Superman in Doomsday Clock

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Every month, even with the delays this book continues to blow me away. This was amazing. spoilers:

I loved the recontextualizing of the metaverse (kinda borrows from Alan Moore's Supreme in a way) and Manhattan realizing he's become the villain in this universe was amazing.

end of spoilers How long until #11?

Honestly, this issue was so good and there is so much to think about here, I don't mind the months long wait this time.

[Yoda]

Honestly, this issue was so good and there is so much to think about here, I don't mind the months long wait this time.

Yeah. Any frustration I have at the delays melts away when I read each new issue and am blown away by how good it has become. I have a few very long flights in the next month and I'm looking forward to rereading this in its entirety. Probably going to have to take some notes all the way through!

[Sacred Knight]

Unfortunately I see Johns didn't pay attention to Morrison's run. He and the New 52 didn't eliminate the Legion from Clark's life. Those early adventures weren't detailed, but they were very much there and very much had a history. It was a key plot point. He either didn't research that fact or ignored it to make his "distant" point.

Also not impressed with the Superman being the center of the multiverse thing. Why? Because Johns has gone here before. The same thing was alluded to in Infinite Crisis. And it never went anywhere. It was lip service with no pay off of any kind. And I suspect this will be the same deal. And its a double-edged sword in that I also ask myself if I would even want a payoff in the hypothetical that Johns was still in the drivers seat going forward. And seeing as I feel he has fundamental misunderstandings of the character in his own right, my answer would probably be no.

[Superlad93]

Damn. From top to bottom, what a great issue. Johns at his finest doing what he's best at: taking decades of history and texture, and slicing it down into a digestible format for mass consumption and understanding. The payoff or the Carver Colman crushing in the best way, and the ending realization put into context and filtered through Jon's "vision adjusting" legitimately made me smile.

I'm usually pretty iffy on Johns, and I know he and this book have a stigma sounding it, but f#%k it dude, so far Doomsday Clock has been pound-for-pound one of the most well told and loving summations of the DC and Superman as an icon and idea. I actually can't say enough good about this issue. With a few lines I may even be at a point where I couldn't give a damn about this being a continuation of Watchmen.

[superduperman]

Unfortunately I see Johns didn't pay attention to Morrison's run. He and the New 52 didn't eliminate the Legion from Clark's life. Those early adventures weren't detailed, but they were very much there and very much had a history. It was a key plot point. He either didn't research that fact or ignored it to make his "distant" point.

Also not impressed with the Superman being the center of the multiverse thing. Why? Because Johns has gone here before. The same thing was alluded to in Infinite Crisis. And it never went anywhere. It was lip service with no pay off of any kind. And I suspect this will be the same deal. And its a double-edged sword in that I also ask myself if I would even want a payoff in the hypothetical that Johns was still in the drivers seat going forward. And seeing as I feel he has fundamental misunderstandings of the character in his own right, my answer would probably be no.

My guess is all of this is just an excuse to explain away all the reboots and retcons. That IS the payoff. "This is why he gets a new origin every five years. Manhattan is messing with him." This puts them in an odd position: They can't reboot him again anytime soon without coming up with some other explanation for how it happened. Once Manhattan is out of the picture, any future reboots become problematic. I think that whatever his current origin is, whether it be SO or something new, will probably stick around for a while. They're sick of doing the Homer with the toaster thing.

[Superlad93]

"This is why he gets a new origin every five years. Manhattan is messing with him.".

As far as I understand, that's not what the book said. Jon messed with Superman once, and that resulted in the New 52. Every other time Jon was observing how strange and inconsistent Superman's (and by extension the DCU's) time line was before he acted.

Edit: just confirmed that Jon himself even says "forces such as the Anti-Monitor and Extant have been responsible for the shifts in in Superman's timeline."

[Yoda]

Unfortunately I see Johns didn't pay attention to Morrison's run. He and the New 52 didn't eliminate the Legion from Clark's life. Those early adventures weren't detailed, but they were very much there and very much had a history. It was a key plot point. He either didn't research that fact or ignored it to make his "distant" point.

Also not impressed with the Superman being the center of the multiverse thing. Why? Because Johns has gone here before. The same thing was alluded to in Infinite Crisis. And it never went anywhere. It was lip service with no pay off of any kind. And I suspect this will be the same deal. And its a double-edged sword in that I also ask myself if I would even want a payoff in the hypothetical that Johns was still in the drivers seat going forward. And seeing as I feel he has fundamental misunderstandings of the character in his own right, my answer would probably be no.

The Legion he removed was the Silver Age Legion, which was the last time arguably they played any really significant role in his development or ongoing narrative. After that they were regulated to a footnote. Do they even appear in the New 52 after Morrison's arc? So in that sense I think it does work as intended.

[Dispenser Of Truth]

This was the dopiest, most lowest-common-denominator fanboy-pandering crap in the world, and baby, you BETTER believe I am that lowest-common denominator.

Two spoiler notes:

spoilers:

Is Carver Coleman supposed to be a George Reeves stand-in at this point? Actor in the Superman-centric issue with a bad relationship with his mother who was found dead under mysterious circumstances in the 1950s?

end of spoilers

spoilers:

So my over-the-top "here's how Superman is the center of the DC reboots/is the same guy through them even though the 'old' versions of him stick around" continuity headcanon from over four years ago was basically just validated? (Just posting the URL since if I link directly it shows up through the spoiler tag. https://community.cbr.com/showthread...ally-Rambling)

end of spoilers

[Superlad93]

The Legion he removed was the Silver Age Legion, which was the last time arguably they played any really significant role in his development or ongoing narrative. After that they were regulated to a footnote. Do they even appear in the New 52 after Morrison's arc? So in that sense I think it does work as intended.

They don't. Well, at least not the Legion that Morrison used. They were actually erased from the timeline beating Vyn, and it can be argued that it was never made clear if Clark meets their non-Universo-timeline-affected counterparts. Thus one could also maybe argue that an added secret tragedy in Morrison's Action Comics is that Clark has to give up ever meeting some of the best friends he's ever made in his life similar to how he gives up the chance to get his parents back so he can save the Mars mission crew.

[Sacred Knight]

The Legion he removed was the Silver Age Legion, which was the last time arguably they played any really significant role in his development or ongoing narrative. After that they were regulated to a footnote. Do they even appear in the New 52 after Morrison's arc? So in that sense I think it does work as intended.

That's rather semantics though. The point the narrative was making that he didn't have the Legion at all, then lost his parents. That's untrue to the continuity that was developed. They weren't used a lot, but Morrison concretely established them as a presence in his life as a boy and that they were his friends. So he still screwed up. It was only the post-Crisis continuity before IC that removed the Legion wholesale from Clark's boyhood.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing losing his parents again didn't affect that version of Superman. It certainly did and was intended to. But this issue also tries to paint a picture that he was alone as a boy too with little friends with the incorrect Legion mention, and that's just a falsehood. We may not have been privy to a lot of detail, unfortunately, but it was firmly established nonetheless.

That criticism aside, these revelations make me think it likely Jonathan and Martha are coming back. At the very least Martha.

[Yoda]

They don't. Well, at least not the Legion that Morrison used. They were actually erased from the timeline beating Vyn, and it can be argued that it was never made clear if Clark meets their non-Universo-timeline-affected counterparts. Thus one could also maybe argue that an added secret tragedy in Morrison's Action Comics is that Clark has to give up ever meeting some of the best friends he's ever made in his life similar to how he gives up the chance to get his parents back so he can save the Mars mission crew.

Ok. So it actually works better than I thought. Vyn is basically a stand in for Manhattan. Taking away the Kent's and ultimately the Legion. You don't even need to get into the thematic stuff I mentioned, though I like my interpretation of it regardless, haha.

[Sacred Knight]

The entire concept was not erased by Vyn. Independent of the adult Legion changes the storyline featured, the run confirms the classic original three visiting Clark as a boy, just like the classic set up, before any time shenanigans. That's not even mentioning his close relationship with Lana. What he lost were his parents at 18. That's completely valid to point out. But Johns should have left it at that because the rest isn't true.

[Superlad93]

Ok. So it actually works better than I thought. Vyn is basically a stand in for Manhattan. Taking away the Kent's and ultimately the Legion. You don't even need to get into the thematic stuff I mentioned, though I like my interpretation of it regardless, haha.

Yes, more or less. But like I said, it's more so something that can be argued because the run leaves it rather ambiguous if the Legion remain part of Clark's past.

The entire concept was not erased by Vyn. Independent of the adult Legion changes the storyline featured, the run confirms the classic original three visiting Clark as a boy, just like the classic set up, before any time shenanigans.

But time shenanigans are time shenanigans. The adult Legion that we meet in issue 6 and 7 of the original run of Morrison's Action Comics are the ones that Clark meets as a boy as confirmed by issue 7's flashback. They go back in time to stop the domino effect that leads to Universo taking over the world in 3030. Using a time bubble and one of Vyn's aspects they hurl themselves at Superdoomsday and not only die, but erase their timeline by saving Superman's life and preventing Universo's take over as a result of the domino effect. We never pick back up with that future or see mention of Clark with the Legion after that point.

Thus it can be argued that in saving the future form Universo and saving their friend's life, they also made it so they never meet Superman at all. Basically allows Morrison's whole run to be rather self contained, and I imagine that's why he got the greenlight for the Legion because that particular version was only for that story. But as I said, it's only a possible argument.

[Sacred Knight]

I don't think it confirms that at all. As I recall Vyn's first strike at Superman's timeline was the death of Jonathan and Martha when he was 18. Clark first meets the original three Legionnaires when he's 13. That's before the imp stepped in. That the changed adult Legion dying wouldn't affect anything independent of the changes, and adult Imra still having the same memory as Clark there also makes sense, as again it was before any known forks in the road.

If Johns was aware of this and is just playing an ambiguity card so be it, but to me he's altering what was once established in a prior continuity. The burden of proof would lie with coming to said other conclusion that it was erased.

[Superlad93]

But they're from Clark's future even when they're all 13. They'd still be from the future that was headed towards Universo, thus influenced by Vyn and Superman's final death. By definition they changed Clark's future, thus their past, and possibly their past with Clark.