Letters to SUPERWOMAN: FOR TOMORROW #2

So, one of the first Superman mini-series I ever read was The Phantom Zone, and it was amazing. Written by Steve Gerber and with art by Gene Colan (what a team!), I had no idea what was going on half the time but it featured strong showings for Supergirl and Wonder Woman, the Phantom Zoners themselves were terrifying, and Superman showed that his strength of spirit, of self, would always ensure he won the day.

The story stayed with me, as did a lot of stories I grew up reading, and so when the time came to write the next issue of Superwoman: Of Tomorrow after the premier, I began to construct a story that not only led on from stuff David teased in the first issue of Superman: Lost Son, but also tied into this great mini-series that scarred me as a child. Because they all scarred me as a child.

The restoration of Krypton was a big thing that was kind of skipped over in #1. I wanted there to be a massive reason that Superwoman wouldn’t be in Metropolis during Lex Luthor’s ‘redemption’ story that we saw glimpses of in Lost Son #1-- because honestly, would ANYBODY in the superhero fraternity trust him to save the day?-- and doing something that Superman had never been able to do-- rebuild their ‘home world’-- was big enough to fit the bill for my purposes. But what next?

I also wanted to redeem a one-note character that we used a lot early on in the site’s history, namely Kru-El, the half-brother of Superman. Again, I glossed over his personal history in this story, because it’s not too important, what was important was laid out for you on the page.

But consider this. Kru-El debuted as the Hound of Zod in the first arc of David Charlton’s Adventures of Superman run that hit the site in the first year of the DC2 (I just checked and the arc was titled “Lost Sons of Krypton”, so some typical cyclical narrative from our boy David right there). In-story, Kru was sold to Desaad of Apokolips and transformed into the DC2’s own Doomsday in time for our first year crossover event, The Apokolips Imperative. I remember writing that issue-long fight scene like it was yesterday-- David took one look at it (I imagine him sighing because I was raw as all blazes back then) and went on to weave some sweet, sweet IXE magic all over it.

I launched Action Comics at some point early on in the life of the site, wrote some really crap stuff (I always struggled to write Superman)-- that is going to be touched upon in Green Lantern Corps of all places-- and one of my larger arcs involved sending Superman off (to where, I never told) and filling Metropolis with replacement heroes. Now that was fun. Sure, there was some utter bollocks too, because I collaborated with a really regrettable human being at one point, but I was writing The Guardian in a mainstream title! I was writing crazy stuff! I got Roy Flinchum to contribute a back-up feature and then he eventually took up the reins of the book after my finale! How cool is that, considering what that man contributed to the lifeblood of the site? So out of my crap came gold, and only a bit of it was my gold. Roy Flinchum is a hell of a man and I still enjoy working with him to this day.

But during said ‘replacement heroes’ arc, I reintroduced Kru-El. I had him able to transform into Doomsday and back whenever he wanted (shades of perennial DC2 inspiration, Smallville, perhaps? I think this one was prior to the Davis Bloome arc in Season 8). Eventually, he was defeated by a returning Superman. Exposed to Gold Kryptonite and therefore stripped of his powers, Rip Hunter took Kru away and dumped him somewhere else in the multiverse, in a mental asylum. Kru was last seen gibbering in Kryptonese, and that was that.

Until David and I planned to relaunch the Superman line on DC2. Now, David planned some massive stories. “Empire of Zod” for one, and numerous others he’s alluding to have taken place in the timeline of Lost Son. I too had plans. In the aftermath of DC2’s very own Zero Hour, I intended for Kru to have returned to Earth-1, completely human, and living in Metropolis under an assumed identity of Jon Kent. The plan was for Jon to insinuate his way into Clark’s life, pose as a cousin, or a long lost brother, and undermine and infuriate the Man of Steel. Jon was also going to be able to regain his powers (I wasn’t clear how, but there was a special wristband involved, it’s all very high-science…) and generally cause problems for Clark before turning to the side of good and redeeming himself for his actions as the Hound of Zod.

And then the Superman relaunch stalled (I think mostly due to my inability to write Superman, oops) and here we are today.

Everything that happens to Kru-El in this issue is original to this story, and wasn’t part of my original Action Comics plan. He’s more overtly good, I think, and there’s less overt evil in him as a person prior to his meeting General Zod. Zod using brainwashing techniques on some of his followers seemed right for such a monster. Imagine having kids who were a bit rebellious falling under the sway of this cult figure, and him using those kids against you? That’s horrifying-- that’s Zod.

Faora made sense as a villain because I wanted to stack the deck with female characters wherever possible. The absence of Non and the death of Zod and Faora’s child-- at Faora’s own hand no less!-- was me seeding future stories set in this timeline, post Ten Years Later if it comes down to it, and I have a few cool ideas for this continuity beyond what we’re doing right now.

And yet this issue was a struggle to get out. Roy kindly stepped up to do the cover-- it wouldn’t be right to wave goodbye to these characters without Roy on art duties on a Super-title-- and that gives Steve time to work on the madcap cover for our next story.

One of these reasons writing the story was hard because I wrote segments ahead of time, because they were easy, then I had to get to the connective tissue which was damn hard. Az-Rel about to be released from the Phantom Zone and Nadira laying waste to any man she could, that came first and easy. The penultimate scene with Faora near triumphant, that was an early one too. Lena facing down the military types came out of conversations with Don, along with Power Girl fighting the government. The former was actually going to end with the young Eiling Jr transforming into the Hulk-like version of the General we’ve grown accustomed to, but I thought it best to keep that as a war of words. It’s not that the US government as bad here, it’s just that they want what they want.

The connective tissue went on and on because there was so much ground to cover. I hit way over 12,000 words on this one story, which is… ridiculous… and I’m hoping I can keep myself to something not much over half that for #3, which I took a run at today. But there was so much groundwork to lay, so much character development and winks and nods to the story that had to be done for it to make sense. If this was an actual continuation of the stories on the site, then we’d have had ten years of story to pull from, but there are adventures and experiences we can only allude to, and they had to appear within the pages. Rough writing time.

Finally, the last scene. Kara being the last ‘survivor’ of her family and her decision to cut Lena out of her life due to role in taking Kru off the board. There’ll be repercussions there for the next two issues, for both these characters. And I thought it was really sad to end on that note, but hopefully it built appropriately to earn that moment. You be the judge of that.

Thanks for reading if you do, and I’ll be over in my flat trying to write more stories.

This is actually my favourite of the Ten Years Later stories. I would love to see Kara and her supporting cast in other stories after this set.

Just finished #3 and was wondering if anyone would like to edit it? I've been sat in this cafe for four hours but I wrapped it, and now I'm exhausted!

I appreciate you taking the time none the less, mate! 

I was worried about the length, but there was so much I wanted to get out of it. Glad the scope delivered on the size of it. 

A lot of those early Action Comics issues were a bit of a shit-show, to be blunt. But that's what I had to work with-- hell, that's what I wrote-- so I wanted to make amends with the past and make it work in the present. Kru was a pet project that I never got to follow through on, so that's what this story was about, using his story, a lot of it we didn't see, be used to tell a larger story.

One of the things I'm trying to do in these anniversary issues is not use editorial comments, so I have to... succinctly sum up what's happened in the narrative, and they go one of two ways. 1) They actually happened in DC2 issues (text) or 2) they just happened but we didn't see them (subtext). I know Kru's story, but you haven't seen much of it, so it's my job to convey that without derailing the story. 

Plus, I get to introduce New Krypton, tie it into the past, utilise things I'm aware David was setting up and build upon accordingly without tripping him up if he decides to revisit his stories!

Lena's life is a vital part of this book, even in her absence (as you see in the next issue). Again we ask, how can you live being Lex Luthor's daughter if you're not a monster? And what happens when you inadvertently become party to the loss of the last surviving member of your best friend's family? And that leads to said best friend abandoning you for a period of time?

Poor Jimmy. This was a nod toward the Supergirl TV show, but with a more comics-orientated Olsen. Their will-they-won't-they felt really odd to me in the first season of that show, so I thought I'd have fun with it, same as the plot of next issue, which is... well, it was hard to write, but I think the content backs up the spectacular cover that Steve delivered.


I think that this entire concept would have worked better if it was an ongoing series that had been running for a couple of years, you know? I'm condensing ten years into four issues (maybe five, the finale is playing tricks on me), and so there's a lot of "lived-in" continuity I'm having to tell rather than show. I wanted to make sure that the Luthor name was clearly still causing trouble for Lena. I had bigger plans for Eiling-- like I do for every character that appears in this book!-- but at the same time... it's set in the future. I'm never going to get a chance to share them. That might mean stuff comes across as clunky at times, but it's a case of powering through, maybe? 

Eiling's scene was actually much larger originally-- and it had more of a focused point. Lena was going to push all of his buttons, triggering his transformation into a Hulk-like version of The Shaggy Man. She was going to take him down, showing off her cool power set (that glimpse on the first issue's cover was sharp) and giving her a win before her big loss at the climax of the issue. It's more blackmail material for her, and it shows how dark this shadowy corner of the US military-industrial complex really is.

You also have to remember that I'm skipping years in the timeline of the book, so it's difficult to have something happen in #1 and then follow it up in #2. I hope that it's not that rough a ride, but if I had a couple of years and the drive, this really would be around #50 of the title, that sad anniversary event where something great happens followed by something terrible. 


Yeah, I'm always going to catch flak for my use of Kru-El. David used him in the very first issue and arc of Adventures of Superman, when the site launched, and he was a one-note villain, an interesting wrinkle in DC2's history for the House of El. After his transformation into Doomsday during The Apokolips Imperative I used him in my personally-reviled run on Action Comics, and then I had future plans that I never delivered on, but their conclusion tied in beautifully with the Superwoman concept. So here we are!

Hopefully everything is in the text here, that there's nothing that causes the story to be lacking. I've said before, I want this to be standalone, enhanced by back issue knowledge, but not diminished by a lack of reading said back issues. Kru is a wily customer, he's got a sixth sense for danger, and all that pays off for his odd little theft. 

Hydrogen Skull was a bit of fun, but I've gone for a lot of mirroring with these Superwoman issues; the cybernetic entity in last issue; the "werewolves" in this, as it were; next issue there's a literal parallel drawn but I won't ruin it, etc, etc. I like taking characters and extrapolating them forward-- hell, this is a Superwoman title. Atomic Skull to Hydrogen Skull seemed like a laugh, you know?


And that's all that matters, when it comes to Kara. I read about Joe Casey's Adventures of Superman run, prior to a number of much bigger runs on that title by bigger name writers, and he made Superman a pacifist. A hero who wouldn't punch his way out of a problem. Obviously that doesn't work all the time, but if I could position Kara in a similar place, I thought that'd be a laugh. I still don't have my take on the Man of Steel down, but I'm confident I've made the Woman of Tomorrow a strong character. 

I think the scale of the battle for Metropolis in Man of Steel is a good take on how humans should feel when surrounded by these kinds of battles. Do we ever get a sense of scale in the comics of these battles, outside of the work of Bryan Hitch? If you were the lone human on a world full of superbeings, wouldn't that be terrifying? 

I mined a lot of characters from one of my favourite pre-Crisis miniseries for this issue, namely The Phantom Zone. If you've never read it, they recently released a collection and it was at the forefront of my mind during the writing of this issue. Nadira, Az-Rel, they made appearances in that title and it was genuinely scary. I really recommend it.


I was unsure of that final exchange between Kara and Lena for the longest time, but it made sense for where the direction was going. Kara's been all about family, and trying to live up to Kal's example, but also drawing Kru back out from himself. All she wants is a family, and in her anger-- a very human response, I think-- she blames her best friend. It's devastating for Lena. Kara's example is what she strives to live up to, and if the person who believed in her before anyone else no longer does... where does that send the daughter of Lex Luthor? 

Thanks for reading, O. Appreciate it!