Could a "Xmen grand design" or "life and times of scrooge mcduck" work for Superman where a writer puts all his comics...

Could a "Xmen grand design" or "life and times of scrooge mcduck" work for Superman where a writer puts all his comics into single narrative ? (from golden age through today)

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Not in the same way, since unlike the X-Men, Superman has been through several continuity alterations and hasn't had a continuous history.

For instance you couldn't even include the Golden Age since it was retconned as Earth-Two, the Silver Age was retconned out and replaced with The Man of Steel before being piecemeal retconned back in, etc.

A talented writer could make a story that utilized elements from every era to make the illusion of a continuous narrative, but it wouldn't be like Grand Design which is full of exact continuity details.

This. CoIE is a big hurdle as it was meant to create a streamlined continuity (funny given what has happened)

You mean like action 500?

Current Superman isn't even the same fron the golden age, there can't be a linear story

It technically is since Crisis collapsed Earth-Two's history into Earth-One, so Superman is as much the same as GA Superman as he is SA Superman, depending on your perspective. But the mere fact that you have to ask the question "is a character technically even the same character if elements of his history have been removed?" is why it would be much more difficult.

You could do it in a really meta way like in Doomsday Clock where Superman is literally splitting and combining into different versions as the timeline slides forward.
You could also take some extreme creative liberties to try and resolve the entire history into one story while preserving as much as possible, ignoring all timeline alterations and retellings. For example, Golden Age Superman and Silver Age are the same, and the Superboy alterations are ignored. The problem being that many of those alterations have become signature elements of the mythos themselves.

Strange Visitor

The latest issue of Doomsday Clock actually kind of did it. And despite all the many problems with Doomsday Clock, that particular bit was kind of cool.

Ironically enough, Morrison proved you can do it with Batman.

It's possible but it'd be a bit tricky. One way is doing what Johns was already setting up in Doomsday Clock, and acknowledging all the weird changes happening (like Superman being around in the 1930's at first but then making his debut decades later, or the Daily Star becoming the Daily Planet)

By explaining the silver age as being a drug trip?

even in bronze age they'd still (sometimes) reference golden age stuff in his book as if it still happened to the same superman (there is no clear cut off between the two since he was continuously published.
you could just write out a reason why Superman wasn't that powerful during his early years in metropolis (between being superboy in smallville and moving to the big city)

to explain: Superman goes up against J. Wilber Wolfingham in the early 80s. A character he hadn't faced up against since the golden age. This wasn't a new character (to superman) and he mentions their history (how he doesn't like him)
presumably the adventures of "golden age" superman happened to the regular Earth 1 Superman along with the Earth 2 Superman.

It's similar with Batman during Bronze Age. Specific example is the Englehart run, where he brought back Hugo Strange and Deadshot, who were both Golden Age characters and hadn't been seen in between their Golden Age appearances and when Englehart brought them back in the 70's.

Earth-Two established that Hugo Strange also existed there and the Golden Agebut was severely fucked up by the fall off the cliff in his last Golden Age appearance.

Superman / Batman Generations sorta, but it wasn't really good and had trademark Byrne autism by the end. Though I am interested how people will do it and what significant event per year would you do. The main problem is that it obviously has to start at the 40s, yet shit like Superboy only happened during the 60s

I honestly won't be interested in the first one, that's too meta for me and honestly removes the challenge and any source of interest here. I'm looking for basically Spider-Man Life Story - Superman Edition.

Yeah that was pretty good

To continue, like obviously Jon would be conceived around the 2000s or 10s for it, but putting it there means that Superman would be around his 60-70s if you start from the 40s. I think you can do a pretty decent semi-serious one starting from the 70s onward, but the main problem here is that unlike say Spider-Man or the X-Men or Batman I can't think of any really stand-out Superman events per decade worth doing a Life Story / Grand Design type book. Unlike early Marvel, early DC just didn't give a shit about continuity or progressive storytelling and had more episodic one-off tales instead.
I'm sure ultra autists can think of stand-up issues per each decade though.

Also with Superman Year One, I won't get your hopes up, it's gonna take at least another decade before DC attempts another Superman from the ground-up comic.

not really

t.brainlet

>stand-out Superman events
Final Crisis: Superman Beyond
Doomsday Clock

One thing I remembered was that had Morrison continued All Star Superman with some side project that took place in the same universe, one of the stories was going to be "Superman vs the Devil" and it would be a Superman similar to the 1930's version; this eventually got changed to the Action Comics run he did. But the idea was going to be that the Superman from All Star Superman started out with less powers and was going around beating up wifebeaters and stuff like that.

So one way is thematically doing the Superman stuff but not outright saying what year it was, and keep going on as he ages. Another is starting Superman right in the 1930's and age him slowly (sort of like Kingdom Come and Generations and all that) or not age at all while everyone else around him does.

if anything, he proved that you can't put in continuity everything.

Hmmm for Doomsday Clock, if we're talking a Grand Design / Life Story approach I don't think that'll work, the introduction of retro-active continuity will just ruin the appeal and entire point of it, I can see Final Crisis fitting there though. Honestly the 80s and 2000 onwards having big 'Continuity Reset' type focused storylines in them put a wrench in these things

Grand Design didn't put all the X-Men comics into one narrative since it stopped around X-Tinction Agenda and then looped back to DoFP. You could probably do something like that with Superman, you'd just need a clear idea of an ending point.

All Star Superman is kind of like his entire mythology combined into a single story.

id go with superman being active around 10 years (not counting his time as superboy in smallville and LoSH)

so his "less powerful" golden age version was probably around a year in his start in metropolis