​​Hi Grant - 

​1.I understand that you were tasked to write Superman and The Authority with a older Superman, but do you think younger Superman like the T-shirt and trousers version of Superman you wrote in New 52 Action Comic would work with The Authority? What would change if that happened?

​嗨 格兰特 - 

​1.我知道你被安排写的《超人与权力战队》里的超人年纪较大，那你觉得像你在《新52动作漫画》中写的T恤加牛仔裤版的年轻超人会和权力战队合作吗？如果会的话，有什么不同？

​

​Hi！

I think the young Superman would definitely work with the Authority! It wouldn't be as much fun to watch as Manchester Black wouldn't have had enough time to hate him and he'd lack the elder statesman gravitas to hold the team together in the same way but he'd be more inclined to sign on with the Authority than he was to work with the nascent JLA in Action Comics #10 where he gets exasperated with these law-abiding cops and billionaires and royalty who won't break the rules to do the right thing. I think he'd have talked the Authority out of killing and then left when they refused to listen – after fighting them probably, so there would still be a story just like the one you mention next…

​我觉得年轻版超人一定会和权力战队合作！但故事就没那么有趣了，因为曼彻斯特没有足够的时间来讨厌他，N超缺乏长者的威严，不能用老超一样的方式把团队凝聚在一起。比起新兴的正义联盟，他会更倾向于加入权力战队，像《动作漫画》第10期，他对这些守法的警察、亿万富翁和皇室成员感到恼火，因为他们不会为了做正确的事打破规则。我想他会劝说权队不要杀人，然后在他们拒绝采纳时又离开——可能是在与他们战斗过之后，你的下一个问题仍然还会提到…

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​2. What's your honest opinion on Joe Kelly's infamous Action Comic #775 story What's So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way?

​2.你对乔·凯利那篇备受争议的《动作漫画》第775期故事《真理，正义，美国方式有什么可笑》有什么样的看法呢？

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​​I'm a big fan of Joe Kelly's work on X-Men and Superman, and I own a page of his JLA which has one of my all-time favourite moments in comics, where the Flash saves an entire city of people as an atom bomb goes off.  As far as ‘Whatever Happened…'  there's a lot of fun to be had in its depiction of the Elite as an amoral Authority-lite superteam, Manchester Black is a great character, and there's genuine heart behind the story but the central problem and its solution sit uneasily.

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​Firstly, I'm not sure it was something that needed to be addressed in the first place. I never felt that Superman had been ‘deconstructed' or rendered meaningless by the Authority. I personally never felt that the existence of pro-active, kill-your-enemies superheroes made Superman feel obsolete as an idea. Perhaps they were considered more of a threat to conventional superheroics in their day around the hinge of the century but pushing these two very different approaches into conflict – one rooted in stories written to appeal to children where characters like Superman and Batman were by and large law-abiding public servants, the other aimed at bloodthirsty older readers in their teens and 20s who'd grown up on Miracleman - felt a bit like having Winnie the Pooh go up against Cocaine Bear and win by introducing the charlie fuelled bruin to the addictive game of pooh sticks!

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I think the way it tries to resolve these completely opposing methods of fighting crime and evil in order to give Superman the win doesn't entirely tackle the moral question at the heart of it - is Superman wrong not to kill his enemies? Is it right to kill bad people rather than try to rehabilitate them? For me, especially having covered similar ground in my JLA New World Order storyline, this a non question on a par with ‘should Snoopy kill other dogs?' Should Gandhi have used a machine gun? Why the thirst for blood? As I've said before, the desire to turn superheroes into casual murderers is one I struggle with. The notion that killing our enemies is the only real way to solve problems and close out stories is one I find problematic and disturbing. If Batman killed the Joker, Commissioner Gordon would pat him on the back then quite rightly lock him up for homicide. End of story. If Superman started killing people, they'd have to break out the kryptonite and take him down. Given the real commercial reasons that Batman cannot kill the Joker because he's DC's most popular villain, then it makes more sense to have in-story explanations to allow for the character's continued existence and success.

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Superman's speech at the end has a powerful cadence but his point is vague and he's only able to convince Manchester Black by tricking him into thinking he has killed the rest of the Elite. He says he'll never never stop fighting for the‘dream' of a better world but there's something a little defeatist there in his admission of a potentially endless struggle - if a good-hearted individual with Superman's power and influence can't make the world a demonstrably better place, what chance have the rest of us?

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As I've said before, I agree with Joe Kelly that classical superheroes killing their enemies is boring and a waste of characters. It's more fun to see them come up with mad super-punishments like they used to, a bit like Dr. Who at the end of Family of Blood. If we want to explore some more ‘adult' dimensions of super crime and punishment, that would be more unsettling.

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The Phantom Zone is just the start of it. The Justice League used to stick their evil counterparts from the Crime Syndicate in a limbo between dimensions! And if that wasn't bad enough, they left them in an unbreakable energy bubble no bigger than a pop-up tent! With no changes of clothing and nowhere to have any privacy at all, let alone take a shit. THAT's cruel and unusual! If we must get into the moral minutiae, I'd much rather see more along those lines but taken seriously. I think it should feel a bit weird and unknowable when we see how super-people punish very bad villains and witness the bizarre lengths they'd go to avoid executing them.

​​我超级喜欢乔·凯利写的x战警和超人，他在《JLA》里写过一页我在漫画中最喜欢的场景之一，就是当原子弹爆炸时，闪电侠拯救了整个城市的人。至于《有什么可笑…》（注：莫里森这里笔误了，把故事的标题What's So Funny…写成了What Happened…）将极英盟描绘成一个无道德的超能力团队，很有乐趣，曼彻斯特·布莱克是一个很不错的角色，他在故事背后有着真挚的内心，但核心问题和解决方案却令我不安。

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​首先，我不确定是否需要先谈这个问题，我从来没有觉得超人被权力战队“解构了”或者变得毫无意义了。我个人从来没有觉得存在主动杀死敌人的超级英雄会让人觉得超人这个概念过时。也许在世纪之交的那个时代，他们被更多地认为是对传统超级英雄的威胁，让这两种截然不同的作风发生冲突——一种角色植根于吸引儿童的故事，像超人和蝙蝠侠等角色基本上都是奉公守法的公仆，另一种则针对十几、二十岁的嗜血老读者，他们是在“奇迹人”的陪伴下长大的——这让人感觉有点像让噗噗熊对阵可卡因熊，并通过给可卡因熊介绍令人上瘾的“维尼棒”游戏来赢得胜利！
 

​我觉得它为了给超人一个胜利而试图解决这些完全对立的邪恶方法，并没能完全解决其核心的道德问题——超人不杀死他的敌人是错的吗？杀死坏人，而不是试图把他们引导至正道，这样好吗？对我来说，尤其在我的JLA刊《新世界秩序》这条故事线情节里也提到了类似的内容，相当于问“史努比应该杀了其他狗吗？”甘地应该使用机关枪吗？为什么要渴望见血？正如我之前所说，阻止超级英雄变成一般杀人犯的想法是我一直苦苦挣扎的执着。杀死我们的敌人是解决问题和结束故事的唯一真正方法，这种想法让我觉得有问题和极其不安。如果蝙蝠侠杀了小丑，那戈登局长会拍拍他的背，接着很自然的因杀人罪把他关起来，故事终结。如果超人开始杀人，人们就必须取出氪石将其打倒。考虑到蝙蝠侠不能杀死小丑的深层商业原因，即小丑是DC最受欢迎的反派，那么在故事的解释中允许这类角色继续存在和活跃才是更有意义的事。

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​超人在故事最后的演讲节奏铿锵有力，但他的观点是模糊的，他只能通过欺骗曼彻斯特，让他认为超人已经杀死了其他的极英盟成员来折服他。他说他永远不会停止战斗的更美好世界的“梦想”，但这又有一点失败主义者承认了可能会存在的无休止斗争——如果一个心地善良的人拥有超人的力量和影响力都不能让世界明显变好，那我们其他人又能有什么机会呢？

 

​正如我之前说过的，我同意乔·凯利的观点，经典超级英雄杀死他们的敌人是对角色的无聊浪费。看到他们像以前那样想出极为疯狂的超级惩戒手段更有意思，有点像《血之家族》那集结尾神秘博士做的那样，如果我们要探索超级罪犯和相关惩戒措施的更多“成人化”层面内容的话，那将更令人不安。

 

​幻影地带只是小儿科，正义联盟过去常常把他们来自犯罪辛迪加的邪恶对手置在维度之间的边缘！如果这还不够糟糕的话，他们就把他们困在一个牢不可破的能量泡沫里！那里不能更换衣服，也没有任何隐私，更别说人有三急了，这简直太残忍了！如果我们一定要深入道德细节，那我宁愿看到更多关于这些细节方面的内容，但也要认真对待。我认为，当我们看到超能力者如何惩罚非常邪恶的反派，并目睹他们为避免处决他们而付出的离奇努力时，应该感到有一丝称奇和震撼。

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​3. Have you read Mark Waid and Bryan Hitch new comic Superman:The Last Days of Lex Luthor? If you have, what's your opinion about it? Do you think Lex Luthor would be worthy for Superman to save?

​3.你读过马克·韦德与布莱恩·希奇的新漫画《超人：命在旦夕的卢瑟》了吗？如果读了的话，你对此有什么看法？你觉得莱克斯·卢瑟值得被超人拯救吗？

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​Haven't read it yet but looking forward to it! Superman tries to save everybody, including Luthor. That's his raison d'etre. He's no fool but he tries to see the best in everyone and he believes everyone can be redeemed. He may be wrong about that but more than likely he's right. 

​还没有读呢，但是很期待了！超人想要拯救所有人，也包括卢瑟，那是超人的信条。他并不是傻瓜，而是想看到每个人身上的闪光点，相信每个人都可以被救赎，他有可能看走眼，但是我觉得他通常不会看走眼。
 

​4.In many stories Superman would either leave humans behind or disappear from public, such as Silver Age Superman imaginary tale death in Superman #149, Elliot S. Maggin's  Superman 2001!  Alan Moore's Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? And your All-Stars Superman，what's your opinion on this trope? Do you think Superman would eventually leave at some point in time?

4.在很多版本的超人故事里，超人最终都离开了人们的视线，例如白银时代的虚构故事《超人之死》（第149期），艾略特·S·麦金的《超人2001》，阿兰·摩尔的《明日之人的命运》以及你的《全明星超人》，你怎么看这点？你觉得超人会在某一天离去吗？

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​In terms of his wider biography, there's something narratively appealing about the idea of Superman having a walkabout period in his life. It's good to see him in unfamiliar situations dealing with different kinds of problems. His global travels as depicted in Mark Waid and Leinil Yu's Birthright cover that for his young life, but for his later years, I imagined he'd take off into space for epic cosmic adventures after he'd fixed the world sufficiently or felt he could leave it in safe hands, or when his human friends had died. A search for ultimate being!

​在他更为广泛的传记里，超人一生中有一段流浪经历的想法在叙事上很有吸引力，他在陌生的环境中处理不同类型的问题是件好事，正如马克·韦德和雷尼尔·余在《天赋使命》里所描绘的那样，他青年时期的生活都在满世界旅行，但在晚年，我想象他会在充分修复了世界或者觉得可以安心把世界交给别人，或者在他的人类朋友死后，他会踏上太空之旅开始史诗般的宇宙冒险，寻找终极的存在！

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​5.What if Superman time traveled to Prehistory and found out that the human race ain't the natives, they were alien invaders to the Earth, and Earth's true native tribes was seeking help from Superman, which side Superman would choose? Humans or the natives?

5.​如果超人穿越到史前，发现人类并不是原住民，而是入侵地球上外星来者，而地球上真正的原住民部落正在向超人寻求帮助，超人会选择哪一方呢？人类还是原住民？

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​It's an interesting moral dilemma for Superman, that reminds me a little of how the Silurians in Dr. Who were played recently. Superman would always side with the vulnerable. Since we know that the human race eventually inherited the Earth, I'd guess Earth's native tribes died in some tragic natural catastrophe (they died of a Covid virus that hitched a ride in Superman's nostril hairs) or were given another home in a parallel reality or paradise planet built by Superman with his bare hands, or…

What would you have him do?

​对超人来说是一个有趣的道德困境，这让我想起了《神秘博士》蜥蜴人篇是怎么处理这个问题的。超人永远会站在弱势群体的一方。不过既然我们知道人类最终继承了地球，那我猜地球上的土著部落已经死于某种悲惨的自然灾难（也许正是超人的到来带来了疫情传染给了他们导致灭绝），或者在超人赤手空拳建造的平行现实或天堂星球上另外安家，或者…
你会让超人怎么做呢？

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​6. Continue from previous question, what if Superman came back to present days, and the Earth's native tribes declared humans have invaded their final shelter and they would start the ultimatum to destroy humans, what would Superman do?

​6.接前面的问题，如果超人回到现在，地球上的土著部落宣布人类已经入侵了他们的最后避难所，他们将发出毁灭人类的最后通牒，超人会怎么办？

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Negotiate a settlement.

协商解决方案。

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​7. Have you finished Assassin's Creed Valhalla ? If you have, what's your take on the ending?

​7.你通关《刺客信条英灵殿》了吗？如果通关了，对结局有什么想法？

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​I still haven't finished! Got hammered fighting Malvigr and gave up after a while. I'm currently playing Demon Souls.

​还没通关！我卡在了冰霜巨人马尔维格这里，后面就弃坑了，最近我都在玩《恶魔之魂》。

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