Jigsaw Falling Into Place

(Warning: Major spoilers!)

And so I skimmed Geoff Johns and Jim Lee's Justice League#12 yesterday. It was the resolution of the "Villain's Journey" arc, in which a dying writer named David Graves blames the Justice League for the death of his family and attacks the League. Turns out the League may have been partially responsible by not taking a certain factor into account during their earlier battle with Darkseid. So of course, the solution is to have the one Justice Leaguer most capable of accounting for that factor in the future....QUIT THE TEAM. Brilliant.

And then I got to what we've all been talking about.

So the premise here is that Wonder Woman and Superman are both so alien and isolated from humanity that they both feel terribly alone. That was Johns' rationale.

Wait, Superman isolated and alone? So much so that he can't confide in anyone? I don't remember that being the case a year ago.

And then I remembered these quotes from DC's "The Source" back in July 2011 regarding the Superman reboot:

* This Superman is very much an alien, one struggling to adjust to his adopted home. In the series, he must come to terms with both the loss of his home world, as well as the loss of both of his adopted parents. He is more Kal-El from the planet Krypton than Clark Kent from Kansas. He’s a loner trying to find his place in the world.

Timeless and modern, classic and contemporary, but younger, brasher and more brooding, this is Superman. The New Man of Tomorrow.

“We wanted to have that sense of isolation that might come with being an alien among men,” DiDio said. “The two choices that were made, with both his parents being dead and not being married, isolated Clark a little bit more, so that he really had to do more exploration about mankind. There wasn’t that one strong human tether that he was bonding with and learning through.”


“That’s one of the things we’re trying to explore much more,” DiDio said. “We’ve told so many great stories over the years where Superman has embraced his human side and built stories around that side of the characterization. Now we’re flipping it around a little bit and really embracing his alien side, so we can understand what it’s like to be a man from another world, living amongst men, but not feeling like you’re a part of it, but belonging to them all.”


And then, like a jigsaw falling into place, it hit me. All the pieces suddenly fit.


The Kents now being dead? The Super-Marriage getting the "One More Day" treatment? Clark Kent now being single, isolated, alien, and broody?


It was all for this.



Follow me here:

Nu52 Supes has less of a connection to humanity -->  Supes is and feels like an outsider -->  Hey, Wonder Woman is ALSO an outsider --> Sooo....

It's a classic bad writing move: You want to write Character A in Situation B. But Character A as he historically has been written, would never get into Situation B. So you rewrite and alter Character A into a character who would get into Situation B.



The result? Superman/Wonder Woman is replacing Superman/Lois indefinitely. What once was fan fiction is now canon, and the canon that was in place for decades is now the fan fiction.