Superman and the Authority

[TheKryptonMan]

Part 5 is out!

This intrigued me. Referring to what the ending was supposed to be when it was originally meant for 5G?

Vordan , thank you man for posting so much of Morrison !!!

[The Frog Bros]

I would still like to read more superman and authority.I hope after pkj's arc is done.We go back to earth.We get back to tom strong suit and finish where we left off.

Same here. It'd be more interesting than the same old Justice League stuff and it's in good hands with PKJ. Plus, it goes along with what Morrison said about leaving the end of their arc open ended for someone else to continue.

[Vordan]

Part 6 of the annotations are out, I’ll have to read them later.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Part 6 of the annotations are out, I’ll have to read them later.

Holy shit, that would have been quite a mic drop on Morrison's part.

I totally understand why PKJ (and DC) didn't want to pursue that particular idea though

[manwhohaseverything]

Dang!that yin and yang thing was something i been thinking about in regards to superman.

[Robanker]

Part 6 of the annotations are out, I’ll have to read them later.

I don't like Jon siding with an asshole version of his dad, but the take obviously didn't stick. Still, it would have been far more interesting a conclusion than what we got which was Superman absconding his terrestrial conflict to venture to the stars. Bigger swing, to be sure.


But I'm glad we got what we did. PKJ's Action Comics has been awesome and I enjoyed Superman and the Authority more than the premise had any right to bring me joy. Leave it to Morrison to pull that off. They'll be missed at DC, to be sure.

[manwhohaseverything]

Jon would be siding with tom strong superman...right?hell yeah! Go jeans and T-shirt!
leap tall buildings with the old man..Jon kent and manchester black would have been a crazy reunion as well.

[Superlad93]

Yup, I'd have really liked to see the original take on this put to the page. PKJ's run has been quality stuff, but it clearly was never supposed to fit in with an older Superman and Authority idea. Superman could've taken anyone with him to Warworld and it wouldn't have changed a thing. Could've just been a super cool gen 2 book. As it stands it makes no sense for a number of reasons. Where's the contrast between Clark and Jon as Supermen now.

"Hi, I'm a Superman who joins a group of radical liberals to get more hands on about changing the world. Oh, hi, I'm also a Superman who joins a group of radical liberals to get more hands on about changing the world too! What's the difference? I guess one of us is sort of old and the other isn't? Who's even talking right now?" And on top of that Clark goes "time to change the world" and the fucks right off to another world going "lolz, I never said this one. Get pranked nerds!" Like, what actual sense does that make? "Well son, looks like I've spent my whole time as Superman basically having wrestling matches while not actually changing things for the better, so I'll just let you clean up this mess. Cool? Cool. K bye!" (more on the contrast later)

Anyways, I find the idea that Jon would've joined Clark Red's (aka Clark Right) team to be really interesting. Not because I think Jon's a super right-winger or anything, but rather because Morrison clearly states that both Superman Red and Blue start out pretty much like a more to the center normal Clark. Jon wouldn't have any real reason to object to his putting together a team he asks him to join in that context. But As Morrison says, BOTH Clarks would eventually start "growing ever more hardline as time went by and they remained separated. With dire consequences for the world." Both Clarks would likely started to freak their teams out with how inflexible and unreasonable they'd get in their stances.

My guess is that Morrison wanted to set up a civil war between the two Clarks and their Authority teams. My guess is that eventually Jon and both teams would realize that they'd need to unite as a collective. Again, Morrison says as much when they say "the need to unify opposites to make progress". This is why I think the Morrison made a point to express that the Round Table had more seats than current members. The new Authority and the old one would've came together along with Clark reforming into one whole person. But we likely wouldn't have kept all the members.

For example, we know Damian wouldn't have stayed because he was to eventually become DC's Magneto/Doctor Doom. This would've likely been DC allowing Morrison to give their creation a send off before moving him onto the next stage. And Damian may have even been affected by Clark Right's rhetoric since that was already the direction he was going in the lead up to 5G. It would've also mirrored Injustice Clark and Damian's dynamic where Damian is fed up with his dad's revolving door method of dealing with issues.

We'd have gotten to see the breakdown in the Super Son's friendship over the span of a year of comics.

This also lines up with the fact that we know that Jon would've started a relationship with Jenny Spark/Quantum because clearly she was part of the original Authority that Clark Right/Red reformed and that Jon would've been part of. And on top of that Morrison's words regarding unifying the lefty and the righty views would've been lined up in the form of Jon because as we heard, he was supposed to be a "more traditional" Superman than the now more radical Clark(s). So the idea would've been that Jon learned and took from both side of Clark to form a more even approach to things.

I'm even betting that it would've been on Clark Red/Right's suggestion that Jon bottle Metropolis in the original 5G pitch. Clark Right whispering in his ear about needing to take control as the new Superman and "protect what's his from all outside invaders" and all that other hardline anxiety stroking rhetoric. And it would've totally made sense why it worked on Jon. He's new to being Superman, his hero-- his dad-- tells him this is the right thing to do, and he doesn't want to be the one that messes up the legacy or lets his dad down. It totally works. I even imagine both Clarks are gaslighting their teams into thinking that the other Clark is some sort of clone or fake.

And before anyone asks "how does this all fit into the 4 issues that Morrison said they were only doing, huh?" Well, they explain that the majority of these plots were supposed to be passed onto the Authority ongoing where another writer and the Superman office would've taken it. We'd have had a year of Superman related stories outlined by Morrison. So potentially Fraction on Superman & Action would be dealing with the fallout of Metropolis now being under the dome and Jon dealing with making that choice. And on that front, this would've also been the perfect breaking/passing of the torch story between Clark and Jon. Jon having to muster up the confidence to tell his dad (or a version of his dad) that he doesn't agree with him. And it would work as a great generational story because it would be the next generation not falling into the trap of red vs blue, your side vs my side, Sunday Night Football politics, and instead finding a third option.

It was all there for the taking. And it could've been this fun and multilayered story that took characters somewhere interesting. It would've been bold and something to really talk about and debate.

[Superlad93]

This also means that Taylor's run is very likely both Bendis and Morrison's leftovers stitched into a run. Jay is potentially an amalgamation of Damian and Jenny being on the classic Authority with Jon (also likely settles the debate of which Jenny Jon would've dated since Jay is Asian like Jenny Q was). The Truth as an organization is Taylor taking all of the nuance out of the idea of Jon joining the classic Authority. Taylor makes them exclusively liberal, and thus kills both the contrast between Clark and Jon, and the character and generational arc of the two characters in one move. Rather than the idea that common ground and and uniting ideas being the point of putting starting Jon on that team and that arc being the point, Taylor elects to please twitter politics while not saying a got damn thing about anything of substance in almost 10 issues before going "lolz it's just a bald smart guy killing super people, I guess."

One of the big tells that this is Taylor sneaking looks off of the abandoned pitch is the fact that the very first threat the classic Authority fights is Gamorra and its president. Hell, even the fact that Bendix is creating his own superhumans and sending them around the world is LITERALLY the plot of Elis' first arc.

A lot of people maybe don't want to hear it because it doesn't fit in with the John Cena "never wrong, and never made to look like he's in the wrong" view they have of Clark and now Jon, but I'll say it...Jon Kent being framed as a child of privilege legacy republican (not in the literal sense, but in the ideological sense due to the situation of following a version of his father who is leaning more and more radically right) who starts to have doubts about the path his dad is setting up for him is the most dese and well drawn summation of character that he's ever had and is ever likely to have. Jon then being characterized as a young man who is now making up for the mistakes he's made (shrinking the city) and the mistakes his legacy before him has made (Clark being so hands off and complacent till now) is so damn topical and needed that right now that I feel like I'm in fucking Bizarro world when I realize that people who live in the world and write fiction for a living said no to that idea.

No matter what you feel, Superman as an idea is privilege incarnate. That man doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want to, and no one can say shit about-- plus he holds the world's future in his hands. And Jon is even more topical because he's "old money" (not in the literal sense, but basically everything short of being a literal billionaire legacy Jon does have in his pocket) privilege incarnate. His best and only friend is a literal old money billionaire prince, and Jon and his family are the most famous and influential beings on not just the planet but also in the galaxy. This young man is not the underdog, so for the love of God stop gaslighting us into thinking that's the case. It's nearly insulting. Especially when there's a more relavant story to be told with the one character that could accurately be described as the literal prince of the DCU.

Anyways, rant over. I stan 5G still blah blah blah Superman blah blah blah Jon Kent. Still can't convince me it wouldn't have been at the very least more interesting and worth talking about regularly.

[Matt Rat]

Part 6 of the annotations are out, I’ll have to read them later.

It's kind of scary to speculate, but maybe a lot of Youtube grifters would be perfectly OK with Superman Red and even an aged up Jon if he had sided with that version?

[Ra-El]

This was a great read! I have to say the ending we got was better, imo, but Morrison would have done the other one work for sure.

We really need a Superman and the Authority ongoing, unfortunately we can't get Morrison for now, but PKJ probably can handle one more montly book, maybe even help him telling his story, Action could remain a more Superman centered book while SaTA could be more focused on the team. Maybe we could even get Janín on art!
Yes, I know it won't happen.

[Quinlan58]

Nevermind how this would have affected continuity or potential fallout on later Superman (Clark or Jon) stories. The idea of Superman Red vs Superman Blue as a symbolic depiction of Superman's history as a Right-wing symbol vs Superman's history as a Left-wing symbol is so great that I'd rather this whole mini had been out-of-continuity if they didn't want it to intrude on PKJ's story.

Anyway, neat ideas on OMAC, none of it showed on the page so ultimately irrelevant I guess. Morrison's idea of Kandor as representing the ruins of Kennedy's America is interesting but it didn't really come across to me as that while reading the comic, so whatever. Gotta disagree that Janin's depiction of Kandor looked like it could have supported an entire mini-civilization.

Jon Kent and Damian Wayne being analogues for Apollo and Midnighter sounds like some great shipping bait.

And yes, SuperLad, Clark ending the whole comic by going "oh, we're not going to change this world, we're going to go fight aliens, let the kids solve the problems" after all the talk in this miniseries was absolutely ridiculous... and hilarious, so I can't complain.

Overall, these series of annotations have been an interesting look at the context of how this series came to be and to What May Have Been.

[Superlad93]

Jon Kent and Damian Wayne being analogues for Apollo and Midnighter sounds like some great shipping bait.

Once you take into account that Jon is all but confirmed to have been dating Jenny Q in this version, and that it would've been put together by an ever increasingly more cartoonish hyper right-wing Superman, the real joke because that Clark Red replaced the gay Superman and Batman with two straight (Jon wasn't bi at the time of this pitches creation), white, privileged legacies that got there via nepotism.

It becomes a particularly biting joke that plays to the parody nature Morrison was going for while being very upfront and being almost uncomfortably stark about the reality of what Jon and Damian inherently represent.

It also makes the idea that Clark Red being the one to then potentially suggest to Jon that he "build a wall" (if you catch my drift) around his city yet another jab. And also a really, really fascinating hole for Jon to eventually have to dig himself out of and restore his personal and family image.

Storytelling wise, it's how you effectively "reset" things for Jon as a new Superman to then rebuild off rather than him getting by on his legacy alone. I even suspect Clark's image would've taken an even bigger hit because it would've been a civil war where both side were him.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

The Superman Left and Right would've been interesting to explore for a bit.

[Superlad93]

The Superman Left and Right would've been interesting to explore for a bit.

It would've. But I'm sure some people read that and assume that it would've been the new normal forever.

Morrison seems to strongly imply that it was made to last only a year.

DiDio would've gotten his full on right-wing authoritarian Superman, and his new Superman shrinking and bottling the city without it harming the characters long term. And on top of that it would've left characters with character arcs to explore and a new status quo from the fallout to deal with.