Superwuss (or, Is it really THAT hard to write a good superhero?)

Two excellent writers, whom I'm lucky enough to call acquaintances, help explain why Superman Returns has been something of a superflop this summer. I'm not sure quite why or how this happened, but somehow our culture has lost the ability to create or to sustain a decent hero. First, the creators of Smallville, in the space of five years, manage to turn the perfectly nice teenage Clark Kent they started with into a lazy, selfish brat who's better at getting people killed than saving them. Now we get a dour movie with little of the joy or hope you'd expect from a Superman story, instead providing us with a heaping helping of superhero angst.

Which is why I ditched plans to see it and ended up going to the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie instead. It wasn't nearly as good as the first, but at least, thanks be to God, Captain Jack hasn't yet taken to whimpering that he's all alone in the world and nobody wuvs him. Right now that fact alone is worth quite a few points in my book, and apparently in a lot of other people's books as well.