A Superman What If?

[llozymandias]

Seeing that TELLE paged me here goes.   The current DCU would be the post-crisis universe first seen in issue #11 of Crisis.  A lot of his adventures would still have been retconned out though.  The silver-age Superman visitted many parallel universes.  Also the golden-age Supermen would still have been retconned out.  So even here Superman would no longer be his earth's first super-hero.  Unless that Superbaby story where he met Zatara is kept in continuity.  In that story Zatara was still new to his powers.  That would place that story sometime in the 1930s, at the most recent.  A lot of Superman stories would still have been discarded.  "Whatever happened to the man of tomorrow?" would never have been written.  DC Comics Presents would probably still be in publication.  The awful story that ended its run (in our universe) never gets written.

[lonewolf23k]

Well, I was thinking more of how Superman would exist within the Post-Crisis DCU, and how many of the stories from the Byrne era and beyond would've been told using the standard Superman.   Some ideas I had were..

-Superman's stories pick up after the Crisis, with Kara's funerals.  Not too sure about what to do with the people of Kandor, but I want to limit the number of Phantom Zone criminals to a few: General Zod and his direct underlings.  I do want to go the "Superman is the last son of Krypton" route, but without wiping out every adventure possibility.  

One roundabout way I was thinking of handling Kandor was to make the "shrinking" actually permanent, so that the Kandorians would sadly be forever trapped in their small size.  Even Superman couldn't really shrink down to their size without the Atom's help, and would instead rely on a robotic telepresence robot to walk about the city of Krypton to interact with it's people.

-Lex Luthor's shift from Mad Scientist Villain to Corporate Villain would essentially be one big act..  As in the classic "Death of Superman" story, Lex Luthor would've used his genius to solve a major problem, and convinced the world and Superman that he'd decided to go straight and use his intelligence for the benefit of mankind (and for legal profit as well).  He patents some of his inventions and founds Lexcorp, a corporation intended to help advance science and technology for humanity's advancements.

Of course, the real motives for Luthor's actions are more sinister: he's decided that simply Killing Superman just isn't enough.  He wants a more complete triumph, including actually replacing Superman as Humanity's greatest hero.  Operating his villainy in secret now, he organises dangers to threaten Superman, while setting himself up as a humanitarian helping to solve every crisis he secretly causes.

Of course, Lois, being a shrewd and suspicious reporter, guesses that Luthor hasn't reformed, and investigates on him.  Clark himself is torn between wanting to believe in Luthor's redemption, and his own suspicions on Luthor's involvments with recent troubles.  This would be an ongoing subplot culminating in Lex being "outed" as a villain..   At which point he'd arrange for his "death" and return as his "Son", Lex Luthor the Second..

-The Eradicator: Instead of being from "real" Krypton, the Eradicator would be a device made be one of Kal-El's ancestors, one of the rare "black sheep" of the family, who thought Krypton's future rested in rejecting all emotions and becoming more machinelike and logical.  Coldly Logical.  After the disappearance of the Kandorians and the loss of Kara, Superman would at first adopt the Eradicator as a friend, longing for the friendship of anything Kryptonian.  But as the Eradicator tries to make Superman more cold and machinelike, Superman rejects it and fends it off...

-The Death and Return of Superman: Basically, it happens very much like in the Byrneverse version, but instead of Superman and Doomsday simply beating the snot out of each other to death, Superman's desperate plan to get rid of Doomsday involves shoving him into the now empty Phantom Zone.  Sadly, the already badly-wounded Superman doesn't make it back out, and everyone thinks he's dead.  The events of "Funeral for a Friend" happen with everyone being broken up about it, even Lex, who goes "Superman should've died at MY hands, dammit!"  The Reign of the Supermen also happens as well, but this time Superman comes back through the Forteress' own Phantom Zone projector just in time to help the others defeat Henshaw's schemes, before sending Henshaw into the Phantom Zone as well..

That's all I got so far..  Any opinions?

[Great Rao]

Sounds good to me, with one minor glitch:  pre-Crisis, Kandor was enlarged and moved to a dimensional phase-shifting planet.  So the Kandorians couldn't get stuck in their small size as you have happening - unless you plan to have them shrunk back down again, which I don't think would make sense.

But if you're going to keep all the same storylines that were published, then why bother to retcon out the reboot?

Although I admit that I like the idea.  It's sort of a way to have the published DC comics be slightly related to the real Superman...

[NotSuper]

It's important to note that DC could've made the changes they wanted without a reboot. Sadly, that isn't what happened.