Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Emergency Superman Post: Earth One "redesign"

Tomorrow sees the release of Superman: Earth One from DC Comics.

The book reimagines Superman as if he is starting his career in 2010/2011 as a 20-something (and without any of the baggage of 10 years of Smallville).  The book is written by J. Michael Staczynski and drawn by Shane Davis.  As an attempt to reach the library, bookstore, Amazon and general audience that isn't too keen on dropping $4 for a floppy comic (or finding a comic shop), DC is launching the Earth One line as a series of original graphic novels.

This comic arrives in hardcover (which I think is an iffy call) and is priced at about $20 USD.

Apparently there's been some confusion and some odd press from major/ non-comics-related press being written that suggests that Superman is not wearing a cape and tights, but a hoodie or something.  Apparently, these writers literally never opened the book or looked beyond the cover.

This is not the costume
This is 20+ Clark Kent becoming Superman in America.  I know its very confusing that he's not a middle-aged guy in a suit (which, really, who wears suits anymore?  Let alone 24 year olds.), but that's his street clothes, not his Superman costume.

And, press: all kinds of people wear hoodies. Who does not?  Twilight vampires. I don't even know where that's coming from.  Having seen those movies, nobody wears a hoodie despite the fact they live in a rainforest in Washington and probably should if they want to keep their hair nicely gelled.  But...  is everything featuring a 20-something with a sci-fi or fantasy bent to it going to have to be compared (unfavorably) to the Twilight franchise? 

This, by the way, is the Supersuit:

You do not @#$% with the Super
So, there's your wild reimagining of the costume.

DC isn't stupid.  Nobody likes it when you mess with the costume and basic look of Superman.  Oh, sure, everyone will say they want to update it, but at this point the costume is an icon.  Anything you do to "fix" it will be a modernization that reflects current fashion or design, and that's not really what makes the Supersuit.

I'm picking up my copy of the comic tomorrow at Austin Books.  Hopefully a review is forthcoming.
 
Thanks to Bleeding Cool for the very specific links.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So is this separate from the Superman comic that's also written by JMS?

-NTT

The League said...

Yeah. Earth One is literally DC's new Earth-1. The "Grounded" storyline is taking place on Earth Zero, I believe. Earth-0 is mainline DCU continuity, so it roughly follows continuity as established since "Infinite Crisis", including Geoff Johns' "Secret Origin". Its basically post COIE continuity, but if something was broke post COIE-the editors can say "yeah, that didn't happen. Infinite Crisis."

And, no, its not that complicated, so don't even start going down that path.