Absolute Superman’s Reinvention of the Hero is Exactly What We Needed

DC Comics’s Absolute line of books has succeeded beyond what anyone could have imagined. DC has often been a pretty distant number two in comics, but the Absolute line has made it more than a contender. Each of the three launch books — Absolute Batman, Absolute Wonder Woman, and Absolute Superman — have wowed fans, and changed the game for the titular character, taking familiar concepts and shaking them up, and one of them has been exactly the reinvention that fans have wanted for a very long time. Absolute Superman has presented an entirely new vision of Superman, one that takes the character’s past and brings it into the 21st century.

Superman is about to have his biggest year in decades, with Superman (2025) presenting the character to his biggest audience since forever. DC has been putting out some amazing Superman comics for the last few years, but Absolute Superman, by Jason Aaron and Rafa Sandoval, is the most exciting. It’s giving fans exactly the kind of Superman they’ve wanted for a long time, but most importantly, it’s giving fans the Superman they need in 2025.

Absolute Superman Modernizes Everything About Superman

The Absolute books have thrown readers into a DC Universe that was curated by Darkseid, after the evil of the dark god had supplanted the hopeful energy of Superman. Superman’s status as the basis of the DC Multiverse has always made sure he played an important role in the way things the DCU worked; in Darkseid’s universe, that influence uis gone. The new Superman of the Absolute Universe was always going to have a very different life and Absolute Superman has given him that. To begin with, instead of being forced off Krypton as a child, Superman grew up there with his parents, with the planet’s detonation happening when he was much older. This Krypton isn’t the happy Krypton of the Silver Age, but the science-obsessed, quasi-fascist, Krypton of later iterations, leading to Superman’s upbringing to be very different.

Instead of being raised by two humans who represent the best of humanity, Superman was raised by two rebels fighting against a hidebound, evil government. Jor-El and Lara-El are freedom-loving iconoclasts and they take the place of the Kents in Superman’s life. Readers haven’t gotten to see everything that has happened on Krypton yet, but they have gotten to see Superman’s father imprisoned for trying to warn Krypton of its fate, only to rescue him via an action-packed jailbreak. This young Superman wasn’t taught to honor the government or its power, but to embrace freedom and truth, even if it takes fighting against the established order. That’s a large change, and it leads us to the modern day Absolute Superman.

RELATED: Jimmy Olsen’s Absolute Superman Debut is Not at All What You’re Expecting

Absolute Superman Isn’t Scared Of A Complex Modern World

The Earth of Absolute Superman is one controlled by the wealthy and corporations, ones that use the poor as fodder in their quests for power and aggrandizement. Sound familiar? This new Superman enters a world that is honestly very much like the one that his main universe counterpart did in 1938: a world of tenements and slums, controlled by the wealthy and the corrupt. Absolute Superman is currently battling the mysterious Lazarus Corporation, showing up in the world where Lazarus is doing the most harm and helping the people who are its victims. Absolute Superman‘s major political message — advocating for the people more than the powerful — is the same as the original Superman’s early political messaging, and one that needs to be sounded from the rooftops in 2025.

Superman is a symbol of everything good in humanity – but we don’t need Superman as the status quo cop he has tended to become in the post-Crisis DC Multiverse. Superman has always battled corporate interests for the people — there’s a reason he’s a reporter, folks — but Absolute Superman does more to oppose them than ever. Looking at the world of Absolute Superman, a world where the wealthy do anything they want and always get away with it, it’s easy to see shades of the United States in 2025. We need a hero to believe in and Superman, as he always does, is showing us the path.

Absolute Superman Is the Rebel We Need Right Now

Superman is the most important superhero of all time. He’s the entire reason that superheroes exist at all, and he has often set the stage for where superheroes should go as a medium. Superman began his career as a protector of the people, something that has fallen to the wayside over the years as he became a larger-scale hero. The New 52 tried to bring back this type of Superman, but once Grant Morrison left Action Comics, no one picked up that baton. Superman has been through a lot in the last ten years as a character, becoming a father and starring in some amazing stories, but the changes made by Absolute Superman, ones that have always been a part of the character’s DNA, are what the world needs right now.

Superman isn’t the status quo; Superman is rebellion. Superman looks out for those who can’t look out for themselves. He fights for the people who need fighting for. Absolute Superman’s anti-corporate, anti-wealthy ethos is what the world needs right now – especially in the United States. Superman should never be the voice of establishment, as he’s been in comics like The Dark Knight Returns, but rather the rebel who inspires us to fight the power by embracing the best of our own.

You can pick up Absolute Superman at DC Comics.