In a world where hope has to burn brighter than ever before to survive, the Last Son of Krypton burns with the power of the Sun. Absolute Superman, by Jason Aaron and Rafa Sandoval, introduces the Kal-El of the Absolute Universe: a world forged from Darkseid energy. Like his counterpart in the DC Universe — who was born beneath the red sun of the doomed planet Krypton and developed super powers by absorbing the solar energy of Earth’s yellow sun — Absolute Superman has the powers of superhuman strength, speed, and red-eyed heat vision.
While the DCU Superman is powered by solar energy, Absolute Superman is a living solar battery — literally. Superman absorbs the Sun’s solar radiation and is able to channel that energy into beams of heat from his fists, but the Kryptonian must recharge his powers in a mobile solar chamber.
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“Rafa really killed it with the suit design, and that first issue cover sums up so much of the feel of the book,” Aaron told ComicBook. “Superman standing in the sun in a Kansas field, but still kind of in the shadows. I think that’s very much the driving tone of our book: This guy’s living in the shadows, but gets his power from the Sun. He’s a child of the Sun.”
A nomad without a Fortress of Solitude, Superman has spent years traveling the globe, battling Lazarus Corp and an army of heavily-armed Peacemakers whose weapons and armor incorporate technology that appears to be developed by this universe’s version of Brainiac. But Superman has his own alien tech: Sol, a suit of living armor powered by the Kryptonian artificial intelligence that monitors and regulates his solar energy levels.
When an overwhelmed Superman unleashes a powerful blast of heat vision he’s unable to control, he makes Sol power him down before he incinerates the Peacemakers. Sol is a Kryptonian nanotechnology, able to shift and change shape to protect its wearer: the Last Son of Krypton. As Sol tells Superman, “It is my mission to protect you. To guard the last living vestige of the House of El.”
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“There’s a lot that’ll be revealed as we go,” Aaron teased. “You’ve gotten to look at one iteration of [Superman’s suit]. It’s a suit that has sort of different forms. Sometimes there’s a cape, sometimes there’s not a cape. Other parts of it change.”
“There’s a lot going on there that has a lot of deep meaning that goes back to the culture of Krypton, why Krypton exploded, who Kal-El’s parents were, what they were doing on Krypton, how he ended up coming here to earth,” he continued. “All that is represented in the different parts of his suit.” That includes Superman’s cape, which consists of sunstone crystals mined from the depths of Krypton by the Klerics of the Science League.
“Superman is literally wearing the last dust of his home world on his back,” Aaron said. “And it just looks cool. There’s a lot you can do with it in ways that are different from the traditional flowing cloth cape.”
Like Superman’s S-shaped symbol — the crest of Krypton’s laborer class, rather than the family shield of the House of El — the suit’s sun-charged gauntlets are similarly linked to the destruction of his home planet.
“That’s something that goes back to Krypton, and what the culture on Krypton is, what led to Krypton’s ruin,” Aaron explained. “It goes to Superman’s relationship with that suit and what he’s going through here on Earth as his powers are developing. It’s all of that mixed together.”
Absolute Superman #1 is on sale now from DC Comics.
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