<\/p>\n
With the silly crowd-pleaser that is “Superman,”<\/a> James Gunn has made superhero movies fun again. Rather, he’s made DC fun again after more than a decade of desaturated downers courtesy of the relentlessly lugubrious DC Extended Universe or “Snyderverse.” Gunn’s Superman differs from past versions<\/a> in almost every way, with star David Corenswet portraying a sillier, less self-assured version of the hero in a refreshing change of pace for the character and his on-screen odyssey. Now, we can look forward to more of the same as Gunn sets about building upon the foundation provided by “Superman,” in the process establishing his vision for the newly renamed DC Universe.<\/p>\n What we almost certainly won’t see in future “Superman” installments, however, is a questionable piece of comic book history that, while certainly intended to be as light-hearted as Gunn’s latest offering, probably wouldn’t go down too well in the modern age. This has to do with the history of Kryptonite, which is far more expansive than you might realize. Throughout the Silver Age of comic books (that is, the 1950s and ’60s), writers came up with an astounding number of variations on Superman’s achilles’ heel, producing multiple different versions of Kryptonite (many of which were just downright silly). This trend somewhat died out in the 1970s, but one writer tried to revive it in the early 2000s \u2014 or, rather, he tried to poke fun at the era that saw this grand proliferation of Kryptonite alternatives. Lamentably, this brief parody doesn’t actually hold up all that well today, and while Gunn, with his well-publicized love for Silver Age shenanigans, might well want to revisit the history of Kyrptonite variations, focusing on this particular example probably isn’t the best idea.<\/p>\n