Superman: Secret Origin - Seriously, Who IS Superman?

Superman: Secret Origin is the latest "definitive" origin story for Superman, published in 2009 and 2010 during the time JMS decided Superman should go take a hike around the country and Batman was busy traveling through time. I reviewed Superman: Birthright a few months ago, giving it my seal of mixed approval.

Secret Origin is controversial. I could end this post with that sentence and not need to write another word, but I have to get details across. Geoff Johns wrote Secret Origin and I was shocked to see that not only is it well written, but it's so well written you actually feel sorry for young Clark Kent learning he is not from this planet. The artwork is definitely better than Birthright, more in line with how comics look these days, the only problem is that Gary Frank has no idea how to draw teeth. This becomes a problem when Lex Luthor is constantly grinning and Superman is constantly smiling. Everyone looks like beavers when they smile, especially Jimmy Olsen. John Sibal does a great job inking, but the real star of the show other than Johns is Brad Anderson, the colorist. I hate when people decide Superman needs a darker blue costume, so I was very pleased to see his old-school blues in show.

Let's just get straight to business and talk about those nitty-gritty details I mentioned in my Birthright review.

• Life on Krypton is never shown and is left to interpretation.
• The S-shield is speculated by Martha Kent to be the El family coat of arms, but it is never confirmed.
• The story actually begins with Clark Kent as a young boy discovering he is not human, rather than finding out as a teenager.
• This is the first Superman origin story that does not show Jor-El in detail nor showing Kal-El crash landing on Earth.
• No reason is given for why Jonathan and Martha Kent never had any children.
• Clark Kent's glasses are finally given a reason to exist other than a disguise: they are made of the same material as a data crystal included in his rocket, so they can block his heat vision, activated by stress or excitement when he is young.
• Jonathan Kent does not die, mostly because he isn't allowed to die when Clark is a teenager anymore, he has to die several years later before the New Krypton story arc.
• Lex Luthor is native to Smallville and his father Lionel is an unemployed alcoholic.
• Clark Kent operates as Superboy after Ma Kent creates a Kryptonian costume based on a video she saw of Kryptonians included in Clark's rocket.
• Lex Luthor gains some of his fortune after Lionel dies of a heart attack and Lex collects a massive life insurance policy. He uses it to get out of Smallville and build a fortune in Metropolis.
• Superboy travels to the 30th Century and operates with the Legion of Superheroes briefly. The Legion decides not to erase his memories of his time in the future.
• Clark Kent is once again a bumbling fool as "Metropolis Clark" so that no one would think of him as possibly being Superman.
• The Parasite now gains his superpowers from kryptonite, establishing early on that kryptonite is not harmless to humans, an idea originally conceived in the 90s when Lex Luthor got cancer in his hand from constantly wearing a kryptonite ring. Parasite getting superpowers however, stems from Smallville.
• Lex Luthor cannot comprehend Superman's altruism, something borrowed heavily from All-Star Superman, and he believes Superman has ulterior motives in being on Earth.

Something interesting Geoff Johns and Gary Frank did was design the characters after the various actors and depictions of them. Superman looks like Christopher Reeve, Pa and Ma Kent look like Jonathon Schneider and Annette O'Toole, Lois Lane looks like a hybrid of Margot Kidder and Kate Bosworth, and Lana Lang (hilariously enough) also looks like Annette O'Toole. Perry White, Jimmy Olsen, and Lex Luthor look like they have been drawn in the comics for the past 70 years.

Secret Origin, despite regressing Superman increasingly to his more classic Silver Age origin, is so well-written it doesn't matter. John Byrne went crazy after writing Man of Steel and Mark Waid's Birthright wasn't the greatest thing in the world. Johns has written some of the best contemporary comics (other than Grant Morrison) and somehow managed to not go crazy yet. Seeing his work on Secret Origin has convinced me to give his work a chance and read Infinite Crisis, 52, and his upcoming Batman Earth One, a re-telling of Batman's origins part of DC Comics' new Earth One line, trying once again to compete with Marvel's Ultimate brand where the All-Star brand utterly failed thanks to Frank Miller fucking up Batman.