Superman Through the Ages! Forum

 I don't read the regular Superman comics for a very important reason, I don't like the constant origin revamps. This has soured me on DC continuity altogether. Even if they were to call me up tommorow and ask me what I would want done with his origin I still don't think I could go back at this point. I recently picked up "All Star" #6 in hopes of finding a Superman book that I can read on a regular basis again but I find that my past experiences have made me so cynical that I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop and for them to do something that I don't agree with. I also did this with "Generations", even though I have both the first and second volumes and parts of the third. It has yet to do something I don't like also, but I'm still expecting the worst. All of this has to do with the post crisis Superman.

"Man of Steel" came out when I was eight years old but I didn't find out about it until I was twice that age. I was grossly disapointed to discover that in this reality this Superman didn't even start developing his powers until late in life. I had read some post crisis comics up until that point with out realizing there was anything wrong with them and even after that I tried to continue reading them while ignoring the parts I didn't like. This only works for so long until they keep reminding you of the stuff you don't like on a regular basis. I then went back and embraced the pre-crisis stuff because it told me what I wanted to hear. But over time I have come to realize that this is not the solution or a particularly healthy attitude to have, it's just a symptom of a larger problem. There are just too many versions of Superman.

When you look at a character like Batman or Spiderman, you automatically know his history. With Superman, the only thing known for sure is that he left Krypton as a young child and sometime between then and the age of thirty he discovered he had super powers and put on a costume to save people. Is this a good thing? Is it a good thing that the Smallville Superman's powers developed differently then the Lois and Clark version did? It seems like everytime they do a new TV show, his powers developed a different way. Is this a good thing? Is it a good thing that you actually have a choice in which version you like best, especially if that version may not be around?

 Should Superman have a carved in stone history the way the other heroes do? If so, what should it be? This web site is dedicated to the pre-crisis Superman, so obviously there is a clear divide on the issue of how his history should be, I doubt you'll find a fan site dedicated to the Stan Lee/Steve Ditko Spiderman that says Marvel should bring back that version into continuity because technically, it already is. We all have our favorite version of the character, my question is, should we? Should there be so many to choose from in the first place? I have said on another thread how I like the pre-crisis version because it is very loose with the absolutes, this allows me a lot of leeway in interpretation. This is good for me but is it good for the character as a whole? I'm just curious if anyone else thinks that Superman has too wide a field to play in or if it's just me.           

Everyone who seems to edit or take over a title these days revamps it to his liking.... whether comics, TV, movies, etc...

I agree, pre-crisis had a tighter continuity. When Julie Schwartz took over the editorial reigns, he respected Mort W's continuity AND elaborated on it.

Today, whoever the editor of the month is, he revamps things to his own liking.  Ironically, the Crisis was supposed to iron all that out (well, it WAS the Iron Age!), but failed miserably

pre crisis had a messier continuity, if you look around  this site you can find a timeline which refereances supermans early days... the origin story was revisted so often that its pretty much become weighed down by lots of excess stories, i mean it started out with Jor-El only having one shuttle in a desperate attempt to blast it off... but after morty and the boys got to it, it turned out he had quite a few to spare...

Superman's sheer longevity probably has something to do with the fact that his origin is constantly embellished as well as changed, but there is SOMETHING about the character that seems to drive people to want to re-imagine it.  I suppose partly because its such a big story, involving another lost world and a sense of him being an orphan among humans.

Here are a lot of them, still missing one or two I think.

http://superman.nu/tales/origins.php


Krypton had rockets, it is just that no one believe Jor-El.

see:

http://superman.nu/wiki/index.php/Mala
http://superman.nu/wiki/index.php/U-Ban

An part important of the problem is that from "Man of steel"the authors have given too much importance at movies and TV series.John Byrne'Superman was too much influenced from "Superman the movie" of 1978.Planet Krypton and Jor-El and Lara look,the cancellation of Superboy,Ma and Pa Kent that are alive (in the movie only Martha) ,Lex Luthor with red hairs,come all from the motion picture.Cancel Superboy was a big mistake.The character existed from 1945 (only seven years after the birth of Superman on comics),and was a great character;which was the problem with he? Im are very very angry with Byrne. After "man of style" every author has been felt free to change also important parts of legend (like the wedding of Clark and Lois).About all things that came from movies and tv they would have to be considered "imaginary stories",and not incorporate in comics.

Having Clark as a Superboy that makes logical sense with Superman is difficult, as anyone who's seen both meet President Kennedy can attest.

Each choice introduces fun storytelling possibilities, but eliminates others.  Superman doesn't make such a grand debut by saving the helicopter or space shuttle if Superboy's been doing that stuff in Smallville for years.  Given the variants, I'm surprised they don't have a multiple choice checklist:

Status of Ma and Pa Kent relative to Superman:
a) both parents dead
b) both parents alive
c) Martha alive
d) Jonathan alive (not often used, we like Martha more)

Status of Jor-El and Lara:
a) dead on Krypton
b) alive, suspended animation, surrounded in a Kryptonite
c) Jor-El dead, but spirit lives on to torture Superman (Smallville option)

etc.

One thing that probably factors in is that many characters get powers at very certain times - Flash, Green Lantern, Spectre, etc.  Kal-El comes to Earth with his powers in place, and its always tempting to want to show them earlier and earlier, or to react against it.

I liked Superboy when he lived in a nebulous past, I lost interest when he moved on to battling the Nazis, to meeting Kennedy, having his parents rejuvenated, to meeting Bigfoot, and solving the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle.

 I think this is largely what the post-crisis revamp was about, a reaction to what many saw as an unrealistic history. It would be very easy to argue that perhaps giving a toddler or an infant super powers isn't the smartest thing in the world. I don't like the idea of taking those powers away at a young age but I can see the logic in doing so. The point I was trying to make is that you don't have the option of giving Spiderman or Hulk their powers as children like you do with Superman, some versions do and some versions don't. My question is, should there be one for all time version that has to be universally followed in all forms like there is with the other characters? Peter Parker is always sixteen or seventeen when he gets bit by that radioactive (or in the case of the movie, genetically engineered) spider, Bruce Wayne is always around eight to ten years old when his parents died. With Superman it's easy to pick your favorite version but this creates problems in and of itself when another version comes along that doesn't do the exact same thing. For the most part, you don't have that problem with the other characters.

The one thing I think there is a general consensus on among both the pre and post crisis fanbase is that the early post crisis years were handled poorly. You can't remove Superboy from history and keep the ongoing Legion series, it just doesn't work. Ditto Dick Grayson as Nightwing. The attitude during the mid eighties was, "Well, we'll sort all that out later..." and it took them two decades to finally do it! That's just irresponsible. Someone should have sorted all this out long before John Byrne set pencil to artboard. You can't have a more "realistic" universe if you leave stuff behind from the previous universe. 

In my view, an origin should not place much restrictions on future writers. For example, Byrne, as well as other writers took away even the possibility of other Kryptonians showing up. This limited the writers who came afterwards.

Granted, there should be some limitations (Superman shouldn't kill, his birth parents shouldn't be alive--holograms are okay though, ect), but not as many as there have been.

Superman's origin was never rebooted until 1986, and since then there have been 3 of them. We just need to get back to the basics. In the Golden Age, Superman's origin wasn't revealed all at once, it was revealed and retconned a little at a time, until we wound up with this:

1) Superman arrived as a toddler. (The first episode of the radio show differs, but that episode was later retconned and ignored.)

2) After being at an orphanage, he was adopted by the Kents (Sarah and Eben in the radio show, tv show, and novel, but Martha and Jonathan in the comics.)

3) Had a career as Superboy.

4) (In Easter language) was fully man and fully kryptonian.

5) Left Smallville, came to Metropolis, and so on.

Every one of these Golden Age aspects of the origin of Superman are routinely ignored, except the last one. Therein lies the problem. Green Lantern, Flash, Spider-Man, Captain America, etc. all have intact origins. But with Superman, Action Comics #1 never even happened.

Well I've already said elsewhere that I'm sick to death of the origin being retold. Mostly because it's never been improved on.

The origin of Superman is one of the greatest stories in the history of comics, and everyone seems to want to put his little spin on it, just as each comedian will embellish a favorite joke to make it his own.  The problem is some embellishments just make the joke longer, not better (see many of the Weisinger add-ons) and every now and then you get a joke-teller who misses the whole point of the joke and just plain tells it WRONG (you know who).

I just think it would be refreshing to see some of these overpaid modern "superstar" creators add something significant to the mythos instead of re-telling the oldest story in the book.  Just as it's nice to hear a new joke every now and then, no matter how great the old ones are. 

Introducing a Superboy with an 8 to 10 year career (along with the many Superboy spin-offs like the Legion) seems as much of a re-boot as Byrne's, even though I liked the pre late 60s Superboy a lot.

I never have understood the desire to stuff more and more into a character's past rather than tell new stories, no matter what the era.

There are easy ways around that. His entire career as Superboy could have been in the future with the Legion, for example.

It's not just Superman, I hate it when people mess with characters' origins in general. For example, I didn't even bother to see the recent Fantastic Four movie, after watching the mess that was the Hulk movie. Nearly every superhero movie ever made has significantly changed the hero's origins, except Superman: The Movie and Spider-Man, which are considered the best two superhero movies ever made.

One idea I'd contemplated long ago is that Kryptonians age to maturity more slowly, such that he -had- to have lots of time travelling adventures as a boy because otherwise he'd still be a child. 

The Superman movie tampered with his origins in serious ways, unless you think Jor-El sequestering him for a decade and Ma Kent being alive was part of prior Superman canon.

 Late last year I picked up the Superman Sunday Classics and in it they reprinted an origin story from around 1942-3 that was about two pages long. It told me more in two pages about Superman's history then the 300 some pages of Birthright. I think this simplicity is what we have lost and I think that we still haven't gotten back to it yet. Does anyone know when the current universe Superman started developing his powers? How about the All Star universe Superman? DC is still tip toeing around the issue and I think it's because they are so desperate to get people to approve of it that they are afraid of offending someone if they choose the wrong origin. I think they figure that by the time that his history is revealed, you will like the series so much you won't care if it's not to your specifications.

In 1986 when they started the universe all over again so many old fans were turned off by the idea that they didn't give the "new and improved" :P Superman a chance. They may be trying to avoid that now. I don't think that's really necessary, trying to please everyone with a little bit of everything not only doesn't work, it hurts the credibility of the character. If DC really wants to have a stable Superman, they might want to take another look at that 1942-3 origin and do something to that effect. It's a lot simpler then deciding "he started doing this at this age" and so on.    

I don't agree. Superman doesn't need a simplified non-origin. In fact, the very "simplicity" of the origin in the Gold through Bronze age was its biggest liability, and it was the thoroughness and completeness of BIRTHRIGHT that was its greatest strength.

The biggest problem with Superman's origin, and also with Batman's origin, is that it was always tended to be covered in montages.

I'm sure you can picture the Batman origin montage now: there's always the same three panel sequence of him "training:" one panel with Batman lifting weights, another with him holding up test tubes, and finally one with Bats at a pommel horse (or rarely, set of rings).

If the origin was covered in these montage sequences, then by definition there are going to be "gaps." And if there are gaps then there's the potential to go crazy.

Batman's origin was not harmed in this way, because mostly when we filled in the montage gaps, it was with cute, disposable facts like "Batman trained with Argentinean cattlemen in the use of the bolos."

Superman's origin, though? There were always new things being added or deleted. It was like he had a Wikiorigin.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about: in some versions of the story, Jor-El built the rocketship for both Lara and Kal-El, but Lara refused to leave because she wanted to die with her husband, and the weight would unsteady the craft. Some retellings have this, others don't.

And don't get me started on the "little details" that were forever being added: Jor-El sending a Super-Teacher, or Mon-El's ship landing as Krypton crumbled. One of the most important elements of the origin of Superman, the urgency with which he was sped away, was eventually neutered because it seemed Jor-El had just about all the time in the world, what between sending Mon-El off and building the Super-Teacher and all that.

You're right in comparing this to the Marvel heroes. One of the things I think is most interesting about the House that Stan Built is that every little detail, no matter how old, still counts. We Superman fans regularly forget really colossal things like the fact Heat-Vision wasn't a separate power for DECADES. Or the fact in some issues, gold blocks Kryptonite radiations as well as lead.

Compare that to, for instance, ONE LINE in an early issue of the Stan/Jack X-MEN where Professor X admits in a thought bubble he loves Marvel Girl. Stan wisely never, ever mentioned this again because it made the Professor look like a creepy, creepy letch, and transferred the "secretly in love" angle to Cyclops.

In case you're curious, the explanation later writers would come up with for that fantastically Mopee-ish line is that because Prof. X trained with Marvel Girl and they shared each other's thoughts, he was somewhat possessive and protective, and that "scrambled" him a little until the Prof came to his senses.

But my point here is this: because we saw the day-to-day developments of the X-Men "on camera," because we had a definite "first issue" and start point, something that Superman and Batman both don't have, there's a greater sense that what we see is "honest."

Hell, in the early Daredevil run, the Man Without Fear used gadgets in his cape and cowl, including a microphone inside his baton. These gizmos were abandoned after one issue, but almost every writer after (including Frankie Miller himself) has at least in passing rationalized them away: Matt Murdock eventually discarded them. Even if it was a one-issue phase, it was still a part of the story of Daredevil.

And so we come to the problem with the origin of Superman: whatever is in and out depends on the caprice or whim of the writer. And that's no origin at all.

This is why I liked BIRTHRIGHT very, very much: here was an origin of Superman where everything happened "on camera." There were no gaps that a future obnoxious writer could use to say, "Kal-El, before you left, your father sent out your beloved pet Kangaroo."

In fact, because it was so complete, it isn't necessarily desirable to include little twists like this.

As for there being multiple Superman origins...actually, I like this.

The thing that ticked me off about the Jeph Loeb "Return to Krypton" is that all it did was bring back "classic" Krypton. It didn't show us anything we haven't seen before. BIRTHRIGHT at least, showed us a totally different take on Superman's origin, with totally different elements that were a nice surprise: the idea that Clark Kent travelled the world before becoming Superman, which gives him a global, cosmopolitan perspective instead of being Jeph Loeb's provincial "Super-Forrest Gump."


No one knows this. Including, I bet, Morrison.

Sure, there was that two-page thing in the beginning that hand-waived the origin away.

This is a great example of the postmodernist, subliterate assholery that makes me loathe Morrison with every fiber of my being: the ASS origin was a copy, but of something that has no "original." (What would Jean Beaudrillard say?)


I think DC has been pretty good with their "have your cake and eat it too" explanations that are intended to please many different kinds of fans. Hal Jordan is a Green Lantern, and so is Kyle Rayner.

If there's ever a time to whip out a new Superman origin, it would be now. People are as exhausted and tired of the Byrne/Wolfman origin now as they were in 1985 with the Wikiorigin. And people aren't willing to commit to BIRTHRIGHT. It went over about as well as an abortion in a Disney cartoon.


For the record I agree with Alex Ross: time will not be kind to the Spider-Man movie in the long-term. The truly good, truly definitive Spider-Man movie has yet to be made.


Awww, c'mon. Waid made some pretty substantial and significant additions to his BIRTHRIGHT origin.


Yes, I think there ought to be at least for the comics. I really hope Kurt and Geoff get off their fannies and give us this. If they don't want to use BIRTHRIGHT, fine, but we need something.

This is not to say that there can't be other origins to meet the needs of shows, games, etc. However, one of the greatest advantages of comics is that they are how it all "really" happened.

Of course, there's always some ape like Morrison reminding us all stories are imaginary stories. But this is temporarily putting away an instinct we all have initially: that the comics version is real and definitive.

Cartoons can afford to be vague, but comics are what started it all.

A friend that knows I like adventure comics, asked me if I knew how it all "really" happened with the X-Men (he was a fan only of the movies). Note the assumption implicit in that statement!

Julian Perez writes:


And yet, from all I've read, BIRTHRIGHT is already being ignored and/or treated as an Elsewords.

This is my big gripe with re-doing origins, especially at DC: no matter how well you might do it, someone a couple years down the line (if that far) will probably be allowed to ignore your work and take a stab at the origin themselves.

IF DC could find someone with the skill to write a "definitive" origin that ties up all the loose ends, IF they were willing to commit to that origin as canon and IF they compelled all future writers to respect and adhere to it, then maybe I'd be willing to read it.  But that's a lot of IFs.  As it stands, BIRTHRIGHT is as much a waste of time as any tweaking Binder, Hamilton, Byrne, Wolfman or Loeb ever did, only to be undone. 

Sorry, but for me every retelling of Superman's origin reads like a "fill-in" issue.  It never moves the mythos forward and more often than not it just creates a lot of headaches for continuity.

I'm getting used to holding the opposite opinion to you on most things ;), and sure enough you can put me down as a fan of "montage" origins.  In my opinion, every comics origin worth telling can be told in two pages.  And the best characters never have so much historical detritus piled on them that they can't be reduced back to those two pages.  Thus Batman adapts just as well to an Adam West treatment as a Christian Bale treatment, while the X-Men have to jump through all kinds of hoops to be made into a movie, and even then the fanboys gripe about the details.

My preference would be to keep with that little blurb they used to run at the start of Superman stories in the late 70s and 80s: "Rocketed to Earth from the dying planet Krypton as a baby, Superman now fights for truth and justice"...or whatever.  That's all you need; now get on with the story. 

How well something can be made into a movie SHOULDN'T be the barometer for how successful - or how not successful - an origin is.

Some things can't be given a "Reader's Digest" version.

THUNDERBOLTS for instance, one of the greatest triumphs of the 1990s and arguably Kurt Busiek's greatest work, is so dependent on events in the Marvel Universe that there's no way it could exist in any form outside of comics. That's not a positive or negative trait, just an attribute.

And LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES is the sum total of decades; the only way a Legion movie would work is the X-Route: starting in the "middle," with the assumption of all this backstory behind us, and a POV character that brings us into the Legion world.

(Incidentally, it's always baffled me that there have been TWO visual versions of such a hard-to-film book as DUNE.)

There can never be a LOST movie (unless it is an X-FILES style continuation of the series proper) and that's GOOD, because to condense all those twists and turns (and complicated personal backstories) would be doing a disservice to LOST's greatest attribute: how complex it all is.

There are some characters that have "montage" origins that are great, and there are some characters with montage origins that are terrible. There are some characters with complicated life-stories that are terrible (the original Spider-Woman) and some characters with complicated life's stories that are absolutely scene-stealing and terrific (Valkyrie, Hank Pym).

And if that's all there was - a few sentences and that's it - Superman's "Wikiorigin" would WORK.

Something can succeed by being complex, and something can succeed by being simple, too.

But here's where it becomes a problem: Superman's origin, because it is so vague, becomes adjustable to the needs of the writers, who feel free to add a Super-Pet here or a big brother there, until it isn't a "simple origin" anymore. Details, like Lara's sacrifice - flicker in and and out until it isn't 100% certain exactly WHAT happened.

All in all, the vagaries would not be as helpful as solid details that a foundation can be built on, like the Fantastic Four and Hal Jordan Green Lantern have with THEIR origins.

Strangely enough, the montage origin worked for Batman but not Superman; it's telling that Batman's origin has never been truly rewritten; it's only been "tweaked." And even THEN, the keep details (like what movie Batman's parents were at) pretty solid, which is usually pretty rare. Sure, Batman's origin is a little more plastic, but early variations tend to be dropped instead of perpetuated forever (the idea that Mrs. Wayne was killed by a heart attack instead of a bullet at the death of her husband).

Compare that to Aquaman, whose origin lacks even BASIC features.

I would attribute this to the fact that Superman's origin is (contrary to popular belief) dependent on details. This is why the 1980s recasting of Krypton was so disruptive: Krypton wasn't just a place that blew up, it was a world that had been so solidly developed: the Kryptoniad as the epic poem, the Three-Sisiters Volcanoes, Mt. Mundru being the highest mountain, and all that stuff that gave E. Nelson Bridwell a woody.

For the most recent horrible complicated origin  that works better as a montage, compare and contrast the recent Iron Man cartoon DVD or Orson Scott Card's Ultimate excrement with Iron Man's historical origin.  Iron Man's origin isn't THAT interesting (especially in a post-Jarvik world, but of course the real inventor of the artificial heart voiced Silvermane in a Spider-Man cartoon :) ). 

I agree.  ;)

 Birthright was fun, well written, and had pretty good art (I think the coloring was better then the drawings, but I also think that about DS Returns) and would have made a great movie, but I don't feel it added anything to the mythos. the reason why I gave the two page comic strip example is because it covered the basics without getting bogged down in little excess details like Birthright did. Yes, the "Wikiorigin" can get very annoying if your determined to follow every minutia detail in continuity and wanting to get it all accurate (like I tried to do, trust me, it's not possible!). I think it is possible to do a Superman history the way you do Batman, have little snippets out of his life showing him growing up and using his powers to do this, that, or the other, but nothing so significant that it couldn't be left out of a two page montage like Batman has. You want something you can hand to someone who doesn't read every issue going back to 20 years ago and still make them feel like they didn't miss out on something important. You couldn't have that with the "Wikiorigin" and you couldn't do that today.

 My screen name was taken from an old Saturday morning cartoon version of Superman that showed a little snippit after every episode called Superman's Family Album, it showed clips of him using his powers while growing up but nothing so important that you didn't feel like you missed something when the "camera" was turned off. These were not "Superboy" type adventures, just things like his first day of school or him going on a camping trip with the scouts, or him running away from home because he wasn't allowed to use his powers to do chores. If you saw one episode, you got a pretty good idea of what he was like growing up. It could have been summed up in two pages easily. I feel Birthright said a lot but still left some things out about his development. Like what age what powers developed and so on. If you want your audience to interpret continuity correctly, these are the things you need to establish early on. This is a trend that Superman has gotten away from recently.

http://ape-law.com/GAF/pages/the-five-other-identities-of-superman.shtml? (http://ape-law.com/GAF/pages/the-five-other-identities-of-superman.shtml?)

Julian Perez writes:


Even Batman's origin has been too mucked about with in recent years.  From his debut through the mid-80s it was enough to know "his parents were killed in front of him, he vowed revenge, he trained himself in all disciplines and now he dresses as a bat."  Period.  It's only been in the last 15 years or so that writers have felt compelled to "fill in the blanks" and follow Bruce through his years of training and whatnot, and in my view this really detracts from the character.  Batman works better with a certain air of mystery about him, and it was always fun in the past to have some tiny tidbit parcelled out to us about Bruce's past.  That gets harder to do when every moment of his training is tracked and documented.  It's not quite as bad as giving an "origin" to Wolverine, but almost.

I think the reason Batman's "montage origin" worked for so long is that what mattered about him was the here and now...what case is he on at the moment and how is going to solve it.  We know he's a detective, and he's human; all we need to be reminded of every now and then is why the outfit?  Superman, on the other hand, requires constant explaining.  Why does he have these unearthly powers? How is he able to do what he does?  Anyone from the Joker to a simple gangster is a potential threat to Batman...have the villain pull a gun and voila, you've got a tense moment.  On the other hand a Superman writer has to go to great lengths to create a threat for Big Blue.  "Well you see there's this radioactive rock that can kill him.  Why?  Well, you see he comes from another planet..." The need for challenging foes leads to flame dragons from Krypton, escaped criminals from the Phantom Zone, rays duplicating those of a red sun, and so on.  It gets to the point where every issue you have to refer to Superman's place of birth just to create a menace to the guy.

In other words, Superman can never escape his origin because it totally defines the strip.  Every power, every weakness and most enemies either hail from Krypton or exploit a knowledge of it.

Where it gets messy, though, is when writers decide they want to tell a story that won't work in the Superverse as is, so they go back and rewrite the origin to suit their needs.  This could be as simple as Binder, Seigel or Hamilton giving us a Krypto, Lyla Lerrol or Kandor, or as sweeping and jarring as Byrne making Krypton into a festering pit of despair, then Loeb saying, "No wait it was a scientific paradise" and Waid saying, "Well it looked a little like this one and a little like that one."  Sometimes these tweaks pay off, but more often it just comes off as sloppy storytelling, the same way it does when a joketeller says, "Oh did I mention there was a nun in the bar?  Because that's kind of important.  Yeah, there was a nun.  So anyway, the horse says..."

sometimes less is more.

The sloppiest part of Superman's origin is the first thing that he does after becoming Superman. Krypton always blows up. There are always other Kryptonians who survive. The Kents always die (eventually.) And Clark always does super things before becoming Superman, whether wearing the costume or not. His origin AS SUPERMAN is the messiest.

Action Comics #1 says that he saved Evelyn Curry from execution first. Or did he catch Lois in a space-plane? A regular plane? A helicopter? Or did he stop Luthor first?

I don't think that more rewrites are needed to correct this disparity...I just think that DC should choose a particular origin and stick with it. After that, the story can be reprinted, but not changed. We've had several rewrites in the last year already.

Another thing to consider is that we are now living in an age in which most people have never read a Superman origin. The most popular origin of Superman, by far, is the movie origin. It wouldn't hurt DC at all to just choose that one. (Though for my money, the 1973 origin is the most developed, and my favorite.)

Aside from giving Marlon Brando a beard, it's looking like that's exactly what DC is doing.  Perhaps that's why they're not printing a new origin.

Honestly, I hope they wait a couple of years until the new era is more set in stone before they do yet another origin. A glimpse here, a glimpse there, but nothing more.

That, and ignore the dreck over in Supergirl.

I hate to be a "fence-sitter," but whether Superman's origin is told in montages or in a story dedicated to it doesn't matter much to me. As long as the origin allows future writers the ability to add to the mythos, without undue restrictions, then I'm perfectly happy. These restrictions are bad because writers have to create convoluted backstories to justify or reintroduce characters. That's why we had Matrix-Supergirl, the pocket universe Superboy, and so on. If Byrne had created a more open origin then these concepts wouldn't have felt so forced and needlessly complicated.