As the punny title makes clear, the concept of Red Son — written by Millar and drawn by Dave Johnson — is pretty ingeniously simple: Instead of landing in rural Kansas to be discovered by the Kents, baby Kal-El’s rocket arrives twelve hours earlier, thus landing on a collective farm in Soviet Ukraine. As tempting as it is to think of the recurring trope of evil Superman as the world’s longest inside joke, it’s more clear-cut to say that we love stories of Superman gone bad for the same reason we like other What If? With Elizabeth Banks, David Denman, Jackson A. Dunn, Abraham Clinkscales. Just because he isn’t Clark Kent doesn’t mean he isn’t Kal El. Tom Speelman is the former manga/anime critic for the Eisner Award-winning Comics Alliance. No one knew what it was. Fairly certain he will have a good read. The long, grim comic history of Superman turning evil . A symbolic-minded person might take these two parallel visuals as a stand-in for how superheroes have grown far beyond the real-life humans who dreamed them up. But where Zack Snyder and David Goyer’s film questioned if Superman should bother using his immense power for good, what Brightburn seems to propose is: What if, while still a kid, Superman decided it was better to just tear the whole world down? To begin with, there’s Red Kryptonite. I see this as a trend for newer superhero movies. Brightburn tells an intriguing and somewhat-sympathetic story about how its young Superman transforms into a homicidal maniac. After all, it’s a natural question: If a perfect man comes from the sky and does only good, what would happen if he decided not to? With the Earth spread out below them, Miracleman gives his creator a kiss and then hurls him at the planet. Anyone who’s enjoyed Taylor’s other superhero work, like his new DC zombie comic DCeased, wouldn’t be remiss in checking this out. Stories. The solution to Brandon’s super-rampage is telegraphed early on. And so now we have a chance to take it and turn it on us. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. While Brightburn is a riff on Superman, Miracleman is a twist on the “Shazam” concept where young boys could transform themselves into adult superbeings with a single magic word (“kimota,” in this case). And that’s when it becomes totally clear: We’re watching a movie about Earth 3 (sorta). And considering how much direct imagery it pulls from Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, from the Kansas farm to Brandon Breyer’s glowing red eyes, Brightburn works almost perfectly as the Earth 3 to the current DC film universe. Then, intercut with the end credits is a final scene: it’s a YouTube video featuring an Alex Jones-esque conspiracy theorist played by Michael Rooker. With Quitely’s typical jaw-dropping work and Morrison on the “Superheroes as Their Archetypal Selves” kick that’s produced some of his best work, it’s no wonder WB Animation adapted this for the 2010 direct-to-video Justice League: Crisis On Two Earths. However, as an evil grows inside of him, the child uses his powers as a villain instead. Brightburn the Bad Seed of superheroes plus The Omen & Man of Steel all in one epic comicbook story. There’s Hyperion, from the Marvel series Squadron Supreme (and its R-rated revamp, Supreme Power), who believes the world would be better if he and his fellow superheroes ruled it. With a Russian Batman, a militarily-aggressive Wonder Woman and the Green Lantern Marine Corps (a concept that’s surprisingly never been reused), in just three issues, this Eisner-winning series proves to be one of Millar’s finest hours and one of the best explorations of an “evil” Superman, that questions our very notions of good and evil. I’m not sure if I will be a fan of this movie, given that it wasn’t a comic book series and is a new concept. Avengers: Endgame broke one box office record after another, but it was only in 2014 that the family of Jack Kirby (the artist who co-created most of the superheroes in Endgame) saw any money from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and only because they were about to take their copyright case to the Supreme Court. is a multi-million-dollar movie. Scarred for life. And there’s plenty of examples in which you see various creative teams answer that question and a variety of responses pop up.