whacha think of that superman 2000 pitch? seems like a mixed bag honestly, not sure if gutting the marriage would have been worth it
Personally I think it could've been the shot in the arm the character needed.
For those people who have somehow found this blog but aren't obsessed with every bit of info on Superman they can find, what Anon is talking about was the Morrison/Waid/Millar/Peyer pitch on how to reboot Superman for the 21st century. No doubt the creative names behind this have peaked your interest, and I promise the pitch itself is fascinating. You can read the pitch as well as an article that analyzes it and gives some of the background. Note that there were at least two versions of the pitch, Superman 2000 which is what we have a copy of and was more Waid/Millar's brainchild, and Superman Now which was the final pitch and more Morrison's baby. Far as I know we have never been able to read the Superman Now pitch but we do know a few details about it.
Revamping pretty much every corner of Superman's world, from the man himself, to his supporting cast, to his Rogues, this was basically an attempt at rejuvenating the character who was already starting to show signs of stagnation at the tail end of the Triangle Era. For Byrne fanboys this pitch is the blackest heresy because it pretty much goes scorched Earth on Byrne just like he did to Pre-Crisis. All the soap opera storytelling is gone, replaced with much more high concept scifi adventures. "Grounded" Superman is gone, his power levels were going to rocket up, including his intelligence which would have been nice. Trunks on the costume were gone too, Superman would've gotten a new costume with a new S-shield. The Fortress would've been massively expanded and fleshed out. Unsurprisingly a lot of these ideas are 100% up my alley. Big dealbreaker for a lot of people is that the Superman 2000 version would have dissolved the Clois marriage.
Must confess to being a bit of a hypocrite here: while I'm adamant that Peter and MJ should be married, I'm indifferent to whether Clark and Lois are. It's hypocritical because Millar was on the team, and he is rumored to have passed along some of the pitches ideas to Quesada, who used the basic premise of a trickster dissolving a marriage with magic in One More Day. So this pitch may have helped contribute to the Spider-Man story I hate with a passion, yet I still think overall it's great.
Why am I not so upset about the Clois marriage getting dissolved? Well for one the 2000s were some of the worst writing for that relationship ever. Grounded had Superman implicitly threatening to break Lois' arm if she didn't bury a story because it would've put people out of work. Earlier in the 2000s you had Lois being written as a "bitch" who was "unworthy" of Clark, with Clark getting romantic teases with Lana, when both of them were married to other people! Only Busiek and Johns wrote the couple to my liking during the 2000s. Fundamentally I care more about whether Clark and Lois are written well than whether they're actually married, and I think we would've gotten much better writing for both if this pitch had gone through rather than what we got. However you should know that the final pitch apparently kept the two of them together anyway.
Love telling people about this pitch because it spits in the face of the idea that Morrison and Waid are just Silver Age nostalgia fanboys. They wanted to take the trunks off of Superman decades before Jim Lee did it! The Daily Planet is a 21st century media company that doesn't sell newspapers?!?!? Red Kryptonite as a tool for horror stories instead of funny throwbacks to Pre-Crisis?!? Weisinger would be rolling in his grave. No question that those two really like a lot of Pre-Crisis stories, but they aren't interested in returning to that status quo. Morrison also apparently wanted to keep the marriage (I've heard contradictory accounts about whether they are pro or anti-marriage, but Waid/Millar are both on record as being against the marriage) and Clark & Lois stayed together in the final version of Superman Now.
Lot of ideas for how to revamp the Rogues as well, my favorite is the Mxyzptlk pitch. Making him more of a serious threat to Superman is something I've wanted done for a long time, and it's part of my own take on where he should go. Bringing in Solaris and making him a threat to Superman in the present would've been awesome, I still have hope that Solaris will be one of Jon's foes. Rest of the ideas are solid, I am curious if they had plans for other foes beyond the ones listed, and what those ideas would've been.
Overall a lot of ideas that are present in this pitch would go on to form the basis for individual stories, acclaimed stories at that. Morrison used their ideas for All-Star Superman and Action Comics. Waid used his for Birthright and presumably some will also show up in his project with Hitch coming next year. Millar used a few ideas from this pitch in Red Son, particularly the ideas for Lex. Could all four working together on weekly comics done as well as they did working individually? Morrison and Waid working together on a weekly got us 52, but that was a miracle in execution that left the 52 team pretty burnt out at the end. Doubt they could have kept up the energy for weekly Superman comics for long, but I do think it absolutely would've gotten people excited and interested in Superman. Also am sure that at least some of the comics would've been legendary, and the 2000s would've been overall a much better decade for Superman. Might have even put him on better footing to challenge Batman in popularity.
The pitch is one of the ultimate "what ifs" of comics and Superman in particular. Impossible to say if the execution would've been able to deliver on the ideas, and many of those ideas got turned into stories anyway. Still, can't help but sigh and imagine 4 of the hottest creators at their peak who love Superman working on his main books. Doubt there will ever even be a chance of anything like that happening again.
