” This universe was better when I was a kid.
“Way better.
“I’m from another universe, but I grew up learning all about life from this one.
“I learned what was good and what was bad.
“I learned what a hero was supposed to be.
“But when I sacrificed everything for the people I looked up to, I learned something else…
“I learned it was a fiction.”
Geoff Johns, 2007
I’ll warn you now, I’m probably going to be reading way too much into this book but that’s really half the fun of it.
The above quotes are the opening monologue in Tales of the Sinestro Corps: Superman-Prime #1. When I first read those words and even now as I type them, I can’t tell exactly who is speaking; the author Geoff Johns or the fictional character Superman-Prime? In what could be a stunning piece of metafiction, it is easy to see Superman-Prime as an in-print avatar for Johns, a main architect in much of the woes at DC lately. Look at everything that Superman-Prime has done over the past couple of years and it is not hard to see that the true puppet-master hasn’t Alexander Luthor, Sinestro or even the Anti-Monitor; it’s been the writer Geoff Johns. The destruction and death in the fictional universe hasn’t been caused by Superman-Prime but by Johns himself. Maybe it is reaching but can’t you hear the author uttering those opening words about the fictional world he’s had such a hand in? Can’t you see the man, once a young, devoted fan of DC, now looking at the books and realizing that “it was fiction” and that he can do anything he wants with it. If Alan Moore taught us anything, it’s that these are all imaginary stories so everything and nothing matters all at the same time.
One of the most troubling aspects of the lawsuit between Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane is that Alan Moore’s Miracleman comics have been kept out of print for over a decade now. I wonder how many people who read this issue have read Moore’s Miracleman, particularly the climatic “Olympus” storyline which featured the return of Kid Miracleman, former sidekick now bent on destroying everything. Essentially, Johns has recreated Kid Miracleman in Superman-Prime. They’re both twisted versions of the heroes they once hoped to become. In one of the most destructive battles in Miracleman, Kid Miracleman lays waste to London, killing one of the Warpsmiths, Miracleman’s alien allies. John Totleben’s fantastic artwork conveyed the devastation staggeringly. In the end, Miracleman gets Kid Miracleman to transform back into his young, innocent teenage alter ego who can’t understand what he has done and what he is responsible for. In a touching moment, Miracleman embraces the boy, both crying, until Miracleman snaps the boys neck, preventing Kid Miracleman from returning again. Almost twenty years later and I can picture the pages and panels clearly.
Now in the DCU, Superman-Prime fills the same role, returning to Earth after Infinite Crisis, planning to burn down everything and start all over. He’ll usher in the new heroic age. In Infinite Crisis, Johns has already done the giant fight, with Superman-Prime fighting all of the heroes. That fight resulted in such memorable moments as Pantha getting her head literally punched off, some forgettable Teen Titan getting an arm ripped off and the strange shuffling of Flashes as they whisked Superboy-Prime (as he was then able to be called) off to his temporary Speed-Force prison.
It’s almost unexplainable why Johns returns to the same ground and tries to show an even bigger battle this time, only a year or two after he already did it, so I’m not even going to try and figure out why. Just accept that he’s revisiting his own stories already. But where that previous battle was only a portion of one issue, here he is allowed the luxury of an entire issue to redo the fight. He now has the room for each and every whimsy that he can possibly think of. Remember that generic Teen Titan whose arm was yanked off? He’s back and he still has one good arm, but not for long. Superman-Prime is so tough that he can even burn holes through the real Superman’s shoulder. At least this time there’s no disembodied heads bouncing along the ground.
Even as Moore’s Kid Miracleman has the moment of realization toward the end of Moore’s , John has Superman-Prime come close to the same kind of clarity toward the end of this special. Inexplicably, the character comes close to a breakdown after being almost beaten by Superman, Power Girl and Supergirl. He starts crying and tries to explain away his villainy by saying that no one ever said “thank you” to him. No one ever thanked him for whatever it was that he did. And here’s where Johns veers away from Moore. When KM shows the moment of realization, Miracleman does what needed to be done and kills KM’s alter ego. Now, when Superman-Prime says that all he ever wanted was to be hugged, Superman just looks down at him stearnly and basically tries to send him to his room like a petulant child.
Now I’m not saying that Geoff Johns thinks he is Alan Moore. I’m not even too sure that Geoff Johns knows a lot of what he’s subtextually doing. It’s difficult to tell how serious he is trying to be and how much of this issue is tongue in cheek. Look at that instance early in the fight, when the one-armed Titan shows up again. There’s no way that scene, almost a perfect mirror to the earlier battle, could be written by the author without a chuckle and a grin.
Tales of the Sinestro Corps: Superman-Prime #1
“Into the Sun”
Written by: Geoff Johns (backup by
Drawn by: Pete Woods and Jerry Ordway
Colored by: Brad Anderson
Lettered by: John J. Hill
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