According to legendary comic book creator Grant Morrison, Superman’s recent organizing of a new Authority team as a contingency for his possible death was written in order to prevent former DC Comics publisher Dan Didio from turning the Man of Steel into “a right-wing authoritarian”.
Morrison explained the reasoning behind their decision to turn Superman into an aging superteam leader during a recent interview with pop-culture YouTuber Daniel Lee, published to the young content creator’s channel on December 10th.
Discussing how Didio convinced them to return to DC Comics by giving them essentially free range over both Green Lantern, an agreement which resulted in the recent Liam Sharp-illustrated volume of the character’s solo title, and later, Superman, an offerwhich Morrison asserted they took up in order to stop the publisher’s tired plans to turn the canon Superman into a fascist dictator.
“The idea was that Superman was now this super right-wing authoritarian, and he formed this team the Authority to take over,” recalled Morrison of Didio’s scrapped ‘5G’ plans for the DC Universe, which the author considered so terrible that they took it upon themselves to right the ship.
“I said I don’t want to see…Superman is not a right-wing authoritarian!,” exclaimed Morrison as they continued. “That’s not how you do it.”
Thus, in an effort to save the character, Morrison said they told DC, “If you’d let me do a version of Superman where he’s like, a Dad, who’s having to lay down the law sometimes but at the same time he’s only doing it for the best reasons.”
“You know, he’s trying to be ‘the Dad’,” the Final Crisis architect added. “I said, if you let me do that version of Superman please don’t make him a right-wing tyrant guy, that’s just not Superman.”
Ultimately, Morrison told Lee that they “got sucked into doing the book again because if I hadn’t, they’d’ve made Superman a tyrant.”
“I told them, here’s what we’re doing. An Older Superman who’s a bit more of an outlaw, but without making him a bad guy,” they concluded. “Showing that he’s still sense of humanity, and even when he doesn’t have his powers, he still willing to fight the good fight.”
It’s good to see that at least one comic book creative still understands the characters they’ve been invited to write – even if those at the top clearly don’t.
What do you make of Morrison’s push back against DC’s plans to turn Superman into a canon dictator? Let us know your thoughts on social media or in the comments down below!