Superman: Lost #10 Final Issue Of What?

[superfangirl1]

Clark goes to leave and join the Justice league in space. But a few minutes later, he mysteriously return to the apartment.





"EVERY MAN HAS
HIS OWN
DESTINY--
"THE ONLY
IMPERATIVE IS
TO FOLLOW IT...
WILL.

"...TO
ACCEPT IT, NO MATTER WHERE IT
LEADS HIM."





Hope’s baby isn’t Clark’s at all, it’s the kid of the guy she killed

As for the ending. Somebody brings up a good point question.

“If the "Gatekeeper" is responsible for providing a path home for Clark that branches off after only a few days, how do all the events leading to saving Victor's planet still occur creating the Gatekeeper in the first place. Is it like an alternating loop? Clark lives the LOST timeline, resulting in the Gatekeeper. The Gatekeeper alters the past to avert a Clark going through the Lost timeline. But then there would be no Gatekeeper so Clark goes through the LOST timeline, etc. But then why would Lois remember the LOST version of Clark even if he doesn't return until after the events of LOST in Lois' timeline. So the Gatekeeper and the LOST version of Clark are essentially alternate future versions. Or is it closer to the MCU Endgame time travel and like Gamora?”

Comments

[mastermahan]

"Lois, you know full well I would never acknowledge a clone as my son, even if that's clearly what they are."

[zachbeacon]

I remember so much hostility directed at Season One Young Justice's deadbeat dad Superman.

Wild that there was a time when THAT was the worst on-screen Superman.

(Yeah, it always seemed like comic Kal and Kon should have been closer but it feels worse when you hang a lampshade on it and don't fix it)

[obsidianwolf]

I've often felt that part of the problem is that Kon started out not being an actual clone of Clark. He was just a human clone that had been altered to be as Kryptonian like as possible.

That was the status quo for quiet a huge chunk of his early Series.

So it made sense that while Superman was willing to offer advice, guidance and make sure the boy had someone looking out for him (Dubblix)but there wasn't the whole he's technically your kid thing.

However things like Y oung Justice adapt their early distance while keeping the post retcon physical relationship.

[zachbeacon]

On the one hand, I really appreciate the idea that a relatively obscure mad scientist (Westlake? Westfield? I'm not gonna Google it) tried to make his mark on the world by giving (some of) Superman's powers to a younger version of herself.

On the other... yeah, I see why they ultimately made Conner's parents Lex and Clark. There's the marketing reasons (I don't have to Google either dad), story reasons (torn between the greatest hero and an evil mastermind), ect (*Smallville shippers have entered the chat*).

But you're right that it makes Superman look worse. I still don't think he came off great in the 90s especially when you consider how much closer he eventually seemed to be to Post-Crisis Supergirl and Steel

[obsidianwolf]

To be fair Matrix was based on an Alternate Lana Lang and lived with the Kents for a while and John Irons lived and worked in Metropolis.

Plus Superman did become closer to Superboy over time. After all the whole giving him the name Kon El thing IIRC came about before the Hybrid Retcon.

The thing that always gave me the most pause with the retcon was how it fell into DC's wierd Eugenics leaning bent where folks who had "Evil" Parents all were said to have dark sides they had to constantly struggle against even if said evil parent had never had a hand in raising them.

[zachbeacon]

It feels like it's hard to make the "Hawaii is far away" argument when Superman lives in Metropolis, has a storage unit in the artic, and works on the moon.

I know Kon eventually became part of the family (and was living in Smallville for a while before the New52 BS) but it took SUCH a long time.

Yeah, the Eugenics Era was weird. I'm not the biggest Cassandra Cain fan but they were right to be furious about the tail-end of her Batgirl run. Actually... between Steph's dad and Bab's brother... shouldn't ALL the Batgirls have the "evil gene"?

And it continues to be a problem now even if it isn't as widespread. Chris Kent is just Jon's evil counterpart in the Zod family these days.

[obsidianwolf]

I wasn't saying Hawaii was far away in the that's why they didn't' interact much just that they were not running into each other constantly their civilian and heroic lives were taking place predominantly in different locals. I mean for the first bit of his comic Superboy was in a lot of ways a local hero sticking just to Hawaii with other heroes dropping in during crossovers or actually very far away running around with the Intergalactic Rave.

I do think in Hindsight DC and especially after the retcon that you would expect DC to handle things differently in new continuities but they never seem to which is frankly kind of weird and off putting esp when they do it especially badly like in Young Justice.

Yeah I know what you mean about Chris Kent and how it shows the eugenics bent is still there just that it's not as blatant and under the surface every so often though it always bugs me who gets to count as an evil relative. As you said Babs and Bruce (sometimes) have evil brothers but they don't get shown being drawn to the dark side. Damian is a wierd case since Talia definitely counts as an evil relative but most of Damian's darker quirks get put down to his upbringing (as they should) instead of it being in his DNA but even still some times it reads like DC is jsut saying Bruce's genes are just so good that that's why Damian has a chance and not hard effort on the part of Bruce, Dick and Alfred to try to straighten that kid out.

[zachbeacon]

It just feels like - while some heroes have a neighborhood, city, or even nation that they protect and I totally get making Superboy champion of Hawaii - Superman is there for everyone on Earth and the state of Hawaii is a part of Earth.

But I get that it's a balancing act. Establishing that Martian Manhunter is the primary superhero for a lot of the southern hemisphere raises questions for me about Superman being the main protector of just about everywhere else (what'd Brazil do to you, Clark?). But that month in 1999 where Superman pops into just about everyone else's comic to check in really makes him seem like a busy body (Nightwing even called him on it when he did it to the Titans).

Re eugenics: When you think about it, I'm pretty sure Tim and sometimes Dick are the only "pure" members of the Batfamily. Nevermind that a huge part of the Batman franchise is using your personal trauma as fuel to prevent others from experiencing the same. I think I might have just talked myself into being a bigger Cass fan.

[obsidianwolf]

Wasn't that period just after Clark was dealing with the whole mutated into having energy powers and then getting split in half before returning to the Status Quo deal or was that before it.

I do know that 1999 was when Superboy finally found out that Superman was really Clark Kent. (I always liked that he met the Kents first during zero hour.)

Even Dick and Tim have the shadow of evil in their stories. I mean you've got Tim's evil future self and Dick was supposedly slated to become a Talon thanks to Haley's Circus being retconned to be a Talon recruiting ground.

[zachbeacon]

I don't actually know what set those events off because I couldn't afford to follow all the interconnected Superman books at the time. I do know that was the mini-event that gave us that one Hitman issue ("Wait, Ennis DOESN'T hate Superman like he hates every other superhero?!")

Zero Hour was wild. I'm happy to ignore that it created more problems than it solved just because of that Tim/Dick team-up. That One Writer was so great until he lost his mind over the 2016 election and never recovered.

Yeah that's why I put the qualifier on Dick; they keep throwing in stupid retcons that never stick and the Court of Owls one seems to be the one that finally did (though I'm happy Taylor has mostly ignored it). As for Evil Future Tim ...any writer that thinks Tim Drake WANTS to be Batman does not understand Tim Drake; Tim has more of an edge than people give him credit for but that story was straight-up character assassination.

[obsidianwolf]

I went and looked busy body supes was shortly after all that jazz (the red/blue thing was 98 and then 99 was them trying to get back to basics)

I have a soft spot for Zero Hour but the follow up introduction of Hypertime annoyed me. Talk about trying to have your cake and eat it too. A Multiverse was too confusing supposedly but that mess which was a multiverse in everything but name wasn't.

And I agree about Evil Bat-Tim. I can see an Evil future Tim easy enough( all the bats have tendencies that could go very wrong) but I never quiet bought him as Evil Future Batman and Johns I think it was really didn't sell us on it. Frankly instead of Batman with a gun and some BS about making it a good thing if instead they'd had Evil Future Bat Tim arguing that he took the job cause no one else would and the world needed Batman. That seems like the kind of self destructive streak Tim might embrace.

[zachbeacon]

While there are certainly stories I'd rather see forgotten, I generally like the whole Waid/Morrison "everything is in continuity" sensibility but writers still have to do the work when it comes to explaining it. Hypertime never got a satisfying explanation because, as you said, it seemed to be a multiverse that didn't want to admit it was.

Personally I feel like we already have the template for what would cause Tim to snap. We've seen glimpses of it several times now. When someone he loves (usually Bruce but also Connor that one time) dies he gets obsessive about bringing them back because obviously they aren't really dead; they're lost in the time stream or the multiverse or whatever. He's always proven right eventually (Thanks Bendis!) but one of these days he won't be. When Bruce dies for real, I think Tim is among the LEAST likely Bat-folk to be capable of taking to mantle. A world without Bruce would either crush him or cause him to go full-Monarch*.

*The Armageddon 2001 guy, not the Venture Bros guy. Jason or Damien are more likely to become the Venture Bros guy.

[obsidianwolf]

I agree the idea of Hypertime wasn't bad but the execution of it and the confusing way they kept explaining it only made it worse.

That's certainly the most likely way I was just saying if you wanted Tim as Evil Batman I think only obligation would make him take the cowl. After all it harks back to how he ended up Robin since he didn't intend to apply for the job but there was no one else and he was convinced Batman needed Robin. Titans tommorrow was honestly IMo really lazy writing. Wanting the Titans as the Evil Justice league in the future with a corrupt trinity but then they didn't really put much thought into how to get them there.

You know everytime I think about Armageddon 2001 I think about how annoyed I was that they showed Hawk and Dove fight him and then he turned out to be Hawk. It was only years later when I learned about the leaked ending and how DC randomly changed it at the last moment.