Reread New Krypton Recently

[kingaliencracker]

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.

I think DC was trying to expand the Superman universe and thought they could do this by having some lesser known supporting characters feature heavily in the main titles for a year, while continuing to publish Superman in the New Krypton mini. But as you said, sales dropped so hard during the year that any positive aspects of the story that could have been used once it completed were essentially ignored.

[adkal]

They didn't do anything with the 'farming-organisms-that-had-skin-that-could-protect-against-magic', did they?

[manofsteel1979]

I think DC was trying to expand the Superman universe and thought they could do this by having some lesser known supporting characters feature heavily in the main titles for a year, while continuing to publish Superman in the New Krypton mini. But as you said, sales dropped so hard during the year that any positive aspects of the story that could have been used once it completed were essentially ignored.

I can sort of see why they did it,but I think that Superman's arc should have been in SUPERMAN, Lois and The Daily Planet should have been in Action,with perhaps the Mon-El/ Guardian and Nightwing /Flamebird stuff being back up features in those books with maybe miniseries spinning off as the story got bigger. It would have simplified the flow of everything and slowly built out the story instead of just having it all at once after the initial New Krypton arc wrapped and kept the story focused on Superman and his immediate cast,Supergirl, and Zod.

[Vordan]

I think DC was trying to expand the Superman universe and thought they could do this by having some lesser known supporting characters feature heavily in the main titles for a year, while continuing to publish Superman in the New Krypton mini. But as you said, sales dropped so hard during the year that any positive aspects of the story that could have been used once it completed were essentially ignored.

They should’ve had the Superman book follow Clark on New Krypton and maybe make Action Comics a biweekly book that followed Mon-El and Nightwing/Flamebird similar to how Greg Rucka handled the WW Rebirth book. That I think might have worked.

[Myskin]

Hah! The New Krypton debacle again. Let's recap what I remember/know from that period.

Geoff Johns' and Busiek's relaunch after Infinite Crisis was the starting point. They basically redesigned the Super Universe by adding several elements and making it more compact with some unique details. As far as I remember, the ONLY element which was preserved in subsequent issues and recent stories (besides Brainiac's musclebound look, which I hate) was Jor-El's beard. It was introduced during the Last Son arc by Adam Kubert and it has become one of the distinctive traits of the character (by the way, it was the ONLY trait which was preserved: other specifics, like Jor-El's clothes and Lara's look, were discarded almost immediately, during Johns' run).

Among the distinctive characteristics of that era, we had: a strong and and, quite frankly, belated influence from the Donner movies (I have a strong suspect that it depended on the release of Superman Returns, which occurred in the same year); a reduction of Superman's rogues gallery to its 6-7 most iconic members (nothing to argue here); a new attempt at giving Metropolis a recognizable look and atmosphere.

The Metropolis element was IMHO the most interesting one. We had had the cyberpunk futuristic Metropolis during the Loeb/Kelly run (I loved it with all my heart and I still strongly miss it; it would resolve a LOT of problems with Superman and it was one of the best ideas of an underrated period) and Johns/Busiek's attempt was the second and, so far, last attempt at giving the city a recognizable identity (Bendis had promised to make it the most racially diversified city in the world, but so far he hasn't delivered; Ivan Reis' Metropolis is interesting in terms of architecture, but he strongly references some pre-existing concepts from Steve Rude's design introduced in his World's Finest mini years ago). The new aesthetics had already been introduced at the end of the B13 saga (Superman 201, I think); the designer was Lee Bermejo, but my memories are foggy; take it with a pinch of salt - it could have been Jim Lee, too. I am a bit puzzled regarding this specific detail because the new, deco Metropolis was used in the Lex Luthor mini (by Azzarello and Bermejo) and Superman For Tomorrow (by Azzarello and Lee), and I can't remember who designed it first. However, that specific skyline was reprised by Kubert and Pacheco and it was only at the beginning of the Johns/Busiek era that they really attempted to give to the city a new identity besides a recognizable aesthetics.

To keep it short, the Johns/Busiek Metropolis was a mix of deco architecture and toned down futuristic elements, mostly confined to the "Avenue of Tomorrow" where the scientific companies and the research groups are located. Some elements were introduced, like the Squad K. Johns dealt with the classic elements (Bizarro, Brainiac, Legion, Zod) and Busiek wrote stories about revamped, forgotten characters (Prankster, Amalak, Kristin Wells) and new villains (Subjekt-17, Khyber).

Chris Kent was introduced. I think that he was created mostly for synchronicity with Superman Returns, but also as a Superboy replacement and the first attempt on DC's part at testing the water for the introduction of SuperDad (basically Chris was a prototype for Jon), something which I think they have been planning to do for a long time.

However, there were problems from the very first moment. Last Son had HUGE delays, mostly due to Adam Kubert (I think), for never revealed reasons. The continuity, especially for some specific characters (Luthor and Superman himself) was a mess. The Supergirl series was a complete, utter and unbelievable chaos (it had been from the inception, to be fair; way before Johns and Busiek started their run) until Gates came on board. There were several fill-in stories. I think that it was at this point that DC did their best to erase Superboy/Conner from their books for copyright issues after killing him in Infinite Crisis (never officially confirmed as far as I remember, but that's what everybody thinks/suspects). At one point, Busiek left the title (the official reason was that he had to write the Trinity weekly series) and was replaced by James Robinson. Johns stayed on board until New Krypton started and was replaced by Rucka (apparently the original choice was Mark Waid though, and he refused). Plans for New Krypton changed (it would have involved Wells in some capacity, but she disappeared from the series). There were some plans for stories which were never published; I think that at one point Johns was planning a Mxyzptlk issue and a Doomsday one, but it never came to fruition; Busiek once confirmed on his site (it was an answer to a mail of mine and it was published in the Astro City mail column, but unfortunately I can't find it anymore, sorry) that there had been some discussions/vague ideas about a "Toyman war" which would have involved Schott, Nimball and the mechanical Toyman introduced in Up, up and away.

However... Even if Robinson's and Rucka's run had already been partially compromised (and Robinson's writing was weaker than it used to be), I have to give them credit that they really did their best to preserve a lot of the original ideas and they tried to give a very unique, distinctive atmosphere to the Super-universe. I don't think that Johns left the title for editorial reasons - it is more likely that at that point he was simply more interested in his Green Lantern series (which was becoming hugely popular) and possibly in the DC Cinematic Universe; as far as I remember, James Robinson and Johns were close friends and Robinson kept a lot of Johns' original plan intact. In general, I'd say that Johns' shadow looms large on the entire New Krypton saga (even if some ideas were clearly Rucka's or Robinson's) whereas most of Busiek's concepts are simply forgotten after his departure (except for some rare reference, like Squad K).

Sam Lane as a nasty, irredeemable villain (he wasn't THAT evil in past stories) was Johns' idea and they kept it. At one point the Science Police from the Legion of the Super-heroes was introduced in present days and it had a "Top Ten"-like, futuristic look. Robinson revamped a lot of Kirby concepts. Rucka reintroduced some classic Krypton ideas and refocused on a conspiracy subplot about Kryptonian sleepers. In Superman: Secret Files (2009) they designed the ultimate map of Metropolis as the city of science since the days of the XVIII century "science hero Waldo Gennmorgan" (referenced by Morrison in his Action Comics run with Glenn Glennmorgan, maybe?). Zatara, a grandson of the original Zatara from Action Comics 1 (1938) was reintroduced in the Metropolis lore. They pretty clearly tried to introduce some very specific challenges for the heroes (Steel vs Atlas, Zatara vs Mirabai, Supergirl vs Superwoman/Reactron, The Guardian vs Codename Assassin, Mon-El vs the Parasite and so on). At one point - again, as far as I remember this was confirmed by Greg Rucka in a reply to a post of mine on the old Geoff Johns/ComicBloc forum, which I think is dead now - they were trying to create a Superman version of DC's recent hit The Blackest Night, with every Superman character involved except for Mxyzptlk (the Mxyzptlk mention is Rucka's, I am certain of that, but I am not 100% sure that he openly mentioned The Blackest Night... Everything validated the idea that they were creating a Super-event of some kind, though). Some of the rumors were that they were also trying to give some order to DC's alien planets (United Planets, perhaps; the Legion itself was involved at one point) and that's the reason why Superman deals with Thanagarians, Saturnians and so on in The World of New Krypton.

But... Everything fell apart. I think that there were several factors at work. The stories were fine, but not unforgettable. The preparation for the final saga took too much time and a lot of readers never forgave DC for removing Superman from the series (I was relatively fine with it, personally speaking). The huge interplanetary saga was rushed and changed into the War of Supermen mini just to close all the open subplots. I strongly suspect that the awful, unreadable Superman Grounded story which followed (probably the lowest point ever in Superman's history) was just an extremely rushed fill-in for the months which were originally supposed to be filled by the War of Supermen (basically Grounded started with no real plan in mind). After one year of mess on Grounded and Lex Luthor as the main character of Action Comics, we had the new52; Superman Secret Origins, which was supposed to be Supes' official origin for Johns and Busiek's run was published and ended when the run was already a thing of the past and DC was about to relaunch everything with the New52.

[Myskin]

The user Myskin made this post in a similar New Krypton thread I made 5 years ago. NK was supposed to be a lot bigger than just 4 issues (released once a week throughout July 2010) war with Earth, followed by a massive reset button.

Ha! I was already in this thread without knowing it. Thank you for mentioning me.

[Vordan]

They didn't do anything with the 'farming-organisms-that-had-skin-that-could-protect-against-magic', did they?

Nope. They blew up with New Krypton and were quickly forgotten about.

Ha! I was already in this thread without knowing it. Thank you for mentioning me.

Loved your write up about what happened. I’m rereading a lot of the Johns/Busiek era right now and I mostly agree with what you posted. I agree with your critique that a lot of the storylines were “good but not unforgettable” but I think a lot of the blame for that lies with editorial. Imagine how Geoff Johns Green Lantern run would read, if at the last second, editorial suddenly told him he couldn’t do Blackest Night and would have to wrap everything up in one issue. Even if Johns could somehow pull that off, it still would be impossible for it to not feel anticlimactic. So I blame Superman editorial which has got to be one of, if not the most incompetent group in comics. While I did have my issues with Rebirth (never really been a huge fan of modern Jurgens) I don’t think the success of that era and the hands off approach of Superman editorial are disconnected.

And goddamnit hearing about that Toyman War is ******* me off. A long-running Superman villain besides Lex or an OC getting some huge focus? Why the hell didn’t that happen? Just makes me furious at how badly Superman has been handled. I found your analysis of the Metropolis aesthetic to be fascinating, I love the cyberpunk Metropolis look myself too. Unfortunately Bendis’ promise to focus on making Metropolis a City of immigrants looks like it will be similar to a lot of his Iron Man promises in that he says it will happen but it doesn’t actually end up occurring which sucks. I do think Red Cloud, Melody Moore, and the Invisible Mafia are great additions to Metropolis though. I actually liked stuff like the Science Police in Metropolis, I want Metropolis to have more of a futuristic look to it. I absolutely hate it when Metropolis looks like a regular city, the worst occurrence of this is the DCAMU Metropolis which looks awful. Borussa did a terrible job designing the city or maybe the reduced budget is to blame.

[Bruce Wayne]

However, there were problems from the very first moment. Last Son had HUGE delays, mostly due to Adam Kubert (I think), for never revealed reasons.

I think they just weren't given enough time. IIRC Pacheo/Busiek's Camelot Falls also had delays. Busiek I think said they just weren't given enough time.

I don't think that Johns left the title for editorial reasons - it is more likely that at that point he was simply more interested in his Green Lantern series (which was becoming hugely popular) and possibly in the DC Cinematic Universe; as far as I remember, James Robinson and Johns were close friends and Robinson kept a lot of Johns' original plan intact. In general, I'd say that Johns' shadow looms large on the entire New Krypton saga (even if some ideas were clearly Rucka's or Robinson's) whereas most of Busiek's concepts are simply forgotten after his departure (except for some rare reference, like Squad K).

Johns has a habit of leaving books if he doesn't get what he wants or if there are some bts conflictt. The biggest examples are Hawkman (because he lost the artist) and Teen Titans (right in the middle of a story). I think he just wasn't onboard the revamp and not writing Superman, but Flamebird/Nightwing.

[Myskin]

Loved your write up about what happened. I’m rereading a lot of the Johns/Busiek era right now and I mostly agree with what you posted. I agree with your critique that a lot of the storylines were “good but not unforgettable” but I think a lot of the blame for that lies with editorial. Imagine how Geoff Johns Green Lantern run would read, if at the last second, editorial suddenly told him he couldn’t do Blackest Night and would have to wrap everything up in one issue. Even if Johns could somehow pull that off, it still would be impossible for it to not feel anticlimactic. So I blame Superman editorial which has got to be one of, if not the most incompetent group in comics. While I did have my issues with Rebirth (never really been a huge fan of modern Jurgens) I don’t think the success of that era and the hands off approach of Superman editorial are disconnected.

Thank you for the kind words. As for Superman editorial, well - yes, there are lot of problems of competence, but I also think that many, many copyright issues are at work here. Basically every Superboy story in the latest 15 years has been affected by legal troubles (and I think that something similar is behind the New52 as well).
However, I agree that Superman editors work in an utterly bizarre way.

If you look closely all the concepts which appeared in Superman stories after the Jurgens era, you'll realize that very few ideas are inherently bad. I'd say that the basic concept behind Grounded is terrible (mostly because it makes Superman incredibly ineffective and morally questionable) and I hate with a passion the Supermen merger at the end of Superman Reborn, which I consider one of the biggest narrative failures ever occurred in a Superman story. But New Krypton, For Tomorrow, OWAW, even The Truth, are not inherently bad. They are just interesting ideas which failed because at one point DC simply dropped the ball. I'd also say that being a Superman writer must be incredibly frustrating, because at no point you can be sure of what is in continuity and what isn't.

The last time someone tried to make some continuity changes in an organic, understandable way was during the Loeb run with the Return to Krypton story. Of course, the retcon was retconned at the end, but what was the point? They had ALREADY introduced Birthright.
So... When Johns and Busiek relaunched everything they were in a pretty fragile position, but I guess that their mindset was something like: OK, the origin is a mess, we have changed it ourselves with our bearded Jor-El and Donner crystals, so we won't touch the origin OR Luthor in Smallville. However, everything else is still relatively intact (NK Luthor is basically Byrne Luthor after his fall from grace; Ma and Pa Kents are the Byrne ones, etc.). So maybe if we just work on the Krypton lore we could create something new (I mean, if you think about it, also musclebound Brainiac is basically Johns' attempt at reconciling ALL of the previous incarnations of the character in an organic way).

However, after that New52 occurred, and then Rebirth. And now Superman universe is in the messiest position ever. Basically it's as if ALL of the details of the past continuities are relatively intact, but they are completely disconnected one from the other. We know that President Luthor occurred in some capacity, but it can't have happened the way we saw in OWAW, not it can be connected to Supergirl's arrival as it happened in Superman/Batman... What's the point of having so many details from past tales if you can't touch them or use them in any possible way within the stories?

It will never happen, but I always thought that the ONLY possible way to make this chaos a bit more streamlined was to make a 52-like weekly series where they could put every main element from Superman stories (from Lori Lemaris to Conduit) and make it work in an organic way.

And goddamnit hearing about that Toyman War is ******* me off. A long-running Superman villain besides Lex or an OC getting some huge focus? Why the hell didn’t that happen? Just makes me furious at how badly Superman has been handled. I found your analysis of the Metropolis aesthetic to be fascinating, I love the cyberpunk Metropolis look myself too. Unfortunately Bendis’ promise to focus on making Metropolis a City of immigrants looks like it will be similar to a lot of his Iron Man promises in that he says it will happen but it doesn’t actually end up occurring which sucks. I do think Red Cloud, Melody Moore, and the Invisible Mafia are great additions to Metropolis though. I actually liked stuff like the Science Police in Metropolis, I want Metropolis to have more of a futuristic look to it. I absolutely hate it when Metropolis looks like a regular city, the worst occurrence of this is the DCAMU Metropolis which looks awful. Borussa did a terrible job designing the city or maybe the reduced budget is to blame.

To be fair, I have no idea of how close they came to do the Toyman war story - perhaps it was just an idea. Maybe Mr Busiek could give more details.
As for cyberpunk Metropolis, yes, it's a huge loss. These days we have things like Alita and Cyberpunk 2077 (the videogame), postmodern cyberpunk is everywhere and Superman keeps living in a vaguely deco New York? Hasn't anyone learnt anything from the HUGE efforts of the Batman writers to make Gotham a character in itself? I mean, that's pretty basic - every major Superman story and the core of the character himself has been about science out of control. A futuristic city would give Superman a reason to stay and live in Metropolis instead of working with a NGO in Africa, too: during Loeb's and Kelly's run it was pretty clear that Metropolis was so huge that even Superman couldn't know or understand every single detail or menace it hid, and the destiny of the world basically depended on the technology of Metropolis. I have recently reread the Superman Metropolis Secret Files (2000) and it is still incredibly interesting and fresh. And Superman Metropolis (the Jimmy Olsen maxiseries) is simply great.

I think they just weren't given enough time. IIRC Pacheo/Busiek's Camelot Falls also had delays. Busiek I think said they just weren't given enough time.

Well, it took almost TWO YEARS to complete the story and that's more than enough. I think that Kubert had some health issues, but nobody knows for sure.

Johns has a habit of leaving books if he doesn't get what he wants or if there are some bts conflictt. The biggest examples are Hawkman (because he lost the artist) and Teen Titans (right in the middle of a story). I think he just wasn't onboard the revamp and not writing Superman, but Flamebird/Nightwing.

Johns has also a habit of being late with his scripts and he was loaded with work in those days. I think that it is way more likely that he simply decided to check the story from a distance thanks to Robinson's involvement. Or maybe he simply realized that it was more important for his career to focus on GL rather than Superman. Anyway, I really don't think that editors are to blame specifically for Johns' departure.

[Vordan]

I think they just weren't given enough time. IIRC Pacheo/Busiek's Camelot Falls also had delays. Busiek I think said they just weren't given enough time.



Johns has a habit of leaving books if he doesn't get what he wants or if there are some bts conflictt. The biggest examples are Hawkman (because he lost the artist) and Teen Titans (right in the middle of a story). I think he just wasn't onboard the revamp and not writing Superman, but Flamebird/Nightwing.

Yeah he does have a bad habit of setting plot lines up and then not actually doing them (Rise of the Seven Seas anyone?), but New Krypton was apparently a mess of editorial interference so I guess on some level I can’t blame Johns for not sticking around when he got a free hand to do whatever he wanted with GL. Even if he had stuck around I don’t think he could’ve saved War of the Supermen.

Thank you for the kind words. As for Superman editorial, well - yes, there are lot of problems of competence, but I also think that many, many copyright issues are at work here. Basically every Superboy story in the latest 15 years has been affected by legal troubles (and I think that something similar is behind the New52 as well).
However, I agree that Superman editors work in an utterly bizarre way.

If you look closely all the concepts which appeared in Superman stories after the Jurgens era, you'll realize that very few ideas are inherently bad. I'd say that the basic concept behind Grounded is terrible (mostly because it makes Superman incredibly ineffective and morally questionable) and I hate with a passion the Supermen merger at the end of Superman Reborn, which I consider one of the biggest narrative failures ever occurred in a Superman story. But New Krypton, For Tomorrow, OWAW, even The Truth, are not inherently bad. They are just interesting ideas which failed because at one point DC simply dropped the ball. I'd also say that being a Superman writer must be incredibly frustrating, because at no point you can be sure of what is in continuity and what isn't.

The last time someone tried to make some continuity changes in an organic, understandable way was during the Loeb run with the Return to Krypton story. Of course, the retcon was retconned at the end, but what was the point? They had ALREADY introduced Birthright.
So... When Johns and Busiek relaunched everything they were in a pretty fragile position, but I guess that their mindset was something like: OK, the origin is a mess, we have changed it ourselves with our bearded Jor-El and Donner crystals, so we won't touch the origin OR Luthor in Smallville. However, everything else is still relatively intact (NK Luthor is basically Byrne Luthor after his fall from grace; Ma and Pa Kents are the Byrne ones, etc.). So maybe if we just work on the Krypton lore we could create something new (I mean, if you think about it, also musclebound Brainiac is basically Johns' attempt at reconciling ALL of the previous incarnations of the character in an organic way).

However, after that New52 occurred, and then Rebirth. And now Superman universe is in the messiest position ever. Basically it's as if ALL of the details of the past continuities are relatively intact, but they are completely disconnected one from the other. We know that President Luthor occurred in some capacity, but it can't have happened the way we saw in OWAW, not it can be connected to Supergirl's arrival as it happened in Superman/Batman... What's the point of having so many details from past tales if you can't touch them or use them in any possible way within the stories?

It will never happen, but I always thought that the ONLY possible way to make this chaos a bit more streamlined was to make a 52-like weekly series where they could put every main element from Superman stories (from Lori Lemaris to Conduit) and make it work in an organic way.



To be fair, I have no idea of how close they came to do the Toyman war story - perhaps it was just an idea. Maybe Mr Busiek could give more details.
As for cyberpunk Metropolis, yes, it's a huge loss. These days we have things like Alita and Cyberpunk 2077 (the videogame), postmodern cyberpunk is everywhere and Superman keeps living in a vaguely deco New York? Hasn't anyone learnt anything from the HUGE efforts of the Batman writers to make Gotham a character in itself? I mean, that's pretty basic - every major Superman story and the core of the character himself has been about science out of control. A futuristic city would give Superman a reason to stay and live in Metropolis instead of working with a NGO in Africa, too: during Loeb's and Kelly's run it was pretty clear that Metropolis was so huge that even Superman couldn't know or understand every single detail or menace it hid, and the destiny of the world basically depended on the technology of Metropolis. I have recently reread the Superman Metropolis Secret Files (2000) and it is still incredibly interesting and fresh. And Superman Metropolis (the Jimmy Olsen maxiseries) is simply great.



Well, it took almost TWO YEARS to complete the story and that's more than enough. I think that Kubert had some health issues, but nobody knows for sure.



Johns has also a habit of being late with his scripts and he was loaded with work in those days. I think that it is way more likely that he simply decided to check the story from a distance thanks to Robinson's involvement.

A lot of the continuity problems can be blamed on editorial though. I get that towards the end of the Triangle Era there was a growing dissatisfaction with the Byrne MoS origin, but the fact that DC has constantly started then stopped multiple Superman reboots lies with the editors who approved the reboots but then didn’t have the stones to actually stick with the reboots. There needs to be a ban on origin retellings for Superman, the well has completely run dry there imo and has only exasperated the continuity problem.

[Sam]

Read the second trade. Damn, Alura is cold. Not entirely sure how I feel about that. There is definitely drama in it, but she seems a little straw villain at the moment. Hopefully, that improves. Overall, it still is pretty enjoyable. Zor-El's death was pretty well-done and emotional. Poor Kara.

Loved your write up about what happened. I’m rereading a lot of the Johns/Busiek era right now and I mostly agree with what you posted. I agree with your critique that a lot of the storylines were “good but not unforgettable” but I think a lot of the blame for that lies with editorial. Imagine how Geoff Johns Green Lantern run would read, if at the last second, editorial suddenly told him he couldn’t do Blackest Night and would have to wrap everything up in one issue. Even if Johns could somehow pull that off, it still would be impossible for it to not feel anticlimactic. So I blame Superman editorial which has got to be one of, if not the most incompetent group in comics. While I did have my issues with Rebirth (never really been a huge fan of modern Jurgens) I don’t think the success of that era and the hands off approach of Superman editorial are disconnected.

I don't know. I thought Up, Up, and Away, Last Son, and Brainiac were all pretty unforgettable.

[Myskin]

A lot of the continuity problems can be blamed on editorial though. I get that towards the end of the Triangle Era there was a growing dissatisfaction with the Byrne MoS origin, but the fact that DC has constantly started then stopped multiple Superman reboots lies with the editors who approved the reboots but then didn’t have the stones to actually stick with the reboots. There needs to be a ban on origin retellings for Superman, the well has completely run dry there imo and has only exasperated the continuity problem.

One of the symbols of Superman's current messy situation (in terms of continuity: I have a great admiration for Bendis even if he is not always my cup of tea and I think that every single good thing from the current Superman era - Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, Legion - is due to him personally) is current Jor-El. Not Mr Oz, but the version of the character which appears in the flashbacks. It simply doesn't make sense.

Every single version of Jor-El makes sense in its own way and the writers/artists carefully designed it to make sense in the current continuity. We had the alien, cold costumes for Byrne and Sean Connery for Adam Kubert, or even the bearded Marlon Brando look from Secret Origins (it's ridiculous IMHO; but it makes sense because of the Donnerism of that period). However, current Jor-El is clearly JUST a mix of Marlon Brando Jor-El and New52 Jor-El. It isn't planned at all - it is just a clumsy Frankenstein Jor-El for a Frankenstein continuity.

All in all, they could have just left Byrne Jor-El alone and they should have tried to change some slight details to make him more friendly and likable.

[Vordan]

Read the second trade. Damn, Alura is cold. Not entirely sure how I feel about that. There is definitely drama in it, but she seems a little straw villain at the moment. Hopefully, that improves. Overall, it still is pretty enjoyable. Zor-El's death was pretty well-done and emotional. Poor Kara.



I don't know. I thought Up, Up, and Away, Last Son, and Brainiac were all pretty unforgettable.

I loved all three of those stories but I think the simple fact that all three of those, and all of Johns old run iirc, are currently out of print means that they have been forgotten unfortunately.

[Myskin]

I loved all three of those stories but I think the simple fact that all three of those, and all of Johns old run iirc, are currently out of print means that they have been forgotten unfortunately.

I am not sure that they are completely forgotten - they are reprinting Loeb's run and it came even earlier than Johns' stories. I'd say that they are simply strictly tied to a very specific moment in continuity which isn't that important or useful anymore.

Up, up and away doesn't make sense without Infinite Crisis and yes, I'd say that this one is probably forgotten. Last Son introduced mild mannered Chris, which has no reason to be anymore, and even if the art is gorgeous it is rather weak in some points (especially Luthor, who is cackling, moustache twirling idiot throughout the whole story). I'd say that Brainiac is probably the least dated one, even if I hate thug Brainiac with passion.

But yes, another problem with Superman is the almost total absence of standalone stories.

[Vordan]

I am not sure that they are completely forgotten - they are reprinting Loeb's run and it came even earlier than Johns' stories. I'd say that they are simply strictly tied to a very specific moment in continuity which isn't that important or useful anymore.

Up, up and away doesn't make sense without Infinite Crisis and yes, I'd say that this one is probably forgotten. Last Son introduced mild mannered Chris, which has no reason to be anymore, and even if the art is gorgeous it is rather weak in some points (especially Luthor, who is cackling, moustache twirling idiot throughout the whole story). I'd say that Brainiac is probably the least dated one, even if I hate thug Brainiac with passion.

But yes, another problem with Superman is the almost total absence of standalone stories.

Hush features a ton of elements that also rather date it, but it manages to still be a popular “intro” Batman story (although I think Snyder’s New 52 run has displaced it somewhat). It has President Lex Luthor, Harley Quinn as Joker’s GF, Tim Drake Robin, Talia on the outs with her father and not at all villainous, etc. I don’t think a story has to necessarily be totally standalone to stand the test of time. I think a lot of Superman’s problems stem from the lack of outside media adapting his storylines. Up, Up, and Away or Ending Battle I think are quite easily adaptable as standalones, but the people in charge aren’t interested in Superman at all so it never happens. Under the Red Hood the comic is frankly an awful storyline imo, but the movie did a fantastic job of cleaning out the crap and taking the interesting ideas that were always there. That’s why I would still love to see a New Krypton adaption because I believe it has interesting ideas that just need proper execution.