Kistler's History of Superman - Part 4
Friday, February 13, 2009 at 03:12PM This part of my Superman files and continues from Part 3. It covers the rejected proposal Superman Plus and shows how much of the Superman comics since then have been influenced by it, through the events of Infinite Crisis and up to today.
SUPERMAN PLUS: THE REJECTED REVAMP
So we talked about how starting in the late 90s and early 21st century, mainly under the writing of Jeph Loeb, the Superman titles began to work their way back towards several Pre-Crisis ideas. Some folks embraced this, some thought it was silly and wanted to keep things such as Krypto away from their comics.
But let's backtrack a bit. This new wave of Pre-Crisis love and updated takes was actually a soft-sell version of a much more radical revamp that had been proposed to DC in 1998 by a group of avid Superman fans. These fans were Mark Waid (writer of Kingdom Come and the biggest Superman historian you will ever find), Grant Morrison (who rocked a lot of socks off with his work on JLA, Animal Man and The Invisibles), Mark Millar (who would go on to make a lot of waves writing the Ultimates for Marvel, as well as his own creation Wanted), and Tom Peyer (who had done fine work on the third New Gods volume and wrote the hilarious and poignant Hourman comic).
These four got together and decided they wanted to remake Superman. It had all started when Grant Morrison and Mark Waid had met a man dressed as Superman at the San Diego Comic-Con. Morrison and Waid began speaking to the man and he, very naturally and very casually, answered questions in character as Superman. Morrison later went into more detail about it:
"I can say here and now that the Superman proposal by Waid, Peyer, Morrison, and Millar was the best, most thoroughly worked-out take on a major character you are ever likely to see. It was Superman Plus. I wrote most of it after meeting the Man of Steel at 2am opposite the Sheraton in San Diego - a true shamanic moment.
"He was wearing the best Superman suit I've seen and looked fantastic as Superman, a cross between Chris Reeve and Billy Zane, so we asked him if he'd answer some questions which he did in the character of Superman! It was like a possession. I'd say to the guy, 'So how do you feel about Batman?' and he'd come back with 'Well, Batman and I don't really see eye to eye on a lot of things. He's so hung up on the darkness in everyone's soul and I just don't see it that way...' and so on. He spoke to us for about an hour and a half.
"The thing that really hit me, wasn't so much what Superman was saying as how he was sitting. He was perched on a bollard with one knee drawn up, chin resting on his arms. He looked totally relaxed...and I suddenly realized this was how Superman would sit. He wouldn't puff out his chest or posture heroically, he would be totally chilled. If nothing can hurt you, you can afford to be cool. A man like Superman would never have to tense against the cold; never have to flinch in the face of a blow. He would be completely laid back, un-tense. With this image of Superman relaxing on a cloud looking out for us all in my head, I rushed back to my hotel room and filled dozens of pages of my notebook with notes and drawings."
And so, Morrison called up Waid, Peyer and Millar and they put together their proposal for revamping the Man of Steel, making him more powerful and yet more emotionally interesting than they believed he had been for years. A major idea was that rather than try to ignore things from past continuity that seemed silly, the Superman comics would embrace them and update them, embracing the absurdity and emphasizing the fairy-tale like atmosphere of certain Superman stories from the 50s and 60s.
The intro the the proposal was as follows:
"Historical record tells us that every fifteen years or so, Superman is re-imagined to address the wants and needs of a new generation. Fifteen years ago, John Byrne recreated Superman from the ground up. Fifteen years prior to that, Julie Schwartz and Denny O'Neil engineered the biggest shake-up since Mort Weisinger began bringing in all his familiar lore fifteen years previous.
"That fifteen years cycle is upon us again. With all due deference and heartfelt thanks to the creators of all the fine work done since the Byrne revamp, it seems that many of the social trends and historical currents which made those comics so appropriate and so successful in the '80s and early '90s have now been replaced by newer, different trends and currents. Sadly, sales would seem to reflect our contention that new times demand fresh approaches.
"That fifteen year cycle is upon us again. With all due deference and heartfelt thanks to the creators of all the fine work done since the Byrne revamp, it seems that many of the social trends and historical currents which made those comics so appropriate and so successful in the '80s and early '90s have now been replaced by newer, different trends and currents. Sadly, sales would seem to reflect our contention that new times demand fresh approaches.
"We believe that the four of us understand the new face of Superman: a forward-looking, intelligent, enthusiastic hero retooled to address the challenges of the next thousand years. The ultimate American icon revitalized for the new millennium as an inspirational figure, a role model for 21st Century global humanity.
"The Superman relaunch we're selling bucks the trend of sweeping aside the work done by those who came immediately before. Unlike the 'cosmic reset' revamps all too prevalent in current comics, our New Superman approach is an honest attempt to synthesize the best of all previous eras. Our intention is to honor each of Superman's various interpretations and to use internal story logic as our launching pad for a re-imagined, streamlined 21st century Man of Steel. The 'cosmic reset' notion has been replaced by a policy of 'include and transcend' with regard to past continuity.
"Our intention is to restore Superman to his pre-eminent place as the greatest super-hero of all and to topple Spawn and every Marvel comic that's currently in his way.
"We don't think this will be much of a problem."
Among the changes they wanted to do was to alter the costume slightly, losing the shorts Superman wore over his pants. They wanted to bring back Krypto and have Superman map-out the Phantom Zone and they wanted to Fortress to be a place where Superman explored strange new ideas and dimensions. By becoming more powerful, his senses and brain power would now be enhanced further as well, filling him with an intense desire to learn more about a myriad of things. He'd have his lab again and it would be filled with strange, otherworldly things. There would be the "Living Library", containing the DNA of extinct alien species. A transtermporal flaw would allow Superman to create an "Impossible Room" where he could meet and interact with his descendants and successors from future eras. And there would be a boom tube generator for Superman to make inter-galactic trips instantly or for whenever he needed to check on what the New Gods were doing.
In Morrison's JLA stories, Morrison had introduced the "infant universe of Qwewq" and he wanted to bring that back by having Superman watch over the young reality in his lab. Though it would never be specifically stated, Qwewq would actually be OUR universe that you and I live in. Superman could relax on Qwewq's nanoscopic Earth because it was a place where villains didn't exist. However, Kal's nature meant he would inevitably get involved with helping folks anyway, so whenever he was there he would assume the identity "Hyperman" when he had to go into action. But unlike his adventures in the main DCU, on Qwewq's Earth, he would have to be careful to act clandestinely, not wishing to disrupt the reality of this world that was not supposed to have people with superhuman abilities and would probably freak out if they found out that comic book super-heroes actually existed outside their universe.
The lab would also contain the "Superman Molecule", on which our hero would engrave a personal journal of his exploits (using special goggles that reduced the bandwidth of his heat-vision).
"The emphasis is on cool stuff. A Fortress we can do cutaway diagrams of again. The ultimate treehouse. The greatest den known to man."
Concerning Superman the character, along with making him now a student of all things around him, they wanted his increased power levels to force him to change emotionally, to re-evaluate his place and purpose in the world and rededicate himself to being an example for people and super-heroes.
" ... we'd like to balance out his battles with Brainiac and Luthor with stories which thoroughly explore those values, stories allowing him to return to his roots as a champion of the weak and oppressed. Even more so than for Batman, Green Lantern, Flash--all his peers and contemporaries--Superman’s job is to fight for and inspire those who cannot fight for themselves. His job is to make this world a better place and to help all men realize their potential as supermen.
"Further to this, it's important to keep in mind the Superman/Christ parallels WITHOUT being obvious and heavy-handed about them. Superman has to think differently from us, and when we see into his head, we should be shocked by the clarity and simplicity of his brilliance and compassion ...
"We also see Superman as the ultimate communicator - invulnerable to pain, he needs none of the physical defensive postures we take for granted and so would be incredibly relaxed and open - the big smile, the instant handshake, the conviction that everyone he meets is to be regarded as a friend until he proves otherwise. Superman should be indefatigable and trustworthy. No more 'Bad Superman' or 'Crazy Superman' stories for a while."
The four writers also wanted to re-emphasize the feeling that Clark Kent was a disguise, feeling that the line between the hero and the secret identity had blurred too much by making Clark act too outwardly confident and turning him into a famous award-winning novelist. They wanted Clark to be more relatable to the average reader, more blue-collar again. Specifically, they cited that the radio series, Fleischer cartoons and George Reeves TV show had all described Superman as "disguised as Clark Kent."
So as not to go completely against the Post-Crisis continuity, the writers decided that the power-increase itself would lead to Clark changing how he related to people in his secret identity. A the proposal stated:
"It's been established that Superman's powers are a result of solar energy saturating his cellular batteries. It's even been suggested that his powers will increase through time as he absorbs more of our sun's radiation. And that's just what happens.
"As part of his alien maturation process, Superman crosses a second, critical threshold of solar radiation absorption and suddenly wakes up three times more powerful and three times smarter."
As a result, Superman no longer activates his telescopic vision or infra-red vision when he needs it. His default setting is to perceive things on levels humans simply can't.
Furthermore, the writers wanted to bring back Superman's ability of being able to see the electro-magnetic fields of all living things, a power Elliot S! Maggin had used in his books and which had been jokingly called "soul-vision." The four writers felt that a person with this ability would find eating dead life forms disturbing and so Superman (who really didn't need to eat as much compared to a human) would be on a vegetarian diet.
Back to Clark being more of a disguise, the proposal explained:
"Priority One is to make Clark Kent different from Superman. For too long, they've been exactly the same guy with zero contrast between them. Clark doesn't have to be an overblown drama-queen wimp, but neither can he be so super-successful he has the world in his pocket. We must not forget why he was created in the first place - to be a touchstone ... we'd like to use Christopher Reeve's Clark Kent as a base, but lend him enough dignity so that he's not the total Reeve cartoon.
"In our interpretation, Clark Kent isn't what Superman really IS, Clark is what Superman WAS ...
"Clark is the creation of Superman's memory and imagination. His eyes can see through skin and stone and light years; only memory tells him what it was like to simply see and he can only imagine what it would be like to need glasses. Still, Clark is his cherished link back to his human upbringing and the ethical structures forged in the Midwestern dream of Smallville. Without Clark, Superman knows, he might have been inclined towards detachment, aloofness, alienness. As Clark, he can walk among people, meek, quiet, unnoticed, learning all the time. From this perspective, the secret identity becomes something more like the human disguises gods would don or the rags kings would wear when they wanted to walk among the ordinary and the merely human. Without even a hint of condescension, Clark is eternally delighted by humanity. A man whose perceptions so routinely unlock mysteries and secrets genuinely loves to be confronted by the only thing in the universe which can actually surprise him.
"Clark’s also the sob sister of the Daily Planet, if not of all Metropolis. Despite his attempts to keep a low profile, compassion radiates from him, and people pick up on that almost unconsciously. Friends and total strangers alike constantly confess their plights and problems to poor Clark. They don’t want advice. They just want someone to listen, and no one listens better than him. This aspect of his character naturally opens up the occasional avenue to the smaller human-interest story which can be investigated by Clark the reporter and by us the writers."
This portrayal, if you'll notice, sounds quite a bit like the original Shuster/Siegel interpretation and is certainly very much like how Clark was portrayed in the radio series.
Another idea the proposal had was to have Lois and Clark split up. This would happen in a story that involved first the writers showing how fantastic and romantic their love truly was and then to have their lives shattered when Brainiac and Lex Luthor learned Clark's secret and broadcast it to the world. Clark's friends and family would be attacked by a variety of villains and even normal people would disrupt his life, attacking his apartment and the Daily Planet offices for "collectables."
In the end, Brainiac and Luthor would be defeated, but not before Brainiac had poisoned Lois. What science has begun to tell us, and what Brainiac has known for years, is that memories are mainly chemical in nature, thus the villain would actually turn Lois's memories of Clark's identity into a lethal poison.
Superman considered his options, such as having one of Earth's sorcerer or psychics block out Lois's memory of his secret ID, but he felt this would have been a flawed solution since she was too smart to not figure out fairly soon that her husband was leading a double life. Mxyzptlk presented the option that he could alter history and save Lois by not simply blocking out the memory of Clark's secret, but by making it so that she had never learned it in the first place. Clark and Lois argued against this but finally gave in. Clark promised Lois this would be temporary, that he would court her again and they could be together again. They shared one last sunset together and fell asleep. In the morning, Clark woke up in his old apartment. The world no longer knew who he was and neither did Lois, whom he had never married. But eventually, he would find a way to be with her again. After all, he was Superman.
Mark Waid explained that the idea to erase Lois and Clark's marriage was based on their belief that one of the core things that made Superman interesting was the presence of a love triangle that actually involved only three people, which did not happen in most comics. What's more, having Clark be aware of what he'd lost would add an element of tragedy to his character. Later on though, the writers felt that perhaps this idea was too much and Lois and Clark should've been allowed to stay married.
If you are a Marvel fan, you may notice that this story idea sound suspiciously similar to the premise of Spider-Man's "One More Day", in which the hero and his wife Mary Jane decided that his life had become too dangerous since the world had learned his secret identity and they made a deal with the Devil that resulted in the world forgetting who he was. Reality/history was also altered in the process so the he and Mary Jane had never been married in the first place.
Of course, this Superman revamp didn't happen or comics might be very different these days. Initially, the proposal was approved by new editor Eddie Berganza while editor Mike Carlin was on vacation. When Carlin returned, he evidently was shocked to hear that such a radical new approach to Superman was going to be taken and immediately shifted gears, telling Morrison and company that they would not be given "the keys to Superman", partly because DC had a new policy not to put "big name" creators in charge of the core Superman and Batman books.
Concerning the softer revamp that happened instead, in which (among other things) Jeph Loeb introduced an alternate Krypto and began having Superman use the data-crystals from the Richard Donner movie, Morrison commented:
"We had the 21st century Superman, we had four guys who'd been waiting all their lives to do this, we wanted to launch in January 2000, and we'd have sold a million copies. It would have been the coolest, biggest thing to happen to Kal-El since the Byrne revamp and DC blew it. I have nothing but respect for Joe Kelly and Jeph Loeb and the other guys currently on the books, but they haven't been allowed to go far enough and, as a result, the current revamp seems a little muted. Not being able to do Superman and not being offered anything else at DC was the main reason I decided to do Marvey Boy [for Marvel Comics]."
A few years later, Morrison returned to DC and utilized the infant universe of Qwewq in JLA: Classified #1-3 and later took it into a whole new direction with his self-described "mega-series" 7 Soldiers of Victory.
In 2007, Morrison began All-Star Superman, a series designated as taking place outside of mainstream continuity, allowing the writer free reign. Concerning Superman's final days as a hero on Earth, Morrison's 12-issue story-arc used many of the ideas from the rejected proposal and hit on the same themes. It has been hailed as one of the best Superman stories in the past few decades and was a hit with many who normally didn't read his comics.
Time magazine's Lev Grossman ranked the collected edition of All-Star Superman #1-6 as third in the Top 10 Graphic Novels of 2007. The series won the Eisner Awards for "Best New Series" in 2006 and "Best Continuing Series" in 2007. In 2006 it won the Eagle Award for "Favourite New Comic book" and "Favourite Comics Cover" (for the first issue), as well as the 2007 "Favourite Colour Comicbook - American" Eagle. And it won the Harvey Awards for "Best Artist" and "Best Single Issue" in 2008.
Makes ya wonder how different the Superman books might be today if the proposal had been allowed to go through.
A couple of years after the proposal had been rejected, Smallville began airing on the WB network (which later merged with UPN to become CW). The WB cartoon series had shown that several Pre-Crisis ideas could work and Smallville had taken this a few steps further. First, like the cartoon, Clark was seen arriving on Earth as a child and was not born via a birthing matrix. Second, rather than only one sample of Kryptonite falling to Earth, the show used the Pre-Crisis idea that of several Kryptonite samples falling towards Earth. In fact, Clark's arrival was cloaked by a massive meteor shower that devastated parts of Smallville. This not only increased the chance that at any time Clark might find his life in danger, but it also gave the show a chance for super-villains with the new idea that Kryptonite radiation could mutate humans under the right circumstances.
Finally, the show had brought back the concept that Lex Luthor and Clark were closer in age (Lex was shown to be only be about five or so years older) and that they had met each other in Smallville when Lex moved there. A large part of the show’s focus was to watch Clark and Lex start off as friends and then to slowly have Lex become more and more the manipulative villain we knew he would eventually be.
The show quickly became a success and sparked interest in some TV viewers to start picking up the comics. DC became a little bit afraid, though. If viewers enjoyed the fact that Clark and Lex had been friends once, they might get disappointed when they found out that in the comics continuity the two hadn't met until they were adults. If they liked how the version of Krypton in the WB cartoon was a Utopian future, they might find it strange to see that the comics version was a cold, sterile place.
What was needed was a limited series that retouched on the early days of Superman and tweaked a bit. It would be the new official origin that would be fine with long-time comic fans and would also work well as a jumping-on point for newcomers. Mark Waid was tasked with writing it and finally got a chance to use some of the ideas he'd had in the afore-mentioned proposal.
BIRTHRIGHT
SUPERMAN: Birthright was a 12-issue series, illustrated by Leinil Yu (who would later be known for his work on New Avengers and Secret Invasion). Soon after Birthright was collected, I spoke to Mark Waid who explained to me some of the thoughts behind re-touching Superman's origin yet again.
“DC Comics has become ... Batman comics. What do we publish? We publish Batman and, oh, yeah, what else? So what do you do to get people’s attention [back on Superman comics]? You take the best of every element of the Superman mythos and you put it together and really give it some drive and some verve. It's not about cleaning up continuity, it's just there was no book to really put in the hands of general audience members and say, 'okay, here's the origin of Superman, here's the supporting cast, here's why he does what he does.' Yes, [John Byrne's] Man of Steel is still in print after 20 years, but it feels a little dated. Let’s spit-polish it and bring in Luthor's [motivation and origins] too and there you go. The idea was to write it as Superman: the TV mini-series."
Mark Waid was told to do a story that "put the myth first and continuity second" (within certain boundaries), that would do for Superman what BATMAN: Year One did for Batman. In the opening, Krypton was a futuristic wonderland. As he stands with his wife Lara, Jor-El talks about a planet that will truly be a tragedy to lose.
"For ten thousand orbits ... a shining planet circled a celestial font of heat and light. The people of that world grew tired of war ... so they achieved a united society. They feared the unknown ... so they conquered it with marvels of science. They yearned for Heaven ... so they created it beneath their very feet. For ten thousand orbits, a clump of dirt careened around a red dwarf star. And it accomplished miracles no one will ever remember."
Great speech, huh?
Another change is that Jor-El is wearing the S-Shield. Mark Waid latched onto the idea from the Christopher Reeve movie that the shield was a Kryptonian symbol but didn't want it to just be a family crest. "He's not the last son of El, he's the last son of KRYPTON," Waid said.
Thus, the S-shield became an ancient Kryptonian symbol and was the most widely loved and respected icon of the planet. It stood for hope and working for a better tomorrow. Takes the "Man of Tomorrow" nickname to a whole new level, doesn't it, kids? Later on in Birthright, just like in the Reeve movie, Lois would see the symbol and mistake it for the letter "S" inside a diamond, inspiring her to dub her new hero "Superman" in the headlines.
Kryptonians were not genetically bound to their world in this version. Like the Pre-Crisis history, Jor-El tried to convince the Science Council to build a fleet of space arks but was ignored and now had to rely on a prototype vessel just large enough for his son. Kal was once again a baby sent to Earth, not a fetus. This allowed for a touching scene in which Jor-El and Lara wrap him up in the banner of Krypton, place a history computer by his side, and kiss their son good-bye as they send him away, praying that he'll be safe.
In Birthright, Lara is just as responsible for the rocket as Jor-El is, having been the one to program its computers. Unable to find any form of alien life he considered "advanced" enough to be comparable to Krypton, Jor-El chose Earth because, although primitive, Kal-El would stand the best chance of surviving there. Like Pre-Crisis, it's said a combination of gravity and sunlight will grant Kal his powers, instead of just solar radiation as Byrne had it.
Another interesting thing is how much stronger Lara becomes as a character in these brief scenes. At the last minute, Jor-El is unable to bring himself to send his son away, but Lara forces him to, providing a voice of strength and courage and convincing Jor-El that any small chance for their son is better than having him die along with them. This is very reminiscent of her portrayal in the 1940s radio serials.
Waid was also affected by how interesting Smallville had made Jonathan and Martha Kent, portraying them as younger and more fallible. He followed this portrayal and also gave Martha Kent a new dimension. Waid talked about how the parent of an Olympic athlete often becomes a great Olympic coach. Thus, Martha Kent became a near-expert on UFO stories and alien myths, even finally setting-up her own web-site on the matter after Clark graduates high school.
Although Clark's abilities were not immediate, as they were Pre-Crisis, they didn't take quite as long to develop as Byrne had said. As in Smallville and the Pre-Crisis stories, Clark is just entering high school when he is told about how he was adopted. Looking at the computer his genetic parents had left, Clark finds images of his homeworld's history and has no doubt that he's an alien being. But where was he from and why had he been sent to Earth? He can't speak Kryptonese, so he has no way of knowing.
Waid also brought in the "soul-vision" ability and made Clark a vegetarian.
Concerning Luthor, Byrne said he had deliberately removed Luthor's tragic childhood connection to Superman because he wanted the villain to be "evil for evil's sake." Waid instead took a nod from the Pre-Crisis version of Lex's past, particular the portrayals of Elliot S! Maggin.
Waid did not like Luthor as a businessman who was never caught despite all his crimes, believing this made Superman seem ineffective. But he recognized that this portrayal obviously struck a chord with folks since idea had been used in Lois and Clark, the WB cartoon and Smallville. So he simply altered how Luthor had begun his business empire, revealing that Lex started his company by marketing technology modeled on his hypotheses concerning the evolution of alien life. Indeed, Waid's Luthor had been obsessed with the possibilities of alien life ever since he'd been a child, possibly because he felt completely alone on Earth.
In Birthright, 14-year-old Clark befriends 17-year-old Lex Luthor when the latter moves to Smallville. Over a series of months, they find that they understand each other. Clark feels like an outsider due to his alien nature, whereas Luthor simply knows that he's smarter than everyone around him. Worse, no one recognizes his intelligence. When he writes up a proposal for a new form of government, it's dismissed as a childish notion without even being looked at. It's almost understandable now how he turned out later when you considered that his whole life he was belittled or ignored by people who he knew would have benefited from his genius. This makes him so cynical that he actually doesn't understand the concept of a gift being given without an ulterior motive. When he learns that Clark recieved a telescope for his birthday, Luthor frowns and questions this.
LEX: "Wait. Someone GAVE you this? For FREE?"
CLARK: "That's ... how a birthday ... WORKS."
Tragic events led to Luthor being burned during an experiment with a sample of Kryptonite he'd found, leaving him bald. Although Birthright showed that his father was killed in the same explosion, a short story Waid wrote for Superman/Batman Secret Files #1 indicated that Luthor had had his parents killed a few years before (as had been established Post-Crisist) and that the man in Birthright was an actor he'd hired to pretend to be his father, so that child services and others wouldn't bother him.
Like Byrne, Waid had Clark explore the world after leaving high school. He didn't go to Metropolis University and graduate after two years, though. Instead, he collected credits by going from one newspaper to another all around the world and only graduated just shy of his 25th birthday. This showed readers a far deeper love of journalism than before. It wasn't just a job he took on later so that he could be alerted to action, it actually was a personal passion, as much a part of him as being Superman would be. Years later, when Jonathan warns Clark that it's dangerous for a man with a secret identity to work in a newspaper office, surrounded by reporters, Clark's immediate response is "I'm a journalist, Pa. And I'm good at it." For him, it's really that simple.
In his travels, Clark remarks how many cultures have ceremonies where they dress in the colors and styles of their ancestors in order to celebrate their heritage. As he nears his 25th birthday, events occur that force Clark to realize that he's been wasting too many years being careful and only helping folks in secret. Clark returns to Smallville and makes the costume, decorated by the red and yellow symbol he has come to realize stands for "hope." He goes out and starts helping around, though no one clearly sees him. Even when he "saves a space-shuttle", he is not photographed. In this way, Waid was not dismissing Byrne's story but was underplaying it so that he could give Clark a more dramatic, colorful debut as Superman later.
In this version of events, Clark does not decide against a mask because people have already seen his face when he was in action. Rather, he just doesn't like them. Masks, he feels, breed distrust and he needs people to trust him. This is another reason for the colorful costume, because by wearing it he's announcing his presence to people and implying he has nothing to hide. Thus, Martha Kent decides they need to disguise the Clark Kent half, which should be easy since no one in the states has seen Clark Kent since high school.
Here, Waid touches up the disguise. The glasses are not just a distraction, their thick prescription (which doesn't affect a man with X-ray eyes) refracts light enough to dim the color of Clark's piercing blue eyes. To enhance the disguise, Martha suggests Clark use his super-muscle control to completely alter his voice (much like Bud Collyer in the radio series and Fleischer cartoons) and tells him to study acting books at super-speed so he can truly give his identities different body language
On the topic of making the "Clark Kent" persona more of a disguise again, Waid said to me, "The moment you make Clark so completely the real guy and make Superman so completely the disguise, then you've taken away one of the things that makes Superman unique ... He was always created by Siegel and Shuster as an alien among us ... And once you lose that, once you make him just like every other super-hero who grows up and decides to put on a cape, you've lost something essential. And I think we got that back ... 'Mild-mannered' doesn't mean 'completely cowardly.'disguise." This is probably because I'm too young to have watched George Reeves's show, but that never resonated with me because [similar to Byrne's portrayal, he acted as] the same guy in both identities. These are reporters [working with him], how stupid are these people? It needs to be a disguise."
Metropolis in this story was being patrolled by experimental LexCorp robot attack helicopters. When the copters start going nuts, Lois wants an exclusive and grabs Jimmy as she heads to the helipad. They jump into the Daily Planet chopper but get clipped by one of the rogue robot copters. Jimmy falls out, plunging to his death, and Lois is still in the chopper as it begins to falls, its rotors destroyed ... when suddenly Superman, in full costume, flies up and catches Jimmy in one hand and Lois's chopper in the other. It was, of course, a scene reminiscent of Christopher Reeve's costumed debut in the first Richard Donner film.
On the story behind this new debut scene, Waid told me, "I sat down with Dan Didio and said, you know, with all due respect to what's come before, I don't think a space-shuttle is the way to go for Superman's big debut, because nothing says 80's to me like a space-shuttle. It was very cool in 1986 because it was timely. Unfortunately, too timely as you'll recall, with Challenger ... to me it read as dated as the George Reeves show where his first big mission is he saves a guy from a dirigible. And that's not to slam. 20 years from now someone's going to do an origin that's different than what I gave them.
"One thing I will swear up and down, and I will take this to my grave ... I don't care what medium you're in, I don't care what kind of story you're telling, I don't care what the circumstances are, he has got to make his first appearance flying. He has got to appear to people for the first time in mid-air, because that is his coolest power and he is an angel come from above to save us. That led me to attack helicopters, to terrorist attacks from the sky."
I won't give the rest of Birthright away, you can check it out for yourselves and enjoy the details I've left out. I will say this. Due to this studies on alien science and his frequent experiments with the Kryptonite, Luthor discovers all about Krypton before Clark does himself and it is now he who tells Superman that he is the last survivor of a dead world, a moment which gives him great joy. Later on, Superman finally learns his true name as well as who his parents were and why they sent him. It's a great scene, topped only by the touching ending of the series.
By the way, after Birthright came out, John Byrne openly mocked it and critized Mark Waid's love of the Silver Age on his own forums. Go figure.
DEALING WITH CHANGES
With Birthright now in continuity, DC started shifting the mainstream Superman comics to reflect that. After defeating a future-born Brainiac, Superman returned to the past but seemed to get lost along the way and, at one point, saw three different versions of his origin: the Silver Age version, the Byrne version and Waid's version. When he did arrive back in the present, he found that his journey in time had caused the Brainiac-13 technology to be eliminated from Metropolis, returning the city to a more classic style.
Although Birthright was redefining Superman's past, it was not advertised very well and fans were not sure if this was actually meant to redefine continuity or if it were an Elseworlds story. The timing of publication also meant that the series was overshadowed by Brian Azarello and Jim Lee doing a year-long storyline called "Superman For Tomorrow", which involved a mystery surrounding half the people in Metropolis suddenly vanishing, including Lois.
After a year of searching for clues, Superman discovered these people had been transported into Metrotopia, a portion of the Phantom Zone that Superman had altered and re-programmed into becoming a paradise. Apparently, Superman had done this in the hopes of creating a utopian haven for Earth people in case their planet ever blew up. But things didn't go right and in the end Metrotopia was destroyed.
The story was deliberately ambiguous on several points and again brought up the idea that Superman was the true identity and Clark Kent the disguise. But not a lot of folks really enjoyed it. I personally thought it was a story with some good ideas but that the pacing was very slow, some of the scenes and sub-plots felt like filler, and also there were some plot-holes I just couldn't let go of. Also, in my mind, Superman acted out of character several times. The idea that he would create a paradise safety-net for humanity all by himself seems, to me, to be completely anti-thetical to his purpose of trying to inspire humanity into creating their own utopia for themselves.
This story referenced Birthright through flashbacks and also emphasized the idea of Superman as an angelic figure, both awe-inspiring and frightening to those he protected. But no comics really referenced it once the story was concluded (other than the fact that Superman moved into a new Fortress in Peru at the end) and for several reasons it doesn't really fit into continuity anyway. Still, it has some beautiful artwork from Jim Lee, so that's something.
After Birthright, it was decided that the "sole survivor of Krypton" rule could be relaxed. Thus, it was finally time for Kara Zor-El to come back. In a Superman/Batman story-arc written by Jeph Loeb and drawn by the late Michael Turner, Kara crash-landed on Earth. She had left Krypton years before but the planet's destruction had caused Kryptonite to form around her ship, shutting off her FTL engines. Thus, she had only been traveling at sub-luminal speed, locked in suspended animation while Kal-El had grown to adulthood on Earth.
When her ship arrived in Earth's solar system, the heroes thought it was a giant Kryptonite meteor and Captain Atom did his best to break it apart, using a special ship to blast the rock while also employing his energy-absorption powers to take in most of the radiation. As a result, Kara's ship was freed and she woke up upon finally crashing to Earth. Captain Atom's radiation manipulation also caused some of the chunks of Kryptonite to alter in color and nature, thus bringing back some of the Pre-Crisis colored Kryptonite in the process.
Superman was glad to have his cousin on Earth but their relationship was a bit rocky. Kara had been prepared to look after her baby cousin, she had not been ready to find out that he had grown and would take on a parental attitude towards her. She also didn't like that people immediately saw her as his sidekick. And while she was fine with the name Supergirl, it bothered her to find out there had been other "Supergirls" before her (Matrix and Linda Danvers, specifically). Some fans complained that this was not at all like the Pre-Crisis Kara, while others argued this gave the two cousins a more interesting dynamic.
Supergirl seemed slightly more powerful than Superman. This was later explained to be not quite true. In fact, Superman was more powerful but also much more prone to hold back, due to years of experience in controlling his abilities so that he did not accidentally hurt anyone or damage property he didn't mean to.
Kara wasn't on Earth for too long before she wound up fighting Lex Luthor, whose warsuit now utilized different samples of the new colored Kryptonite. He also had a strange rock given to him by Darkseid (presumable also created by Darkseid) which he called Black Kryptonite. This rock caused Kara's darker impulses to split off into a separate being. As of yet, Superman has not encountered black-K so it's unknown if it would affect him in exactly the same way.
And what about Superman's clone Superboy AKA Kon-El? He joined the new team of Teen Titans and decided to rethink his life. First, he ditched the costume, choosing instead to just wear a black Superman t-shirt with jeans. Secondly, he found that his powers were increasing, making him more formidable. On Clark's advice, he began leading a double life in order to connect better with humanity and gain a new perspective. By day, he was now "Connor Kent", Clark Kent's fictional cousin who lived on the Kent farm and went to Smallville High. To help him learn responsibility, Clark put Connor in charge of taking care of Krypto.
Geoff John had made a name for himself writing Flash and the bringing back hero Hal Jordan in Green Lantern: Rebirth. Now he was writing Teen Titans and he did a lot to develop Connor's character. Takinga nod from Smallville, Johns wrote a line for Superman where our hero mentioned that his rocket had brought a Kryptonite meteor shower in its wake when it had crashed in Smallville.
Geoff Johns also shook Connor's world when the boy discovered something about his origins. For years he had known that he was not a true clone of Superman. Rather, he was the product of human DNA which had been manipulated to mimic Kryptonian DNA. He had been told that the human donor had been Paul Westfield, former director of Cadmus. But in Teen Titans, Johns revealed that this was a lie and, in fact, the donor DNA had been from Lex Luthor. Connor was now torn by his dual heritage, wondering whose legacy he would actually follow in the end. Later, Lex Luthor (still a warsuit-wearing fugitive for his crimes during his presidency) took control of Connor's mind and set him against the Teen Titans. After Connor was freed, he left the team and retired from being Superboy, ashamed of his actions.
Greg Rucka did a run on the Superman books that had our working more closely with the police, while also focusing on Lois's activities as a field reporter overseas. Chuck Austen also did some stories which were, sadly, not terrible memorable aside from a scene where Lana admitted she was still in love with Clark and believed that Lois didn't love him as much as the spectacle of Superman. He was succeeded by Gail Simone, who was partnered with John Byrne on art chores. Gail Simone did a few fun stories and introduced the villain Livewire, who previously had only existed in the WB animated series.
And then came the big event. Infinite Crisis, the sequel to Crisis On Infinite Earths. Before the crossover actually began, several storylines began which would set the stage. In one major story, "Sacrifice", Superman fell under the mental control of Maxwell Lord, the manipulative but usually comical industrialist who had funded the Justice League during the late 80s. It was revealed that Lord had deliberately been holding back the team's effectiveness back when he had worked with them, believing that super-humans, both hero and villain, would ultimately bring about the fall of humanity.
Now, Lord had become a high-ranking official of the government group Checkmate and had commandeered Brother I, an artificially intelligent satellite Batman had created which was tasked with watching over and keeping files on super-humans, including heroes in case they went rogue. Using Brother I, Lord had created the O.M.A.C.s, sleeper agents who would be armed with nannite-created armor and weapons programmed to adapt to various superhuman abilities.
Now Lord was making his move. Using mental abilities he had possessed for years and now had truly honed, he took control of Superman's mind and set him against Batman and Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman grabbed Lord and encircled him in her lasso of truth, demanding that he reveal how to free Superman from his control. Lord simply said, "Kill me," and Diana snapped his neck.
Superman's mind returned to normal and he was shocked by what he'd done, but not nearly as shocked as he was at Diana's actions. Despite her explanation, he could not get past the fact that she had held a person in complete submission, having them tied up and at her mercy, and had then killed him in cold blood. He was also upset concerning Batman's actions in creating Brother I. While he understood the need to be careful for heroes going rogue, and had himself given Batman green Kryptonite years before, he did not think that the satellite should have been kept secret and was angered that it had now led to the creation of soldiers programmed to hunt and kill heroes. The DC trinity was now split and it wasn't definite that they would reunite their friendship. Superman found himself with more doubts about himself and his crusade than ever before.
INFINITE CRISIS
Geoff Johns was in charge of writing Infinite Crisis. The story kicked off with a confrontation between Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman. Superman criticized Batman again for how his general paranoia and mistrust had gone overboard the past few years. He also refused to accept Diana's explanation that she'd had no choice but to kill Maxwell Lord, believing that the villain had already been apprehended and a different solution could've been found. When Diana said that she had only been acting as a warrior would, Superman argued that in recent times she had lost touch with normal humanity.
At this point, Batman said that Kal had for the past few years tried too much to identify with humanity, forgetting his power and his role as Superman. Batman argued that Superman's debut had inspired a new age of heroes but that he had become so concerned with doubts and worries over the past few yeras that he had lost that special quality. He said "The last time you inspired anyone was when you died."
The three went their separate ways as events went into motion. And we saw that watching all this was the Earth-2 Superman and Lois Lane-Kent, Earth-3 Alexander Luthor and Superboy of Earth-Prime, four of the only survivors of the multiverse that had existed before the Crisis and who had been living in exile in another dimension ever since. With Alexander Luthor's prodding, Earth-2 Superman had become convinced that the universe had been left flawed after the Crisis. He now wished to remake reality so that it more closely resembled his own lost reality, which he believed was intrinsically better because it had been more hopeful and its heroes had worked together rather than be torn apart by distrust.
Superman of Earth-2 was unaware that Alexander Luthor and Superboy-Prime had been making trips into the DCU for weeks already, setting various events into motion to cause chaos and bring back other universes that had been lost. Alexander Luthor wished to remake reality into something he deemed perfect. Superboy-Prime wanted to have his family and girlfriend back, as he'd lost them during the first Crisis. Prime had also grown envious and resentful of Connor and the two wound up fighting, with Prime killing other super-heroes in the process.
Meanwhile, Clark found himself thinking on Batman's words and realized that his old friend was right. He had become too concerned with his limits, too doubtful of his own instincts. He needed to remember to follow his gut and simply be guided by the morality that had served him well in the past.
As he went out now during Infinite Crisis, it was with renewed confidence and the other super-heroes couldn't help but feel awe and inspiration in his presence. When a building was about to collapse, Superman simply said "I've got it" and used a combination of heat-vision, super-strength and blinding speed to fix the structure. When the toxic villain Chemo delivered a poisonous explosion onto the city of Bludhaven, Superman tricked him into re-absorbing a great deal of the radiation and poison unleashed before soundly defeating the monster. Clark was back in rare form, acting with the confidence of someone who was determined to save lives and fight evil no matter what the cost.
By the end of the story, Superboy-Prime had become fully corrupted. He was so unwilling to accept responsibility for his actions that he chose instead to believe that the rest of the universe was literally against him and that if he made any mistakes it was because the DCU had a corrupting influence on all who were in it. Later on, Connor sacrificed himself to prevent Alexander from over-writing the DCU with his own personally-designed universe and Superman had to deal with the loss of one he'd looked on as a younger brother.
Concerning Superboy's death. Originally, it was going to be Nightwing who died during Infinite Crisis. But DC later decided this was a bad idea since Nightwing was part of the foundation of the DCU, having started out as the original Robin. During publication of Infinite Crisis, the Siegel family had been fighting once again for the rights to Superboy and wound up winning. DC was now not allowed to feature any teenage male character who wore the S-shield and called himself Superboy. So, it was decided that Connor would take Nightwing's place as the sacrifice. As for Superboy-Prime, DC got away with calling him just Prime or Superman-Prime for a while. A year later, the decision was appealed and DC regained the rights to the property of Superboy.
Back to the story. Superman and Earth-2 Superman, along with help from the Green Lantern Corps, finally defeated Superboy-Prime but in the process the came into contact both with Kryptonite and with Krypton's red sun Eldirao. As a result, Earth-2 Superman died and our boy Clark found himself without his powers. Solar treatments didn't seem to do the trick and the Man of Steel was left without any clue as to how long it would be until his abilities kicked back in. Meanwhile, Superboy-Prime was imprisoned by the Green Lantern Corps, but he wasn't done yet and would show up again in later stories. During his final fight in Infinite Crisis, he had justified his actions by saying that he would grow up to be the one, true Superman, superior to Kal-El because he came from a fundamentally better universe. Our hero ripped the "S"-shield off Prime's chest, saying it wasn't about where you came from or what you called yourself. Life was about action.
Following Infinite Crisis, all of DC's titles jumped ahead one year in continuity. While readers saw their books launch off with a new jumping-on point and status quo, a weekly series called 52 was published which showed what had happened during the lost year. The series was written by Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid and Grant Morrison. Concerning Clark, we found out that he had to wait over a year to get his powers back and that during that time he had cemented his relationship with Lois and regained a reputation as a dynamic, hard-hitting journalist. Luthor, on the other hand, returned to the public limelight, claiming that his crimes at the end of his presidency had actually been the handy work of Alexander Luthor of Earth-3. Luthor later got himself into some trouble again, though and once again found himself facing the law.
A NEW BEGINNING
After Infinite Crisis, it seems that DC decided some of the spirit behind the rejected 1998 proposal Superman Plus wasn't such a crazy idea after all.
In the "One Year Later" story for Superman, entitled "Up, Up and Away", Kurt Busiek and Geoff Johns began a new status quo for Superman. Luthor had once again avoided prison thanks to his lawyers, but it was now too little to late in the eyes of the public. Several people didn't believe his claims that it had been a parallel universe doppleganger who had attacked Superman wearing a technological warsuit and many were suspicious of him after the events of 52. Lex found himself bid out of his own company due to his image as a criminal. In retaliation, he started his plans to have revenge on Metropolis. He had now fully left behind the role of savvy businessman and once again become the criminal super-scientist in hiding.
Meanwhile, Clark found his powers returning. It was slow at first, but when they came back it was on a level more enhanced than before. Superman found himself surprised by his newly charged abilities, his enhanced super-senses, his now super-level brain. He was going to need some time to adjust to this new power level, but at the same time it only strengthened his resolve about being a true protector for the Earth.
Along with the new power came a new emphasis on Superman as a loner. Busiek and Johns stated that since he and Lois were of two different races from different worlds, it was physically impossible for them to have children together, meaning Clark would not be able to continue the line of the House of El. What's more, it was shown in flashback that Clark had at first been elated when other super-heroes began appearing after his debut, feeling that he would now belong to a brotherhood of similar people, but was then disheartened to realize that even several other super-heroes looked on him as a celebrity rather than an equal (which is partly why he and Batman connect more, as the Dark Knight refuses to be intimidated or impressed by most people).
When a villain accused Superman of not understanding the pain of loneliness, Kal simply answered "I've been alone all my life." Yes, he had Krypto and Kara, but that did not change the fact that he had grown up a stranger in a strange land and that he was all too aware he was a relic of a dead world. At the same time, this gave him a unique perspective on the world, one that was not clouded by judgment concerning race or ethnicity or beliefs. In one Johns-penned story, when Superman saved an alien child, a nearby human couldn't believe it, declaring that Superman was "for humans!" Superman then sternly corrected "I'm for EVERYONE."
At the end of "Up, Up and Away", Superman also used a Kryptonian data-crystal (now named as a "sunstone") to create a new Fortress of Solitude for himself in the Arctic, one that was outwardly identical to the one used in the Richard Donner movies starring Christopher Reeve. In this new Fortress, Superman could access a holographic A.I. program that emulated his father.
But Superman's present status wasn't the only thing altered. The events of Infinite Crisis had tweaked history again. This was touched on in "Up, Up and Away" and elaborated in further stories by Johns involving flashbacks. Now, Krypton looked more akin to how Richard Donner had portrayed it in his films.
One change that took folks by suprise was that history now stated that Clark had begun wearing glasses before high school, apparently to help give an impression that he was a "nerd" so that people wouldn't ask him to play sports where his powers might injure other people. What's more, if he wasn't expected to perform physical activities, there was less chance he'd accidentally reveal the incredible powers he was still having difficulty controlling. So, in a way, he had begun cultivating this mild-mannered Clark Kent persona at a very young age now. This makes it slightly more believeable, I think, that high school buddies from Smallville don't recognize Superman or wonder why grown-up Clark became so meek compared to how he used to be.
This change first appeared in the movie Superman Returns, when a flashback scene showed Clark wearing glasses as a child. Likewise, the new cartoon series Legion of Super-Heroes had shown a teenage Clark Kent wearing glasses and acting meek long before he even thought of putting on a costume.
It was also now said that Clark had clandestinely helped people during his teenage years, which led to various rumors and tabloid reports of a "super-boy" in Kansas. Thus, the idea of Clark acting as a teenage hero was back now but sans costume or public knowledge.
An interesting change with Lana Lang concerned her family. Post-Bryne, Lana was said to be an orphan who was raised by an aunt and uncle. After Infinite Crisis, not only was Lana raised by her parents but she had several brothers and sisters and was constantly visiting or being visited by extended family. This made her now a contrast to Clark, who didn't have much interaction with extended family and certainly no sibling or blood relatives to speak of.
It was also said that after college, Lana had taken over her father's bank. This experience and the fact that she had been involved in politics in recent years meant that she had some definite business chops. And so, in the modern-day stories, Lana took over as CEO of LexCorp. Though she tried to reform much of the company, she was forced to cross swords with Clark when he discovered that she had saved LexCorp from bankruptcy by having Luthor's Kryptonite-based weapons tech turned over to the federal government, who felt the need to be ready in case Superman ever lost control again.
Clark and Lana were at odds for only a short time before Lana proved herself by later ordering LexCorp forces to aid Superman in a fight against the being called Atlas. Sadly, this violated a clause in her contract, which stated that any employee helping Superman would be instantly terminated. With no job, Lana has begun finding her new path in life and has taken on a mentor role with Kara Zor-El.
In Busiek's issues, he explained that Krypton had once formed an interplanetary empire but that they had eventually been beaten back by those they'd lorded over. This event was what caused the Kryptonians to become xenophobic and to put a ban on space travel, hence why Jor-El was forced to work on his rocketship in secret.
And the buck didn't stop there. Krypto was now said to be a dog from Krypton, sent in a prototype rocket Jor-El had tested. He wasn't from a fake Krypton Brainiac-13 had created, he was the real deal. When Kurt Busiek left Superman, writer James Robinson (author of the hit series Starman) took over and showed that Clark was no longer just going to keep Krypto in his fortress or on the Kent farm. Superman was now seen playing fetch with Krypto in outer space. What's more, while the dog didn't have human intelligence as he did Pre-Crisis, he most definitely was shown to be more intelligent than any average Earth dog. Along the way, Robinson also began focusing on Jimmy Olsen, indicating that this was a young man who had the chops to one day be a fantastic crusading journalist, someone truly worthy of being "Superman's pal."
It was also now said that the bottle city of Kandor Superman had taken from Tolos was one of many cities called Kandor, all of which had been named after Krypton's capital of art and science, the "one, true Kandor" which had been shrunken and stolen by Brainiac. Johns also restored Superman's relationship to Mon-El, saying once again that the Daxamite had encountered Clark as a teenager and had spent a week with him before being exiled into the Phantom Zone so that he wouldn't die from lead poisoning.
In reference to Mon-El being called Valor in his Post-Crisis adventures, Johns wrote that "Valor" was the name of Daxam's sun.
And to the surprise of many, DC even brought back Superman's ties to the Legion of Super-Heroes, saying that they had visited him and had adventures with him when he was a teenager but that he had then had these memories blocked out for the most part (presumably to prevent him from altering his own future). In the JLA/JSA crossover "The Lightning Saga", older versions of the original Legion team showed up and Clark remarked that he had not seen them since the first Crisis.
Batman had met the Mark Waid-created "threeboot" Legion (the third version of the team which had been introduced just a few years before). He spoke about this encounter and reminded Superman of the time the post-Zero Hour LSH had traveled back into the modern day and helped out Earth's heroes during the story Final Night. Batman hypothesized that the future was always changing and that this was how it was possible to meet three different versions of the Legion. Perhaps each of them represented a different possible future. The full answer behind this would be discovered later in the mini-series Legion of Three Worlds, where it was confirmed that the original Legion was from the future of the main DCU whereas the Post-Zero Hour Legion and the Threeboot Legion were from the futures of very similar parallel realities.
Geoff Johns recieved fast acclaim for his work on Action Comics, but the story "Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes" made many fans take notice of artist Gary Frank. Frank has been well-recieved for giving the hero a look reminiscent of Christopher Reeve and has impressed many with his detailed expressions and dynamic action shots.
One change that has been controversial occured in the pages of Superman/Batman #50. In the story, the Man of Steel and the Dark Knight discovered a lost sunstone which showed them a simulation of the past, revealing that Jor-El had looked at many planets as possibilities for his son, including Colu, Thanagar and New Genesis. He hadn't decided on Earth until he had sent a probe there and allowed a human to find it, a human whose mind was then transmitted to a hard-light duplicate on Krypton so that Jor could interact with him. This human had been Thomas Wayne, Bruce Wayne's father. It was through meeting Thomas that Jor gained an idea of humanity and decided this was the place for his child. And it was through studying Jor-El's probe that Thomas Wayne was able to reverse engineer some new technology and allow Wayne Enterprises to prosper with its research department during a time that Gotham City was suffering from a great economic depression.
Superman and Batman were stunned by this and could not help but feel a stronger connection now, acknowledging that in a strange way fate had made them akin to brothers. Some readers found this hokey, while others thought it was handled with enough care and skill that it actually worked. I am in this second camp. In a comic book that stars an angelic hero who comes from space and a modern-day samurai who maintains his nobility despite being surrounded by darkness, why limit ourselves always to what is "realistic"? Just my thoughts.
Johns did a few adventures with Richard Donner as a co-writer. One of these, "Escape from Bizarro World", had Bizarro discover a blue sun which granted him new powers, allowing him to create a cube-shaped planet to call home. His new powers also allowed him to create new Bizarros, finally giving him a place to belong (though it wasn't easy at first). Now, whenever people such as Bizarro Brainiac threatened Bizarro World, its people would cry out "Look! Under ground! Is gopher! Is submarine! Is BIZARRO #1!"
The other Johns/Donner collaboration was "Last Son." This story began when a Kryptonian boy crashed-landed in Metropolis. Superman found him and confirmed he was Kryptonian, but couldn't learn any more. The boy himself seemed unsure of his origins. Seeing that the government intended to study the child, Superman took matters into his own hands and took him away. He then asked his parents how they had managed to raise a super-powered child in secret, as he intended to do the same. He and this boy were among the only survivors of Krypton, he could not allow the child to be a lab rat.
Lois was against the idea at first, but slowly came around after spending some time with the boy. With help from Batman, they had fake adoption papers forged. They took the boy in and named him Christopher Kent (get it?). At last, Clark had a family.
Like the story "Up, Up and Away", this plot was compared to the recent film Superman Returns which involved Lois bearing Superman's illegitimate child. However, you'll notice that this is hitting very different themes and story beats. Just like "Up, Up and Away", "Lost Son" was only superficially a similar tale. Underneath, the two story-arcs were quite different (and quite superior, in my opinion) to the recent film.
Chris was later revealed to have been born in the Phantom Zone, the son of General Zod (the true General Zod of Superman's Krypton as opposed to the Pocket Universe version). Zod had figured out a way to send the boy, Lor-Zod, to Earth and had used him as a tether, allowing his forces to escape the Zone. With him were Non and Ursa, who previously had only existed in the movie Superman II. Rather than looking like a bald Nazi, Zod now sported dark hair and beard harkening back to Terrence Stamp. He and the other Phantom Zone inmates all had Kryptonian prison uniforms and goggles (perhaps the Zone makes your eyes sensitive to light?).
New background was given on the characters. Johns and Donner wrote that Non had been a great scientist and Jor-El's teacher, but that he had been specially lobotomized after trying to warn Krypton's populace of the disaster which the Science Council had claimed would not happen. Zod had then tried to start an insurrection, believing that Krypton needed to be led by one such as he. When he and his forces failed, the Council had agreed to Jor-El's request that they be imprisoned rather than killed but only on the condition that Jor-El be the one to exile them into the Phantom Zone.
Zod and his forces attacked humanity and Superman was forced to team-up with Luthor and several villains to stop him. Zod and the other Kryptonian criminals and terrorist were sucked back into the Zone, but so was Chris Kent. Superman could only watch as his adopted son was lost, falling into the frightening "twilight dimension." Not even Mon-El could find him. But Superman promised himself that one day he WOULD find Chris again.
Now, here's where scheduling causes some problems. Initially, "Last Son" was meant to be a single, straightforward story. Nothing more, nothing less. But delays on the art and other concerns caused later chapters to be published several months afterwards. DC told Kurt Busiek over on the Superman title, "hey, Superman has an adopted kid now in Action Comics, so use him in your stories too." So Busiek did several issues with Chris Kent, not knowing that "Last Son" was meant to end with the kid going back into the Zone. Because of this, Johns wrote in some dialogue into the last chapter implying that several weeks had passed between the chapters 2 and 3 of "Last Son", thus allowing for Busiek's issues.
In Busiek's stories, Superman sought out Batman's help in keeping Chris's abilities under control. Batman gave the boy a watch that emitted a focused dose of red solar radiation, keeping Chris effectively human while he wore it. Batman also explained to Superman that he had discovered that red solar energy did not drain his powers away, it actually locked his cells so that they could not process the energy store within them. A few issues later, Lois got rid of the watch when she realized it was hurting Chris.
RECENT EVENTS ...
Recently, Superman discovered that the many Brainiacs he has fought over the years have actually been different probes or avatars of a villain who had lived for centuries and whom no one had actually personally met, the one true Brainiac. Superman finally did meet the true Brainiac and just barely defeated him. During the affair, two significant things happened. First, Superman discovered the city of Kandor and it wound up returning to full size in the Arctic, suddenly giving Earth a population of 100,000 Kryptonians. Secondly, Jonathan Kent suffered a heart attack and died.
While Clark was mourning for Pa Kent's loss, he was also dealing with a city of Kryptonians who remembered Zod as a hero and who looked on Earth as a primitive, savage world. Wishing to make things secure for themselves, they began hunting down Superman's enemies, even those incarcerated, exiling them all to the Phantom Zone. And they were perfectly willing to kill any humans who got in their way. Earth's heroes got involved, combating the Kryptonians before Supergirl's mother Alura finally had had enough. Using sunstone technology, she moved Kandor into space and created a new crystaline world: New Krypton.
Interestingly, these Kryptonians do not have one uniform look but are dressed in a variety of styles that emulate the Silver Age interpretation, the Byrne interpretation, the WB animated series, the Donner film, and some looks which are entirely new.
When Superman visited New Krypton, he found that Alura had released General Zod and his soldiers, granting the man a full pardon and putting him in charge of the army. Not willing to let Zod walk around unchecked, Superman has recently decided to temporarily move to New Krypton to keep an eye on things. Before he left, he asked the recently freed and mysteriously cured Mon-El to watch over Metropolis in his stead. This will surely be easier said than done, since the U.N. just enacted a ban on all Kryptonians on Earth, with the exception of Superman himself, and many people do not care about the differences between a Daxamite and a Kryptonian.
Also watching over Metropolis now is the mysterious new heroic duo Flamebird and Nightwing, who showed up right when the people of Kandor were first freed.
Meanwhile, Luthor was put in jail but has recently been recruited by the government to put his brilliant mind to use and figure out how to access Brainiac's recovered equipment. Who grabbed Luthor for this mission? General Sam Lane, the father Lois believes to be dead. Hey, that sounds suspiciously like a plot point in All-Star Superman. Hmmm.
And what Sam Lane and the government don't know, but what Luthor is all too aware of, is that their comatose green-skinned prisoner is only faking his condition. Brainiac is fully aware of what's going on and is biding his time as he lies in this secret federal facility. He has a plan ...
What are Luthor and Brainiac gonna do next? Who are the new Flamebird and Nightwing? What does Zod have planned? How was Mon-El cured? Where is Chris Kent? Your guess is as good as mine.
Also, Geoff Johns and artist Gary Frank will soon be presenting us with a mini-series called SUPERMAN: Secret Origin which will firmly establish Superman's early days in current Post-Infinite Crisis continuity, utilizing the flashbacks we've seen so far. I am excited to see this, but also sad because I personally really liked Birthright. To console myself, I've decided that Birthright and All-Star Superman are companion stories, a beginning and end in every sense of the word that exist in their own separate and wonderful universe. I suggest you buy them both and then read one right after the other. Then tell your friends. Don't keep reading, you fools, DO IT!
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this look at the history of Superman. Be sure to check out the other articles concerning Superman's history in media and other fun facts. Until next time, cheers!
Reader Comments (9)
Thanks as always,
Rob
I've never understood the aversion to the Silver Age characters. The stories themselves weren't great, but that had more to do with cheese and camp and poor dialogue. I just don't get how you can write about fantastical characters like... Superman... and then think that other characters are too fantastic...
There's nothing more puzzling to me than comic book readers saying things are "too silly" or "too ridiculous."
For God's sake, how silly are the main characters themselves? Let's see, a radioactive spider? A chemical spill? Gamma rays? Being formed from clay? An imp from the 5th dimension? Yet, if Superman's dad and Batman's dad met before they did, that's "hokey"?
Krypto being a dog with a cape, sure, that looks silly on the surface. So does any human being wearing a cape. But dammit, we know how much a man can love his dog and if that dog is also capable of crushing steel with his jaws and protects his master the same way humans have been protected by their pets for years, we can let the cape slide, can't we? As long as the story itself is entertaining and good and has an emotional core that is deeper than just "maybe this will sell a few new toys", we can be okay with that, right?
Just my thoughts.