Optimist Rock and Superman

How a drive to nowhere and Lady Gaga got me to "land the plane" on Superman: Kal-El Returns

Top Gun: Maverick made me cry.

I hate how good Tom Cruise is at making movies. Every time he puts out a popcorn flick wherein he’s the only person capable of saving the day (rules and protocol be damned!), I’m in the theater opening weekend. This new Top Gun movie felt like the first REAL movie to get all Nicole Kidman at an AMC over since the pandemic (sorry, Spider-Man). I was so overwhelmed by the nostalgia, the groundbreaking visuals, and Tom Cruise running that I totally burst into tears. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s a peculiar feeling I’ve been investigating and submitting to more often lately.

It was around the time of Top Gun’s release that one of my DC Comics editors Paul Kaminski invited me to pitch a story for the Superman: Kal-El Returns one-shot. I had already spent like 18 months in Smallville working on a teenage Clark Kent story for the Young Readers line, and I was excited to set foot in Metropolis! Paul is a great editor and has fantastic instincts about where to place his talent. I wanted to go against expectations and try writing something like Kal-El’s reunion with Batman, but Paul suggested I play the hits and use a lovable/ humorous character like Jimmy Olsen as the focus of my chapter.

At first, I was really stuck on emphasizing how this grand Superman return was different than all the other times he’d left earth/ died/ been taken for dead. My original pitches had Jimmy in a more sour mood, and sometimes downright resentful that Kal-El left to begin with. Paul, always knowing how to whisper the right direction into my ear, reminded me: Jimmy’s our eyes and ears… he, like the rest of us, would be thrilled to see Superman back on earth! I took that note, and I went for a drive to get lost. Showers, long drives, aimless walks to cafes, these are a few of my favorite things to get creative juices flowing.

The right story was in me, I knew that… but the pieces weren’t fitting. I think I was trying too hard to do something out of my wheelhouse and ignoring my instincts. Driving long stretches always helps me clear my head, so I eventually set my maps to take me to a comic store about 45 minutes away, and put on Lady Gaga’s intensely optimistic Top Gun song “Hold My Hand” on as loud as tastelessly possible. After repeating it a few times, I let Spotify play whatever the algorithm thought I’d appreciate, and what followed was a genre I personally define as “Optimist Rock.” Cold War Kids. U2. Bruce Springsteen. Coldplay. Metric. Relentlessly hopeful rock and roll bangers that fill a stadium with smiles and cheers. It was there, 20 miles out of Los Angeles, that I found the angle.

As a writer, I approach Superman and Wonder Woman with the same sensibility: they’re near-gods who not only protect us, but see the best in mankind and try to reflect that back onto us. Without Kal-El around, humans had to do their best. Yes, there were hundreds of other heroes still on Earth, even the son of Kal-El… but it’s still like having a weekend-long music festival with no headliner. You do the best you can, and sometimes you can’t see that doing your best is a miracle onto itself. I played with that idea and flipped the “eyes and ears” of it all for my story. Jimmy’s become Kal-El’s eyes and ears on earth, and while things start off with Superman needing Jimmy Olsen, it becomes all too clear by the end that Jimmy Olsen needed Superman… or maybe not at all. You’ve got to read to find out.

I’m so grateful I got to tell an optimist rock story about Superman. If you keep following this substack, there will be plenty of entries about my relationship with this character and how he’s inspired me to become a better version of the writer I always wanted to be. Just like Lindsay Lohan wishing she was a blonde rail-thin Kate Moss supermodel, sometimes I try to go against my natural strong suits to be something more popular or mainstream, and I’m so grateful for editors like Paul Kaminski who remind me that being the heartwarmer gets a crowd going, too.

Superman: Kal-El Returns is out in comic shops today, and if you go read it, you will see that Mark Waid did a 1000% better job at the Batman reunion than I ever could have done.