John Byrne’s got a history of creepy fetishes surfacing on the comic book pages, but he’s had a special place in his heart for the Man of Steel when it comes to sharing them with the world. When he’s not turning Superman into the World’s Most Powerful Porn Star, he’s got future-Clark tonguing underage Lana Lang.
No. Seriously.
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In all seriousness, that’s a really weird sequence. Even beyond the actual content, it even LOOKS weird, you know? That room in the fist panel looks so oppressive — like it has this kind of salacious undertone. The “heroes” are in these hyper-sexual outfits, and Lana Lang is in this repressive, Mennonite school marm outfit…a strange contrast.
An interesting aspect in Byrne’s art to me that I realize now more than I used to is that it’s always been overtly sexual — moreso than other artists, I would argue. Sometimes it seems loose and fun (especially in the 80s when he was do all those wonderful things with X-Men, FF, Superman, etc), like he’s celebrating anatomy or just going over the top, which is par for the course with superhero comics. But sometimes you catch creepy and weird moments like this, and that’s when he’s really fascinating. It creates a bizarre subtext, I guess.
I couldn’t agree with your second paraagraph more. The last few years it’s really hit me that there’s a very bizarre dichotomy between Byrne’s loud and proud assertions that “Comics are for kids!” and the actual content he puts in them.
Between this Superman stuff, his Scarlet Witch orally raping Wonder Man in WCA, Sue Storm’s dominatrix personality and outfit in the FF and his uber-sexualized She-Hulk, the guy’s got a weird thing going on. Thing is, it wouldn’t raise eyebrows nearly as much if he’d stop harping on other creators for ruining comics for youngsters.
Yeah, it’s like kind of misogynist and slightly lurid. Sometimes it seems like he’s aware of it and sometimes not. I know, a lot of superhero art is this way. But Byrne’s is different. Darker I think because he contrasts it with that Silver Age superhero art style he’s so good at. My talking-out-of-my-ass guess is that he’s trying too hard to incoporate the more modern superhero artistic styles into his art in an attempt to keep up with the times, but he can’t really pull it off…which is kind of weird because he was such a big influence on the more modern style. Blah blah blah.
Generations III is weird in all kinds of ways when it comes to the underage/apparently underage characters — the Lana Lang snog isn’t the worst of it, frankly; the one that really creeped me out was the twin age-retarded Supergirls who stay at a relative physical age of about ten for several hundred years…one of whom, looking ten at age 600 or so tries to get it on with a Green Lantern who looks adult but may be a young teenager. Ah…what?!
Next to that the Lana bit seems mild. At least she wasn’t asking to be taken behind the barn and super-shagged. Then again, that’s perhaps only ebcause Byrne didn’t think he’d be able to get away with the idea….
Wow, that sounds just bizarre.