For everyone complaining that Superman is a jerk...

[Grimlock]

...isn't it possible he's under some subtle mind control?

No i don't mean he's been brainwashed like in Legacy, but if anyone read the JLA/Avengers crossover, you could see Captain America and Superman acting quite on edge, and it later gets explained that their moods were being affected.

So maybe Superman's (and the rest of the league's) mind is being clouded by something...perhaps of Luthor's creation?

Just an idea, but don't be so quick to judge Superman's attitude.

[Supremus]

Mind control? Again? No. It would completely undermine a lot of the issues of the current arc if that were the case.

[DerekPowers]

i dont think he's so much a 'jerk' as he is lame. and when they try to make him bad-ass, for some reason it always comes off as forced and a bit corny or cheeseball.

i actually think Superman was pretty good in 'Clash', compared to other appearences. atleast his character is getting some kind of direction, FINALLY. anyway, peace.

[Beyond Batman]

He's not a jerk. One way or another, all of us snap under stress. Even the best of us make mistakes...


...except Batman. :D

[Kieralinn]

Superman is so not a jerk...he just woke up. He now realizes that the world is so not Black and white.. that there are many shades of gray. He has become an adult vs a kid with absolute hope in that people are basically good.

I like that he has seen the light ...so to speak.;)

[Harley_Quinn]

Superman is so not a jerk...he just woke up. He now realizes that the world is so not Black and white.. that there are many shades of gray. He has become an adult vs a kid with absolute hope in that people are basically good.

I like that he has seen the light ...so to speak.;)
I couldn't say it better myself, so I won't :D

[Karkull]

...isn't it possible he's under some subtle mind control?
I think it might be possible, along with Wonder Woman and J'onn. They've all had their jerk moments in the past season.

[Bones Justice]

I'd like to think that this is the direction the Superman character is headed of his own free will. I wouldn't think less of someone for being more cynical after all he has been through. It's gotta be tough, after all the times he has saved the world, to not only have his trust-worthiness questioned but to have [part of] the government trying to kill him off. Even some of his teammates have started questioning his motives. You have to wonder what that would do to anybody.

OTOH, maybe Gorilla Grodd is up to his old Jedi mind-tricks again.

[CyberCubed]

Superman has been written as a jerk ever since Justice League started.

It's probably just due to poor writing.

[Funkatron]

He's not a jerk. One way or another, all of us snap under stress. Even the best of us make mistakes...


...except Batman. :D
Batman has snapped more than once in the DCAU. Mostly in the BTAS, not so much in JL/JLU

[Bird Boy]

Superman has been written as a jerk ever since Justice League started.

It's probably just due to poor writing.

It can't be poor writing because after "Clash" it's apparent they're making him act like a jerk on purpose.

Superman seems to be the character in the DCAU that puts up with the most crap. I'd be grouchy after awhile too.

-BB

[Ed Liu]

Howdy,

I don't care that Superman was a jerk in "Clash." What bugs me is that he went so far into jerkdom with no prelude. If there were buildup moments where we really get to see the cracks and fissures forming in Superman's idealism, then I could believe that he'd act the way he did in "Clash."

The one and only moment that would seem to lead to Superman jerkhood is Batman's criticism to Superman after Doomsday got sent to the Phantom Zone. It was harsh, but then I'd expect Superman to be snippy to BATMAN, not to the random new guy.

Contrast this to Hawkgirl's involvement with John or her betrayal of the League. There were lots of hints dropped all along the way. When you get to the punchline of both of those events, it felt like a natural evolution of a character. IMO, Superman got turned into a jerk in "Clash" because it was necessary to get into a big punch-up with Captain Marvel, so poof! he's a jerk.

-- Ed/Ace

[stwasm]

Just to piggyback on what Kieralinn already said so eloquently, it's not so much Superman has become a jerk as it is the evolution of his character through real-world experiences versus that childlike wonder and naivete. But, I gotta say that the "You're no longer heroes" speech Captain Marvel delivered at the end of "Clash" was one of the most powerful I've heard in animation. You can bet that's a theme that's going to continue for the rest of the season -- especially now that it's been revealed that Luthor is in cahoots with Cadmus.

[GregX]

He's always been a jerk...


http://www.superdickery.com/images/dick/1296_4_135.jpg

[Temple Fugate]

What I'm about to point out may be taken as a special circumstance and inadmissable as evidence to why or why not Superman is a jerk...but in "Twilight" (several years ago according to DCAU continuity) he said to Darkseid: "I'm not going to stop until you're just a greasy smear on my fist."

He's been a jerk for a long time now. For good reason.

EDIT/ADDITION:
Just to piggyback on what Kieralinn already said so eloquently, it's not so much Superman has become a jerk as it is the evolution of his character through real-world experiences versus that childlike wonder and naivete. But, I gotta say that the "You're no longer heroes" speech Captain Marvel delivered at the end of "Clash" was one of the most powerful I've heard in animation. You can bet that's a theme that's going to continue for the rest of the season -- especially now that it's been revealed that Luthor is in cahoots with Cadmus.I've gotta agree. Not many cartoons have demonstrated the flaws of their main characters in such a profound way. Having it be Superman, of all people, makes it even more dramatic because he's the guy everyone sees as the perfect being, the Icon. Perhaps that's why so many people are complaining about Superman's attitude; Their faith in the infailability of Superman has been dashed. JLU tells a hard lesson: Even the World's Finest aren't perfect.

[stwasm]

What I'm about to point out may be taken as a special circumstance and inadmissable as evidence to why or why not Superman is a jerk...but in "Twilight" (several years ago according to DCAU continuity) he said to Darkseid: "I'm not going to stop until you're just a greasy smear on my fist."

He's been a jerk for a long time now. For good reason.

EDIT/ADDITION: I've gotta agree. Not many cartoons have demonstrated the flaws of their main characters in such a profound way. Having it be Superman, of all people, makes it even more dramatic because he's the guy everyone sees as the perfect being, the Icon. Perhaps that's why so many people are complaining about Superman's attitude; Their faith in the infailability of Superman has been dashed. JLU tells a hard lesson: Even the World's Finest aren't perfect.
You've hit the nail right on the head! Excellently said! And this is what will bring us back to see how it all develops.

[Quintessence]

I don't know where this is coming from, Superman's change of personality came from out of the blue. It's been told that Superman: TAS is cannon in the JLU world. He lost the faith of the people and in turn, lost faith in himself. JL starts up, and for once he really can't solve the problem on his own (That episode with the Flash doesn't count on TAS. He was just with Superman when it started). Another tap away at his esteem. Starcrossed comes, and one of his most trusted friends betrayed him. He can't trust himself to save the day all the time, and now he can't even trust if those he allied himself with are allies. JLU starts and he finds out that not only does he has more allies betrayed him, but the world distrusts him and what he's doing so much that governments are forming ways to defeat him.

Think about that, people. Think if you had superman's powers and his drive to help and all that stuff happened to you. Wouldn't you think every time you save a car from falling off a bridge, the person you helped might be thanking you face to face but driving off and wondering if you're going to turn evil again and someone should stop you? How sunny and great would your outlook be if you faced all of that?

[Sue]

I'm with Kieralinn and Harley on this. More than anything, I think he's maturing. Considering all he's been through from his own series to JL/U, I wouldn't expect him to be the same bright eyed, naive character he was before.

[Wizard]

Howdy,

I don't care that Superman was a jerk in "Clash." What bugs me is that he went so far into jerkdom with no prelude. If there were buildup moments where we really get to see the cracks and fissures forming in Superman's idealism, then I could believe that he'd act the way he did in "Clash."

The one and only moment that would seem to lead to Superman jerkhood is Batman's criticism to Superman after Doomsday got sent to the Phantom Zone. It was harsh, but then I'd expect Superman to be snippy to BATMAN, not to the random new guy.

Contrast this to Hawkgirl's involvement with John or her betrayal of the League. There were lots of hints dropped all along the way. When you get to the punchline of both of those events, it felt like a natural evolution of a character. IMO, Superman got turned into a jerk in "Clash" because it was necessary to get into a big punch-up with Captain Marvel, so poof! he's a jerk.

-- Ed/Ace
I agree completely, but I wonder why the writers have done comparatively little to show the evolution of the jerkhood. It's like what they did with J'onn, but worse- Task Force X was an extreme situation, and his reasons for the attitude adjustment are easy to understand. Here, we just see Superjerk, and without any concrete explanation of why. Why did he instantly take poorly to Marvel? It's not like he was another Booster Gold. Then, Luthor. The distrust is understandable (and correct, and would have been even if he was wrong), but Superman has dealt with him before, and I can't remember him ever turning his brain off so willfully. Marvel may have been naive (and he was, and would have been even if he were right), but I can't see the harm in having somebody actually examine the device when there was enough time to do so.

[Supremus]

I agree completely, but I wonder why the writers have done comparatively little to show the evolution of the jerkhood. It's like what they did with J'onn, but worse- Task Force X was an extreme situation, and his reasons for the attitude adjustment are easy to understand. Here, we just see Superjerk, and without any concrete explanation of why. Why did he instantly take poorly to Marvel? It's not like he was another Booster Gold. Then, Luthor. The distrust is understandable (and correct, and would have been even if he was wrong), but Superman has dealt with him before, and I can't remember him ever turning his brain off so willfully. Marvel may have been naive (and he was, and would have been even if he were right), but I can't see the harm in having somebody actually examine the device when there was enough time to do so.Superman's characterisation on JL(U) has been a pretty bumpy ride. Perhaps they felt they could rest on the laurels of whatever development he had on STAS and became a little complacent by giving far more attention to other characters, leaving Supes with the occasional 1-dimensional outburst.

The other perhaps more likely explanation is that they just don't have a handle on Superman's character at all. It's not just his powers that make him a much more difficult character to get right than someone like Batman, and they have certainly had far more misses than hits with Supes.

The jerk/jaded behavior is obviously intentional for the purposes of the story, so I don't think that's a miss as such, and even though it's not necessarily the right way to do Superman, it's an interesting issue to explore, as long as he eventually regains his perspective.

For a period in the 80s (70s?), Superman was written as quite arrogant, and it worked reasonably well as a conduit for some soul searching about what it means to be Superman, so there is definitely potential for JLU Superman, even if it's lightly disconcerting that he occasionally acts outright brain-dead simply for the purposes of hammering a point through in a far too easy way, as was certainly the case in "Clash". And as good as the Cadmus arc has been, I still think they have taken too many shortcuts with a lot of important issues, so I am not entirely confident we will get a satisfying pay-off with regards to Superman's behavior.

[gerasimos]

Superman has become a "jerk" for a good reason. In the finale of STAS the entire world has their view of Superman skewed after all the carnage he caused. Superman is no longer trusted by the people of Earth; the U.S. Government especially and Superman knows it. He is very uneasy in all of his actions and it wears him down, causing him to be a "jerk". This is even shown in the models created for JL, where Supes is given wrinkels to show his stress. By the end of Season 2 they were removed because of fans complaining.

[Bones Justice]

Superman probably had another crisis of public trust after Secret Origins, also. He was instrumental in helping disarm the Earth's nuclear defenses even if he was being deceived by an alien. How many people remembered anything beyond the fact that Superman, an alien himself, had gotten rid of the very missiles that could have been used to defend them? I recall that one of the military's generals (was that Eiling?) was not to happy with Superman's part in all this when everyone realized that Earth was being invaded and they were basically defenseless.

Yeah, I'd think Superman's popularity has gone down a lot after all that. And it's got to eat at him. He knows he was doing in a good thing for Earth by removing the threat of nuclear war but it all back-fired on him. He lost a lot of trust, many people were killed in the subsequent invasion, and afterwards, everyone went right back to being under the nuclear threat.

[Azrael24]

i dont think superman was that much of a jerk. you have to look at the situation w/captain marvel. hes stealing his title. its like when you are an only child and you are your parents favorite :anime:. but then your mom gets pregnant and you get an annoying little brother :shrug:. he hets all the attention from your parents, and your left in the background :sad:. if any of you are big brothers or sisters you should now what im talking about. i think superman felt that way about captain marvel and thats why he was being a jerk to him (although i'll admit he went too far.)

[karasu]

He hasn't matured, he's become bitter. He's angrier than Batman for crying out loud. He has a good reason since it's based in Darkseids plott hat turned Superman against the people of earth. I just wish he would hurry up and progress past that point now. The total boyscout thing ala Captain Marvel is ridiculous, especially considering that Captain marvel was wrong!But the perpetually bitter thing isn't much better. Supes needs to find a balance between the two. My biggest problem with him is his voice haha. It sounds like someone is pinching his nose.

[Willowhugger]

Superman's personality ironically ISN'T that of the perfect human being.

Superman's Jerkier days (http://www.superdickery.com)

Has a collection of his original and most consistent personality that's only now coming back into fashion. Superman has flaws as a human being, things like with Captain America in the Ultimates that are only now coming out.

Superman is at heart a show off and a good old boy. He's a man who is very reasonably trying to be responsible by his religion and live up to the "great power comes great responsibility" sticke but primarily he's a farmboy with a weird past who is easily frustrated by the 'legitimate authorities' that he's been raised to love.

Lex Luthor is a businessman, Lex Luthor is a scientist, Lex Luthor is his best friend, Lex luthor is the President. All of these work in part because in their age they are the people whom are the biggest interference with Superman's desire to do right by people.

Hell yes, he's irritated. The portrayal in "JLU's Cadmus arc" was an outgrowth of "Secret Society" where as you recall, Superman is only speaking his mind that he's the best.

[Mr_Millions]

The main thing that Superman's actions create in me is a sympathy towards the JL's enemy: Cadmus. I can't say whether or not Luther's goals are altruistic (wait, yes I can: they aren't), but as for the rest of the government, I understand their concern. We're always seeing Superheroes flying through (and knocking down) buildings, but nothing like that. Not just were buildings destroyed, we know that they were people's homes. That's 30,000 people that have probably lost their faith in the Justice League, or at least Superman. And who can blame them? Neither Captain Marvel nor Superman stopped to really consider their actions. They just kept pummeling each other.

It's not even like a "Vash the Stampede" situation. It isn't just that things get destroyed while the "good guy" is avoiding killing anyone while defeating his enemy, it's that the Heroes are lucky that no one dies during their escapades. It's probably a little much for JLU, but the series might fast be approaching a "Watchmen" type situation where there is public outcry against the superpowered and an official ban of their presence on earth. Cadmus can use its clones to mop up the bad guys, and we're left with a "normal" world.

At the very least it leaves the field open for Luthor to do something very, very bad.

[Willowhugger]

The main thing that Superman's actions create in me is a sympathy towards the JL's enemy: Cadmus. I can't say whether or not Luther's goals are altruistic (wait, yes I can: they aren't), but as for the rest of the government, I understand their concern. We're always seeing Superheroes flying through (and knocking down) buildings, but nothing like that. Not just were buildings destroyed, we know that they were people's homes. That's 30,000 people that have probably lost their faith in the Justice League, or at least Superman. And who can blame them? Neither Captain Marvel nor Superman stopped to really consider their actions. They just kept pummeling each other.
Of course, take a step back and realize that Superman wasn't acting to selfishness either. He was trying to save the lives of everyone there. Thinking rationally, he should know that Lex Luthor wouldn't kill 30,000 people (including himself) just for the hell of it. He's not Brainiac or Darkseid who thrives on mass destruction. On the other hand, Superman is also aware that Lex Luthor is smarter than him. It's one of the biggest troubling aspects of Superman's mind. Lex Luthor IS capable of killing everyone and somehow getting away in order to make a huge "terrorist attack" against him that's surely going to sweep him into public office that no one would suspect him of because of his humanitarian deeds. Superman knows in the end, he really is THAT evil.

[Azrael24]

i dont know why people feel sympathy for cadmus. they may have a point but they ARE the samething that the justice league are. its sort of like 'double date.' cadmus is becoming exactly what they feared, a threat. they crossed the line when made galatea and what they did to the ultimen. this episode should have gotten the sympathy for cadmus out of people.

[Willowhugger]

At present Cadmus' list of sins include

* Cloning five helpless people (and many others) with false families that are doomed to die horribly as canon fodder.

* Cloning a young woman without her knowledge (that would be charged as a either a form of rape or grand theft I think) and using her as an assassin against one of their own rogue scientists.

* Bypassing Congress for funding in what could be construed as Treasonous activities and is at the very least a violation of numerous laws designed to prevent corporate interests from influencing US policy for reasons oddly exactly the same as being demonstrated here.

* Deflaming a humanitarian group for no real reason than they MIGHT prove a threat.

* Freeing killers and psychopaths on the off chance they MIGHT be of help.

* Trafficing with demons (this is only church law but you'd think the USA would know better)

* Cloning Superman without his knowledge and making a monster out of him through torture

* Firing a nuclear missle without Presidential approval (My god, what kind of jail time would this accure in a court of law?)

* Kidnapping, torture (even under the Patriot Act and the fact that the Question assaulted a Presidential Candidate with the intent to kill, this is highly illegal)

Anything I miss?

[Grimlock]

Well, it's nice to see all the positive responses. Plenty of you don't think he's a jerk, and plenty of you think he's become what he's become for a reason.

It just wouldn't surprise me if they had Task Force X or something plant some sort of aggression transmitter which made all the JLU members on edge.

Keep up the discussion though, your opinions are interesting.

[Mr_Millions]

Yeah, crap, Cadmus sucks.

Let me re-phrase. I sympathize with certain people that started Cadmus and I understand the atmosphere in which is was created.

There. Hooray. This should have been in the talk back, but this thread was so much more convenient.

I'm still a little angry at myself that I missed The Question's reappearance. I need reruns!

Back to the actual question:

I'm of the mind that Superman is just being Superman. No mind control or anything like that. Just a man trying to deal with a whole lotta crap all at once.

That said, there's gotta be a better way of dealing with problems than throwing teammates through low-income housing. Though in Supe's defense, Captain Marvel was being unreasonable as well. They both are responsible for the weeping babes of homeless mothers. And giving Luthor great PR.

[Willowhugger]

Ironically, the US government comes off very positively here. The President does cut the league a GREAT DEAL of slack with what seems to be an attack on US soil by them. He also is hesitant to move against them despite twice they'd played right into Alien Invasion hands (admittedly stopped by self-same forces)

CADMUS also only became corrupted when Luthor allowed them to bypass Congress for money.

[Wizard]

Willowhugger- you might want to edit some of your previous posts to prevent accidental spoilage.

[RAINMAN]

i dont know why people feel sympathy for cadmus. they may have a point but they ARE the samething that the justice league are. its sort of like 'double date.' cadmus is becoming exactly what they feared, a threat. they crossed the line when made galatea and what they did to the ultimen. this episode should have gotten the sympathy for cadmus out of people.


I think they cross the line in task force X. Brakeing in, trushpassing, stealing a dangerous weapon.etc. How can cadmus consider themsleves the good guys when acting like the bad guys?:shrug:

[Azrael24]

exactly what i mean, willhunger pointed out the main reasons why they are also bad, actually EVIL

[Willowhugger]

I think they cross the line in task force X. Brakeing in, trushpassing, stealing a dangerous weapon.etc. How can cadmus consider themsleves the good guys when acting like the bad guys?:shrug:
To be honest, aside from killing Plastique, that's perfectly normal Spy stuff.