Well, unless you’ve read this book, you don’t know Joe.īecoming Superman is a surprisingly intimate, honest, and at times raw look back on Straczynski’s life, especially his youth. Some of us might even know him primarily through his always amusing and often insightful Twitter feed. Some might have found Joe by browsing on Netflix and finding Sense8. Some of us came to know him through his time on the Spider-Man and Superman comic book lines. 'What could Superman ever have to feel sad about' is a thought I've had about many people in real life, and this outlines the journey one must take through overreach, the underworld, and re-emergence in order to finally embody the thing we're all really seeking over happiness and contentment and love: the heart of a hero.Some of us might know Joseph Michael Straczynski through his work on Babylon 5.

Regardless of how super we are, if we are rising to the limit of our abilities and not succumbing to complacency, we're eventually going to hit challenges beyond our scope, which presents a peculiar paradox: the more potent we are, the harder we are hit by evidence of our impotence. I haven't read enough of Superman to know if he's had depression before, but apart from some complaints that it was a little too on the nose especially in the exchange with Flash, it was a very touching exploration of why depression is such a malaise and how it can fundamentally alter sensory perception to become a quicksand of negative spirals.

The entire arc reads like Nietzsche's ideals given Jungian practical steps, transcend humanity into the Ubermensch by reconciling with shadow and embracing the hero's quest, the latter being called out on quite a few occasions, although Jung might not be pleased about the collective-unconscious crusader being called a Freudian Superego. I've come across the Jumper episode many times before but this is the first time I actually got around to reading the entire series, and it takes an entire series to realize the advice he's giving the Jumper is advice he's actually giving himself, fighting his demons of loss, hopelessness and impotence with the raw simplicity of putting one foot in front of the other and looking to save just that one next person.

As a non-American, I was quite glad the writers didn't try to de-nationalize the ideals of truth, justice and 'the American way', giving readers enough credit to read it as a label for an idea and not a trademark or patent of a country. I read this during the 2020 BLM riots so it's even more striking in its resonance and contrast.

Superman by J. Michael Straczynski