Originally posted by ODG
I never gave two sh1ts about writer interviews as per form rules, but considering that you do here, a lot of that interview actually reinforces the major points that I've been saying, e.g., "the effort Max had to put into this was tremendous – and unique. It’s not as if he left a little door in Superman’s head saying, ‘Enter’ so that the telepath du jour can jump behind the wheel and play the DCU’s version of Being John Malkovich," "you have to get Superman to such an emotionally distraught and temporarily deranged state that he’s willing to pull off all of the governors that he lives with every second of every day, to get him to the point where he’s going after someone with everything that he’s got," "the fight is between two opponents whoa re at very cross purposes – Kal is hitting her with everything he has, and Diana has to do everything she can do to survive that, and move on from that, and get to Max." Pretty sudden to me. As I'm suddenly having to confront what I had always thought for years, was explicitly against the forum rules. Random writer interviews. I've always said there isn't a single way to fight at your best. Thor can fight his best by using Mjolnir's plot device powers or just going balls-to-the-wall. So prove to me that when Superman lets his power (and his powers) fully loose in a direct, no nonsense approach, that it falls well below his best. An approach he's used successfully against DoS Doomsday, against Darkseid in Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, against the first Imperiex Probe, against the multiple Imperiex Probes, etc.This shouldn't be a huge contrived discussion, because Superman has few fights where he goes full-out direct assault on his opponent, let alone killing (trying to kill) his opponent. It's sourced from now having to dignify a random writer interview from a French comic discussion forum. Forgive me.
I said way back, and have said years ago, that Superman wasn't holding back. I haven't disputed that at all recently, nor would I.
We've been using that interview for years. It's from 2005 after all. Q99 and I have done the rounds on this same argument a bunch of times too. If it's sudden to you, fair enough, but it's not out of the blue for others.
As far as the difference... I mean, how are they not? You have read both, right? Superman against Darkseid, even as annoyed as he was by Kara, was still in control. When he beat the Elite, he was still in control. Imperiex Probes, Doomsday(s), every time he fights them, we see him act with an actual tactical mindset (even in DOS before things degraded in to a drawn out fist-fight).
In the fight with Diana on Earth, he does use some tactics, and when he does, he's winning, but he's still shown more as a murder machine than he typically is. He doesn't fight against Diana as Doomsday the way he would usually fight against Doomsday, after all.
One of the biggest examples, imo, is how Superman reacts. Max didn't just show him Lois dying, he pushed him to new levels of grief he wasn't used to feeling. Manchester Black had already shown Superman what it would be like to lose Lois, and even then Superman wasn't pushed over the edge.
If you want to say he's at his best, that's fine. I just wholly disagree, and I (like you I'll bet) see the events in Sacrifice as being proof of that. Especially when a forum rule we all know is that characters under mental control can't be argued as being acting at their peak. And we've used that with everyone from Wolverine to Cyclops to (yes) Superman.
The original link doesn't exist anymore. Sorry. I did try. shrug