2008 Comic Book News Archives

December 9, 2008: Gary Frank's Thoughts on "Superman: Secret Origin"

Newsarama.com spoke with Gary Frank about next year's "Superman: Secret Origin" miniseries and the reasoning behind needing to re-tell Superman's origin story. Here's an excerpt from the interview...

    GF: I'm someone who likes clarity. It depresses me to see people arguing about what is or is not canon instead of enjoying the books. We know that Superman has had a lot of stories told about him over the years and it's probably inevitable that some things will contradict other things and become a little messy. I'm not sure whether the main motivation for the previous reboots have been to keep the character fresh or to just clear the decks and say "Okay, this our jumping on point." so that everyone knows where they stand.

Secret Origin Covers

    From my (slightly anal-retentive) point of view, I like the tidying up aspect of it. I like to know who the character is and be reasonably confident that the stories I read will be about that character no matter who the writer is.

    That said, if you're going clear those decks, then I think you need to find the writer who has a very clear vision of the character and, presently, I don't think there is a writer in the industry who is better at taking these characters and distilling them down to their essences than Geoff. He understands the appeal of Superman and yet doesn't seem to have the common weakness of trying to make his mark on a character. When he gets going he doesn't ever talk about his "version" of Superman. It's just Superman.

Read the complete interview at the Newsarama website.



2008 Comic News

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