Superman has his origin retold to perfection in just 4 panels

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Every good character can be defined in a few words. Wolverine, with “a hunter and excellent survivor”; or Batman, with “turns revenge into justice”. Of course, Superman, “the symbol of hope,” can also be easily summarized — and perhaps that’s the main reason why the Man of Steel remains so popular nearly 100 years since his debut. And now, a cover of his comic recounts his origins perfectly in just four panels.

Before showing anything, it doesn’t hurt to summarize Superman’s origin when baby Kal-El was sent from a doomed world, the planet Krypton, to Earth, where he found a couple who adopted him and raised him as their own son. From then on, the teachings from these kind people transformed an almost divine being into a powerful protector with a human heart, capable of inspiring hope in everyone who lives in the foster home he learned to love.

This story has become so famous and recurring that everyone, even the few who don’t know Superman, know what it is about. And, over time, we have never needed so little to represent it.

The original version, from 1929, was already extremely succinct, leaving a lot for our imagination to complete, with the creation of Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster saying that “on a distant planet destroyed by old age, a scientist placed his young son in a spaceship towards Earth.”

The following pictures describe the baby’s encounter and his super strength, in a very crude way, but one that makes it possible to completely understand what happened, which would become so popular from then on.

In All-Star Superman #1released in 2006, artist Frank Quitely transformed the revision of the Man of Steel’s origin in Grant Morrison’s script into a definitive graphic representation: one panel shows a “Threatened Planet”, while highlighting the facial expression of “Desperate Scientists”, following to a small ship sailing through space like “Última Esperança”, until arriving at “Casal Gentil” opening a red cloth from the blanket of a probable baby.

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Until then, everyone thinks that this would be the ideal definition for Superman’s origin, until the arrival of a new graphic representation presented this week.

The origin of Superman in a few panels

In DC Comics’ batch of solicitations for June, the publisher gave fans a look at what it has in store for the summer. The big highlight is the epic conclusion of the crossover House of Brainiac, in which, of course, Brainiac tries to take over Earth once again, now with the help of Czarnians. The edition that closes the plot brings some variants to Superman #15.

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Artist Danny Earls’ variant for Superman #15 shows Clark Kent’s iconic origin in just four panels: the first shows baby Kal-El flying to Earth through space, the second with a young Clark lifting several bales of hay on the Kent farm, the third has Clark navigating Metropolis and the last panel highlights Superman flying.

If we put Quitely and Earls’s placed on one page, next to each other, you then have almost 100 years of comics from the greatest superhero of all told in just eight panels, from the beginnings of Clark Kent to Superman — difficult to find such an iconic and accurate summary.

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Superman #15 will be available on the foreign market on June 25th.