How Sufjan Stevens’ album ‘Illinois’ ran into trouble with DC Comics
While Sufjan Stevens has been responsible for many masterful albums throughout the course of his career, a decent portion of his fanbase, and of casual listeners, will look towards Illinois as being his greatest achievement.
The second instalment of his unrealised ‘50 States Project’, which he said would aim to release a different concept album relating to each of the US states as part of a publicity stunt, is a sprawling and lavish record that showcases the full range of Stevens’ strengths as a songwriter and, much like its predecessor, Michigan, is a loving tribute to the state it takes its name from.
Telling stories that relate to the Prairie State, its inhabitants, its history and folklore, the record is an expansion on his previous folk-orientated works and features more compositions that veer into baroque pop territory and seemingly have plenty of musical theatre influences thrown in for good measure. In line with that, the painting itself also bears many allusions to the state, such as representations of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, the Sears Tower, the Black Hawk, and… Superman?
But hold on: Superman is a Kryptonian who relocated to the fantasy city of Smallville, now officially in Kansas, so why would he be depicted on the cover for an album that’s specifically about Illinois? All of the other allusions on the cover are heavily related to Illinois, so to see Clark Kent’s superhero self flying over the Chicago skyline is discomfiting. However, the artwork proved to be controversial because of Superman’s inclusion, but it wasn’t because of his apparent lack of relevance to the album’s themes that it was hastily altered.
According to a number of news outlets, DC Comics, the publishers responsible for creating the character, reportedly sent a cease and desist letter to Asthmatic Kitty Records, the label run by Stevens and his stepfather, Lowell Brams, asking them to remove the depiction of the superhero. However, a later statement made by the label debunked this and claimed that they had preempted a potential lawsuit over copyright infringement and chosen to remove Superman’s likeness of their own accord.
As a result, four different ‘versions’ of the artwork found their way into circulation within a year of the album’s original 2005 release. The first, which featured Superman, was still sold in record stores, while later reprints have a blank space where he previously appeared. On top of this, some retailers were sent versions of the record with Superman covered by a sticker of three balloons, and later on, vinyl pressings had been altered so that the balloons were part of the artwork instead of the superhero.
Original pressings of Illinois now fetch a small fortune if sold via Discogs, raking in around $160 per sale on average, and a fifth incarnation of the artwork was created for the 10th anniversary of the album, replacing the balloons with the Blue Marvel, a superhero who does in fact hail from Chicago. Thankfully for Stevens and Asthmatic Kitty, the rights to use the likeness on this occasion were acquired, which begs the question: why wasn’t he used in the first place?
