Dan Jurgens Compares Jonathan Kent to Damian Wayne, Clarifies the History of Superman: Lois and Clark

In his newly-announced series Superman: Lois and Clark, writer Dan Jurgens will return to the pre-Flashpoint Superman, his wife Lois and their newly-introduced son Jonathan.

The difference is, unike the hundred-plus Superman issues Jurgens wrote and/or drew in the ’80s and ’90s, he and artist Lee Weeks will be taking the Kent Family into the post-Flashpoint world, where that Superman has been secretly living for nine years on an as-yet-undisclosed mission, raising his family looking on in wonder at the strange world around him.

Jurgens joined ComicBook.com for a brief discussion on the new title, which is due out in October.

Right around the time you came on Superman the first time, they had launched Adventures of Superman, based on the radio and TV series of the same name. Is Superman: Lois & Clark named for Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman?

I think what it really reflects is the relationship between Lois and Clark, and the whole idea is that I understand what you’re saying about the TV show. That show was about their relationship. This book is about their relationship, wrapped in the world of Superman and with the addition of their son Jonathan.

And it is how they live on this world. What are the ramifications of living in this universe where we’ve seen Superman’s secret identity outed? That kind of thing. How have they been able to pull this off? How has no one noticed, “You look kind of like that guy?” That’s part of the beard right now, for example.

So it’s a very different story, but at its core, it’s a family book. It’s a family unit. It’s Lois and Clark and Jonathan and if you go back to the Convergence issues that I wrote, where Thomas Wayne talked to him about doing what he could do — “whatever you do, keep your child safe” — that’s the core of the book in terms of that part of it.

Superman has had a mission here all along, and we’re going to explore all of that.

With Jonathan, what motivated the decision to jump to nine years old, or was it just that you needed Superman’s history on this planet in the story?

It’s a couple of things. First of all, when you write about an infant, it’s not like that infant becomes that character in and of itself. But we have some definite ideas for what we want to do with Jonathan and that nine-year-old timeline sort of fits in perfectly — in a way just like it did with Damian and Bruce Wayne in Batman.

That nine-year-old timeframe fits great, and it also fits great with this idea that they have been here all along. They have been monitoring events, Superman has been doing stuff behind the scenes and had a very active role all along, and it is how do they react to this different universe for them, where people may have the same names, but they’re not at all the same characters?

Now, we really take that on like a head-on question because that’s part of the core of the book.

The version of Superman that you wrote for many years had a very different Krypton. Once they changed that around, it changed a lot of the trappings and a lot of his villains. Does this Superman have The Man of Steel or Secret Origin in his rear-view mirror — or does it not matter?

I won’t say that it doesn’t matter. I think what’s most important to understand is, his background still reflects that very classic Superman background that was of that era. Yes, visually things were changed with Krypton, but still the same basic core concepts were in place, and they’re in place here.

This is a Superman whose parents lived on — and when I say “parents,” I mean Jonathan and Martha Kent — and that makes him different from the current Superman. And it’s someone who has this relationship with Lois as such that he would look at this world’s Superman and Wonder Woman and say “Everything is different.”