The Man Of Tomorrow

A lawsuit has been making its' way through the courts over the past several years, an attempt by the family of one of the creators of Superman to take advantage of changes in Copyright Law to reclaim part ownership of the character. It's a long, and not particularly interesting story (unless you find a discussion of the minutiae of Copyright Law interesting) but a surprising aspect that has been uncovered as part of the process is that one of writer Jerry Siegel's abandoned ideas for the origin of the character was that he should have come not from the doomed planet Krypton — but from a doomed future Earth!

What I find so fascinating is that this seems to go so much against the very spirit of optimism and hope for tomorrow the character has always represented. (For me, anyway.)

Above: unpublished art from artist Russell Keaton's interpretation of the origin of Superman. Keaton was approached by Jerry Siegel to collaborate with him on developing the character, several years before the feature was eventually published. Siegel and Keaton eventually parted company, and Superman would come to be known as created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.