A Multicultural Krypton? - On Dan Jurgens, Ian Churchill et al's "Action Comics" #977

From 2016's "Action Comics" #977, by Dan Jurgens, Ian Churchill et al

Of all the sweeping changes made by John Byrne to the Superman mythos in 1986, it was perhaps his depiction of Krypton that proved the most contentious. Even many who embraced the back-to-basics puritanism of Byrne's post-Crisis reboot balked at how Superman's homeworld had overnight been transformed from super-scientific paradise to sterile, hidebound dystopia. In the words Byrne gave to Jor-El, the new Krypton was a "cold and heartless society, stripped of all human feeling, of all human passion and life". As with the Kryptonians, so with their world. No longer a wonderland of pulpish micro-environments, Byrne's Krypton was an icebound wasteland. How was the loss of the Arcadian Krypton to inform Superman's character and mission when his birthplace was now anything but a paradise lost? Hell rather than heaven, this reworking of Krypton introduced a serious of fascinating contradictions into Superman's set-up that Byrne, for all his laudable ambition, never successfully resolved.

For awhile, Byrne's Kryptonians were a useful shorthand for the fundamental differences between DC traditionalists and schismatics. In a time when continuity-wide reboots were as rare as they're now commonplace, the newest incarnation of Jor-El, Lara and their fellow alien citizens carried with it the shock of the new. In short, they symbolised a clear and fundamental break between the established DCU, to which many had been devoted, and the post-Crisis order. To reconcile the previous versions of Krypton with Byrne's was impossible. Oil and water, they could be placed next to each other, but all that could be gained was a greater understanding of why the two were entirely incompatible. They simply couldn't be a single society seen from two different perspectives. The differences in style and meaning were too essential, too substantial.

But oil and water do eventually mix, and, thankfully, many heresies eventually become nothing more than taken-for-granted aspects of everyday life. In 2016's The New World Part 1, Dan Jurgens and Ian Churchill et al played their part in introducing yet another rebooted take on Superman. To those of us who recall the comics culture wars of the mid-to-late 80s, it's charming to note how once irresolvable conflicts of canon have been imaginatively reconciled. In Jurgen and Churchill's version of Krypton, the planet's citizenry come dressed in the costumes associated with both pre and post-Crisis continuity. No longer symbols of any number of critical debates, they're now integrated into a single and yet convincingly varied version of Krypton. The house-styles expressed in the work of, say, Wayne Boring and Curt Swan now sit more than comfortably with the revolutionary takes by Byrne and Jerry Ordway and their many successors. (*1) Neither an over-obvious paradise or its polar opposite, this Krypton immediately appears a richer, more complex, more interesting society.

*1. I feel convinced this type of blending of styles as regards Krypton isn't in itself a new development, and that I've seen it several times before, although the chapter and verse of where this fusion began and how it developed, shamefully, escapes me. (13/12/2017 - My sincere thanks to Graeme McMillan for subsequently letting me know "the mixed Kryptonian thing goes back at least as far as the 2008 “New Krypton” storyline".)

The alien mono-cultures so common in episodic fantasies are, of course, deeply worrying in the pernicious messages they send about diversity in its absence. Even if it can't be said that this Krypton goes far enough in the direction of unseating White characters from stage-centre, it does present a more vibrant picture of a futuristic culture than has often been the case. In this, the still-evident differences between older and newer versions of Kryptonian fashion play a major part. To present explicitly distinct styles is to insist that a culture is one that hosts a variety of different groups. With that comes, to this degree or that, the suggestion of diverging values, and with that, a sense of vibrancy that immediately inspires the reader's involvement. In Churchill's art for The New World Part 1, we can immediately sense that this Krypton is unlikely to be marked by an overbearingly monolithic culture. His is a version of Kryptonian society that's far more than a cute nod to comics styles of the past. And so, the various cloaks on show? Not only do they fannishly suggest that Superman's own cape is a continuation of Kryptonian tradition. They also hint at the complexities of dress codes and their broader social meanings. Why is the man at far-left wearing a tiny blue cape, while the woman at far-right has a longer cloak of green? Such choices, deliberate or not, help the eye to perceive variety and imagine complexity. In such a way does even the most familiar relic of superhero tradition come fascinatingly to life. I wonder, which of the fashion styles on show would be regarded by the Kryptonians themselves as the most new, as the most daring, as the most contentious?

Perhaps most fascinating of all are the two women Churchill portrays at the bottom-left of this page. They appear emblematic of the two dominant traditions we've been discussing here. One, a relaxed take on late Silver-Age costumes, the other directly influenced by Byrne. Churchill's artwork here is wonderfully delicate and deft. The characters' body language is both relaxed and engaged. Their postures are absolutely convincing. (How beautifully expressive are the hands that Churchill's portrayed.) Similarly, the drapery is so wonderfully rendered that each character is lent the weight and substance of a credibly real character. In that, it's impossible to see the two as meaningless if perfectly pleasant place-fillers. They are, quite simply, alive, and in being so, they help to make Krypton alive again too.  I'd love to know what they're discussing, and why they're dressed as they are, and what they think about the people around them. I don't think I ever believed in Krypton as much as I did when I first saw those two women.

(Early afternoon, Tuesday 12th December 2017)