Reign of the Supermen #21: Black Lantern

Source: Blackest Night: Superman (2010)
Type: Alternate Earth/Villainous copyBack when the multiverse had an infinite number of parallels, one parallel's Superman became a hero who, when his reality collapsed, chose to go beyond the wall of the reconstructed universe to prevent a paradox. Later, he returned to the universe and was killed. Then, a Black Lantern ring recreated him as a zombie with all the same memories, but not the original's morality and personality. That is a pretty convoluted premise for a character. But if could have been worse...

5 Ways to Make Black Lantern Superman's origins more convoluted
1. Blackest Night was all a dream made manifest by Guardian energy tapped from the Power Battery on Oa.
2. The Superman of Earth-2 who returned in Infinite Crisis is actually a Durlan spy.
3. Grant Morrison has written a 3-year story about the character and its roots to the Silver Age, covering 4 series and an untold number of connected mini-series and specials.
4. The spirit inhabiting its corpse time traveled from a far future when everyone's been resurrected; however, it (and all other Lantern spirits) went insane in the time vortex.
5. Midichlorians!

(More convolutions in the comments!)

Comments

snell said…
You forgot to include Darkseid and/or Satan, because yuo can't have a really complex DC theory without one of them getting involved...

Or, Superman-2 sold his soul to Mephisto in exchange for Mephisto undoing Crisis on Infinite Earths--but, ironic fate, Geoff Johns had already done that, so Black Lantern Superman is cursed to blah blah...
De said…
I just finished re-reading the Mad Guardian storyline in the 90's run of Green Lantern. It wouldn't have surprised me if Geoff Johns trotted out that chestnut as the genesis for Blackest Night.
snell said…
De--a 90s story, from Geoff Johns? Surely you jest...his entire career is premised on wiping away anything post-1985ish...
Dale Glaser said…
Another good possibility would be to dole out some righteous cosmic punishment in the aftermath, thus creating the Black Lantern Earth-2 Superman Spectre, forced to act as the undead Kryptonian Wrath of the Presence!
Jeff R. said…
Speaking of Morrison, between ASS and Superman Beyond, (not to mention having one or two each in most of his other works like Animal Man and DC 1,000,000), they guy has done so darn many parasupermen that it's a bit anamlous that we haven't seen one yet at 21 in...are you saving them all up for a Morrison Month or something?


And it's already more convoluted that you present it because we're not just talking one random parallel world Superman but the original one, and then you have to explain how the current one isn't the original one, and how the current one isn't really the one that replaced this one either, although exactly what happened to that one [in-universe] is opaque at best and probably convoluted enough to satisfy anyone if fully explicated...
so can someone explain to me about this whole blackest night/brightest day series if it has something to do with The Guardians of OA? i'm so lost when it comes to this series. my initial thought that it was DC'c version of Marvel Zombies or something. can any one out there help me out here?
Siskoid said…
I think Wiki can probably offer a better synopsis than I, but there was this Guardian on Oa called Scar who was pouring ink into this giant old book, and the prophecy of the war of light came to pass...

First all the different Corps started to show up, each with a color from the rainbow representing an emotion. And if there were colored Lanterns, then there was also a Black Lantern, and the colored Lanterns had to fight the Blackest Night (from their oath). All the black rings came out of Anti-Monitor's corpse or something and went to the hands of every dead person in the DCU, thus zombies.

Brightest Day (also from the Oath), seems in part about who will be the White Lantern of Life. It's the Green/Yellow scheme of the Green Lantern mythos taken to its extreme logical point.
Siskoid said…
Jeff R.: It wasn't a conscious thing! I'm still trying to balance eras, types of Supermen, article length and importance.

But ask and ye shall receive: How about tomorrow?
thanks for responding Siskoid your not the first person online i've asked this question. i guess i kinda . . sorta . . for the most part . .. understand, in a way. um. . .yeah. i think i'll just bury my head in the sand over this series.