After The Crisis

After the Crisis on Infinite Earths, I was a Superman titles completist for several years. Briefly, some DC and Marvel Comics were appearing on British news stands. I bought Green Lantern 200 for nostalgia value, then got hooked on Green Lantern Corps and John Byrne's The Man Of Steel.
Fortunately, there was a comics stall in Lancaster and comics shops in nearby cities.

The Man Of Steel showed how good Superman could have been with a completely changed dynamic between Clark Kent, Lois Lane and Lex Luthor. Byrne simply and rightly reversed Kent's character which should never have been changed back again. I don't know what it is in current continuity.

After a few years of collecting Superman comics, there were too many monthly titles, annuals, specials, mini-series, prestige formats, cross-overs, Elseworlds (have I missed anything?). It was quantity again quality and would have led to massive storage problems if continued. I stopped buying cross-overs as an act of civil disobedience. A more restrained approach would have kept my attention for longer.

A Cosmic Detail

What hobby would Clark Kent have? His strength and speed suggest sport - like Smallville Crows football team. And, in John Byrne's revamp of the Superman comics, the young Clark did successfully play football, although his foster father discouraged it as a misuse of his powers.

In the Smallville TV series, Jonathan Kent goes further and completely opposes football as too dangerous for someone with Clark's strength. However:

"Ever since his parents had revealed the truth about his origins, he'd been obsessed with scanning the night skies." (1)

An interest in astronomy is a logical implication of Clark's extraterrestrial origin. He looks at:

"...Betelgeuse, the giant red star." (1)

- and wonders whether it has planets. We know from other parts of the Superman legend that Rao, the sun of Krypton, is a red giant so are we here being told that Betelgeuse is Rao?

Clark knows that several planetary systems have been detected by their gravitational effects on their primaries. That was not known when Superman was first published in 1938. In fact, at secondary school in the early 1960's, I was disappointed to read in a book by the British astronomer Patrick Moore that it was not known whether there were planets in orbit around any other star. If there were any extrasolar planets, then they were not self-luminous and would be too far away to be seen. Further, maybe then or maybe sometime earlier, one theory of planetary origin - that stellar matter pulled from stars passing close to each other cooled and went into orbit - would have made planets rare, not the norm.

That our galaxy is one of many was recognised in 1925 and that the galaxies recede was discovered in 1929, the latter date just nine years before Superman's first publication. So the universe conceptually inhabited by us and by our science fiction heroes has, like the legend of Superman, grown through the twentieth and early twenty first centuries.

(1) Alan Grant, Dragon IN Smallville Omnibus 1 (New York, 2006), p. 270.

Supergirl?

Supergirl's first appearance in a comic was as a temporarily conjured magical manifestation, not as a permanently real Kryptonian cousin. I agreed with John Byrne when he restored Superman as the last surviving Kryptonian. This need not have ruled out a return of a version of the original Supergirl and, in effect, that was what happened.

I disliked it when, having streamlined Superman mythology, Byrne presented new versions of the greatest absurdities:

Lori Lemaris, a mermaid;
Mr Mxyzptlk, an omnipotent five dimensional imp;
Zod, even though as a pocket universe Kryptonian and even though almost immediately executed by Superman;
Supergirl as a pocket universe artificially created being - even though this was an attractive version of the character.

Surely there were new stories that could have been told?

I have not been reading DC more recently. I know that they have brought back the Kryptonian Supergirl and even Krypto and have had to do something else with Power Girl's continuity. Originally, they did a good job of transforming Power Girl, the Earth 2 version of Supergirl, from the Kryptonian Kal-El's cousin into the Atlantean Arion's granddaughter programmed with spurious memories of a Kryptonian origin.

At that stage, some of the rewriting of continuity, especially by Frank Miller and Roy Thomas, was clever and evocative. Consider these statements:

the Golden Age of superheroes happened decades ago in another universe;
the multiverse existed until everything changed in the Crisis.

These read like fantastic reflections of our collective experience of living through the twentieth century. "The old order changeth..." The past is another country. Our parents' childhoods, decades ago, seem to have happened in another universe. The War(s) changed everything...

So I liked Power Girl turning out to have been Arion's granddaughter (like Alan Moore's Marvelman finding out that his memories were of a parareality program) and starring in her own mini-series although I would not have wanted Supergirl back. Her death in the Crisis had meant something - and then the Crisis changed continuity in any case. When someone said, "How can Supergirl come back? She's dead!", I replied, "It's worse that that. She never existed, Jim."

A version of Bizarro appeared in Byrne's introductory mini-series but I really thought that that was going to remain a one-off. Monthly comics have to bring everything back. Maybe Superman: The True Story (see previous post), if it ever exists, could feature just a one-off appearance by a scientifically created Supergirl?

Superman: The True Story

I think that a very good version of the Superman story is potentially emerging from decades of different continuities. The main contributors are John Byrne's Man Of Steel mini-series and the Smallville TV series. Byrne incorporated Marv Wolfman's idea of Luthor as a businessman. This version of Luthor has survived every subsequent continuity change and is a strong element in Smallville.

The continuity-contradicting Superboy period of Clark's career came and went but left a powerful legacy, his home town of Smallville, the setting for an entire TV series and the home of characters who would not otherwise have existed.

I hope that Superman: The True Story will be told in a series of graphic novels and feature films. It cannot be done in monthly comic books.

The World Of Krypton

I do not think that an alien origin is an essential part of Superman's character but a lot of people disagree with me. Let us suppose that Krypton is a necessary part of the story. In the previous post, I argued for annual graphic novels about Clark Kent growing up in Smallville. We would know in advance that this series must end with him moving to Metropolis, starting to fly and donning the costume.

I would also argue for a similar series about the History of Krypton, like John Byrne's World Of Krypton but longer. It would have to start with an explanation of why there were human beings on Krypton, as also maybe on Rann and Thanagar. We would know in advance that this series must end with Kal-El being launched towards Earth.

Main parts of the History have to be the origins of the Raoist priesthood, the Science Council and the great cities of Krypton.

Smallville and Krypton could be published concurrently but with no cross-reference until the end of the latter. A Superman series, following both, would have to end with either his death or his disappearance. I agree with Elliot S Maggin's idea that, in the future, Luthor reforms and they become friends.

The Future Of Comics?

As John Byrne said when reflecting on his own Man Of Steel mini-series, Clark Kent's story starts in Smallville, not on Krypton. I like to imagine:

that the occasional graphic novel replaces the monthly comic book as the main medium for sequential art story telling;

that a good writer-artist team produces an annual Superman series;

that Volume I, World Of Smallville, simply establishes the setting and characters of Smallville;

that Jonathan and Martha Kent have not as yet revealed to their son Clark that his arrival in Smallville was in any way extraordinary;

that initially Clark experiences occasional flashes of super power at crucial moments, eg, super strength when needed but not, as yet, continuously or finding a lost object by X-ray vision but thinking afterwards that it must have been a good guess or intuition;

that he himself doubts whether this has happened or thinks that at most it can only have been a temporary stress-induced phenomenon;

that he spends time diverting the suspicions of his parents, Lana, Pete, Chloe and Lex, his aim being to appear normal to them.

I think that this alone is sufficient to generate a narrative with plot and characterisation for one or more Volumes.

Longer term:

Need he or we ever learn about Krypton?
Can Clark and Lois not simply work as investigative journalists visiting real world war zones while Clark, trying to be as discrete as possible, uses his powers to help people without interfering too much in how the world is run?
Luthor yes but Brainiac, Bizarro, Mxyzptlk, the Zod Squad, Lori Lemaris, Krypto and Supergirl no?
Do we need Kryptonite?
Maybe but how best to introduce it and minimise its quantity?