But everything has to work for its time, its zeitgeist. And today, the populist conception of heroism is a throwback to speaking softly — if at all — while carrying a big stick. And the comic book device of -> choke <- — I call them emotitexts now — had been made laughable, at least to the intelligentsia of Roy Lichtenstein and Susan Sontag's generation, long before *my* generation even started writing comics.

So today's Superman can't have any of the things from ACTION #500 that some people wax nostalgic about. My take on Superman in that book makes him, by today's standards, an emo wuss. That you remember it as fondly as you do says that it spoke to ITS era, and that I did the job I was hired to do, that's all. Just as Cornell, Goyer, et. al., are doing the ones *they* have been asked to do.

And they seem to be doing a pretty damned good job. Because the fact of the matter is that, on a day when a twister killed hundreds in Alabama and much of the world was about a royal wedding and a presidential birth certificate, several thousand people were also talking about a near-Public Domain character who was beloved to their great-grandparents, and talking about him as if he were relevant and interesting in the here and now.

If that's not taking good care of the legacy, I don't know what is.

Thanks again.
MP

Some of those giant-size DC comics of that era were really well done. Too bad Action #900 was such a let-down after many charming issues from Cornell.