It would be difficult to find a more passionate and knowledgeable fan of Superman than writer Mark Waid (author of the classic Superman: Birthright maxi-series that’s currently celebrating its 10th anniversary – more about that at the end of this article). Mark was also pretty vocal in his criticisms of Man of Steel, as presented on his blog at Thrillbent.com. Well, VFK editor Ed Gross, no slouch in the Superman department himself, recently sat down for a conversation with Mark regarding MOS, and, in particular, its controversial ending in which (SPOILERS GALORE!) Superman ends up killing General Zod to stop him from murdering innocent people.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Let me start by saying, I must be the biggest Superman whore on the planet, because even though I have many of the complaints that you and a lot of people have had about Man of Steel, I still enjoyed the movie. I don’t know if it was because the action was unlike anything I’ve ever seen, or I just like Henry Cavill as Superman.

MARK WAID: There’s a bunch of X factors, too – again, you can’t make an argument that Superman Returns was a better movie than this by any stretch of the imagination, but I enjoyed it more. And I knew at the time I was enjoying it that everyone was looking at me thinking, “What is wrong with you? You’re a freak!” But I didn’t care, because I just enjoyed it. As I said in my review of Man of Steel, I don’t want to take that away from anybody. I guess the reaction to my review was disappointing to me a little, because while most people seemed to get it, there’s been a reductive aspersion cast on it by a lot of people. More and more I’ve seen, “Read here why Mark Waid hates Man of Steel.” Well, that’s not what I said.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: See that’s the problem with the Internet – everything is turned into a news story.

MARK WAID: Exactly, and that’s not what I said. I was broken hearted, I was disappointed, I was gutted by that one scene as much as anything else or certainly the last third of the movie, but I also liked a lot of things about it. I even kind of understand why they went that way, so this isn’t, “It’s not my Superman,” or “Why can’t it be like the ’50s when I was growing up?” It’s not that at all. It’s more the idea of, man, there’s just no heart or charm, especially in that last third of the movie. It’s just destruction porn.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: When Christopher Reeve played Superman, he put on the costume and the character was essentially fully formed. He knew who he was, he knew why he was here, he had all the confidence in the world and he instantly knew how to react to situations and what to do. But I’m looking at Henry Cavill as this is the first time his version of the character has ever put on the uniform, it’s the first time he’s gaining any understanding of what he is basically, and it’s all new to him. Whereas Reeve’s Clark had 10 years training in the fortress with Jor-El, Cavill’s had the uniform on for 10 minutes when there’s an invasion from Zod. To me, he represents someone who’s learning how to be Superman. The analogy I used was that someday Chris Pine is going to grow up to be William Shatner in the same way Henry Cavill is going to grow up to be Christopher Reeve.

MARK WAID: Right, but the difference is that in the first Star Trek movie, Chris Pine showed parts of himself that were Shatner-esque. I think that seems to be the overall feeling from a lot of people, that this is the first step. But nobody knew it was going to be a trilogy going in!

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: No, I don’t view it as a trilogy, I just view it as the first time this dude has put on the costume –

MARK WAID: Right, but if I wanted to see Boy of Steel I would have seen Boy of Steel –and that slips into the category of personal preference rather than intelligent critique. It’s more just to the storyteller. I understand that you want growth and development and stuff, but I just want a little more pay off to that. It reminds me very much of the thing you loathe hearing from freelancers and writers when you’re a publisher or editor, because I get this a lot – every publisher and every editor gets it – you get someone turning in a first issue and it’s kind of there, but nothing big has happened or there’s something missing, and the answer is always, “Wait till you get to issue three.” Oh, shut up! “We have to set the stage!” Stop setting the stage and get on with the play. That’s my kneejerk reaction to the point of, well he’s just learning. But that’s not what it was sold as, that’s not what we thought we were getting. We thought we were getting a Superman movie, and we got a Superman in training movie, and maybe that’s part of my disappointment, too; maybe my expectations were forwarded that way, but if that’s the case I don’t think I’m alone.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Like I said, I would be more than happy watching the “big blue Boy Scout” guy; I love that version of the character. While most of the reviews were pretty bad for this movie, the cinema scores are through the roof – people love it! But what concerns me is, are we in a time where this is the only version of the character that can appeal to a mass audience now?

MARK WAID: Actually we’re not, but we’re in a time where the people who are in charge of that character believe that’s the only version that can appeal to a mass audience. That’s where I grit my teeth – again, I’m not the insider I once was, but I still have my ear to the ground. I’ve talked over and over to the people at DC over the last ten years, and I know what WB’s feeling is about Superman, which is that he’s stupid, he’s corny and why can’t he be more like Batman? Well, because he’s not Batman, but there’s nothing Hollywood loves more than safe bets. So that certainly always informs the tone and direction that this movie was going to have. We always knew once they got serious about it that it was going to be a darker, more brooding take, but I kind of thought there would be a little wiggle room there and, my hand to God, the first and last words out of my mouth were, before we walked in that theater, was I turned to my girlfriend and said, “Look, my expectations are moderate, I’m good, as long as he doesn’t kill anybody.” I swear to God I said that, but in jest, because who would have thought?

The other thing that must be remembered, and this is something that is easy to overlook — and I’m not undercutting my position but I’m trying to look at it from different perspectives – we know there have been 30,000, 40,000 Superman stories, we know there are four to five Superman stories a month, we know that the legend is as deep as it is and as wide as it is. We take for granted that everyone else knows that, too, and the more people who have used the “Yeah, but in Superman II he killed Zod as well”, which was like cartoon violence – defense, the more it occurred to me to remember to step back and stay a little humble about comics themselves. To a large extent that’s the Superman people know, and they’re not looking at is as him being a comic book character that also had a few movies a few years ago – some of these people are looking at it like it’s a pop culture character and this is the iteration we know, so all they’re doing is remaking the second movie but with a different twist. I’m not articulating this well, but in other words I think to some degree our criticism of, “That’s not what Superman does, that’s not how he is,” sounds to some people like we just walked out of the Wild Wild West remake with Will Smith, and are angry and bitching about how this is not how James West and Artemis Gordon act, it’s not in character for them.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Because they’re holding it up to their perception of Superman: The Movie, or whatever rather than the history of the character — –

MARK WAID: They know a half a dozen Superman stories, they know The Death of Superman, they know the Superman movies…

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: But they’re not mired in the mythology –

MARK WAID: Exactly, so from their point of view on a statistical level, maybe Superman does kill. It’s not as apparent to them as it is to those of us who’ve been swimming in the mythos for 75 years.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: My hope is that they acknowledge the killing in the next movie and it will change him having done so.

MARK WAID: I hope so, and that would certainly buy back a lot of my faith. But I made this argument when John Byrne did his awful, awful story 25 years ago about Superman executing the Phantom Zone criminals, in cold blood by the way, because they were powerless and not a threat anymore. To say that this is what teaches him his code against killing… I mean, I have a code against killing, too, but I didn’t have to learn it by killing someone.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: I was one of the people, when he snapped the neck I was just like, “Oh, shit!”, out loud. By the same token, if you had listened, Zod’s dialog saying he has been genetically created for one reason, one purpose, and he would stop at nothing to achieve that purpose…

MARK WAID: And what was that purpose?

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: To let Krypton live again.

MARK WAID: No, to defend all things Kryptonian, to defend the Kryptonian people and the Kryptonian bloodline…

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Right, but after Kal –

MARK WAID: “I will kill you, the last of them.” That seems an odd choice to me – before he goes off punching in that last fight, his last words are – and I didn’t even pick up on this until the second time through – which I did go back to give it a fair shot – the last thing he says is, “You took this away from me, my entire purpose was to defend the heritage, the bloodline,” I forget the exact words he used – “to protect all things Krypton, and now that my henchmen are gone, let’s kill you. Or now that you’ve killed a bunch of embryos, Superman, when you screamed “Krypton had its chance,” and destroyed a ship full of embryos….”

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: I just didn’t see him stopping.

MARK WAID: I understand, and I didn’t see him stopping either, but what I’m saying is this: it could have been sold to me much better by reminding me that Zod is using people against Superman. Because by the time he gets to the final fight, all he wants to do is punch Superman, and there is no reason in the world that Superman at that point can’t take the fight anywhere in the galaxy. No reason at all. There’s no reason why Superman just didn’t give a flying flip about collateral damage and about the people.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: I have to admit, that point did bother me. I was watching Superman IIthe other day, actually, and in the middle of battle with the Kryptonians he’s catching shit and still managing to save people.

MARK WAID: And I get that that can come off corny, but it’s all delivery. Instead of having him take a moment to not only save a baby in a carriage but also smile and nod and wink and wave, just play it as a guy multitasking and losing. Play up the frustration. Julie Schwartz gave me one piece of Superman advice that I’ve never forgotten ever. He always said Superman never does one thing when he can do two. He said if you’re flying Superman from one side of the globe to the other as part of your story, take two panels in the middle and have him stop up a volcano on his way. Have him save a fishing trawler on the high seas on the way. To show that he can multitask. And yes, that’s a more mature Superman, but at the same time he’s also had these powers for 25-30 years, at least since he’s been an adult. My god, he knows a few things about multitasking by now, I would think. Again, that was my disappointment. I felt like I needed Superman to care more about the people around him and protecting earthlings, not just saving them by sacrificing himself, although that didn’t really work… not his fault.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: It was big picture saving rather than individual saving, seriously, in saving the entire planet.

MARK WAID: Charles Schultz had Linus say at one point, “I love humanity, it’s people I can’t stand.” Just one or two moments like that would have gone the distance to really help me feel like there was just no other way. I’m still not sure I would have bought it, but at least it would have gone down easier because it felt very facile. But again, that’s stepping back from it, too. When people challenge me with what would you have had him do in that situation, my answer is not I would have had him put his hand over his eyes or I would have had him fly away. My answer is I wouldn’t have put him in that position. As a writer, and I could be wrong, I don’t think Superman is built for that kind of story. I don’t think Superman is built as a character to fail the Kobayashi Maru. Superman was created specifically to do the impossible, and I don’t mean that just in the philosophical sense, I don’t mean that in an abstract sense, I mean literally – two 17 year olds from Cleveland created this character specifically to do the impossible. The first thing we see him do is lift a car over his head and smash it. Remember, there are perhaps anecdotal stories that the publisher didn’t put Superman on the cover for the next few issues because, “who would buy that, that’s ridiculous?” The character is created to do the impossible, and he’s no more created and equipped and built to fail the Kobayashki Maru than is Woody Woodpecker. It doesn’t mean you can’t tell that kind of story, but you have take care with it, and don’t lose sight of the fact that Superman is not supposed to be like us. We’re supposed to want to be like Superman. Don’t give me an hour and a half of ghost dad preaching to him over and over again how he will inspire us, he will lift us, he will show us the light, he will lead us into the sun, he will do all this, and then not deliver on it. In any way – Superman didn’t do anything in the movie that someone didn’t tell him to do.

It doesn’t make it a bad movie, it doesn’t make it anything other than, from my perspective, a flawed presentation of a character I love. The bigger worry is, as you say, that because it’s making money hand over fist, that this becomes for this generation the definitive Superman. And I’m watching this movie with a friend and his boy when I’m watching this the first time, and I’m a little broken hearted not just for me, but I’m looking at this kid who loves Superman, this kid loves Superman, who’s eight or nine.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: What was his reaction?

MARK WAID: His reaction was sort of numbed. He enjoyed it, but it’s hard to tell at that age whether he enjoyed it because any movie is good when you’re eight years old or because he was genuinely involved in it, or because he got to stay up past his bedtime. He certainly didn’t leap out of his seat trying to fly. He looked like I felt; he looked beaten with a bag of oranges – but he seemed to enjoy it. It was hard to tell.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Does it surprise or concern you that, yes, many of the criticisms are addressing things that we’re talking about, but much of the audience seems to be enjoying it?

MARK WAID: I don’t know. I think it surprises me that they’re reacting so favorably to the two hours and 25 minutes of it. I think when we get to that one specific scene, it sadly doesn’t surprise me at all that they’re reacting favorably to Superman’s decision.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: In one of the showing I attended, they actually applauded.

MARK WAID: I thank god every day that I was not in a theater where people applauded. I probably would have vomited at that point, because it’s a weird moral lesson. We have a million other movie characters who can tell you that sometimes you have to kill the bad guy, but this is the one guy who doesn’t. That’s his whole thing, and it’s just insanely unimaginative not to find another way in that specific instance. Again, we can play the game of “How do you…”

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: …come up with an alternative to that?

MARK WAID: Right, because my issue is not that Superman didn’t solve the intellectual puzzle to my satisfaction of how to stop Zod in that moment. My issue is the bigger issue of “Wow, this sends a really screwy message that we don’t have faith that as a movie studio or as a company or as an American audience, we don’t have faith that there’s other ways to solve problems.” Very depressing. I’m not exaggerating – not proud, but not exaggerating – that I’ve just been in a depressive funk for days.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: My kids thought this was a very cool version of Superman – I think for current moviegoers, that’s going to be their reaction.

MARK WAID: And I get that, too, because on Twitter, on Facebook, on social media, the kids are coming after me with the axes and the torches and the pitchforks with real anger. To the kids who come after me throwing stones, I want to say, “I was you! I was you when I was 17.” I understand, because that faction of the audience who sees it as a perfect movie, wow, I get it, because I too remember what it was like to want these characters to grow up with me. I remember what it was like to want to shove Steve Gerber comics into people’s hands or more sophisticated stuff and say, “Comics aren’t just for kids! See, they’re for grown-ups, too!” And I get that. I was there, that was me, and I think if this was my first Superman movie and I was 17 years old, man you know what? I probably would think it was perfect, because it’s serious, it takes the source material seriously… except when it ignores 2/3 of it.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Maybe that’s it. You touched on it before with the whole comic book thing and knowing the character from the comics or knowing the characters from the movie versions, or TV versions. Maybe for some people, this is their first real experience with this character and it’s OK to them because this is cool.

MARK WAID: They don’t know any better. This is the Gestalt of the era, but I feel like we were better than that and we shouldn’t be pandering to that. Look,we could have had the reverse conversation seven years ago – my God, seven years? – about Superman Returns. I was first in line to say it’s a horribly flawed movie, and that there were a million things wrong with it, but I don’t care. Okay, it’s too long…No, actually there’s no such thing as a too-long Superman movie; that doesn’t exist in my head, so I’m perfectly capable of spiriting out my personal preference from genuine critique of good and bad. But it’s the bigger picture, not just that Superman doesn’t kill, but the idea that, man, this feels pandering. It feels like we’re giving the audience what we think they want. And again, I’ve said this a million times, if the audience knew what it wanted, it wouldn’t be an audience.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: I know you said there’s no such thing as a too long Superman movie, and I know that even if I’m in the mood for those, and I go back and watch Superman The Movie and then I pop in Superman II, I’ll watch III and IV. Why? Because it’s all I’ve got of Christopher Reeve.

MARK WAID: Exactly, yep! If there was 20 minutes of test footage opening a jar of peanut butter, I’d have that on a loop. I’d watch that.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Exactly, and that shows the impact, but I could easily sit down and watch The Adventures of Superman, you know what I mean ? I love it, so you and I are very much the same that way. Just a real love for it, and I guess there’s a part of me that wants this to work because I want this character to live again. I think that’s part of the reason I’m being more forgiving in my mind, because in my mind it’s like, “OK, I know some people say better off not having him than having him like this, but I think there’s a chance to improve it, and I like having the character around.

MARK WAID: I can only hope they improve it – I can only hope by the time we get to the Justice League movie, there will be an Earth left to save.

Mark Waid’s Superman: Birthright serves as a partial inspiration for Man of Steel. As that maxi-series celebrates its 10th anniversary, VFK editor Ed Gross has written an ebook that goes behind the scenes on its writing, exploring it issue by issue with Mark Waid. It’s a Q&A session that runs over 20,000 words in length, and includes Waid’s original pitch as well as the first outline. It’s a discussion that is completely Superman-centric. To order an ebook edition, just click on the image below.