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The Superman ’78 series is a continuation of the Christopher Reeves movies, and issue #5 features one of the Man of Steel’s most brutal fights.
Warning: The following contains spoilers from Superman ’78 #5, on sale now from DC Comics.
When Zach Snyder’s film Man of Steel was released in 2013, its depiction of Superman was rather controversial. Not only did his fight level several buildings in Metropolis, but his defeat of Zod— by neck-snapping, no less— was seen as a little too dark for DC’s greatest hero. But in Superman ’78 #5 (by Robert Venditti, Wilfredo Torres, Jordie Bellaire and David Lanphear), a spiritual continuation of the classic Christopher Reeve era of movies, Clark’s hand-to-hand tactics against the robotic bodies of Braniac’s is considerably more brutal.
Superman ’78 brings back all the likenesses of the original film’s actors, and it’s depiction of Braniac feels right at home in the comic. There’s no attempt at making him dark or metallic, and his spandex is arguably even shinier than his depiction in Silver Age comics. Issue #1 begins at the destruction of Krypton, but indicates, much like the comics, that Braniac collected the great city of Kandor at the moment of the planet’s demise. When he realizes a Kryptonian has survived the explosion and landed in an alien ecosystem, Earth, Braniac redirects the course of his vessel. In order to prevent the android from harming any humans, Superman surrenders to Braniac, and is placed in the shrunken Kandor, where he discovers that his mother and father have been alive all along.
Clark’s peaceful surrender ends when Braniac returns to Earth and steals Metropolis, as this violated the agreement that led to his surrender. With the help of Lex Luthor and Jor-El, Superman is teleported outside of the shrunken city, and proceeds to brutally attack Braniac’s drones. One of the drones comes at him with two razor-sharp laser blades, which Superman forces back into the attacker’s skull, bashing its brain open. And while one neck-snap was considered violent in Man of Steel, this take on Superman has him snapping an android’s neck in a move that immediately impales another, before proceeding to tear the robot’s torso from its legs.
Some might not consider this a huge deal considering that Superman is fighting robots in the issue. However, many consider the Reeve Superman to be the innocent boy scout type that could never hurt a fly, so the tonal whiplash of him beheading, stabbing and ripping apart his enemies is a little more jarring than Snyder’s film, which is dark and bleak from the beginning. It’s worth remembering though, that Superman killed Zod in Superman II as well, so perhaps the ’78 Clark Kent was more of a killer than audiences gave him credit for.
To this day, the two original Richard Donner Superman movies stand out as one of the most iconic depictions of the character, even if his slight tendency toward violence deviates a little from the silver age comics of the period.
While his hack-and-slash with Braniac might’ve been a little bit more than those films were likely to contain, the passion shown by Kal-El in defense of Earth hearkens back to the spirit of the Donner movies perfectly.
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