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, Bennett dives into how Superman continues to lose popularity because he is less relatable to modern audiences.

With his dark doppelgangers all over mass media these days (The Boys' Homelander, Omni-Man in Invincible), it’s frustrating that Superman himself isn’t as popular as he used to be.  I’ve written before about “The Issue With Superman” (see “Confessions Of A Comic Book Guy -- Superman: Into The Super-Verse”), the perceived notion that Superman is too old, too powerful, or even too good to ever gain massive mainstream success again.  That seems to have become an accepted fact in Hollywood, given the way it keeps greenlighting slightly different approaches to the character; like the progress on the development of a Black Superman movie or the live-action TV series Superman & Lois, which turned the franchise into a CW-style family drama.

And on the horizon, we have the animated My Adventures With Superman (see “Dwayne Johnson In ‘Super-Pets’, Animated Drizzt Short; Bruce Timm’s New ‘Batman’ Series; New ‘Spidey’ Pre-School Series; ‘Mech Cadets’ Series; ‘Batman: The Long Halloween, Part Two’”) coming to HBO Max and Cartoon Network which "will focus on Kent, Lane, and Olsen as they live out their twenties in Metropolis, adjusting to being adults and figuring out who they want to be."

From the single piece of promotional art provided and the fact it showed a black Jimmy Olson and a decidedly less glamorous-looking Lois Lane, I fully expected this announcement was going to cheese off a lot of fans.  And boy, did it ever; I found at least a half dozen YouTube videos on the subject.  Some content creators were unhappy with My Adventures With Superman because it wasn’t primarily about Superman, others (as predicted) didn’t like the new character designs.  But most were shill screeds, calling it sight unseen an “SJW woke” series that was "trash" and "garbage".

I confess, the approach My Adventures With Superman takes with the franchise isn’t the animated Superman series that I'd like to see, but it makes sense.  If you’re worried Superman has become less relatable, especially to a younger audience, focusing on younger versions of The Daily Planet staff is one way to go.  It’s not like you can’t tell great Superman stories using that format’ one of the best adaptations of Superman has to be the long-running 1940s radio serial The Adventures Of Superman.  That also focused primarily on Clark, Lois, and Jimmy.

In short, if they keep true to the characters, I’ll be happy with My Adventures With Superman.  As far as I’m concerned, as long as you’re taking the character in the opposite direction Zack Snyder was, you’re going the right way.

I regularly write about Mystery Science Theater 3000 (see “Confessions Of A Comic Book Guy -- Inching Back Towards Movie Theaters”) because I’m a fan, and also, because the self-proclaimed Cowtown Puppet Show has had a lasting impact on American popular culture.  An example of this being Teen Titans Go! See Space Jam, a special scheduled for June 20 on Cartoon Network that has Robin, Raven, Starfire, Cyborg, and Beast Boy hosting a viewing party of the 1996 original Space Jam.

In the special, "we’ll be watching the Teen Titans, watching the movie, and listening to their commentary" in Mystery Science Theater 3000 style.  Like MST3K, Teen Titans Go! See Space Jam will be editing their movie; the special is 80 minutes, the original Spam Jam has a running time of 1 hour, 28 minutes.  No word as to whether we’ll be seeing a silhouette of the Titans at the bottom of the screen.

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.