The story of superman has become a trope in itself; these days, the idea of an all-powerful
being capable of superior feats has become a common narrative, especially thanks to the
continuous popularity of the superhero genre.
But often that trope can be subverted and twisted, giving us much darker versions of
that superman character.
Today, we’re returning to a list that examined that very trope, our top 10 scary alternate
superman stories, coming at you with a part 2!
So this time around, rather than just focusing on stories outside of DC’s realm that feature
a superman, we’re also going to be looking at a few Elseworlds and alternate earth titles
that stray a lot from the regular Superman narrative.
So with that in mind, let’s get to it!
10 Samaritan Starting off our list, we have a character
from the comic series Astro City, the Samaritan has been compared to both Superman and Captain
Marvel.
He has superhuman strength, can manipulate energy fields, is capable of hypersonic flight,
has enhanced senses, and has pulled off interdimensional travel, too.
So how is he a tragic version of the man of steel?
Because his mind is that of a weary and worn-time traveler, who comes from a dystopian future
timeline set in the 35th century.
He’s chosen to be sent back in time to prevent a catastrophic event that completely ruins
the future.
Sent back to 1985, the Samaritan encounters an empyrean fire, which was the strands of
energy that made up time itself.
They fused with his body, altering him.
He manages to alter the event he was sent back to change – saving the space shuttle
the Challenger from disaster – and eventually becomes a superhero, using his powers for
good.
But that takes a toll on his mental health, causing him great stress, and when he does
time travel back to his era, he learns that by saving the Challenger, he saved the future,
but also created a future in which he ceased to exist, meaning he could never return home.
9 ArchEnemies Archenemies is the story of two roommates
who have no idea that the other is actually a super powered individual, and that they
are each other’s arch enemy.
The Superman in this case is a fella named Star Fighter, Ethan Baxter, who is a handsome
buff dude, but is also a complete slob, loves to party, and controls something called stellar
energy, which allows him to fly and project energy, among other talents.
Vincent Darko, his roommate, is the villain Underlord.
The two are horrible roommates to one another, with Ethan throwing parties solely to piss
Vincent off, with Vincent hating Ethan more than he could ever possibly hate his Star
Fighter alter ego.
Not as scary as some of the other entries on our list, but the idea of
8 The Ubermensch For this number, we’re diving into some
philosophy.
Back in 1883, Friedrich Nietzche published a book called Thus Spoke Zarathustra in which
he elaborated on an ethical ideal of his known as the Ubermensch, which translates into the
Superman, or the Superhman.
The idea was that the ubermensch is a goal for humanity to set for itself, and that god
is dead, god being a concept that gave meaning to life.
With that understanding, there is danger of nihilism overwhelming humanity, unless we
look to the ubermensch; the perfect example of the kinds of values humankind should strive
for, a bar that is set for us to strive towards.
He also said that the ultimate aspiration for a woman would be to give birth to an ubermensch;
this was conceived in the 19th century after all.
Anywho, the ubermensch philosophy has become a trope of sorts, apparent in a lot of different
kinds of media in which we see an idealized ‘superman’ esque character who attempts
to give others meaning in their lives, yet that trope is often twisted with the ubermensch
character causing more chaos or destruction in the process.
Take a look at Tyler Durden from Fight Club for example, or both Batman and the Joker
from Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, the latter example being two completely different
kinds of ubermensch.
While Nietzche’s philosophy predates DC’s Superman by around half a century, the concept
is still often associated with the man of steel, and we constantly see its impact today
in modern stories.
7 Superman Red Son The concept behind Superman Red Son is ‘what
if Superman had landed in the Soviet Union and was raised there?
Well, the answer to that is a very, very different version of Kal-El.
A three issue prestige format mini series from DC, Red Son, which won an Eisner Award
in 2004, has Superman’s rocket ship land in Ukraine, on a collective farm, and is raised
as the champion of the common worker who fights a never ending battle for Stalin, socialism
and the international expansion of the Warsaw Pact.
It’s a story world in which the cold war is concerned with superhumans rather than
a nuclear arms race.
Superman becomes a big brother-esque figure for the Soviet Union, and because of his influence,
the Soviet Union has nearly expanded to all parts of the globe by 1978, with the US on
the verge of collapse.
An introduction of a brain surgery technique turns dissidents into obedient followers known
as Superman Robots, with Lex Luthor, the president of the US, constantly coming up with schemes
to defeat the threat the man of steel poses.
Oh, and Batman exists in this universe too, but as a freedom fighter vigilante of sorts.
6 Injustice Superman The Injustice Superman is one of the most
grim takes on the hero.
His back story is similar to the main continuity’s, but diverts after Metropolis has been destroyed
by a nuclear blast, and the Joker had manipulated Superman into killing Lois Lane and his unborn
child in the process.
As Batman and Superman interrogate the Joker, the clown prince of crime presses Superman’s
buttons, toying and taunting with him, with Superman leaning into his rage, eventually
snapping and punching a hole through the Joker’s chest, killing him, despite Batman’s attempts
to intervene.
From there, Superman decides that the only way to eliminate crime is to have absolute
power over the earth, which begins a tyrannical regime in which like minded super powered
individuals, both heroes and villains, works as his generals enforcing his laws.
5 Doctor Manhattan Doctor Manhattan from the Watchmen may seem
like a wee bit of a stretch here for this list, but hear us out.
Doctor Manhattan is the only superhero in the Watchmen universe that has powers (and,
worth noting, for the purpose of this number, we’re looking specifically at Alan Moore
& Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen stories, not any of that new Doomsday Clock stuff).
Doctor Manhattan, once known as Jon Osterman, became the near omnipotent super powered after
the nuclear physicist was trapped in an Intrinsic Field Subtractor in 1959, which reconstructed
him on a molecular level, granting him his abilities.
After being reanimated, he was immediately put into the service of the US government,
and was asked by Nixon to intervene in the Vietnam war, where the opposition saw him
as a literal god.
That’s because he has unlimited manipulation of his own body and of matter in general,
subatomic perception and control, invulnerability and clairvoyance.
Gradually overtime, he loses touch with humanity.
He’s seen as a post human god, and, according to his colleague Wally Weaver – “I never
said the superman exists and he’s American.
What I said was God exists and he’s American.”
In the events of Watchmen, he is framed by Adrian Veidt in order to create distrust towards
the character and prevent him from seeing through Veidt’s plan to put an end to the
energy crisis and create world peace.
Later though, in that Doomsday Clock series, Manhattan is portrayed as a villain, and comes
to the conclusion that he is a being of inaction on a collision course with a man of action,
that man being Superman.
4 Ultraman Ultraman is a Superman alternate from DC who
hails from an alternate earth in which the Justice League’s counterparts are all villains.
Initially from Earth Three, Ultraman is a villainous version of Superman who gets stronger
every time he’s exposed to kryptonite, and initially developed a new super powered ability
every time he was exposed to it.
One of those powers allowed him to see through dimensional barriers, which is how the Crime
Syndicate, the evil version of the justice league, learned of other Earths existences.
Luckily he does has a weakness to the yellow sunlight, something revealed post New 52,
with the direct sunlight breaking down his kryptonite radiation.
3 Astonishman – The End League Astonishman is considered the world’s greatest
hero in The End League series, a Dark Horse bi monthly comic that ran from January 2008
to October 2009.
It’s a story in which super villains have prevailed, and the remaining superheroes struggle
to fight for a world that has largely been enslaved.
Astonishman, also known as Brian Terrance, was over 100 years old, and blamed himself
for what has happened.
In 1962, Astonishman triggered a worldwide cataclysm which would be known as the Green
Event after he’s tricked into believing that a communist nuclear facility is at the
bottom of the sea.
Detonating a nuclear missile into this facility, which turned out to be an alien space ship,
causes a wave of radiation to knock the Earth off of its axis, killing three billion people
in the process, and causing one in 10 thousand survivors to develop super powers thanks to
the radiation.
It only gets worse from there.
We learn that Astonishman had been drawing energy from the Earth’s core, and when his
skin was broken, that energy that gave him his powers leaked out of his body.
When he died, the energy left his body entirely in a blast of nuclear proportions.
2 Sentry Sentry has often been called Marvel’s Superman
equivalent.
A character who first appeared in 2000, hes described as a hero with the power of one
million exploding suns, and is capable of feats beyond DC’s man of steel’s own abilities.
Sentry has super strength, speed, stamina, a regenerative healing factor, can manipulate
light, is completely invulnerable, has psionic powers, can fly, has enhanced senses, is capable
of molecular manipulation, weather and gravity manipulation, matter manipulation, can absorb
or project energy, is immortal, can teleport and use astral projection, can shape shift,
bend time, project thoughts, is telepathic, and can even become invisible.
Yeah, damn.
Aside from having an awesome level of power, it’s his story that lands him on this list;
when we first meet the character in his alter ego form, Robert Reynolds, he has started
to recall memories of Sentry and his nemesis, the Void, and soon discovers that he has been
wiped from the minds and memories of all of the other superheroes in the Marvel universe,
along with the public.
Reed Richards and Doctor Doom helped erase his and everyone else’s memories as a means
of keeping the Void at bay.
The Void is Sentry’s other half, a nefarious villain that lives within Reynolds, a dark
side effect of his powers.
The reason why Void exists within him has changed over the years; sometimes it’s because
of an innate division between good and evil within Reynolds.
Other times its thanks to a mind virus placed within him, and so on.
But regardless, he’s a twist on the concept of Superman in a way that makes his ultimate
powers more complex, and allows for a new character dynamic that readers found themselves
quickly invested in.
1 Super Shock – Powers Supershock comes from a comic series called
Powers, a story told from the perspective of a homicide cop who has to navigate a world
where super powered individuals reign and fight off flamboyant villains.
Supershock first shows up 22 issues into the series, and is a high level Power, the name
for those with super powered abilities.
Active since World War 1, the character would eventually become insane, becoming destructive
and going on a rampage that inevitably caused his own death.
With their Justice League-esque team, Unity, slowly becoming corrupted and falling to shambles,
Super Shock began asking himself why he was serving humans when they were inferior creatures
to him.
Rather than being useful to them, he wanted them to serve him as if he were their King.
He began acting irrationally, first by murdering one of his Unity teammates, a ‘hero’ by
the name of Red Hawk who Super Shock publically exposed as a pedophile, then killed.
He began intervening in political issues, including the war between Israel and Palestine,
which he put an end to by vaporizing the entire area.
He then flew over to Rome and melted the Pope, wanting to be the only ‘godly figure’
on the planet.
When the rest of the world’s Powers and legal authorities began to hunt him, he pulled
a particularly gruesome stunt; he ended up taking a police officer up into space, killed
her, then resurrected her, then killed her again, repeating the process over and over
to the point where he even ripped out her own heart and showed it to her, his point
being to show the world how he had complete control over the life and death of humans.
There we have it friends!
What other alternate erroneous Superman stories can you think of, both outside of DC and from
the publisher?
Give us a shout in those comments below and let us know!
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