I Think This Scrapped Plan for Superman Would Have Changed Comics Forever

Superman is going through something of a renaissance lately. DC wants to have the best Superman comics for readers that go to the comic store when James Gunn’s Superman comes out, and they’ve done a great job of things lately. Superman, as a character, can be very simple.

His neverending battle for truth, justice, and a better tomorrow is one that can seem kind of passe in the current comic industry. Superhero comics have moved far beyond the simplistic morality plays of days gone by, and sometimes Superman can feel a little old-fashioned. DC has been fighting this fight for years, doing their best to keep the world’s first superhero on the cutting edge without destroying everything that made him.



In the ’90s, this usually meant things like killing him off, replacing him with other heroes, and giving him all new powers. However, by the end of the 20th century, Superman was stale again, leading some of comics’ best creators to present an audacious plan for Superman that would have changed comics forever — “Superman 2000”.DC legends Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, Tom Peyer, and then up and coming writer Mark Millar worked together to create a Superman proposal that would have completely changed the status quo of Superman.

“Superman 2000” would have done “One More Day” before that story was ever thought of, and that was just the beginning. “Superman 2000” wouldn’t have just changed the Superman comics in the years to come, but it would have completely changed the current tenor of the comic industry.“Superman 2000” Would Have Done Away with Several Major Aspects of the CharacterTo understand how revolutionary “Superman 2000” was, you have to understand the Superman books at the end of the 20th century.

Superman in the ’90s was all about the next big event. It began with “Death of Superman”, the blockbuster event that even got major news coverage. After that, we got “Funeral for a Friend”, “World Without Superman”, “Reign of the Supermen”, “The Return of Superman”, the wedding with Lois, the electric blue powers, the electric blue and electric red split, and finally the return to normal.

There were four Superman books at the time — Superman, Action Comics, Adventures of Superman, and Superman: Man of Steel — and the line really had no identity other than the next big story. Now, that’s not to say they weren’t good books, because they were and most of the ’90s Superman events are pretty cool, but Superman had, in a lot of ways, been pushed to the back. The gimmicks were center stage.

By the end of the ’90s, the Superman team that had been around since the end of John Byrne’s tenure redefining Superman in the late ’80s — Dan Jurgens, Louise Simonson, Jerry Ordway, Roger Stern, Brett Breeding, John Bogdanove, Jackson Guice, and Tom Grummet — were all gone. There was no real plan for the future, and Morrison, Waid, Peyer, and Millar stepped in. Since the Superman books of the ’90s were defined by the gimmicks, they decided to give “Superman 2000” a huge gimmick.

It was going to begin with an attack by Brainiac, one that would see him poison Lois Lane’s memory of Clark Kent and Superman. The only way to save her ends up being Mr. Mxyzptlk, who would “One More Day” the world of the memory of Clark Kent being Superman.

The whole point of this was to bring back the old relationship dynamics, while also going back to a more Silver Age conception of Superman, one where Clark Kent was the mask and Superman was the real person. They were going to make Superman a vegan, revitalize Brainiac as a major Superman villain, and basically take a back to basics approach with everything in the Superman mythos. Waid, Morrison, and Peyer are all known for their love of pre-Crisis DC, so it’s plain to see that they were trying to bring Superman back to the earlier days of the character, before Crisis and the Byrne revamp made everything so serious.

RELATED: DC Just Brought Back a Shocking Superman VillainThe entire proposal is available online, and fans of the best Superman stories in the modern era will recognize a lot of the ideas within the proposal. Morrison would use some of them in their All-Star Superman, DC would do a partial mindwipe of the world’s knowledge of Superman’s identity, Brainiac is a major villain again after the failure of the various post-Crisis versions, and Lex Luthor’s more altruistic past — him wanting to help people until his jealousy of Superman made him hate everyone — would all become a part of the Superman books in the years since the proposal was made. However, at the time, DC didn’t want to do anything nearly as audacious as “Superman 2000”, and basically laughed Morrison, Waid, Peyer, and Millar out of the room when they made it.

This was the first in a series of blows that angered Morrison at DC. The straw that broke the camel’s back was actually The Matrix; Morrison found out that the Wachowskis were handing out copies of their creator-owned opus The Invisibles and took a lot of inspiration from ideas that Morrison owned. Morrison ended up leaving DC for a time, and going to Marvel.

Meanwhile, Millar also went to Marvel, and would be responsible for some of the bestselling comics of the ’00s, helping to cement Marvel’s sales dominance over DC.The really intriguing thing about “Superman 2000” is thinking about how different things could have been if DC would have accepted the proposal. Morrison and Millar would have stayed at DC, and their names, along with Waid and Peyer’s, would have guaranteed that Superman became a bestseller.

Morrison and Millar not going to Marvel in 1999 would have changed everything for the comic industry; these two sold tons of books at Marvel. 2000 was a very different time in comics. Marvel was actually on the wane after the calamities of the ’90s, and a lot of their later success came from getting DC talent like Morrison, Millar, Garth Ennis, Steve Dillon, and editors like Axel Alonso and Stuart Moore.

“Superman 2000” would have kept two huge names from Marvel and Superman would have become a bestseller. Combine that with Kevin Smith’s 2000 Green Arrow series, which sold like hotcakes, and DC could have pulled ahead of Marvel forever in the year 2000, all if they had actually accepted the “Superman 2000” proposal.“Superman 2000” Is an Interesting Relic of Years Gone By“Superman 2000” was pretty well-known back in the day.

It was talked about in Wizard magazine by Morrison and Waid, so many comic fans watched the drama unfold, including this one. I remember reading the ideas that the quartet had and wishing that DC would have went with them instead of Jeph Loeb, Joe Kelly, and the others that got nod from DC (although, their runs from the early ’00s were all pretty good, and include Kelly’s stellar “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice, & the American Way”). Now, over twenty-five later, it’s easy to see that “Superman 2000” was the right direction to go, mostly because DC has gone in that direction in a variety of ways.

“Superman 2000” would have completely changed the tenor of DC forever. Its success probably would have seen DC try to bring back more pre-Crisis DC concepts years before they tried it in the real world, and almost certainly would have led DC to a rather handy lead over Marvel, even with their 2000 announcement of Joe Quesada as editor in chief. Of course, it’s easy to look back and play what if.

“Superman 2000” was going to take a rather big step back, and fans of the day may have completely rebelled against it, even with the star caliber involved. However, it’s still fun to think about what could have been.The post I Think This Scrapped Plan for Superman Would Have Changed Comics Forever appeared first on ComicBook.

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