The (Comic) Book Was Better - Superman/Batman: Public Enemies

We’ve all heard it.  Heck, we’ve all said it—“That movie was good/bad/okay/fantastic/the worst piece of dreck ever put on film… but the book was better.”  In this new review series, I am going to be looking at movies (or TV episodes, though the emphasis will be on DC’s series of animated films) and the comic books/graphic novels that inspired them to determine which one told the story better.  I won’t really be comparing them per se, because otherwise you could probably narrow it all down to “the cartoon cut too much stuff out”—I’ll just be judging each version on its own merits as if I have never seen/read the other version, and we’ll see how this works. Today’s subject: Superman/Batman: Public Enemies!

This storyline was originally published as Superman/Batman #1-6 in 2003-04; the legendary Bruce Timm, the man behind Batman: The Animated Series and loads of other special things, executive produced the cartoon adaptation in 2009.  The plot for both the film and the comic are basically the same.  A giant Kryptonite asteroid is heading straight for planet Earth, and President Lex Luthor is blaming it on Superman because… because he’s Lex Luthor—you need more of an explanation than that?  He places a massive bounty on Superman’s head, so both the Man of Steel and his trusty pal the Dark Knight are now enemies of the state, hence the title.  Our heroes’ job is to stop the asteroid before it hits Earth and stop Luthor because he’s a crazy person while being pursued by other heroes, led by Captain Atom, who have decided to work for Luthor.  Ultimately, a rocket built by boy genius Toyman is able to stop the asteroid well before it hits Earth, and Luthor is exposed as a nutcase and thrown out of power.  This is where the similarities end.

Okay, so let’s start with the comic version.  How’d they do?

Pretty well, I think.  The camaraderie between Batman and Superman is blunt but (dare I say it?  Yes!  I dare!) affectionate—it’s obvious these two are the best of friends, regardless of petty spats and personal differences.  Just read that banter!

 

The comic is constantly emphasizing the stark contrast between sunny, outgoing Clark and broody, skulking Bruce, which only makes it more satisfying when they manage to work together, kick butt, and genuinely care about each other… mostly.  I have to admit, after a while of the juxtaposed worldviews I started thinking “I get it already!  They’re different and yet the same!  Can we move on?!”

Even more minor characters are given complexity and conflicts, Captain Atom in particular.  He’s trying to be a “good soldier” and serve his country the way he’s been taught, even though Luthor’s methods and ideologies clash severely with his own beliefs.  Ultimately, he can’t make it work and ends up sacrificing himself (well, as much as anyone in a comic ever really sacrifices themselves before being resurrected six months later) to stop the asteroid.

Another thing I liked was that it really showed how neither Superman nor Batman is an island unto himself.  Aside from each other, they have Lois Lane helping them distract Luthor, Katana and Power Girl operating as spies within the Luthor administration, and when Luthor falsely claims that he has captured Superman, all of the World’s Finest’s Helpers—and I mean all of them, from Nightwing on down to Krypto the Superdog—immediately stage a rescue operation.  Granted, Lois fails to keep Luthor in place for long and the sidekicks get their butts handed to them inside of five pages, but they tried and they’re there.  It’s nice to see acknowledgement that Batman and Superman—each of whom are often depicted as loners, in their own ways—are really family men who have plenty of allies to call upon in times of need.

The only cameo that kinda bugs me is the Future Superman, who time travels back to warn his younger self not to pilot the rocket that will destroy the asteroid (the mission is destined to fail, meaning everyone but Superman will die, unless someone who can absorb radiation pilots the craft).  Future Superman’s plan to stop this catastrophe involves… yelling about how stupid he used to be and killing his younger self.  Um… couldn’t you have just told them what would happen if Superman flew the rocket?  Wouldn’t that have been more effective?  Or are your social skills so shot from years of living alone that you’re incapable of non-violent human interaction?  Also, grandfather paradox.  But maybe that’s what he wants. *shrug*

Another thing that bugged me was this one line from soon-to-be-ex-president Luthor:

Um, what mankind?  We’ve seen about three civilians in this entire comic, and they certainly didn't believe Superman was "that thing they fear the most."  Ohhhh, he must mean the invisible mankind that lives in his armoire and steals his socks from time to time.  I gotcha.

Anyway, the art is weird.  Half of me digs it, the other half is wondering why Superman and Batman are running around with rocks stuffed up their sleeves.  Superman and Batman look much better when they’re not on steroids, thank you.  And Captain Marvel looks like a duck.  A very angry duck.

 

Quack.  Also, I hate to be crude, but…

…are those onomatopoeias or orders?

But really, the artwork isn’t horrendous or anything, so let’s give an A to the original comic book because it’s fun and full of excitement.  How did the cartoon do?

The art style of the cartoon is pretty good.  It’s not completely trying to imitate the comic or previous cartoons.  The characters are recognizable, and the influence of the ‘90s animated series is there, but they’re just sort of doing their own thing, which is cool.  They should have stuck with the Justice League: Unlimited design for Amanda Waller, though. 

Ew.  On the upside, she is just as awesome here as she is everywhere else I've seen her.  She is loyal to Luthor but is also unafraid to stand up to him… until she realizes he’s a few hairs short of a toupee at which point she does not hesitate to betray him to Superman.  Bad. Ass.

And, of course, the cartoon has the benefit of Andrea Romano as voice director.  If you’ve ever watched any DC cartoon worth watching, Ms. Romano was probably involved.  And if you’ve ever watched any DC cartoon worth watching, you’ll already know a lot of the voice cast—Kevin Conroy as Batman, Clancy Brown as Lex Luthor, and Tim Daly as Superman.  Though my absolute favorite has got to be CCH Pounder as Amanda Waller.  I am seriously in love with this woman.  She has the best voice I have ever heard ever.  I haven’t seen the Green Lantern movie yet, but it would have been a thousand times better if Pounder had been playing Waller instead of Angela Bassett, I promise you that.  The only weak performance, to my ears anyway, was Allison Mack as Power Girl.  She just doesn’t have the authority to play a character who is supposed to be as powerful as Superman himself.

The bad news is that the cartoon seems mildly incompetent in spots.  Just a couple of examples:

-The movie begins with a montage of faux-news clips showing that the U.S. is having some pretty powerful problems at present—unemployment, homelessness, wars… sound familiar?  Now initially, throwing in some references to the modern world makes sense, because why else would America vote for a “former” criminal running on a third party ticket unless we were in truly dire straits?  The problem comes up later, when Luthor has apparently pardoned and then hired John Corben, a.k.a. Metallo, a Superman baddie with a heart of Kryptonite.  If this world is supposed to be so similar to our own, how was he able to do that?  Can you imagine the field day his opponents would have if the President of the United States hired a notorious ex-con?  I really don’t think Lex Luthor could or would do that, simply because it would draw too much attention to his criminal past and probably cause a lot of suspicion when all he wants to do is appear upstanding and honest.

-Towards the beginning, when Luthor is giving his inauguration speech, he introduces five of his superhero allies—Captain Atom, Black Lightning, Power Girl, Katana and Major Force.  The next time they show up (during the first fight versus Superman and Batman), Starfire is with them.  She isn’t named or explained and she isn’t given a line, she’s just there.  And then in the next fight, Starfire is there and Katana is not, nor is she ever mentioned again.  I’m going to guess that the production process went something like this:

“Uh, hey, Charlie?  Which super-chick did we decide to use in this movie again?”

“What’s the difference?  They all look the same.”

“But what if one of them is important or something?”

“Who cares?!  Quit bugging me, I’ve got these awesome CG cars to work on.”

One thing I absolutely do NOT like about the movie is the fact that Power Girl is a gullible stooge.  She is shown to be easily manipulated by Luthor into not only working for him but also doubting her own cousin’s innocence in the murder of Metallo.  She’s also physically weaker than she should be (she is SUPERMAN’S COUSIN, hello) and is basically a punching bag in need of rescue whenever she tries to fight.  And the one time Power Girl does kick butt, she ends up puncturing a hole in Major Force, thus nearly blowing up the city.

To be fair, it is implied that she helps Batman and Superman beat up Hawkman and Captain Marvel later on, but we never actually see it happen.  And like I said, having the voice of Chloe Sullivan really doesn’t help her case at all.

While we’re on the subject of Power Girl, her presence isn’t actually explained.  I already knew that Power Girl was Superman’s pseudo-cousin, but I don’t think they ever say this in the film.  Either way, her being here is a problem.  A: If she is Kryptonian, then why isn’t she affected by the Kryptonite in Luthor’s bloodstream the way Superman is?  B: If she isn’t Kryptonian, then what is her connection to Superman?  Why is she so concerned about him? 

Ninety percent of the cartoon’s problems can probably be traced back to the producers just assuming that anyone who bought the movie had already read the comic—which is a very, very bad assumption to make.  I guess if a parent got this for their ten-year-old (which I would not recommend, as there are a couple of naughty words in here), the kid would be too enthralled by the action scenes to care much about plot.  Mostly because there are fifteen thousand action scenes and only the bare bones of a storyline.  But if some dude who read comics as a kid notices this film and decides to give it a shot, he is going to end up kinda lost.  Since I read the comic several times before watching the cartoon, I was able to mentally fill in the gaps (e.g. Power Girl isn’t affected by Kryptonite because she is from an alternate universe and is not Kryptonian in the usual sense of the word), but I know I’d have been scratching my head without that prior knowledge.

So those are my opinions on the two different versions.  Aside from the basic plot and a few lines of dialogue the cartoon stole from the comic, do they have anything else in common?

Well, both of them feature crazy Transformer Lex, which never sat well with me for some reason.  It’s probably just a personal hang-up, but when I envision Lex Luthor, I think of a calm, cool, rational, ruthless businessman, not a wild-eyed, steroid-abusing, robot-suited wacko.  I think I would have preferred to see Lex try to take down Supes and Bats with his intellect and non-physical power, not in a curb-stomp battle out on the streets.  On the other hand, Luthor is super intelligent, and I guess when you’re going up against a near-omnipotent being, dosing yourself with your enemy’s one weakness and building a robot suit is the most intelligent thing to do.  So maybe I should just get over it.

Another thing I have to fault both versions for is the science.  In order to eliminate the asteroid, Luthor sends a bunch of rockets out to make it go boom before it can hit the Earth, and if you’ve seen Deep Impact or some other sci-fi movie about blowing up astronomical bodies to save the world, this might seem reasonable.  In reality, however, this would be the exact opposite of a good thing.  Think about it—this asteroid, according to the comic, is somewhere between the size of Brazil and Australia.  Now look at the size of the rockets being sent to blow it up in relation to the size of the asteroid.

Yes.  Tiny.  So there is very little chance that those rockets would do anything worth talking about.  Even if, by some miracle, they did manage to break off chunks of the asteroid, those chunks would still be on a collision course with Earth, and we would still be royally screwed.  And I don’t care how powerful Luthor is or how hard he tries to override the military’s orders like he is shown doing in the cartoon—any astronomer with any brains would immediately start a riot upon hearing of this idiotic plan, and I have my doubts about the effectiveness of Toyman’s (relatively) puny rocket, too.  And for that matter, why is the United States the only country dealing with the Earth-threatening asteroid heading our way?  Shouldn’t the U.N. or the International Astronomical Union have something to say about all this?  I hate to break it to you guys, but America doesn’t own the world quite yet.

In conclusion, look at the title of this review.  The comic is leaps and bounds superior to the cartoon.  It has better (not to mention non-disappearing) characters and more space to develop the story.  The only thing the cartoon did better was the ending, which, while a bit simplistic (“then Luthor was arrested and everybody lived happily ever after, the end” basically sums it up), is at least better than crazy-Lex threatening us with “a crisis.”  Yeah, like we need another one of those.  And the cartoon does show more of the public’s reactions to the asteroid and stuff—not enough of the public, mind you, but three short scenes is more than the comic gave us, so kudos to the cartoon for that.  Still, these aren’t enough to cancel out its other faults.  Out of all the things the cartoon cut, the fight scenes suffered the least casualties, and with only sixty-seven minutes to develop both characters and story, the movie simply can’t support six full fight scenes. The cartoon is certainly entertaining, but it can’t stand on its own.

On the other hand, does the comic book version have a Jon Stewart expy mocking Lex Luthor?

 

I think not.

Next Time: The one thing Professor X doesn’t teach at Xavier Institute?  Gender studies.  Good thinking, Baldie.

Images from Superman/Batman: Public Enemies (film and comic) and Justice League: Unlimited