Appraising the Fourth Estate: Constructions of the Media in The Death of Superman

Constructions of the media are quintessential to the Superman mythology, a perpetual presence as both theme and narrative structure throughout the canon. At a crucial juncture in the development of the Superman mythos (and in addition to its interrogation of the nature of, and responses to, heroism), The Death of Superman constructs a thorough and critical analysis of the media, through images of television and newspaper pervading the narrative.

 

Although now something of a misnomer, the epithet mild‑mannered reporter continues to define the Clark Kent-Superman construct. That, today, the attribution is usually applied as irony or self‑parody does not diminish its efficacy as a signal of what “makes” Superman. Just as he is “the man of steel,” “the last son of Krypton,” and “the man of tomorrow” (29) so, too, is he Clark Kent, “mild‑mannered reporter,” observer and recorder of events. Within the same construct is news maker and news hound: hunted and hunter. The assigned role of journalist, essentially that of an onlooker, complements his status as an outsider, an alien. In The Death of Superman, the Clark Kent persona is presented only fleetingly (in two panels, on page 11), but the news gathering imperative dominates the story, both as a narrative device, as when the newscasters’ reports summarize the plot for new readers of the original comic series, and as theme in the over‑riding ambitions of Cat Grant, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen. The Superman persona is constantly objectified by the media, in words, on TV screens and monitors; paradoxically, the more dynamic and powerful his actions, the more he is reduced to media fodder.

 

The relevance and importance of his career, evident from his earliest appearances in Action Comics in 1939, remain a constant into the 2000s. The media—particularly the Daily Planet—retain their pivotal status within the mythology, accommodating the incursion and expanding influence of TV, teletext, and Internet which threaten to, but never quite, replace paper and ink as the primary (news) medium. The situation of the Clark Kent persona within the context of a successful and reputable newspaper functions as an exemplary narrative device: fulfilling the multiple requirements of human interaction, inherent plot potential, and an established value system, as well as guaranteeing de facto an ongoing interrogation into the business of the media.

 

The Daily Planet provided a cast of supporting “players,” necessarily extending the Superman “family” beyond the rural associations of the Kents into the urban values of Metropolis. These stock, if not stereotypical, characters of short‑tempered but highly principled editor; eager, if naive, office junior; and (overly) ambitious, reckless female journalist, are seminal elements of the Clark Kent-Superman construct. Initially Kent is positioned in the roles of employee, friend, and object of disregard respectively, but these relationships have been developed and substantiated into complex, multi‑layered depictions of friendship, respect, and love. The expanded circle of Clark Kent’s “friends” continues to recruit from the media, for example Ron Troupe, Cat Grant, Franklin Stern, and Simone Deneige. In turn, these characters all bring their own families into the mythos—for example Perry’s wife Alice and Jimmy Olsen’s parents—while establishing links with existing characters: Lucy Lane is reintroduced via her relationship with Ron Troupe; Keith is adopted by the Whites—each character functioning as a source of narrative potential. While many other careers and work‑places would serve equally well as an agency of new personnel, situating Kent within the media business, more specifically the news business, provides both a narrative structure which engenders multiple plot lines and, at the same time, a strategy for Superman’s early arrival at scenes of crime, threat, and disaster. It forges an unbreakable link with national and international events and political developments, with the immediacy and potential excitement which such a business entails.

 

The news business itself has been the theme of narratives, most notably Sins of the Father, which presents the ethical and campaigning facets of the power of the press. In direct opposition to this altruism, Lex Luthor’s colonization of the media, both textual and audio‑visual, explores the media’s virtually unchallenged influence, acknowledging the potential for the manipulation, even the corruption, of the truth, and profiles the power that comes with the control of the media and the inherent dangers of that power. Given the situation of the Superman-Clark Kent myth within the context of reportage, “his” narratives have an intrinsic subtext which interrogates, not only the nature of truth, but more pertinently, the action, purpose and consequences of committing “truth” to paper, of telling stories. The Death of Superman offers a direct challenge to a value system which endorses the imperative of getting a story at any cost.

 

Superhero comics are “writerly” texts. That is, by employing their own narrative conventions, they continually draw the reader’s attention to the fact that they are texts. The insertion of the editor’s comments, references to other issues, and the readers’ letters page—all function to destabilize the narrative, breaking into the illusion that a truth is being told, that events are being recounted. Applied, as they are, to Superman narratives, which are intrinsically concerned with the writing of stories, more particularly of creating a text out of an event, these conventions endorse the self‑referential character of the Superman myth. As shall be more fully discussed later, The Death of Superman directly confronts the complex dynamic of creating a text from, or making news of, an event and then making news of the text itself. In this case, the narrative explores the insecurity of the Superman construct within the genre which owes its existence to “his” creation; life and art in mutual imitation.

 

Doomsday, a product of the media who named him (92), a negative image of Superman with raw power, but without his reason and compassion, functions as a metaphor for the threat posed to the Superman ethos, and to “his” survival in the comics industry. The threat arose from the encroachment of the “new” superheroes, whose own amoral attachment to violence, which can exceed that of their adversaries, is constructed as being in direct opposition to the philosophies of restraint and functionality which underpin, not only the Superman mythos, but also those of the more established “Golden age” heroes: Wonder Woman being an obvious example, while Batman continues to function at the boundaries of comic code acceptability. This conflict, both conceptual and commercial, is highlighted early in the narrative, via the interview on The Cat Grant Show (29‑46), which explicitly positions Guy Gardner in opposition to Superman.

 

The show functions as a critique of the TV chat show genre, with the interview, a “true rarity” (31), constructed as a discomforting juxtapostion of show business hype, triviality, and serious discussion. The discomfort is created and conveyed to the reader, not only conceptually, by the unfamiliar context of Superman taking the stage, acknowledging his celebrity (40), but also visually, by the images of him seated, cape tucked neatly beneath him, in full costume. As a symbol of his function as superhero and, therefore, with inherent associations of action and power, the costume does not fit well in this episode of inactivity. Superman’s own discomfort is cued visually throughout the interview, in contrast to Cat’s composure: in one panel (32), while Cat’s glass is quite full of water, his is two thirds empty, and it reappears later (38) refilled, suggesting his nervous drinking perhaps? His face is hidden from the reader in the panels where he is asked one of the more contentious questions, about his relationship with Guy Gardner (35), and one of the most trivial (36), so readers can imagine his reaction; in other panels, his face is unexpressive, if not totally blank. His posture remains static, unchanged for moments at a time (31-32), in a formal, tensed pose with his right hand placed on his crossed knee, left hand resting on the arm of the chair. Again he is implicitly contrasted with Cat, who is depicted in movement throughout the interview. Although such a stance may, theoretically, be that of a relaxed person, Superman’s defined musculature, lack of movement, and rigidity convey, instead, a self‑conscious, deliberate adoption of a pose, intended to give the impression of being relaxed, rather than that of someone genuinely at ease with the situation. It may be that images of superheroes in full costume yet seated and inactive, will always convey, by their very incongruity, impressions of discomfort and self‑consciousness. Certainly, in this interview and therefore, by extension, in his relationship to the popular media, the artwork constructs a superhero out of his element, at a disadvantage.

 

Superman and his mythology are somewhat diminished by his subjection to some particularly trivial lines of questioning, for example:

 

As a leader of the JLA, perhaps you can give us the inside story on you and your pals. (32)

 

I was wondering what you superheroes do when you’re not bashing bad guys? I mean, do you get together and party all the time or what? (36)

 

Yeah, I was kinda wondering about Fire. Does she score as high on the Babe‑o‑meter as it seems? (40)

 

Their inclusion and choice of language is undoubtedly mimetic, intended to construct an impression of reality, of the quality of debate spawned by many chat shows. Nevertheless, these questions do not provide the most complimentary image of television, nor one that signals approval and respect for the genre.

 

Demonstrating that it is the Clark Kent persona who has a facility with language, Superman’s responses to each of these questions are stilted: inappropriately formal and detached. He co‑operates by answering, but he does not compound the triviality and sexism by mirroring the language of the questioner or encouraging gossip: the JLA are a “group of people” not “pals” (33) with a “variety of interests” and none that he mentions are hedonistic or intimate; Fire is “good at her job and a terrific person” (40). His replies may well suggest pomposity and a remoteness from the values and language of popular culture as represented by this audience and, in conjunction with the reproduction of his image on TV screens and monitors, confirms his status as an outsider and focus of attention. The interview is a self‑referential strategy for the construction of Superman as a public figure, reflecting a reality beyond the text, in which he was likewise rendered a media personality by the massive publicity campaigns of DC Comics for the promotion of The Death of Superman.

 

The narrative device of the television interview accentuates the reader’s position as voyeur, and for the rest of the narrative that is their constructed perspective. The artwork consistently situates the reader at an emotional and psychological distance from events; a remoteness enhanced by the most significant scenes being mediated by the tools of the media: cameras, television screens, and monitors. The image of Doomsday’s final and killing blow is not directly represented to the reader, but only shown reflected in a camera lens (157), a visual cue that not only confirms the narrative’s construction of Superman as media fodder, but also that the news we read is always seen through another’s eyes first. The narrative’s perspective promotes a detached response to the scenes of battery, assault, and mayhem being played out. In the final section of the story (135‑163), the panels gradually increase in size, culminating in a series of splash pages which bring the images closer and closer (in imitation of cinematic technique) and in greater and greater detail, mirroring the relentless physical punishment given and received by Superman in the bare knuckle fight that comprises the ultimate battle.

 

In the background of many of these panels, the Daily Planet and WGBS helicopters hover, vultures competing for a fresh carcass; a reminder that above all else this is a media event. In this narrative, for newspaper and TV reporters alike, there is little of the need to tell the truth, but rather it is presented as a battle to get the first and best reports, a career opportunity. As Cat Grant says, “We are not going to miss the story of the century” (139). The death of hundreds of citizens, the devastation of Metropolis and Superman’s bravery and suffering are important only in terms of their story potential; there is little compassion in the news broadcasts. Despite the proximity of the final images of the battle between Doomsday and Superman, the neutrality of the side‑on perspective emphasizes the status of the reader as observer; a voyeur, complicit in the violence, unable to assist, yet like Superman’s parents (in particulary discomforting scenes), unable to stop looking-reading.

 

This complicity aligns the reader with the viewers within the narrative, affixed to their TV screens, watching Superman fight, initially for Metropolis, but ultimately for his life. Such scenes are mimetic, presenting a likely public and news media response. However, the theme of “watching,” whether from personal or professional interest or simple curiosity, permeates the narrative, focusing on the audience and the act of watching itself, with scenes of Luthor, Supergirl, and the Kents witnessing events via the mediation of television camera, news broadcast, or dictated newspaper text, and constructs a damaging image of the media in terms of its trivializing and desensitizing propensities. Superman’s pain and fear are reduced to entertainment. The narrative does not allow the reader to make this conclusion herself; it is made explicit by Martha and Jonathan Kent, themselves remote from their son’s battle for survival, part of a mass audience:

 

Martha: That’s our son, Jonathan! He’s being beaten to a pulp ‑‑ and those TV reporters are treating it like entertainment!

Jonathan: Clark is our boy, Ma. But to the world he’s Superman. It’s not that they’re callous. ‘least they don’t mean to be. (129)

 

This dialogue can be read as a comment upon both the contemporaneous comic readership, who seemed to be taking the Superman character so much for granted that they did not see the danger he was in, and DC Comics’ own media activity which focused world attention on the death of its seminal superhero. The sharpest irony, of course, is that one of the reporters treating it like entertainment is his girlfriend, and one of the photographers, his best friend.

 

This narrative’s construction of Superman’s relationships with Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen is especially troubling. It commences with a storyline reminiscent of the 1960s, when Lois habitually put herself in danger, often just for the gratification of being rescued by Superman. The 1993 version is less reductive in the Underworld sub‑plot, with Lois demonstrating self‑sufficiency, resilience, and far less trivial motives, but, nonetheless, Superman has to rescue her. This is a critical construction of a female journalist, career-driven and blinded to other considerations including the safety of her boyfriend. The narrative does not encourage admiration of her commitment to her profession, nor her bravery. For much of the story her commitment to the news business is juxtaposed with images of Superman risking his life, taking terrible punishment, and facing his fears—all to protect others. Given this relationship of word and image, the text suggests a detachment and impartiality in Lois that, though admirable as a professional attribute, is not a sympathetic quality in one witnessing the destruction of her lover. The impression of Lois choosing the professional over the personal continues throughout the narrative until, once again, she endangers herself and the city by her reckless enthusiasm to get a story. In what is surely an intertextual nod to an early scene in Christopher Reeves’ first Superman film (1978), Superman, choosing the personal, has no choice but to save her from a helicopter crash.

 

As with his inevitable decision to rescue Mitch and his family earlier in the narrative, Superman again loses an advantage over Doomsday by doing so. Although in this instance, these characters willfully endangered themselves for their jobs, given Superman’s code of behaviour and his values, he has actually no choice at all. That members of the news media caused him to lose ground in his battle to save Metropolis, constructs a sub‑text that the media collectively is a nuisance, a liability. Eventually Lois Lane does shift her perspective from reporter to girlfriend, and registers fears for Superman’s safety, but it has taken many pages for her priority to change to one of personal concern, and for this concern to supersede her desire for a story: “We can’t worry about pictures! Superman is in trouble and I intend to help him” (147). Needless to say, her help only places him at an even greater disadvantage, but at least her role within the media is finally eclipsed by her personal relationship with, and love for, Superman. Not so with Jimmy Olsen.

 

It is in its portrayal of “Superman’s best friend” Jimmy Olsen, that the The Death of Superman constructs its most damning images of the media. This one character signifies how the media function to desensitize, not only the viewer-reader, but also those working within the media business, distorting perceptions and values. Given that, at this stage in the narrative, Olsen already knows that Doomsday has destroyed thirty lives and injured hundreds more (86), his words upon first sighting him are inappropriate and reductive: “Wow, he’s a big one!” (102). Such a trivializing comment is discordant, but it accurately prefigures Olsen’s reactions of excitement and insensitivity throughout the rest of the narrative. The language used, particularly the exclamations, may be intended to convey Olsen’s youthfulness, both suggesting and explaining his immaturity, but that immaturity and lack of awareness are at variance with his role as press photographer, and raise questions about a business which would employ a boy in such a position.

 

The introductory image of Olsen as Turtle‑Boy, a nostalgic intertextual reference to a mutation he experienced in the 1960s, is a miscue; this Jimmy Olsen does not have the benignity of “the perennially eager, perennially boyish and not overly bright club reporter” (O’Neil 51). Despite a much vaunted friendship, one that is seminal to the Superman mythology, Olsen’s concern, like that of the most hardened paparazzi, is focused exclusively on the photo opportunities offered by the scenes of death and destruction. Olsen’s complete lack of solicitude for Superman’s safety is unsettling, mirroring those comic readers who, negligent of a very real threat to his existence, had become complacent about Superman’s survival:

 

Lois: Doomsday is probably the deadliest foe Superman has ever faced.

Jimmy: Man, this must be my lucky year. Those were some of the best shots I’ve ever gotten. Don’t sweat it, Lois. He’s Superman, right —he’s gotta be okay! (126-7)

 

It is only when his own safety is jeopardized that Olsen’s perceptions broaden beyond his ambition, to appreciate the extent of the damage to Metropolis and the potential threat to himself: “Stay back Miss Lane! We don’t need to get that close to get a decent picture” (147). In The Death of Superman, Jimmy Olsen is defined by his job, his role within the media; he and his camera are inseparable, both visually and conceptually. His function as friend within the myth is marginalized, so entirely displaced by his function as press photographer that, even as Superman lies dying, he exploits the photo opportunity which the scene presents (162-3). The emotive climax of the entire narrative is constructed as a moment of personal grief amid the public loss: the death of a son, of a respected colleague and lover (158-61); tears are shed by all but the one “who would be his pal” (157). Chillingly, in the background of the final double page spread, stands Jimmy Olsen, camera obscuring his face, defining his identity, taking the photograph “of the century”; a devastating indictment of the values engendered by the media business. (In subsequent narratives, that photograph comes to symbolize Olsen’s degeneration into an opportunist whose ambitions transcend any sense of personal loss.)

 

Within this narrative, the characters of Olsen, Lane, and Grant can be read as exemplifying the drive and ambition intrinsic to, and lauded by, the American Dream, and according to Wiley Lee Umphlett, “that individualistic enterprise is the rockbed of the American economy and way of life” (90). However, they are also constructed as powerful critiques of the American media; of their corrupting influence on the values of compassion, reason, respect and love, of all that makes a society civilized. The recurring images of the media and media personnel are uncompromising: intrusive, irresponsible, callous, trivializing, sensationalist, reckless, self‑serving and desensitizing, Significantly, these are also the defining features of the “new comics” superheroes and narratives which were threatening Superman and all that his mythology represented.

 

Within its multiple narratives, The Death of Superman, a complex metaphor for the dangers facing Superman in the media business, constructs a world that is unworthy of him. Continually under the public’s voyeuristic gaze, a gaze relentlessly mediated by TV and newspaper personnel, he loses his life in a battle to contain (but not to kill) Doomsday, much as he lost his battle to contain the competition from the “new” superheroes. Doomsday’s unrestrained violence and brutality mirror the qualities of the newer comic superheroes whose popularity and commercial success were a direct attack on the Superman ethos and his status in the comic marketplace.

 

The fundamental paradox, of course, is that in producing The Death of Superman as a response to fallen sales figures, and by promoting it so relentlessly, even cynically, DC Comics orchestrated a media campaign which exemplified the distorted values critiqued throughout the narrative. Whether this is the ultimate in corporate hypocrisy or a display of self‑critical irony is for each reader to decide for herself.

 

Anne Edwards

1 Alders Close

Wanstead, London E11 #RZ

 

Works Cited

Eagan, Patrick. “A Flag with a Human Face.” Superman at Fifty: The Persistence of a Legend. Ed. Dennis Dooley and Gary Engle. New York: Collier Books, 1988.

Jurgens, D., J. Ordway, L. Simondson, and R. Stern. The Death of Superman. New York: Titan Books, 1993. (NB.The pages are not numbered, and so the page references given are my own calculations.)

O’Neil, Dennis. “The Man of Steel and Me.” Superman at Fifty: The Persistence of a Legend.

Reitberger, Reinhold, and Wolfgang Fuchs. Comics: Anatomy of a Mass Medium. London: Studio Vista, 1972.

“Sins of the Father.” Superman: The Man of Steel. 47. New York: DC Comics, 1994.

Umphlett, Wiley Lee. Mythmakers of the American Dream: The Nostalgic Vision in Popular Culture. New Jersey: Associated Universities P, 1983.