Blog: Talking About Superman

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Yesterday I had a lovely chat with someone about SUPERMAN.

This may not seem like news in particular - I have lovely chats about all SORTS of things all the time - but it was slightly different here in that I was speaking to a JOURNALIST for an article what he was writing for A Well Known Magazine. I guess he had got my details via a press release that UAL's lovely comms team did about my THORTS. The idea of doing that was to get my name out as Someone Who Can Say Mildly Interesting Things About Superheroes and, almost exactly a year later, it seems to have worked!

I'd done a bit of REVISION beforehand about new things like Absolute Superman and OLD things like the fact that Superman stayed in continuous publication even when most other superhero titles shut down (I was pretty sure that that was the case, but wanted to make sure), and amazingly all of that came in handy.

I chuntered on for about twenty minutes altogether, giving my THORTS on various aspects of Superman across different media. It was a bit weird because I'm usually HYPER-AWARE these days of chuntering on, and after a couple of minutes ALARMS go off in my BRANE shouting "You are Going On A Bit now Hibbett, draw these remarks to a close!" However, in this case I had to keep reminding myself that he'd rung me specifically to harvest some of these THORTS and so I was actually behaving correctly. I kept saying "Well, if you want my opinion..." and then remembering that that was the whole point of the conversation!

I also tried to say AMUSING and/or INSIGHTFUL things, my favourite of which was coming up with a possible modern revision to Superman's motto as "Truth, Justice OR The American Way". It struck me, and continues to strike similarly, that the "All-Star Superman" version of the character that James Gunn seems to be going for is EXACTLY the sort of Superman we could all do with at the moment i.e. a REALLY NICE PERSON who is incredibly powerful but, unusually, has not turned massively evil. In a way the idea of someone HAVING so much power and managing to use it wisely feels almost as fantastical as him being able to fly!

The chat was for a piece that'll be coming out nearer to the film's release so I'll keep an eye out for it and will see how much of my mighty insights get into the final thing. Whatever happens, it was a lovely excuse to have a chat with someone about it - especially someone of a similar age and comics-history as me who really did sound like he wanted to do it all justice!

posted 12/3/2025 by MJ Hibbett

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