Dan Jurgens once did seem to express regret over the death of Cat Grant's son
There was a time a decade back when I'd noticed (and almost forgot) Jurgens telling on social media he may want to go back and rewrite the 1993 story where Adam Grant, son of Superman cast member Cat Grant, was murdered by the Toyman. Now, here's an interview he'd given about 5 years ago to Everybody's Hometown Geek where Jurgens said the following:
As noted by CBR, which recently brought this up 2 months ago, whatever reception the story got seemed to have an impact on how Jurgens scripted a later Superman story where Clark Kent was investigating a black neighborhood where armed drug traffickers were running rampant, and unlike the earlier tale where Adam was buried at the hands of politically correct beliefs, Superman saves a girl who witnessed a murder, and flies her to the hospital after she was later caught in the crossfire of the gangs. No doubt, the spectre of Adam Grant hung heavily over this tale, though some might wonder: if Cat and Adam Grant were black, would Jurgens have avoided taking the direction he'd gone in almost 30 years ago, and kept Adam alive? It's certainly a challenging question today, when you look at how political correctness has turned whites into sacrificial lambs (except if the characters in question are LGBT practitioners), to say nothing of putting them in a form of stereotyped role as a result.
But if Jurgens really does regret terminating Adam Grant at the hands of the Toyman, which sticks out as the grimiest moment of that time in 1993, why doesn't he just come clean and admit science-fiction shouldn't be held captive to the dictates of political correctness, and that even "civilian" characters with no fantasy powers are worthy of resurrection, or retconning their previous fates away? If there's something good Mark Waid once did around the turn of the century, it was reversing the 1990 fate of Alanna Strange, wife of Adam Strange on the planet Rann, in the pages of JLA (and I think Impulse's solo book also had a storyline involving these characters at the time). So maybe all involved should consider retconning Adam's previous fate away, which could make the Death & Return of Superman more palatable in retrospect? So far, alas, nobody at DC who worked on that storyline from the time seems interested in doing so. Let's hope in the future, they'll reevaluate their positions and start advocating for correcting some of the biggest mistakes made in the past, depending on how revolting the stories were to begin with. It's good if Jurgens does have regrets over the story he scripted in 1993. But he could do a lot more by addressing the subject more straightforwardly, and whether he thinks it should be reversed, which is entirely possible to do, if he really wants it to happen.
Supergirl TV show Adam Grant vs. comic book Adam Grant – Should they incorporate your controversial storyline?Well I suppose we'll have to give Jurgens some credit for at least admitting, if not all that directly, the story he'd brewed up was in poor taste, and the main problem is that it couldn't evade shock value effect, to say nothing of serving as an example of what happens when somebody in upper management cultivates a mentality believing every minor character they think is literally an "obstacle" must be sacrificed for the sake of shock, to make room for other cast members who could later suffer the same fate. When he says the story was "something" for Cat, that too suggests he's hesitant to say he thought it was a masterpiece, which it was most definitely not, and it definitely wasn't anything to celebrate.
I suppose they could, but I don’t know that they should. I have said before that, as creators we all have a couple of stories we wished we could do over again, sometimes I think that would be one that I might [do over.] For those that don’t know, in that story, Adam Grant dies…and it’s not that Superman failed, but Superman didn’t succeed. I don’t think every story has to have a happy ending, by any means, but I think it ultimately ended up being something of a good story for Cat Grant. And we debated this, when we were putting that story together at the time… should Superman… like I said he didn’t fail, but he didn’t find Adam in time and Adam died. I think that Superman did not succeed and that to me is something that should always be considered somewhat carefully and I’m not saying that I regret doing the story, but i’m not sure that today, for example, if we were going to redo that, I wouldn’t have it end the same way. It was different for the books at the time. I think it’s important to have a sense of loss in our stories from time to time and that certainly did.
As noted by CBR, which recently brought this up 2 months ago, whatever reception the story got seemed to have an impact on how Jurgens scripted a later Superman story where Clark Kent was investigating a black neighborhood where armed drug traffickers were running rampant, and unlike the earlier tale where Adam was buried at the hands of politically correct beliefs, Superman saves a girl who witnessed a murder, and flies her to the hospital after she was later caught in the crossfire of the gangs. No doubt, the spectre of Adam Grant hung heavily over this tale, though some might wonder: if Cat and Adam Grant were black, would Jurgens have avoided taking the direction he'd gone in almost 30 years ago, and kept Adam alive? It's certainly a challenging question today, when you look at how political correctness has turned whites into sacrificial lambs (except if the characters in question are LGBT practitioners), to say nothing of putting them in a form of stereotyped role as a result.
But if Jurgens really does regret terminating Adam Grant at the hands of the Toyman, which sticks out as the grimiest moment of that time in 1993, why doesn't he just come clean and admit science-fiction shouldn't be held captive to the dictates of political correctness, and that even "civilian" characters with no fantasy powers are worthy of resurrection, or retconning their previous fates away? If there's something good Mark Waid once did around the turn of the century, it was reversing the 1990 fate of Alanna Strange, wife of Adam Strange on the planet Rann, in the pages of JLA (and I think Impulse's solo book also had a storyline involving these characters at the time). So maybe all involved should consider retconning Adam's previous fate away, which could make the Death & Return of Superman more palatable in retrospect? So far, alas, nobody at DC who worked on that storyline from the time seems interested in doing so. Let's hope in the future, they'll reevaluate their positions and start advocating for correcting some of the biggest mistakes made in the past, depending on how revolting the stories were to begin with. It's good if Jurgens does have regrets over the story he scripted in 1993. But he could do a lot more by addressing the subject more straightforwardly, and whether he thinks it should be reversed, which is entirely possible to do, if he really wants it to happen.
Labels: dc comics, golden calf of death, history, Superman, violence
