Superman Now!
By Adam Murdough
Blatant cross-promotion aside, the intent here seems to be both to celebrate the synergistic appeal of Superman--to acknowledge the great and memorable stories that have been told about him in all media--and to create a welcoming experience of the familiar. Just as Silver Age elements of the Superman legend are being reintroduced to accommodate veteran Superman readers, the inclusion of trappings inspired by well-known non-comics interpretations of Superman may help to provide relatively new readers with a Superman reading experience that is more in line with their expectations.
Playing off the lessons that the Superman of today learned from the Superman of Earth-2 in Infinite Crisis, the Superman creative teams have been at pains since then to ground Superman’s character in dependability, stability, and capability, rather than angst and self-doubt. The creative teams are determined to show us a strong Superman, one that is always there for those who need him--but they seem equally determined to put Superman’s mettle to the test. In "Back in Action," Superman must cope with widespread mistrust among the people he protects, many of whom doubt that he really is Superman (and not an impostor, like the four ersatz Supermen that emerged after Superman’s "death" in 1992), and he must prevent their doubt from infecting him as he faces the Auctioneer. Then, in the epic "Camelot Falls," classic DC Comics sorcerer Arion the Immortal challenges Superman’s rigid heroic ideals by contending that his constantly "saving the day" is actually exposing humanity to eventual disaster. For once, Superman is faced with a situation in which the key issue is not so much whether he can save the world, as whether he should, ever again. Even flush with post-Infinite Crisis confidence as he is, the implications of this story arc are nearly enough to stagger the Man of Steel.
However, Superman faces the greatest test of his maturity and strength of character when he shoulders the ultimate responsibility: fatherhood. In the "Last Son" story, Clark Kent and Lois Lane adopt a young boy--and not just any boy, but a superpowered Kryptonian boy, the biological offspring of Superman’s mortal enemy General Zod. The unique challenges, both physical and emotional, of raising Chris Kent (named by the writers in honor of the late Christopher Reeve) are allowing the character of Superman to move and grow in directions never before attempted in his seventy-year history. The adoption has also served to strengthen and deepen the marital bond between Lois and Clark, which is one element of post-Crisis continuity that has not been abandoned in favor of a return to a Silver Age status quo. Neither the marriage nor the adoption is universally popular with Superman fans, of course, some of whom argue that both conditions compromise the sense of freedom that Superman’s powers and double identity are meant to convey, and that a wife and son only make him seem "older," not better.
If there is one major drawback of the past two years’ worth of Superman comics that should be addressed here, it is the chronic lateness that has plagued both of the mainstream monthly titles. Prolonged gaps and fill-in issues in the middle of major Superman storylines (e.g., "Last Son," "Camelot Falls," "The Third Kryptonian") are not only irritating to regular readers, but they have made it more difficult for the Superman titles to establish a consistent, identifiable "voice" or "feel" for themselves. On the bright side, the self-contained fill-in issues, mostly written by Kurt Busiek, are reminiscent of single-issue stories of the 1970s, which contributes to the retro ambience that is such an important part of the Superman titles nowadays; plus, they give Busiek an opportunity to apply the intimate, character-centric storytelling techniques made famous by his Astro City series to some of Superman’s friends and foes, such as Jimmy Olsen and the Prankster.
The "Other" Superman Titles
So far this discussion has been confined mostly to "inter-Crisis" events in the two mainstream monthly Superman titles, Superman and Action Comics. I would be remiss if I did not also acknowledge the Superman monthlies that take place outside of conventional present-day DC continuity. Superman Confidential is an anthology series, specializing in "retellings" of key incidents from different points in Superman’s history, such as his first encounter with kryptonite or the origin of Jimmy Olsen’s signal watch. Superman/Batman, at one point a high-profile mainstream ongoing, lost much of its prestige and topicality when its original superstar creative team of Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness left after issue #25. Since then it has basically been relegated to anthology status, telling stories of Superman in action with his longtime friend and ally Batman that are technically set in the present, but that have only a tenuous connection to current continuity. The self-contained "continuity-lite" story arcs favored by both of these titles is similar to the format that brought Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight success for over ten years, yet readers seem less willing to accept Superman stories of this kind. Whether this is because they feel that the character is a poor fit for the format or that the format itself has grown stale is unclear. Having already been widely dismissed by numerous readers as poorly done and irrelevant, it appears that Superman Confidential (which was recently canceled after eighteen issues) and the latter issues of Superman/Batman are destined to be remembered as little more than footnotes in Superman history.
Finally, there is All-Star Superman, a twelve-issue maxiseries by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. Like all offerings from the "All-Star" line, All-Star Superman is set outside of the DC Universe, effectively occupying a world of its own, the idea being to give big-name creators the freedom to reimagine DC characters as radically and completely as they wish, without interfering with the "official" serialized versions of those characters. Morrison and Quitely use this freedom to create what Morrison describes as "folk tales" of Superman, a self-conscious effort to capture the mythic essence of the character without paying too much attention to the historical particulars of current or past continuity. Important elements from every period of Superman history (but especially the Silver Age), as well as quite a few typically mind-bending original concepts contributed by Morrison, are included in All-Star Superman, but jumbled and juxtaposed unevenly, as if these stories were being cobbled together from memory (with major additions and embellishments) in some far-future era, when the main body of published Superman lore has been lost. The story itself is based very loosely on the myth of the Twelve Labors of Hercules, and it represents a highly stylized combination of over-the-top science fiction, storybook fantasy, and classical mythology, among other things.
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