Alternate Earth: Superman 2005

[Mister E]

Imagine, if you will, a world where comicbooks of superheroes didn't exist. A world where Superman wasn't created back in the 30's, and all that followed likewise never happened. No Batman. No Fantastic Four. No Spider-Man. Nothing.

 

Now, say tomorrow, some guy in the comicbook industry had an inspiration for the completely brand new, and previously never explored, concept of using a superhuman as the main hero in an adventure comicbook. Say he wanted to call this character "Superman".

 

My questions for you are:

 

• What would Superman look like?
   
  
• What powers would Superman have?
  and...
   
  
• What would be the source of Superman's powers?
  

[Iuz the Evil]

Re: Alternate Earth: Superman 2005

 

Best case scenario?

 

He gets his powers from Earth's yellow sun, wears a blue body suit with red cape, and has all the traditional super powers. Raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent to have strong moral values and be an iconic representation of all that is Good... you know, Truth, Justice, and the American Way/Hope. Since super-heroes have never been presented, it'd be just as likely that the origin/powers/appearance would be as they originally were depicted. Assuming you get a creative team with the vision and creativity of Siegel & Shuster to do it.

 

Worst case scenario?

 

He wears a kewl black & silver bodysuit, gets his powers from radiation/toxic waste/is bitten by a radioactive wombat while struck by lightning, and his powers are something SUPER L33T! Like he shoots knives out of his hands and heals when people cut him up! Yeah baby! His code of morality could be something awesome like "kill em first... I'm the best there is at what I do!" And we'd need him to fight a giant mechanical spider right off the bat, 'cuz spiders are the most savage killers in the $%@@ animal kingdom!

 

Ewwwwwww...

[Whitewings]

Re: Alternate Earth: Superman 2005

 

That's actually a very hard question to answer, because a world without the modern concept of superheroes would have to be drastically different from our own. However, some elements can be answered. First, the hero will need an origin. If he has genuine super-powers, the explanation will probably be pseudo-scientific because a "magical" or "religious" explanation will get too many people crashing down on you like so many neutron stars. You'll probably get something like "tapping into zero-point energy, the power of the expanding Universe itself," and either a spontaneous mutation or an extraterrestial origin for him. Possibly both; a really clever writer might have an alien race use tailored nanotech to rewrite the parents' DNA so their offspring will have these powers. If they're benevolent, or at least benign, then the couple will have value most of the world calls "good:" Respect for oneself and for others; the judging of situations based on experience and morality, using both reason and compassion; acceptance of personal responsibility for one's actions; the ability to accept that sometimes, there are no good solutions, only degrees of bad (but at the same time refusing to believe that there can never be good solutions, or that one should not at least try to find one). If the aliens are malevolent, then maybe our Superman is raised to be good in spite of them, or grows up to be good despite his parents' example. If he grows up to be amoral or actively evil, he's not a superhero.

 

Most likely, this version of Superman would be like the early appearance of Superman: Able to "raise tremendous weights! Leap an quarter of a mile! Hurdle the Empire State building! Run faster than a bullet train! And nothing less than the explosion of a cruise missile can harm him!" In simple terms, tremendous magnifications of ordinary human abilities. An ordinary man can throw a baseball ten yard with trivial ease; Superman can throw a wrecking ball ten yards with trivial ease.

 

If our hypothetical "Superman" does decide to adopt a distinctive costume, it would most likely be based on the outfits used for many extreme sports, meaning a heavy Spandex bodysuit and a helmet, just as the original Superman's was based on a circus strongman's. It will probably be black, with some bright colour for highlighting and a distinctive crest of some sort.

[MitchellS]

Re: Alternate Earth: Superman 2005

 

I would think Superman would be someone like Captain America. A super-man. Someone who is the best of the best physically and uses martial arts to defeat his foes. How he became a super-man would be open to speculation covering everything from super-soldier serium to mutant, to just being the best human possible due to fluke.

[vitruvian23]

Re: Alternate Earth: Superman 2005

 

Or a modern-day writer could go with more of the intellectual and psychic/psionic Superman typical of much science fiction prose, from Odd John to Weinbaum's New Adam to A.E. Van Vogt's Slan or even Heinlein's Valentine Michael Smith. Such a character would likely eschew a specific costume in favor of street clothes, but would arguably be both more powerful and potentially scarier than Siegel and Shuster's version.

 

Another alternative - presuming that the speculation about 'transhumanism' goes in the same directions in the absence of inspiration from the superhero comics, a modern take on Superman could be based on the concept of nanotech enhancements, to include: unbreakable bones due to carbon fiber (flexible diamond) substrates; skin as resistant to injury as Kevlar; rapid healing approaching Wolverine levels of regeneration; enhanced strength and athleticism, but only to about a 10x normal human level; massively enhanced reaction time due to faster nerve fibers; and massively augmented intelligence and senses due to integrated onboard computer systems and sensors. Abilities that could be added as time went on could include interfacing with/controlling electronics (ala Jake 2.0), releasing swarms of nanites for purposes ranging from spying to dissolving things to building equipment from raw materials; changing his appearance rapidly; and giving other people similar abilities, especially for healing purposes.

[Sketchpad]

Re: Alternate Earth: Superman 2005

 

What would he be like? How about this?

[Iuz the Evil]

Re: Alternate Earth: Superman 2005

 

Hmmm... not bad, not bad. But something seems to be missing.

 

I got it! How about something like - this?

[Wombatman]

Re: Alternate Earth: Superman 2005

 

He wears a kewl black & silver bodysuit, gets his powers from radiation/toxic waste/is bitten by a radioactive wombat while struck by lightning, and his powers are something SUPER L33T! Like he shoots knives out of his hands and heals when people cut him up! Yeah baby! His code of morality could be something awesome like "kill em first... I'm the best there is at what I do!" And we'd need him to fight a giant mechanical spider right off the bat, 'cuz spiders are the most savage killers in the $%@@ animal kingdom!

 

Radioactive Wombat bite is the ONLY way to get great super powers.

[Ura-Maru]

Re: Alternate Earth: Superman 2005

 

Well, it’d start out at a more moderate power level. People generally don’t swallow orders of magnitude level power-jumps. That’s why wire-fu seems so ridiculous to a good percentage of the US population. They missed the cultural ‘build up.’

 

Speaking of which, you probably have to assume action based manga/anime and higher powered HK action movies/wuxia comics/novels never developed, either, or you’d just get an Americanized version of one of them. Culture’s too globalized now to avoid cross-pollination.

 

You wouldn’t get a sparkly, total CVK boy scout without the Comics Code, and you wouldn’t get a dark iorn age anti-hero without a silver age legacy to rebel against. You’d probably get a morality more or less in line with other action heroes in other genres. Someone who’ll kill if pressed, but would never murder. Who’d break the law when it’s important, but would respect it when possible. Like a movie PI or cowboy.

 

My first instinct is to say ‘You’d never have such a simple origin story today’ but if you look at actual SF movies, it doesn’t seem unreasonable. It’d have more science words added in, but it probably wouldn’t make any actual sense. So the yellow sun’s chromospheres interact with his six extra chromosomes, hyper-activating his mitaclorians and boosting his beta waves to superstring levels!

 

So, yeah, a Captian America-like super solder or a low level brick (like the original Superman) both sound likely. The skintight costume was probably a fluke. If he had a costume at all, it would probably look more like a police or military uniform. It’s just as likely he’d just have a ‘standard outfit’ that was fairly easy to recognize, but still relatively normal clothing, like anime characters from the 70’s and 80’s.

 

Now, if he’d shown up in the 70’s, you’d have a ‘wandering badass’ type who went from place to place, beating up bad guys and helping people. In the 80’s, he would have been a self-obsessed loser who’s main goal was something fairly petty, involving Molly Ringwald. The 90’s, he’d be up against some vast, very vague conspiracy, that was kind of threatening, but wouldn’t have any actual goals.

 

Now, I’m not sure. The dominant theme of 00’s pop culture seems to be remaking old stuff and foreign stuff. So, if it were going to happen at all, it probably wouldn’t happen now.

 

Are we assuming that graphic media never developed? If so, it’s going to be fairly crude for quite a few years. Maybe more than that, if a Kirby or Tezuka doesn’t show up early. You’ll start out with simple, one shot stories, because extended ones will be badly paced and confusingly broken up.

 

Actually, the format wouldn’t be a 28 page monthly comic at all. It’s just not economically feasible. Comic companies wouldn’t do it at all if they weren’t so traditional. You’d either get a graphic novel sized chunk, produced by an exceptionally brave publisher, or more likely ‘page a day’ type web-comic.

 

Yeah, Web-comic is the only way I could see it starting up now. And with no editor to keep the content clean, and a need to keep daily hits high, it’d probably be fairly racy and violent.

 

So what you might end up with is something very close to the old Heavy Metal magazine comics. In web-comic form, with a four or five page story, updated once a week or so. Supes would either be a wandering drifter in a signature bomber jacket, helping people with his amazing 35 STR and 5 points of rPD, or a military or SWAT agent, who’s broadband but minor ‘super-humanness’ was enhanced by the best gadgets and guns the government can provide. In either case there’d be a surprising number of girls tied up in their underwear.

 

---

So, the TV Incredible Hulk or . . . who was that martial artist in the 70's book series, with Chuin?? The Destroyer?

[OddHat]

Re: Alternate Earth: Superman 2005

 

Great pic Sketchpad.

 

 

Serious answer:

 

Superman was a natural outgrowth of 19th and early 20th century fantastic literature, borrowing from many other characters and following well established story lines, with some imaginative new updates added by the pulp and sci-fi loving kids who wrote him. He was Gladiator without the resentment of mediocre men and ultimate failure, living in Doc Savage's fortress and eventually fighting The Spider's rogue's gallery while wearing a circus acrobat's costume and cape (keep throwing in more; Siegel and Schuster did).

 

If Siegel and Schuster had never created the modern Superhero, and we'd somehow just had a century of Pulps, then the other modern heirs of the pulps would be the inspiration for an American Superman. Maybe he'd be a Blade Runner style Repplicant with Star-Wars style Force Powers backing up his physical abilities, his costume inspired by Cirque du Soleil. Maybe world culture would have fed us enough Anime and Wuxia characters that our Superman would be an American who was gifted with the Chi power of a dying kung-fu master, and now fights crime in America with his invincible Iron Shirt and Flying techniques, as well as punches that can shatter stone.

 

None of the individual elements of Superman were completely new (except possibly Krypton, and someone more into early sci-fi than I am might be able to point something out about that), but the combination has proven to be very enduring.

[vitruvian23]

Re: Alternate Earth: Superman 2005

 

Ah - forgot one suite of abilities for nanotech Supes, aka Human 2.0 - 'metabolic dominance', which DARPA is actually trying to develop. This would translate as some degree of Life Support vs. Sleep, Eating (with a time limit or requirement to ingest food to fuel regeneration), temperature extremes, fatigue, etc., with Reduced END on physical abilities.

[Mister E]

Re: Alternate Earth: Superman 2005

 

Still just brain-storming here:

 

For origin of powers... I'm thinking atomic-radiation and toxic chemicals are right out. With the common general understanding of space and astronomy we now have, I'd have to say that the alien angle probably wouldn't be that hot either, but it is still open to possibilities. Bionics has some potential, but it's not easy for most people to swallow, aesthetically. The same goes for eugenics and genetic engineering... however, genetic engineering is super-duper big, right now.

 

The fact that humanity really is only just barely starting to mess around with genetics, and our understanding isn't anywhere near being able to create a truly "super" man... it seems like alien guidance of some kind would have to be required. Either something truly extra-terrestrial, or an A.I... maybe even a "Ghost In The Machine", from the internet. What do you think? Computers certainly are a big deal, these days... almost forgettably big.

 

The problem, though, is you don't want the origin to get too complicated, because then you risk loosing people in the details. Simplicity is the key. One sweet easily digested ‘concept’, is the Holy Grail.

 

I keep thinking about Dune… Star Wars… and the Matrix. (Drugs/eugenics… sub-cellular genetics/chi… and [random mutation?]/cyber-Zen).

 

 

 

I need to keep thinking…

 

There are some good ideas here, but I’m not sure we’ve nailed it, yet… and the more thoughts we toss around, the likelier someone will come up with something that is truly “inspiredâ€. So please keep posting.

[Supreme]

Re: Alternate Earth: Superman 2005

 

Best case scenario?

 

He gets his powers from Earth's yellow sun, wears a blue body suit with red cape, and has all the traditional super powers. Raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent to have strong moral values and be an iconic representation of all that is Good... you know, Truth, Justice, and the American Way/Hope. Since super-heroes have never been presented, it'd be just as likely that the origin/powers/appearance would be as they originally were depicted. Assuming you get a creative team with the vision and creativity of Siegel & Shuster to do it.

 

Worst case scenario?

 

He wears a kewl black & silver bodysuit, gets his powers from radiation/toxic waste/is bitten by a radioactive wombat while struck by lightning, and his powers are something SUPER L33T! Like he shoots knives out of his hands and heals when people cut him up! Yeah baby! His code of morality could be something awesome like "kill em first... I'm the best there is at what I do!" And we'd need him to fight a giant mechanical spider right off the bat, 'cuz spiders are the most savage killers in the $%@@ animal kingdom!

 

Ewwwwwww...

You got rep for that.

[Supreme]

Re: Alternate Earth: Superman 2005

 

I would keep his extraterrestrial origin, since Superman effectively represents America and we are all, in effect immigrants. I would probably make his powers the result of his presense on our soil, probably a combination of gravity differential and a relative lack of pollutants in our atmosphere. Kal-El would have been sent to Earth because an attempt to perform a massive waste dump into the core of Krypton went awry and Krypton began tearing itself apart seismically. Jor-El sends Kal-El, and only Kal-El to Earth because he simply wants a better life for his son. Lara is already dead, and Jor-El like Krypton doesn't have long. The radioactive isotopes created by the failed Core Waste Dump have induced massive radiation poisoning, and its taking its toll.

 

Unfortunately, since Jor-El was not a rich man he was forced to use the only fuel source available -- those same isotopes. This is how so much Kryptonite follows him to Earth. The ship was programmed to dump most of the isotopes at a safe distance from Earth before splashdown. However, Jor-El didn't count on humans being space-faring enough to collect those samples. Jor-El wasn't able to make a ship that went faster than light. He was able to make a ship which accelerated almost constantly for the entire journey. Thus too much time did not pass for baby Kal-El, and his muscles were further stimulated.

 

Kal-El still grows up in rural America, if not Kansas specifically. I'm not sure if he grows up as Clark Kent. I would like a Superman who looked less white. Sort of a Louis Wu mixture of all the races putting him somewhere between Asian and Latino. His powers are simply super-strength and invulnerability. His weaknesses are still Kryptonite (green only) and magic. He is, however, and absolute specimen in all other aspects: mental acuity, health, courage, attractiveness, etc. Lois figures out his secret ID in a blink. She is an investigative journalist, after all. His costume is red and blue, but the S shield actually looks like a shield, not a corporate emblem. He's here to protect us, after all.