After much hemming and hawing over whether or not I should buy this thing, I finally bit the bullet and got it. Initial thoughts...

Well, I'll be honest. I'm hugely critical–or at least wary–of the evil or dark Superman-type story, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't irritated by the seeming rise of twisted pastiches like Homelander, Omni-Man, or Brightburn. That being said...I think this comic explores the idea of a Superman not necessarily raised on the same values as the prime version pretty well. Mostly because even for how much of a different approach he takes, however many mistakes he makes...he's still at least trying to be a hero. His heart's in the right place, but he ended up doing the wrong things for what he earnestly believed were the right reasons. And even then, even after all the mistakes he made...he still ended up going out like the Superman we all know and love.

I think if there was one thing I don't really like about the book, it's the ending. I don't like the stable time loop thing. Just feels like it's there for surprise value and not much else. It doesn't really do much for the story as a whole other than just being there for a last minute surprise. You could cut it out entirely (as the animated version did, which I liked), and the story as a whole would be pretty much unchanged, I think.

But anyway, other than what I thought was an unnecessary twist ending, I liked it.

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"Just feels like it's there for surprise value and not much else."

Mark Millar's entire writing style, right there.

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I'm glad you enjoyed the book. It's definitely one of the diamonds out of Mark Millar's body of work.

Though I still prefer the comic's ending to the animated movie.

Red Son is my favorite alternate universe Superman and one of my favorite comics. Even though Superman was raised in such a drastically different environment and made choices he may not have made otherwise he still felt like Superman.

I agree, it had a lot of interesting ideas and what if scenarios, but the ending killed it for me too.

I mean, good God, what were they thinking?

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The ending didn't really kill the story for me because it was really far removed from everything else, and it happens at the end after the main story is done.

But by that same token, the fact that it doesn't really change anything bugs me even more. Why did it need to be there in the first place?

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My guess, the author had to make the final issue a certain amount of pages, but he couldn't stretch the story he had intended far enough, so he made up the ending on the spot.

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Brightburn

To be fair to that last one, though, the whole 'super boy but rotten on the inside' was clearly that movies attempt at sincere horror. Like, that movie got what made Super Man so compelling, and intentionally twisted those things to make you uncomfortable. You only get horror twists on something that effective if you actually understand and deeply respect the source material.

Not... well, intentional cynicism and jadedness from people that genuinely cannot understand nor want to comprehend somebody with power that is ALSO a good person, as so many, many, MANY takes on Superman tend to take on the character. Cough, DC Movies lately joke here, cough.

Like, IMHO, of course, but I find the later much more annoying and disappointing. Like, it genuinely shouldn't be the hardest bit to imagine that a Super Hero is a nice person that wants to help people, you know?

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Still feel like it lends itself to the most common fears levied at Superman as far as his powers go; “a being with that power could never be good”.

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I'll freely admit that... well, it's sadly not a high bar to pass with Superman, given how often he's been done dirty that exact way.

Just A for Effort in doing such an overdone idea justice and taking it all the way, you know?