What went wrong with the New Krypton Arc?

[Doctor Know]

Pretty much like the title says.

I was deeply invested in the New Krypton Arc. I followed all the books, even the Supergirl titles which I don't normally read.

From
The Coming of Atlas
Brainiac
New Krypton
SupermanL Mon-El
Supergirl
Codename: Patriot
Nightwing and Flamebird
Last Stand of New Krypton

and finally
War of the Supermen


And the result of my investment in this 2 year long arc was a BIG DUMB ENDING and a reset of the status quo.


After bringing back so many Silver and Bronze age themes and characters; that were woven in to a clever story. How could things go so wrong right as the series prepared to cross the finish line? Was it a change of writers and thereby a change of vision?

Geoff Johns had been threading Superman's Silver Age mythos back in to his Post-COIE canon prior to Infinite Crisis. Johns left Superman around 2009/2010 to work on GL and the big Blackest Night + Brightest Day storyline. James Robinson picked up the threads and was put in charge of Superman New Krypton vol 3-4, Last Stand of New Krypton, War of the Supermen and Mon-El's story. Robinson was also writing the JLA at the time.

Or was it behind the scenes editorial mandates that sabotaged Superman's New Krypton arc?

[Kid A]

1. People lost interest in Superman and Action books when Superman left them, leading to a decline in sales. Kind of a shame because while Rucka's Action with Nightwing/Flamebird was mediocre and clearly a last-minute revamp, Robinson's Mon-El stuff was great and overlooked.

2. Departure of Geoff Johns probably also caused people to lose interest

3. Decompression - WoNK played out nicely in 12 issues, but the other S-books just looked like they were buying time waiting.

4. While the idea of unshrinking Kandor and establishing New Krypton was an interesting idea, it's hard to really keep a city of Kryptonians in mainstream canon. I'm down with having other Kryptonians like Supergirl, Zod, etc. and I don't think Superman has to literally be the last son of Krypton, but this was arguably taking things too far.

5. And finally, JMS coming aboard because of falling sales, causing editorial to press the abort button on the whole thing.

So yeah. I remember I was following all the Superman books during the New Krypton saga and was loving every minute of it. Even though in hindsight some of the writing was flawed (ie. General Lane was kind of an awful villain), the concept was good and WoNK in particular was underrated, and having Superman take the role of Commander El and work among his people was a great way to cast new light on Kal-El's leadership skills and ability to inspire. Zod's portrayal was also nuanced and interesting before he quickly reverts back into Terrence Stamp in time for War of the Supermen.

I think the horrible finale to this saga is what dug this pre-FP Superman to the ground, and it was hard to imagine things could get even worse before JMS came on to do Grounded. The idea that Lane and Luthor committed genocide on the last of Superman's people and this was going to just be a status quo reset and business as usual was just jarring to me, and for that alone I'm so glad they rebooted.

[Doctor Know]

^ Everything you said QFT.

Luthor and Gen Lane killing some 80,000 Kryptonians and it all being glossed over by Superman #700 and #701 (Grounded), unbelievable to me. Supes doesn't seek justice for his race or protest anything that mischracterizes his people. Despite Clark's job of being a reporter/journalism and exposing the truth and corruption of what Luthor and Lane were doing.

Grounded and Reign of Doomsday only further drove the Superman franchise into the ground. Thank god New 52 rebooted the Superman mythos. Although I am intrigued by how Convergence will handle Post-COIE Supes in this final tale.

[Myskin]

I have no official confirmation of this, but according to some interviews which came out during the New Krypton saga and personal deduction based on some of Rucka's declarations on the old ComicBloc forum, I think that at some point the initial plans were changed.

Here's what I think. The original plan was basically having New Krypton and the following War of Supermen saga as the culmination of years of build-up. New Krypton was already in the writers' mind after Infinite Crisis, and it was initially conceived by Johns and Busiek (even if Busiek's plans involved some elements which were changed after his departure, like the presence of Kristin Wells and a different version of Brainiac). The aim was a complete relaunch of the Superman universe, including all of his most prominent villains, Metropolis, Kryptonians, and the cosmic elements of the DCU. The climax of New Krypton should have been an intergalactic war which involved not only Earth and Krypton, but all the most prominent alien races of the DCU (the same involved in World of New Krypton: Thanagarians, Saturnians, etc.). War of Supermen (or whatever they want to call it) was supposed to be much longer. But, at a certian point, they dropped the ball. After Johns' departure and the declining sale, they decided to cut everything and WoS became a one-month, hurried event. I wouldn't exclude that even JMS' Grounded was a last-minute solution just to fill the void, which would explain why Grounded was written without a real script in mind.

Certainly, the story has we had it wasn't even remotely satisfactory, but somehow I regret it: it was the last time they attempted a real worldbuilding concerning the Super-universe.

[Doctor Know]

I have no official confirmation of this, but according to some interviews which came out during the New Krypton saga and personal deduction based on some of Rucka's declarations on the old ComicBloc forum, I think that at some point the initial plans were changed.

Here's what I think. The original plan was basically having New Krypton and the following War of Supermen saga as the culmination of years of build-up. New Krypton was already in the writers' mind after Infinite Crisis, and it was initially conceived by Johns and Busiek (even if Busiek's plans involved some elements which were changed after his departure, like the presence of Kristin Wells and a different version of Brainiac). The aim was a complete relaunch of the Superman universe, including all of his most prominent villains, Metropolis, Kryptonians, and the cosmic elements of the DCU. The climax of New Krypton should have been an intergalactic war which involved not only Earth and Krypton, but all the most prominent alien races of the DCU (the same involved in World of New Krypton: Thanagarians, Saturnians, etc.). War of Supermen (or whatever they want to call it) was supposed to be much longer. But, at a certian point, they dropped the ball. After Johns' departure and the declining sale, they decided to cut everything and WoS became a one-month, hurried event. I wouldn't exclude that even JMS' Grounded was a last-minute solution just to fill the void, which would explain why Grounded was written without a real script in mind.

Certainly, the story has we had it wasn't even remotely satisfactory, but somehow I regret it: it was the last time they attempted a real worldbuilding concerning the Super-universe.

Thanks for your post. I wouldn't put it past TPTB. Everything you said, sounds plausible.

I was watching a review by Linkara earlier, and he said that the New Krypton arc is supposed to be interpreted as a "what-if" scenario. I found no confirmation of his claim, however it would explain why DC subsequently distanced themselves from the entire arc by the time Grounded started and the subsequent New 52 reboot. Which brought back all of Superman's villains and restored Kandor to a peaceful city in a bottle.

[Tayswift]

I have no official confirmation of this, but according to some interviews which came out during the New Krypton saga and personal deduction based on some of Rucka's declarations on the old ComicBloc forum, I think that at some point the initial plans were changed.

Here's what I think. The original plan was basically having New Krypton and the following War of Supermen saga as the culmination of years of build-up. New Krypton was already in the writers' mind after Infinite Crisis, and it was initially conceived by Johns and Busiek (even if Busiek's plans involved some elements which were changed after his departure, like the presence of Kristin Wells and a different version of Brainiac). The aim was a complete relaunch of the Superman universe, including all of his most prominent villains, Metropolis, Kryptonians, and the cosmic elements of the DCU. The climax of New Krypton should have been an intergalactic war which involved not only Earth and Krypton, but all the most prominent alien races of the DCU (the same involved in World of New Krypton: Thanagarians, Saturnians, etc.). War of Supermen (or whatever they want to call it) was supposed to be much longer. But, at a certian point, they dropped the ball. After Johns' departure and the declining sale, they decided to cut everything and WoS became a one-month, hurried event. I wouldn't exclude that even JMS' Grounded was a last-minute solution just to fill the void, which would explain why Grounded was written without a real script in mind.

Certainly, the story has we had it wasn't even remotely satisfactory, but somehow I regret it: it was the last time they attempted a real worldbuilding concerning the Super-universe.

blackest night and brightest day were around the same time, if War of supermen was really suppossed to be that big, maybe DC just wanted to have one big wide event with blackest night and brightest day.
I think that on the end of day DC just choose the easy way out of a problem with thousands of superpowered kryptonians. and that hurt the superman franchise, except supergirl that was pretty good at the time

[manofsteel1979]

I think MySkin and Kid A hit the nail on the head. Great ideas....ultimately botched execution that led to declining sales and instead of fixing the main issue, which was taking Superman out of SUPERMAN and ACTION COMICS and putting second string characters as the stars of those titles and then sticking to the initial plan and story outline for the ending, DC panicked and at some point someone up the chain made the call to hit the reset/abort button, and Matt Idelson pretty much wrote the last part of the story for that purpose. There were lots of rumors that there was circulating regarding friction between editorial and Robinson, and given the problems that later occurred between the same editorial team and George Perez over his scripts being completely rewritten without his input, it's logical to assume the same happened with NK.

Edit: I've often wondered if they had kept Superman as the star of Action and Superman and had his World of New Krypton arc feature as the lead story in those books, with the Mon-El and Nightwing/Flamebird arcs either as subplots or back up features, would NK sold better, and thus we would have gotten the original ending as was intended?

[Stanlos]

^ Everything you said QFT.

Luthor and Gen Lane killing some 80,000 Kryptonians and it all being glossed over by Superman #700 and #701 (Grounded), unbelievable to me. Supes doesn't seek justice for his race or protest anything that mischracterizes his people. Despite Clark's job of being a reporter/journalism and exposing the truth and corruption of what Luthor and Lane were doing.

Grounded and Reign of Doomsday only further drove the Superman franchise into the ground. Thank god New 52 rebooted the Superman mythos. Although I am intrigued by how Convergence will handle Post-COIE Supes in this final tale.

Say WHAT?!!! Might you expound on that for me??? How in Briareos' bile did they manage that?

[manofsteel1979]

Say WHAT?!!! Might you expound on that for me??? How in Briareos' bile did they manage that?

It's been awhile since I've read WAR OF THE SUPERMEN,but If I rememeber correctly, Gen. Lane has the villain ReActron "enhanced" with Gold Kryptonite and infiltrate New Krypton. He's taken into custody, and when he is where he needs to be he detonates like a suicide nuke and destroys the whole planet killing most of the Kryptonians. Later, Luthor manages to temporarily turn Earth's Sun Red, robbing the powers of the Surviving Kryptonians in space (the remanants of Zod's army), and they suffocate.

[Stanlos]

It's been awhile since I've read WAR OF THE SUPERMEN,but If I rememeber correctly, Gen. Lane has the villain ReActron "enhanced" with Gold Kryptonite and infiltrate New Krypton. He's taken into custody, and when he is where he needs to be he detonates like a suicide nuke and destroys the whole planet killing most of the Kryptonians. Later, Luthor manages to temporarily turn Earth's Sun Red, robbing the powers of the Surviving Kryptonians in space (the remanants of Zod's army), and they suffocate.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. I am glad to have this information; thank you, ManofSteel! I am a little disappointed that Superman doesn't solve this on his own (here again I am seeing similarities between the issues plaguing Wonder Woman and those troubling Superman as well).

I guess I should be happy that the Amazons remain depowered and completely ineffectual. If they were all their Hercules level selves then I imagine they too would be similarly wiped out.

[Rod G]

^ Everything you said QFT.

Luthor and Gen Lane killing some 80,000 Kryptonians and it all being glossed over by Superman #700 and #701 (Grounded), unbelievable to me. Supes doesn't seek justice for his race or protest anything that mischracterizes his people. Despite Clark's job of being a reporter/journalism and exposing the truth and corruption of what Luthor and Lane were doing.

Grounded and Reign of Doomsday only further drove the Superman franchise into the ground. Thank god New 52 rebooted the Superman mythos. Although I am intrigued by how Convergence will handle Post-COIE Supes in this final tale.

You said it, Doc.

[kingaliencracker]

It's hard to pinpoint exactly where it fell apart. There were a number of contributing factors, obviously, such as Geoff Johns leaving right as the story took off, removing Superman from the main titles and replacing him with lesser-known characters, the length of the story, and interconnecting all the titles together by way of bringing the triangles back.

However, I stand by what I said then and what I'll say now - it just wasn't an interesting enough of a story to engage a broader audience. Krypton and Kryptonians are interesting mostly to JUST Superman fans, so I think centering a story around Kandor and a population of Kryptonians didn't have the appeal to say, Batman or Green Lantern fans, that I think DC assumed it would have.

[Stanlos]

Pretty much like the title says.

I was deeply invested in the New Krypton Arc. I followed all the books, even the Supergirl titles which I don't normally read.

From
The Coming of Atlas
Brainiac
New Krypton
SupermanL Mon-El
Supergirl
Codename: Patriot
Nightwing and Flamebird
Last Stand of New Krypton

and finally
War of the Supermen


And the result of my investment in this 2 year long arc was a BIG DUMB ENDING and a reset of the status quo.


After bringing back so many Silver and Bronze age themes and characters; that were woven in to a clever story. How could things go so wrong right as the series prepared to cross the finish line? Was it a change of writers and thereby a change of vision?

Geoff Johns had been threading Superman's Silver Age mythos back in to his Post-COIE canon prior to Infinite Crisis. Johns left Superman around 2009/2010 to work on GL and the big Blackest Night + Brightest Day storyline. James Robinson picked up the threads and was put in charge of Superman New Krypton vol 3-4, Last Stand of New Krypton, War of the Supermen and Mon-El's story. Robinson was also writing the JLA at the time.

Or was it behind the scenes editorial mandates that sabotaged Superman's New Krypton arc?

I didn't buy those primarily because there were SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MANY PARTS. I looked around in this board and it seemed that success among all those parts was spotty at best. I may grab them at a convention or some such.