Superman's death at the hands of Doomsday in the booming slut times of the early nineties crazed into the stratosphere of wrongness stemming from the speculator market to affect the comicbook industry on a whole. Events with no meaning and a shallow marketing campaign tugged at the non-commitant heart strings of one-time and occasional readers and all-time gold dusters. Shortly following that crash cow, the distaste flavouring the hobby turned off many millions of copies leaving a hole in the bubble. Left to rubble, the industry was obliterated and climbed through the ruck and muck that followed to a state of respectability it is in today.
Christopher Reeves' very recent death—through cardiac arrest, comatosing and flatlining stemming from complications of a paralysed life—may spark moves in the opposite direction for all taking lessons.
Warner Bros.' new production on the Kryptonian, tentatively entitled Superman Returns and helmed by Bryan Singer, has been held down through a myriad of hellish production streams from scripts, director choices and allocated funding. Above all else one thing loomed large: the hunt for the new actor to be typecast as Clark Kent/Superman. As long as Reeve remained alive his shadow cast a mighty presence as whoever stepped up to the plate would be ostensibly be compared to the star. In death, though the shadow remains, it will not be with two living actors compared to each other, but as a touching passing of the mantle. Dean Cain's rendition in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (also starring Teri Hatcher as Lois Lane) stands outside as it was a television series. Believe it or not.
On those particular coattails, and with the stir generated by movies undergoing endless restorations and special editions, DVD sales of the classic Superman: The Movie should be set to spike and fly through the roof.
During his later years, Reeve fought a hard campaign and lobbied for funds and acceptance into stem cell research from the tightened governments. According to his research into the validity and likelihood of curing paralysis through the research, the technology was only a few short years away. Invariably, no matter how important the message, how vital the information to part from his lips, references would always be dropped on the Man of Steel. Movement and sensation in his fingers and spots around would bring up the notion of the man who made the world believe we could fly would one day walk again.
Now with Christopher Reeve put to rest, the martyrdom for the cause can begin anew.
Written on Monday, 11 October 2004