Superman: A Celebration of 75 Years

I'm the kind of guy who spends all day brooding—about life, death, the nature of consciousness, AI, future prophecies, alien intelligence, AI again (because let’s face it, that rabbit hole never ends). The heavy stuff. The kind of thoughts that turn a normal afternoon into an existential crisis wrapped in a headache.

And then, right alongside all that cosmic dread… comes the real philosophically weighty issue:

What gives with my favorite comic book characters and creators?

Why does every new run feel like someone cranked out a reboot after skimming three issues and an angry Reddit thread?

Why does Batman suddenly sound like a self-help guru with a grappling hook?

Why does Superman talk like a Pentagon press release?

I'm gagagooey over Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Junji Ito, Hellboy, Spawn, old issues of Heavy Metal, Moebius—what-have-you. I grew up on the good stuff, like Ronin. Grown-up, metareferencing, gritty reboots of the comic books of yore that promised you the cosmos for a couple bucks and a bent spine. The tough, postmodern, "cutting-edge dawg" comics. The ones that knew how to bleed on the page and grin while doing it.

But then I open up Superman: A Celebration of 75 Years, and I’m reminded—comic books started out simple. Real simple. Sunday funny papers simple. Full-color spreads across yellowed newsprint, with Superman fighting the Axis and telling kids to buy War Bonds. A world where the difference between good and evil fit inside a single panel. And you know what? I dig it, bubbelah. There’s something holy about that one-dimensional clarity. It was propaganda, sure—but it was mythic propaganda. And it worked.

Superman: A Celebration of 75 Years begins with Ground Zero—Action Comics #1—and works forward from there. You get the obligatory Batman team-ups, Superman falling in love with a mermaid (not even joking), pushing planets around like furniture, getting shrunk and bottled by a flying saucer captain who turns out to be proto-Brainiac (before the chrome dome and cyberpunk makeover). Lex Luthor even goes straight for five minutes, while Superman plays bodyguard when his old mob buddies come back for payback, kemosabe. All in color for a dime. Then a quarter. Then five bucks. Because inflation, ya know.

We’ve got Kandor, the bottled city, and alternate dimension Supermen—like George Reeves beaming in from Earth-WTF, drawn by Frank Miller with a broken ruler. We’ve got Superman holding Hitler and Hirohito like naughty kids in a schoolyard scuffle. And yeah, he gets political: busting up war profiteers, helping exploited migrant workers, standing tall while the world burns (he'd have a hell of a time in L.A., presently). He fights Darkseid. He dies (but never really dies). He gets lost in a dream where Krypton survived and Jor-El’s on trial for banishing criminals to the Zone of Silence. It's all there.

And through it all, he evolves—from those clunky, crude 1930s panels to a sleek, ironic, photorealistic Gen Z reimagining. A symbol that somehow survives the weight of the world he’s trying to save. A myth wearing spandex, trying to stay relevant while we all quietly rot.

Superman’s not just a superhero—he’s a cultural litmus test. A Rorschach blot in a cape. We remake him every time we’re scared we’ve changed too much. Or not enough.

And yeah...

Keep going, Supes. Don’t ever stop.

You’ve been punching Nazis, catching missiles, and doing the right thing since 1938. You’ve died and come back more times than disco and still—somehow—we believe in you. You’re the last son of Krypton, but you’re also the last flicker of a dream we can’t quite kill.

Here’s to 100 years.

Because when you fly, we do too.

—Tom B., over and out.

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