them using it.
This whole thing started with that Saturday Night Live sketch: "what if baby Superman had landed in Germany in 1920?"