Superman Superstars will take over Action Comics in 2024

[Mantis-Ray]

I'm hoping he doesn't get too cynical about this.

He can be pretty destroy heavy at his worst.

[Last Son of Krypton]

ACTION COMICS #1062

Written by JASON AARON

Art and cover by JOHN TIMMS

Variant covers by JORGE JIMENEZ and RICCARDO FEDERICI

1:25 variant cover by BABS TARR

1:50 variant cover by PAOLO RIVERA

Black History Month variant cover by NIKOLAS DRAPER-IVEY

$4.99 US | 40 pages | Variant $5.99 US (card stock)

ON SALE 2/13/24

The shocking second chapter of the Worst Bizarro Story Ever! Jason Aaron’s first time writing Superman sees the Man of Steel trapped in a world gone mad, a Metropolis transformed into the City of Bizarro! While Superman struggles to save the lives of people who despise him, he’s also battling the most powerful Bizarro of all…the one inside his own mind!

[Vordan]

Federici Bizarro man, such a cool cover. Need him to draw all of the Rogues at some point.

[Frontier]

So Superman is still involved in the Bizarro story.

[Kuwagaton]

I love Rivera even if I don't understand the bad spelling

[Vordan]

I love Rivera even if I don't understand the bad spelling

Bizarros don’t use the letter “I” hence why they refer to themselves as “me”

[Kuwagaton]

Whoa, is that just something I've never considered? Although there's an 'i' there in "Planit."

[Vordan]

I wonder if we’re going to get a wedding issue next year given how Steelworks ends:



Is the reason they don’t have an immediate permanent replacement for PKJ because they’re trying to find someone who will tackle Action as a team book? A lot of stuff featuring the Superfamily keeps saying Action is where you can continue to follow the Family as a team. Now we have Lana back to being Superwoman too.

[Frontier]

I do wonder if we're reaching peak Superfamily capacity to the point that they'll be scaling back for the next creative era.

[garazza]

I do wonder if we're reaching peak Superfamily capacity to the point that they'll be scaling back for the next creative era.

They're already kind of doing that. Aged up Jon has been appearing less and less in group shots if not being outright excluded.

I mean has anything actually been meaningfully done with the Superfam? All that's really happened is "Look at how many characters we can shove onto the page!"

It's worse than what they do with the Batfamily because at least they have years of publication history to justify being together on the same page.

[Vordan]

I do wonder if we're reaching peak Superfamily capacity to the point that they'll be scaling back for the next creative era.

Yes we’ve definitely maxed out with the current roster. I believe Waid was on record for saying that behind the scenes he was pushing DC to focus on Superman (Clark) instead of his son/clone/kids, and he succeeded in his efforts starting with Dawn of DC, can’t find where I read that now. That said Taylor is making another push for Val-Zod apparently, but that might just be with the Titans or as an Elseworld mini. It’s getting to the point of ridiculousness if we’re going to have four Supermen (Clark, Jon, Kenan, and Val) running around Earth 0 because Taylor wants to “validate” his OC. I can’t see it lasting long, especially with Legacy on the way featuring Clark, the S&L show ending next year with its take on Superman’s sons, and the Val-Zod MAX show likely quietly cancelled. A lot of this stuff was probably in the works back when it looked like Clark was losing his pillar status to newcomers on the live action side, and now that they’re pivoting back to him they’ll likely start winding down and refocusing on Clark after 2024.

Also as much as I’ve loved his run, it’s abundantly clear that PKJ like Taylor wants his OCs to stick around too . The Super-Twins are cool and I enjoy them more than I do Jon these days, they’re a good spiritual replacement for Chris Kent, but the odds of them sticking around long term are slim to none. Unless PKJ is getting JL like I suspect, then he might have the clout to keep them around just like Taylor is currently using his clout to push Val. I dunno, it’s all up in the air right now. Clearly there’s not a huge mandate to keep the focus on the Family in Action. Aaron doesn’t seem to be using them anyway, but they will be part of both Williamson and Waid’s arcs. It’s likely going to come down to who the fourth Superstar writer is and who will have the book going into 2025.

Also it’s trendy across the DC line to focus on the “Families” right now. Green Arrow is an “Arrowfamily” book, Spurrier is using the Flash family for his run, Batman just had the big Gotham War with the entire Batfamily getting involved, you have Amazons Attack for the Wonders and the Wonder Girls will show up in King’s WW soon, etc. Come next year that might change.

They're already kind of doing that. Aged up Jon has been appearing less and less in group shots if not being outright excluded.

He’s still being used in Action and I’ve posted art of him showing up in the likes of Waid/Henry Action arc. It seems like Taylor is probably going to have him join the Titans so he can keep him under his control which sucks.

It's worse than what they do with the Batfamily because at least they have years of publication history to justify being together on the same page.

You have to start somewhere and you do that by getting them all in the room together and interacting. Now that they’ve actually been on a team together you can justify them hanging out more in the future. Or are we mandating this tedious process where you have to “earn” the right for a bunch of characters to work together? Because that’s stupid, they all wear the S-shield, it’s not a problem for them to work together.

[Last Son of Krypton]

I never got the feeling lately DC is following a particular trend from live action outside some very bland surface level synergy.

When DC was planning 5G to age-up and replacing all DC heroes with legacies for 5 years before rebooting again, on the live action side the focus was to make multiverse related plans to get the audience used to the idea of multiple cinematic Batmen and Supermen (among the others) co-existing with new and old versions coming and go (unless we should view the 2025's Crisis teased in DCC #12 tied to WB's planned Crisis film, these comics vs live action concepts ain't matching at all). This is was still in the card when 5G was scrapped for Infinite Frontier and DC started to emphasize the heroes' families more.

It's a very comic-books thing. The concept of multiple people being Batman or Superman in the same Earth is still extraneous to live action, as executives only care about Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent in these roles (or multiple versions of Clark and Bruce). That was how the Val-Zod show came into existence as MBJ was asked to play a racebend Clark, he pitched to do Val or Calvin instead, and WB told him or Clark or burst. The rejected pitch was picked by HBO Max because, to be honest, that's were all WB/DC' scraps were going.

They always had Clark Kent-centered projects across different media being in development while comics were wasting time to make Jon the "future"/focus of the franchise.

I think Gunn can be the one interested to bring into live action the extended families of heroes.

[Vordan]

Gunn is interested in that for the Batfamily, although that is in part forced on him because he has to differentiate it from what Reeves is doing, but it ties into what I’ve said about the families being too large. They’re going right to Damian as Robin for DCU Batman and I doubt that DCU Tim, if he exists, is going to get much attention. I don’t see any of the characters created post Damian getting any play whatsoever. For the Superfamily we’re getting Kara but instead of using John Henry Irons, Gunn went with Mr. Terrific. Seems like a long shot for Kon to get used, and he’s the third most popular Super, never mind Kenan, Nat, the Super-Twins, etc. Of the GLs it looks like Hal and John are going to be the main guys, maybe Guy will get some shine, but Kyle, Jess, Simon, and Jo are not all going to get equal play.

Jon is the only wild card because depending on how Legacy ends, I could see him showing up - if Gunn becomes a father himself. Then I could see him using Jon to make a film about Superman grappling with fatherhood the way Legacy seems to be Gunn grappling with the death of his father and his own rise to the top. But the 5G/FS crew as a whole forget it. They’re as much a dead end as the YJ crew has become, and I still think that Kingdom Come is going to be the Endgame for the DCU as a whole if Gunn can get to that ending.

But all that assumes Gunn even manages to get to his plans beyond Legacy, and that’s a ways off. Right now the sales for DC across the board are soft and I don’t think this push for multiple shared mantles is going to last. Marvel backed away from it and their push for the legacies in the MCU is tanking. Come end of 2025 I expect the focus on the families to end.

[The Frog Bros]

I do wonder if we're reaching peak Superfamily capacity to the point that they'll be scaling back for the next creative era.

Good question. There’s certainly more than enough characters to be farmed off to their own books (though prob unlikely). So if they do get scaled back, do we think they’ll provide a reason story-wise (i.e., they’re simply written off), or will they just gradually disappear without much of a mention?

No Dr. Manhattan explanations this time, please.

[garazza]

You have to start somewhere and you do that by getting them all in the room together and interacting. Now that they’ve actually been on a team together you can justify them hanging out more in the future. Or are we mandating this tedious process where you have to “earn” the right for a bunch of characters to work together? Because that’s stupid, they all wear the S-shield, it’s not a problem for them to work together.

Unironically, yes.

You don't start with a conclusion and retroactively try to justify its existence. Not to mix metaphors, but that's putting the cart before the horse or starting with the payoff with no prior setup. It's stupid to have had them kept apart for so long only to all of a sudden turn around and have almost a dozen characters fighting for page space. It's a quality vs. quantity argument imo.

Imagine if instead of starting with an extensive cast like they did only to now be slowly shift singular focus back to Superman, you start focused on the typical small Superman supporting cast and over the course of a series of shorter story arcs, you slowly integrate more and more characters one at a time and give them meaningful interactions in those arcs, so that by the time you get to a big crossover event, like say House of Brainiac (or whatever it's called), it's a massive payoff to see all these characters on the page at the same time. And then that can neatly dovetail into the status quo they wanted all along. It wouldn't be like it does now where it feels like there's all this wasted potential because they didn't try to do too much at once.

Show me Superman reconnecting with Steel for the very first time instead of immediately showing them back together and collaborating. Show me Clark reconnecting with Kara and asking her to stick around more often instead of having her not be there one second and then there the next. Show me Clark not wanting to keep Conner and Kenan at arms length anymore and makes the effort to bring them closer to him and inadvertently having them strike up the relationship you want them to have instead of starting right off the bat them being the best of buds like they have all this history together that never happened.

These all would be short one to two issue arcs all with different A-plots and recurring B-plots focusing on Superman's relationship with these characters having quality interactions (because they're not fighting with other character to have a moment to shine) and maybe a background C-plot that would lead into the crossover event. These small but quality arcs would be slowly accumulated into a significant quantity that it's not out of place to all of a sudden have all these characters on the same page together. Because actual work and effort was put into reaching the desired end goal of having an ensemble Superfamily. Setup. Payoff.

You say tedious, I say that's how comic book storytelling in an interconnect universe works.