Superman: The Last Family of Krypton #3

[superfangirl1]

Comments

[jarodrussell]

"But what about the fifty-seven thousand children I've saved from abductors, slavers, and rapists through my drones in the last decade?"

"Nope, four white guys are way more important."

[nezchan]

Heck, there's even still a Green Lantern, just not that Green Lantern. A different one lived to carry on the role, that's all.

[espanolbot]

Plus, no Hal Lantern = No him going nuts and killing millions of people as Parallax.

[xammax]

Well... 3 of the 4 of those white guys.

Ollie is hard arguement but I would argue Hal, Bruce and espeically Barry might outweight it.

[jlroberson]

No Hal=living Coast City. Masses alive.

No Batman=No Joker and any number of other Gotham villains. Masses alive.

Remember how much villain activity simply arises from a wish to challenge one of these superheroes.

But what's lives compared to the precious trademarks?

I hate this Elseworlds trope where the point is that there simply MUST be superheroes as we know them(usually specifically, "Superman will out"). Well, there aren't any in our world, does that mean ours is terribly wrong? No. (At least not because of that)

Point of Order

[nefrekeptah]

No Batman=No Joker and any number of other Gotham villains. Masses alive.

We don't know the Joker's exact origin, but we do know it didn't necessarily involve Batman. Not to mention the plethora of Gotham villains who's origins have nothing to do with Batman.

So no, masses not alive. If anything, many more dead.

Re: Point of Order

[outlawpoet]

I'm thinking they probably didn't get locked into a endless cycle of revenge with an enabling extra-legal figure who refuses to kill or effectively imprison them. JorCorp or Raology might just fucking Phantom Zone anyone whose killcount gets too high, we don't seem to get details here.

[jlbarnett]

Hal wasn't responsible for Coast City's destruction.

[jlroberson]

Well, would we have had a Cyborg Superman without a Superman?

[darkblade]

But this world does have a Superman.

[jlroberson]

Geh. I give up.

[jlbarnett]

"I can't really speak about the other three, but if this Jordan would have been such a skilled Green Lantern then why didn't you just give him a ring?"

[mercia]

Oh, I see. It's the "What If...?" syndrome.

[sailorlibra]

Um, what about all the superheroes that had been around before Superman landed on earth? Admittedly, most of them would probably be retired, but Dinah would probably still have taken up the reins again. Also, what about Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Zatanna, Martian Manhunter, the New Gods, etc.?

[arbre_rieur]

Elseworlds.

[majingojira]

Elseworlds: the industry term for "Plot Induced Stupidity"

[arbre_rieur]

Industry term for "regular continuity does not apply." There's no reason the New Gods, the JSA, Amazons or anyone else need to have ever even existed in this reality. Hey, they don't exist on Earth-Prim, either.

[thanekos]

there's a Maggin story where the Guardians pulled that on Superman too, wasn't there?

they sure don't like projected outcome deviation in the least.

[jlbarnett]

This book really would have been better if it stayed an Elseworlds. It seems like DC allows more deviation in their multiverse which is at least semi-tied to other stories than their books that really "never happen"

[hybrid2]

I lost interest when they had Kal El raise by the Kents.

[retro_nouveau]

Set, Horus, Isis and Thoth. Hal, Bruce, Barry. Um, ok, and Ollie, too, I guess. But HELLO! YOU'RE MISSING THE HALF-DOZEN 800-POUND ALBINO GORILLAS IN THE ROOM!

[mullon]

Ultra-Humanite?

[jaybee3]

I actually found the concept of this Elseworlds interesting - now? Not so much. The fact is these 4 white guys are NOT necessary compared to the thousands Jor-El and Lara saved through their technology. Need proof? Based on what we know DC's own 52 multi-verse, such as Earth-5 (aka Fawcett/Thunderworld) or Earth-Charlton (whichever number that is) where these heroes don't exist.

[xammax]

Except if this is based Pre-Crisis...

Crisis on Infinte Earths - Barry

Final - Bruce might help


This seems an Elseworld for Earth Zero then an actual multiverse story, so yeah sometimes 4 people are more important then thousands of normal people.

[jlroberson]

If they represent valuable trademarks.

[mistersandman]

When I clicked on this, I thought it was a continuation of that superb "Last Son of Earth" elseworlds. It looks like this series never got interesting.

[jlroberson]

It started that way and seems to have gone down. Once again an Elseworlds serves only to try to confirm how Great DC Is.

When I read a comic I don't care about the cheerleading. This is one thing I never can stand about Elseworlds. For that matter, it was also something I hated about BIZARRO COMICS: DC lacking the courage to just do an anthology and slapping this unreadable, continuity-reinforcing framing story(with Steel explaining everything. WITH STEEL. I DO NOT CARE ABOUT STEEL, DC, ANY OF THEM. STOP THROWING HIM AT ME.) THAT I DO NOT CARE ABOUT onto what could have been a lot more fun.

[pyrotwilight]

Sigh. Referencing the story is an Elseworlds in the Elseworlds so blatantly is cheating. Kinda makes me unsure of picking up the last issue now.

[thanekos]

not without precedent, at least; Another Nail had our heroes run into the CSA briefly.

[pyrotwilight]

True but the Nail had its own Multiverse with a Shazam World, Crime Syndicate World and so on so it wasn't a commentary on the regular DCU.

[philippos42]

This is really stupid. It relies on knowledge of another timeline & elevation of that timeline. There would have been a smarter way to indicate those changes, but now they want to say the changes are "wrong."

And are these four supposed to be predestined? OK, let's look at unintended consequences.

Hal Jordan? The traitor who slaughtered how many GL's again? This is who we're supposed to be sad isn't in uniform? If it had been Guy Gardner, that would have been interesting.

Batman? The man who infiltrated the JLA to find out superheroes' weaknesses, then built Brother I, which damn near destroyed Themyscira? He's been more Lex Luthor than superhero for years.

Ollie Queen? Saved Hal's life once, that's a mistake.

Barry Allen I might miss.

[arbre_rieur]

It's explained that the Guardians can peer into other realities.

[jlroberson]

>>Hal Jordan? The traitor who slaughtered how many GL's again? This is who we're supposed to be sad isn't in uniform? If it had been Guy Gardner, that would have been interesting.

Hal was the second choice because he was closer than Guy, so that the Guardians use Hal as the example here makes no sense.

[sherkahn]

Not having read this, I thought when the twins were playing with the lightning, that they interrupted the vital transformation of Billy Batson into Captain Marvel and doomed the Marvel family.

The Flash works, too.

[schala_kid]

I really loved the first two issues but like New Krypton the ending left me really disappointed. I mean Luthor and B! I so fucking saw it coming but I did give the writer the benefit of the doubt *sigh*

Also Hal, Barry, Ollie, and Bruce might be gone but we still have the JSA, Aquaman, Wonder Woman and other more important heroes!! Seriously WTF? I was at least expecting Lara to have relations with the Amazons! What a let down.

Also poor Bruce, his parents just have to die violently in all of his lifetimes.

[drexer]

Ugh. Honestly, this issue pretty much destroyed everything that makes a person like an Elseworlds story.

It just seemed like a lot of 'fuck you, the main universe is how things should have been all along' and an excuse for DC to shelve elseworlds for another decade.

Even more so with the whole 'Lex and Brainiac are eeeeeevil' angle'. For em superhero stories are all about representing a battle between good and evil, and representing that humanity has an higher capacity for good within it; simplifying that to a simple X is always evil and Y is always good just annoys me to no end. Specially as all of Luthor's caracterization so far, implied that events such as this would not thrown him down that road to arrogance.

Oh, and do not get me started on the whole 'faith vs science' angle in here; even when those stories try to shoehorn a message of 'both things can coexist', somehow it always is science which fails in the end and faith which has to save the day.

If you'll excuse me I'll be in this corner over here reading 'Secret Identity'. Clutching my knees and rocking back and forth.

[jlroberson]

Haven't read this, but is this YET ANOTHER Elseworlds which falls back on Brainiac at the end? Gah.

[arbre_rieur]

"Specially as all of Luthor's caracterization so far, implied that events such as this would not thrown him down that road to arrogance."

The story took great pains to establish that kid Lex was already an arrogant, egotistical douchebag when Jor-El recruited him.

[recognitions]

"Natural evolution of super-heroes," huh? Somewhere there's a diagram of Bat-Mite growing up to be Batman.

[geoffsebesta]

This, on the other hand, is not great.

Though the art is nice.

This is problematic on so many levels. If for no reason than the way it asserts one particular fictional universe is metaphysically "correct" and all other universes pale reflections.

Although I can imagine how someone might feel that way, working for a big comic corporation. Actually, it's pretty logical in the DC-sense and would explain why all the other universes keep coming into and collapsing back out of DCcontinuityverse.

I guess the next step is to consider why the mainstream DCU is the Only True one.

[outlawpoet]

man, I hate that storyline.

"You've thwarted their destinies!?!?!"

"Uh, why exactly should I care about predestination, if it can be disrupted by unintentional side-effects of otherwise reasonable actions? How could I choose any action, without necessarily interrupting apparently scores of undetectable possible futures?"

"iono"