Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Alan Moore, Comics, dan jurgens, Dave Gibbons, dc, keith giffen, superman

Superman #8 – Before For The Man Who Has Everything

Published Wed, 25 Apr 2012 09:00:42 -0500

Last updated Wed, 25 Apr 2012 09:42:16 -0500

I possibly could have guessed from the cover. But I didn't.

This month's issue of Superman, by Giffen and Jurgens, gives us the Wildstorm villain Helspont in his war against the Daemonites on Earth, but in doing so captured Superman, in a rather familiar fashion.

In a Superman Annual back in the eighties, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons gave us a tale, For The Man Who Has Everything, with Superman captured by an intergalactic dictator, kept passive in a dream by a parasitic plant that gave him his ultimate fantasy, that Krypton had not been destroyed and that he still lived there with a family.

In Superman #8, it's flipped, Superman shown a number of futures by the intergalactic dictator Helspont, using his own mind altering orgamism to warn Superman of the consequences if his continues his life as he does, rather than being subjugated.

You can imagine that it doesn't go well. But it does paint a rather possible future, with Superman hunted down, referred to as an "it" rather than a person of any description… given recent issues of Justice League, is this the way Superman is going?

Chris Sims wrote a piece mocking Before Watchmen by suggesting other DC Comics by Moore that they could prequelise. I didn't think he expected to be proven right quite so soon.

Comics courtesy of Orbital Comics of London. Their Roger Langridge signing is on Saturday, as well as their new Roger Langridge gallery exhibition into May.