All-Star Superman has been out for a month now, but I’m just getting around to writing about this. When the preview images came out, there was a small but noticeable amount of chatter about the new logo. It wasn’t anything drastic, but penciller Frank Quietly had taken out the serifs on the famous Superman “S”. Back when the book was in its early stages, writer Grant Morrison wrote We’re changing his costume slightly… the symbol slightly. Yet when the book actually hit the shelves, the standard Superman logo was what we got. Why the change?
The cover:
Page 10:
First, you can see the sans-serif version that was never published (click to enlarge). Then, the published version, containing the traditional “S” logo. It’s a slight difference, but the omission of those little bits takes out the definition of the “S” shape, moving the emphasis from the logo being an “S” in a diamond to the diamond shape itself. It’s a softer look, in my opinion, maybe indicating that this Superman, the one in the All-Star books, hasn’t had as rough a time as the standard version. It also gives us a kind of half-way point between the standard logo and the Kingdom Come shield (seen bottom-right here).
So why the change? Why did Quietly’s original design never make it to the page? A poster on Barbelith asks:
So could someone tell me what the deal is with the Superlogo? I know Quitely rounded of the top serif, and that caused and uproar in some arenas. Then Tom1 wrote an article about it on plastikbag. Then I sat and to design a mark. Then “new” images come out of A-S:S#1 wirth what looks like redrawn linework over the original, making me question whether the new Superlogo was retracted, and DC now has equity in an antiquated design, or what?
The response on that forum was:
What it seems like is that Grant & Frank proposed a new S logo for this series, DC took them seriously for a while but at the last minute decided their iconic trademark S was too precious to change at all, esp. for a title aimed at readers who maybe aren’t super comic book fans (the whole ‘these are the Classic versions of the characters that the average man/woman on the street know’ approach to the All-Star line).
Similar things happened right before Greg Rucka took over Wonder Woman, the artist had designs that were shown in various comics news magazines that would change Diana’s costume, take away the star-spangled panties and make them a permanent star-spangled skirt, and make her look more Greek, change her hairstyle a bit. It seemed these were a go until the issue came out and lo and behold, Diana was drawn the way we all know her, the ‘classic’ WW look. So basically, DC seems very hesitant to change the look of their big 3 characters even in slight ways. (Apparently getting rid of the yellow oval on the Batman in a permanent way doesn’t seem to matter much, Batman Begins having solidified that image in the public’s mind.)
I buy that explanation, but I think it’s a bit of a shame. The Superman logo is one of the most recognizable icons in the world, so I can see that DC wants to protect it and make sure they aren’t dilluting it, but I’d like artists to be able to have some fun with it, too. I guess there’s no middle ground here, and since DC’s the owner of the mark, they can decide if they want to be strict about the design or not. Except of course that Infinite Crisis, currently their best seller, features two different Supermans, one of whom wears a golden-era shield, so they’re clearly willing to break the rules in some cases.
So if DC did decide that they couldn’t allow their Superman logo to be changed, did they really have a staff artist go through each panel and draw in the tops and bottoms of the shield? Maybe this is common practice and I just didn’t know.
- The reference to “Tom” is in regards to the post Type Challenge: Redesign the Superman logo… on Plasticbag.org. ↩