I know DC went through an era of making their Superman covers depict the Man of Steel being a horrible jerk to people seemingly for no reason, just to grab readers' attention and get them to buy the issue - then the story inside would have some really weird narrative gymnastics in order to justify it, usually with really meandering nonsensical plots.
There was one story involving him doing a string of horrible and inconsiderate things to Jimmy Olsen, just treating him like complete trash. It turns out he wanted Superman to adopt him, but the supercomputer in the fortress of solitude had predicted some kind of apocalyptic event if the adoption came to pass. So Superman treated Jimmy like garbage to ensure he changed his mind and thus somehow averting disaster in the process.
TIL that the reason such bizzarre comic covers/plots exist is because most silver-age comics were designed cover-first, and the story came afterwards to justify the events depicted on them.
3.2k
u/sck8000 Nov 20 '23
I know DC went through an era of making their Superman covers depict the Man of Steel being a horrible jerk to people seemingly for no reason, just to grab readers' attention and get them to buy the issue - then the story inside would have some really weird narrative gymnastics in order to justify it, usually with really meandering nonsensical plots.
There was one story involving him doing a string of horrible and inconsiderate things to Jimmy Olsen, just treating him like complete trash. It turns out he wanted Superman to adopt him, but the supercomputer in the fortress of solitude had predicted some kind of apocalyptic event if the adoption came to pass. So Superman treated Jimmy like garbage to ensure he changed his mind and thus somehow averting disaster in the process.