He wrote a Superman I could believe in as a hero (Superman's a very fine line, because if he's perfect he's boring, but if his morality goes even a little gray he becomes terrifying to the point of making one side with Lex, because, uh, yeah, omnipotence is scary...!) And his Lex was hysterical mad-genius awesome and yeah, really like that take.
Yes, THIS. I think the thing that impressed me most about Maggin's take on the characters is not even his shades-of-gray Lex (not that I wasn't delighted with it, but I also grew up with X-Men and Marvel comics in general, who did a lot with shades-of-gray bad guys in my formative 1980s comic-reading years) so much as the way that he humanized Superman, a character who was little more than a moral paragon, and a virtually omnipotent one to boot, into an actual person. And he had a wonderful, nuanced take on their relationship. I've had both of the novels since I was a teenager and I think I've read the short story you're talking about too. (Actually, AFAIK, Maggin wrote at least a little of what could reasonably be considered fanfic for those characters, because he wanted to continue writing them even after he no longer worked for DC. I think the short story is one of those, if it's the one that's set many years in the future ...) The way he wrote the characters was a wonderfully fannish "I love these characters AND NOW I AM GOING TO FIX EVERYTHING THAT DOESN'T WORK FOR ME" sort of take on them ...
it's the only show I've ever fanned on that I actively disliked; but something about the Clark/Lex dynamic hits my buttons so hard I can't let it go.
... oh dear. ^^;;;; Yeah ... the relationship that we fans have to our fannish love objects is so interesting. I'm not sure if I've ever fanned on something I outright disliked, at least not for very long, but oh, the number of times I've either been hugely disappointed in canon's developments, or had to ignore vast tracts of canon (or pretend it was better than it really was) in order to continue liking the show/book/movie/anime ... yeah.
Actually, Sanctuary is like that in some ways for me, I guess. It's an awful show in so many ways -- I've stopped watching all but the Tesla episodes because it frustrates me so bad. I think if I wasn't latched onto that one character, I'd have stopped watching completely. And yet, I can't resist the shiny allure of NEW TESLA.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
winterfish
no subject
Date: 2011-05-18 01:55 am (UTC)Yes, THIS. I think the thing that impressed me most about Maggin's take on the characters is not even his shades-of-gray Lex (not that I wasn't delighted with it, but I also grew up with X-Men and Marvel comics in general, who did a lot with shades-of-gray bad guys in my formative 1980s comic-reading years) so much as the way that he humanized Superman, a character who was little more than a moral paragon, and a virtually omnipotent one to boot, into an actual person. And he had a wonderful, nuanced take on their relationship. I've had both of the novels since I was a teenager and I think I've read the short story you're talking about too. (Actually, AFAIK, Maggin wrote at least a little of what could reasonably be considered fanfic for those characters, because he wanted to continue writing them even after he no longer worked for DC. I think the short story is one of those, if it's the one that's set many years in the future ...) The way he wrote the characters was a wonderfully fannish "I love these characters AND NOW I AM GOING TO FIX EVERYTHING THAT DOESN'T WORK FOR ME" sort of take on them ...
it's the only show I've ever fanned on that I actively disliked; but something about the Clark/Lex dynamic hits my buttons so hard I can't let it go.
... oh dear. ^^;;;; Yeah ... the relationship that we fans have to our fannish love objects is so interesting. I'm not sure if I've ever fanned on something I outright disliked, at least not for very long, but oh, the number of times I've either been hugely disappointed in canon's developments, or had to ignore vast tracts of canon (or pretend it was better than it really was) in order to continue liking the show/book/movie/anime ... yeah.
Actually, Sanctuary is like that in some ways for me, I guess. It's an awful show in so many ways -- I've stopped watching all but the Tesla episodes because it frustrates me so bad. I think if I wasn't latched onto that one character, I'd have stopped watching completely. And yet, I can't resist the shiny allure of NEW TESLA.