RESCHEDULED! Superman Space Age: Q&A with Mark Russel & Michael Allred! July 27, 2pm PT!

[DCCommunityQAndA]

@RepHope

Hey guys, big fan of your writing Mark and absolutely adore your art Michael! Since this is a take that sets itself during the time period of the Pre-Crisis Superman I was wondering what you two see as the biggest difference between the Pre-Crisis version and the ones that came later.

MA: Pre-crisis Superman was more innocent, more playful. Post crisis Superman was much more sophisticated and complex in characterizations and themes.

MR: What Mike said. And thank you!

[DCCommunityQAndA]

@moro

Thank you guys for taking the time to answer our questions. Simple question for ya:

What were your inspirations while creating this book? Were you influenced by the works of any other Superman writers or artists?

MA: I revisited everything, put everything in my mental pot and stirred. But my most important influences would be Darwyn Cooke and Frank Quitely. My earliest inspirations that I pulled from were the Fleischer Brothers cartoons. Also, I’m a huge fan of how Joe Schuster drew the original Superman.

MR: I was (obviously) most heavily influenced by the Crisis on Infinite Earths storyline, but I tried to include easter eggs and winks from pretty much every era and incarnation of Superman, including but not limited to the Siegel and Schuster Superman and the Superman movies of the 70s and 80s.

[DCCommunityQAndA]

@RexRebel

In the promos, I’ve read the story apparently takes place over a few decades, I am wondering if we are getting a single version of Superman throughout, or different pre crisis versions of him in each decade, similar to how he was portrayed in each decade.

MA: I did a few warm-up drawings to figure out how I wanted to depict Superman. I’d drew him in the Superman/Hullaballoo crossover and I wanted to refine it. But once I found the depiction I was happy with, I stuck through it throughout.

MR: We do see, briefly, different depictions of Superman in other universes in this story, and those are drawn from other runs and past iterations of Superman. But our Superman, the protagonist of our story, is as Mike said, the same throughout.

[DCCommunityQAndA]

@TheRealDetectiveChimp

Question to Mark: I loved Superman vs. Imperious Lex, which you wrote last year. Is Spage Age going to be a spiritual successor to that book?

MR: No. I love working with both Steve Pugh and Mike Allred, but their art brings very different things out of me and, from the start, I wanted this to be a very different story. Superman vs Imperious Lex is a very specific chapter in Superman’s story, whereas I wanted this to be more like his diary. The true confessions of Superman, compiled over a lifetime, and to be about how he grew from incidents like those.

[moro]

Just read the book yesterday (my question’s been sitting here for a while).

I definitely see the influences both of you mention, especially Darwyn Cooke and the Chris Reeve movies.

Love the book, and can’t wait for the next one. Thank you both for your time and awesome work .

[RexRebel]

Thanks for answering our questions and providing us some insights.

[DCCommunityQAndA]

@NYJt3

Hello

How did you decide what eras or events in time to include in this series?

MR: Hey here!

Well, I knew I was going to tie into Crisis on Infinite Earths, so I knew I had a hard out at 1985. And I wanted to use the Kennedy assassination and the nuclear standoff with the Soviets as a sort of genesis event. So the events of 1963 became a Rorschach test, not only for Superman, but for Bruce Wayne, Lex Luthor, Lois Lane, and Hal Jordan. I wanted to use that as the starting point where all those characters would start to become the people we know them as today.

[NYJt3]

Very interesting.

Exited to read it.
Thanks for answering

[DCCommunityQAndA]

@FelixLeiter

Apologies in advance for the dorky question but I’ve wondered these for a while…

• How does this version of Superman breathe in space and do his powers diminish the further he gets from the yellow sun?

Thank you both for taking the time to do this and thank you to @Jitsu and the staff here at DCUI for putting this together.

MR: One of his many awesome powers is that Superman doesn’t need to breathe. He just pretends to breathe so he doesn’t weird the rest of us out. And, no, his powers do not diminish (at least not radically) the further he gets from our sun because he is still powered by the light of all the little yellow suns you see in the night sky.

[DCCommunityQAndA]

@Zontar_of_Pellucidar

This is dealing with Superman during a period that is within spitting distance of the George Reeves Superman show. Do you consider that show relevant to the story you’re telling, and is your early 1960’s Lois Lane inspired at all by the Noel Neill Lois (since every Lois of this century has taken pains to show they’re a great departure from that version)?

MA: Only in my earliest childhood memory do I remember seeing that show. It just never appeared to me later in a way that I could watch it, so no.

MR: My earliest Superman influences were the old Super Friends cartoons and the George Reeves TV show, which appeared in syndication after I got home from school. So you could say that Noel Neill was the foundation for Lois in my mind, and probably in a lot of other minds, too. And I always really liked George Reeves’ cool-as-a-cucumber take on Superman. So it would be impossible for me to say that I wasn’t influenced by that show in writing Superman all these many years later.

[DCCommunityQAndA]

@Don-El

Wow I’m very excited to read this one, I recently completed Fantastic Four: Life Story, and I’m assuming this is a very similar concept of the comic book character actually aging and going through traditional life stages over the decades instead of remaining static as they do in the comics. My question is: how far apart did you both find yourselves at times over which direction things should go based on your personal philosophies about meaning of life, politics etc.?

MR: First of all, thank you! I’m glad you liked FF Life Story, and yes, this is a similar conceit because it is ultimately about how a superhero goes from being changed by the world to becoming the one who changes this world. In terms of how Mike and I worked together, we were pretty much in sync from the get-go. What discussions we have had about changing the script have been very tactical and boring. Things about which scenes should be splash pages and how many panels to cram into a page. And I don’t think Mike would disagree.

[DCCommunityQAndA]

That’s all we have time for today–thanks so much to everyone who joined us for this great Q&A!

[Don-El]

Dynamite! Intimate events like this make the DC Community a real value.

And to think the Community is free to use!!!

[Jitsu]

@Don-El

Dynamite! Intimate events like this make the DC Community a real value.

And to think the Community is free to use!!!

Love to see it!