2015 Comic Book News Archives

October 2, 2015: "Superman: American Alien" is Not About Clark Kent Becoming a Superhero

Superman: American Alien Max Landis, the screenwriter best known for his film "Chronicle", who is a big Superman fan and has his own Superman comic book series "Superman: American Alien" coming out in November, spoke to Newsarama.com about the series, and how he would describe its premise...

    Newsarama: Max, what's the meaning behind the title American Alien, and how does it apply to the stories you're telling?

    Max Landis: The stories are thematically united by the idea of identity, but not so much "secret" identity... more "personality" identity, who we want to be versus who we are from moment to moment.

    The reason it's called American Alien is that the thing that's always interested me about Superman the least are his alien origins. I think they're important thematically, but ultimately what I like about him as a character is that he was someone who was "born" in the U.S.A. and has grown up wanting to be the best kind of person.

    Each of the stories is him challenging himself - while being challenged - about what kind of person he is. They're less about becoming a superhero and more about becoming not-an-a$$hole.

    Nrama: Wow, what a description. It's interesting that you said it's not about him becoming a superhero, because I've noticed that most of the descriptions reference him as Clark Kent. Are these stories more about Clark Kent than they are about Superman?

    Landis: I would say 150 percent yes. This is not a Superman comic. Superman is in it. Clark puts on the costume a couple of times, although I don't want to give away where and when, but it's more about the man behind it.

    Because honestly, Superman as a hero, most of the stories involving him have been told so brilliantly, that could be told - you know, he's lost his powers, he's died, he's turned evil a million times, he's stopped world-enders and con men and aliens and robots, he's fought inter-dimensional gods, And all that was exciting, but I've seen it. And I wanted to write a comic about what we haven't seen, which is just sort of his day-to-day and the stories he would tell you if you were his friend.

    Because Batman doesn't have one of those. Batman's secret identity is he's killing time until he can be Batman again. And Superman, as Clark Kent, they're the same person. Superman doesn't, to me, doesn't exist - it's just Clark in a costume choosing to try to help people. If there's an immediate call to Superman then he's Superman. You know? I don't think he ever willfully identified as Superman until he saw it on the news, and then he went, why not?

    So yes, it's much more based on.... my interpretation of this mythos is much more based around Clark Kent not just as a secret identity of Superman, but as a character.

Read the entire interview at the Newsarama website.



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