Reign of the Supermen #396: Tangent Superman

Source: 1st - Tangent Comics/The Superman #1 (1998)
Type: Reimagining/Alternate EarthTangent Comics was a nifty gimmick that asked writers and artists to scrap everything that went before and create a whole new superhero universe using only the NAMES of DC characters. And so Nightwing became a shadowy mystic organization, Green Lantern a petite horror comic host, and Flash a cross between Clueless and Dr. Light. I much preferred the original batch of mini-series which made a conscious effort to use names that were made popular in the Silver Age, leaving the big three out of it. I guess Tangent had enough of a success that they needed to make a sequel, and in that sequel, they introduced a Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman. Of course, as with the rest of the Tangents (from what turned out to be Earth-9), there was very little in common between our version and their.

The Tangent Superman is Harvey Lee Dent, a man who literally fell to Earth from falling off a building and mysteriously survived. The fall unlocked an ever-growing array of mental powers such as telekinesis and telepathy, which he used to fight ordinary crime, at first, and then super-villains. He even had a Supermanish costume.
As it turns out, Nightwing had dosed the water supply in his native South Carolina with a drug called Miraclo in an attempt to create more superhumans. He was the only survivor. What's more interesting is that he's far more like Siegel and Shuster's original Super-Man from the Reign of the Super-Man short story. He's bald and has mental powers, and the Superman's Reign mini-series doesn't quit its homage after the title. Superman actually takes over the world in order to turn it into a socialist utopia.
Superman's Reign is actually a crossover with the standard DCU, as Tangent Superman learns of New Earth and sees it as a threat. That second take-over doesn't go as well, and he is punished in a way that recalls how the JLA and JSA originally dealt with the Crime Syndicate. Trapped between worlds with bathroom.

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