COMICS: ACTION COMICS #9 To Reveal An African-American SUPERMAN
Action Comics #9 will reveal an alternate Superman who happens to be black. Is this a response to Miles Morales?
With ACTION COMICS #9, two acclaimed guest artists will explore an alternate Earth and the story of its Kryptonian protector. Multiple Eisner Award-winning artist Gene Ha will be a guest artist for the primary plot, penned by regular series writer Grant Morrison. And fresh from his recent work on THE SHADE miniseries, artist Cully Hamner will illustrate the issue’s back-up story, written by Sholly Fisch.
Parallel worlds come to the forefront of DC COMICS-THE NEW 52 “Second Wave,” with titles such as EARTH 2 and WORLDS’ FINEST exploring the adventures of heroes on alternate Earths. ACTION COMICS #9 sets up the multiverse with a standalone story of a Superman from another Earth, who must fight a monster from yet another parallel world. But this isn’t just any monster; it’s a Superman surrogate known as Superdoom, twisted into an unstoppable agent of evil.
The back-up story will also feature an adventure of this alternate Superman, set on his parallel Earth.
Regular series artist Rags Morales will return for ACTION COMICS #10 in June. In the meantime, check out Ha’s inks for ACTION COMICS #9.
Superman, also known as Clark Kent and Kal-El from Krypton, has been a continually published character. Following the Crisis on Infinite Earths, he went through a distinctive reboot. To accompany discrepancies in the aging of Superman across several decades, his earliest stories were retroactively portrayed as having taken place on an alternative world called Earth-Two. The Multiverse used to explain these characters later gave way to an "evil" version of Superman from Earth-Three and other "What if?" scenarios. The Multiverse system was discarded in the Crisis on Infinite Earths miniseries, following which an adaptation of the mainstream "Earth-One" Superman was rebooted in John Byrne's The Man of Steel miniseries in 1986. Variations in the character were eventually defined by the varying Superman origin stories, such as the subsequent Superman: Birthright reboot by Mark Waid in 2003.
The single-Earth continuity would still allow for the dichotomy of a good and evil Superman by introducing an alternative version of Superman's Earth-Three double, Ultraman in the Antimatter Universe surviving the Crisis, as presented in JLA: Earth 2. Alternative Supermen were also depicted using literary devices such as time travel and "Hypertime". The subsequent sequel to Crisis titled Infinite Crisis would see a brief return of the Golden Age Superman, Kal-L as well as the teenage Superman of a world without heroes who survived the original Crisis. Due to the events of the sequel, as revealed in the subsequent weekly maxiseries 52, a new Multiverse, consisting of fifty-two alternative Earths, was created with most worlds featuring new alternative depictions of Superman.
In addition to these "official" Supermen, variations of the standard character, a number of characters have assumed the title of Superman in many variant stories set in both primary and alternative continuity. Following the storyline of The Death of Superman and during the subsequent Reign of the Supermen storyline, a number of characters claimed the mantle. In addition, Bizarro, for instance, is an imperfect duplicate of Superman. Other members of Superman's family of characters have borne the Super- prefix, including Supergirl, Superdog and, in some instances, Superwoman. Outside comics published by DC Comics, the notoriety of the Superman or "Übermensch" archetype makes the character a popular figure to be represented with an analogue in entirely unrelated continuities, for example rival publisher Marvel Comics parodies Superman through the character Hyperion.