Currently Reading:
DC: The Flash, Challenge of the Super Sons, Nightwing
Image: Lazarus: Risen, The Old Guard, Black Magick
Boom: Mighty Morphin', Power Rangers
Nice write up. I was taken out very early. Johns is a great historian and great at distilling character and concept appeal, but there was another aspect that got me: the idea of bringing back something nostalgic without actually getting it. Those triangles were awful, I was completely confused on reading order. The main titles had random characters and the generically titled New Krypton specials seemed to weave in and out of availability at my shop.
The idea of revisiting is rough because such a long story is daunting enough without knowing that it just implodes at the end.
Lol well I'm quite fond of Robinson normally but that sounds like setting a bar low to clear it later.
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It just felt really cluttered at the time. There was so much going on, and I wasn't really into the Nightwing/Flamebird thing, I thought Guardian's return was kinda confusing, didn't like Codename: Assassin, didn't like that they killed off Zor-El right away, etc. Reading it again all at once in trade could help.
"They can be a great people Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you. My only son." - Jor-El
Alura's characterization was probably the best thing from Gates's run on the book. Naturally editorial had to kill her off.
Wasn’t a fan of the Nightwing/Flamebird stuff myself. At best it was ok and an interesting look at Kryptonian religion, at worst it was really creepy seeing an adult woman say Chris was her “soulmate” from the first time he appeared as a child to her. Rucka wrote a great Lois there though, loved how she had everyone’s phone number.
But Clark on New Krypton and the Sterling Gates Supergirl was great. Zod in that series was great too, pretty much the best comic book Zod has ever been honestly. Zod actually got to be cunning until the end, he knew there was more to the story of the assassin for example, and his plan to initially get Kal off Krypton was actually pretty smart.
So what was the original ending supposed to be? I started drifting away from comics around this point so I didn’t read much of this at the time. I’ve picked up most of the trades over the years though and my son has actually read the whole thing and loves it. He’s generally a big fan of the aughts era trades. Maybe I need to give it another go.
Gee removing Superman from his main titles and putting in Mon-el and Nightwing/Flamebird while driving away Busiek and Johns would do that.
Oh man I think Myskin had it right. The Sautorians show up and then are just totally dropped as a plot point and War of the Supermen does feel totally rushed. Yeah an interstellar war between all the Sol system planets makes way more sense. Also agree with him about New Krypton being the last time they tried to do meaningful worldbuilding. Were sales that bad that they couldn’t just let the writers go with their original ending? I mean they must’ve already started planning the reboot at that point, what was the harm in letting the story play out? DC editorial is just mindboggingly incompetent sometimes.
Last edited by Vordan; 07-07-2019 at 10:43 AM.
1) Sales were bad. And DC wanted JMS to do Superman. And he probably didn't want to handle the New Krypton stuff. So they got rid of it in the worst possible way.
2) The reboot was probably only decided around September 2010 (the date Harras was hired) when JMS's Grounded and Cornell's Luthor book were already underway.
Read the first New Krypton trade and, Jimmy and Guardian prologue aside (which I found terribly dull), there was a lot of good stuff there. Martha's isolation and Krypto, Clark's grief over his father, the ramifications of a Kryptonian city appearing on Earth overnight, and Superman torn between two worlds. Nightwing and Flamebird's intro was a little hokey, but overall, it's a promising start.
Currently Reading:
DC: The Flash, Challenge of the Super Sons, Nightwing
Image: Lazarus: Risen, The Old Guard, Black Magick
Boom: Mighty Morphin', Power Rangers
There was a lot to like about the New Krypton saga. It was a paradigm shift on a scale similar to the multicolor Lanterns were in GL, which I thought for Superman was balsy. I loved the redefinition of General Zod into someone far more complex yet true to his past was clever, as was Sterling Gates run on Supergirl and Adventure Comics with Superboy. I even liked Clark on New Krypton. I think we all knew deep down we'd eventually return to a more standard Superman status quo by the ends,but I expected at least a few threads or characters stick around.
Nope. War of The Supermen hit the reset button so hard. It's a shame really given the New 52 reboot was coming in a year anyway so they could have gone wild with it all, but as we know now,outside of maybe DiDio and Warner's higher ups not many knew the New 52 was coming, and in the zeal to give JMS a clean slate for Grounded, they basically salted the earth and the arc was almost immediately forgotten. The way it ended left a bad taste in my mouth to this day.
When it comes to comics,one person's "fan-service" is another persons personal cannon. So by definition it's ALL fan service. Aren't we ALL fans?
SUPERMAN is the greatest fictional character ever created.
The strongest part of that whole first New Krypton arc following the Action " Brainiac" arc. The 12 issue Superman: New Krypton series was great but that arc should have taken place in one of the main Superman books. The biggest fumble of that story was taking Superman's arc out of the main Supes books and putting it in a mini series. That alone impacted sales negatively. The casual reader wanting to pick up the latest Superman or Action during that run got a bunch of side characters instead. That was a really dumb decision.
When it comes to comics,one person's "fan-service" is another persons personal cannon. So by definition it's ALL fan service. Aren't we ALL fans?
SUPERMAN is the greatest fictional character ever created.
According to Kurt Busiek (either stated here or on the old DC boards), he and Geoff Johns had New Krypton mapped out, but left the books before it came to fruition and the direction the story ultimately went in was not what they were planning on doing.
Also, War of the Supermen was supposed to be an actual company-wide event for DC but sales dropped so hard during New Krypton that they just wrapped it all up in a month. As far as JMS taking over, he states that he was told about the reboot prior to coming on board and doing Grounded, as a way I think to mitigate the lukewarm response to that story. But the timeline of that doesn't really add up, and JMS didn't even wind up staying on full-time through the conclusion of Grounded.
I will say that I was really enjoying Geoff Johns' stuff that he was doing with Superman just prior to leaving and New Krypton being published.