With the “Big Game” coming up this weekend, I thought a sports-themed story would be fun, so this week’s Superman Stuff is going to take us back to 1999 and the Elseworlds one-shot Superman, Inc. by Steve Vance and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez. I was pretty happy a couple of years ago when DC announced the return of their Elseworlds imprint, and for the most part, I’ve enjoyed how they’ve used it. Rather than a home for one-off stories and prestige format miniseries as we’ve had in the past, DC has been using it to actually build “worlds:” longer stories – six issues, twelve issues – and stories that serve as sequels to or spinoffs of other stories that fall under the Elseworlds aegis. When Elseworlds started, DC was still under the edict that the Multiverse didn’t exist anymore. Now that the Multiverse is back in full force, they’re using the Elseworlds imprint to populate it. 

All that said, there was a charm to these one-off stories that modern Elseworlds – for all their positives – sometimes lack. Also, as is always the case, DC needs to scale back on the Batman stuff and give some other characters a chance. 

So let’s see what Vance and Garcia-Lopez gave us 27 years ago. 

Like many Elseworlds, there’s a single divergence point that the story starts from. Kal-El’s rocket lands in Kansas, but the baby crawls out on his own before he can be found by a kindly farming couple. He is found (run over, actually) by a drunk driver who takes him to a police station, and he’s eventually adopted by a young couple who gives him the name Dale Suderman. (It may be a trifle cutesy, but that’s how they did things in these stories.) The cutesy ends there, though – little Dale’s father dies when he’s only five years old, and a few years later when the boy discovers his ability to fly, his mother is so shocked that she falls down the stairs and is killed as well. The trauma gives Dale amnesia, blocking not only the memory of his mother’s death but also full access to his powers, and he begins bouncing from one foster home to another, finally ending up in a juvenile facility. His isolation continues until he discovers his natural talents make him a superstar on the basketball court, and he runs away from the juvenile home to find his own path.

Dale grows up and becomes an all-star not only in basketball, but every sport. Super Bowl MVP, a record-breaking home-run hitter, an Olympic Gold medalist in multiple disciplines – Dale Suderman is the world-famous Superman, sitting atop a global empire built on marketing, smiling for his fans in public and disdaining them in private. Lex Luthor, owner of the Metropolis Monarchs, tries to lure Dale to sign with his basketball team, seeing an opportunity to position the world’s most famous athlete as the crowning jewel in the new extravagant sports complex he’s building. Dale sweeps the rug out from under Lex, though, by announcing his own sports complex and a new expansion team, the Metropolis Spartans. 

Dale’s empire grows with a new Saturday morning cartoon starring Superman as an all-powerful “super hero,” and the merchandise bonanza that comes with it makes him even richer. Lex, meanwhile, tries to lure Lois Lane to begin digging into Suderman to find anything less than heroic he can use against him. Reluctantly, she agrees to investigate. She is unable to dig up any dirt except for the fact that the team doctors have, for some reason, never been able to take a blood sample. Following the trail of data, Luthor uncovers a spacecraft in a Kansas field and releases the news – via the Daily Planet – that Dale Suderman is an alien. Dale goes after Luthor and the ensuing battle with Luthor’s guards winds up unlocking the true extent of his power and revealing it to the world. 

Dale goes on TV to explain his side of the story, but a gunman shoots him with a bullet made of a glowing green substance. As he recovers in the hospital, Lois and detective John Jones visit him, and together decide that Luthor was behind the shooting. As Lois leaves, refusing to return to Luthor, Jones reveals himself to be an alien as well, and uses his powers to unlock the mental blocks in Dale’s mind. Dale leaves in solitude, but a lightning bolt in Kansas takes him down. He finds himself in the care of a farming couple, Jonathan and Martha Kent, who don’t follow sports and have no idea who he is. After weeks of learning from them, he leaves and releases a video to the press, vowing to leave Earth to search for his birth planet. In his absence, his “Superman Foundation” will use his fortune to benefit mankind. On the last panel, though, newly-minted journalism professor Lois Lane meets her newest student, a bespectacled behemoth calling himself Clark Kent.

There’s good and bad in this book. The bad – and really, “bad” is too strong a word, it’s more of an adherence to the tropes of the time – is the way that things all dovetail in the end to bring this world more in line with the main DC Universe. That’s how so many of these Elseworlds (and, in fact, Marvel’s What If comics) often went: if the world wasn’t all but destroyed, then circumstances were contrived to make things turn out the way they did originally. It doesn’t usually bother me that much, but this is a story where Dale Suderman was literally the most famous person ON THE PLANET. The notion that the Kents had never heard of him is ridiculous – even if they don’t own a TV, they’re seen reading the newspaper with a story about Luthor being indicted for the Superman shooting. And while I’m the first one to tell people not to worry about the glasses as a disguise, that disguise is kind of incumbent upon the idea that nobody is looking for Superman’s secret identity in the first place. Again, Dale is globally famous, and has a prior relationship with Lois Lane. It would be like Tom Brady putting on a pair of glasses and trying not to be recognized by Anderson Cooper.

What I like about this, though, are the parts of the story that diverge SIGNIFICANTLY from the standard Elseworlds of the time. The villain is still Lex Luthor, but we never get a hint of supervillainy. There’s no alien invasion, no hints about Brainiac or Mr. Mxyzptlk. Heck, there aren’t even any fight scenes in the book. It’s a story of somebody who has great potential working his way up towards unlocking that potential. It’s as though the entire issue is the first act of a standard origin story. As such, it’s very much unlike most other Elseworlds, and I enjoy that about it. 

I also love the artwork. Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez is one of those truly iconic creators, having spent decades as the lead designer for DC’s merchandising department. For a large portion of the public, his depiction of the DC heroes is THE standard, and for a reason. He’s bold, he’s an excellent storyteller, and he’s CONSISTENT. You could pull out a Superman Valentine’s Day card from 1987 and put it next to this book and see the same Superman. The face, the smile, everything but the haircut is a perfect fit. There are far too few artists who can actually do that.

It’s been a long time since I’ve read this one, but I’m glad I revisited it this week. I’d forgotten what a joy it is, and I wouldn’t mind a return to this world to see what became of the former Mr. Dale Suderman. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. Don’t forget, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman/Superman Stuff Archive! Got a request for a future “Superman Stuff”? Drop it in the comments!