How would YOU merge the Supermen?

[JBatmanFan05]

Yeah, I hear you on that. Despite all of DC's incompetence with a continuity-driven Superman over the years, DC can atleast continue to give fans some great stories in the out-of-continuity realm. Which is interesting. Ask a Superman reader what his/hers top 10 favorite Superman stories have been over the past 10-20 years, and odds are excluding the elseworlds-like Superman tales would be a tall order.

I think there are perhaps some fans like me that hope there might come more Elseworlds-like Superman tales like All-Star Superman that actually feel more main and classic and continuity than actual continuity Superman. That's how hopeless it feels at times as far as definitively fixing Superman and his continuity once and for all.

[stephens2177]

Kon-El of Lor-Zod would have been a better fit for all this, tbh. Or, my personal choice, a little time traveling Cir-El!

Kon needs to graduate to the 18-20 year old hero,BUT cir-el would be great to see again.....just done better.

[Superlad93]

I disagree this was about Clois though. I don't think DC has any more affinity for them being married than they did when they nixed the marriage. In other words, they don't think much of it. But it was necessary to bring about Jon. EVERYTHING about this new direction revolves around him.

But then one of the big parts in Rebirth's mission statement is relationships/bonds. If they just wanted Jon for Superman then a time displaced son would have done the trick. That way Superman could've formed a relationship with anyone they wanted. But they picked Lois because she is there definition of a relationship/bond with Superman. The actual words "true love" is used to describe all of the relationships being made post Rebirth.

Jon is the "legacy" part of their mission statement.

[Sacred Knight]

I think its just for appearances sake, really. They tried the time-displaced son route and it failed for a variety of reasons. Not to say it couldn't have worked, but the dumb way they tried it failed so they went a different way for Rebirth. The totality of which they turned the mythos upside down a testament to how badly they wanted the son concept. I don't think the marriage will be utilized to any greater degree than they utilized it before Flashpoint. Its just kinda there. The buzz words of the Rebirth mission statement mean zero to me, to be blunt. I've seen their cries of change before, I'm not falling for it again. The main focus will be on Jon and Clark's relationship. I'd bet my bottom dollar on it. Lois will get her moments but they'll be few and far between, just like before. People will point to Jon and say that will create a different dynamic for Clark and Lois. And it very well could. I just don't think it will. The focus will be too much on the father/son relationship to really give the same effort tot he wife/husband or son/mother dynamics. That'll be more backburner. This all based on past history, how they wrote their relationship before. And again I don't think it can be stressed enough that the same people are running the asylum so I find it folly to expect much to be different.

[Superlad93]

I think its just for appearances sake, really. They tried the time-displaced son route and it failed for a variety of reasons. Not to say it couldn't have worked, but the dumb way they tried it failed so they went a different way for Rebirth.

Do you mean the evil one that had literally no interaction with Superman? That's not really trying it. To the day he died Nuperman didn't even know Jon Lane Kent was a thing. They could've very easily tried it again in the form of a reformed and redeemed Jon Lane. Or they could've made a time displaced/ alternate reality kid with Wonder Woman. But they picked Lois and Clark.

The focus will be too much on the father/son relationship

I don't feel like they've made this a secret of any kind. Jurgens even compares Jon and Clark to Clark and Jonathan. But I don't think that completely excludes Lois. In fact there's some pretty ripe story potential do be had dealing with her POV of this. Plus Tomasi's book seems to be where some family dynamics will be played out. He said that sometimes it'll be just Clark other times it'll be Clark and Jon and other times it'll be the whole Kent family.

If you don't believe this then that's fine. We have only to wait and see.

[Sacred Knight]

I'm just done giving these guys the benefit of the doubt. If it was brand new faces, that would be a completely different story. No way would I be automatically dismissive and suspicious of their own words, as they'd have done nothing yet to lose credibility. But the usual suspects? I think its safe to count on their usual whims in the meantime.

[yolo_dude]

Someone mentioned NU52 memories going to Superdad.

[Ascended]

That they're futzing around with these unresolved plots in all the Rebirth books says to me that the actual order of things is not settled yet. So even though Rebirth looks like it's supposed to be the beginning of something new, it's probably the beginning of the end and it's not yet there at an actual beginning. So in another year, we can expect to see a whole 'nother launching of the beginning of a new direction out of the ashes of what was done.

I agree. Although Rebirth has ended up having a bigger effect than I assumed it would (Wally, Superdad, Diana's non-origin, etc) this is still largely just a Marvel-style re-branding; throwing a fresh coat of paint on a car that doesnt run right. Once the hype dies down and people realize the quality isn't any different, sales will drop again until the next big thing, and the cycle will repeat just like it has for Marvel since 2012. Until fans get wise anyway, and the day that happens both DC and Marvel are gonna be in some deep sh*t and Image will be dancing to the bank.

That's not how every pre-FP fan looks at it, once pre-FP Supes wasn't main Superman, he was effectively killed as character to me and for many. Some people think in-story "happy endings" mean more than they do. So IMHO it's a lot like 2011 again: one main Superman replaced by another.

And I don't support this multiversal Superman game of substitution. DC is only going to make things worse IMHO. They need one merged Superman with an cohesive enough inclusive past.

I agree. That Superman got a short happy ending scene with a wink and a wave didnt change the fact that it was essentially killing the character. I think it was a mercy killing, because holy crap I dont think even Hawkman was ever as messed up as Superman was at that point, but it was still killing post-Crisis for everything except Batman and the Lanterns (and post-Crisis still died in Gotham, it just took Zero Year to do it.)

I hope that this is different from 2011 in that DC has had the time to actually plan something and come up with a cohesive format and "new" history for the DCU....but given the people involved I have my doubts. This entire thing still feels like a overcompensating knee-jerk reaction to 2015's sales and little more.

I dont think Superdad and this whole mess will fix anything. I think it'll make things worse. I dont think a merger is the answer either though. Post-Crisis was a huge mess by the end, and for more franchises than just Superman. And the New52 has more than enough cracks in it and, in Superman's case, is mostly just enticing potential that was rarely, if ever, capitalized on.

What DC and Superman especially need is new management, and I might even go so far as to say that a completely fresh start, ignoring all previous versions and eras, might be called for too....though at this point Im not sure if that would work either.

[suemorphplus209]

I agree. Although Rebirth has ended up having a bigger effect than I assumed it would (Wally, Superdad, Diana's non-origin, etc) this is still largely just a Marvel-style re-branding; throwing a fresh coat of paint on a car that doesnt run right. Once the hype dies down and people realize the quality isn't any different, sales will drop again until the next big thing, and the cycle will repeat just like it has for Marvel since 2012. Until fans get wise anyway, and the day that happens both DC and Marvel are gonna be in some deep sh*t and Image will be dancing to the bank.



I agree. That Superman got a short happy ending scene with a wink and a wave didnt change the fact that it was essentially killing the character. I think it was a mercy killing, because holy crap I dont think even Hawkman was ever as messed up as Superman was at that point, but it was still killing post-Crisis for everything except Batman and the Lanterns (and post-Crisis still died in Gotham, it just took Zero Year to do it.)

I hope that this is different from 2011 in that DC has had the time to actually plan something and come up with a cohesive format and "new" history for the DCU....but given the people involved I have my doubts. This entire thing still feels like a overcompensating knee-jerk reaction to 2015's sales and little more.

I dont think Superdad and this whole mess will fix anything. I think it'll make things worse. I dont think a merger is the answer either though. Post-Crisis was a huge mess by the end, and for more franchises than just Superman. And the New52 has more than enough cracks in it and, in Superman's case, is mostly just enticing potential that was rarely, if ever, capitalized on.

What DC and Superman especially need is new management, and I might even go so far as to say that a completely fresh start, ignoring all previous versions and eras, might be called for too....though at this point Im not sure if that would work either.

I know the feeling, which is when you feel that someone has been acting like a politician, that is, they talk a lot when shit hits the fan, and after all the ringers you have gone through, you don't feel like taking them at their word. I am waiting back patiently myself. I don't mean to sound bitter, but back in the 2000s I stopped collecting actively, just going for issues or TPBs after the fact. It just felt that for years DC and Marvel were doing a mediocre to poor job where I wanted them to be doing a good one. To me, it felt like they were doing mediocre to awful on Superman for quite a while. Right now, I am calmly and hesitantly going to get their stuff after the fact. Not because I hate it, but because I have a reputation with them that is stuck in my head and hard to break up.

It would be possible to essentially reset a comic book universe, but for DC, for example, you would have to go farther than just Superman. To be fair, Batman and Green Lantern would essentially have to be reset back as well. You would also have to have a whole lot of planning and editorial constraints on the growth. I mean, Ultimate Marvel was appealing to me as a bunch of alternate versions of the Marvel characters that got their start in the 21st Century, but it grew into pretty much every bit the complicated universe that the main Marvel one was pretty quickly as they loaded all the ultimate versions of hero and villain characters in a fraction of the time it was built up in the main universe. I liked it, and was disappointed to see this alternate Marvel universe go, but I would bet for a lot of people, they were left wondering "what's the difference?"

[Ascended]

It would be possible to essentially reset a comic book universe, but for DC, for example, you would have to go farther than just Superman. To be fair, Batman and Green Lantern would essentially have to be reset back as well. You would also have to have a whole lot of planning and editorial constraints on the growth. I mean, Ultimate Marvel was appealing to me as a bunch of alternate versions of the Marvel characters that got their start in the 21st Century, but it grew into pretty much every bit the complicated universe that the main Marvel one was pretty quickly as they loaded all the ultimate versions of hero and villain characters in a fraction of the time it was built up in the main universe. I liked it, and was disappointed to see this alternate Marvel universe go, but I would bet for a lot of people, they were left wondering "what's the difference?"

I dont know if it would be possible for DC (or Marvel) to completely reset. I dont know if the fans would let them.

DC can come up with new material for their properties, but just because they say "Its a brand new day and we're starting at year Zero" doesnt mean fans are going to forget.

You can say "Okay, Batman has one Robin, has only ever had one Robin, and that's a young man named Rich Grayson!" and fans are going to ask "When will Jason and Tim and Damien show up?" and they'll bitch and moan and drop books until DC is forced to bring those characters back in. But they'll be forced to do it in a way that doesnt fit the characters' history because they'll be confined by a new timeline.

This is why the New52 had a five year gap, so characters like that could be fit in and DC wouldn't lose anything they didn't want to lose. And it didnt work. Characters who got re-introduced typically weren't accepted very well (Wally West) and characters like Tim Drake were twisted up so much they weren't the same characters anymore. And here we are, just five years later, and DC is trying like hell to bring all that back into the fold, even though most of those characters weren't selling by 2011 in the first place.

I think the only way a complete reset might work, and this is a huge, ridiculous and impossible *might* is if they pulled a Silver Age/Barry Allen deal and created brand new characters with brand new supporting casts, villains, and status quo's, and only kept the name and basic powersets. Make Flash a young comic writer trying to break into the industry who has kinetic powers and lives in Detriot, named....I dunno, Jimmy Morrison. No more Jay. No more Barry or Wally or Bart or Max or Johnny or Jesse. A whole new mythos. It worked in the 50's because superheroes had pretty much been a dead genre for a decade. And the characters didn't sell merchandise then like they do now either (with a few obvious exceptions like Supes and Bats). I dont think its at all possible, but it might be the only way a complete reset might work. But again, it'd be impossible; there's too much money wrapped up in these characters and the merchandise they sell for another Silver Age style restart.

[SuperCrab]

I dont know if it would be possible for DC (or Marvel) to completely reset. I dont know if the fans would let them.

DC can come up with new material for their properties, but just because they say "Its a brand new day and we're starting at year Zero" doesnt mean fans are going to forget.

You can say "Okay, Batman has one Robin, has only ever had one Robin, and that's a young man named Rich Grayson!" and fans are going to ask "When will Jason and Tim and Damien show up?"

Personally, my first question would be "When will Dick Grayson show up, and how is he related to this Rich Grayson guy?".

[Adekis]

You would also have to have a whole lot of planning and editorial constraints on the growth. I mean, Ultimate Marvel was appealing to me as a bunch of alternate versions of the Marvel characters that got their start in the 21st Century, but it grew into pretty much every bit the complicated universe that the main Marvel one was pretty quickly as they loaded all the ultimate versions of hero and villain characters in a fraction of the time it was built up in the main universe.

I think that's correct, and it would be as much of a problem with a hard reboot of DC as it was with Ultimate Marvel. It's one thing to reboot Superman, most of his supporting cast can be met fairly quickly. The post-Flashpoint Superman, even though he wasn't a hard reboot, did meet the whole gang within the first year or two of moving to Metropolis, and you could condense those meetings into a few weeks without rushing it. But Batman? His supporting cast in a hard reboot is going to be Alfred. Building up his cast is going to happen in real-time at the absolute fastest, and that's way too slow and I wouldn't be interested in reading about a Batman without a supporting cast (I already watched The Batman, why do it twice?) or a Bat-Family without comic book time.

Got to be honest, I think hard reboots are a pretty bad idea on the whole.

How do I think you ought to do it?

Consider Atomic Robo. Robo has a set timeline, beginning to end of his life. New events can happen throughout his life, in the very large gaps that Clevinger leaves for the specific purpose of filling them in. Because the dates and times aren't precise, you don't need to worry about actually running out of time in the hero's life, you can just say "this event happened in World War Two. This one happened in the 1960s," and so forth.

I'd give Superman a timeline like that. No new stories can contradict previous stories on the timeline, but also, large swaths of the timeline are blank, to leave room for new developments. I think that Morrison's Action run is a good blueprint- it jumps around in Superman's life, but leaves a lot of room open. We see Superman just after he's gone public, we see him go into space and get his space tights, we see him defeat the Collector and Vyndktvx- but if editorial wants to tell a story about Superman in blue jeans and a t-shirt with less powers, we don't need to take away his costume and powers! We just set the next story arc during that first period of his career which is analogous to the Golden Age. If editorial wants to show that Superman is the Optimus Prime of heroes, King Badass of the Universe, set it later in his life and characterize Kal like it's the Bronze Age. Want him to date Lori Lemaris? College. Lee Lambert? A few years after he moved to Metropolis. Cat Grant? Shortly after he started working for the Planet. Want him to be a Dad? Well look at that, about twelve years after he got his space tights, he married Lois Lane, and a year and a half after that, they managed to use Kryptonian Tech to conceive Jon. The pre and post Rebirth Superman can be the same man at different points in his timeline. And don't take anything in the timeline more seriously than All-Star would have. He's an action hero, it's not soap opera.

I'll admit though- this model becomes increasingly difficult if you start trying to fit multiple titles into the structure. Superman is one thing, Batman might be one thing too, but by the time you're mapping in the whole DCU it probably starts getting messy.

But screw it, the thread's about Superman.

[Patrick Gerard]

If you want heresy, here's my elevator pitch for one "ultimate" Robin:

Drake Grayson is the only son of John and Mary Grayson, performers with Haly Cirque. He programs the engines in the acrobats' motorcycles.

After a horrific accident that kills John and Mary and injures stuntman Waylon Jones and disfigures the ringmaster Basil Karlo (stage name Nostromo), Drake goes on the run tracking his parents' killer, despite the police insisting it was an accident.

Drake steals the Batmobile by reprogramming it with Batman in hot pursuit... and they discover that Mary Grayson is alive! It turns out she's the immortal daughter of Ra's al Ghul, Talia, and that Mary was one of many aliases. A paternity test reveals that Drake is Bruce's as we see that a 17 year old Bruce, while traveling the world, had a relationship with "Mary Grayson" while learning sleight of hand from the magician Zatara at the circus.

Drake Grayson is Bruce's biological son and the son of Talia. Haly's Cirque was a League of Assassins front and they've used weapons-grade venom and genetic splicing to convert Karlo and Jones into assassins, with the aid of Professor Milo. It turns out the accident was staged by Carmine Falcone, an Court of Owls member who was trying to kill Talia and cripple the League. Drake's best friend from the circus, Jason Todd, is revealed as Tony Zucco, sent undercover by his uncle to ensure the accident. Batman knew something was up because there were no birth records for anyone named "Jason Todd" anywhere in the United States in the last 40 years.

There's basically no way to bring anybody else back from that.

[Ascended]

Personally, my first question would be "When will Dick Grayson show up, and how is he related to this Rich Grayson guy?".

Ha! You kid, but that actually sorta proves my point. You can reboot with a fresh start but as long as fans remember what came before you'll never actually get a fresh start at all.

If you want heresy, here's my elevator pitch for one "ultimate" Robin:

That's either the most brilliant "Ultimate-ization" I have seen or you've broken like, eight cardinal comic book sins are going to comic book hell.

[stephens2177]

Howabout they just destroy the multiverse,destroy hypertime,destroy alternate earths,all gone,and forever,and just have 1 earth,with everyone showing up on that earth,and EVERYTHING happened,nothing written before now is off the table.

And no that is NOT like the Crisis.yes its got a clutter earth,but thats because if you dont show up on planet,you dont show up ever,but its not changing to a new version,its the ONLY version.

Or just keep doing reboots from time to time,i only mind when they completely change a character i like and have followed for years,like kon.