DC Rebirth: Whatever Happened To the New 52 Superman?

Yesterday, DC announced (most of) the slate for their Rebirth event creative teams…

…and somebody was strangely missing.

No, not Scott Snyder. Despite all the rumors you may have heard, he’s still safely in Gotham, and now exclusive to DC.

Instead, it was the post-Flashpoint Superman who appears nowhere to be seen.

How do I figure? Well, it looks like the pre-Flashpoint Superman is now the Superman of the post-Rebirth DC Universe. How that comes to pass, and what it means, is anybody’s guess, but here’s what I’ve seen so far:

Action Comics, from writer Dan Jurgens and the art team of Patrick Zircher, Tyler Kirkham and Stephen Segovia. It’s already been confirmed that the book will feature the post-Crisis versions of Superman, Lois and Jon White seen in Jurgens’ Superman: Lois and Clark.

During the livesteam event yesterday, Jurgens and the editorial team said that at the start of the series, Luthor declares himself “the Superman of Metropolis,” and the pre-Flashpoint Superman, having none of that, is lured to Metropolis. Jurgens also said that now there is a Superman and a Clark Kent who are different people, and that equation doesn’t work out quite the way fans might expect.

It also features a version of Doomsday which, according to the image above, looks much more like the one Jurgens created in the ’90s than the post-Flashpoint version with the ram horns.

I had actually expected that Action Comics — bringing Jurgens on board, and resuming its pre-Flashpoint numbering so that they’re bearing down on #1,000 within a couple of years — would feature the pre-Flashpoint Superman. That, and Jon Kent as one of the Super-Sons is something I’ve been half-expecting and fully hoping to hear out of the Rebirth stuff.

Superman by Pete Tomasi, then, is where I fully expected to see the post-Flashpoint (“New 52”) Superman kicking ass and taking names — but instead, what do we get? Take a look at this cover.

Yeah, that’s the Superman: Lois and Clark costume that he’s wearing as he pulls it open to reveal the Superman costume.

That, coupled with what appears to be Lois and Jon White in the foreground, seem to establish that this Superman is the one from before Flashpoint, too.

The Super-Man is, of course, kind of an oddity. It appears to be a new character somehow imbued with the powers of Superman.

“He gets infused with Superman’s powers,” said writer Gene Yang. “But they don’t just affect him physically — they also affect his heart.”

I have to wonder: how does that happen? Could it be that the previous Superman loses those powers somehow? That’s just idle speculation, but it is another Superman title without the Superman we’ve come to know over the last five years in it.

As are Justice League of America and Trinity, both of which appear to feature the same Superman (or at least the same redesigned costume, spit curl, and lack of a collar) as the Superman and Action Comics titles do.

Lastly, we’ve got Super-Sons. As described on the livestream, it’s the sons of “Superman and Batman,” with no qualifications about which Superman.

In the background of the cover, though? That’s pretty clearly the same spitcurl Superman standing alongside Batman.

And in case there was any doubt, DC’s Twitter feed confirmed that’s Jon White as the member of the Superman family in the image.

And, look, that makes sense. The post-Flashpoint Superman hasn’t got a son and it would be strange to give him one. Still, the lack of any delineation in identifying which Superman, combined with all these other appearances of just the one Superman, makes me wonder: Whatever happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

I guess we’ll find out as May 25 — and the start of DC Universe: Rebirth — creeps closer…!