The Man of Steel is A Man of Tomorrow

I’m not a fan of Superman – but no matter. He’s becoming a Man of Tomorrow. 

Over the weekend, DC Comics held their second annual FanDome event, chock-full of announcements and teaser trailers and all that good hype stuff. 

During Saturday's event, Chief Creative Officer and Publisher Jim Lee announced that Superman would be getting a new mission statement "to better reflect the storylines that we are telling across DC and to honor Superman's incredible legacy of over 80 years of building a better world". 

In other words, he will no longer be fighting for the American way – but for a better tomorrow instead. Yay-y-y!

This idea of "truth, justice, and the American way", if you didn’t know, is not intrinsic to the character as originally created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1938. While truth and justice have always been central to the character, "the American Way" was only added during the popular Adventures of Superman serial that aired during World War II. By the time the Super Friends cartoon launched in the 70s, the achingly pandering nationalism was replaced by "truth, justice, and peace for all mankind". 

Whether you have an affinity for America or not, the Man of Steel will now fight for "Truth, Justice and A Better Tomorrow" – and to me, it fits better with the character anyway. 

Besides, dropping the “American Way” makes sense, given the increasingly global markets that DC are operating within. 

Chinese war epic ‘The Battle at Lake Changjin’ surpassed the 5 billion yuan ($782 million) mark at the China box office on Tuesday – its twentieth day of screening. 

This makes it the second highest-earning film of 2021 at the global box-office, according to Chinese ticketing platform Maoyan. 

In fact, the top two movies worldwide for this year both belong to Chinese hits that cater almost exclusively to Chinese audiences, with ‘The Battle at Lake Changin’ in second place and ‘Hi, Mom’ in first place with a whopping $821 million. 

In the meantime, Wednesday's grosses for ‘No Time To Die’ amounted to a worldwide tally of $474 million – and it is already on its way to cross the $500 million milestone over the weekend.