Axe’s Musings
December 2024
Gunn’s Superman – Cowardly
I wasn’t a huge fan of the “teaser” (is it me, or do teasers now seem like trailers?). It just wasn’t Superman for me, mostly because I see him as a beacon of hope, not smashed and broken in a crater (which seemed awfully small considering the impact). The costume looked dowdy – like a child received hand-me-downs from his older brother. The music was butchered with that electric guitar…
People are afraid to be sincere. The 90s, the era I grew up in, taught irony as a way to signal you were shrewd and edgy, but really, it’s the clarion call of the coward. It’s tempting to think it’s brave to have Superman battered an beaten, but I assure you it’s the cynical choice. It’s cynical because it’s not emotionally true, but manipulative. It’s the attempt to induce sympathy through suffering/injustice.
Superman doesn’t require that kind of introduction, especially considering how he’s been written recently. And the allegory argument of Superman’s state representing the cultural shambles we find ourselves in now? No… hogwash.
Gunn won’t deliver, not if this teaser is our indication.
Launch Ready
Today will have quiet significance. I finished the first version of this site with chat at the centre of the user experience combined with a dedicated LIVE page for the various channels I’ll be live-streaming on. I wont promote it aggressively – more of a soft launch to get the kinks worked out. In particular: the ease of joining the site in order for readers to participate in chat. It will be an uphill battle, but worth it.
A Chat Centric Website
I’ve been observing the various spaces online for comics now for some time. I wont pretend to have the answers, but I have to take a shot and I’ve decided that chat, and other community driven elements, are going to be what attracts the kind of readership I’m looking for.
It’s not enough to have a website with your portfolio, comics, store. Chances are people will go there once, take a quick look, then bounce – never to return. If you’re going to have a site you should think of it more as a platform for offering engagement and cultivating difficult to break interrelationships. You want a place where people can really escape to, find like-minded people, share, and be merry.
I really despise the other platforms and their policies. So if I build my site around CHAT, and develop it from that central focus, perhaps I have a chance at taking those who visit and having them stay a while.