Multiple Choice
This post takes off from the ending of Infinite Crisis #1, so beware of the possible SPOILERS.
In the beginning, we are told, there was a Multiverse -- an infinite array of parallel universes, separated by vibrational frequencies, begetting an infinite range of possible histories and futures. In one such universe, Kal-L was rocketed to Earth from his doomed homeworld of Krypton, and began his heroic career in 1938 as the adult Superman. In another universe, another Krypton yielded a younger Kal-El, who matured into Superman after debuting as the teenaged Superboy. Kal-L's last adventure ended with his defeating the Anti-Monitor and being whisked away to a mysterious, idyllic dimension -- a sort of personal paradise where he could spend eternity with his beloved wife. Likewise, Kal-El's heroic career ended with a great battle in the Arctic wastes, after which he relinquished his powers and chose to live in anonymity with his beloved wife.
It's eminently fitting that Crisis on Infinite Earths began and ended with Kal-L, the Earth-2 Superman. He represented the foundation of what would become DC Comics -- the powerful figure from the cover of Action #1 lifting that car over his head as panicked thugs flee the scene -- but his journey was also indicative of what DC sought to do with its cosmology twenty years ago.
Because DC never had a clear dividing line between its Earth-2 and Earth-1 Supermen, Kal-L ended up getting all of the character's "original" traits and Kal-El received all of the "modern" ones. Thus, Kal-L of Earth-2 isn't quite the same figure who appeared in the Golden Age's Superman comics. Instead, he's more of an extrapolation from those stories. Although he shares an origin with the Superman of Action #1, his first appearance in a multiversal context was in 1969's Justice League of America #73. As such, he might be considered a somewhat idealized version of Superman. In Crisis he comes across as the ultimate elder statesman, acting as a father figure to virtually all the other heroes, including his younger counterparts. There would have been no good way to kill him, so the aforementioned limbo was an acceptable alternative.
Of course, limbo allowed Mark Waid to show Kal-L pounding on a dimensional wall, as if bored with his "reward" and eager to get back into action. Waid used Kal-L to illustrate that through Hypertime, none of DC's variations on its characters had truly been forgotten. All were still "alive" somewhere, like Cowgirl Jessies in a vast toy chest, abandoned and waiting to be rediscovered by the right playmates. Kal-L's role in The Kingdom thereby made him a representative not just of DC's Golden Age, but the Multiverse itself.
It's therefore tempting to say that Geoff Johns having Kal-L finally break free, on the last page of Infinite Crisis #1, is akin to Jessie turning off the Sarah McLachlan, crawling out from under her owner's bed, and demanding to be played with, puberty be damned. Certainly it looks like Kal-L intends to teach proper superheroic virtues to his wayward descendants.
Still, his reappearance poses the question of how he'll (again) be shuffled offstage. Will Johns and Phil Jiminez give him that heroic death; or will he find himself back on his own Earth as if he'd never left? One might as well ask the same questions of Lois Lane Kent and the Earth-Prime Superboy, both of whom are similarly free; and both, in a sense, similarly redundant. All these characters were placed in that limbo because they no longer had homes, so if Infinite Crisis truly intends to restore happiness and light to DC's superhero books, it could do worse than finding places for them.
Those places will most likely be separate from the mainstream DC books. Because DC's characters, especially its front-line heroes, exist in a kind of eternal now, the Earth-2 Superman and the Earth-Prime Superboy will always be variants on the current Superman, whoever he may be. However, the eternal now eventually becomes a more static past, and so requires constant renewal. Before Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC and its fans could consign events and characters to various parallel Earths -- but for much of the past twenty years, DC's own rules dictated that everything match up more cleanly. Hypertime might have been more workable, if not for a nebulous set of rules which frustrated its practical application. Accordingly, the history of the current "eternal now" may be as confusing in its own way as the infinitude which preceded it.
Again, though, I imagine that very little of DC's cosmological problems mean anything to that hypothetical new reader who only knows the characters from movies and TV. The eternal now insures that they always encounter a familiar, thirtysomething Superman. The rest is for the longtime fans who don't want to feel like the times have passed them by. This line of reasoning, taken to the extreme, has produced works like Alan Moore's Supreme and the various Supermen of DC One Million. Although both poked fun at superhero comics' revisionary tendencies, both affirmed the need for a Superman to carry on the ideals of the original. Therefore, the image of Superman never ages, despite variations in the details. Whether longtime fans accept the variations depends on how attached they were to the details.
Speaking of details, Kal-L's reappearance raises the additional question of how exactly the first Crisis unfolded without the infinite Earths. The four Multiverse survivors were orphaned after Crisis #10, surviving only by virtue of being present at the dawn of time. However, the DC universe got a secont restart nine years later, during Zero Hour -- which supposedly took care of all the Multiverse's loose ends. Obviously limbo exempted the four survivors from that too; but the second time, there was no Earth-2, Earth-3, or Earth-Prime to produce them so they could participate in the post-Zero Hour Crisis. I would not be surprised if Johns and Jiminez tried to explain this particular continuity gap, especially the origins of the post-Zero Hour Alex Luthor.
Put another way, the mechanics of DC's two timeline restarts may mean that when the current Kal-El encounters his older and younger selves, he won't automatically remember his past as the Superman of Earth-1. I don't think he was ever meant to be that Superman, since the post-Crisis revisions were intended to make the character more universal. Instead, the two S-shielded strangers will carry more symbolic weight, one exemplifying an heroic career lived to the fullest, and the other the potential of one just begun. I would like to think this fits with the dramatic roles Johns intends for them. Clearly that's the obvious use for variant Supermen. Like the four replacements introduced after this Supes died (the last time the character "inspired anyone," according to Infinite Crisis), the variations' different perspectives illuminate the values at the main character's core.
Such an end result wouldn't be the worst product of Infinite Crisis. After seventy years, maybe DC is realizing that its strength is in selling symbols, not continuity. It will soon be juggling at least five Supermen -- a mainstream comics version, an All-Star comics variation, an animated Justice Leaguer, a teenaged TV Clark, and a new movie version. Rather than homogenizing each of these so they're all compatible with each other, I hope that DC emphasizes the essence of character they all share and uses their diversity to highlight Superman's common appeal. If Infinite Crisis also provides a new gateway back to the Multiverse, it should likewise preserve both the eternal now and DC's venerated past. As for Kal-L, he's not just a plot device or a loose end. He's always been a symbol -- and symbols never die.
In the beginning, we are told, there was a Multiverse -- an infinite array of parallel universes, separated by vibrational frequencies, begetting an infinite range of possible histories and futures. In one such universe, Kal-L was rocketed to Earth from his doomed homeworld of Krypton, and began his heroic career in 1938 as the adult Superman. In another universe, another Krypton yielded a younger Kal-El, who matured into Superman after debuting as the teenaged Superboy. Kal-L's last adventure ended with his defeating the Anti-Monitor and being whisked away to a mysterious, idyllic dimension -- a sort of personal paradise where he could spend eternity with his beloved wife. Likewise, Kal-El's heroic career ended with a great battle in the Arctic wastes, after which he relinquished his powers and chose to live in anonymity with his beloved wife.
It's eminently fitting that Crisis on Infinite Earths began and ended with Kal-L, the Earth-2 Superman. He represented the foundation of what would become DC Comics -- the powerful figure from the cover of Action #1 lifting that car over his head as panicked thugs flee the scene -- but his journey was also indicative of what DC sought to do with its cosmology twenty years ago.
Because DC never had a clear dividing line between its Earth-2 and Earth-1 Supermen, Kal-L ended up getting all of the character's "original" traits and Kal-El received all of the "modern" ones. Thus, Kal-L of Earth-2 isn't quite the same figure who appeared in the Golden Age's Superman comics. Instead, he's more of an extrapolation from those stories. Although he shares an origin with the Superman of Action #1, his first appearance in a multiversal context was in 1969's Justice League of America #73. As such, he might be considered a somewhat idealized version of Superman. In Crisis he comes across as the ultimate elder statesman, acting as a father figure to virtually all the other heroes, including his younger counterparts. There would have been no good way to kill him, so the aforementioned limbo was an acceptable alternative.
Of course, limbo allowed Mark Waid to show Kal-L pounding on a dimensional wall, as if bored with his "reward" and eager to get back into action. Waid used Kal-L to illustrate that through Hypertime, none of DC's variations on its characters had truly been forgotten. All were still "alive" somewhere, like Cowgirl Jessies in a vast toy chest, abandoned and waiting to be rediscovered by the right playmates. Kal-L's role in The Kingdom thereby made him a representative not just of DC's Golden Age, but the Multiverse itself.
It's therefore tempting to say that Geoff Johns having Kal-L finally break free, on the last page of Infinite Crisis #1, is akin to Jessie turning off the Sarah McLachlan, crawling out from under her owner's bed, and demanding to be played with, puberty be damned. Certainly it looks like Kal-L intends to teach proper superheroic virtues to his wayward descendants.
Still, his reappearance poses the question of how he'll (again) be shuffled offstage. Will Johns and Phil Jiminez give him that heroic death; or will he find himself back on his own Earth as if he'd never left? One might as well ask the same questions of Lois Lane Kent and the Earth-Prime Superboy, both of whom are similarly free; and both, in a sense, similarly redundant. All these characters were placed in that limbo because they no longer had homes, so if Infinite Crisis truly intends to restore happiness and light to DC's superhero books, it could do worse than finding places for them.
Those places will most likely be separate from the mainstream DC books. Because DC's characters, especially its front-line heroes, exist in a kind of eternal now, the Earth-2 Superman and the Earth-Prime Superboy will always be variants on the current Superman, whoever he may be. However, the eternal now eventually becomes a more static past, and so requires constant renewal. Before Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC and its fans could consign events and characters to various parallel Earths -- but for much of the past twenty years, DC's own rules dictated that everything match up more cleanly. Hypertime might have been more workable, if not for a nebulous set of rules which frustrated its practical application. Accordingly, the history of the current "eternal now" may be as confusing in its own way as the infinitude which preceded it.
Again, though, I imagine that very little of DC's cosmological problems mean anything to that hypothetical new reader who only knows the characters from movies and TV. The eternal now insures that they always encounter a familiar, thirtysomething Superman. The rest is for the longtime fans who don't want to feel like the times have passed them by. This line of reasoning, taken to the extreme, has produced works like Alan Moore's Supreme and the various Supermen of DC One Million. Although both poked fun at superhero comics' revisionary tendencies, both affirmed the need for a Superman to carry on the ideals of the original. Therefore, the image of Superman never ages, despite variations in the details. Whether longtime fans accept the variations depends on how attached they were to the details.
Speaking of details, Kal-L's reappearance raises the additional question of how exactly the first Crisis unfolded without the infinite Earths. The four Multiverse survivors were orphaned after Crisis #10, surviving only by virtue of being present at the dawn of time. However, the DC universe got a secont restart nine years later, during Zero Hour -- which supposedly took care of all the Multiverse's loose ends. Obviously limbo exempted the four survivors from that too; but the second time, there was no Earth-2, Earth-3, or Earth-Prime to produce them so they could participate in the post-Zero Hour Crisis. I would not be surprised if Johns and Jiminez tried to explain this particular continuity gap, especially the origins of the post-Zero Hour Alex Luthor.
Put another way, the mechanics of DC's two timeline restarts may mean that when the current Kal-El encounters his older and younger selves, he won't automatically remember his past as the Superman of Earth-1. I don't think he was ever meant to be that Superman, since the post-Crisis revisions were intended to make the character more universal. Instead, the two S-shielded strangers will carry more symbolic weight, one exemplifying an heroic career lived to the fullest, and the other the potential of one just begun. I would like to think this fits with the dramatic roles Johns intends for them. Clearly that's the obvious use for variant Supermen. Like the four replacements introduced after this Supes died (the last time the character "inspired anyone," according to Infinite Crisis), the variations' different perspectives illuminate the values at the main character's core.
Such an end result wouldn't be the worst product of Infinite Crisis. After seventy years, maybe DC is realizing that its strength is in selling symbols, not continuity. It will soon be juggling at least five Supermen -- a mainstream comics version, an All-Star comics variation, an animated Justice Leaguer, a teenaged TV Clark, and a new movie version. Rather than homogenizing each of these so they're all compatible with each other, I hope that DC emphasizes the essence of character they all share and uses their diversity to highlight Superman's common appeal. If Infinite Crisis also provides a new gateway back to the Multiverse, it should likewise preserve both the eternal now and DC's venerated past. As for Kal-L, he's not just a plot device or a loose end. He's always been a symbol -- and symbols never die.
posted by Tom Bondurant @ 9:22 PM
3 Comments:
Looks like after the end of the Infinite Crisis and the year jump, the DC Universe will apparently be progressing in real time. I know this was tried before (Marvel's New Universe, I think?), and it'll be somewhat interesting to see how it goes.
Tom: This is a really good post that has given me quite a few things to think about. You've got me thinking about how these characters will be used. I'm hopeful in the way you're describing things here are taken up by Johns et al.
I'm a bit worried about doing comics in "real time" because there will always be a delay between production & print.
I'm just now reading the first Crisis of infinite Earths (it's ... fun, I think) but I agree with your point. Let's focus on the characters instead of handcuffing everyone to continuity or whatever you want to call it.
the DCU ain't gonna be real time. In continuity titles are jumping a year ahead from Infinite Crisis. 52 is going to be a weekly series covering the time frame between IC and Where the rest of the DCU is. That's the only "real time" book.
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