#subjekt-17

[doctorslippery]

[secretwaterbear]

Random DC Characters I think deserve better

Whether its in TV, movies or comics, I need more of these guys.

Heroes:

Red Tornado, Saint Walker, Green Beetle(He's kinda a hero...somewhat)

Villains:

Brushogun, Subjekt-17, Kyd Wykkyd

[thevindicativevordan]

I have a raging fever…and the only thing that can cure it is your take on Superman’s various villains

😉

Hm guess I'll rapidfire a bunch of small Superman Rogues that I keep getting asks for but don't have really have opinions on.

Luminous - Cool name, cool powerset, but not really all that deep. Were I to use him I would keep the name and powerset and change everything else to the point it wouldn't really be the same character.

Faora/Ursa - Cool as Zod's right hand/wife/mother of Lor, don't think she offers all that much on her own. Would be interested in seeing more of her opinion on things when it comes to building New Krypton, the Els, and raising Lor.

Titano - Rules. Never going to be more than a Silver Age gag or a one off issue at best I suspect but still very cool.

Satanus & Blaze - Find them dull personally, would rather Shazam keeps them since they're the Wizard's kids if I recall correctly. Mxy or Vyn are better "devils" for Superman.

Blackrock - Throwing him in here for the record, but I don't find him interesting at all.

Composite Superman - Lame. Don't get why people keep bringing him back.

Insect Queen - Give her to Kara or Jon.

Psiphon and Dreadnought - Lame.

Sleez - Hahahaha Jesus Christ how does this guy keep cameoing every now and then?

Subjekt-17 - Wrote about him already, I liked him and what he represented, he would make a good foe for Jon.

Killgrave - Give him to another member of the Superfamily or forget him completely, there's already plenty of mad scientist Superman Rogues.

Nick O'Teen - Please somebody use him as the Kite Man/Condiment King of the Superman Rogues Gallery!

[maxwell-grant]

Today (May 17th) is Miracle Monday, which is a fictional holiday from the Superman franchise. With that in mind: What are your favorite Superman stories? Any medium is fine

This one took a little longer than I expected, because while I very much like Superman and always have, he’s never been much within my usual areas of interest. As a kid I was much more of a Batman/Spider-Man/Wolverine fan, as a teenager I drifted away from superheroes, and even now I don’t really read Superman stories, and I should. Still, I have three particular stories I want to highlight here regarding my personal enjoyment of Superman, so here they are:

“22 Stories in a Single Bound” from Superman Adventures #41 was actually the first Superman comic I remember reading and liking. It gave me a whole tour of Superman’s world and supporting cast and served as my main introduction to most of them, and I still revisit if often because of how it’s one-story-per-page format makes it very easy to come back to it and just flip through a small story on occasion. The ones that stick out to me in particular are the Mxy and Bizzaro pages (since those two are my favorite Superman characters and this was my first introduction to them), the “What if you were Superman” page, and the Darkseid page, which still remains, outside of Darkseid Is or anything penned by Kirby, maybe the most effective and to-the-point summation of his character and what makes him a great villain in that one line he gets. 

The Fleischer cartoons, on the other hand, were my first introduction to the character as a kid, the first time I got to actually see Superman do things outside of just being a character I saw on still drawings. I had a whole DVD collection of these that I’ve sadly lost by now, and back then the things that stuck out the most to me was that, 1: Seeing the costume in action made me like it to the point my mom got me Superman pajamas (I never did get those for even other superheroes I liked better), and 2: They scared the shit out of me back then. Not just the one with the robots (and to this day I still always associate giant robots with Superman), but the one where he fights a giant gorilla specifically scared me bad enough that I couldn’t finish it. 

Nowadays, I still appreciate them a great deal as maybe the simplest, to the point summation of what I like about Superman. Supes is a character I will always associate with childhood fantasy no matter how many mature stories, for good or bad, I read with him, and the Fleischer cartoons do maybe the best job of tapping into that. They are largely just stories about a guy in a costume flying around and either punching big scary things or solving big problems with his strength. It’s a very pure simplicity to come back to and ultimately that’s always going to be one of the most appealing aspects of Superman specifically for me. 

I don’t think I have a specific story I’ve read from Superman that I would consider my favorite definitely, I’ve yet to read or revisit a lot of his most critically acclaimed ones and I’ve hardly read most of the others. But if I had to point to one Superman story specifically that appealed to me, it would be the Subjekt-17 parts from Kurt Busiek’s Superman run, which I’ve yet to fully read outside of the issues where he appears. 

While Mxy and Bizarro are my favorite Superman characters, if I had to point to a more serious, non-Luthor villain as my favorite, it would easily be Subjekt-17, who is Frankenstein’s Monster as a Superman villain which of course is a winning combination for my Frankenstein-loving heart, and while I would like to see a story that explores the lines connecting Frankenstein to Superman, this is easily about as good as this kind of story could get, with Subjekt-17 being easily the most tragic and interesting of all the big, flying superpowered monsters similar to Superman that he’s ever had to fightm as well as one of the only villains who ever succeeded in calling into question the integrity of Superman’s mission (I really wish people paid half as much attention to this as they do to Action Comics #775, a story I very much didn’t care for). 

I’m somewhat glad that he has succeeded in staying dead for the most part, lest he run into the problem that always plagues sympathetic villains in comic books, but I also very much would like to see other stories about him. Maybe an Elseworlds where circumstances cause him to end up becoming the only Superman in a world with Luthors and Parasites and Brainiacs aplenty, and he finds himself forced to fill in the role, and the world has to contend with an ugly, monstrous and tortured angry Superman who’s still trying his best to do something good, and how long can he keep that up.

[travisellisor]

the cover to Superman (1939) #656 by Carlos Pacheco and Jesús Merino

[thevindicativevordan]

got any thoughts on the short lived villain, Subjekt-17?

Was reallllly hoping Superman & Lois was doing an adaption of him, but sadly that wasn't the case.

Like a lot of Kurt Busiek's run he had a really cool idea, "what if there was an alien orphan that crashed on Earth who couldn't pass as human?" that sadly didn't outlast his time on the books. Subjekt-17 is a cool way for Clark to face his privilege, how lucky he is to have been able to "pass" as a member of the dominant race and to have been found by a kindly couple who embodied the best of said race. He's also a living testament to how cruel humans can be, which is something Clark would rather not think about but occasionally is forced to confront. I suppose in a way S&L did adapt Subjekt-17 in a fashion with their take on Morgan Edge given both landed outside the United States, were raised in military bases, hated humanity for the torture they endured growing up, and saw Clark as a "brother" who "betrayed" them by not siding with them against humanity. Damn actually that is pretty accurate now that I think about it, just wish they had adapted Subjekt as a member of a non-Kryptonian race.

Personally I think Subjekt is cool and would welcome him coming back as a foe for Jon given Jon is half-human and would not be exempt from Subjekt's wrath. Plus Jon is being built to confront the worst of human society and Subjekt is someone who has suffered because of human society. Feel like that would make for a fun match-up, how can Jon make sure Subjekt gets justice for the pain he's endured, while also not letting him go on a rampage against innocent humans? Would make for a tough moral conundrum for Jon to navigate.