Letters from the Phantom Zone

Gwen - She/Her

[lettersfromthephantomzone]

I've been unable to get the Child of Two Worlds out of my mind for months, so putting all my thoughts down in a rambly blog.

[heydocverdant]

Anyway the reason I’m going insane about the New Gods right now is because it suddenly clicked for me that they really are superhero gods?? Like, real-world pantheons reflect the cultures that created them, but Jack Kirby designed the New Gods as a pantheon of deities that reflect a world that’s filled with superheroes. I was specifically thinking about how Mister Miracle is like a mythological synthesis of a ton of common superhero tropes — he’s an origin story turned into theology. basically

his father sent him away from his home planet as their last hope for salvation (Superman)

he was raised as an orphan and put his focus into training for survival (Batman)

he’s the child of royalty from a distant land, is a peaceful person willing to take up arms to defend the weak, and falls in love with a commoner in the military (Wonder Woman)

he crashed on Earth and was taken in by a kindly stranger in the American Midwest (Superman again) who brought him to a circus and took him on as a pupil (Dick Grayson)

Mister Miracle exists as Freedom incarnate, and he often fights against the literal God of Fascism, Darkseid; that’s about as grandiose the battle of good vs evil can get, especially when you consider Jack Kirby witnessed WWII firsthand

His tagline “No Trap Can Hold Him!” and his tendency to escape chains is evocative of the classic “Superman shatters chains” image:

Finally, Scott and Barda are the only New Gods to have any kind of a civilian life, with Scott specifically splitting his time between being a husband, a father, a performer, a superhero and a god. It’s the ultimate application of “secret identity” as a concept

Anyway, yeah, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Truly nobody was doing it like the King did with his Fourth World mythos

[jkparkin]

Superman: The Last Days of Lex Luthor #2 (DC, March 2025) variant cover by Chris Samnee

[lettersfromthephantomzone]

[thevindicativevordan]

Superman is a character and franchise with a broad enough range to basically tell any story in, what’re some of your favorite genres that you like to see with the character and his world? what’s some genres you wish they used him more in?

Genre stories he's starred in that I've loved (restricting myself to one from each):

Comedy: Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen (Fraction/Lieber)

Space Opera: The Warworld Saga (PKJ)

Satire: Space Age (Russell/Allred)

Horror: Phantom Zone (Gerber/Colan)

Alternate History: Red Son (Millar/Johnson)

Period Piece: Superman Smashes The Klan (Yang/Gurihiru)

Adventure: Up in the Sky! (King/Kubert)

Apocalyptic: Kingdom Come (Waid/Ross)

Bildungsroman (Coming of Age): Secret Identity (Busiek/Immonen)

Time Travel: Superman & The Legion of Superheroes (Johns/Frank)

Genre's I'd like to see him star in:

Cyberpunk - Essential pieces are already there, he fights the amoral CEO of a megacorp for Pete's sake. Absolute Superman might be going in this direction, but it's disappointing and frankly shocking that we haven't seen more writers exploit these elements.

Post-Apocalyptic: I would love a story about a Superman who failed, something in the vein of Last Knight on Earth. I want a story where he's forced to live through seeing the people he's devoted his life to utterly let him down. His beloved adopted planet ruined beyond all repair, the death of civilization, his friends all dead or broken. Then I want to see what happens next. What does he do? When you've suffered total defeat, how do you come back from that if you even can? Both Batman and Wonder Woman have gotten stories set in this genre but not Superman (Gabriel Hardman had an epic pitch but DC rejected it the fools). I want to see a Superman live though Mandrakk's threat made good, after failing the way his father did, what does Superman do?

Fantasy - I like Tolkien and plenty of the writers who either emulated or rejected him. My basic instinct is it would be fun to do a Superman story where the sun gives him magic instead of the traditional powerset, and craft a fantasy world around that.

Thriller - Something of the psychological variety in particular.

[lettersfromthephantomzone]

Superboys so cute lmao

[andruillus]

part 2. superboy wants to show off his cool flying powers and lex just wants more labs (also i gave lex a coat because i don't want him to be cold)

bonus clark helping him move stuff to his lab

[cootiekid]

Superman Treasury BACK COVER Variant by Scott Koblish

[andruillus]

some maggin-esque clark & lex. i just love when lex is written as a little prankster

[missterywitch]

i appreciate they made clear that, yes, Clark is a sweetheart with golden retriever energy, but that doesn't mean he isn't horny for his girlfriend

not that those things are mutually exclusive but a lot of times people (especially in fandom) treat them like they are

[superman-the-secret-third-thing]

They get freaky sometimes, it's just facts

Action Comics #1035 ""Warworld Rising, Part Six" (2021) written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson with art Daniel Sampere & Adriano Lucas

[superman-the-secret-third-thing]

Utterly fascinating interview with Jack Kirby about Darkseid & Superman:

JACK KIRBY: The idea of the Anti-Life Equation is that all Darkseid has to do is say a word and you become a slave. That's what he's after. He likes that and the fact that he likes that makes him valid, see? Because he exists and his idea exists, so why the hell shouldn't that be valid? That's the way Darkseid looks at things, and he's going to get what he wants in his own way. He's very ruthless and he's very smart.

---

Superman will continue as a character in many of these stories. In the first story we thought that it would be important to use him and see how relative he would be to that kind of thing. And Superman is relative. Superman has, despite the fact that he is a super-being, emotions just like everyone else. He's not a robot. If I were a super-being, I'd just be a human being with super-powers, which is the way I see Superman. He's a human being with super-powers and he can be lonely; he has emotions, he can be in love, he can hate people. He hates evil.

---

TOT: Why is Earth so important to [Darkseid]? KIRBY: Because Earth becomes a testing ground. This is where we have thinking animals, and there's the principle of Anti-Life. If someone took control of your mind and you were not able to think as yourself any longer, you would no longer be yourself. You'd be something in his command. You as an individual would be dead. That's Anti-Life. In other words, if you gave yourself to some cause, and gave up everything as an individual and you were at the beck and call of some leader, you would be dead as an individual. And that's what Darkseid wants. He wants control of everybody. If it was snowing outside and you weren't wearing any shoes and it was 38 degrees below zero and this guy says, "Go out and get me a bologna sandwich," you have to go through all that; you obey him automatically, you obey him meekly. You walk out without a coat and you freeze to death. He doesn't care. You do it anyway despite the fact that you don't want to do it. You're dead as an individual. You have no choice. You can't object and you have no stature as a person. You're dead. A slave is a dead man. That's what Darkseid wants. Darkseid wants complete subjugation of everything at a word - his word. He wants every thinking thing under his control. I believe it's an evil concept but he doesn't think so. Not if he's Darkseid. If you had the power you might not dislike the idea. Every-body sees the world from where they sit. It may be uncomfortable for the next guy but you think it's great. The right idea to Darkseid is anything that benefits him. He isn't going to worry about you. He sees the world from where he sits, and of course what he sees is big. He's a big man. Darkseid is a tremendous, powerful, evil figure, and he's going to see everything in a cosmic view. He's not going to see a view of the candy store around the corner or what's playing at the Palladium next week. Darkseid is going to see everything in an over-powering cosmic view, and of course what else would he want but complete subjugation of everything? Earth is included in that everything, and my concept is that somewhere on Earth is someone who can solve the Anti-Life Equation, and Darkseid is after that poor soul. He shakes up everything. He shakes up cities and creates all kinds of plots.

---

TOT: Does he have any equal, or is he the most powerful?

KIRBY: No actually, he's not the most powerful, but he's the most relentless. In other words, Darkseid is strictly a first-rater. I don't classify gods as far as their power goes. I classify them as far as their personality goes. Each god, if he used his power right, could defeat another god. If I used my power right I could defeat anyone on Earth if I wanted to. As a man, if I used my physical strength at its best, I could overpower anybody I wanted to.

[soranatus]

“‘What if Clark and Lois' genders were reversed, see how toxic it is’ oh yeah haha like imagine if a burly farmgirl was pining after a cynical city guy with a heart of gold, that would be awful.” — Dan Schkade

[smashpages]

Flash Gordon comic strip artist Dan Schkade paid tribute to the late, great David Lynch in a very unique way on BlueSky — with David Lynch’s Superboy.

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[fleshmonk]

drew @TheOtherRO (on Twitter)’s Superman design

tried to make it Moebius, Mignola, and Gibbons esque, like this is a lost illustration of the 80s or 90s

[classicartverso]

Jae Lee - Superman and Batman