I threw this together last night based on an idea I had for reinventing Superman's origin. Make sure you click on it to see it full-size... the thumbnail looks pretty odd. Anyway, I was just fooling around. I didn't start out with the intention of creating a retro style image but it's just where it ended up. Anyway, if you feel like reading it, this is the idea I had for the origin: It basically starts off similar to the standard origin: Doomed planet, last son shot to Earth. However the ship does not crash land with an infant on board. Instead it lands safely… piloted by an adult Kal-El. Having been in an induced sleep-state for the trip Kal-El is telepathically fed all the knowledge Jor-El has to offer… which is a pretty stale in-flight movie but it gets the job done. This is an adult Kal-El with memories of his home who is fully aware that he is the sole survivor of a planet that no longer exists, about to venture out into a strange world that doesn’t know what to make of him. His mission is to make a place for himself among these primitive people, try to save them from suffering a fate similar to Krypton and help them realize their full potential. At the same time though he has no vested interest in them at first and at times views them as an inferior nuisance. There is no Clark Kent. There is no Kansas upbringing. There’s just Kal-El trying to make his way.
Having just arrived in a ship designed to prevent him from being exposed to any harmful radioactivity such as the deadly Kryptonite core of his home world, Kal-El is just now soaking in the rays of Earth’s yellow sun. And while he feels himself growing stronger almost instantly (and sometimes painfully) his powers will not fully manifest for some time. Though he is able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, outrun speeding bullets, and overpower locomotives he is not quite up to his full potential. At times, however, he does employ a Kryptonian jet pack to fly (an ability he has yet to discover). The rocket pack helps him cover more ground and allows him to reach the only place he can feel at home and collect his thoughts in peace: The Fortress of Solitude. However this is not the arctic fortress of past Super-stories. This is the modified ship in which he arrived nestled in orbit over the Earth.
Upon arrival Kal-El does not instantly engage the world publicly. He first tries to gain their trust by performing heroic deeds. Having no name for this stranger, humans interpret the symbol on his chest to be an “S” and dub him “Superman”. The “S” perceived by the humans is actually the negative space behind the four yellow Kryptonian glyphs that make up Kal-El’s family crest (hence the squared-off redesign). And though he only refers to himself as Kal-El he doesn’t take offense to “Superman”.
