Hands up if you ever wanted to be Superman. For those of you who put your hands out in front of you as if you were flying, you are true Superman fans. 
The point of this blahg was not inspired by the recent blockbuster film “Batman V. Superman, Dawn of Justice” (which I changed to “Batman V. Superman, Bowl of Mucus” for reasons I’ll explain in a bit). The inspiration for this blahg actually comes from the fact that I’ve had a close tie with Superman over the years. Hang onto your capes kiddies because here comes another chapter in the Saturday morning serial of the life of Uncle Scotty.
I guess I’ve always had a fascination with Superman. 
When I was a child he was the greatest superhero there was…next to Rocket Robin Hood. I was born in 1962 and I don’t recall if we had a television set at our house in the 60s but I must have come across Superman somewhere. Maybe it was re-runs of the Fleischer Superman cartoons from the 1940s or the Filmation Superman cartoons of the 1960s. It might even have been some comic books but I was in my early reading stages and was probably immersed in Plato, Dostoevsky, or Tolkien. Who am I kidding, I was probably out in the garage advancing my education with early copies of Playboy. Regardless, I had a fascination with Superman.
I remember a story that my Mother was known to tell of me running around with a towel tied around my neck and proclaiming to be Superman or Superboy. 
One story also has me standing in the window of a second or third floor building and ready to leap into the skies before being pulled back in by my Mother. Another story has me leaping down a long flight of stairs and landing in a pile of laundry at the bottom that was ready for the washer. Boy am I glad my Mother hadn’t got to that chore yet! Unfortunately there are no pictures of me with my towel cape but there is this wonderful picture to the right of my son Noah dressed in a Superboy costume my wife made for him when he was around three years old. I must have passed on my Superman fixation to him.
If you think about it, Superman was probably one of the first superheroes. 
Sure there was Tarzan and The Phantom and the greatest of them all, Popeye, but Superman really started the generation of superheroes to come. He had powers beyond the mortal human being. He had a great origin story with his home-world of Krypton being destroyed and being rocketed to Earth as an infant. He was found and raised by Smallville couple Jonathan and Martha Kent. They must have raised him right, too, because he didn’t go on to be a super villain. Who could have stopped him if he’d gone a crime spree? It wasn’t like Kryptonite was easily accessible at the local five and dime store. Superman was and is the greatest.
Now, I want to skip ahead a few years to 1978 and the release of Superman The Movie. 
My friend Steve Dafoe and I were the first ones in line at the Quinte Mall Cinema to see this phenomenal movie. We had heard that it was coming out and we were both huge Superman fans. With a tag name of “You’ll Believe A Man Can Fly”, we certainly weren’t disappointed. We were 16 and it was close to Christmas when the movie was released. Talk about Christmas miracles, they pulled it off. In an age when there was no CGI to fall back on, they managed to show us a man flying…a Superman.
I want to jump back in time to a period before the movie. I want to talk about “The Great Superman Movie Contest.” “
The Great Superman Movie Contest” asked readers to clip out letters appearing in special coupons inside DC Comics to spell the words “Superman” and either “Kal-El” or “Clark”, glue them to a card, and send the to DC. There were two first prizes of a cameo role in the upcoming movie and lucky young contest winners Tim Hussey and Ed Finneran were picked from entries numbering in the tens of thousands before eventually appearing in the movie as members of the Smallville football team. Lucky stiffs!
Of course, I wasn’t aware of that contest before the movie came out. I did manage to get wind of the second contest, “The Second Superman The Movie Contest.” 
This time we had to provide the answers to 25 questions culled from two months worth of DC Comics titles. 1st Prize this time? Christopher Reeve’s screen-worn cape! There were other prizes, too. Second prize, of which there would be 10 winners, was a page of original Superman artwork. Third prize was a subscription to our favorite DC comic. There is a very interesting Blog about this particular contest and an explanation how the the third prize changed somewhat. You can read about it here: http://bobrozakis.blogspot.ca/2013/02/bobro-archives-superman-movie-contest.html.
This was another particular difficult contest for Steve Dafoe and I because the questions were spread out across many different DC Comics titles and no one really knew which titles contain the different questions. 
I remember that Steve and I haunted our local comic shop and checked out corner stores or cigar shops or any store that carried comics. We didn’t always buy the comics we sought but we perused them in the store and between us managed to memorize the questions. Some of the questions were tough and we didn’t always know the answers. Try this one on for size:
Q: Women with the initials “L.L.” have always played a part in Superman’s life. He met one such woman, Lori Lemaris, the mermaid from Atlantis…
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as Clark Kent while on assignment at sea for the Daily Planet
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when he saved the underwater city from destruction
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when she telepathically contacted him for help
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while Clark was a student at Metropolis University
The correct answer to that one is 4. while Clark was a student at Metropolis University. I’m not sure if we knew the answer to that one but lucky for us, something else debuted in December of 1978. It was the “Superman Quiz Book” by Bruce Nash. We obtained a copy of it and it really helped to provide us with some answers.
I don’t 
remember how many questions Dafoe and I were able to answer but I know it was more than 20 but less than 25. We both sent in entries and we hoped for the best. Apparently there were only 21 fans who scored 100% on the quiz. That left us out. If you read the blog that I linked above you will find out what happened to the second and third prizes. Here’s a quote:
“We were going to have to contact every one of the winners and ask which comic they wanted their subscription to. (Another job — and expense — no one had figured on.) The DC library at the time was overflowing with extra copies of books, I pointed out to Sol. Suppose, as an alternative to a subscription, we offered the winners a “DC Prize Pack” of twenty books that would include “classics from DC’s library,” some foreign editions (of which we had plenty) and at least one autographed comic.”
Well, I am proud to say that Dafoe and I each won a “DC Prize Pack”. I don’t remember what all was in the prize pack and most of my pack has been lost, donated, or sold over the years with the exception of one item. I kept my autographed copy of The Super Friends #21 autographed by E. Nelson Bridwell. Bridwell was the writer of this particular comic and he may not be famous but it was what I valued the most from the prize pack so I’ve held onto it all these years.
I still have a great affinity for Superman The Movie. Recently, I read online that there was an extended version of the film that aired on television in Europe and Australia. The original theatrical print ran 143 minutes and both the theatrical print and an extended 151 minute print have been released on DVD. There was, however, more footage shot for the film that was cut then put back into the European and Australian print that the “International Cut”, as it has now been referred to, runs a whopping 188 minutes. I was able to track it down recently and saw a number of extended and deleted scenes that I had not been able to view before. I highly recommend it to anyone if you can track it down. Also, do yourself a favor and view the Richard Donner cut of Superman II. Richard Donner had directed Superman The Movie and had filmed that movie and the sequel at the same time so there would be continuity of stories and actors. Unfortunately, the film was taken away from Donner and the story ran differently when released in theaters than was intended by Donner. In 2006 the film was compiled from various elements and released on DVD to match Donner’s vision and released as Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut. It runs like a part two of Superman The Movie and enhances the story better than the theatrical release.
So why all of this information and ramblings about Superman The Movie? Well, I promised I would comment on “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice”. This 2016 blockbuster is a follow up to the 2013 “Man of Steel” film and a prelude to the future Justice League film that will feature Superman, Batman, Wonderwoman, Aquaman, Flash, and other major DC heroes. Unfortunately “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” was a hot mess. It had too much in it and too much CGI that it made me pity what Superman has become. The character of Superman in “Man of Steel” and “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” is second to the CGI. We are really not invested in this Superman nor do we get his human Clark Kent side. The only positive thing I can say about either of these films is Kevin Costner as Jonathan Kent, Superman’s adopted earth father. Costner is my second favorite Jonathan Kent after Glenn Ford’s turn in, you guessed it, “Superman The Movie.” 
The late Glenn Ford is one of my favorite actors and I’ve enjoyed him in everything I’ve seen him in but even he probably couldn’t have saved “Man of Steel” nor “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice”. (By the way, bonus marks to anyone who recognized Phyllis Thaxter as Martha Kent along side Glenn Ford as Jonahtan Kent and Aaron Smolinski as young Clark Kent in the photo.)
Before I close this blahg, I want to post two other related Superman related items. The first is by me and is a reprinting here of one my favorite poems (meaning one I wrote):
if you’d be a superman
He works long hours
and he don’t ever get paid
or remuneration or thanks sometimes
but that’s all part of his job
being a protector of the good
If you wanta be Superman
you gots to be more than human
not necessarily superhuman
but better than most folks
who are always trying to do good
and put you out of a job
In the center of that man’s faith
is himself
and he’s pretty sure
they’ll all worship him always
for being a hero and not a villain
because Superman is where it’s at
Yeah Superman’s this guy
who flies you know
but when he walks
he walks among us
and is one of us
like he wants to be
and drinks a little
and he tells dirty stories
but he’s perfect on duty
Superman’s got no hang-ups
maybe hang-outs maybe
like getting in free at the drive-in
but then who’d really ask him to own up?
If you’d be a Superman
you’d be just a guy in tights
because you gotta hate the job
like it was the only thing evil
and you couldn’t defeat it
If you’d live a Superman
you’d be out of work
because there’s only room for one
and we’d all be Supermans if we could
Yeah Superman’s’ this guy
who flies you know
because they draw him that way
and he can’t object
like you would
if you’d be a Superman
Yeah Superman’s this guy
who fights crime and evil
and is always looking to be put out of business
but not everyone wants to be a Superman
and he cries at night
when he’s flying
but you think it’s rain
and he’s still up there
and he wonders what it would be like
if Superman’d be a you
I never had the opportunity to be Superman since my fascinations in early youth with a towel around my neck nor did I get a chance to win a cameo in Superman The Movie. I think the above poem does explain a little of my feelings about Superman and what it would be like to be him. You can also see a video of me reading this poem in a previous blahg: MORE POETRY FROM THE MIND OF SCOTT HENDERSON.
The final piece that I want to end on is one of my favorite songs about Superman. It’s called “Superman’s Song” by the Crash Test Dummies. The Crash Test Dummies is a great Canadian band and the song is from their 1991 debut album “The Ghosts That Haunt Me”. Check out the official music video below:
That’s it for now. I’m up up and away…and out of here.