Tony Black reviews Superman: Rebirth #1…
The world needs a Man of Steel, but can Superman protect the world while raising a super-son with his wife, Lois Lane?
IT BEGINS: Now it’s Clark’s turn to be Pa Kent and teach his son what it means to be super, but who is hunting Superman’s son—and why?
SEE ALSO: Check out a preview of Superman: Rebirth #1
I am a newbie to comic books, if not specifically comic-book characters. So these reviews are going to be from the perspective of someone not massively well versed in the lore of DC and therefore may provide something of a fresh outlook on the DC Rebirth universe the new comics have introduced. If you want to see more of my comic-book musings, please feel free to check out my new blog on the subject.
This outing of Rebirth serves as less an introduction to Superman as a goodbye as it turns out, with a fair dose of alternate timeline interference in the bargain.
The previous primer issue established that while Superman was presumed dead after a battle at, I believe, the end of Justice League #50, there was another Clark Kent, Lois Lane and a son knocking around – this Clark had a nice little beard to establish the difference. It appears he was keeping a low profile and was from a parallel Earth, and here in a conversation with Lana Lang we get more detail on that; it seems he was involved in the battle which killed Superman, and shows up at his new Metropolis crypt just as Lana is showing up to give him a burial in Smallville, his hometown. Alt-Clark–who wears a black Superman outfit, which I assume has significance–is intending to revive this world’s Superman.
Okay so to backtrack, I have no idea who this alt-Clark is or where he came from, but I have heard of Lana Lang. I know she was a major figure in the TV show Smallville, and I believe she appeared in Superman III or IV (though we try and forget those, don’t we?), and that she’s an early love interest before he meets Lois (he does like his alliterate girlfriend names doesn’t he?). Though there’s something unusual about Lana – she seems to know about Superman’s Fortress of Solitude (which I know again from the films the general gist of) and when she touches crystals inside, it seems to recognise her as Kara (who I know to be Kara Danvers, aka Supergirl). Why? No idea.
So by the end, it seems as though this bearded, black-suited Clark is going to assume the role of this world’s Superman, and that the Superman presumably we’ve been following for a while is definitively dead. Alt-Clark has his own backstory of how he fought Doomsday, who I know partly from the recent Zack Snyder film kills Superman in comic lore, but that he was revived through a Kryptonian artefact called the ‘Regeneration Matrix’ – which this Superman doesn’t seem to have.
This was very much a scene-setting issue placing new ideas and characters on the board it seems, with less a plot and more a central quest at its core, but it clarified enough for me to get on board and understand where the pieces have landed for the start of Rebirth.
Tony Black is a freelance film/TV writer & podcaster & would love you to follow him on Twitter.
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https://youtu.be/b7Ozs5mj5ao?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng
Originally published June 13, 2016. Updated November 10, 2019.
