This article contains spoilers for Action Comics #1030.
Superman appears to be about to learn the greatest secrets of his homeworld, Krypton. The Man of Steel lost his homeworld when he was just a baby, and he has spent a lifetime learning the secrets of Krypton. Kryptonian society has always fascinated him, with Superman generally considering his forefathers’ culture almost utopian.
In Action Comics #1030, by writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson and artist Daniel Sampere, most people assume Kryptonian civilization at its height to be far superior to Earth’s. The truth is that Krypton was simply older, with Krypton’s industrial revolution happening countless millennia ago, leading to the planet’s teachers marrying the arts and the sciences. “They no longer differentiated music from mathematics or language,” the comic observes, “fine art from horticulture or architecture, dance from physiology and medicine. Kryptonian artists didn’t just practice their craft on framed canvases and murals. They applied it to every brick and stone, every thought and sound and movement. They were all artists.“
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But Action Comics #1030 subtly hints there is another side to Krypton’s history, one that has never been told before. The issue sees what appear to be Warworld refugee ships arrive on Earth, and as he approaches them, Superman hears one of them whisper a prayer. He’s never heard those words spoken aloud, only having read them in an ancient Kryptonian text. It appears Warworld possesses slaves from ancient Krypton.
DC recently offered a vision of Superman’s fate in the “Future State” initiative, and it seems he is destined to leave Earth in order to become a champion of Warlord, seeking to free the slaves. It’s reasonable to assume this is why; because he will learn of a secret, ancient connection between Krypton and Warworld, one that explains why Warlord’s slave caste includes so many Kryptonians. Superman is about to discover some ancient wrong – most likely one that is even connected to the House of El itself – that he resolves to put right. Action Comics‘ current story can be compared to pieces of a jigsaw puzzle; “Future State” showed readers the picture on the front of the box, and now they have to see how the pieces are going to be put together in order to take that shape.
This, then, is why the Superman franchise is about to be transformed. Clark Kent has been Superman for years, but Superman is soon to leave Earth in the capable hands of his son, Jonathan. The future foretold in DC’s “Future State” is coming to pass, in both the Superman comics and the Batman books. But that future includes as many tragedies as it does triumphs, and it remains to be seen whether heroes like Superman and Batman will be able to change their fates.
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