Superman 2000

The key to the initial concept lies in a radical but organic reversal of the currently accepted logic of the Superman/Clark dynamic.

In our interpretation, Clark Kent isn’t what Superman really IS, Clark is what Superman WAS--until he reached his teenage years and began to realize what all those years of soaking up the Kansas sun had done to his alien cells. Superman’s story here is seen as the tale of a Midwest farmer’s son who BECAME AN ALIEN shortly after puberty. Suddenly young Clark doesn’t just know his Ma and Pa through sight, touch, sound--he knows the exact timbre of their pulse rates, he can look at their DNA and recognize their distinctive electrical fields and hear the neural crackle and release of chemicals which tell him they’ve changed their minds about something.

And he can do all this, he can scan the entire environment in an INSTANT, with levels of perception we can only imagine.

That’s gonna turn anyone’s head around a little.

This is someone who by any stretch of the imagination is no longer just human--except for the part of him, the ethical, humanitarian base nurtured by the Kents, which forms the unshakable foundation for everything Superman is BUT WHO IS WHAT SUPERMAN CAN NO LONGER BE. Or, in other words not our own, "...who, DISGUISED as Clark Kent, fights a never-ending battle..."

As originally conceived by Siegel and Shuster, Clark becomes a cherished, poignant masquerade: mild-mannered, thoughtful, humane Clark. When Superman is being human, Clark is his template but this is a being no longer confined by gravity or pain or mortality and his experiences as Superman are experiences on a level of existence we can only hope to imagine.

So, in order to accomplish the transition to this new take on Superman more easily, our rationale is this: it’s been established that Superman’s powers are a result of solar energy saturating his cellular batteries. It’s even been suggested that his powers will increase through time as he absorbs more of our sun’s radiation.

And that’s just what happens.

As part of his alien maturation process, Superman crosses a second, critical threshold of solar radiation absorption and suddenly wakes up three times more powerful and three times smarter.

This changes everything.

We see Luthor playing chess with twenty grandmasters simultaneously while reading untranslated Il Principe and teaching himself Urdu via a Walkman he made for himself in five minutes back in 1962. Luthor is so smart we don't even have a WORD for what he is yet; calling him a genius is as insulting as calling him an imbecile.

Here’s a secret about Luthor no one yet knows. Despite his born ruthlessness, he was once salvageable, once redeemable--until Superman arrived. Though even he doesn’t consciously realize it, every iota of Luthor’s self-esteem was pinned to achieving that most lofty goal: to be considered the greatest man who ever lived. And he was on his way--until Superman appeared and outclassed him, triggering the scattershot sociopathic tantrum that is his criminal career.

Here’s another secret. Luthor's Lexcorp empire? All the corporate-baron stuff we see him doing routinely? Six minutes of his day, maybe less. He’s not the Kingpin. He only pretends to be. Luthor the businessman is the tip of the iceberg, a smokescreen generated to give the public and his enemies a false, easily digested persona which masks his true depths. In other words, Luthor conquered the financial world largely in order to project a "secret identity" designed to make people underestimate him. Lexcorp is but one of a thousand projects Luthor attends to every day.

In time, once Superman learns of Luthor’s depth, he will come to understand Lex as a tragedy of wasted potential. Though he realizes he could not have handled his earlier, formative encounters with Luthor any differently, Superman carries a new weight around in his heart. He knows now that Luthor, but for the path he chose, could have been his equal, his only true peer on this earth. And though Superman’s greatest priority will always be to stop Luthor’s schemes, his greatest frustration will be his continuing inability to rehabilitate Lex for the good of all mankind.

Apologist Puncher wrote:I seem to remember something about that. Didn't THEY also want to "drop trunk" in their pitch?

Apologist Puncher wrote:I seem to remember something about that. Didn't THEY also want to "drop trunk" in their pitch?

thecolorsblend wrote:Yeah, actually. And for whatever it's worth, that's one thing I seriously doubt DC would've permitted them to do at the time. They were investing a lot of merchandising and licensing efforts behind Superman, esp at the time, and I can't imagine they'd let even those guys ruin that.

Apologist Puncher wrote:

thecolorsblend wrote:Yeah, actually. And for whatever it's worth, that's one thing I seriously doubt DC would've permitted them to do at the time. They were investing a lot of merchandising and licensing efforts behind Superman, esp at the time, and I can't imagine they'd let even those guys ruin that.

Still, with Morrison attached to that abomination of a "costume" in BOTH books makes much more sense now.

He didn't get his chance before, and is making-up for it NOW.

thecolorsblend wrote:I don't know about that. He had a golden opportunity to do the same thing in All-Star and didn't go for it.

THE COSTUME

We’d like to tweak the costume by finally getting rid of the red underpants. This gives us a new look which somehow recovers the more classic, Golden Age, "primal" Superman look and feels like an update. This move also has instant media appeal: Finally, Superman’s smart enough to wear his shorts UNDER his pants.

thecolorsblend wrote:I disagree. In the pre-9/11 world (and maybe even now), removing the trunks from The Suit (and I mean this as a standalone event, not in the context of The New 52, where it's a snowflake in a blizzard) would be newsworthy.

Apologist Puncher wrote:

thecolorsblend wrote:I disagree. In the pre-9/11 world (and maybe even now), removing the trunks from The Suit (and I mean this as a standalone event, not in the context of The New 52, where it's a snowflake in a blizzard) would be newsworthy.

So, you have ZERO problem with them:

A. Calling them UNDERPANTS

And:

B. Implying Superman is not only an IDIOT, but mocking the look he is famous for creating?