Superman = Wanker

Now I thought the days of Phil Collin’s saying ‘wanker’ on Miami Vice were all over. American communications businesses had become aware of other versions of English out there and that some of those versions of English had words in them that could be regarded as rude.


I remember my first dalliances with internet messages boards and found that, while I couldn’t say ‘someone was having a bit of a bitch’, meaning someone was complaining, without the word ‘bitch’ being blanked out, I could quite happily sit at my desk and call American’s ‘wankers’ until the cows came home. And I did.

“They must have cottoned on”, I thought. So, I was flicking through ‘Prelude to Infinite Crisis’ a collection of extracts from various different DC comics which hint towards a coming event across DC comics (who, of course, publish Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and countless other comics) called Infinite Crisis. I think this event is going to last a year or so.

It’s a glossy thing they’re selling world-wide to plug the forth-coming event (which is to mark the 20th anniversary of DC’s ‘Crisis on Infinite Earths’, fellow geeks) so you’d have thought they’d have had a good look at it before send it out.

Well, in one extract, Superman is about to intercept some villains who are about to assassinate a woman prisoner, Amanda Waller, who knows “too much.”

Firstly, I like that twenty-first century super-villians say things like “Is that…” when meeting Superman and not “Curses, the Man of Steel!”

And to that the Australian super-villain Captain, um, Boomerang says: “Stop Starin’ and get the bloody wanker.” Which is how Australian villians speak, of course. No respect.

Ha, “get the wanker.”