Man of Steel: Five Ways it's Different From The Man of Steel

, we looked at a number of the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths ideas that had been carried over from the John Byrne's Man of Steel-era Superman comics to the upcoming Zack Snyder film Man of Steel. And while there were a handful of those ideas that carried over from one to the other, there are almost as many things that we know about Man of Steel that don't fit with the '80s and '90s take on the iconic superhero. What didn't seem so familiar? Well, here's a partial list... A Race of Supermen Alternately described as a race of supermen and a warrior race, the Kryptonians of Man of Steel seem to more accurately reflect some of the earliest interpretations of Superman's home planet culture. As we've noted in the past, that actually calls back to the earliest descriptions of Krypton, a version of the world that hasn't been canonical since at least the Silver Age. In Byrne's story and after, Krypton has a clone war but were generally not "warriors." Rather, the planet was essentially a cult of science. The cold, sterile, emotionless world hardly had the passion for things like war and certainly wasn't the home of anyone particularly powerful. That said, it's widely known throughout the universe even in post-Crisis comics that Kryptonians have the capacity for great power in the right circumstance.

Krypton's Look This one kind of ties to the previous point - in The Man of Steel and after, the science-driven culture of Krypton had a very distinct look. The skyscrapers of glass and polished metal are closer in execution to something you'd see in Legion of Super-Heroes than in throwbacks like The Warlord, which seem to have inspired Man of Steel more than the Superman stories of the '80s and '90s. Even Zod's ship, in the movie trailer, seems more like something out of Watchmen than what we saw in the Watchmen film. Interestingly, if you look at the cover of John Byrne and Mike Mignola's World of Krypton, shown at right, you'll see that there's a much more sci-fi-looking take on the flying dragonfly craft that Jor-El uses in the most recent Man of Steel trailer.

Lex Plays a Big Role, Almost Immediately In Man of Steel, fans were introduced to a new take on Lex Luthor--now a bit rotund, Luthor was a savvy businessman who controlled Metropolis the way an organized crime figure might control a city--largely through fear and intimidation, and unconditionally. When Superman appeared on the scene, he felt his unquestioned dominance of the city threatened, and that set up the eventual conflict between the two. While we now know that Lex Luthor will play a role of some kind in the feature film that goes by the Man of Steel franchise name, it seems pretty obvious that he won't be the principal threat he has traditionally been in the Superman films. Of course, he may have shown up in the initial miniseries--but it was also in the fourth issue of a six-issue series. And he showed up AFTER Superman had already met Batman. If Man of Steel is setting the stage for a DC Cinematic Universe, that doesn't necessarily make this one as much of a difference as it seems at face value. Superman's First Public Appearance The Space plane, let's face it, has been done. Superman saved a helicopter in Superman: The Movie, and he saved an experimental low-orbit aircraft (on which Lois Lane was riding) in Superman Returns. The Man of Steel had almost exactly that idea, and it was Superman's coming-out event for years. In Man of Steel, though, it appears from interviews as though the first appearance of Superman as a public entity will be when he faces off against Zod.

The Sigil "Yes. It took a while, but Pa and I finally come up with this! We made one for the front, and one for the back," Clark Kent tells his mother when he and Jonathan emerged from a brainstorming session that resulted in the creation of the stylized "S" that was Superman's logo. The "S," in that case, was an actual S (which we're of course reminded in the trailer that it is not for the purposes of the movie), and stood for "Superman," a name that Clark had already been called by Lois in a newspaper headline after he saved her from the space plane. Superman and his adoptive parents created the costume--skintight because the electromagnetic aura that gives him his invulnerability, as opposed to the fact that it closely resembles traditional Kryptonian clothing.