Good god, the man never learns. As Rich reported this past Monday, he recently slammed close a Superman Returns thread with the following self serving, self delusional bullshit:

I could make the argument that a Superman who ignores his father’s warnings and messes with the rotation of the Earth itself in order to turn back time for purely selfish reasons isn’t right, either. I mean, I won’t, because largely based on Reeve’s performance, it felt right.
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If you can’t see the difference between a Superman who makes a decision based on what he has learned from his upbringing as a human on Earth (he ignores his biological father’s warning — he heeds the sage council of his adoptive, human father), and a Superman who is tricked by his arch enemy into deserting the planet his has sworn to protect, then I’d say Christopher Reeve’s performance is not an issue. As you note, you have not seen Brandon Routh’s performance, yet you are prepared to cut this new movie all kinds of slack in order to end up with a Superman who feels “right”.

Sadly, you do not seem to be alone in this. As with Spider-Man, as with the X-Men, Hollywood has once again gutted the mythology, but self-declared “fans” a eager to race to the theater and reward them for doing so.

And you know what? I’m tired of it. I’m fed up with it. I am sick to death of opening this thread and finding post after post that clearly shows me that I, and those who think like me, have been wasting our time for the past twenty, thirty, forty years, working on superhero comics. None of the lessons we have tried to teach have sunk in. Superman can desert the Earth. Lois can have a bastard kid. Doesn’t matter. Just make it fast and loud and shiny.

No more. I’m shutting down this thread. If you want to discuss this movie, find somewhere else to do it. Such chatter is no longer welcome here.

What an ass. This from the man that’s made a career out of either “breaking” or “fixing” other people’s creations. If Byrne were still half as creative in his comic book work as he is in his verbal message board gymnastics, then maybe he’d still be relevant. And if he really, truly ever gave half a crap about Superman the way he claims to these days, maybe he wouldn’t have turned Supes into an interplanetary porn star and murderer back when he was writing and drawing the character.

And as for Superman abandoning the Earth, well, after Byrne had Supes kill the Phantom Zone criminals and then left the book, that’s pretty much exactly what the guys that took over had the character do. In fact, they had Superman develop a split personality and then abandoin the planet due directly to the guilt of dealing out the death sentence that was Byrne’s swan song. I wonder how that’s so different than Singer’s plot.

Spread the word!