Superman or Supermen? Where Do We Go?

This time in 2009, DC was promoting an upcoming series called Superman: Secret Origin. That was the third in-continuity origin of Superman in 23 years, with Geoff Johns blending all of the different stories, including the Richard Donner movies and Smallville, into one, vast account. It seemed like overkill to redefine Superman once again, but it was all worth it if one, beautiful, all-encompassing origin could be established for once and for… a while.

That while wasn't long. In less than two years, Superman was rebooted with a loving, year-and-a-half redefinition by Grant Morrison.

Three years later, that Superman is dead, and we have been told by the mysterious Mr. Oz that the last Superman was maybe never Superman at all.

But we have the previous Superman back, which may mean that Secret Origin is once again the origin of the main Superman. Even if so, his reality is now (pending future events) very messy, with his life from birth through adulthood having been spent in his home dimension and the rest of his life on a new dimension without "his" Batman, Wonder Woman, Justice League… even his Krypton or Supergirl. Only his Lois Lane and his son made the trip with him, so the new world has two Lois Lanes. It also has a Clark Kent who is not super-powered, is not Superman, and has memories of meetings with Superman that Superman doesn't have. Everyone in this world knows that Superman is… or was… Clark Kent.

It's messy. And far messier with the addition of two other supermen, with Lex Luthor wearing battle armor bearing the S-symbol and, in Shanghai, Kenan Kong starring in a title called New Super-Man. So there are four living men, plus one dead, sharing some aspect or another of the identity of Superman. In addition, August will bring Superwoman #1, with Lois Lane getting the powers she always wished for.

All of this hearkens back to the past in many ways. When Superman died in a 1993 story, he was succeeded by four alternate versions of Superman – including the Eradicator, who is the focus of the current plot in Superman – none of whom was the literal incarnation of the dead man. The event in which the dead Superman returned to life was called "Reign of the Supermen," a titular reference to Jerry Siegel's 1933 story about a Bill Dunn, a regular man who had been given super powers artificially by a mad scientist. This title was referenced in 52 in an issue dubbed "Rain of the Supermen," in which ordinary people given powers by Lex Luthor fell to their deaths when he suddenly switched off their powers. All very ominous for China's new Super-Man, who, in getting his powers from mysterious scientists, is perhaps following in the footsteps of the oldest Super-Man. Lois Lane getting superpowers to become Superwoman was originally depicted in 1943. Is DC revisiting every past year that ends in a '3'?

If 1993 is the playbook for what is happening now, the non-Superman supermen will serve as good supporting characters for DC to work with and the real Superman will step up. Certainly, the Superman who's married to Lois is the individual who seems ordained to fill the role, but we also know that he's going to be reclassified in some essential way, with Mr. Oz telling us in DC Rebirth #1, "You… are not what you believe you are. And neither was the fallen Superman." With Mr. Oz alluding to that Superman's death as a "tragedy" (the air quotes are his, corresponding to a snarky tone of voice that we can't hear), we can take it that Superman's falling was not dying in the conventional sense, and so, the New 52 Superman must be alive or in some sort of limbo. If he's anyone whom we've seen living, then he's likely the powerless Clark Kent who is running around being enigmatic, seemingly on purpose.

When Grant Morrison told the tale of the New 52 Superman in Action Comics, he posited that the New 52 Superman was the individual who fought Doomsday and died – who was the same Superman as pre-Flashpoint, but altered. This wasn't clear until Action #16 when Jimmy and Lois stood beneath the golden memorial statue with an eagle perched on Superman's arm. Lois said, "Superman died right here." Jimmy responded, "Yeah, and then Superman saved everybody, remember? He beat the bad guy. He came back from the dead." Yes, Jimmy, we do remember. Are we supposed to? Is DC being true to what the stories have told us before? They're preparing some intriguing reveal that will tell us that the identities of the dead New 52 Superman and the revived pre-Flashpoint Superman aren't what everyone thought, and that will give us the Rebirth take on Superman, someone whom we're seeing in action (and in Action), but whose true nature is still unknown to us and to him.

There's a new story in progress, though, one that surely wasn't in line with Morrison's plans. Now we have a Clark Kent who is just as suspicious about Superman as Superman is about Clark Kent. And, in a fragmentary conversation during the battle in Action #959, Clark indicates that he seems to know more than Superman:

Clark: You'll "save me," is that it? Like you did before?

Superman: No idea what you're talking about.

Clark: Months ago. When you sent me into hiding.

Superman: I want to help you, but I don't kn-

Obviously, the timeline is fractured. Clark was plucked from it at a different moment than Superman. This Clark experienced a meeting between the two that this Superman either doesn't remember or didn't experience. Clark is resentful of how that all transpired, but here he is, alive. And we know that the fallen Superman's fate is not a "tragedy."

How, at the end of this, are the creators going to put all of the crayons back into the box and give us a Superman whose origins are not torturously complicated? If married-to-Lois Superman isn't who he believes he is, and they want to make the origin blend into the post-Flashpoint, post-Rebirth world, then they may be planning to tell us that he is the post-Flashpoint Superman, but older. If the falling of the fallen Superman was not a tragedy (with a snarky tone, in air quotes), then something else happened to him. For the messy situation with four living Supermen, a dead Superman, and a Superwoman to resolve itself, we're going to have to start learning that some of the multiple Supermen are evidently not different men but the same man tumbling through some timeline or inter-dimensional voodoo. Perhaps dead-Superman, living-Superman, and Clark Kent are all (or, at least two of them) the same individual at different moments in his life. Perhaps the New 52 Superman didn't die but grew a little older to become the Superman who's now married to Lois. Wally West has kicked off Rebirth by telling us that years of the heroes' lives went missing, and they lost, among other things, love. The simplest solution to the mystery of the multiple Supermen is that they aren't multiple, after all.

Given these clues, my take is that is the Superman who is now fighting Doomsday is the Superman who was born on this universe's Krypton. What appeared to be the death of New 52 Superman, wasn't. He somehow lost his powers and was sent into hiding as a powerless Clark Kent by Superman, who – due to some sort of timeline fracturing – doesn't remember the past few years correctly. I think the resolution to the mess is that DC will tell us that it's not a mess, just a good story, and that there was only one Superman all along.

Justice League #34

The best team stories are the ones where different characters all have a different role to play in some way that's more sophisticated than whether their superpower is to communicate with sea life or run very fast. Justice League #34, "Unlikely Allies," is a fascinating phase deep into a very deep strategic game with several players representing several different sides. We can't actually see who has what planned, but in this issue, Geoff Johns gives us a glance at a few players' cards.

Aside from the classic heroes whose interests are presumably aligned, we have front and center Lex Luthor, who has been teased as a good guy in stories going back to the Sixties. This always ends with him turning out to be a very dark agent practicing duplicity or a self-interested party capable of serving the greater good when it serves his interests. We've seen the former in 1961's Death of Superman and Kingdom Come and the latter in Final Crisis, Injustice: Gods Above and many other stories. Since Forever Evil, it's been hard to decipher Luthor's game plan, but we know by the end of JL #34 that he is masking his true intentions and is allied with Owlman. This makes it more tantalizing to re-read the scene where he asks Wonder Woman to use her lasso on him but she does not, because he has apparently engineered that interaction very carefully to seem like a conflicted figure in order to keep her from actually using her lasso and discovering his deception.

That revelation, however, isn't the "bwah hah hah" revelation of evil that it might be in a simpler story. Owlman was possibly being forthright in Forever Evil when he proposed an alliance with Dick Grayson against the stronger members of the Crime Syndicate. While we can't expect the best of Owlman's desire to take possession of the super-powerful offspring of Ultraman and Superwoman, he may have some endgame in mind that is not entirely at cross-purposes with the Justice League.

What makes it credible that the moderately-evil characters in this ongoing story might be allied with the heroes is the looming threat of a purely-evil menace as discussed by Cyborg and seen in Justice League #34. The sentient ring from Power Ring, now fighting for control of Jessica Cruz, has indicated that its intention is to lure the being who destroyed Earth 3 to Earth 0 so it can take possession of Superwoman's child, the very same objective that Owlman has. It is unclear, though, how these three sides square off, except that it is unlikely that they are all aligned. Owlman probably does not crave destruction for its own sake, and would prefer to be as powerful as possible on some Earth or another. Luthor, no  doubt, would like that same outcome for himself, a vision that could place them into alliance or eventual conflict.

The spare information we have about the really evil characters is that some unknown character is helping the Anti-Monitor find worlds to consume, which is feeding him energy for an anticipated battle with Darkseid. Darkseid, the conqueror of Earth 2 and would-be conqueror from the DCNU's earliest stories, Final Crisis and countless previous works, has nonetheless been allied with our heroes against the Anti-Monitor in COIE. The win our heroes need to engineer may involve playing the two evil forces against one another. This story is likely to play out on a grand scale over the coming months, with tie-ins galore, certainly including Earth 2, likely the Green Lantern/New Gods Godhead miniseries, and possibly Multiversity, although in the past Grant Morrison stories have maintained separation from other plans other than a few minor points of tie-in.

The heroes see a deeper game, with Batman and Superman planning to snare Luthor, but perhaps not nearly as deep as the game really is. Johns is setting up one of his epic crossovers such as we've seen done – usually quite well – over the past 7 years. Among other mysteries that he's keeping secret is the identity of the character who is allied with the Anti-Monitor. Johns has a flare for going "big" with his villains, which makes me wonder if he'll bring Superboy Prime, one of his regulars from pre-Flashpoint, into this story, or perhaps Volthoom from Green Lantern lore, although he has also used characters as obscure as Nekron and Qull of the Five Inversions, and could possibly draw from just about any story in DC's past, but it is more Johns' style to use an existing character here, whether prominent or obscure, than present us with someone totally new.

The main upshot is that we are approaching a story on a grand scale and this issue is an important one on that path. The action scenes in JL #34 and even the revelation of Captain Cold's duplicity seem like minor sideplots while the grand design moves forward. We know, in the main, that good will prevail, but there could be some wonderful sound and fury along the way.

Batman Zero Year

A year in story time and a year in publication time, Scott Snyder's Batman: Zero Year retells for the nth time, perhaps at greater length and in greater detail than ever before, the story of how Bruce Wayne became Batman. It is inevitable that it be compared to earlier stories; its greater scope leaves it with no true analogues, which is good because the similarly named Batman: Year One covering this topic in a third the length is virtually impossible to transcend in quality.

Snyder's story covers Batman's first year in three acts of four issues each. The first pits our (initially nameless) hero against the Red Hood gang, bringing about the origin of the Joker. In the second, Doctor Death is front and center as the agent of Edward Nygma. In the third, Nygma, as the Riddler, holds Gotham captive in a scenario clearly patterned on Bane's domination of the Gotham in The Dark Knight Rises.

Through an extraordinary number of flashbacks, the story visits earlier episodes of pivotal importance to Bruce Wayne and to his opponents. Some of these are shown as quick, cryptic impressions that can only be understood later. As a result, the story is much stronger when read in one sitting than over a period of thirteen months (issue #28 was not part of the story), with threads introduced in a panel or two left dangling for nine or more weeks before the reader sees where they lead.

Any story of this kind must revisit and modify existing mythology. Compared to previous canon, BZY reasserts the early importance of Doctor Death (the villain of Batman's third and fourth published stories, back in 1939) and the Joker (who debuted in Batman #1 and was tied to Batman's origin in the 1989 film). Meanwhile, it makes the changes of placing a larger-than-ever emphasis on the Riddler and the previously minor character of Uncle Philip (first introduced in 1986).

BZY also changes the tone of post-COIE continuity by placing the debut of the Red Hood Gang (and by extension, that of costumed villains in general) before the debut of Batman himself. This has the curious implication that the Joker, in his Red Hood identity, debuted before Batman and probably before Superman. This is a considerable alteration of the portrayal in Year One / Long Halloween and the Nolan films that Batman began his war on crime in order to fight real-world kinds of criminals (such as the Falcone crime family) and thereafter attracted a host of costumed villains inspired by his own theatrical qualities.

This changes, in particular, the vision from Year One that Bruce Wayne found himself not particularly effective fighting crime while dressed in street clothes, and so, while suffering in his study from injuries during one poor outing, came up with the idea of being Batman. The new, BZY account is that while in his regular identity as Bruce Wayne himself, he suffered a terrible beating at the hands of the Red Hood gang, and then, after receiving medical aid from Alfred, a virtual reality view of the Batcave helped inspire a similar realization. Thus, many of the original elements are maintains, with the details considerably changed.

One offbeat choice in the story is to make the Riddler the villain with the most impact in Batman’s first year. While the Riddler has occasionally risen near the top of the list of Batman’s most prominent villains, he has never been accorded true primacy besides being the villain in the two debut episodes of the 1966 TV show. This Riddler is homicidal and darkly egomaniacal like Jim Carrey’s rendition in Batman Forever. He is delighted with his own intellect, and constructs a world where he rules by torment. For nearly three issues the story covers the efforts of Batman, Lucius Fox, and Jim Gordon to search the maze that the Riddler has turned Gotham into for the vulnerable point in his electronic control structure. This search becomes torturous almost to excess, as one lead after another is a dead end that the Riddler anticipated someone to find until finally, he is face to face with Batman and even then has a few more surprises in store. The action is exciting, scene-by-scene, even as the Riddler’s defenses start to become as tiresome for the reader as they are for the story’s heroes.

The hallmarks of Snyder's writing include an impressive breadth of detail rooted in real world facts verging on trivia, a bit like the famous "Flash Facts" from Silver Age Flash issues. Snyder is an intelligent and knowledgeable man and this informs his Batman stories wonderfully. He writes scenes that make Bruce show his detective skills; many writers avoid this even though "the world's greatest detective" is the character's alternate moniker.

The use of flashbacks make this the tale of more than just one year, which the 12-issue length amply merits. We visit events from young Bruce discovering the cave to key incidents with his parents before their deaths, his early and bitter encounter with Jim Gordon, and a brief glimpse of his period of training. Some of these scenes are patterned on The Dark Knight Returns, others on The Dark Knight Rises, and still others are entirely new. The flashbacks often provide the background that explain the significance of some event taking place in the present, although one or two are handled so quickly that they lack impact, making the story more broad then deep. One, in particular, describes an incident of uncharacteristic tumult in which a young adult Bruce nearly uses electroshock to erase his mind and reboot himself as a new person, with no memory of the death of his parents. For him to consider this after years of training would imply a deep ambivalence carried around for years, perhaps a man straining and ready to crack. Snyder gives this enormous decision far too little attention and should have cut it from the story or delved into it more deeply.

What we do see into the character of Bruce Wayne comes, as often as not, during his conversations with Alfred. Alfred initially seeks to discourage Bruce’s war on crime, and then he tries to redirect it into more conventional efforts as the owner of Wayne Enterprises. In some tactical situations, he tries to get Bruce to shy away from risks. In none of these efforts is he successful. At last, when Alfred revives Bruce from a final victory that knocked him unconscious and Bruce asked how he did it, Alfred responds, “Because you’re Batman.” Unwilling to advocate the life his master has changed, Alfred nonetheless recognizes the greatness within him.

However, even at this point, Alfred makes one final effort to redirect Bruce from the life of Batman by arranging for Julie Madison (beautiful, as in past renditions; a sci fi fan in this one) to meet with him. Bruce is tempted by this prospect. In fact, the scene in which Bruce briefly considers a serene, happy life with Julie is patterned on The Last Temptation of Christ. But instead of choosing marriage and an ordinary life, Bruce chooses to be Batman, just as Christ chooses to die on the cross. It’s a powerful reference that might draw shouts of blasphemy, but it’s a defining coda for the story and the character.

Batman’s origin has been told many times, sometimes in small pieces covering his parents’ death, his training, or his adoption of the bat identity, but never before has the origin been packed into one super-length story of this scope. The prominence of Uncle Philip and Julie Madison suggest that the origin of the Golden Age Batman in Secret Origins #6 was on Snyder’s reading list. Many stories before and since are given a nod here and there. Only in small details does it contradict the more recent origin stories, as opposed to a radical redefinition like John Byrne’s Man of Steel. As my earlier comments have noted, this is probably a better work to hold in your hands and read in one sitting than with its many, lightly-sketched flashback threads dangling from month to month. And in that regard it can be enjoyed not as a retcon or erasure of Batman Year One but as another volume worth having and revisiting.

Forever Evil #7

Geoff Johns is, as we already knew, orchestrating serial events, now in the New 52 as he did for much of the past several years beginning with Infinite Crisis. Trinity War led right into Forever Evil, and it's long been apparent that another event would take the baton, in due time, from this one.

While it followed many familiar patterns from pre-Flashpoint continuity, Forever Evil ended on an original note, or at the very least blended a large number of stories we'd seen before. Johns did some of his most inventive work in creating or adapting new characters in his reimagined Crime Syndicate, although most of that squad, save its own Trinity, is now dead.

Probably the single greatest surprise of the series is that the heavy hitters of the Justice League did absolutely nothing to defeat the big bads. Batman and Cyborg played supporting roles in the victory, but most of the Leaguers needed to be saved themselves, thereby disproving the old adage that every major DC event ends with Superman punching something.

The event's possible death was teased but Dick Grayson literally came back from the dead. We've seen the death of the Nightwing character, but DC's ninth-oldest superhero lives to fight another day.

The great original stroke of the series is that a group of classic super villains saved the day, not in a supporting role, but doing almost all of the heavy lifting. Luthor prevailed as the central figure, leading the more powerful members of his team, slaying two members of the Crime Syndicate, and single-handedly saving Dick Grayson, Batman, and Superman. This leads to Luthor asking for JLA membership in Justice League #30, seizing to capitalize on his role as a human savior with no superhuman powers.

But, despite Luthor's plausible story while lassoed by Wonder Woman, is this all just an act? Luthor surely has the ability, whether with self hypnosis or some other means, to fake his way around that test. The older story guiding the narrative here might be 1961's "Death of Superman" story in which Luthor pretends, over an extended period of time, to turn good in order to lure Superman into a death trap. Despite outward appearances, perhaps Luthor is doing so here. Evidence of this is his unilateral invitation of Shazam to join the Justice League despite his ongoing disdain of superpowered beings. Maybe Shazam's strength will be utilized by Luthor in a future devastating strike against the Justice League. This would hearken to another existing story in which Luthor used a mind-controlled Shazam as a weapon against Superman, Kingdom Come. The richest possibilties might be for the story to explore Luthor as a hero for several months, then have him find out, to his own surprise, that he'd been acting that way as a ruse involving self hypnosis, with the heroes struggling to fend off his betrayal.

Johns was also used misdirection in his clues regarding the bigger threat to come. While it seemed all along (and still does, to Superman at least) that Darkseid was the threat behind Earth Three's destruction, we find out at the end that the Anti-Monitor is the muscle behind the event, but someone still unknown is the mastermind. This is in keeping with Johns' love of throwing the biggest villains into a surprise reveal, and he's used the Anti-Monitor for this purpose before, with one page at the end of Sinestro Corps War Special #1 containing Sinestro, Parallax, Superboy Prime, Cyborg Superman, the Manhunters, and the Anti-Monitor. Johns also used the Anti-Monitor in Blackest Night. Here, we see a war of unsurpassable proportions building: The Anti-Monitor and his unseen master are planning an attack against Darkseid. In order to gain power for these attacks, he consumes the energy of a positive-matter universe, and he began with Earth Three. As I observed in an earlier post, destroying Earth Three is precisely how Crisis on Infinite Earths began, so Johns is setting up a sequel to that event. For those who are keeping score in the New 52, Darkseid has been turned away from an attack on Earth Prime, and has devastated Earth Two, nearly conquering it. Now we see that his nemesis has taken Earth Three for its sheer energy, and we have the makings of a battle that could carry over to any of the 49 other Earths as well.

Again, we see Johns riffing on older stories on an unprecedented level, as even Infinite Crisis was a sequel to COIE. Forever Evil #7 managed to remix old themes just enough to avoid the series being a forgettable retelling of ideas we'd seen before. Johns continues to keep interest going, but he's teetering on the edge of a Crisis of Infinite Story Recycling.

Action Comics #1

Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Yes, it's all there, and not by coincidence. The second Action Comics #1 visually-checks numerous elements of Superman lore without always name-checking them. And so, we get references to the Thirties in the form of the wife-beater who is thrown through a wall, the poor tenants who have their homes destroyed, and even (Neo) Nazis. We get a nod to the 1978 movie when Superman is asked if he can do something and he says he's never tried. From later eras, we see a photo of the deceased Kents, Jimmy Olsen holding a device that emits a zee zee zee, and of course, Lois Lane putting herself at risk and needing to be saved. Grant Morrison is aware of the elements he wanted to include, but unlike the Superman he portrays, he doesn't want to beat anyone over the head with them.

And conscious as he is of the little touches, he begins on page 1 by showing Superman overshoot his intended target. The seemingly countless elements of Superman lore that Morrison includes make it important to note which ones he avoids. This is not the Superman who is so used to holding back that he has forgotten what it is like to go all out. This Superman is going all out, frequently, and he's a bit of a bull in a china shop.

The china happens to be the powerful and the corrupt, who include Glen Glenmorgan, the Army of Sam Lane, and a Lex Luthor who is not a fugitive, but far from law-abiding, and whose use of electricity to stun, but not stop, Superman, channels the Ultra-Humanite from Action #13. Glenmorgan merges together in one person several powerful men whom Superman harassed in 1938's Action, including a magnate who is promoting arms in order to sell armaments and a mine owner who subjected his workers to unsafe conditions. He may also be based on Morgan Edge, as the owner of Galaxy, and the Earthly liaision of Intergang, and therefore of Darkseid. This, then plays on the Darkseid plot in JLA #1, and suggests that the matchup we saw in Final Crisis that nearly ended the last DC Universe is at the forefront as we begin this one.

Morrison excels in teasing future plots, and while the main action in Action #1 concerns Sam Lane and Luthor teaming to trap Superman (as in the recently out-of-continuity Superman Secret Origin) while the threat of Intergang looms, there is more. An object entering the solar system from afar is sure to be the focus of another plot. The diction resembles that used of the kryptonite asteroid from Jeph Loeb's Superman/Batman, but this could be just about any interplanetary friend or (more likely) foe. Clark Kent's landlady has a name that suggests the Fifth Dimension. The three friends -- two men and a beautiful blonde -- visiting Clark are almost certainly the Legion of Super Heroes. And as Clark now works for an editor named Taylor, he is probably at the Daily Star, which may go out of business if it is, as stars normally are, part of Galaxy. That would mean that by taking down Glenmorgan, Superman is taking down Clark Kent's boss. And the little man turning the tables is what Action #1 was all about. Both Action #1s.