ClaRK! Kent

This was a good episode, not a great one as some last season were. But ne'ertheless, it was funny in places.

For a moment there I misread that and thought Affleck was first choice to star in it and I panicked. Phew. He's not actually an awful director, Gone Baby Gone is a pretty decent movie, but I'm not sure 2 movies and a hugely-tenuous link to Superman make him the best choice to direct what needs to be a great film, in order to save the franchise and all.

Zack is a loser, Cloud's where it's at. Although both of them can go take a running jump when you compare them to Reno.

He's also the protagonist, which counts for a lot.

Benji, I'll play VI if you will. At some point I'm going to do a proper playalong of one of the Star Ocean games, that'd rule.

Sister Ray?

There are times in life when a difference of opinion strays into an objective error of fact.

I have FF7 and FF8 saves like, ludicrously late on in the narrative, that I keep meaning to go back to from about six weeks ago but can't find the time to. FF7 sees me halfway through the 'parachute jump into Midgar/zOMG SISTER RAY!' mission, FF8 sees me aimlessly wandering around the Island Closest to Hell trying to get respectable levels with the people in the party who aren't named Squall, Zell and Selphie. Damn you, Quistis, I will reach level 100 with you this time. I don't want to restart either of them as it stands, and jumping in less than 10 hours before the end of the game doesn't seem in the spirit of this. I might dust off FF6 at some point this week, because I'm retro like that.

Slipknot? I mean, seriously, motherfucking Slipknot? I get that some people look for different things other than quote-unquote "technical skill" in their singers, and I don't want to get involved in that brain-sapping 'is metal or is it not total wank' argument again because I value my time... but SLIPKNOT? If you voted for Corey Taylor, you should hang your head in shame. Otherwise... Moz is awesome, Shirley Manson is great, Billy Corgan is a cunt who actually can't sing all that well, Liam is not a great singer but is a good frontman (I echo the 'favourite frontperson' list idea, if only because that'd give me a place to put Jemima Pearl), and Aretha is actually only average across her whole career - Skummy hit the nail on the head there, she may have done some great stuff and inspired the likes of Beyonce to write some great stuff, but her warbling is annoying and directly responsible for every female X-Factor contestant ever. The rest are the definition of 'meh' for me, I have no opinion.

That discussion of metal singing was beyond the pale, really... just terrible. The last selection was pretty good. Obviously this is EWB, so one expects a few American artists you've never heard of, but any list with Tom Jones and Stevie Wonder on it is all right by me.

Dan, check out the Bryter Layter album, probably his best work IMO. Cracking record. Rod Stewart only placed in at #40? Boo. But I suppose, with Nicks/Bjork/Lennox missing out, one should be glad he features at all. Ditto Nick Drake. I could live without Jack White on this list, but given that my reaction to the White Stripes is one of total and utter indifference I'll just say "meh."

As I said in my votes, for me there's a big difference between my favourite singers and my favourite bands. There's some overlap (The singers from Fleetwood Mac and The Detroit Cobras made my top 10 for example) but it's a different set of criteria that leads me to place Elvis Presley as my #1 choice, because he is the greatest rock'n'roll singer of all time, but he'd struggle to place so highly on an all-around best/favourites list for me because, for example, he didn't write his own songs and his output declined rapidly in quality as he got older/fatter/druggier. Similarly, I love bands like Be Your Own PET and artists like Bob Dylan, but I recognise that the vocals aren't exactly the strongest. Of course, Lemmy as a singer and Motorhead as a band are both equally bad.

Had Robyn's Hang With Me single in my head for well over a week now, have fallen in love with it/her as I always do everytime she releases anything.

Little tip, EWB. On a list asking you to list your favourite singer, it's not sufficient to just name the frontman from a band you like. They have to be able to fucking sing, you silly sods. Paramore? Maynard James Keenan? LEMMY OUT OF MOTORHEAD?! This is what kept the ladies of Fleetwood Mac, not to mention Annie Lennox and Bjork, off of the list? This is a world gone topsy-turvy.

Not hugely disappointed that any of those missed out (Macca is more of a songwriter than a singer, and Bjork is more of an "aww, shame" than a violent rage), but I'm guessing that Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie will miss out. This is fucking bogus. Seriously, though, I'm hoping for a high finish for some of my top ones, Elvis Presley specifically.

Agreed. We do really need a full reboot, whereas Superman Returns was sort of half a sequel, half a reboot, all confusing. Don't necessarily spend an entire movie telling the origin story, but touch on it. Let's see Clark Kent, discovering who he is, let's see him arriving in Metropolis, let's see Superman being born. The best telling of the origin story in any medium was Superman For All Seasons, so they should feel free to steal as much of that as they like.

Yeah, they'll almost certainly keep that, it's a lock. It's part of the character, as much as the suit or something. The fact that it's the best superhero 'theme' ever doesn't hurt.

Yeah, people who say that Juno is a "conservative" movie haven't watched Juno lately. Because she doesn't get the abortion, right? But wait, she chooses to go ahead with the pregnancy after seeing the other option, which was open and available. So it's pro-choice if anything, surely? Pro-choice doesn't mean pro-abortion. The list is pretty asinine, as has been noted.

Maybe 5 years ago John Hamm would have been a good choice, but he's a little on the old side now, isn't he? Guy's like 40. 30-35 is really the best age for Superman, he needs to be old enough to have some gravitas but young enough to still look youthful and dashing.

Air Force One. He's a strong, tough President, and when the chips are down he's strong. And tough.

Hahahaha. But seriously, no. The "Superman is a weak character" fallback argument is often used by people who don't actually understand the Superman character, so I'll let you off there. He's not a weak character, when he's written properly and understood by the writer. I'll admit there has been a lot of bad Superman, in the movies and in the comic books, but that really says a lot more about the state of the people they get to write the stuff than about the character. When Superman is done well - I'm talking about Superman For All Seasons, All-Star Superman, so on and so forth - he's one of the strongest characters in the DC universe. Yes, his superpowers are fairly all-encompassing, and obviously they get ramped up each and every time the character is threatened to the point where Superman can reverse the flow of time or move a planet if he so wished... but at its heart, he's the Man of Steel, the immovable object and the unstoppable force rolled into one, he's a wrecking machine. If you accept that, accept he needs solar energy to use those powers, and accept his weakness to Kryptonite, at its core it's not a particularly huge deal. What is actually more interesting about Superman is the character itself, and the stories you can tell. He's both the All-American Hero and the ultimate immigrant, both the living embodiment of the human spirit and an alien, both the saviour of planet Earth and a guy living in a foreign land trying to make a life for himself, both the guy who can defeat any foe and the guy who has trouble getting the girl... you see what I mean. The 'contradictions' as you put them are the essence of the character, those contrasts and dichotomies are what have made Superman so brilliant when he's done properly. I think we focus, when discussing Superman, too much on the 'Superman' aspect of his character and less on 'Clark Kent,' despite the huge success of Smallville and previously Lois & Clark, which both shifted some of the focus more towards that part of him. Ultimately, Superman is 4 characters, rolled into one. You've got Kal-El, the last son of Krypton; you've got Clark Kent, the Smallville farmboy; you've got Superman, the Man of Steel; and you've got the 'mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent' which is basically his cover story (this is the reason you don't cast a Levi or something). He's trying to be all of these things, and the question of which of these aspects of his personality is the 'true' character is interesting. I happen to think the second one is the 'real' Clark Kent, Superman is just as much of an artifice as the invented, nerdy persona he puts on when he's in Metropolis, but you can have your own opinion on that and that's fine. Ultimately, there's no actual need to make Superman 'dark' or 'edgy,' because the character actually isn't the two-dimensional, square-jawed jock hero that the people who try to make the 'dark' or 'edgy' interpretations think he is. You don't need to do that to make Superman interesting, you just have to take the essence of the character and write it properly, instead of going too far with the 'he can do ANYTHING' angle or the 'cartoon violence' stuff. What Superman says is that these characters, these extraordinary people with superpowers and fantastic lives, are ultimately people. Clark Kent could've taken over the world the moment he found out about all these powers, but instead he chooses to help people and do the right thing. That says something very profound about the human spirit, when it's at its best, and if that's 'cheesy' or whatever then fine. This is a character who has a troubled history, huge power, a hugely complicated life and destiny, and has to live a lie (or several lies) every day to make a life for himself... he has all of this baggage, and he's still a fundamentally good person at his core, he comes through all of that at makes the right choices. To say that overcoming personal strife and adversity to come out and do the right thing is somehow 'not relevant' to the modern world is beyond stupid. Give me a good lead (Grifter is right, you find a square-jawed hero and have him play down to be the geeky reporter, so no Levi), a good director, and a writer who understands the character and isn't trying to fuck around with the essentials, and I'll be happy.

For me the list would look like... - Every FPS except Goldeneye-007 and the Timesplitters series. - FIFA, PES, and all of that football genre. Meh, I'd rather play FM thanks. - Almost every car/bike/whatever racing game ever made. Perhaps this is just because I don't drive, but I never get into them, although I did like the Wipeout series back in the day, that was fun. - Final Fantasy XIII, from a self-confessed fanboy of the series no less, I thought it was the most facile and overblown load of shit I'd played in years, and it truly makes me doubt Square-Enix's ability to do anything good again, especially when you factor in the abomination that was Star Ocean: The Last Hope. - Street Fighter. I'd rather play Tekken I suppose. - Super Smash Bros. This is probably because I've always been a Sony loyalist and only owned one Nintendo console ever, but surely I can't have been the only person who's reaction to the hype around Brawl was just a jaw-breaking fucking yawn? It's amongst the worst games I've ever played.