Review — Superman: Lost

Nothing seems amiss the evening Superman goes to help the Justice League stop a potential international incident. He leaves his wife, Lois Lane, at her laptop, saying he’ll be “back soon.” A few hours later, Lois wakes from an impromptu nap to see her husband standing in their apartment, eerily quiet. “That was quick,” she says. Clark stays silent…

…and then he tells her it wasn’t “quick;” he wasn’t “back soon.” He claims he’s been gone twenty years. Just to make circumstances a bit stranger, Bruce Wayne shows up, eyeing Superman quizzically.

The last time Batman had seen his JLA teammate, Superman, tethered to Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth, had dove headlong into an alien ship powered by a black hole and vanished. Batman is just about to tell Lois what had happened when he sees his friend. To them, Clark’s been missing for a couple hours, reappearing as spontaneously as he vanished. To Superman, he’s been gone two decades, lost out in space, arduously making his way home like the fabled Odysseus.

The Odyssey ends with its titular hero returning triumphantly and winning back his wife. It doesn’t unpack the potential emotional ramifications of a decade-long journey filled with monsters, shipwrecks, and dead friends. In this series, Black Panther writer Christopher Priest allows Superman that unpacking, as the hero struggles with a part of him that still feels lost even after finding his way home.

Content Guide

Violence: During invasions, ships and tanks are smashed. A few people are fired upon. Superman is punched and blasted, and punches and blasts a few folks himself. A man’s face is smashed against an object. We’re told someone’s back is broken. A villain dreams and daydreams about the ways he expects a hero could kill him, including smashing him through walls, burning him alive, and dropping him from space. A few alien creatures are shot or stabbed.

Sexual Content: A married couple kisses on multiple occasions and expresses a desire for intimacy. A female character becomes pregnant, implying the child is the result of an affair (later proven to be untrue). Reference is made to an actual affair, and a married woman admits being jealous of and worried over her husband’s attractive coworker. Someone sees a woman showering, though nothing explicit is shown. A woman kisses a married man on the cheek. Someone is called “sexy.”

Drug/Alcohol Use: A few people have glasses of wine. Truth serum is administered to a character. We’re told someone “overmedicates” to stave off the effects of an illness.

Spiritual Content: Various references are made to philosophers such as Søren Kierkegaard, biblical events and characters such as the Road to Emmaus and Lazarus, and Dante’s version of hell. Elsewhere, a man refers to himself as a “devil” and calls Superman an “un-messiah,” though other folks compare Clark to a god. We’re told an alien race believes in magic but considers politics their religion. A character notes his powers were given to him by a wizard and calls himself religious-sounding nicknames.

Language/Crude Humor: A few uses of h***, d***, and a**. One profanity is bleeped out, someone makes a crude anatomical reference, and someone uses a variant of a crude nickname. An alien god’s name is taken in vain.

Other Negative Content: Someone makes a cutting remark about women. Another character lies to their spouse. Someone is manipulated by a health scare. A few folks take their anger out on electronic devices.

Positive Content: Superman is a hero who will take whatever risk he needs to save individuals, people groups, even entire planets. He genuinely wishes to help people, and his merciful outlook extends towards his villains, one of whom he rescues and offers an opportunity at redemption. Friends — heroic and human alike — surround Lois as she endeavors to help Clark adjust to the world. A character mourns at someone’s gravesite. A morally ambiguous character receives a redemption arc.

Review

When this series was first announced, I reacted excitedly. Christopher Priest wrote a Black Panther series for Marvel during the late 90s and early 2000s which remains, to this day, one of my favorite runs of any any creator on a comic title. It’s a smart, funny, intentional examination of a character; and I expected a similar experience with Superman: Lost. It’s there, sorta. The same wit and intentionality are present, as is the same analytical lens through which Priest examines his characters. There is something different which makes Lost a more difficult series to pinpoint, but we’ve got a universe to traverse before crossing that particular Einstein-Rosen bridge.

A Galaxy Far, Far, Far… Far Away

Superman: Lost is constructed on an engaging premise, and most of the series wields that premise well. Priest isn’t just writing the story of Superman finding his way back to Earth (and Lois) from waaaaay across the universe; he’s juggling Clark’s interstellar adventures with Superman readjusting to life on Earth. It isn’t enough to say that Superman is safe and sound the moment Lois finds him in their apartment. Events have happened — two whole decades of ’em, by Clark’s reckoning — which have changed the Man of Steel in ways he and his loved ones struggle to understand.

Priest fantastically applies the notion of being “lost” on most of his characters and not just in a physical sense. Yes, Superman becomes untethered from Earth, but his experiences affect him profoundly in other ways. Like Odysseus washed up on Calypso’s island, Clark spends years on a foreign planet, involved in foreign politics and drawn into conflict he wouldn’t otherwise concern himself with. He wants to get home, yet he finds purpose among people who need him. And Superman has never been one to ignore a cry for help. So what’s more important? Returning to Earth to the woman who loves him? Or helping people in immediate need on a planet far from home?

Because you know from the first issue that Superman does return, Priest must hook the audience by fashioning two stories: what happened while Clark was “lost,” exploring his space-faring adventures and his involvement on an alien planet… and how Clark remains “lost” even when he’s back home. The seemingly invulnerable Superman is made desperately human across these issues, from experiencing extreme hopelessness while wandering through space, to momentarily wondering if he should settle down with an alien woman when it seems he’ll never get home. Back on Earth, he’s reminded by people to breathe, so used to wandering the vacuum of the void; and he learns to readjust his super-hearing, so used to the silence of space. He calls Jimmy Olsen “Szhemi,” the name of a friend he made on another planet. Priest doesn’t shove aside the effects of Clark’s adventures or treat them as unimportant, instead giving readers a necessary look into the physical and emotional toll these adventures take on the hero.

Lost Lois

Priest extends that toll to others, particularly Lois. “I’m living with a ghost,” she tells Clark at one point, a statement which sums up her own arc. The tumult Clark has experienced of twenty years separated from her cascades upon Lois in a much shorter span. She quickly learns that though Clark has returned, he hasn’t returned to normal. As the series’ secondary protagonist, Lois becomes “lost” herself as she desperately tries to rouse Clark from the listlessness he feels. Priest paints her as a woman who has exhausted all her options and makes a few decisions which may rankle readers, particularly in choosing who to trust in helping bring her husband’s heart back.

I found Priest’s approach to Lois somewhat divisive. On the one hand, he endeavors to craft her as determined and driven to aid Clark in whatever way she can. The change in Clark’s personality places her in a position where she just wants her husband back, even if such a goal appears unattainable. Her drive is appreciated, yet it leads to actions which frustrated me. I understood the “why” but kept wondering if the “how” made sense. I ended the series not fully agreeing with Priest’s logic in directing her the way he does, despite her desperation and kind-hearted intentions.

Priest handles genuine struggle across the book fairly well. His characters have been, seemingly, irrevocably changed; and he outlines the conflict and tension created from that change. He artfully makes you sympathize with Clark and Lois, even if you don’t always agree with their actions. Steps are taken for our characters to find healing. Clark seeks professional help, underscoring the mental impact of his “odyssey” and signaling the practical, relatable steps even a nigh invincible superhero would have to take to reclaim a semblance of wholeness. Priest dangles hope in front of the couple (and the reader) like a carrot — maybe Clark will learn to breathe freely again, maybe Lois will get her husband back.

And then Priest eats the carrot himself like a ravenous rabbit.

A Black Hole of an Ending

If you look up other reviews for Superman: Lost online, you’ll find the series’ ending is considered by some to be underwhelming at best, controversial and disappointing at worst. I concur with the portion of the fanbase who finished this series frustrated. Part of this frustration stems from Priest using space/time travel concepts like wormholes and time dilation to resolve the series, and part of this is because he wraps up a major conflict in a few final pages. It’s all very neat and convenient, like the author just wanted to brush the dust off his hands and step away.

The high concept nature of the resolution bothered me a tad; I kept flipping through the final issue, trying to determine how events work out practically. I even searched online for other people’s thoughts and explanations to find what I was missing. I still don’t fully grasp how it functions from a scientific standpoint… or even if it does. I assume Priest consulted whatever resources he needed to provide an accurate conclusion, but I can’t say that with complete confidence. Possible scientific inaccuracies and my own ignorance, however, don’t form the basis of my most significant complaint.

From a narrative perspective (and I’ll speak in general terms to avoid spoilers), the ending hampers the work Priest has developed so far, particularly with his characters. He creates an easy solution, one which feels convenient for him and a few characters… yet also feels incredibly selfish. Instead of applying the hard work which could bring our characters further down a path of healing, Priest seems to throw up his hands, consider some concepts irreconcilable, and tosses in some time travel deus ex machina to clear up everything. The ending creates more wrinkles for me, and not just from a “I don’t get the science” standpoint. I genuinely don’t believe these characters reach the place they should have, and a final panel which promises hope and growth feels stymied by me wondering how certain folks will function past the ending. As far as I understand the plot, I would argue a few tweaks could have covered over the ending’s sins; but with the way Priest leaves the story, I am less than satisfied.

All that said, I will note (and I think this is important going into the series, to at least temper expectations) Superman: Lost does not appear to take place within main DC continuity. This appears to be an “Elseworlds” style story, with an alternate Superman in an alternate universe. All of this happens to “a Superman,” but if you don’t like the ending, at least you can find comfort that it doesn’t happen to “your Superman.” That lessens the ending’s impact somewhat, but the final pages still left me sour.

Superman: Found?

Early in the series, Lois quotes philosopher Søren Kierkegaard: “Losing one’s self can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all.” Superman loses his home and his wife; yet it’s when he finds them again does he realize he’s also lost part of himself, somewhere out there in the cold, quiet darkness of space. Priest makes the reader believe this is the story of Clark finding himself again… and it isn’t, not necessarily. It’s the story of Clark’s struggle to find himself, to find hope and healing, and of Lois wrestling with a similar struggle as she helps him. In detailing this struggle, Superman: Lost has merit. Priest allows the reader to see an incredibly powerful hero — a man known as a symbol of hope — struggle with hopelessness, both in the comfort and safety of his own home and the vast void of outer space.

However, the conclusion Priest comes to — the conclusion he forces Clark and Lois to come to — undermines that struggle. There is hope in believing that wholeness is possible, that what is broken can be fixed. But it isn’t an easy process. Characters recognize all that, but to give us what appears like a happy ending, Priest skirts around the process and uses a little space science to tidy the trouble. As I said in the opening, a good chunk of this series works well. The struggle itself is engaging; and Priest capably cobbles together clever phrasing, surprising plot developments, and strong character moments, key storytelling elements which make me love his Black Panther run so much. The ending does not eliminate the strength which comes before it, but it does muddle the process and leaves me as a reader feeling a little… lost.