Superman

[GeneChing]

And not just because of BVS.

DC to Premiere Chinese 'New Superman' Written by Gene Luen Yang
by DAVID LUMB

DC Comics announced a new addition to the Superman lineup at WonderCon last weekend. "New Superman," an upcoming comic series by writer Gene Luen Yang and artist Victor Bogdanovic, will feature a first for the Superman mythology: A new character from Shanghai, Kenji Kong, will inherit the powers of Superman.

"Everybody in the world recognizes Superman," Yang told NBC News. "The reason he transcends cultures is that he embodies these ideals that are international, that are cross-cultural. We wanted to tell a story that was about the Superman ideal but tell it in a different culture. Regardless of where you grow up, you know what he stands for."

DC Comics ✔ ‎@DCComics
NEW SUPER-MAN is here with @geneluenyang writing! Check it out 7/13! #DCRebirth
10:11 AM - 26 Mar 2016 · Los Angeles, CA, United States
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DC Comics has yet to release details about how the 17-year-old Kong will acquire his Superman-like abilities and impact the DC universe, but the company has told fans that inheriting the powers — and the mantle — will be a struggle.

"Getting those powers, it changes his body obviously, but it also changes his heart," Yand said. "When he starts off, he's kind of a jerk. Once he gets this piece of Superman in him, it will change who he is."

Yang's previous works, including "American Born Chinese" and his recent "The Shadow Hero," have dealt with stereotyping of Asian Americans and the resulting identity struggle many Asian Americans face. Yang explored the duality of Superman when he was tapped by DC last year to write 10 issues of the main Superman title. For Yang, the child of Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants, writing "Superman" was an opportunity to dig into the immigrant experience, which he'd also done for the comic anthology "Secret Identities."

"One of the guys who was involved with 'Secret Identities,' Jeff Yang, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, he used to talk about how Superman is an Asian American: He has black hair, he wears glasses, he has two different names — an American name, Clark Kent, and a foreign name, Kal-El, with a hyphen in it," Yang said. "His parents are non-English-speaking and sent him to America to have a better life."


Gene Luen Yang is also the 5th National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Albert Law

Yang said he didn't come up with the base idea of the character that would become Kenji Kong. DC co-publisher Jim Lee and chief creative officer Geoff Johns came up with the idea of an Asian Superman and gave him to Yang to develop into a full character. For Yang, that meant doing some homework to develop an authentic Chinese character.

"Kenji Kong — I created that name with my mom," Yang said. "I wanted to find a name that works in Chinese and is immediately pronounceable to an American reader. With Kenji Kong, we stuck with the hard-K sound like Clark Kent. I would definitely be more comfortable writing a Chinese-American character, as I myself am Chinese-American. Writing a Chinese character is, for me, a lot like writing 'The Other,' another culture. So it requires a lot more homework and talking to people who actually live that experience."

"[JEFF YANG] USED TO TALK ABOUT HOW SUPERMAN IS AN ASIAN AMERICAN: HE HAS BLACK HAIR, HE WEARS GLASSES, HE HAS TWO DIFFERENT NAMES — AN AMERICAN NAME, CLARK KENT, AND A FOREIGN NAME, KAL-EL, WITH A HYPHEN IN IT. HIS PARENTS ARE NON-ENGLISH-SPEAKING AND SENT HIM TO AMERICA TO HAVE A BETTER LIFE."

Kong joins a growing stable of superheroes of color, though many of them have been unable to grow beyond their mantles, according to cultural critic Keith Chow, founder of the cultural criticism site The Nerds of Color and editor-creator of the two "Secret Identities" collections.

Marvel's current Hulk is Korean American Amadeus Cho; African American Sam Wilson is one of two Captain Americas; Miles Morales is an Afro-Latino Spider-Man; and the teenage Pakistani American Kamala Khan is the current Ms. Marvel. But only the latter two have become very strongly associated with their superhero mantles, Chow said.

"Now when you say Ms. Marvel, you're associating it with Kamala Khan and not necessarily [the first Ms. Marvel] Carol Danvers," Chow told NBC News. "For a segment of the population, their Spider-Man is Miles Morales. That's a character that's not going away to the dustbin of history. That's my hope for Kenji Kong, that he's not just a character that shows up for a couple issues and disappears. Having a talent like Gene gives me hope that that's the case."

Yang acknowledges that concern, but believes there's good and bad with giving a person of color the mantle of an established hero, a balance that gives immediate recognizability to a new character of color. As a reader, he doesn't discount the importance of having original Asian and Asian-American characters.


The cover of Ms. Marvel #1 featuring Kamala Khan. Khan is the first Muslim-American superhero to be featured in their own dedicated comic book series.

Whether Kenji Kong sticks around the DC Universe is uncertain: To some extent, it's in the hands of the fans.

"We'll see," Yang said. "I'm hoping he finds a place in the DC universe, I'm hoping he finds a place in the hearts of DC comics fans."

[GeneChing]

KENJI KONG
DC Comics’ new Superman is a Chinese teen with a Japanese name


The all-American hero goes east. (Reuters/Mike Segar)

WRITTEN BY Josh Horwitz OBSESSION
China's Transition March 31, 2016

DC Comics recently announced a new Superman comic book series with a twist—the titular hero hails from China. Instead of mild-mannered journalist Clark Kent, the upcoming Superman will be a 17-year-old teenager who lives in Shanghai.


Gene Yang’s American Born Chinese(Geneyang.com)

New Superman will be penned by Gene Luen Yang, an Asian-American cartoonist whose previous work centers around ethnic identity in the US. His comic book American Born Chinese merges the traditional Chinese tale of The Monkey King with the story of an Chinese boy growing up in the United States.
“Everybody in the world recognizes Superman,” Yang told NBC News. “The reason he transcends cultures is that he embodies these ideals that are international, that are cross-cultural. We wanted to tell a story that was about the Superman ideal but tell it in a different culture. Regardless of where you grow up, you know what he stands for.”

DC Comics Verified account
‏@DCComics
NEW SUPER-MAN is here with @geneluenyang writing! Check it out 7/13! #DCRebirth



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10:11 AM - 26 Mar 2016
Los Angeles, CA
Gene Luen Yang

As well-intentioned as the revamp may be, DC has already set itself up for ridicule. The Chinese Superman is named Kenji Kong—a name that sounds unmistakably Japanese, not Chinese. Yang said that Kong’s creators settled on the name because native English-speaking readers wouldn’t struggle with it.

“I wanted to find a name that works in Chinese and is immediately pronounceable to an American reader. With Kenji Kong, we stuck with the hard-K sound like Clark Kent,” Yang told NBC.
But the internet’s multi-cultural watchdogs can be very unforgiving and DC’s announcement of the character was met with some scrutiny on Twitter and Chinese social media.

美奈子 ‏@YuanSerenaP Mar 27
@DCComics @geneluenyang I love this. But why is a guy from Shanghai named Kenji? It's a Japanese name.
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Gene Luen Yang @geneluenyang
@YuanSerenaP @DCComics Thanks! We're excited about it. Kenji can be a Chinese name too: 孔恳记 (Simplified) 孔懇記 (Traditional)
RETWEET 1 LIKE 1
12:10 PM - 29 Mar 2016

“Does he understand China? He’s not afraid of criticism?” one commenter wrote (link in Chinese) on Sina Weibo, referring to Yang.
The new Chinese Superman is part of an ongoing trend in the comic book industry to make superheros more multi-cultural. A new version of the Incredible Hulk, for example, features a Korean-American as the titular hero.
It’s not clear if DC’s Chinese Superman is intended to appeal to actual people in China. Most comic books in China mimic Japanese manga, not the US’s cape wearing muscle men, but the genre is a smash at the Chinese box office. Seven of the top twenty highest-grossing foreign films in China have featured superheroes (link in Chinese).
These films illustrate how difficult it can be to create entertainment that appeals to two audiences with different languages and cultures can be difficult. Awkward segments tailor-made for Chinese audiences often fall flat. The version of Iron Man 3 distributed in China, for example, includes scenes where Tony Stark drinks a Chinese milk drink, and goes to China for surgery. The alterations were widely ridiculed in China.

In Mandarin, the name would be Kong Kenji. Still sounds Japanese, but that's the Chinese translation.

[GeneChing]

GENE LUEN YANG REVEALS "NEW SUPER-MAN'S" NAME
Posted: 2 hours ago


"New Super-Man" by Viktor Bogdanovic

Move over, Clark Kent -- there's a new Superman in town!

This summer, "Superman" scribe Gene Luen Yang and artist Viktor Bogdanovic will join forces to bring "New Super-Man" to DC Comics. Writing for DC Entertainment, Yang discussed his involved process for developing "New Super-Man's" secret identity and the meaning behind the Chinese character's name.

In his essay, Yang described his initial discomfort with the project, explaining, "My mom’s family left Mainland China when she was just an infant. She spent most of her childhood in Hong Kong and Taiwan. My dad was born and raised in Taiwan. My family hasn’t lived in China for at least a generation. I've only visited China twice, so my understanding of Chinese culture is through echoes."

"I would be writing about Chinese life as an outsider, but some American readers would assume that I was an insider simply because of my last name," he continued. "It seemed like a situation fraught with peril."

Regardless, he decided to take his own advice: "to read and write outside of their comfort zones." In naming the character, he established a set of parameters in order to develop an appropriate identity:

One of my first tasks as the New Super-Man writer was to give our lead guy a secret identity, a Chinese civilian name.
I thought for a while and came up with these constraints:

1. The name would need to be a plausible Chinese name.

2. The name’s meaning should relate to the character’s journey in some way.

3. The English version of the Chinese name should be derived using Pinyin. There are different ways of Romanizing Chinese. A lot of what we see in American Chinatowns uses a system called Wade-Giles (or is “Wade-Giles-ish”). Pinyin is now the standard in Mainland China, so that’s what I want to use in the book.

4. The English version should have the initials K. K. I want to use this as a mnemonic device to help readers connect the new character to Clark Kent. I can’t use C. K. because there is no hard c in Pinyin. The Pinyin c is pronounced “ts,” like in “cats.”

5. The English version should be immediately pronounceable by American readers who haven’t studied Pinyin. This means I have to avoid certain letters like x (pronounced kind of like “sh” in Pinyin) and q (pronounced kind of like “ch”).

6. The Pinyin version cannot sound Japanese.

Constraint #6 was added later in Yang's process, as the name he initially came with bordered too closely to a popular Japanese name. "What would I think if I were a casual comics reader and I encountered an Asian super hero named Kenji Kong as a supporting character in a couple panels of a DC comic, without any context for the name?" he asked himself. "I'd probably assume some non-Asian writer had confused Asian cultures. I was only thinking about how I’d make this character and his name work in the particular story I was going to write... I had to change the name."

As such, he went back to the drawing board, which led him to the character's official secret identity:

孔克南 Kenan Kong
南 Nan means “south.” Appropriate for a kid from Shanghai, since folks from Beijing like to call folks from Shanghai “Southerners.”

克 Ke means “to overcome.” What could be more Super-Man than “to overcome”?

Kenan isn’t quite as easy to pronounce (in Chinese, it’s closer to “Ken Ann” than “Key Nan”), but it’s pronounceable enough. And it definitely satisfies constraint #6.

For more on Yang's "New Super-Man," check out his full blog post on DCComics.com.

"New Super-Man" #1 goes on sale July 13.

This might need its own indie thread here someday...

[GeneChing]

Over a Shazam cameo? srsly?

SEPTEMBER 12, 2018 6:55am PT by Tatiana Siegel, Borys Kit
Henry Cavill Out as Superman Amid Warner Bros.' DC Universe Shake-Up (Exclusive)


iStock; Courtesy of Warner Bros.

Talks broke down for a cameo in 'Shazam!' due to scheduling conflicts, and the door is now closing on other potential appearances for the actor.
The DC cinematic universe appears to be losing its Man of Steel.

Henry Cavill, who has played Superman in three films, is parting ways with Warner Bros., sources tell The Hollywood Reporter. The British actor, who first donned the blue suit for 2013's Man of Steel, and then starred in 2016's Batman v. Superman and last year's Justice League, is said to be hanging up the red cape.

Warners had been trying to enlist Cavill, who most recently co-starred in Mission: Impossible — Fallout, for a Superman cameo in Shazam!, which stars Zachary Levi and will bow April 5. But contract talks between Cavill's WME reps and Warners broke down, and the door is now closing on other potential Superman appearances.

That's because the studio has shifted its focus to a Supergirl movie, which will be an origin story featuring a teen superheroine. This effectively removes an actor of Cavill's age from the storyline's equation given that Superman, aka Kal-El, would be an infant, according to DC lore.

Furthermore, Warners isn't likely to make a solo Superman film for at least several years, according to another source. "Superman is like James Bond, and after a certain run you have to look at new actors," says a studio source. As such, Cavill will join Ben Affleck, who isn't expected to reprise his role for director Matt Reeves' forthcoming Batman stand-alone film, as a hero on the way out.

"While no decisions have been made regarding any upcoming Superman films, we’ve always had great respect for and a great relationship with Henry Cavill, and that remains unchanged," read a statement from a Warner Bros. spokesperson after the initial publication of this story.

A Warners source says the Shazam! deal fell apart because of scheduling conflicts. And that is backed up by the fact that Cavill recently signed on to star in the Netflix series The Witcher. However, another source says that the Witcher commitment came after the Warners impasse, suggesting a change in Warners' strategy.

"There's a recognition that some parts of the previous movies didn't work," says the studio insider. Another source says Warners is trying to hit a "reset" button with the DC universe, steering its ship slowly into another direction.

While Affleck and Cavill are segueing out, others who were seen together onscreen in Justice League are carrying forward. Gal Gadot is returning for Wonder Woman 1984, to hit theaters in November 2019. Jason Momoa headlines a solo Aquaman movie this December. And Ezra Miller remains on board to star in a Flash movie, which is due to shoot in early 2019.

Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara and chairman of Warner Bros. Pictures Group Toby Emmerich are looking to reinvigorate the studio's DC Universe, which is still playing second fiddle to the Marvel Universe in terms of box office and critical acclaim. Just six years ago, when The Dark Knight Rises closed out the Christopher Nolan trilogy, DC was the superhero team with the mojo. But so far, only Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman spinoff has lived up to the promise of the franchise.

What Warners hasn't done is wiped the slate clean in one fell swoop, something that is nigh impossible to do given the years of planning that goes into these films. When asked about the studio Sept. 6 at an investor conference, new WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey said, "Hats off to Kevin and Toby and their team." But he also took a shot at DC. "Some of our franchises, in particular at DC, we all think we can do better."

A version of this story appears in the Sept. 12 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

Sept. 12, 9:45 am Updated with a statement from a Warner Bros. spokesperson.

[GeneChing]

HENRY CAVILL
'SUPERMAN' CONFLICT IS FAKE!!!



9/13/2018 8:11 AM PDT
Henry Cavill's 'Superman' Conflict with Warner Bros. is Made Up
EXCLUSIVE

The social media firestorm over Henry Cavill's fate in the next installment of 'Superman' turns out to be an invented conflict ... TMZ has learned.

Sources in the know tell TMZ, there's no real discussion over the main role because there's no active 'Superman' project. It's true ... Cavill has felt he was underpaid for the role and that's an issue, as is what some say was an underwhelming performance.

We're told if and when the next 'Superman' project is greenlit, Cavill along with others would be in play. If, for example, a director felt he was the perfect guy for the role, he could end up with another cape assuming he and the studio could come to terms.

Cavill posted a video Wednesday insinuating the door is not closed.

The whole brouhaha started when Cavill turned down a cameo in "Shazam!" over money, and then accepted a Netflix deal for "The Witcher." Apparently, some people thought he moved on from 'Superman,' but the fact is there's no conflict ... because up to this point there's no movie project.

We really don't need another Superman movie anyway. We need this.