Superman: You're not from here, are you?

• The League of Losers (I) The Fantastic Four: does Mr. Fantastic take a benzodiazepine?

His name was Buck.

He wasn't some mad scientist planning to end the world, but he took out Superman in one fell swoop.

In May 1995, Christopher Reeve, the actor who most successfully lent his face to the most famous comic book superhero, was riding his

when suddenly, in the middle of a competition in Virginia, the jack stopped in his tracks. dry prostrating the man of steel in a wheelchair forever.

An inch to the left would have killed him;

one to the right, would have allowed him to continue competing.

In all the intrahistory of the world of superheroes, there is no worse defeat than this one that happened outside of fiction, at a time when

to cling to more substantial characters. .

May his heirs never hear us, but there is an ironic beauty in this terrible tragedy.

The title of his biography,

("I'm still me"), corroborates this.

Falls from the horse and other fatal outcomes aside, because Reeve was not the only actor cursed by the character, the history of Superman, since his birth, is an ups and downs of triumphs and failures, with some failures that leave the toxicity of the kryptonite

.

Despite being the king of all superheroes and the most perfect in his execution - he is the only one who does not need to disguise himself, since his true skin is that of the superman

.

The thing already started badly: New York, the 30s, a great depression.

In a room almost in darkness, bathed only by the dim light of a reading lamp, two men retouch some pages.

They are Siegel and Shuster, writer and cartoonist, and they have just given birth to the man of steel,

willing, like anyone else, to dominate the planet.

They harbored the illusion that his telepathic powers would make the kids of the time fall in love, but the publishers gave them pumpkins.

Faced with the impossibility of continuing to publish it, they had to turn their alien around - many times equated with an illegal immigrant, given the Jewish origin of his parents - to

.

He still did not fly, but he did have super strength, super speed, a Greek air at the height of a Hercules or an Achilles and a certain

character in that

of Herod, a being from another world raised by a humble marriage.

The guy came to save humans, hence his success: he would be a

, a hero of the underdogs capable of adapting to any real political situation.

.

From the threat of war, from economic misery, from nothing.

From the 20th century, come on.

The duo of creators hit the target, this time, and no one ever dared to question an euphoric creature, born to comfort us, to be

, a blender of our dreams and a compendium of sycalypse studied ad nauseam, analyzed by the most prestigious intellectuals.

"In this universe of ours, with its wealth of errors and legends, historical data and false information,

is the fact that Superman is Clark Kent. Everything else is always open to debate," wrote Umberto Eco. By the way, for losers, its creators, who sold the rights for a measly 100 dollars.

But, as we said above,

behind the skyscrapers: those of celluloid.

For starters, there are more scripts gathering dust in Hollywood drawers than blockbuster productions.

The first cinematographic stage, which spans a decade, since 1978, is perhaps the best and received in its first installment applause for its technique, the direction of Richard Donner and the incontestable and iconic soundtrack by John Williams (

. ..).

However, he was not free from problems: the director was fired in the second film, the

and a critic who has no mercy with the last two productions.

After that, Superman does not return until 2006, leaving behind a pathetic serenade of cancellations: the fifth installment is left in the air due to the bankruptcy of Cannon Films, Warner recovers the rights but never releases the return of the character planned for 1993 because his creators had no better idea than to kill him in the script.

Later, Jon Peters devised

,

, directed by Tim Burton and, beware, Nicolas Cage in the role of the man of steel.

A joke, a

that never made it to theaters, just as the first

, commissioned from JJ Abrams in 2002, who also did not carry out the subsequent

due to lack of budget.

Success is finally taken up by Bryan Singer with

, which in 2006, with an actor reminiscent of Reeve and a style inspired by Donner's, achieved 400 million dollars at the box office and a favorable review.

All that, however, seemed like little to Warner, so

.

And we come to the current stage, when the same production company decides to once again trust the man who is neither a bird nor a plane, creating a new franchise to which Zack Snyder gives

.

668 million box office for

and a delivery a year later,

, which, however, left a trail of criticism and protests over the departure of Snyder, who was going through a difficult personal time, and his replacement by Joss Whedon in post-production.

The film

, who manage to make the Snyder cut premiere on HBO in March 2021 with good reception despite its infinite footage.

The hero, in an animated version and played by the beloved John Krasinski, flies these days in theaters with

, whose premiere has been less than expected.

Nothing, boy, there is no way.

While we wait for the next adventures of the only hero whose name has entered the dictionary (

), we recommend a wander through the hundreds of absurd versions that he has also left and that would deserve own item.

, such as the Hispanic

, by Juan Piquer Simón... But, hey, to Caesar what is Caesar's: he will lack irony, he will display an almost unpleasant perfection, but he is infinite.

Each new success or each new disaster manages to perpetuate the myth of him and strike down the idea of ​​his expiration.

Next delivery:

come on heroines

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

Know more

• comic

• cinema