I apologize for the delay-- I read and I review, I'm just slow! I can't wait for #50 and I was blown away by this issue.
Thanks, O. I’ve been writing for the site for fourteen years now, which is stupid and ridiculous, but when you put so much time and effort into something, it gets frustrating when it’s seemingly for nothing. But if my work can entertain some, that should be enough. “Should”, being the operative word. Ha!
Issue Fifty is in the bag, Ibarra is working on the cover and
maybe something else if we’re lucky. In addition, Roy is also contributing something to this milestone issue of a series he helped shape in the earliest days of its run. It’s going to be a barnstormer.
It’s also massive, of course. It really got away from me, but I think I stuck the landing before I put it to bed. The ongoing Superwoman mythos is something I’m really proud of, and I think it’s one of the most cohesive things I’ve put out into the DC2niverse, even though its reliant on a gimmick anniversary concept, and set in a future that we seem to be creeping ever closer to with every issue that hits the site.
This was heartfelt, clever, and a truly amazing concept executed perfectly. This is like a master class in how to use time travel for amazing dramatic effect and character moments.
One of the things most important to me right now is trying to inject as much legitimate emotion into my stories, because it’s all well and good having superheroes throw punches and exchange quips, but I want there to be a visceral and legitimate reaction to what’s going on in the pages.
I’ve mentioned it elsewhere (I start sentences with that too often in letter columns…) but I have a bag of tricks I like to pull from, story concepts that I thoroughly enjoy revisiting, and time travel is one of them.
I’ve done it a couple of times in
Justice League (#35 and #45) and I explored something similar in one of my favourite
Wonder Woman arcs (#22-26), but I’ll keep going back to the well as long as I can put a new spin on it each time. I think I’m done with it now, because this
Action Comics arc has been exhausting, because everything needs to tie together nicely at the end, and I kept having to write myself out of corners that the premise backs you into.
I love, love, love the twist - this wasn't the quietest day in Superman's career, but (maybe) the worst! And Superwoman's here to fix it!
The logistics of the trip, the reasons why she’s here on that weekend and not any other, get covered next issue.
Coming up with threats for her to face that would keep Superman busy if he had to come into the cold, but are things you can zip from in advance if you knew they were coming was difficult.
The knock on effect of each threat… the Parasite would have rampaged, killing so many people, if he wasn’t stopped so early. That would have eaten into the time it took for Superman to get to Germany, therefore allowing more deaths to occur, and he wouldn’t have even heard the invasion over the Hall of Justice until it happened, and by that time, half the team would have been dead in the rubble of their HQ!
And there was also the opportunity to include some world-building weirdness that I’m really fond of at the moment, adding as much international and multicultural flavour into the DC2niverse as possible at any given moment:
As you can probably tell, I wanted to do more with the concept, but alas, this issue couldn’t run over the standard size, because that would be an awful burden on both the reader and writer.
It's awesome seeing Superwoman again, and just how incredible she has become in the future. I loved getting the League's reactions to her zooming around the planet stopping major catastrophes. The Legion Omnicom is a great way to reveal to the audience the effects of what she's doing to the timeline.
I was really chuffed about the Omnicon concept when it struck me!
I wrote the intended histories first in most places, and then wrote back from there. You can see why Kara made the decisions she did from those alone, e.g. she couldn’t prevent Raymond Maxwell Jensen’s transformation into the second Parasite because of his role later in the timeline routing the Appellaxian Meta Plague Crisis, but unfortunately we know that her actions didn’t help mitigate his insanity because he appears in Eric’s current
Superman run after escaping Stryker’s Island! That said, rather he have a few gangster’s psyches bouncing around his head rather than those of his dead family and their apartment building!
I also really enjoyed writing the various characters who form Nibelung Verteidigungsteam, so they each
had to have their spotlight in that scene. Their appearance is a continuation of the extended sequence they had in
Justice League #78, and their enmity with Captain Nazi is carried over from there, too.
…At some point I need to get into how my Superman and Superwoman are both pacifists, but that’s probably something I can save for the anniversary.
Interwoven with Kara's efforts on Earth is Superman and Lois' off-world adventures. Again, I love the twist, if that's the right word, as Superman reveals that he's been working to give Lois superpowers. (....Huh. Yes, that's exactly what would happen first if Lois had superstrength....)
I wish I had more space to explore Clark and Lois’ adventures off-world—and I certainly had more planned-- but I had to reel them in after the first two Superwoman sequences ran long.
I wanted it to be fun more than anything, and I wanted there to be a reason that Clark would take Lois bouncing around the universe. The end result was nice, but I wish I could have built up to it more, so it landed even louder.
Fantastic issue with a great cliffhanger. One of your best series ever, in my humble opinion.
Thanks again, O. Superwoman is a pet character of mine and I work double hard when writing her, mainly because I don’t want her to be a Mary Sue of any sort. I guess it helps she’s established in her own way in the “present day”, so there is a baseline of character to extrapolate from, but she’s so fun to write, especially considering I originally wrote her the way I did because of a suggestion Don made about the world’s relationship with Superman after he left Earth at the start of the 10YL timeline! More on that next issue’s letter page, I think!