Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason On Superman's Rebirth

This week, fans will get to see the first step in a new direction for DC Comics's new Superman -- [...]

Superman-Rebirth

This week, fans will get to see the first step in a new direction for DC Comics's new Superman -- which is really their old Superman.

Confused yet? For those not in the know, about nine months ago DC launched a title called Superman: Lois and Clark. It featured the pre-Flashpoint Superman, delivered to the post-Flashpoint DC Universe as a result of the events of Convergence, along with his wife Lois Lane and their then-newborn son Jonathan.

After spending a decade in hiding in the new DC Universe, that Superman will now have to step into the role of the Superman of the post-Flashpoint universe following the death of his "New 52" counterpart.

The two monthly Superman solo titles will be Superman by Peter Tomasi, Patrick Gleason and Doug Mahnke, and the art team of Patrick Zircher, Tyler Kirkham and Stephen Segovia will join writer Dan Jurgens on Action Comics.

Gleason and Tomasi, who wrote this week's Superman: Rebirth #1, joined ComicBook.com to talk about that book, their title, and their vision of the Man of Tomorrow's future.

In the Rebirth one-shot, you look back on a lot of very specific pre-Flashpoint territory. Are you guys going to feel free to sprinkle in some of that history, or is that more just establishing this Superman and kind of playing him off the events of "Final Days of Superman?"

Peter Tomasi: It was just a sense of getting readers all lined up as to really get a clear sense of who this character was, where he was coming from, and try to do it in such a way that it wasn't convoluted. That it was real streamlined and easy to digest, and at the same time be character building enough so that people can plug in so him right away. It was important to get that information out there.

Knowing where we're going, Pat and I have a series, we're not going to be looking back a lot, we just wanted to show that that pre-Flashpoint stuff obviously had a big part of that Superman's life. We wanted to make sure that people knew that, we weren't just flushing that, it actually existed, it had an impact on him -- but we are going to be moving forward and not looking back.

Is it safe to assume that the Superman title will be a little bit more Superman driven and that Dan Jurgens is still going to be handling a lot of the Lois and Clark and Jon stuff? We didn't see a ton of that in the Rebirth one shot.

Tomasi: The Pat and I Superman book will definitely be focusing a lot on the family relationship stuff. We will be obviously placing that against the big tapestry of big action stuff and obviously big villains and things.

Our kind of thing was to come out and work the magic we did in Batman and Robin and play it against obviously incredibly distinct characters like Clark and Jonathan, who are obviously night and day so to speak compared to Batman and Robin.

We're embracing those characters and really they are our cast. Our main cast are those 3 characters, but at the same time, we're not going to be zeroing in with stories that are just focusing on all 3 of them at the same time. It will be a nice blend and balance of all of it. Of Superman on his own, Superman with Jonathan and Lois, all the permutations, that trinity of Superman, Jonathan, and Lois allows us to work with. We're going to take full advantage of it, Pat and I, and do as many cool stories as we can within that kind of parameters.

Jurgens is obviously going to be playing with certain elements of the characters to, but in whole other ways, but focusing more on the word action, and also the big stories that he's got coming up are not going to be...

Knowing what's coming up, they're not going to be centered on Clark and Jonathan either. We're all big one Superman family and we're going to all draw from the same well so to speak, but the well that we're drawing from will definitely have a lot more water with Jonathan and Lois in it.

I feel like many readers will come in and it's like okay, well if his name isn't Clark Kent then clearly this is a temporary status quo shift. How will you prevent it feeling that way?

Tomasi: The status quo is that this Superman is now our Superman. It's really kind of as simple as that. We've killed off the New 52 Superman and we're now embracing the pre-52 Superman. Pat and I, that's all were focused on....The stories that are coming up, obviously we're building towards some big stuff, but really to say more about it would take a little bit out at the knees here.

I guess the best thing to say is this is our Superman, the Superman that Pat and I are doing is this Superman with Jonathan and Clark, I mean Jonathan and Lois, at his side. That's the best way to kind of, the easiest, simplest way to put it i guess at this point. That is the status quo, that is the now, those characters are the now.

Something that's interesting to me, in the solicitation text for upcoming issues, you've already teased the Eradicator. It's funny, way back when, I asked Dan Jurgens, "If there was one thing you could bring in from pre-Flashpoint that you would want to have in Lois and Clark, what would it be?" His answer was the Eradicator because that opens up so much story. What can you kind of tease about the impact that a character-slash-artifact-slash-whatever the Eradicator is this in particular iteration, has on a world where that kind of thing hasn't really played a big role yet?

Patrick Gleason: Well, this isn't the Eradicator like you've ever seen him either. People are going to recognize the name, and he's got yellow goggles, and that's where it stops. We wanted to take the idea and play with it, and see how we could really make this cool story with a real threat, and actually put Jon, and Superman, and Lois, through some really major paces right off the bat, so we really hit the ground running going in to this.

The solicitations are talking about stuff in issue 3, but at 2 weeks apart, these issues are going to come fast and furious. We're not really that far ahead of ourselves. I think it will be really exciting, and that's been a lot of the fun, just talking with Pete and figuring out what is going to challenge these characters, and what they working through to in a way become ...

...What you were getting at earlier about is this Superman: this is Superman and all this stuff that is going to be happening to them is going to really push them to the limits of embracing these identities, and Eradicator is just going to be awesome.

Tomasi: Going back to your other question earlier, this story arc, this first story arc, it will put to rest that this is the Superman of the now, because as we build towards the story, Clark and Lois, the way they feel about their privacy, the aspects of him being a superhero now out and about, the way he's perceived by the outside world, especially after all the insanity that happened with the secret identity being blown, and all the stuff of the previous Clark and the New 52 Superman.

The story that Pat and I constructed really builds towards a real sense of that. At the end of the story you will be saying this is Rebirth, this Superman is our Superman now. The DCU at large will be looking at it that way, as will the world at large, and by a lot of different things that happen during the course of the story.

The sense of the drama of course is how does Clark, how does Superman, make this all come to pass, and does it all wrap-up to re-setup the story for the world at large.

On the pre-Flashpoint world, it was ultimately the Eradicator that was responsible for bringing Clark back, so it seems to me that's a really interesting villain to meet 15 seconds after Superman died...!

Tomasi: I think it's safe to say that the Eradicator that we are going to see has a lot of different elements to it, but at the same time there's a foundational similarity, a template that obviously we didn't want to mess with. We don't want to get in to too much of revealing much about him at this point.

Good question, good try.

In the New 52, aliens are not particularly trusted and Superman was kind of an outsider for a good chunk of the early run. Now it almost kind of feels like this Clark is back to that point, because he's from a world that not only is alien to the people of this world, but he's standing up and trying to take Superman's place, which has to be kind of a weird.

Tomasi: You're answering the question really, you're right. You can't get around it, this Superman is uncomfortable at the moment, that's the drama and the conflict early on, and how we move past it. HE is from another world, his experiences are completely different as Superman as to what this world now is about, and this world is incredibly different.

It's a new kid moving in to a new neighborhood. It's the same thing for the whole family. It's a little scary, the ground underneath their feet isn't solid, they're finding their way as a family, and of course he's finding his way as a superhero, in a world that has just gone through some real tough times with their own Superman. There's a lot of conflict and drama inherent in just that alone that we want to explore and get in to, but also we don't want to stay in that zone to long either.

Pat and I, our main objective is to just get right into the status quo, this Superman is now the Superman. We're going to address that drama of sort of a stranger in a strange land for a little bit of time, but like Pat said, we're going to hit the ground running and we're going to be fast and furious, and get in to other stuff quick.

Gleason: It feels right because it does kind of ask that question. Does the world need a Superman, and who does he need to be? The idea of him being, like Pete was saying, the new guy in town. It really plays well to that character aspect that Superman is, because he's there to help, and he's wrestling with this too.

The world is looking at him, almost not sure. Do they want this Superman, does this Superman have their best interest in mind? I think it really plays well in the general society that we him living in right now. Superman feels out of place in some ways, in certain ways, but there's also something missing, and the world knows it, they feel it. I think there's a little bit of that going on underneath the surface too that will be playing out as things get off and running.

I haven't grinned as wide in a really long time as I did in the panel in Superman 52, where New 52 Clark asks him, "Who are you?", and Superman says, "A friend." That was a very nice beat.

Tomasi: Thank you. That Superman [The Movie] has always been a favorite, so wherever I can sort of make my little nods and do touches like that it's always fun for me, and I'm sure for readers, then obviously as you get a kick out of it too, so that's great.

The post-Crisis, pre-Flashpoint Superman, to me, has one of the best and richest supporting casts in all of DC Comics, and of course he's in a new world, so he doesn't really have that cast anymore. As we kind of bop from super event to super event, is there space for kind of Jonathan, and Lois, and Clark, to have other folks who aren't super in their books?

Gleason: Well, right off the bat, we introduce someone very important.

Tomasi: Yeah, we've got new characters coming in right off the bat, right in the first and second issue. Even in the first issue, you notice that there was a girl seeing Jonathan.

We've definitely got plans to sort of build the supporting cast as we go, but starting out of the gate though, it is key to work on the family who are feeling like a little bit of an island at this point early on, and then suddenly the bridges start to happen to other parts of their lives, like supporting characters and things like that.

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