What would a world without Clark Kent as Superman look like? This is the main question that drives the narrative of Future State: Superman Worlds At War, a book that despite featuring the hero prominently on the front cover doesn't really feature the hero much within its pages.
The story is set within the same world of Future State where Jon has taken over as Superman in Metropolis. Meanwhile, in Smallville, crowds have gathered to worship at the alter of the original Superman. This is a world where people have learned that Clark Kent was Superman, and his home town has turned into a giant tourist trap for fans, worshippers, and people who have come to get closer to the figure they worship like a god.
What's most fascinating about this is that despite people knowing who Superman was, knowing that he's a Kryptonian who came to Earth as a baby, was raised by the Kents, and was very much as human as them, at least in personality, they treat him like a mysterious figure. Despite being able to talk to people who knew him as a child, being able to see his old school records, a lot of the people in this book seem to be unable to accept that this was who he was.
They have theories that he's part of a race who travel the stars and come to less developed worlds to be worshipped as gods and remake the planet in Krypton's image. There's someone positing that he's transcended physical form, and is everywhere as energy, living as a 'righteous wind'. Another person puts forward that he never looked human, but was some kind of shape-shifter, who travels from world to world setting themselves up as a hero before moving on.
The book shows how even when people have answers, even when they know what's real they feel the need to make things bigger, to try and see more in things than really exist. When you know who Superman really is and it doesn't meet the wild expectations you have you cant accept that truth. It strikes me as being similar to those people who have to come up with elaborate conspiracy theories to explain things, because they can't just accept that sometimes things are only as simple as they seem.
Despite this, there is someone who sees through the conspiracies and the wild theories, Sadie. Coming to speak with a group of people who were all saved by Superman she finds their weird theories and odd opinions to be missing the point of who he really was, about what made him special. Something that's summed up when she tells them it's not Superman who saved her life, it was Clark Kent. She seems to be the only one to understand that it's not the powers or the cape that made him a hero, but the human being he was behind it all.
The issue does have some Superman in it though, it's not just people talking about him, as we travel across the universe to War World, home of Mongul, where a captured Superman is being forced to fight for his life in a gladiatorial arena. It's a brief appearance for the hero, but one that not only sets up for a more action packed second issue, but also shows that even when he's been beaten down, enslaved, and forced to fight, he still has hope inside him; that the heart of Superman can't be beaten down.
Future State: Superman Worlds At War wasn't the book I was expecting it to be, and at first I wasn't even sure that it was a book I liked, but the more I thought about it, the longer I allowed the content to sit and mull over in my mind the more I realised that this book really spoke to the heart and soul of the character. It showed that it's not what makes him fantastic that makes Superman a hero, but what makes him a human.
No comments:
Post a Comment