DC Comics’s new Absolute Universe finally arrived in last week’s DC All In Special. Powered by the energy of Darkseid, the appropriately darker, more chaotic universe features brand-new versions of the characters you know and love, reinvented by all-star teams of creators for a brand-new era. While Absolute Batman and Absolute Wonder Woman have two title characters who always skirt the darkness… What about Absolute Superman? How will the Man of Steel survive in a world gone mad?
“The core of Superman is always the heart, why he does what he does,” writer Jason Aaron told Comic Book Club over Zoom. “What’s so different about this version of the character — the heart’s still the same, but what he’s been through in his journey has been very different, much darker and rougher than the traditional Superman story we know.”
The book doesn’t debut until November 6, 2024, written by Aaron with art by Rafa Sandoval. But when it does, you’ll get a nearly completely revamped Superman. Krypton is different. He’s landed on Earth as an adult, not as a baby, so no Kents to raise him. And even his enemies will be different… As Aaron revealed to Comic Book Club back at TerrifiCon, he won’t have Lex Luthor to kick around anymore. Even his cape is different, made up of the ashes of Krypton.
So what can you expect when the title finally arrives next month? We discussed all that with Aaron to give you a sneak peek at what to expect from the title, plus some teases for what else is coming down the road — and how this connects (or not) to the uber-story being told in both the Absolute and mainline DC Universes.
Comic Book Club: Absolute Batman sold out and is getting a second printing. Knowing that’s a success, does that relieve any of the pressure for you? Or is the pressure even higher?
Jason Aaron: I don’t know. I don’t think about the pressure in terms of sales or response, really. I don’t let that worry me or bother me. To me the pressure is just doing a good version of the story, right? If I do that to the best of my ability, and it comes together to be the best version of itself, the other stuff will take care of itself. And I feel really, really good about the story I’m telling here.
Let’s discuss that then. What is the core of Superman to you? Because this seems to be stripping away a lot of the trappings. What can be left out about Superman, and he’s still Superman?
The core of Superman is always the heart, why he does what he does. What’s so different about this version of the character — the heart’s still the same, but what he’s been through in his journey has been very different, much darker and rougher than the traditional Superman story we know. I started on Krypton… The story of Krypton, how it’s different in this one, and the story of how he comes to Earth, what happened once he comes to Earth? It’s not really a spoiler to say there wasn’t the traditional idea [of an] upbringing in the fields of Kansas with the Kents like we’re used to seeing. Some of that goes to the heart of what this character meant in 1939 to Siegel and Shuster as immigrants who came to this country. Superman was this idyllic version of the immigrant story.
Well, if you’re creating that character in 2024, the story of a young immigrant coming to the United States is different today. That has a lot of darker connotations to that in today’s setting. So some of it is seeing that Superman’s journey has not been an easy one. It’s been a rough experience, him seeing this planet, yet he still has that same heart.
He has seen the best and worst of the Earth. He has seen more of the planet than any human being alive, and he has fallen in love with it, and also hates a lot of what he sees. A lot of what he sees makes him angry. This guy has not just been raised in the shadows, [he sees] the best that this planet has to offer. He’s seen the worst of it, too, yet still wants to help us, [he] still has that heart that drives him to be a Superman we know.
Like Absolute Batman, Absolute Superman is opposing corporations… He’s coming up against this Lazarus Corporation that’s been teased. Maybe I shouldn’t be asking you this on a DC-sanctioned phone call, but how do you write a counterculture hero who’s fighting corporations when you’re also doing it as part of one of the biggest entertainment conglomerates in the world?
I mean, again, that’s not really a thing that factors into me telling my story. It didn’t at Marvel, and it doesn’t at DC. I get [that] so many people outside of those companies see things that way. In my experience, working with the two biggest companies in comics… It’s a small group of us in one little, tiny, windowless room, putting those stories together. It felt like that at Marvel. It feels like that at DC.
More so than anything [else] with this Absolute Universe, it’s a small group of creators, a small group of editorial and we’re literally just making up the rules — not just for these characters, but for this entire universe, right on our own. Sometimes we look around, like, “can we just do this?” And it’s like, yeah, we can. We don’t have to worry about the history of these characters, the legacy, the continuity. We’re defining all that for ourselves and what feels right for the story that we’re each trying to tell.
This might be getting a little in the weeds, but in the DC All In Special they set up that Superman energy is infusing the regular DC Universe, and Darkseid energy is infusing this new Absolute Universe… But you’re writing Superman in the universe that’s infused with Darkseid energy. So how does that factor in for him, if at all?
You can read this whether you know any of that or not. You read these books, and you understand so much has been stripped away from these characters in terms of their supporting cast, the comforts they had, their origins, so that they are all alone. Superman in particular is more alone, more in danger, more rough around the edges than we’re used to seeing. So some of [it] is that those characters that we will meet from the traditional supporting cast, characters both good and bad, none of them are where they’re quote, unquote, supposed to be. Nothing is the way we understand it. Where it should be in this new universe, mostly in bad ways.
It’s not like everybody is happier here than they were in the DCU. Things are fundamentally broken and shaken up — not randomly, in ways that very much fit together, that tell the specific story that I’m trying to tell. But I think you can figure out pretty quickly, this is a Superman who is more in trouble and more desperate and more on the run and more alone than what we’re used to seeing.
It’s a very different costume for a very different world, a very different look for Superman, with the long hair and everything. How much of that was the script? How much of it was working hand in hand with Rafa Sandoval?
A lot of it came from the ideas we talked about of Krypton, and what’s different about Krypton, and what we’re trying to say about Superman’s parents there, and the culture there. So much of that gets infused into the suit, and it’s not just cosmetic changes for the sake of cosmetic changes. All those different pieces have a deep meaning for his story and his journey and his family, and who he is and what he represents… From the cape and the very suit itself, what it is, where it came from.
So all that stuff was a big part of this story, from the get-go, and then Rafa did an amazing job visualizing all that. What we’ve seen of the suit so far, there are different versions and iterations of it. Sometimes there’s a cape, sometimes there’s not a cape, there’ll be more stuff like that. You haven’t seen fully what that suit is and what it can do, that’ll continue to evolve and develop as we go.
I wanted to ask you about one specific part of the look. He has stubble in this version. Does he still shave with his heat vision, but put it on a lower setting than usual?
[Laughs] It’s a good question. We’ll have to answer that question at some point. But yeah, his hair is a little bit rougher, [an] unshaven look. Those are not just random cosmetic decisions. Those speak to who he is, as we’ll see. I think it becomes pretty obvious what those things really mean, what they say about where he is, when our story starts.
This is another cosmetic thing, but an external one. The logo for Absolute Superman is very sharp and pointy, particularly for a Superman logo. Where did that come from?
DC put together a few different logos. And that was the one we gravitated towards, me and [editor] Chris [Conroy] both, with a few tweaks. I liked that it does seem pointy. It seems a little more dangerous, like you wouldn’t want to pick that logo up if it was sitting on your table. It’s got a different kind of alien feel than we’re used to seeing with Superman, which, to me, again, spoke to what kind of book this is.
You touched on this earlier, but is there a Smallville in this universe? Are there the Kents?
Yeah, yes, there absolutely is. I don’t think it’s a big spoiler to say we’re not going to get issue after issue of young Clark Kent running through the fields of Kansas with Ma and Pa Kent. But I live in Kansas. I’m the first ongoing Superman writer to actually live in Kansas, so that part of it is very important to me, and we’ll see that as the story goes on. You don’t get all those answers right away in issue one. You really don’t get them all for a bit. But you’ll start to see what’s going on in Smallville, and who are the Kents, and where are they at, and what’s happened with them, and if Superman has a connection to them… [And] how is it different?
There is a tease in the synopsis for issue two, that there’s “one motor-mouthed, iron-willed woman” who puts cuffs on him. I’m going to take a massive leap and say that’s probably Lois Lane, or some version of Lois Lane?
I think that’s a fair assumption. Like I’ve said, any sort of the characters we meet that we associate with Superman, just assume they’re not going to be doing what you expect them to be doing. They’re all going to be in different places in this world when they encounter him for the first time.
Is there room for romance in this world? Or is that not really on the table, given the level of danger that they’re dealing with?
Is there room? Yeah, of course. I mean, Superman’s life is very, very different. Where he’s at, he’s literally on the run when we meet him. Who he is, what he’s looking for… He’s not in a place where he’s necessarily looking for romance, but he is absolutely desperately looking for connections and family and sense of belonging that he has not had. He is bereft of friends. He is bereft of connections in life, when we meet him So absolutely, he’ll be looking for those [connections]. Whether that turns into the kind of romance we’re used to with Superman and Lois, or whoever, time will tell.
Tying back to the DC All In Special, there are a lot of dangling threads there that seem like they could show up in this title. You’ve got Booster Gold, you’ve got the Legion. You’ve got Darkseid, of course. Is that anything that will be popping up? Or is this really going to be standing on its own for the first year, or two years?
Very much standing alone. We wanted to have a plan for, how could this universe connect to the regular DC Universe, with seeds of stories to do down the line? But I’ve also felt it’s very important that these books are very much new reader friendly. Anybody can pick this up and enjoy it. We’ll build connections between the books within this world as we go.
But I’ve been the one saying, when we get to the point where this Absolute Superman meets absolute Batman or meets Absolute Wonder Woman, that should be a big deal. We shouldn’t drive past those moments. I shouldn’t drive past the development of those characters before we ever get to that point. So I’ve been the one saying, let’s slow down and enjoy the journey and keep these characters as isolated as [we] can, because that, to me, is where a lot of the fun, a lot of the new stories are going to come from. That’s what we’re looking to do with all these Absolute books before we worry about getting to some sort of big conflagration.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Absolute Superman #1 hits comic book stores on November 6, 2024, from DC Comics. Check out covers for the issue, below. Click for larger versions.
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