With the introduction this week of Tom King to Walmart’s Superman 100-Page Giant series, three incredible writers from three different schools of thought are all developing independent and often complementary Superman stories on an ongoing basis.
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King’s “Walmart Superman” features a Man of Steel juggling his responsibilties to Metropolis (and Earth) and a desire to help a girl trapped in a cosmic adventure.
Bendis’s Superman (seen in Action Comics and Superman monthly) grapples with the absence of his wife and son, while others call on him to take a larger role on the world stage.
Simonson’s Man of Steel, seen in the digital-first series The Death of Superman, is on a preordained path to Doom, but along the way he will help everyone he can.
Between the three, there is quite a bit of overlap, even if approaches, supporting casts, and the like are pretty different.
First, the basics…
The Bendis Superman
Bendis’s Superman is heavily inspired by Silver and Bronze Age Superman stories, with a Clark who is a little more oafish than the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths version and a truly massive amount of power.
He also has spent most of his early stories grappling with an attack by Rogol Zaar, a cosmic enforcer who claims to have been responsible for the destruction of Krypton, a story that will continue for at least Bendis’s first year and reach out into Marc Andreyko’s Supergirl series as well.
The story so far has done without Lois Lane and Jonathan Kent, Superman’s wife and son, who disappeared during The Man of Steel and have hardly resurfaced since, although a conversation/confrontation between Clark and Lois is forthcoming that will reshape their dynamic, according to solicitations.
Jon is currently appearing in The Adventures of the Super-Sons by Peter J. Tomasi, who wrote Superman prior to Bendis and was instrumental in shaping the Superman family post-Rebirth, so he’s fine, although what happened to him and Lois after they left with Superman’s father Jor-El in The Man of Steel is anybody’s guess.
Clark’s personal life thus far has been a lot of stressing out about his family and a lot of dodging bullets at the Daily Planet, where everyone has a theory, an opinion, or an obsession about Lois’s disappearance.
The King Superman
Seemingly more inspired by the post-Crisis Superman as envisioned by John Byrne, Jerry Ordway, Dan Jurgens, and Louise Simonson (among others), this Superman is “Clark-first,” as longtime Superman: The Man of Steel artist Jon Bogdanove used to say.
When he seeks advice from a Kryptonian hologram patterned after his dead father’s personality, it is not Jor-El he sees but Jonathan Kent. his crystal-infused chats are not about Kryptonian history but Clark’s responsibility to his adoptive homeworld.
And, yes, he has an easy, affectionate relationship with Lois Lane that does not seem to be strained by any recent abandonment issues (although Jonathan Kent has not yet appeared).
Even the introduction of science-fiction elements (he is heading into space as part of the storyline) are rooted in Metropolis issues: he hopes to find an alien being who kidnapped a little girl and killed her family.
The Simonson Superman
Louise Simonson’s Superman feels a bit under siege. His responsibilities to Metropolis have him on the go, and in the first issue, he finds himself considering the fact that he cannot save everyone — one of his greatest frustrations, and a theme actually explicitly stated by Lois in King’s first issue.
He lost the crew of a space ship that was bombarded by a meteor shower because he was too busy fighting with Metallo and Parasite. The loss of the crew haunts him now — and will for some time to come.
Set in the world of DC’s animated feature films, The Death of Superman will take place before, during, and after the events of the eponymous animated film and will flesh out the story.
Simonson seems an ideal choice for that; not only was she one of four writers who tackled Superman’s monthly adventures during the original Death and Return of Superman saga, but she is often credited with being the one who really wanted to shift the focus to “Funeral For a Friend,” the chapter that dealt with the hole left by Superman’s death in the fabric of the DC Universe. “Funeral For a Friend” did not have the bombast of The Death of Superman or Reign of the Supermen, but it was in many ways the heart of the saga.
You Can’t Save Everyone
Across King’s and Simonson’s books, the theme that Superman “can’t save everyone” pops up in the first issue.
The first issue, especially in limited-run books like King’s and Simonson’s, always feels like a declaration of purpose or a mission statement. The inclusion of this idea in both indicates that it will likely be an important theme in the story to come.
For Simonson, the character’s response is, essentially, that he cannot save everyone but that does not stop him from trying. The attempt is characterized by him hopping from threat to threat, and beating himself up a little bit (“I was going to check in on the asteroid next…”) when he failed to save the crew of the Excalibur. The theme is also something that he reminds himself in his own internal monologue, explaining it for the audience and reiterating for himself that to open up his senses to the whole universe would be to drive himself mad.
In King’s story, it is somewhat more personal. Yes, his Superman spends 12 pages hopping from, and dispensing of, threat to threat — but when he finally decides to embark on what might be a hopeless rescue mission, it is not his own voice that says reminds him he can’t save everyone; it’s Lois’s.
And she is not chastising him. She is grounding him, giving him a chance to re-evaluate the choice but not asking him to change his mind. His response — that he can’t help everybody but maybe he can help this one person — is telling as to how King envisions Superman’s brand of heroism.
My Responsibility to Earth
Tangentially related to the idea that he cannot save everyone is the notion that Superman has a responsibility to all of Earth (or, in Bendis’s case, all of the universe).
Bendis’s Superman is confronted by J’Onn J’Onzz early on, who suggests that he should seek some kind of official or perhaps political power and take a leadership role on the world stage, so that he can more effectively inspire people. Superman rejects the idea, but that it was brought up at all may be indicative of something Bendis wants to explore in Clark’s character.
King similarly deals with the idea of responsibility to Earth: Superman wants, desperately, to help this one girl. He wants to help Batman, and he wants to do right by the girl’s sister, and by a Superman fan (the kidnapped girl was holding a Superman doll when she was taken)…but feels that maybe he should not wander off into space because something might happen to Metropolis while he is gone. That sense of obligation weighs on him, but ultimately he elects to save the girl because he feels in his heart that saving her is the right thing.
This is a bit of a Saving Private Ryan kind of conflict: how much do you want to put into a potentially lost cause, in the interest of making one horrific event feel somewhat less horrific? But Superman also knows that everyone deserves a chance, and that while Earth has other heroes, this girl has no one.
Lois Lane
So far, King has given us relatively little to work with in terms of Superman’s relationship to Lois Lane. It can be assumed that this is a post-Man of Steel version of Superman since his costume in Superman 100-Page Giant is the same one that he wears in the Bendis series, which was explained away in one recent issue as having been taken out of storage after he gave Lois his previous costume for her journey through space with Jor-El and Jon.
They do not seem to have any uncertainty or animosity about them, although they also are not visibly wearing wedding rings (although that is a common omission by artists, and for example Perry White, who is canonically married, also wears no ring in the issue).
Bendis’s Lois, as mentioned, has been gone, and now that she and Superman are face to face again, things seem a little touch-and-go. He has promised, though, that there will be no breakup of the marriage and that Lois’s fans will ultimately be happy with what he does in the first year…so we’ll hit pause on that one.
Simonson’s Lois and Clark are a couple, but she does not yet know that he is Superman at the start of The Death of Superman, since she did not know in the movie. She has not been a huge part of the story so far, although her first meeting with the Kents was the basis for an issue.
The Stakes
The stakes in Bendis’s book are cosmic. Krypton has been murdered, and not only does Superman have to get to the bottom of it, but while he is doing that, his wife and child are missing, Earth has been swallowed up by the Phantom Zone, and everything is falling apart at the Daily Planet.
Bendis’s Superman is emotionally unmoored; he has no Kents, no Lois, and when he is out of costume, he is constantly under siege at work. As Superman, he glides through everything with ease, taking out dozens of threats at the speed of sound and rebuffing other heroes’ offers for help.
Simonson’s Superman and King’s are both similarly adept at multitasking and superfeats, although Simonson is prone to showing the events taking place in “real time,” whereas King (like Bendis) employs montages or single-panel takedowns to reflect the sheer scope of Superman’s abilities and the volume of what he does every day.
This makes sense, given that the stakes in King’s book are clearly being established as whether Superman can “afford” to save one individual when the rest of the world is waiting. In The Death of Superman, Simonson has a Superman who is always focused on the task at hand, burning his way through a gauntlet of challenges that will ultimately lead to his biggest and most dangerous one: Doomsday.
Work Life
At Bendis’s Daily Planet, Perry White is a paternal figure who gives Clark a lot of leeway and sees him almost as a peer. Things are hard there, but Perry is by and large doing his best to make them easier, while Clark finds himself inundated with unwanted attention from the rest of the staff.
King, meanwhile, envisions a Daily Planet very much like the one from The Adventures of Superman TV series or Superman: The Movie. Perry is a taskmaster and, like in Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, he has tunnel vision and sees his great metropolitan newspaper in a decidedly local light, with little time for stories that have a reach outside of Metropolis.
Simonson’s Perry has not yet really interacted with Superman too much, but feels very much like the version she wrote years ago when she used to write Superman: The Man of Steel. He is tough but fair with Jimmy Olsen, who is trying to work his way up the food chain, and that has been his primary role so far. Given that Jimmy takes the award-winning and game-changing photos of Superman’s battle with Doomsday in the comics — something touched on in the animated movie around which Simonson’s comic is based — that will likely pay off down the line.
Home Life
So when he isn’t Superman, who is Clark? What supporting cast does he surround himself with, and what does he do?
In Bendis’s comics…not much. He works all the time in order to keep his mind off of the situation with Jon and Lois, and he is surrounded by shallow relationships. A large number of characters inhabit Bendis’s books, but so far, Clark has not pursued meaningful relationships with almost any of them, and will not open up even to his friends on the Justice League.
King’s first issue sees Clark palling around with Batman and intimately chatting with Lois atop the Daily Planet globe, but other than that, we get no sense of his supporting cast. When he needs advice, he seeks it out from “Jonathan Kent,” suggesting that outside of Lois he does not have many close, personal friends.
Simonson’s book, so far, seems to reflect more or less what she and other writers of the ’90s were doing. There is a rich supporting cast at the Daily Planet, the Kents are still alive, Clark is dating Lois, and he has friendly relationships with the whole Justice League. Socially speaking, this is the most well-adjusted and well-rounded Clark of the lot.
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