Danny Graydon

Released in late 2010, Taschen’s imperious 75 YEARS OF DC COMICS: THE ART OF MODERN MYTHMAKING made for a stunning addition to my Comics Reference library. Bearing the sheer authority of author Paul Levitz, whose entire professional life had been devoted to the illustrious comics publisher, the books’ 750 pages and over 2000 images makes it simply breath-taking to read – as well as physically lift – and provides truly fascinating overview of the company that, above all, created the superhero genre. If you missed out on “DC75″ – or not unreasonably abstained due to the rather expensive price tag of £135 – then the good news is that Taschen have refashioned the contents in to what will ultimately be five separate volumes, the opening volume covering the years 1935-56, DC’s so-called “Golden Age”.

Obviously, the immediate question is: isn’t this a heinous double-dip? Granted, at £34.99 a volume, you’d end up paying £40 more than the original single volume – still available – but Taschen cannot be accused of a simple repackaging job with no effort made at providing added value. Firstly, The Golden Age of DC Comics comes at a more reader (and shelf)-friendly size (the sheer fact of the matter is that Taschen’s XXL format, while physically impressive, is not at all tailored to sitting on your sofa with it on your lap.) and one that still allows for a dynamic and detail-rich presentation of the images. Speaking of which:  just over 400 pages, the book allows for a considerable infusion of more images, with Taschen promising more than 1, 000 over the five volumes, their detailed annotations a vital addendum to Levitz’s incisive writing. Levitz has updated his essay – moderately so in this first volume, his introduction noting that the final two volumes will benefit most from that.

However, there is considerable value in the addition of an original interview with a prominent figure of the era covered, in this case the legendary figure of Joe Kubert, who died last year. Obviously, with the number of artists and writers who were active in the earliest days of comics now exceedingly thin on the ground, to read the recollections of someone who was actually there – Kubert did his work for DC  in 1943 and worked as an artist, writer and editor across every genre for DC over decades - provides engrossing context and is an eminently suitable way to start the book. (Future volumes promise interviews with Neal Adams, Denny O’Neill, Jeanette Kahn and Jim Lee).

Being published in the 75th year of DC’s company-defining creation Superman – and therefore the superhero genre as a whole – gives The Golden Age of DC Comics a particular resonance, as it provides an excellent and vivid opportunity to get a glimpse of those heady early days, which transformed the landscape of the comics medium forever. However, the book does provide a fulsome reminder that, while DC were pioneers of the Superhero genre, they also trod significant ground in the arenas of hard-boiled adventure, Crime, War, Western, and, most especially, Romance comics. The period of 1935-56 was one of considerable tumult in American life – The Depression, WWII, McCarthyism – and it’s interesting to see how DC, in its speedy ascendance, negotiates those times via its output. Similarly, the sheer resonance and impact of their key characters is reflected in how they were eagerly appropriated by wider media platforms, with radio, theatrical shorts and later Television.

Ultimately, if you do not have the original DC75 tome, then there is huge attraction in obtaining this (and the forthcoming volumes) as it provides an enchanting overview of DC’s birth and early days while also bestowing an almost-overwhelming trawl though the company’s visual archives. (If you do, then, speaking as a collector, you’ll have access to an augmented and far less-cumbersome version of the original, saving DC75 from wear and tear.). Rarely, if ever, have books on DC had as much unfettered access as Taschen’s have had, and with the impressive production values – the metallic gold sheen of the cover is a nice touch – you have a front row seat  in this trip down DC’s memory lane.

THE GOLDEN AGE OF DC COMICS is published by TASCHEN, priced £34.99

It’s been three years since I first I first entered the world of Academia as a lecturer for the University of Hertfordshire and, I have been progressively embracing a key concern of career academics: Research. Broadly speaking, I would like to pursue a PhD in the future, but, if my greatly desired plan of achieving a fractional post at UH comes to fruition, then annual “research outcomes”  – which is to say publication of academic articles and presentations at academic conferences – will be a part of the deal. One of the particular appeals of Academia is the opportunity to engage in concerted exploration of specific subject areas and, right now, I would like nothing more than to do that with my undiluted passion for Superheroes.

Consequently, my first big stab at this is via a book - exploring Superhero costumes - that I am currently writing with a colleague, Dr. Barbara Brownie, who teaches Design and Fashion at UH’s School of Creative Arts. The book, will in turn, generate a number of potential academic papers that can be presented at Comics-focused academic conferences, be they national or international. Rather excitingly, last week, Barbara and I received word that a paper we submitted had has been accepted for presentation at the 2nd Global Conference on Graphic Novels, to be held in Oxford, , from Sunday 22nd September to Tuesday 24th September. Hurrah! Here’s the abstract we submitted:

Negotiating Ordinariness and Otherness: Superman, Clark Kent and the superhero masquerade.

Superhero narratives are distinguished by the hero’s negotiation of the relationship between two constructed identities, one ordinary, one extraordinary. The superhero, whose costume emphasizes otherness, shelters in the guise of a civilian, in a performance of ordinariness.

Prompted by Jacob Riis’ invitation in How The Other Half Lives (1890), journalists of that era engaged in performances of ordinariness in search of trans-status empathy. These journalists cloaked themselves in a ‘signified cloth granting liberation and opportunity.’ The clothes reduced their status, masking profession or prestige, and they found themselves empowered. The disguises gave them a peculiar normalcy and anonymity, allowing them to partake in relationships and activities previously out of reach. Dressing down in civilian wardrobe, the superhero engages in similar trans-status disguise. By concealing otherness, he is liberated from the superhero lifestyle’s responsibilities and the extreme attention it garners.

Superman’s civilian masquerade provides the freedom to engage with normal society. We can consider his Clark Kent persona in terms of the trans-status observations emerging from social experiments that utilise disguise to enter a closed social group. Kal-El of Krypton is a ‘covert operative’ who originates from outside the subject of his study, and disguises himself to infiltrate the group. He learns their costumes and customs via his rural Kansas upbringing, and then, in adulthood and the urban sprawl of Metropolis, positions himself as ‘one of them.’ Superman’s relationship with his alter-ego differs from other superheroes, who previously existed as civilians before acquiring their superpowers. Spider-Man, for example, can be equated to a ‘retrospective participant observer’: he is able to model his civilian disguise on his own experiences of ordinariness.

 This paper will compare trans-status disguise in superhero comics to the activities of undercover journalists and social scientists, exploring the concealment of otherness through the performance of ordinariness.

 Keywords: Superman, Clark Kent, secret identity, ordinariness, otherness, Jacob Riis, outsider, disguise, alter-ego, undercover.

So, very pleasing news – and a good start, I think. It’s also rather nice to be presenting this subject in the 75th anniversary year of Superman, as well, so am very much looking forward to doing this. Onwards and upwards!

Far and away my favourite era of cinema is “The New Hollywood”, generally perceived to have run from 1968 to 1983 and which I was born in the middle of (1974). It was a period of tectonic change in Hollywood, with 1975′s Jaws generating the commercial paradigm of” the blockbuster” which remains to this day Hollywood’s dominant mode. More pertinently, though, The New Hollywood was defined by the arrival of a new generation of young firebrand filmmakers who plied intensely personal and defiantly non-commercial visions, expressing vivid commentary on the state of an America in the midst of profound social, political and economic change.

Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) is a seminal film of the period. Released just a year after the bitter, painfully drawn-out end of The Vietnam War, the films portrayal of a lonely and depressed Vietnam veteran – mesmerically played by Robert De Niro in one of his signature performances – who returns to New York and is faced with an utterly alien, degenerate America that progressively stokes his inner rage to the point of explosion, remains as incendiary and unsettling now as it did then. American photojournalist Steve Schapiro was the special photographer on the set, chronicling the films production and capturing much of what we now regard as the films most iconic imagery. Schapiro’s dynamic work was previously only available as a limited edition volume from Taschen – costing an eye-watering £900 – but now, the German publisher has released a significantly more affordable “trade edition” – with, as ever, no sacrifice made on the gorgeous design and production values -  providing a perfect companion to Taschen’s prior book with Schapiro, The Godfather Family Album, which collected his work on another absolute masterpiece of The New Hollywood.

As Scorsese himself notes in the books foreword, Taxi Driver was produced “in a very different New York. The city was in dire straits, right on the edge of bankruptcy. For many who lived in the five boroughs, it was a desperate time, and you could feel it out there, day and night. New York had become a nightmare version of itself, and we lived and breathed it, walked and drove through it, let our story become infected and overwhelmed by it, just like Travis Bickle…”

Schapiro’s photographs effectively capture the grimy, faded look of 70′s New York, but, like the film, also imbue it with an odd beauty, as the harsh glare of the light from street lamps and neon shop signs contrast with the encroaching darkness of night time. Similarly, there’s a grim enchantment to Schapiro’s images of the films climactic massacre, where Travis Bickle’s twisted vengeance erupts in a shocking, blood-soaked melee, best encapsulated in an overhead shot of the aftermath which looks like a hideous, real-life crime scene.

The best material, though, are the many shots of De Niro at work, plying his famed Method approach to acting and progressively, precisely crafting one of cinema’s greatest psychopaths. From early shots of the wiry, boyish-looking actor pumping weights to the sinewy, muscular Travis brandishing a Magnum .44 with a cocksure grin to the shaven-headed angel of vengeance, standing on a street corner quietly surveying his intended target, Schapiro engrossingly captures the character’s growth, with De Niro’s increasingly dark eyes regularly captured flashing an unnerving malevolence.

The book is augmented with an array of archival interview with the films key players – Scorsese, screenwriter Paul Schrader, De Niro via an extensive and uncommonly penetrating chat with Playboy magazine, and Jodie Foster (whose performance as a prostitute marked a startling transition from the wholesome Disney fare which started her career) – all of which provide fascinating perspectives, from the immediacy of the films release to years afterward when the film had embedded itself in to the annals of truly great filmmaking.

Gorgeously designed, Taschen’s custom ”XL” format provides a suitably dynamic showcase for photography and, in Schapiro’s case, provides an engrossing intimacy.  Like The Godfather Family Album, you get a fabulous glimpse into a cinematic milestone and fans of this key moment in Scorsese and De Niro’s legendary partnership will surely revel in this opportunity to get so close, it’ll feel like Travis is talkin’ to you…

TAXI DRIVER by Steve Schapiro is published by TASCHEN, priced £44.99.

Longtime professional acquaintance and friend Tim Pilcher is a kindred spirit in as much as Comics have defined his entire life. “Comics were undoubtedly in my blood from day one.” he proclaims, “I had ‘four colour funnies’ running through my veins before I’d even heard the expression. Cut me and I bled cyan, magenta, yellow and black. I inhaled the musty smell of old comics, as if they were perfume. I sweated Indian ink and I came in process white. It was my destiny to work in comics.”

Before we ever met formally, we had been at close quarters a great many times as he worked at the much-missed London comics shop Comics Showcase in the 80′s, in its best-remembered location, Covent Garden’s Neal Street. In the 90′s, Tim was fortunate enough to work for DC Comics’ mature imprint Vertigo  as an editor when, for a few years, they had a London office. It was a heady time for Comics and, as Legendary comic book writer Grant Morrison puts it, Vertigo’s Blighty digs were “the comics equivalent of the Loaded HQ in the ‘90s. Vodka, mushrooms, E’s, sex, money, travel and the pure unleashed creativity of young people having a good time together.”

Now, in anticipation of Vertigo’s 20th anniversary, Tim has written a revealing and completely unofficial memoir of DC Comics’ legendary London office, entitled Comic Book Babylon: A Cautionary Tale of Sex, Drugs & Comics and he’s launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the publishing of it. From the press release:

This is the candid, uncensored and utterly unofficial of story of DC Comic’s infamous Vertigo UK office, written by one who was the heart of the drug-fuelled, creative whirlwind. It’s the odyssey of one comic fan in pursuit of his dream job, becoming the first British member of the DC editorial staff, and learning the harsh realities of publishing life. Along the way he meets comics professionals and celebrities including Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan, Jamie Hewlett, Mark Millar, Garth Ennis, Philip Bond, Paul Gambaccini, Glyn Dillon, Jonathan Ross, The Spice Girls, Blur, Adam Ant, and many, many more. Revealing the crazy, halcyon days of the British comics publishing in the mid-Nineties, it blows the lid off the debauchery and excess that was part and parcel of the industry. When you reach such dizzy heights, there’s only one place to go. 

“Comic book guru” and author Tim Pilcher said, “It was an incredibly exciting time to be in comics. We felt we could achieve anything at the Vertigo office, and things got a little crazy. This is the book I’ve been threatening to write for the past 20 years! I suspect the first people wanting to pick this up will be all the comics professionals, to see what I said about them. There should be some very worried writers, artists and editors out there!” The veteran of quarter of a century of working in comics continued, “I wanted to let the world know that the comics industry is not all geeky and nerdy. In fact it’s every bit as hedonistic as the music business. If Paul Gravett is ‘The Man at the Crossroads’, then I’m ‘The Man at the Centre of a 15-Car Pile-Up’”.

Sounds fantastic! There are three versions of Comic Book Babylon available: eBook (with additional images), paperback, and 200 limited edition hardbacks, with covers created by design genius and comic book artist Rian Hughes. “Rian’s outdone himself,” said an impressed Tim, “The punky/acid house colours perfectly reflect the rave mood of the times in the book.” Hughes has also designed a limited edition print and three “Sex, Drugs and Comic Books” badges as incentives. Tim is available for interview and questions. You can contact him via timpilcher2@gmail.com. Comic Book Babylon’s website can be found at www.sexdrugsandcomicbooks.blogspot.com.

Impressively, after just a week, Tim has managed to obtain 85% of his target! However, more cash will mean a bigger print run for what sounds like a great book about a time in British comics that, personally, I am incredibly nostalgic for…! So, this is definitely worth supporting if you are able. The best of luck with it, Tim…!

Next month will see the publication of my latest book , ANGRY BIRDS: HATCHING A UNIVERSE, the first about the phenomenally successful mobile gaming  – and now firmly multi-media – franchise, created by Finland’s Rovio Entertainment.

Written late last year for Insight Editions and in close collaboration with Rovio, Hatching A Universe was an interesting project to take on, as it was, obviously, outside my core specialties of Film and Comics. However, what attracted me to the project was the chance to explore and chronicle the rocket-like rise of a genuine pop culture phenomenon. Since the release of the first game in 2009, Angry Birds has literally conquered the globe.

I travelled to Helsinki at the end of September 2012 to spend some time with Rovio, interviewing key creatives and getting a close-up glimpse of Rovio’s then furiously-expanding headquarters in Espoo, which was a fascinating – if utterly exhausting! – experience. While I was there, the primary focus was on the forthcoming release of their top-secret new game – codenamed “Black” – which, I learned to my enormous surprise, was Angry Birds Star Wars, well and truly proving to me  just how malleable Angry Birds could be and, indeed, has become. The moment I truly appreciated just how vast Angry Birds was when I was given a tour of their merchandising department and was overwhelmed by the scope of it: thousands upon thousands of products – approximately 30,000 licensed products in 18 months! – ranging from soft toys to kids bikes to to umbrellas to deluxe watches to fishing tackle (!)…

It was a real pleasure working with Rovio’s Books team, Juha Kallio (far right), Jann Schulte-Tiggs and Laura Nevanlinna, who were incredibly welcoming and efficiently saw to my every need. I think we – along with the books editor, Chris Prince – have crafted an gorgeous-looking book that will take fans through Angry Birds fast and suitably furious rise. Indeed, as I was finishing the book, I learned of Rovio’s plans for the Angry Birds animated movie, due in 2016, and that’s where we end Hatching A Universe. Consequently, I like to think of this book covering Rovio’s “Phase I” of Angry Birds, a la Marvel’s films.

Here’s a look at the book’s vivid cover, created by Rovio’s Jan Schulte-Tiggs:

ANGRY BIRDS: HATCHING A UNIVERSE is published in May via INSIGHT EDITIONS in the US and TITAN BOOKS in the UK.

The official James Bond website at 007.com has broken the tremendously exciting news that, in October, German art publisher Taschen are publishing a lavish and officially-endorsed celebration/exploration of 50 years of the Bond film franchise, THE JAMES BOND ARCHIVES – which means I can now officially reveal that I was part of the team of writers who crafted it!

As a passionate fan of both James Bond and Taschen, it was literally a dream come true when Paul Duncan, Taschen’s Film Editor, graciously offered me the opportunity to work on the book, which will be presented in Taschen’s imperious, boxed “XXL Edition” (previously showcased via Taschen’s fantastic Archives editions on Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Bergman and Pedro Amoldovar). Paul commisioned me to write the chapters on For Your Eyes Only (1981), Octopussy (1983) and Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), for which I crafted oral histories on the making of said films, utilising a huge amount of material from the archives of Bond film producers EON.

As such, it was an utterly fascinating research job. For a few months earlier this year, my study floor was absolutely covered in reams of papers – early story treatments, various versions of scripts, production call sheets, progress reports, telexes, letters, press cuttings, on-set B-roll material and dozens of interviews with the various casts and crews – which allowed me to discern the unique story behind each production. As a lifelong Bond fan – first film: 1977′s The Spy Who Loved Me – it was, as they say, ”007th Heaven”, providing an intoxicating close-up perspective of the legendary film series.

Leaving aside my bias as a contributor, this unprecedented level of access to Eon’s archives will ensure that THE JAMES BOND ARCHIVES is well and truly set apart from what will be a crowded field of Bond-related publishing this year. Bolstered by hundreds of previously-unseen photographs and, crucially, full access to the latest Bond production, SKYFALL – no, I know nothing about it! –  as well as benefitting from Taschen’s superb production standards, this is going to be a piece of Bondiana to truly savour. Here’s a look at the cover…

Over the next few months, 007.com will be posting previews from the book so you can get an idea of what you’ll be getting for £135 (yes, a hefty, eye-watering price tag, but if you’ve ever seen The Stanley Kubrick Archives, which I rate as one the best Film books I own, you’ll know that you get your money’s worth…). I am exceptionally proud to have been a part of this and I literally cannot wait to see the finished product. Huge thanks to Paul Duncan for giving me one of the most satisfying and enjoyable freelance gigs I have ever had!

The James Bond Archives, edited by Paul Duncan, is available to pre-order now in hardcover (with an original film strip from a new print of DR. NO included with the first printing of the book), 16.2 x 11.8 in., 600 pages £135/$200/€150 from TASCHEN

A friend directed me to this fascinating and very obscure piece of Batman media from 1973 – which I’d never seen before –  in which Batman, Robin and Batgirl from the Sixties TV show highlight a new Federal law regarding equal pay for women. Now, I’m pretty certain that’s not Adam West – althought whoever it is is doing a fair impression of him – although Yvonne Craig, producer William Dozier (who provided the show’s breathless narration) and a somewhat, er, “enlarged” Burt Ward reprise their roles to ensure authenticity.

I did chuckle at amusingly sexist look of outright exasperation that crosses Robin’s face when Batgirl points out that he’s paid more than her. Given that Bruce Wayne’s a millionaire, not only is he a damned cheapskate, but he might be in hot water from the Feds…! BAM! (I wonder if J.Edgar Hoover had a file of dirt on The Caped Crusader…?)

Can Batman & Robin escape the progress of equality in the workplace?? Will Gotham City ever be the same…?? Tune in next week! Same Bat-Time, Same Bat-Channel…!

Last month, I turned 38 years old – and that’s enough about that. ANYWAY. For many, many years now, I have been haunted by the dim memory of a TV show that I watched when I was a boy. Ever hovering on the edge of remembrance, only two details fuelled its continuing presence in my mind. One: there was a boy with silver hair and who was on the run. Two, and most pertinently: it scared the absolute, goddamned, motherfucking shit out of me.

Really, I had given up all hope of ever finding out just what the hell this show was – and maybe it didn’t exist? The mystery was finally solved after 32 years (!!)  while flipping through the latest edition of ShortList, a free weekly magazine for Men that’s given out in central London. Inside, there was a featured called “Scarred For Life”, presenting a list of the top 20 fictional characters that terrified us in our youth. I scanned and saw some Usual Suspects: Pennywise The Clown from It (1990), General Woundwardt from Watership Down (1978), The Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), Star Wars’ Darth Vader (1977) – but, at no.2, I literally gasped when I laid eyes upon … The Tall, Thin Man from Look And Read: The Boy From Space (1980).

Yes. YES. YES…!!!!!!

The Tall, Thin Man was the source of that primal, creeping dread… and his ruthlessly-pursued quarry was the similarly silver-haird boy from space!! (Cue a flood of memory and excited Wikipedia research.). Meanwhile, courtesy of YouTube, here’s the malevolent bastard in question:

Now, granted, to a viewer in 2012, the above clip probably looks the holiday video of an Icelandic paedophile, but, for my generation of 70′s kids, this guy was Fear personified and the source of a lot of sleepless nights…

The Boy From Space was a feature of the BBC’s Look and Read series for primary schools, which began in 1967 (ultimately running for nearly 40 years) and was  aimed at improving children’s literacy skills. The weekly programme presented fictional stories with an educational slant in a serial format typically running over a couple of months. Half the programme would be an instalment of the story, the other half would be an array of follow-on learning activities, hosted by Wordy, a camp typewriter ball with arms, who lived on his Wordlab space station orbiting the Earth with his tracksuited male companion, Colin (Yeah, yeah, I know…).

The Boy From Space, like all the other Look and Read serials, was pretty simple –  an alien boy gets stranded on Earth and is helped by a brother and sister to evade a adult alien – and was almost laughably low-budget (note the Doctor Who-esque use of a quarry), but it efficiently tapped into then SF-rich zeitgeist (remember, Star Wars would only have been out for two years) and displayed a nice line in cliffhangers. Astonishingly, given that this aired in early 1980, I would not even have been six years old when I saw this. It might look utterly shonky to modern eyes, but this was pretty intense stuff and you simply cannot imagine material like this put out today for an equivalent-age audience. Different times.

Well, thanks for that, ShortList! Nostalgia Mystery solved! And, now… back to advancing middle age.

“Space goes on… foreveeeeerrrrr….”

Last week, I interviewed composer Hans Zimmer for EMPIRE to discuss his score for THE DARK KNIGHT RISES for the mag’s TRACK BY TRACK feature (which you can read in the next issue, hitting the stands at the end of this month). At the end of our 40-minute chat – and before a Warner Bros flack called time – the subject inevitably turned to Zimmer’s equally high-profile follow-up gig, SUPERMAN: MAN OF STEEL. Zimmer had pointedly nixed the idea of potentially doing Superman (“ No – and I’m not thinking of rewriting Beethoven’s ninth either. It just sounds like a thankless task, you know? So that’s unequivocally a “no”…”) before, surprisingly, doing a complete U-turn and accepting the gig to score the highly-anticipated feature, likely down to the fact that it is being produced by his Batman and Inception collaborator, Christopher Nolan.

“When the rumours came out that I was going to do Superman, the fact was that nobody had asked me!” says Zimmer, who swiftly realised that his off-the-cuff comments could be interpreted that he was actively being sought for the film. “The horrible thing was that I had never met Zack Snyder and, suddenly, poor Zack must have been reading that the crazy German is going to be doing my movie and I’ve never even met him! So, I had to squash those rumours. Plus – and let’s be honest – I am only human and John Williams is super-human. That Superman theme is beloved and iconic. It’s a pretty hard act to follow and it’s like me saying to you can you turn this interview in to a decent piece of Shakespeare. You’ll say “Maybe not today…!”

“I phoned Zack and said I am really, really sorry about these rumours – it wasn’t me, it’s just a misunderstanding. You’ve got your composer and I never tried to get in between relationships or anything like that. We started talking and he told me about his ideas for the character and his take was really interesting. I started getting a couple of ideas as a result. I said to Zack – and Warners and Chris [Nolan] and everyone involved – “don’t talk to me about it until we finish [The Dark Knight Rises]” …. and, within 15 minutes of finishing it, we were talking about it.”

So, despite his earlier, extreme reticence about the task of remaking one of the most famous themes in Film music, does he now feel confident that he has a strong course to pursue?

“I don’t feel confident at all. I never feel confident. But, a little bit of fear has gone a long way to being inspiring in the past. John Williams is the master and I am not even going to try and go in that direction. I’ll try my best not to embarrass myself and my colleagues on the film. I’m definitely going to have a go! In a funny way, it’s exactly because Superman is such an opposite character to Batman that I am welcoming the opportunity to do the music.”

Has he seen footage from the film? “Yes. All you’re going to get out of me is a “yes”! No elaborations! I’ve started it and am in the ideas phase. I am driving people crazy with my experiments and am trying to write a tune.” The one thing Zimmer will say is that his signature use of percussion – which he jokingly refers to as “his endless quest for the perfect drum-hit” will not be as prevalent in MAN OF STEEL as on his Batman scores. “I am going to try and avoid it. It’s a big conversation I am having with myself right now: how can we avoid that…!!“

It’s interesting to speculate whether there was actually another composer lined up to do MAN OF STEEL and who was dispensed with once Zimmer expressed serious interest, or that there wasn’t and Zimmer just assumed there was someone in place. Whatever the case, it’s very encouraging to know that Zimmer is entirely aware of the enormity of his task and that he will not only be steering away from the dark, sturm-und-drang of his Batman work but also Williams’ approach. Time will tell…

(Interview reprinted with kind permission from EMPIRE.)

The news that composer Hans Zimmer has signed a deal to score next summer’s highly-anticipated reboot of the Superman franchise, MAN OF  STEEL was as surprising as it was, to be honest, tediously inevitable. Surprising, because he’d previously forthrightly nixed the notion on the most obvious (and entirely understandable) grounds: “John Williams, the greatest living composer – full stop. And that happens to be one of his greatest themes. So no. And I’m not thinking of rewriting Beethoven’s ninth either. It just sounds like a thankless task, you know? So that’s unequivocally a “no”…”

The man wasn’t wrong, frankly. With Christopher Nolan’s Batman films, Zimmer has skillfully provided muscular and dramatic scores anchored on an minimal two-note core motif, that was markedly different – but no less vivid and effective – than Danny Elfman’s memorably baroque music for Tim Burton’s 1989 film, the main theme of which was adopted for Batman’s excellent and highly influential 90′s animated iteration. Yet, the fact of the matter is that Batman has never had a musical signature as flawless as the one John Williams crafted for Richard Donner’s seminal Superman: The Movie in 1978.

With it’s wondrous three-note horn fanfare that seemingly proclaims the character’s name (“Su-per-MAN..!”), Williams’ Main Theme – also known as The Superman March – captured the character’s core traits of heroism, wonder, nobility and patriotism with such unerring precision and success that it quickly grew in pop cultural stature to the degree that it is arguably aligned with every version of Superman, not just the beloved Christopher Reeve iteration it was written for. When the composer John Ottman came to score 2006′s Superman Returns, one was left with the distinct impression that he utilised Williams’ core themes not merely because the film was a tacit sequel to Donner’s film, but more that its presence was expected – and that, probably, he too knew that attempting to better it was a fool’s errand.

All of which is not to say that Superman’s newest screen incarnation could not or should not have a new musical voice – it’s just that Zimmer is a mildly disappointing choice for the task. Hence the sense of tedious inevitability: for nigh on twenty years, Zimmer has been a pre-eminent name in blockbuster film scoring, his vast sucess consolidated by the fact that a great many of his proteges dutifully – nay, slavishly – adopt his stylistic approaches, resulting in much of Hollywood’s summer output now having a generic sound (big percussion, choirs, vast horn sections etc, etc). Aside from the fact that Man of Steel’s executive producer is Zimmer’s Batman collaborator Nolan, ensuring Zimmer immediately sprang to mind when considering the Superman score, it’s certainly likely that Warner Brothers were only too happy with the choice. After all, Zimmer is a very safe pair of hands in this regard.

Anyone who is very familiar with Zimmer’s career will be aware that he is undoubtedly capable of great diversity – listen to the likes of Hannibal or The Holiday -  and he’s certainly got not shortage of innovative ideas (Inception a notable recent example), but there is something dreadfully rote these days about the bulk of his mainstream work (Pirates of The Caribbean, anyone?). Add to this the fact that the Zimmer sound is so very pervasive now, there’s a distinct sense of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” – and it would disappointing to see Superman succumb to that.  Personally, I was hoping the gig would go to a fresher name like Michael Giacchino, whose Star Trek score was a fine example of taking an established and beloved musical identity and giving it a fulsome new sheen that harkened back to the franchise’s action adventure roots. Another good choice would have been Henry Jackman, who, like Giacchino, places an accent on the epic orchestral sound.

So, has Zimmer had a creative Eureka moment with regards to re-establishing Superman’s musical identity, promting his about turn? I harbour suspicions of a tactical move, whereby if Zimmer does (inevitably?) end up crafting something that pales in comparison to Williams classic work, then he’s successful enough to ride it out with ease - and at least you can be absolutely sure that it will be grand, which Superman certainly demands. Now he has the gig, I can only hope that he truly attempts to excel himself. After all, he’s up against perfection…