Man of Steel Sequels: Is Superman's Rogues' Gallery A Problem?

Not long ago, we mentioned a conversation that Erik Larsen was having with fans, in which he idly [...]

By Russ Burlingame

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Not long ago, we mentioned a conversation that Erik Larsen was having with fans, in which he idly fantasized about reinventing Superman, and that in that scenario a key to making it work would be to retool Superman's rogues' gallery. It got us to thinking about something that comes up from time to time as it regards Superman: Are his rogues' gallery a liability in terms of trying to build a long-term feature film franchise? Certainly he can't compete with Spider-Man or Batman, whose rogues galleries are legendarily good. Of course, neither of those guys has Superman's power levels, either, which present a challenge that's unique to him and maybe one or two other characters. That is, in order to be powerful enough to be a believable threat to Superman, the power and destruction levels have to be very substantial indeed. And given the uproar that happened when 12 city blocks were leveled in Man of Steel, one has to wonder: is it sustainable to move on from Zod to The Eradicator, Brainiac and Doomsday? Eventually won't you wear out the "Superman does amazing crap with his special effects powers' card? Of course, most fans really only know Lex Luthor, which is a problem. Batman's television series has given him unparalleled awareness of his foes, so that Catwoman, Mr. Freeze, The Penguin, The Riddler and more are household names among anyone who even remotely cares about this kind of stuff. But even beyond awareness, there are other issues.

Aaron Kuder's Parasite

Lex is fully human, meaning that in order to present a physical threat to Superman he's got to have a massive handicap--that's usually Kryptonite, which is frankly not very interesting over the course of a feature film. As we saw with Man of Steel, fans want to see a powerful, impressive, spectacular Superman...not one who spends a chunk of the movie semiconscious. Kryptonite can be done right--but it's difficult and it hasn't yet, frankly. That problem carries over to characters like Metallo and The Parasite, both of whom are dependent on making Superman weaker and less awesome in order to be an effective threat. One way around the Kryptonite problem might be to embrace the John Byrne era a bit, and do either Lex with a Kryptonite ring or Bloodsport, the assassin with the Kryptonite bullets. In either of those instances, it could keep Superman at bay and on his toes, but it would also provide him with a strategic opportunity to work around it, rather than just having him show up and find out there's a box of the stuff somewhere. The villains that seem to keep coming up over and over again with the fans--Brainiac and Doomsday--are characters who come with baggage of their own. Besides the damage issues, there's the fact that Doomsday is kind of a one-trick pony and no matter how cool you make a guy who smashes stuff up, it's hard to sustain over a full movie. It would be absolutely brutal to watch anything like what they did with Superman in the comics, and at a certain point people would become numb to the violence and the fighting. Brainiac is a bit better, but they'd have to lay out some ground rules for him in advance; if you did the Geoff Johns version, it's very similar to what they did with Zod (all the way down to the ship) but any of the other handful of iterations of Brainiac over the years would be difficult to sell as a foe to this version of Superman. And the "robotic" version that would look coolest on film is arguably the hardest to pull off in this kind of movie since the super-fast Superman who's willing to kill to save lives should theoretically dispose of any android threat in a matter of moments. Once you get past that first line of villains, too, the pickings are slim. Eradicator could go very well with the mythology-rich Krypton that they've developed, but it might be a hard sell to do another villain whose basic goal is exactly the same as Zod's. It would start to be like the real estate thing all over again. Looking at the forthcoming Villains Month books for Superman drives this home a bit; now is the time to really start creating some definitive, interesting versions of Superman villains. For too long, the greatest hero in comics has been caught fighting the same guys over and over again, many of whom aren't much real challenge for him--and if they start a feature film with him trashing Metallo and leaving him with the cops, I might pull a Mark Waid and (allegedly) yell at the screen.

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