2014 Comic Book News Archives

November 4, 2014: Scott Snyder Talks About the End of "Superman Unchained"

Superman Unchained #9 With issue #9, the final issue, of "Superman Unchained" finally released tomorrow, HitFix.com caught up with series writer Scott Snyder to find out his thoughts on the series as a whole. Here's an excerpt from the interview...

    There is a misconception with modern - I guess more movie going audiences more so than comic book audiences - that Superman's kind of boring. That he's a boy scout and he's too perfect. That he doesn't have real flaws. But Superman Unchained kind of peels that away. Was that something you actively were trying to do, to humanize him?

    SS: Yeah. Very much so. Honestly what "Superman Unchained" does, and what' I'm most proud of about the entire series, is that it really argues Superman down a core explanation. And for me at least, it's a personal explanation of what I love about Superman. The criticism he gets - that he always does the right thing, he's just a boy scout, he's outdated. How he's just singular in his decisions and he never, ever questions what he's doing and he's goody two shoes. All that kind of stuff that people say when they're trying to make Superman feel anachronistic or, you know, from another time. To me it couldn't be further from the truth.

    When you write Clark, what you realize is he's a guy who's making it up as he goes along. He's not someone who's sure of himself or thinks that he knows the right answers. He's not out there to be a symbol for us. He's basically a guy who grew up in Kansas with the weight of the world on his shoulders, trying to do the right thing case by case. In that way, I think he's actually a tremendous inspiration or he should be, because he's anything but singular or monolithic in terms of what he stands for. I think he'd be the first to say "I don't stand for anything. I'm not trying to show people how to live their lives. I'm just trying to do the right thing with trial and error each time." And that's sort of what the entire story is really about. The accusation made against him by Wraith, the other alien who that's been working for the government forever and is much stronger than Superman, is that Superman doesn't do the tough things. That Superman doesn't change the world to do this, this and this because he's afraid.

    And the truth is Superman doesn't do those things, but not because he's afraid. He doesn't go to countries and reshape their politics. He just feels he'd be overstepping. And all of choices he does make are as a man trying to light his own way. To do things that he can be proud of and allow him to sleep well at night.

Read the entire interview at the HitFix website.



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