Warning! Preview pages ahead for Absolute Superman #1!It’s been a wild ride, butAbsolute Superman’sfirst chapter is winding down and the creative team behind it is opening up about their reinvention of the Man of Steel.The Absolute Universe has changeda lot of things for DC’s iconic heroes, and the Last Son of Krypton is no exception.
Darkseid’s death led to the creationof the Absolute Universe, an alternate Earth where turmoil and strife were the guiding principles rather than hope. Here, Kal-El isn’t the shining beacon of heroism, but rather, a lost soul in search of purpose. As his first big adventure begins to wrap up,Absolute Supermanwriter Jason Aarontalks with Screen Rant about what the future holds for his tragic take on Kal-El.
Screen Rant: Jason, the Absolute line, includingAbsolute Superman, has been a huge hit with fans and new readers. What has seeing this positive reception been like for you?
Jason Aaron: It’s been cool for me, because even though I’ve been writing comics now for almost 20 years, I feel like the new kid on the block when it comes to DC Comics. Batman: Off-World was my first book there, and then Absolute Superman kind of came right after that. So for this to be one of my first things there, and to be part of this big new initiative, and to see all the books doing so well. Not just Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, but the orders on Flash and Martian Manhunter have been insane. So I think everybody working, me and Scott and Kelly, and everybody who were kind of the first people working on this. Think we were all excited about what we were doing, and felt like it was the right time for something like this. But I think it’s kind of succeeded even beyond any of our expectations.
This book has so many creative and, frankly, good-looking elements to it from the Sol armor to the destruction of Krypton. Talk about the process you have with artist Rafa Sandoval when it comes to building your vision forAbsolute Superman.
Jason Aaron: The process is kind of the same as on a lot of stuff I do where I just try to put everything I need to in the script, whether it’s my thoughts on how this world should look, the emotions going on inside people’s heads. And then just get out of the way and let Rafa do what he does so well, and I think he’s really been excited from the get-go, even as a guy who’s drawn a lot of Superman. I think he’s been excited about the chance to do his own version of the character and do something that, again, is familiar, but also where every issue we’re striving to do something that’s new and surprising. So I think Rafa has been the perfect guy for that, and I think you’ve only seen him getting better and better with each issue as we kind of figure our way through designing this new version of Krypton. And also, everything we do in the present day on Earth is new, and we’re basically designing and building that universe as we go as well.
So we’re on issue five, which is the finale of your first arc, and I’ll say this was probably the most moving issue. You do some amazing things with Kal-El and his origin on Krypton and honestly, it feels almost uncomfortably real with what’s going on today. Do you want to talk about the emotional beats of this chapter?
Jason Aaron: My whole goal, I think, with this Krypton stuff…well, I guess a couple of goals. One was just to sort of show how this is who Kal-El is. You know, his identity was formed very much on Krypton, not in the farmlands of Kansas. We’ll get to Kansas, and what part that played in his life. But he was very much a fully-formed person when his planet exploded and he came here. So just to lean into what that meant, what that looked like. And the other part is to do a story that we all know so well, right? We all know Superman’s origin. Everybody could tell you, tell you the major beats of that story. So how do we do that, where it’s still going to turn out much the same way as what you know, but hopefully will surprise you along the way and surprise you with ways that we can still break your heart a little bit. So I think that was kind of the whole goal to to give you a story that’s familiar, but yet at the same time new and exciting.
I like how, midway through this story, there was this shift from Superman vs. Lazarus to the more personal Superman vs. Peacemaker, which develops this core anger we see in Kal-El. Thematically, what makes Peacemaker Smith a good counter to Kal-El?
Jason Aaron: When I knew that I wanted Lazarus Corp to kind of have their own corporate soldiers, it made sense to make those Peacemakers. Again, with Absolute and everything we’re doing, we’re trying to take things that you’re familiar with from the other universe, and tweak them and show them in different ways. And I think Christopher Smith is the same. I’ve always been a fan of that character.I mean it was Watchmen first, when I read the pseudo version of that character, but there were Peacemaker books that came out of that in the ’80s by Paul Kupperberg, and then to watch how that character has exploded in recent years. I love James Gunn’s TV show. So this is that guy, but again, in a different circumstance, and this path is going a bit differently than what we know. I still like the idea of this guy is maybe not such a bad dude. He’s just kind of been corrupted by the process by Lazarus Corp, and in this moment, we see him kind of in distress in issue four, and pretty much asking for help, and he doesn’t get it. You know Brainiac is very consciously suiting him up and arming him again and pushing him back out into the field, knowing full well what’s going to happen. Peacemaker is kind of just a pawn, in this game played between Lazarus Corp and Superman, and maybe more specifically, just Brainiac and Superman.
Jason Aaron: Though there’s still another piece of that game that we haven’t shown yet in terms of who’s actually running Lazarus Corp. But Peacemaker’s just sort of caught up in that. And he lost his cool and killed a bunch of people in issue four. And we see now it’s just the question of, like, well, what does Superman do about that? Like you said, this is an angrier version of Kal-El than we’ve seen because of what he’s been through on Krypton, because of what he’s lost, because of what’s happened to him since he came here. He’s sort of torn. You know, two of the people that he’s met so far, you see Lois Lane on one side working as an agent of Lazarus, and you got Jimmy Olson as an agent of the Omega Men. And Superman is kind of caught in the middle, and he doesn’t know which way to turn and how to fight. This fight he suddenly finds himself in and issue five, we see him coming up to the edge of the cliff and trying to step back from it a bit and go somewhere where he can re-center himself.
I’m glad you mentioned Jimmy and Lois, because I do like how different they are in this universe. It would have been easy just to have them working at the Absolute version of theDaily Planet. But you put them in these incredibly different roles. How does that relate to this more fully-formed Superman you’ve created for this story?
Jason Aaron: I wanted to do a Superman story, where you would read it and feel like this is Superman, right? This is the same guy. He represents the same things, he’s fighting for the same things. He’s been through the same sort of tragic backstory. But everything is also new and different. So I very consciously did not want to do a Superman story that’s, “Hey, we’re doing this big, bold, daring, new version of Superman issue one. Here’s the Daily Planet. Here’s Lex Luthor, here’s all the things that you know in relatively the same place.”. I want you to go through this story feeling like we’ve taken the whole universe and shook it, and all the pieces went in different spots than where they’re supposed to be. So that, to me, is the fun, and the challenge of it. I get to stand on the shoulders of the greatest mythology in comic book history, and look back to kind of what that character meant in 1939 to Siegel and Shuster, but then to take all that and to do something that hopefully feels fresh and new. So yeah, that was part of the guiding point. I can promise you, we will see the Daily Planet at some point. I think it won’t be in the way you expect. And I think it won’t be the Daily Planet that you expect. I can tell you we will see like Luthor at some point, but not for a bit. And again, he’s not going to pop up in the way you would assume he would. I want that to be the case for every single character Superman encounters, good guy or bad guy or whoever.
There’s a moment, and I don’t want to spoil it, but it’s one where Superman talks about hope before feeling it being taken away. And that feels so much in line with what we’ve come to expect from this particular universe and how it’s influenced by Darkseid’s energy. How do you write Superman, this living embodiment of hope, in a world that’s so diametrically opposed to him?
Jason Aaron: I mean, that’s the fun of it, right? The history of this universe, it’s all different from what we’re used to. We clearly haven’t delved too much into the state of the Absolute Universe beyond just, if you’ve read the All In Special, you know there’s kind of Darkseid energy at the heart of it. Even if you don’t know that, you just know this is a darker, more corrupted, more broken universe. All the characters that we meet seem to be in darker, more corrupted places. When these heroes debut, they’re all alone. There’s no sort of legacy of heroes in this universe that we can see. They’re the first of their kind to start popping up. So they’re fighting their fight, all of them, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, all of them very much more alone and isolated and in danger than we’re used to seeing. And that’s, you know, that’s not something they’re going to shake off come issue six, right? Like that’s an ongoing fight, and the odds are much more stacked against them in this universe, and we’ll start to get more hints of what extent that is as things go along.
Jason Aaron: But I don’t want us to lose that sense. I think that’s one of the things that’s exciting and fun about this universe, and it’s one of the things that differentiates it so much from the regular DC Universe, right? Like, the whole point, if you’re going to do a brand-new version of these characters, a brand new version of the entire DC Universe, it’s got to be different. Like, what kind of stories can we tell here that they can’t tell over there? And vice versa? You see both universes kind of leaning into that. This is not the kind of Superman story I could do with the other Superman at the same time. You know, in terms of what, Dan Slott is going to be doing with Superman, and what Mark Waid is doing with the Justice League, where you’ve got this credible roster of characters who are all part of that, part of that group, we’re doing the complete opposite over here. And that needs to can, as far as I’m concerned, needs to continue to be the guiding light. You’re not going to get Absolute Justice League in a couple of issues. We’re very consciously building a universe, all of us working on all of these books, wanted to feel like a cohesive universe with a with its own history, but it’s going to continue to be a dark and dangerous place for these characters.
Absolute Supermanhas been set up to give us a dual narrative between what’s going on with Kal-El currently and what happened six years ago. Now that his origin is concluding, what does that mean for how you are presenting the book going forward?
Jason Aaron: Yeah, with issue five, you get the last piece of what happened to Krypton, what happened on Kal-El’s last day there. Then, the present day, we see Superman in kind of a moment of crisis and needing to ground himself. And we see at the end, he’s going back to Smallville, Kansas. So issue six, which is sort of like an epilogue to this first arc, it gives you the story of what happened when Kal-El landed on Earth for the first time. Beyond that, I can tell you, Kansas will continue to be a major part of the story. And all the characters that we’ve seen in the present day are going to start to converge there. And all these forces, Lazarus Corp on one side and the Omega Men on the other, and Superman not really knowing which way to turn, kind of caught in the middle. That all comes to a head in Kansas. Beyond that. Yes, even though Krypton has been destroyed, Krypton will continue to be a part of the story, and that’s who Kal-El is, what he knows about right from wrong, and you know what he stands for and fights for it that was all defined on Krypton through his relationships with his parents, through his understanding of the culture of his home planet. So that will continue to be an important part of his story, and we’ll continue to go do flashbacks to Krypton to see how he was shaped, and as he’s wrestling with what to do in the present day, there’s nowhere else to look to other than than Krypton. So that’ll continue to be a big part of the story too, which is good, because it was hard for me to blow the planet up because I enjoyed writing that stuff so much.
Speaking of the future, we also know that Brainiac is coming cause he’s been teased for a while, and we’re going to get to see him in a few issues. What do you want to tell us about Brainiac and what he’ll mean forAbsolute Superman?
Jason Aaron: Yeah, we’ve seen him kind of clearly orchestrating things behind the scenes, with Lois, with Peacemaker, sort of playing people like pawns on a chess board. And with issue seven, we get his origin story, or at least a huge chunk of it. We also get a bigger picture of what he’s doing in the present day and who he’s working for. Just in terms of his origin, I can say it’s a much this is a much darker, much creepier, more disturbing version of Brainiac than I think we’ve ever seen. I mean, just from that first issue, where we kind of see him from behind, where he appears to be naked, sitting at this work bench. I was kind of channeling Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs and just that shot of him sewing. But Brainiac sitting in this workshop, and you see the bottled cities, which we’re used to equating with Brainiac, where he shrunk these alien cities down and stowing them away. But these are more like very strange, murderous experiments that he’s conducting. So you see where he’s pumping noxious gas into one city or another one’s overgrown with some kind of fungus, another one’s full of insects. And there are tiny, tiny screams coming from all of those cities. This is the version of Brainiac that we’re going to see here, this is a really dark, broken, demented character, again, in the Absolute Universe, everybody is more broken and corrupted than we’re used to seeing, and that includes the bad guys that they can go to even darker places than we’re used to.
Your first arc is over and the second wave of Absolute titles is about to start. Is there anything you would like to say aboutAbsolute Supermanand what this growth of the Absolute Universe will mean going forward??
Jason Aaron: That’s a good question. I think that’s one where all of us working on these books are excited to answer for all of our books. We’ve been trying to be very conscious and deliberate about making the decisions of how we start to cross these characters over and to not drive past any cool moments. I mean, thankfully, all these books are doing really well, you know, including, including those new ones, Flash and Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter. Martian Manhunter, maybe the biggest Martian Manhunter book ever published, and it’s an incredible, incredible book. So we feel like we’re in a good place where these people seem to be responding to what we’re doing in these books. A story-wise, it feels like we’ve got a lot of bullets in our gun, right? And I think we don’t want to just start popping them off all at the same time. So I think we want to be careful and consider it about the first time you see Superman encounter someone else, encounter one of these other characters. You know, who should that be? And what should that look like? What’s the next step from here? I think all of us working on these books are excited to do those stories, but I think we want to give you the coolest, most unexpected, most deliberate version of those that we can.
