On June 14, Superman gets a new look on the big screen, with “Man of Steel.” Two days before that, he also gets a comic-book makeover, in DC’s “Superman Unchained.”
Two of the industry’s masters are at the helm: DC co-publisher Jim Lee, long the biggest artist in the field, and Scott Snyder, right now the hottest writer.
We asked Snyder and Lee about the dreaded R-word — whether Superman was still “relevant.”
Snyder, a pretty mild-mannered guy himself, responded in the vaguely scornful tone of a man defending the honor of his best friend.
“I think he’s incredibly relevant,” he said. “I mean, to me, Superman is sort of the character in comics, or one of the great characters in literature, that inspires us to be better, you know, than we think we can be.
“Because ultimately even though he flies and he is an alien and he has this incredible power set, the magical thing about that character is he’s the most human, I think, of all of us. You know, like, everything about him is because of the Kents. And so the thing that makes him special when you kind of boil him down to his core or you really look at him as a character, isn’t so much his power set. It’s his ethical compass.”