Ed McGuinness

Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog in two parts here and here.

In the first story here, Return to Krypton, the sterile Krypton of John Byrne's Man of Steel reboot is revealed to be an illusion, and the "true" Krypton is something closer to the Krypton that we saw in the comics of the Silver Age; Jor-El created fake data about Krypton for Kal-El so that he wouldn't miss his home. It's a little convoluted-- retconning a retcon always is, I suppose-- and show more probably doesn't really track with the details of Man of Steel, which I remember really liking, though it's been over a decade since I've read it. In that story, people on Krypton no longer bore children, so baby Kal-El was sent to Earth in a "birthing matrix," and thus literally born in Kansas. Return to Krypton makes it clear that Lara bore Kal-El in her body, and then he was placed in the birthing matrix to be sent to Earth, so the story maintains some details of Man of Steel while ignoring its spirit.

Superman learns much of this from a message Jor-El left in his rocket in a crystal. Then, with the help of Professor Hamilton and John Henry Irons, he is able to use thought projection to make an image of Krypton in the Phantom Zone, into which he and Lois travel to see what the planet was "really" like before it was destroyed; the story is ambiguous about whether Clark and Lois actually traveled to Krypton of the past, or if only to a recreation of it. Clark is able to hang out with his parents briefly, but soon events get crazy: he helps Jor-El adjust Krypton's orbit so it won't be destroyed, but this drains his powers so Lara has to rescue him in a rocket, but space travel is against the law, so General Zod comes to arrest Jor-El and Lara, but they all go on the run, and Zod gets angry and deposes the Kryptonian leadership because he blames their complacency for the crisis, and then all of a sudden Jor-El has been made president in a counter-revolution. Whoa.

It's action-packed (particularly part three, Man of Steel #111), which is the big weakness of it all: I feel like this story should have had more emotional weight. This is momentous! But most of the story is spent 1) massaging the continuity to the preferred form of the 2000s writers, and 2) making things explode again and again. The human story gets lost in the middle of it all. I know this is a superhero comic, but I feel like there must have been a way to balance them better than they were.

One thing I do like about these comics is their emphasis on narration. Three of the five issues use narration: the prologue is Pa Kent, while parts one and three are narrated by Lois. This keeps some emphasis on character, and I particularly liked the focus on Lois, who I think could otherwise have very easily gotten lost in the shuffle.

As for the retcons... I dunno. The Stevil2001 criterion for judging retcons is that The new thing must be at least as interesting, if not more interesting, as the old thing being replaced. I did like Byrne's Man of Steel, especially its vision of Krypton, but I'm open to stories about other forms of Krypton being told. But based on this tale, this new old version of Krypton doesn't have more to offer, but I also believe it could. Weirdly, the story indicates Superman might actually have changed Kryptonian history (wouldn't that have wiped him from existence) and kind of hints that the Man of Steel Krypton still exists. I guess I'll see if either of these ideas are picked up in Adventures going forward.

My feelings about the sequel, Return to Krypton II, are more straightforwardly negative. It seems to me that both of these storylines threw away a potentially emotionally powerful premise in favor of a combination of empty action sequences and unnecessarily complicated continuity "fixes." In this story, the Jor-El of the Phantom Zone duplicate of Krypton manages to travel from the Zone into the real world, seeking Superman's help in pushing back against a tide of fundamentalist Kryptonian zealots who don't like Jor-El's new enlightened age. Honestly, for a supposed utopia, Krypton seems like a giant shithole, perpetually on the verge of complete social collapse at the drop of a hat. They ally themselves with General Zod's lackies against the zealots, trying to save Jor-El's wife and baby Kal-El before it's too late. It just all seems like pointless action sequences.

Then in the end, we finally get an explanation for this Krypton. I thought when reading the original Return to Krypton that all this was intended to retcon away John Byrne's Man of Steel vision of a sterile Krypton; that story claimed Jor-El presented a lie of a sterile Krypton to Kal-El so that he wouldn't feel so sad about his dead homeworld. This story rewrites that, so that we learn that after the Imperiex War (I think), Brainiac 13 time-travelled to pre-destruction Krypton (which really was the sterile world John Bryne showed us) and tried to kill Jor-El to stop Superman from being born. He failed, but made off with Jor-El's diaries and the Eradicator Matrix (I guess this is related to one-time Superman villain "the Eradicator," a.k.a. the Cyborg Superman, but I don't know enough to know), which he used in concert to make a fake Krypton as a trap for Superman. Only since Jor-El was a weirdo, his diaries recorded not the actuality of Krypton, but his dreamed, ideal Krypton. So this Krypton is a real place, a planet in the Phantom Zone, but it is not the real Krypton. Phew.

It's not an explanation that convinces. Why would Jor-El dream up a Krypton where the government is a fascist dictatorship that suppresses dissent with lethal force, and where psychotic fundamentalists lurk in every corner? Like, dream up an actual utopia, dude!

And why did Return II even need to retcon the retcon? This was published in Sept. 2002; exactly one year later, Superman: Birthright would begin publication, removing Byrne inventions like the birthing matrix from continuity just as the first Return seemed like it was going to. By the time Return II came out, editor Eddie Berganza had to have known those changes were coming, so I just don't even get why this story-- which retcons the retcon of a retcon-- even exists.

And if you subtract the continuity jiggery-pokery, there's nothing here worth discussing. None of the five Super title crossovers published during Joe Casey's run on Adventures were exactly great, but Return to Krypton II is definitely the worst of them.

(Incidentally, all of these retcons would themselves be retconned! In Superman: Infinite Crisis we're told that Kal-El's backstory changed because of Superboy-Prime punching at the edge of reality, and thus not because of any of these shenanigans.)

I did like that Krypto was in it, I guess, but Superman is not always a good dog-owner. show less

This story starts out superb. The constant juxtaposition of the two protagonists is of course terribly on the nose, but it's undeniably impactful and gripping. It sets a mood, it makes me instantly remember why these two characters are so iconic and why they're interesting together, and I'm sucked in, wanting to see what happens. I literally get chills from some of the inner monologues, they're so powerful.

There's humour, too, which feels true to the characters and the context, and show more initially, as a result of all this, I'm seized by the story and excited for the ride.

Sadly, then it gets muddled in flashy spectacle with little substance. A future Superman shows up (and he might as well not have, for all the plot relevance he'll end up having) and attacks them (which makes next to no sense when we later get some context), which derails the story and drowns the character voices out. The rest of the story quickly becomes a cameo parade as Lex Luthor sics the Justice League on them and an asteroid of solid kryptonite is about to destroy the Earth.

I make it sound worse than it is. The action is decent, the protagonist's outer and inner voices remain exciting and on point (if less prominent as the noisy "plot" gets in the way), and while Luthor goes from a scary villain in the early issues to a laughable one in the last, they at least make an in-story explanation for why he's so unhinged. But I can't help but feel what started out as powerful and memorable became a shallow spectacle, wasting a terrific potential. It says a lot about how much I liked the first chapter when I still rate this as highly as I do. show less

This was pretty good, but the Original Sin stuff wasn't really that exciting for me. I did like the Annual a lot because of the retro feel and general creepiness (and Groot hugs). It was also really cool to learn the origin of the Venom symbiote home world.

An interesting, but overly complex story with Superman and Batman teamed up against President Luthor as he frames Superman for the blame as a giant kryptonite asteroid hurtles on a collision course with Earth. Most of the DC pantheon of heroes (and some villains) seem to be involved, and sometimes it's a case of needing a scorecard to tell the players. Still, the art is fine, the writing frequently quite good, but the main draw here is the portrayal of the relationship between Clark and show more Bruce. The book is additionally marred by its portrayal of Luthor as a man driven to madness by his envy and hatred of Superman. This would be an interesting premise; it is just badly handled by Jeph Loeb here, as Luthor's fall from grace takes a turn reminiscent of the bad old '70's when he wore a battle suit to do battle with Superman himself. show less