If you’ve been dying to know what to expect from the upcoming Action Comics relaunch, DC has packaged a series of answers in bullet point form, that also includes the official Action Comics #1 cover.
He has been called the Man of Steel, the Last Son of Krypton and a strange visitor from a distant planet.
He is Superman, the Man of Tomorrow. As part of DC COMICS – THE NEW 52, this September will usher in a new Superman for the new century.
In the pages of ACTION COMICS, writer Grant Morrison and artist Rags Morales will present humanity’s first encounters with Superman, before he became one of the World’s Greatest Super Heroes. Set a few years in the past, it’s a bold new take on a classic hero.
* This Superman is very much an alien, one struggling to adjust to his adopted home. In the series, he must come to terms with both the loss of his home world, as well as the loss of both of his adopted parents. He is more Kal-El from the planet Krypton than Clark Kent from Kansas. He’s a loner trying to find his place in the world.
* The series’ first storyline will explore the origins of Superman’s costume, as it evolves from a look that includes jeans and work boots to a new look: a suit of battle armor that pays tribute to his Kryptonian past.
* His great powers have limits. When the series begins, Superman can leap tall buildings, but his ability to fly is in its infancy.
And in the SUPERMAN ongoing comic book series, by writer George Perez and artist Jesus Merino, will be set in present day continuity and will unleash a series of new challenges for Superman and his alter ego Clark Kent.
* Clark Kent is single and living on his own. He has never been married.
* Lois Lane is dating a colleague at the DAILY PLANET (and his name isn’t Clark Kent) and she has a new position with the paper.
Timeless and modern, classic and contemporary, but younger, brasher and more brooding, this is Superman. The New Man of Tomorrow.
ACTION COMICS issue 1 goes on sale on September 7 and SUPERMAN issue 1 goes on sale September 28.
47 Comments
I can almost HEAR the marketing people dripping poison into the editor’s ears. No more parents. They’re old looking. No more wife. That’s so 90’s. Why be positive when he can brood! Why make him a loyal and kind when the kids really want brash!
Yuck.
I can picture Wormtongue whispering into Johns’ and Didio’s ears.
PROOF GRANT MORRISON HANGS ON MY EVERY WORD!
heh :D
Then it is only a matter of time before Legends of the Dark Knight returns to the shelves. Here’s hoping.
He looks a LOT like Tom Welling Prime in that last picture… it’s not HORRIBLE of an idea, but not a great one… I’m still more confused about the Green Lantern thing than this… I’m more OK with a non-super boy scout version of the Man of Steel, may actually pick this up.
i’m horrified.
you have no idea.
I love what I’m hearing of their approach to Action Comics. Hopefully we end up with a lot of the 1930’s Superman in this “bold new take”. Bring back some of the anti-establishment, ruthless, vigilante Superman that you see in those great early Action Comics stories. The fact that he’s being fired on by the police in the cover is a great sign IMO.
Though Perez’s book doesn’t sound at all interesting.
Emo Superman YAYYY!….kidding I meant meh….
To the families of Simon and Shuster:
Thhhhhpppt!!!
Love,
Warner Brothers Megacorp Inc. TM All Rights Reserved
p.s. Nanna Nanna Boo boo!
I’m ok with everything EXCEPT Ma & Pa Kent being dead again… Having his parents around since the last major reboot following COIE really humanized Superman and grounded him to a family.
Now it seems like he’s going to be an angry, broody orphan with no one to turn to…. yay. I’m trying to keep an open mind, but DC is making it challenging! :-/
Well, you have to admit there hasn’t yet been a major DC character who’s an angry, brooding orphan………………….
Oh, wait…….
The family of the creators of the “Lil Abner” comic strip should sue DC for using that look for Superman. My first thought was “Is this Conner Kent?”
More “alien” than Clark Kent from Kansas??? For cripes sake people, that’s what MADE Superman super”man” instead of “Super Kryptonian who dresses like a redneck and ‘broods'”. That outfit looks like something Swain and company would have come up with in one of the “imaginary” stories back in the Silver Age…”What if Superman’s Rocket had landed on a tobacco farm in North Carolina?”
A Superman…that BROODS????? Oh hell NO! Bruce Wayne and Carter Hall have the market cornered on “brooding heroes”. Now someone wants to make Superman into “The Plutonian?”
I’ll get the Perez Superman book just for his art. George Perez could draw huge piles of dog crap and they’d still be the best-drawn pictures of dog crap in the world. But thus far the previews for this “relaunch” have an “alien emo” Superman and Hal Jordan being benched for Sinestro and Martian Manhunter now being the pal of Mr. and Mrs. Apollo. Also, Cyborg gets “flashpointed” into the JLA. But Batman’s “universe” stays the same? I’m still waiting to read what they have but with each info release I find less and less to get excited about and more and more to not look forward to.
Based on the images, i thought it _WAS_ going to be Connor-as-Superman… g-mo liked doing “Dick-as-Batman” so much that I figured he’d just bring his concept to A.C. Instead…. Um, wow. We’re doing “retro-superman” instead?
Based on the images, i thought it _WAS_ going to be Connor-as-Superman… g-mo liked doing “Dick-as-Batman” so much that I figured he’d just bring his concept to A.C. Instead…. Um, wow. We’re doing “retro-superman” instead?
(Also, Perez is _writing_ that book. Jesus Merino is the “artist”, it says.)
Thanks, wyntermute, for the clarification. I would also read almost any thing Perez writes because I know he’ll have something to do with the art as well.
Superman that broods = Tom Welling.
Seriously. I always complained that TW was playing Bruce instead of Clark, but maybe his writers were just setting us up for the relaunch….
I think Tom Welling was a brooding version of Byrne’s Superman. He was raised as a Human, he thinks like a Human, and he has a lot of difficulty with the Kryptonian stuff.
This sounds like it’s very much opposite in that this version is very Kryptonian.
Maybe the Perez-written stuff will even this out.
When they turned Conner Kent into Edward Cullen in Young Justice I was all right with it in spite of myself. Conner got royally screwed by the universe, it makes sense that he would be a moody, sulking, angst ridden kid. It makes more sense, in fact, than the original take of a cocky kid biting off more than he could chew.
And I infer from the much maligned cover art from the post reboot teen titans that the comic is going to continue that interpretation. Again, if that’s what they’re doing, I like it. Sure it’s a cheap attempt to hop on the twinkly tweener train, but it also works for the character and creates potential plots and subtext.
But now, what? they’re doing it with Clark, too? How many loner supermen do we need?
Screw this and the horse they used to drag this stinking carcass in.
“Timeless and modern, classic and contemporary, but younger, brasher and more brooding, this is Superman. The New Man of Tomorrow.”
This sentence is stuck in my craw. Are they putting out a freaking comic book or selling a sports sedan?
Yeah. A little market research goes a long, destructive way.
As long as one point in the series run he has to fight a giant mechanical spider….
Heh
Then hopefully, he’ll be smart and hide behind a rock.
If they’re making him single again, it’s probably not a sedan but a coupe….
oops, that was in reply to TaZ above….
Convertible
Lois has a new job at the Planet? Is she getting Perry’s job?
I guess it wasn’t Doomsday that killed Superman, it was Diddio and company. I”m so disappointed, My Superman is and always will be the modern Allegorical Messiah, not this brooding emo marketing stunt. Boo DC and BOO Warners
Cape plus jeans looks pretty freaking stupid
It’s like he’s a kid playing dressup.
So its not a reboot. We are just going back in time and starting over. But its not a reboot. Ok. Well this will give me time to catch up on all the trades i need. I know my comic book store manager is not going to like me. Oh well. He can write the complaint letter to Diddio. I hope this ends Diddio’s career. Go to Marvel. If I remember New Coke did not go over well either.
It’s “Didio.”
Or is it DiDio?
No, it’s Jay Diddilo.
The one good thing about this reboot is that I’m going to be saving some money each month; most of the DC titles I was getting are going bye-bye, and the others… um, no.
If they mess with any Vertigo titles, there will be blood.
Just got done reading “All-Star Superman”, so I’m definitely willing to see what Morrison has in store for “Action Comics”. Otherwise, though, I agree a total reboot might not have been necessary in “Superman”. We’ll see where they take it.
First, I’d like to say that I called this. However, I really don’t buy Superman (and this doesn’t make me want to either), so this bothers me as much as much as it bothers Mathew. ;p
Second, I want to say that I’ve had it with all the bleeping brooding. Stop trying to turn everybody into the current incarnation of Batman. That goes for you too, Marvel. Wolverine never was, is not and will never be Batman. Stop That!!
And they could even make Bruce a lot less broody! Give me B&B Batman, with the silly puns!
I like Morrisson very much, and I’ve been a fan of Rags Morales since his “Forgotten Realms” days (remember these, Matthew?), but I’m somewhat doubtful about this. I can’t wrap my head around the concept.
Probably too much “Man of Steel” from Byrne (which is, for me, the definitive origin story for Sups…).
I’ll still pick this up (I’m picking up 22 of the 52 new titles…I’m a glutton for punishment…), but still…
Mokin is confused, but then, that’s his regular state…so…
You love that third person don’t you? Good on ya man. Damascus says, go crazy(ier).
This isn’t Superman. Sure, it may have the name. It may bear a resemblance. But, it isn’t him.
Superman was the kid who was rocketed to earth and found by the Kents and raised on a farm in Kansas. He was the guy who, despite being an alien from another planet, always exemplified what were the best things about humanity (and, in a mildly jingoistic sort of way, what was best about ‘Truth, Justice and the American Way’).
“He is more Kal-El from the planet Krypton than Clark Kent from Kansas. He’s a loner trying to find his place in the world.” doesn’t describe the Superman I know (or the Superman whose titles I will continue to buy) at all.
Which is odd, because the SUPPOSED idea behind this non reboot is to take the characters back to their essence, their core for new readers. The Superman you describe is the one in the mind of the common man. If you give them this, they’ll just shake their head, not get it, and move on. Well done DC.
Morrison keeps mentioning a return to the Superman of Action #1. I don’t know the early stories that well, but do his descriptions sound like the very earliest version of the character?
IIRC that Superman didn’t know anything about where he was from. I’m pretty sure he knew he was from somewhere but didn’t know where and knew nothing about what it was like there.
And he had much better sense than to show his face in public in that outfit up top of this thread.
:)
I don’t know, that new JMS Superman book did really well. It got more buzz and attention than anything really relating to Superman in quite a while and that was a more broody younger version of Superman. I haven’t been interested in Superman for years and years until that book, so maybe they need to shake him up a bit. The character feels a little stagnant lately. He’s terribly hard to relate to or to give a damn about (to me, I don’t speak for others), he’s nigh invulnerable and makes me wonder why half of the other superheroes even exist and he’s so boring on top of that. I’m glad they’re doing something different with him. I’m also sure Stephen will appreciate taking him way back to his roots and making him only leap really tall instead of fly (yet).
*cracks knuckles and clears his throat*
I thought the whole thing about Superman was that he was supposed to represent what humanity aspired to be. Just because others do the brooding doesn’t mean Superman is supposed to do the same. The limitations on his powers during his earlier years? Not mad at that per se, but when Byrne tried to rework Superman’s powers (even trying to add a little telekinetic flavor into the mix), people had a fit!
Was money really that much of an issue? Aren’t their movies and merchandising making enough? C’mon!