Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, suggests Superman in a hoodie and comments on the cancellation of Thor the Mighty Avenger, what’s happening to Jane Foster in the Thor movie, who’s on monitor duty on Thanksgiving, and the source of comic ideas.

The fact that almost no one knows anything about the upcoming Superman movie hasn't stopped people from endlessly writing about it.  In casting Jon Hamm, the impossibly chiseled Joe Manganiello and Mathew Goode have all been floated as Superman and just yesterday people started calling for Anne Hathaway to be Lois Lane.  They're saying the super suit might be CGI enabled like the movie version of Green Lantern's or that Superman may be entirely CGI,  though admittedly that seems really, really unlikely.  So I'm not taking anything I read online all that seriously.

But from what has been revealed of the film's plot it concerns a "young journalist traveling the globe, who would rather solve problems and help people without resorting to using his special powers", making it seem more than a little like the Superman: Earth One graphic novel.  It looks like it's going be yet another incarnation of Superman without so much Superman in it, which makes sense, seeing as how there's now a whole generation of kids who, thanks to growing up watching Smallvile, knows Clark Kent a whole lot better than they do Superman.

I'm a huge Superman fan but I've begun to think the character's detractor's might actually have something:  the problem with the character is the character, specifically the costume.  There's no way you can justify it; no context you can put in (besides maybe the circus) where it makes any sense; no reason why anyone would ever wear it; and no way to 'tweak' it (as they've done in the Captain America movie) to make it any more likely.  Sure, you need the costume... for kids and merchandising, but otherwise it may have outlived its usefulness and then some.

So, maybe it's time we stop kidding ourselves and go ahead and have the guy in the comics start wearing a black t-shirt with a 'S' shield insignia and a red hoddie.  I know how unlikely that sounds but more unlikely things have been happening on a regular basis lately so, really, why not?  If nothing else it would be a sure way to generate a metric ton of free publicity.

I've had a few more thoughts about the cancellation of Thor the Mighty Avenger.  Everyone seems to be blaming its 'all-ages' approach or the fact that it didn't take place on a known Earth in the Marvel Universe meant it somehow didn't 'count.'  But me, I have to wonder if it also wasn't a matter of it getting lost among the many Thor-related titles, all of which started coming out roughly a year before the May release date of the Thor movie (which to me seems a little early).

Since I brought up the Thor movie I can mention that I recently learned the character of Jane Foster was being upgraded from nurse (not that there's anything wrong with being a nurse; one of my goddaughters is one) to astrophysicist apparently to give girls a role model in the sciences.  This doesn't bother me as much as a piece on the i09 website stating they've changed her name from "Jane" to "Alice" for no apparent reason (though the cast list on the Internet Movie Database still has it as "Jane").  Maybe somebody just got it wrong.  It's not like Jane Foster is an incredibly well known Marvel character, and it's not like I care all that much.  It's really hard but if I had to pick the worst toxic female stereotype in the early Marvel Universe it would have to be girly, passive Jane.  But a lot has been done lately to rehabilitate her in both the Marvel Universe and on Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes cartoon, the least they could do is get her name right.

And because it's almost the holiday, here's something else I never thought I'd see: last Sunday The Thing appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man comic strip complaining about having do "monitor duty" while the rest of the Fantastic Four were on "Thanksgiving Vacation."  I'll admit at first I thought Thanksgiving Vacation was a totally made up thing but apparently people actually go away around now (though it definitely was never a part of my life experience).  But, uh, Ben, the FF doesn't HAVE 'monitor duty' -- I think you're thinking of the Justice League.

Finally, in the course of a week there were announcements of upcoming comics based on the television series Jericho, Warehouse 13 and True Blood to which I can only say, "Have we completely run out of ideas?"  Maybe I'm just old fashioned but I have to admit I really miss the days when someone would just come up with an idea for a comic and somebody else would publish it.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely  those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.