The Comics Professor

Mourning the death of character in the DC New 52

I hadn't planned to write any more about the DC relaunch--every month I drop a couple more titles, and I fear it won't be long before I'm buying little more than the Batman and Green Lantern families of books. (Even Earth 2 is sounding more like a new Tangent Earth: the names are the same but most else is different.) But then I read something from Marvel that I truly enjoyed, and part of the reason I enjoyed it is also the reason the DC relaunch has left me flat.

The book is Avengers: The Children's Crusade, a nine-issue bimonthy series by Allan Heinberg and Jim Chueng, the creators of the Young Avengers series. It was recently collected in hardcover (very soon after the last issue hit the stands), and I spent a leisurely afternoon and evening last week reading it--with pleasure. The series recounts the efforts of Young Avengers Wiccan and Speed to find Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, whom they believe to be their mother. They are aided in this by Magneto (Wanda's father), and along the way they have run-ins with the Avengers and the X-Men. (This series is a prelude to a certain event, Avengers vs. X-Men, that you may have heard of, despite Marvel's famous promotional subtlety.)

Besides being exceptionally well-written and superbly rendered, the series is steeped in Marvel history--much of which is succinctly recapped along the way for the benefit of the new reader. The rest is inessential to following the story, but adds immeasurably to the enjoyment of it. I don't think it's revealing too much to say the series touches on the relationship between Wanda, her brother Pietro (Quicksilver), and their father Magneto; Wanda's relationship with the Vision (which bore two sons, an epic tale in itself); the three mutants' relationships with the X-Men, the Avengers, and society in general; the Avengers Disassembled and House of M storylines, as well as more recent Avengers, X-Men, and Young Avengers stories. (And many of the Young Avengers' histories are wrapped up in Avengers lore as well, of course.)

Rather than weighing the series down, this tremendously rich and intertwined Marvel history provided essential background to the story, motivation and recognizability to all the characters involved, and emotional resonance to the events therein. These are all things that the DC Universe no longer has, since they erased most of their history, and have been evasive regarding which elements of it remain.

When I read the DC New 52 titles, even the more entertaining ones, I find myself numb to them. I don't know the characters anymore; I don't know what they've been through, how events affected them, and how it affects their behavior. The names are familiar, the costumes are similar (with a lot of redundant seams and armor-plating), and the powers are the same for the most part--but who are they? Without background and history, I have no context in which to understand their actions or care about them as characters. They're mere ciphers in familiar guises, frauds who play on our loyalties while betraying our treasured memories.

This problem is obvious in cases like Superman and Wonder Woman, who have been reinvented to a large degree. (Don't even get me started on Green Arrow.) Superman--perhaps the easiest DC superhero to define in terms of his character before the relaunch--now (ironically) seems completely alien to me. I can't say if any of his current behavior is out of character because I don't know what his character is anymore. Wonder Woman has always been harder to nail down in terms of her underlying character (an observation usually made to excuse low sales, but cause and effect are difficult to parse out), but now DC seems hellbent on upending everything we know about her origins, perhaps in the hopes that this will make her easier to define. (And that's being charitable.)

But the problem exists even for characters such as Batman and Green Lantern, who were left relatively untouched by Barry Allen's jog at the end of Flashpoint. (When I say Green Lantern I'm thinking primarily of Hal Jordan, but it applies to any of them.) We still don't know how much, or what parts, of their past history remains canon and still informs their personal character. DC dismisses these concerns, repeatedly saying that which stories remain in the New 52 continuity will be revealed as they become relevant. But they are relevant now: they are relevant to every character in every story, because they tell us who they are and what they've been through, and give us some basis to identify them as characters rather than simply talking heads in masks and capes.

To know who Batman is now, we need to know whether Jason Todd died, whether Bane broke his back, whether Darkseid "killed" him, and so on. To know who Hal Jordan is now, we need to know if he ever became Parallax, died, and became the Spectre, as well as the status of the more recent events of the Sinestro Corps War, Blackest Night, and Brightest Day. And then we have the various crises, deaths, and resurrections through the DCU, which inform the histories of all the characters in it.

If DC wants to leave all these details vague, or let them slip out little by little to tease the readers, that's their choice. But as long as we don't know what these characters have gone through, other than the broadest details, we don't know them as characters--we can't sympathize with them, we can't understand their behavior, and we have no connection to them. We will come to know them over time, as we do any new characters, and there's nothing wrong with that--unless we're supposed to retain our old loyalties and keep buying the books based on the "0ld" characters we used to know but who are now so much flotsam in the time stream.

Contrast this with Marvel, whose characters are more precisely defined than most of DC's (even before the relaunch). Captain America is noble, Iron Man is cocky and brilliant, Thor is chivalrous, Namor is regal and pompous, Daredevil is idealistic and compassionate, Spider-Man is naively pure, Hank Pym is insecure, and so on. We know who these people are, and when they say or do anything that seems "not like them," fan cry out--and justifiably so! Through decades of stories, even though crafted by a series of writers, these heroes' basic character traits have been defined so well (though not with perfect consistency) that any thing said or done out of the ordinary is immediately called out as out-of-character. Take Thor's calling the Hulk a "pain in the ass" in Fear Itself #5, for instance, which was widely derided by fans as something Thor simply would not say. The Thor they know, the Thor that has been written for so long even by so many, is so consistent in his speech, mannerisms, and behavior that this one phrase seemed horribly out of place. Could anyone justifiably call anything Superman says in the New DC Universe out of place? On what grounds could they say it?

Some may argue that Marvel's characters are too simplistic--especially compared to someone like Batman--but any such "simplicity" is based on well-established regularities of behavior that give them their stable, underlying character traits and that make them familiar to us. We know Spidey, we know Cap, we know Iron Man--and we know when they do something out of character. This is true of all serial fiction--ongoing TV series, movie franchises, book series--in which characters develop over time and establish clearly defined traits. New writers in these media have a responsibility to the fans to maintain the basic elements of the characters by writing them consistently with their past characterizations. And if they want the characters to change and grow--as they should, to an extent--they must do so organically and in a way that makes sense in the story, not present abrupt changes in character that make the fans doubt the writer knows about the character at all. (My chapter on "Brand New Day" in the forthcoming book Spider-Man and Philosophy presents this argument in the context of Peter Parker's deal with Mephisto, which was widely regarded as a bow to editorial fiat that flew in the face of Peter's basic goodness.)

I don't know the new Superman, the new Wonder Woman--or even the "new" Batman, even though he seems little changed from before the relaunch. There's no way I can know them. These "characters" have no definite history yet, and therefore no character to recognize. I suspect the powers-that-be at DC thought they could have their cake and eat it too, relying (as I said above) on longtime readers' loyalty to the characters they loved to keep them tethered to the books, while the creators crafted new characters beneath the surface to try to draw in the mythical "new reader." But speaking as a longtime fan, I don't think it's working on either front; and in the words of a fellow mourner, "I have no interest in the Emperor's new clothes when I can clearly see the Emperor's mucky behind."

Grim and gritty Shazam? Where's the fun in comics today?

In this morning's New York Post, we get an image of the new Captain Marvel Shazam. Gritting his teeth. Looking mean. With a hood. Grrr.

Just like the old Captain Marvel. No different. Ahem.

Somehow I don't think Hoppy the Marvel Bunny is showing up in the DC New 52, unless he plays the role of the rabbit in a story based on Fatal Attraction.

It's amazing how what used to seem corny now seems utterly comforting--or just plain fun. Are any of DC's New 52 books fun? I don't mean good--there are good books, like Batman and Nightwing, Swamp Thing and Animal Man. I don't mean silly books, either--obviously Hoppy was silly. I mean books you could give a kid (say, under 10) who wants to read about good guys beating bad guys, without all the angst. (See this for a parent in a similar situation.)

This isn't about the amount of sex and violence in today's mainstream comics--this is much simpler than that. I love Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns as much as everybody, and I appreciate the more complex storylines that followed in their wake. But does every book have to look like them?

No, it doesn't, and Marvel knows that. Dan Slott's The Amazing Spider-Man is a fun book. Mark Waid's Daredevil is a fun book. Kieron Gillen's Journey into Mystery (aka Kid Loki and Friends) is a fun book (and a lot of it lately has been set, literally, in hell). At times light-hearted and at other times serious, but never depressing--never losing that sense of hope that things will work out in the end. Before the relaunch, DC had books like Bryan Q. Miller's Batgirl and Gail Simone's Secret Six--the first a story of a young hero being trained by her predecessor, the second a band of psychopaths. No two books more different, but both fun.

Am I saying the Batman comic should be fun? No. But the Superman comic should be. Batman's a creature of psychology; Superman is a wonder. When we feel awe at what Batman does, it's because he does it with no special powers or abilities. But Superman can do almost anything--and we want to see that. We want to see flying and punching and heat-vision and speed and spitcurls. We want to see what goes through Batman's mind as he pursues his mission, because that's what makes him interesting. Superman's a fascinating character as well, and that should be explored, but not at the expense of seeing him do things only Superman can do.

That's the fun in Superman. The 10-year-old in me misses that--and the 40-year-old me who buys the books is listening.

Earth 2 and Worlds' Finest bring the classics back to DC in May [UPDATED AGAIN!]

According to a brand spanking new press release in USA Today, DC is launching six "new" titles in May, including the long-hinted JSA title Earth 2 (supposedly written by James Robinson and pencilled by Nicola Scott) and Worlds' Finest, which is said to feature Power Girl and Huntress. The article they both spotlight "alternate worlds," so we can presume that this Power Girl and Huntess are on Earth 2 (the post-52 version of it) and are not Karen Starr as seen in Mister Terrific and Helena Bertinelli as seen in Paul Levitz and Marcus To's current (and excellent) Huntress mini. (I wonder about the Huntress, though, since Paul Levitz created the original Huntress, daughter of the Earth 2 Batman and Catwoman. And are we sure Mister Terrific doesn't take place on Earth 2 already? Hmm...)

UPDATE: A second article at USA Today gives more details on these two books:

Writer James Robinson reteams with the Justice Society for the new series Earth 2, which is being drawn by Nicola Scott, while Huntress and Power Girl are stranded on our world and want to return to theirs in Worlds' Finest, written by Paul Levitz with art by George Perez and Kevin Maguire in rotating story arcs. "What does that mean to be exiles from that Earth 2?" Harras says. "We thought it'd be a nice thing to bring this concept back and to really, as we did with the 52 initially, reconceive it and freshen it up."

UPDATE 2: This article just up at Newsarama confirms that the Huntress in Worlds' Finest is Helena Wayne, not Helena Bertinelli.

Of course, it is far too early to tell if (or, more likely, when) the residents of Earth 2 will meet the rest of the DCnU. (Note all that Worlds' is plural; I wonder if this will be an anthology title featuring other alternate universes as well, perhaps after Grant Morrison gets "done" with the multiverse.) I hope these books will restart to restore the sense of legacy that the traditional DCU possessed since the first Crisis collapsed the original multiverse and put the JSA and JLA on the same world (and earlier, given the frequent crossovers between Earth 1 and Earth 2). I don't mind the essential concept of superheroes being explored in a reinvented world that is meeting them for the first time--that has marvelous story possibilities--but at the same time I am partial to younger generations learning from these elders.

And I dream of seeing DCnU Superman get schooled by the older, wiser Earth 2 Superman--if Kal-L was upset in Infinite Crisis, wait til he sees the DCU now!

My reflections on the post-Flashpoint DCU (and an unexpected walk down memory lane)

So here we are, in early October--New York Comic Con is several days away--and I realized I had written a lot about the new DCU before anybody had actually read the books, but I had yet to comment on it after reading September's big batch of #1's. Rather than give a book-by-book review, I'll just share some thoughts on the enterprise as a whole. I make no claims to originality, nor to any special insight--I just wanted to give at least one "postgame" wrap-up after I commented so much pregame.

Simply put, I hope some readers, new and old, embrace the new DCU as theirs, because it certainly isn't mine.

My love of DC superheroes started with Adam West's Batman and the Super Friends and soon spread to comics. The first comic book I remember reading was Green Lantern/Green Arrow #110 (November 1978), which introduced me not only to Hal and Ollie, but also to Alan Scott--and started my love for Earth-2. Soon I was plucking comics at random off the spinner rack at Betty Jay's soda shop in my small Ohio hometown, including Justice League of America #168 (July 1979), containing the pivotal mindwipe storyline that begat Identity Crisis (and featured a very buff Ralph Dibny on the cover), and an innocuous-looking DC Comics Presents #26 (October 1980), featuring Superman and Green Lantern, and also a special preview of New Teen Titans, which started a legendary run on comics that I was lucky to have read from the beginning (and now look forward to rereading in the beautiful Omnibus hardcovers).

Soon I was riding my bike up to City News, a newsstand/cigar shop in the same town, which carried the full DC and Marvel lines. (I didn't buy any Marvel books at the time, which was more an economic decision than an aesthetic one--I loved the idea of a shared universe and wanted to read the entire line from a company, and what can I say, I loved the DC heroes "first.") I lived for the annual JLA/JSA crossovers, and my favorite titles soon became All-Star Squadron and later, by subscription, Infinity Inc. The Earth-2 heroes were the "other" to me, and by implication cooler than the "normal" Earth-1 characters.

And then came Crisis on Infinite Earths, the first major reboot/relaunch of the DCU (unless you count the introduction of the Earth-1 Flash, Green Lantern, Atom, and Hawkman in the 1960s, which some do). I never regarded the idea of multiple Earths, with independent yet overlapping timelines and histories, to be complicated, but as the same time I thrilled at the idea--soon to be realized with the post-COIE Justice League--of having heroes from various Earths on the same team. (To me, Dr. Fate and Batman on the same team equalled awesome.)

The changes after COIE were just as selective as those following Flashpoint, although some of the former were dictated by the logic of merging the various Earths. Specifically, "duplicate" heroes, such as Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow and Speedy, and Aquaman, who existed in roughy identical forms on Earth-1 and Earth-2, had to be collapsed into one (always the younger, Earth-1 version). But the changes went even further: Superman and Wonder Woman were given hard reboots, while Batman and Green Lantern were left mostly unchanged. (Sound familiar?) And since Barry Allen died during COIE, Wally West stepped up as the new Flash, but the world somehow remembered Barry's death (but not Supergirl's).

For reasons that I do not recall (but probably having something to do with getting my first guitar in high school), I dropped out of comics around the time Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns wrapped up. (Maybe I wanted to leave at a high point!) I didn't walk into a comics shop again until 2004, just in time for Hal Jordan and Jason Todd to come back from the dead--and for Sue Dibny and Ted Kord to replace them--and also for the huge ramp-up to Infinite Crisis, the successor to Crisis on Infinite Earths. I missed everything in between, including the deaths of Superman and Jason Todd, Batman's back problems, Hal Jordan's breakdown possession, and all the events like Zero Hour, likely the most thorough line-wide retcon other than COIE and Flashpoint (and the one which most closely resembles the revised "five-year" timeline of the new DCU). But through the magic of trade paperbacks and online comic book shops, eventually I caught up with what I had missed.

Admittedly, I was much much younger when COIE happened, but I don't remember having the same sense of loss, abandonment, and betrayal as I do now. (Who, me, overdramatic? Never!) Most of the changes after COIE reconciled the five most significant Earths (1, 2, 4, S, and X), the key word here being "reconcile." Redundancies were eliminated, with some minor casualties (such as Helena Wayne and Lyta Trevor), but most of the histories of the two main Earths, 1 and 2, were retained--with the notable exception of those of Superman and Wonder Woman. But even those hard reboots didn't seem so drastic to me--Superman was slightly depowered, his supporting cast changed a bit, and he no longer had a past as Superboy, and Diana no longer had a past with the Justice League (or anybody, for that matter). But their underlying characters were unchanged, or at least so it seemed to me at the time. Most importantly, they were still recognizable as essentially the same characters that they were prior to COIE.

But despite what the now-ubiquitous Purple Glowy Woman said at the end of Flashpoint about reconciling the DCU with the Vertigo and Wildstorm universes, the post-Flashpoint DCU is more about selective reinvention than reconciliation. Once again, Batman and Green Lantern are relatively untouched, while Superman and Wonder Woman are rebooted--along with most of the rest of the DCU. The extent of the changes vary, of course: Barry Allen is in the same job he had before Flashpoint but is no longer married to Iris (and apparently no longer has other speedsters to run with), Carter Hall is a different sort of Hawkman altogether, Ronnie Raymond and Jason Rusch are now brand-new Firestorms, Jamie Reyes is the first Blue Beetle, and Ollie Queen is just a blonde--and bland--archer with a half-assed goatee and no personality to speak of. The full changes to Wonder Woman have yet to be seen (other than the recent revelation of her parentage), but the new Superman is a travesty, edginess replacing nobility and cynicism replacing hope. The histories of the Justice League and Teen Titans, traditionally bedrock institutions in the DCU, are completely up in the air; thankfully, the Legion is little changed from its reintroduction during Brad Meltzer's and Geoff John's JLA/JSA crossover. (I did mourn the JSA most of all, but its planned resurrection on a new Earth-2 is a bright light in an otherwise dim new universe.)

This is why it doesn't feel like my DCU anymore--because it isn't. It's completely new, and in a different way than the post-COIE universe was. Rather than reconciling and retaining most of several alternate histories, Flashpoint replaced a single history with another, with elements retained (seemingly) at random. Like "One Year Later" but on a grander scale, I enjoy being teased with which elements remain the same and which are changed or lost. But now that game is being played with nearly the entire DCU--and frankly, I'm tired of waiting, guessing, being pleasantly surprised and horribly disappointed within the same 20-page story. The treasured history of my DCU, which survived largely intact through several major upheavals since 1978, is gone. RIP.

Am I just being selfish? Do I want to keep my DCU and prevent others from having their new one? Is this like fans wanting to keep Kyle or Wally when Hal and Barry returned? The difference is that those characters all co-existed in some form. But unless the post-Flashpoint world is revealed at some point to be an alternate universe co-existing with the pre-Flashpoint one, the new DCU has replaced the old one, and my DCU is gone. I don't begrudge anyone else the new DCU, and I hope for the sake of the medium that fans continue to embrace it after the novelty of 52 new #1's fades. But I cannot maintain my enthusiasm--this is truly a new DCU, and I simply liked the old one better. And through trades and back issues, the old DCU will say alive for me, while I selectively follow the new one--for there is fantastic work being done. But it's not the same.

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Funny--I had always wanted to write a personal history of my life with comics, but I hadn't expected to write it in the context of a DCnU post. (And there is more to tell, to be sure--later.) But it is appropriate, I suppose, since most of my comics-reading life has been within the DCU. Only in 2006 did I start reading Marvel in earnest, having been enticed by Brubaker and Lark's Daredevil (having loved their collaboration on Gotham Central) and the moral and political complexities of Civil War. Now I count Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, and of course Daredevil among my favorite characters in comics, alongside Batman, Nightwing, and Green Lantern (Hal Jordan).

Many have noted the similarity of the new DCU with Marvel's Heroes Reborn period, in which a group of heroes were shunted to a pocket universe and "modernized," only to be returned to the 616 universe a year later in their traditional forms. Other than that blip (and scattered others, such as "One More Day"), Marvel seems to understand the value of stability, choosing to tell new stories with their existing characters rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater and start their characters from scratch, alienating loyal readers (like me) in hopes of attracting new ones.

DC must recognize this to some extent; after all, they kept their most fascinating character, Batman/Bruce Wayne, largely untouched. Countless stories can be told if you build on the foundation of a great character. And Superman is another great character, embodying strength, hope, and heroism, and showing us that humanity in its highest form is more than just DNA. His superpowers amazed us, but his heart connected him to us. Without that, he is not Superman, but rather just another strongman in a cape (and kneepads).

Characters can change and they can grow, but ideally this happens organically and gradually--in the same way that people change and grow in the real world--not suddenly and discontinuously, by editorial fiat. If this is done well, you have a rich, storied character on which a legacy can be built. For the most part, Marvel seems to realize this. DC seems to have forgotten it, but I hope they will remember it soon, but the sake of new readers as well as old ones.

It's not September yet, Mr. Lockhorn

From today's newspaper funnies (remember those?):

 

Hooray, Superman gets "brash" and "brooding"--at least we still have Cap

From DC's The Source we get press-friendly news about Superman's new status come September, including his very own "One More Day"-style marriage annulment (starring Barry Allen in the role of Mephisto, I'm sure), news that his alien nature will be emphasized over the quest for humanity (at least in Action Comics, which tells stories of his early days as Superman), and this wonderful nugget:

Timeless and modern, classic and contemporary, but younger, brasher and more brooding, this is Superman. The New Man of Tomorrow.

I wonder how "brash and brooding" (never mind "more" brooding--he wasn't brooding in the first place!) is going to sit alongside "noble and heroic." Oh wait--I think I know. (And remember, Supergirl will reportedly be much worse.) Tomorrow ain't looking so bright, my friends... but we do have collars and knee pads, "these are a few of my favorite things." (Ha!)

Ironic that we have to turn to Marvel, the home of brash and brooding, to find a prominent example of "old-fashioned" nobility among superheroes: Steve Rogers, once again Captain America. (If you have not checked out Brubaker and McNiven's new Captain America #1, out last Wednesday, be sure you do.) Even though I'm a lifelong DC fan at heart, I'm starting to say "Make Mine Marvel" a lot more often these days...

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By the way, be sure to check out my chapter on Captain America and modesty in the new free Kindle book, Superheroes: The Best of Philosophy and Pop Culture, just released by Wiley (see more here). Also in it: a new chapter on mercy and punishment in Asgard, my original chapter on whether Batman should kill the Joker, and much more...

And did I mention this is my 100th post at the new Comics Professor site? Please, no gifts--no, really--but spread the word far and wide...

New chapters on Captain America and Thor exclusive to free "Superheroes" Kindle book

Wiley just released their free Kindle book, Superheroes: The Best of Philosophy and Pop Culture, featuring one chapter from each of the superhero-themed books in the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series, including the forthcoming titles on Superman and the Avengers, as well as two new and exclusive chapters, written by yours truly, on Captain America and Thor.

Here are the contents:

PART ONE: Superheroes Exclusives

1: Lord Odin Have Mercy: Justice and Punishment in Asgard—Mark D. White

2: Captain America and the Virtue of Modesty—Mark D. White

PART TWO: DC Superheroes

3: Is Superman an American Icon?—Andrew Terjesen (from Superman and Philosophy—edited by Mark D. White)

4: The Blackest Night for Aristotle’s Account of Emotions—Jason Southworth (from Green Lantern and Philosophy— edited by Jane Dryden and Mark D. White)

5: Why Doesn’t Batman Kill the Joker? —Mark D. White (from Batman and Philosophy, edited by Mark D. White and Robert Arp)

6: Can We Steer This Rudderless World? Kant, Rorschach, Retributivism, and Honor—Jacob M. Held (from Watchmen and Philosophy, edited by Mark D. White)

PART THREE: Marvel Superheroes

7: Forgivers Assemble! —Daniel P. Malloy (from Avengers and Philosophy, edited by Mark D. White)

8: Does Peter Parker Have a Good Life? —Neil Mussett (from Spider-Man and Philosophy, edited by Jonathan J. Sanford)

9: The Stark Madness of Technology—George A. Dunn (from Iron Man and Philosophy, edited by Mark D. White)

10: Amnesia, Personal Identity, and the Many Lives of Wolverine—Jason Southworth (from X-Men and Philosophy, edited by Rebecca Housel and J. Jeremy Wisnewski)

If an economist had written All-Star Superman...

This is great: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal takes an extremely practical approach to the life of Superman, part of it resembling Mahesh Ananth and Ben Dixon's chapter titled "Should Bruce Wayne Have Become Batman?" from Batman and Philosophy: The Dark Knight of the Soul (questioning whether superheroics are the morally best use of Bruce Wayne's wealth and time). 

DC substitutes the lost Krypto story for tale of social prejudice in Superman #712 (UPDATED)

This morning at Newsarama, Jill Pantozzi points out that DC sent out a press release at the last minute announcing that today's Superman #712, which was supposed to contain a Roberson/Straczynski story about social prejudice in the context of the "Grounded" storyline, has been replaced by what fans have come to know as the "lost" Krypto story, written by Kurt Busiek during his lengthy "One Year Later" run on the Superman books, but was shunted aside for continuity reasons. Now that DC has much less regard for continuity, especially current (pre-September) continuity, they like that story again, but that could have gone in a special one-shot--and doesn't Krypto deserve his own book?

But back to the original story, which was solicited like this:

Meet Los Angeles’s newest super hero in the latest Chapter of “Grounded”: Sharif! But Sharif discovers that in today’s current cultural climate, some people don’t want his help – they just want him gone. Can Superman aid Sharif and quell a prejudiced public, or are there some problems too big even for the Man of Steel to solve?

Sounds perfect for the "Grounded" storyline, which was ostensibly meant to allow Superman to be a modern Hard Traveling Hero (without a pick-up truck and a plainclothes Guardian of the Universe) and encounters firsthand the ills of contemporary America. But DC apparently didn't see things the same way:

DC Comics determined that the previously solicited story did not work within the “Grounded” storyline.

Ominous, Orwellian... oh well.

As Roberson explained to Newsarama in an earlier interview (quoted by Pantozzi):

Like Superman, Sharif is a character with powers and abilities far beyond those of normal folks, who came to this country as a child and grew up dedicating himself to Truth, Justice, and the American Way. But the fact that he comes not from an alien world but from another country here on Earth complicates matters for him, and he quickly learns that some people have a different idea of what “The American Way” is all about.

Sounds like a terrific story, and one that I'm sure Roberson told with his customary insight, balance, and humor. Maybe in the run-up to the next reboot/relaunch, we'll have a chance to see it.

(For more on Superman and the American Way, see this post, as well as Andrew Terjesen's chapter "Is Superman an American Icon?" in Superheroes: The Best of Philosophy and Pop Culture, a promotional e-book coming from Wiley soon.)

UPDATE: And if the story change weren't enough, they also messed with George Perez's gorgeous cover--Bleeding Cool has the story here.

UPDATE 2: See Chris Sims' excellent and lengthy treatment, including Sharif's original appearance as Sinbad and incorporation of the Nightrunner controversy, at Comics Alliance.

UPDATE 3: Wow, this story gets better and better... Bleeding Cool gives the real reason behind the switch, and it has nothing to do with Sharif...

More Superman, Supergirl, Superboy details post-Flashpoint

The Source has the rest of the Superfamily details post-Flashpoint:

Superman #1 (note: no subtitle, as reported previously) will be written by George Perez but pencilled by Jesus Merino. "What is Superman’s startling new status quo? How does it affect his friends, loved ones and his job at The Daily Planet?"

Supergirl #1 will be written by Michael Green and Mike Johnson and drawn by Mahmud Asrar. She has "a teenager, the same powers as Superman and none of his affection for the people of Earth." (Wonderful.)

Superboy #1 will be written by Scott Lobdell with art by R.B. Silva and Rob Lean. "They thought he was just a failed experiment, grown from a combination of Kryptonian and human DNA. But when the scope of his stunning powers was revealed, he became a deadly weapon."