I've thought about that before, it's a missed opportunity they've never rolled out an elseworlds ongoing like that. it would kick ass. there's plenty of variety and cool stuff you could do with golden age superman but the only stuff they've done the last 20 years were the novel It's Superman! which is very good but he's hardly in it for long stretches it's mainly about some deadbeat, War of the Worlds which is a cool little one and done where HG Wells' WotW unfolds in a golden age superman universe, and the Superman smashes the KKK book, which is fine for what it is, an update to the radio show episodes it's based on as a comic for small children but it really reads like one.
So Gunn wants to be U.S. version of Mamoru Oshii who had stuck his dog into everything he had done?
At least Oshii made legitimate greatness with Beautiful Dreamer, Patlabor, Ghost in the Shell, Angels Egg among others, even if I think his live action work has been mediocre.
I would swipe out Angel Egg for Dallos as is it comprehensible to understand as a not!knock-off of Moon is a Harsh Mistress. And it get the LoGH fanboys seething as it is the first OVA created not LoGH. Also swipe out GitS for his Kerberos Saga as it is all Oshii's work.
Batman growling to wannabe vigilantes: "I don't need help."
I almost put Dallos but couldn't remember what the fuck it was called. Kerberos is really hit or miss for me I haven't read it but I like Jin-Roh and Red Spectacles but the rest I could take or leave. but that's neither here nor there, my point is Oshii rules and Gunn I legitimately think his best movie is Scooby Doo and that isn't saying much. lol
what works about the BB & TDK humor is it all comes from character stuff without being ironic or self parodic. like when Batman crashes that Lamborghini in the second one and Gordon is like that's a brave thing you did Mr. Wayne and he's just pretending like he was just being a drunk rich irresponsible dude and Gordon's like wtf are the odds this dumbass happened to do this at the right time. or when that guy is like you can't swim in our fountains and he's like fuck it it's my fountain here's half a billion dollars this hotel is mine now. Gordon blowing shit up and being like damn I gotta get me one of these talking about the batmobile, joker's "pencil trick". it's all natural stuff that is funny. it's also why in the early mcu stuff RDJ's Iron Man works is because that guy would be saying shit like he does, it's just later the cadence of the humor stopped being natural character stuff to become let's pause the movie for a second and point and laugh at something.
I would be interested in a story where Superman lands in a Sword and Sorcery style Earth. Same powers and weaknesses. His vulnerability to magic would force him to find ways to counter it and perhaps learn some spells too. It would be an interesting spin. Could definitely work, better than any story where he is evil or something anyway.
closest thing to that off the top of my head is Superman: Kal. I liked it a lot the one time I read it but it was 15 years ago. really all of these kind of ideas lend themselves better to elseworlds ongoings than one shots though. it would be super (pun intended I guess) cool to see a 2/3 year long run of these kinds of things with a growing world, developments and different kinds of stories taking place in whatever alternate setting. I think a lot of people would probably really get into some in their own continuity and settings ongoings. they always just do them as one shots/ogns, or a couple of miniseries where I think you could really get some mileage out of a lot of this shit.
Another good one would have been a Sword and Sorcery Batman as an alchemist/enchanter/magic blacksmith that wants to bring down evil mages.
JOKER AS EVIL DEMONIC JESTER, YES
Poison Ivy as a dryad, Two-face as a cursed man, Scarecrow as an alchemist, Catwoman as a sort of Robin Hood-esque folk hero, Ghul as a vampire, so on, so forth.
Imagine how much they're going to botch Icon if he ever gets introduced into this universe.
Batman live-action films have been screwed since the one-two punch of Batman & Robin's failure and Nolan's success. Barring Synder (and the Bat-adjacent films) as that Batman didn't really do anything, Batman is stuck as a realistic crime drama which is getting extremely stale. It is the Long Halloween 20 times over, but missing the point in how the crazier elements of Batman overtake the more grounded mob stories.
Superman got the reputation for being boring, so they keep trying to reinvent the wheel to make him cool or relatable.
