Press Release
Starting in July 2010, coinciding with the 700th issue of Superman, DC Comics will be celebrating this remarkable anniversary of America’s greatest hero with a historic journey…not to alien worlds or distant galaxies, but through the streets, roads, highways, homes, farms, suburbs, and inner cities of America. And America itself, in the person of those very real places, is invited to the party.
Beginning with the city of Philadelphia, Superman will walk across America, a journey that is expected to take most of a year. He will pass through Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon and Washington. Along the way, Superman will be passing through real towns, real cities, real neighborhoods. And your town, your city, your neighborhood may be among those chosen for his historic journey. Superman will literally pass through your town as visualized in the pages of his book. If your town is within 50 miles of the line marking Superman’s journey, then you are eligible to participate.
If your town is chosen, then it will become part of an issue of the Superman comic. For over fifty years, Superman has been America’s greatest hero, and now he is returning to those roots. The series of issues will examine how Superman sees America, and how America sees Superman. And for those towns selected, it will be a once in a lifetime opportunity to be part of his historic journey.
SUPERMAN ‘GROUNDED’ CONTEST RULES
1. HOW TO ENTER: NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER. To enter, send a 75-1,000 word essay describing why the SUPERMAN character should visit your home town during the “Grounded” storyline by email to publicity@dccomics.com or by regular mail to:
Alex Segura
c/o THE SOURCE blog
DC COMICS
1700 Broadway, 5th floor
New York, NY 10019
Entries must be received no later than 11:59 PM EST, July 12, 2010. Though not required, you are encouraged to include photos from your home town and evidence that your home town has a thriving comic book/library/literary community. Contestants must use their own names and provide a valid email address or mailing address. For email submissions, the Contestant will be deemed to be the holder of the established email account associated with the entry. DC Comics assumes no responsibility for entries unable to be processed for any technical reason, and DC Comics reserves the right to cancel the contest if it becomes technically corrupted or for any other reason beyond DC Comics’ control. Use of all personal data submitted by Contestants will be subject to DC Comics’ privacy policy available at http://dccomics.com/about/?action=privacy .
2. ELIGIBILITY: Contest open to legal residents of the United States who are at least 18 years old as of July 1, 2010, and live within 50 miles of one of the cities listed below. Further, Contestants must reside in the home town described in their entries. Employees of DC Comics, its affiliates, parent companies and subsidiary companies, and their immediate families (parents and children) are not eligible. Void where prohibited.
- CHICAGO
- DES MOINES
- OMAHA
- DENVER
- SALT LAKE CITY
- LAS VEGAS
- LOS ANGELES
- PORTLAND
- SEATTLE
3. PRIZES: Winners will have their home towns included as destinations for the SUPERMAN character in the pages of the ongoing SUPERMAN series during the 12-issue “Grounded” storyline and will receive a copy of the issue including their home town autographed by the writer and artist of the issue (approximate retail value $2.99 per prize; approximate retail value of all prizes $26.91). Applicable taxes are the responsibility of the Contestant.
4. WINNERS: Nine winners will be selected from all eligible entries based on originality, creativity and such other criteria as the judges determine appropriate in their sole discretion. Decisions of judges are final. Each winner will be announced online on THE SOURCE after the close of the submission period and in advance of the publication of the issue of SUPERMAN in which that winner’s home town will be included. Odds of winning depend on the number of eligible entries received. For a complete list of winners write to DC Comics, SUPERMAN ‘GROUNDED’ CONTEST, 1700 Broadway, New York, New York 10019.
5. OWNERSHIP: All submissions will become the property of DC Comics and will not be returned. By submitting an entry, Contestant: (a) represents and warrants that Contestant’s entry will be original with Contestant and will not violate or infringe upon the rights of any person or entity; (b) grants to DC Comics the right to reproduce the entry online and in print materials, including, but not limited to, on DC’s THE SOURCE blog and the DC NATION page of its comic books for any and all commercial purposes in perpetuity, and (c) agrees and hereby releases DC Comics and its parent companies, affiliates, subsidiaries, employees, agents, officers and directors from any and all liability or responsibility arising in connection with Contestant’s participation in the contest and acceptance of any prizes which may be awarded.
26 Comments
You must live within 50 miles of a major city. That’s kinda bull… I bet a lot of people (myself included) would like to see real-life towns and cities that aren’t basically a suburb of Chicago, Denver, etc.
What about the south? People do live down there too.
Poor Florida. :(
Even though I live in Portland, OR, I’m from the South. I was going to ask the same question as Larry King. How come he is not coming to the South. Is this some dig at the South as being “bigoted and repressive to minorities.” I call BS. Is he not going through Arizona because this is some PC dig at Arizona being against immigrants because they are enforcing the law. I can already see just what type of crap this may turn out to be: Liberal PC America hating BS.
HAHA OH WOW….They mentioned he would go through 9 states out of 50. And that made you think a conspiracy was going on against one particular state or the south. Oh I bet they hate all of those other 41 states ;). I think it makes sense if you look at it from the company’s p.o.v. They can’t have him run through every state and town so they settled on a route they thought would be interesting.
Well he COULD run through all 50 states but it’d be the next weekly comic. Also stopping off at Puerto Rico and Guam.
Arizona’s in the Southwest, not in “the South” as usually identified by most Americans. I guess to the writers that little stroll (which is perhaps the most stupid story line since the Teen Titans stopped using their powers and wore purple jumpsuits after “Mr. Jupiter” died). I suppose the Northeast, Midwest and Northwest are more compatible with the writer’s concept of “America” rather than us backwards rednecks in the South and cowboys in the Southwest.
That or the fact that we don’t need superheroes in the south because we kick ass on our own.
Truth be told, Superman’s more of a mythos suited for metropolitan areas and with Clark Kent being from Kansas the “heartland” is more suited for the character. There are few “true” Southern comics characters because most comics/graphic novel writers are not from this area and wouldn’t know spit about crafting a southern character. Other than scripting bad grammar from Jonah Hex.
Rogue and Gambit are more New Orleans area characters, which has it’s own history and character from the rest of the South. Sam “Cannonball” Guthrie and his family were from Kentucky’s mountains, which still aren’t a good representation of the South.
Quite frankly if Supes were to wander through most of my area he’d probably stay for the barbecue and sweet iced tea and Metropolis would be stuck with just the Guardian.
Sweat iced-tea is the reason Superman isn’t going to the south. One taste of that dreck and he’d heat vision half the nation.
Are you kidding? Sweet tea is the ONLY reason to visit the South! Trust me — I live there! ;-)
(Just kidding–country ham is pretty good too. So that’s two reasons….)
I married a gal from Jersey, Stephen so I had to switch over to unsweetened as well. I just can’t deal with a story about a guy with the powers of a god needing to pull a Forrest Gump with walking, asking stupid “emo” questions and basically acting like a huge pile of cool-whip instead of being the freaking “Man of Steel”. I thought we left the pseudo-hippy “get in touch with the real America” crap in the 60’s and 70’s.
TaZ,
I think I’d rather have a more-human, less-godlike Superman walking around the country, to be honest.
As for Metropolis, I wonder if the politicians in the DCU see it as out-of-touch with mainstream America–the way (usually during campaign season) NYC and LA are thought of as not being “real” America, or the way Frisco and Miami are described as not having “American” values.
Unsweetened tea has to be one of the nastiest flavors on earth! Blech!!!
@TaZ:
“I thought we left the pseudo-hippy ‘get in touch with the real America’ crap in the 60’s and 70’s.”
To be fair, an arc showing Supes attending NASCAR events and working on his MySpace page would have been even more dull. Not to mention a bigger cliche.
So … do I get a free comic because I live in Philly? If they show this city as the “Brotherly Love” city, I call foul in the first issue. I think this city is filled with more than enough people who would want to shoot at Superman just to say they did.
I have trouble imagining Supes wanting a closer connection to the city that booed Santa Claus.
Exactly. After growing up here, I don’t know of 1 good thing to say about our city other than this: at least it doesn’t follow when I run away from it.
When ECW was there at the Alahabra, it had that going for it.
Why do I feel like this turn out like street view on Google Maps?
Five’ll get you ten they’ve already written the thing, they know what’s going to happen, and you’re going to get an “I looove you, PHILLIP J. FRY” experience.
Are he and Lois getting divorced? He hasn’t lived with her in two years now. And how does he keep that job open with Perry?
I have to snark about the art–particularly the way the cape looks stuffed into his shirt. I tried that with a sheet when I was a kid, and it didn’t work. There has to be a better way to design the cape’s attachment to the shirt.
Still, I love Flash’s comment–puts a nicely dark spin on the story….
Actually, it kind of sounds more like something Wally West would have said to Superman than Barry Allen. “What? Look, I’ve been dead for a few years. All you did was see the rest of the planet you came from whacked except your hot cousin, your dog, your clone and some folks in another dimension. You want deep thoughts, smoke weed. Iris and I are watching the twins for Wally tonight. Bye.”
I would’ve loved to see Supes visit Morgantown.
Bad idea. Superman just doesn’t work in the “real” world. Whenever DC tries it, we end up getting something like that idiot issue of Action comics where Superman went bowling against Clark Kent. Which issue was selling for well over a couple hundred dollars last time I saw it offered, and I rubbed my mom’s nose in it for throwing all my old 1960s issues of Superman away. But that’s beside the point. Putting Supes into the real world makes about as much sense as putting Spiderman in Flatland, Kansas. He’d spend the whole issue looking around and find nothing to stick his webs to. And, come on, DC. As a native Oregonian, I got to tell you Portland is barely IN Oregon, and you couldn’t find anyplace LESS representative of Oregon as a whole than Portland. As a HOLE, though, Portland is okay. I suggest they try about 60 or 70 miles to the south. Salem, Albany or Corvallis would be a better pick. Even hippy-dippy Eugene. During the last 20 years, with Portland’s Urban Infill law, they’ve pretty much removed anything of local color from Portland and replaced it with ubiquitous concrete and glass towers that you can find anywhere. Nuff said.
Heh, heh. Can’t resist. I suppose when Supes visits Portland DC could have him pop down to Oregon City and use his heat vision to incinerate Dark Horse Comics. :P
how about superman visits the north pole, since his house is there, and he isn’t american.
There are a lot of states that Superman isn’t visiting, so I don’t really think it’s fair to automatically call it biased. I live in Ohio and other than Howard the Duck, we don’t have a lot of love coming our way from the comics world, but the entire North-East is not represented either, New York, New Jersey, MA, ME, CN, RI, I mean the whole area, so I don’t think it has anything to do with immigration laws or any of that stuff. To an extent, I agree with TaZ, Superman/Clark Kent’s idea of “America” probably would be more in tune with the Mid-West like Kansas, Iowa, Utah, but I do hope that they don’t try to color Las Vegas as down home America, cause it’s dirty as hell there. I love Vegas, don’t get me wrong, but it’s scary outside of those casinos. Oh, TaZ, since the comics don’t portray southern folks to your liking, there’s always Squidbillies! That show hits the nail pretty much right on the head. Ha ha! I have a bunch of hicks in my family too, so eh, what’re ya gonna do. Maybe there could be a super hero with a Confederate flag on his cape and a pair of plastic testicles hanging from the back of his truck. Oh man, I think I saw that truck the other day in town. I digress. It’ll be boring either way, Superman almost always is.
Did DC ever say who the winners were of this contest?