Am I the only one?

[13th Superman]

I still think the most elegant solution is to reveal that Nuperman and his Lois are the real Superman and Lois....of a parallel universe. When the universe got rejiggered with during the finale of FLASHPOINT,Superman and Lois were missing on Tellos. So,someone...the Time Trapper,Dominus,Mr Oz...dr. Manhattan.... whomever... plucked Nuperman and Nu Lois from their native timeline (a rebooted pre 1986 Earth 2)and plugged him them into place,altering the New 52 verse around them to mirror their memories in the other timeline. Bring Nuperman and Nu Lois back,have them help Superman and the other heroes save the universe at the end of this whole Rebirth mega story,they discover the truth about themselves and after some goodbyes and farewells to the heroes of Earth 0,they return to their native timeline...which is essentially the New 52 universe...the REAL Earth 2.


Bam. Done. Superdad and family stay on the main earth,Nuperman returns to his real timeline where he can continue his life where he left off. I'd pretty much keep everything up to Truth canon for him and pretend everything after that didn't happen. Go and beg Greg Pak and Kuder to come back and write his new monthly book... SUPERMAN: MAN OF TOMORROW and turn them the f--k loose and let them do what they want with him. Go nuts. have him date Wonder Woman or Batman I don't care.Perhaps have an annual Crossover special for the two Supermen to cross earths and team up.

There. Fixed it DC. Nuperman fans get their Supes back, we all get another kick ass Superman title to read with room to explore a separate universe to experiment. You can cut me a check anytime now.

This is something I can get behind. Imagine a sandbox like that! If only you were working there.

[The World]

Well, you certainly aren't the only one who prefers New 52 Superman. Just like there are plenty of people who prefer Superdad. Different strokes and all that. Me personally, I'll take Superdad over Nuperman any day of the week. Not because of nostalgia. Actually, quite the reverse. For all the talk of "potential" about Nuperman, he really was a big time regression. Made young and single again. Retelling his and his villains origins again. Isolating him to that lonely alien. All regression. Superdad is the natural continuation of the Superman story. He gets married, starts a family, builds relationships at work and among the superhero community. Superdad's life actually changes. He's not a reporter anymore, he's become a farmer like his father. He's going through a very human struggle of trying to do right by his family while being pulled in other directions. He's the only version of Superman to actually progress. Him and Nightwing seem to be the only characters who have been allowed to grow and change. I personally like that.

Now, that's not to say that I didn't like Nuperman. Actually I did. If they stuck with him as the main Superman I would have kept reading. I like the guy. The problem for me was that he started out strong with the Morrison origin and then quickly fizzled out. He was losing supporting cast members like crazy. He was torn down and never rebuilt. I'm not just talking about Truth. Gradually, throughout the whole line, he became more isolated. That made him kind of boring for me. The Pak stuff was good but the rest was kind of a mess. Seems editorial had a hand in that. I know a lot of people feel that Superdad isn't the "real" Superman because of the circumstances of his arrival. I actually felt that way about Nuperman. He exists because the timeline was screwed up. So to me, he always felt like the result of a cosmic mishap. It never quite rang true with me.

Now, one unexpected problem that kind of annoys me is that I'm a big collector of Superman things. My office at work is covered in Superman statues and the like. I have a few really nice Nuperman statues that decorate my office from The Man of Steel line and the Icon statue. They're beautifully sculpted and awesome to look at. If it turns out that he wasn't Superman, I'm going to be pretty ticked off that my statues aren't really Superman. By the way, if any of you are collectors of this sort of stuff, I very highly recommend the Rags Morales, Kenneth Rocafort, Cully Hamner and The DC Icons statues. All very affordable and highly detailed.

To sum up my thoughts, I think Nuperman got a raw deal. I don't particularly care for how we got Superdad. Though of the two, I prefer Superdad. So I'll keep reading and enjoying the books. I actually haven't enjoyed the Superbooks this much in a long time. Though I do really sympathize with Nuperman fans. Especially the ones who got on board with Superman because of the New 52 (which was the entire point). Though I will say, this tends to happen to us Superman fans. Get on-board with the current direction and have everything reset on you. Welcome to the club...

All these things you just described were brought about by inhuman, supernatural means.

[Ascended]

When Morrison's Action Comics launched, I felt as if Superman was finally truly coming back! A man of the people! Fighting corruption! Cleaning up the streets! Beating up wife-beaters! Sticking it to the god-damn MAN!

Yeah... those were the days! = )

I agree with this so much! Best Superman since COIE, though the Triangle Era did have its good points (really loved that time though it didnt honor Superman's established characterization).

Superdad is okay. I dont read Action but Tomasi has been decent.

I preferred Nuperman to Superdad, at least when he was written right (looking at you, Truth!) but Superdad does the job well enough.

The real saving grace for Superdad, at least in my book, is that he barely resembles the pre-52 version.

There's a heavy post-Crisis influence of course, what with the focus on family connections and the implication that this Superman is far more comfortable with his human traits than what you usually saw pre-Crisis. But at the same time there's a sense of "otherness" to him, due largely to the time refugee angle, that helps keep him from becoming *too* much of a common man. And he has a sense of confidence and a quiet, self-assured swagger to him that I found lacking in a majority of post-Crisis history.

Superdad is a little too close to "Clark is who I am..." for my tastes, but he also has enough Bronze Age flavor to offset that. He feels like he has a foot in both worlds; the mundane regular existence of the average man with a family and bills and all that, as well as the superhuman world where a trip to an island inhabited by dinosaurs is barely enough to get a raised eyebrow out of him.

The idea of Superman having a child is something I thought they should have done at least ten-fifteen years ago, and if he's a little too at ease with his "new" role as a father, it at least is ensuring that Clark doesnt devolve back into a hot mess of a person who cant tie his own shoes without a pep talk from the Kents or Lois.

Indeed, Superdad feels like a completely new version of Superman, with ties to both pre- and post-Crisis characterizations. All we're missing, in my opinion, is the strong social crusader undertones and the super-scientist hobbies. Though Jon's science fair experiment did slake that thirst a little bit (yeah, that was Jon and not Clark, but its close enough for a fan starving for quality Superman stories where Superman acts like Superman and not an idiot farmboy).

[Zodlike]

it ain't the first time the half-blooded son has surpassed the father.

Hmm.

10char

[Flash Gordon]

I don't care for any of it, but he'd be fine as an alternate reality Superman.

I like Lois and Clark married, but I'm not big on the mainstream book having a child. Jon is kind of worst case scenario in terms of child characters too, which doesn't help. He's just awful.

[Sacred Knight]

I like Jon in Superman just fine, but he's been pretty routinely intolerable in Action. From what I saw of the preview he seemed to be halfway decent for the first time in the last issue. But of course that issue was garbage anyway for a whole other reason. I wanted them to have a child soon after they got married, but I wanted it in real time, to see Superman as a father with a baby, not jump to him training a 10 year old Superboy. So basically the stuff I wanted to see most out of the concept was completely jumped over. So I basically see the whole endeavor as a day late and a dollar short.

[magha_regulus]

Your not the only one. I've dropped the books for the first time ever. I just can't get around it. I'll check out some things here and there and keep up on events through the boards and on youtube but I just can't get into it all the way. I will be picking up the Multiversity followup issues as thats something I like.

I really don't like the way they shoehorned him in. I might like it better if they didn't execute it the way they did. If this was the Earth 1 Superman (which would be logical given how Convergence ended) and they hadn't gone in the aborted direction they did with the main books while they were deciding what to do, I might like it better.

As is, Superdad is always going to be a temporal anomaly Superman and not the real one to me. He's just another one of the many alternate Supermen throughout the multiverse and hypertime. Since that's the case, my favorite Superman out of those still currently living would be President Superman of Earth 23. I'd much rather read books about him than the temporal anomaly Superman and Lois we have now. Right now I feel like there is no main universe Superman, only anomalies. I really don't like what they're doing with Jon either. We'll see what happens though.

[SuperCrab]

I still think the most elegant solution is to reveal that Nuperman and his Lois are the real Superman and Lois....of a parallel universe. When the universe got rejiggered with during the finale of FLASHPOINT,Superman and Lois were missing on Tellos. So,someone...the Time Trapper,Dominus,Mr Oz...dr. Manhattan.... whomever... plucked Nuperman and Nu Lois from their native timeline (a rebooted pre 1986 Earth 2)and plugged him them into place,altering the New 52 verse around them to mirror their memories in the other timeline. Bring Nuperman and Nu Lois back,have them help Superman and the other heroes save the universe at the end of this whole Rebirth mega story,they discover the truth about themselves and after some goodbyes and farewells to the heroes of Earth 0,they return to their native timeline...which is essentially the New 52 universe...the REAL Earth 2.


Bam. Done. Superdad and family stay on the main earth,Nuperman returns to his real timeline where he can continue his life where he left off. I'd pretty much keep everything up to Truth canon for him and pretend everything after that didn't happen. Go and beg Greg Pak and Kuder to come back and write his new monthly book... SUPERMAN: MAN OF TOMORROW and turn them the f--k loose and let them do what they want with him. Go nuts. have him date Wonder Woman or Batman I don't care.Perhaps have an annual Crossover special for the two Supermen to cross earths and team up.

There. Fixed it DC. Nuperman fans get their Supes back, we all get another kick ass Superman title to read with room to explore a separate universe to experiment.

Works for me.

[Sacred Knight]

My idea is much in line with manofsteel's. I posted a thought in another thread in the general DC forum, I'll just copy and paste it:

Yes. I'm in support of an entire smaller line of continuity set on another Earth, for fans of New 52 concepts no longer wanted in the main verse anymore, or any more experimental, outside the status quo ideas. I've been a strong proponent for hoping that the main universe in the wake of Convergence/Rebirth will be revealed to be an altered original Earth-One or Earth-Two, and that the other Earth still exists as well and will be revealed, and DC returns to the pre-Crisis idea of essentially two main Earths of focus. Earth-0 being the primary and larger foucs, and the other Earth, rebranded Earth-1, being the equivilant of an Ultimate line. I even have the logo thought of. Instead of the DC logo as it is now, remove the circle, which would represent 0, and replace it with a 1 in the background. The line would then be referred to as DC-1.

[unholyrevenger72]

At this point I've seen more than a few people refer to Evan's Cap as the Superman of this generation despite being from a different company. If there ever does come a time where we get a true blue Superman successor things like lineage or power will be irrelevant to the concept.

MCU Cap has more in common with Batman than Supes.

[superduperman]

I wonder if the people at DC read any of these threads.

[W8IN4KAL-EL]

[ Fixed it DC. Nuperman fans get their Supes back, we all get another kick ass Superman title to read with room to explore a separate universe to experiment. You can cut me a check anytime now.[/QUOTE]

lol..love it...wish they would listen

[Robotman]

I don't "hate" Superdad but I definitely prefer New 52 Superman's personality. Superdad is a more stoic conservative version of the character. He's the "big blue Boy Scout" version of Superman. I can actually see Superdad taking orders from Reagan to eliminate The Dark Knight. He's that type of Superman.
Everyone has their favorite version of the character so it's impossible to satisfy all the fans. Personally I loved how Morrison brought Superman back to his Golden Age social crusader roots. The champion of the people who stands up for the little guy. For the foreseeable future it seems like most of the Superman stories are going to be about him protecting Jon. Which is what a good father does but it's not something I'm looking forward to reading every month. So far I'm not a fan of Jon. He just has that Anakin Skywalker annoying little kid quality at times. Especially when Jurgens writes him.

One thing I love about Superdad is the costume. One of my favorite designs. While I loved New 52 Superman's personality I hated the costume.

[Agent Z]

I agree. I find new52 Superman vastly superior to SuperDad as a character. Also, I find child superheroes like his son annoying as a generality, and I particularly find this kid's insertion into the Superman line so heavily to be damaging to my personal view of the Superman brand (Among other things, that Superman seems willing to put his son in danger as a sidekick is contrary to his traditional view that children should be kept out of danger. Also, he seems to want to protect his family more than his city or adopted homeworld, which is understandable, but not the selfless heroic Superman of the past.).

It was clearly that somebody wanted this new 10-year old superhero character to be as popular and as well known as possible, so they made him basically co-equal with the current Superman in Superman's own titles, rather than just creating a new book for people who wanted to follow the adventures of a 10-year old superhero, because the new book wouldn't have sort of a semi-captive audience of Superman fans buying it and might have failed on it's own. That doesn't seem right to me.

There's also the basic fact that the two Supermen could have co-existed. They could have made the SuperDad and Son thing an alternate universe monthly, or if they felt they needed those two characters to be the stars of the main Superman titles in the main universe, given new52 Superman some other role or put him off in another universe where he'd have had his own monthly and fans could follow his continuing adventures. With all the comic books they put out on a monthly basis, it seems like new52 Superman as defender of a different city or "returned" to "his original" universe would have sold enough to justify them making the comic- I'd have subscribed instantly, obviously.

The lack of regard from editors and writers towards new52 Superman and his fans also reflects very poorly on them. I mean, some tried a little to reach out, but mostly they've just trashed the character to play up to SuperDad fans, who's previous favorite Superman (Pre-Crisis Superman- who may or may not be SuperDad, hasn't been made 100% clear yet) the editors and writers also trashed when debuting new52 Superman. Why can't they try to appeal to both groups simultaneously, give them at least one monthly featuring their favorite guy, and say both Supermen are great? Why the need to trash and diminish one and only have one at a time?

Superman's never had an issue with kid heroes before. Also, no he does not want to protect his family more than the city.

[manduck37]

All these things you just described were brought about by inhuman, supernatural means.

Yes, they were. That doesn't change the idea that he's still going through some human emotions and experiences. Like Morrison said, Superman takes normal human life and turns it up to eleven. The circumstances are irrelevant. The core of the experience is the important part.