Whose life is it anyway? : The Nuperman/Superdad conundrum

[K. Jones]

I haven't jumped into theorizing much lately but I was reading some of the good quantum time duplicate stuff and just thinking about Star Trek and Doctor Who. And Futurama. In Futurama: Bender's Big Score, there's a time-displaced older quantum duplicate of Fry and we learn that though the time bubble hi jinx can create a perfect temporal duplicate, no strings, paradox-free, the duplicates always die because universal order is maintained by like a "doom force". There can be only one!

In Star Trek: TNG's "Yesterday's Enterprise" we get an actual time flashpoint, and the whole crew of the Enterprise gets New Fifty-Twoed into more assertive, militaristic, less ideal versions of themselves. But Guinan, like Wally, because of her connection to cosmic witchy forces, senses and can remember the changes. Everyone is restored when the flashpoint paradox anomaly is closed. Except ... Tasha Yar, who was spared from the temporal reset/patching by having volunteered to go back in time with the characters from the past who turned up. This is kind of similar to how Superdad and Lois skip the time-reset, though it's not a good direct parallel because Tasha Yar-Prime had been dead for a while. She's Alt-Tasha. But she's still the same Tasha. Actually her comparisons go more directly to like, Ted Kord and other characters who had been dead in the Prime-Timeline but who are back now thanks to Flashpoint.

Superman, jumping to the next time-travel pop culture thing, had more of a Doctor Who thing going; where a big timely-wimey conundrum happened and two Superman met each other. When two Doctors meet, it's the same guy meeting a younger version of himself, and for Superman it's the same thing, just with an alt-timeline story factored in on top of it. Although alt-timelines can have dramatic changes (see: some other New 52 "reinventions" of characters), the New 52 was more a "slightly modified timeline", at least as far as a guy like Superman goes.

Anyway, to top it off, weird predicament we're in or not, I think it's at least apropos that Superman and The Flashes are THE quintessential characters to handle this DC event-sized timey-wimey story. They're the best time-travel heroes in the DCU. (SOrry Booster and Rip)

[Flash Gordon]

Neither of them are Superman. Johns gets rid of Superman entirely.

Boom, drops mic.

[superduperman]

It sounds like we are all over the place about why the New 52 exists and who is responsible for what. First it's the Siegel lawsuit. Then it's management. If I had to guess, I would say that New 52 was at least partially handed down from on high from WB itself. In which case, Johns' opinions would be irrelevant. I have no doubt that the SM/WW relationship would have been broken up just to keep in line with the movies if nothing else. Probably would have gotten rid of the body armor too. From the moment MOS came out we knew the books would be changed at least a little bit to make them fall in line. I don't think we'll ever know who's idea was what. I also suspect the return of pre-Flashpoint Superman was because Nuperman just never caught on with fans quite the way they wanted. In fact, given the way Rebirth is panning out, I would say the entire New 52 never caught on quite the way they wanted and the whole thing will be lampshaded in the near future. With almost all elements of the pre-Flashpoint universe being restored. They say there's a new JSA is in the works and it wouldn't surprise me if even things like Year One get retconned back into canon.

[manofsteel1979]

It sounds like we are all over the place about why the New 52 exists and who is responsible for what. First it's the Siegel lawsuit. Then it's management. If I had to guess, I would say that New 52 was at least partially handed down from on high from WB itself. In which case, Johns' opinions would be irrelevant. I have no doubt that the SM/WW relationship would have been broken up just to keep in line with the movies if nothing else. Probably would have gotten rid of the body armor too. From the moment MOS came out we knew the books would be changed at least a little bit to make them fall in line. I don't think we'll ever know who's idea was what. I also suspect the return of pre-Flashpoint Superman was because Nuperman just never caught on with fans quite the way they wanted. In fact, given the way Rebirth is panning out, I would say the entire New 52 never caught on quite the way they wanted and the whole thing will be lampshaded in the near future. With almost all elements of the pre-Flashpoint universe being restored. They say there's a new JSA is in the works and it wouldn't surprise me if even things like Year One get retconned back into canon.

I'd say we are seeing a rolling reboot to the pre 2011 timeline ultimately. Although,i have a feeling that a few things that happened in the last few years won't make it Into the" new" timeline. For instance,characters like Ted kord, the dibney's etc may be back for good as if their deaths never occurred. The New Krypton shenanigans are likely gone as well.

What's occurring is similar to Heroes Reborn/Heroes Return at Marvel. The early 90s saw Marvel screwing up the Avengers and Fantastic Four franchises to the point they did a reboot in a pocket universe. High sales at first,but over that year it just didn't take,so they brought the characters back to the main Marvel universe,convienently returned back to the forms they were prior to when they lost their way. In other words,i think the DCU post Rebirth will look more like it's 2005 pre identity/Infinite/final Crisis self and less like the version we had in summer 2011.

Superman may be the exception,because I'm not sure if even DC knows what they want the Superman franchise to be now.they certainty don't want the New 52,but everything else is up in the air,IMO.

[Lokimaru]

Man you'd thunk New 52 Superman was a violent psychopath with how people who like Superdad talk about him on YouTube. They always say he's depressed or angry. No wonder not many people are in his corner with that kind of PR. Geez ya show you have a backbone and they treat you like a monster. Maybe the kid IS a way to get over cause Dad's gotta be tough.

[MeloDet]

This is an interesting question, especially when viewed on multiple levels. On the surface this is a fairly straightforward situation; as Sacred said, at the moment it is N52 Superman's life though it looks like they are going to eventually reveal that it was Superdad's all along. The more interesting question however, is whether or not they can really change the answer. Sure they can retcon things to fit their current plans, but will they really be able to change people's perception? Cause ad much as Rebirth is regaining Post-Crisis elements it doesn't feel like it's actually Post-Crisis at the moment. Some people are going to be more willing to accept the changes than others, and it's not just a matter of which character you are a fan of. We had 5 years of N52 Superman; we saw him grow change and live his life on this earth. Will some comic book explanation really be enough to make people feel like Superdad truly belongs? That those 5 years of stories with Nuperman were stories starting a fake/interloper? It won't for me, but I am a Nuperman fan so I'm inclined towards that side of things. Still I can't help but feeling like they won't really be able to set this as sidly as they like.

[Chris24601]

It sounds like we are all over the place about why the New 52 exists and who is responsible for what. First it's the Siegel lawsuit. Then it's management.

As with most things, I suspect New52 was the result of a combination of factors. I think primarily it was an edict from above to increase sales and a near line-wide reboot (i.e. 52 new #1's which always sell well) was seen as the best way to do that.

Once that decision was reached, decisions had to be made about the degree to which things were going to be re-booted. Batman and Green Lantern were big sellers so if you read those you'd barely even notice at first beyond a few costume changes and some new titles. Others were soft-booted with a new start but some of the history retained (ex. Barbara was still shot and spent time in a wheelchair but with surgery and therapy was able to recover the use of her legs). Others were hard-booted and started from scratch.

With regard to the Siegel lawsuit being involved in the New52 changes, I suspect it was more a matter of "Well, since we're making changes anyway why don't we..." than the lawsuit itself being the root cause.

As far as Superdad goes, I think the decision was based on what would fix Superman the fastest and with the most attention grabbed (i.e. draw new and/or lapsed readers) after the pileup of problems behind the scenes derailing Nuperman. Repairing the damage done to the Superman line over the last couple years... rebuilding the trust with Lois Lane and putting them back into a romantic relationship, re-establishing the secret identity and so forth using Nuperman and NuLois would take A LOT of structural work for very little payoff in terms of getting eyeballs to check out the books.

If the books were selling strongly they could have probably taken that longer route to get things back to where Rebirth seems to be headed. You could probably milk some big emotional payoffs off of Clark and Lois remembering their relationship with each other as Rebirth continued to unwind and having Lois and Jimmy help Clark re-establish his secret identity (Lois taking a hit with a "I was working with Superman and Clark to help expose XYZ villain... I'm sorry that meant lying to my readership").

But nothing in that process is going to grab eyeballs after the structural failures of the New52 years (plot-lines derailed by crossovers, revolving door creative teams, et cetera). Its just the hard work of storytelling and it takes time for that to garner appreciation and increased readership and the sales on Pre-Rebirth Superman were nowhere near where DC wanted them. What they needed was a stunt to grab eyeballs in addition to pulling things back to the status quo.

Nuperman dying and being replaced by Superdad was that stunt. It feels radical even if everyone rationally knows the end result is going to be a return to the status quo in some fashion. The fact that it also restored the marriage and added a son to the mix was just gravy... a chance to really showcase Superman in a way he's not been seen before.