A while ago, I made a post about wanting to eliminate my endless physical TBR stack before I begin buying any more books - kind of like a "one-in, one-out" type of thing. I have made a grave mistake.
Tuesday was the last day of my Newcastle University Summer School (post coming soon hehe), and I was expecting to finish at 17:00, as per the original timetable. However, I was told in my last session that we were actually changed to finish at 16:00 today, which is a message I had completely missed in the Whatsapp groupchat! I was so excited and thought maybe we would finish maybe even ten minutes earlier, as we have done with some of our previous sessions. However, I was lucky enough to finish at 15:13! By that point, I had rescheduled my train to 16:40 rather than 17:40 (rip the £4 from my bank account), and so didn't want to spend any more money on changing my train ticket. I decided to spend my extra hour or so between leaving the university site and catching my train in Forbidden Planet.
For anyone unfamiliar with Forbidden Planet, it's basically a haven for nerds of all sorts - anime, FNAF, comic books, manga, Marvel, DC, those sorts of things - my boyfriend and I are massive fans (him more than me; he is a big comic fan). In trying to get into some of his interests, I watched Starkid's Holy Musical Batman on YouTube and loved it - though he hates it and claims it isn't true to the original source material. We then watched James Gunn's Superman, and just like, wow. I knew people said it was good, but I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would as I wasn't really a fan of superhero movies. I thought it was filmed amazingly; it was easy to digest as someone who knew nothing from the comics, and the message was great! Sorry, that was just a bit of background for me to say that my interest in reading any of the comics had spiked. I would really like to see the new Supergirl movie, but I only really want to see it with my boyfriend (unless he betrays me like he did with Backrooms...), so I thought I would buy the comic. I bought not one, but three comics!
I was blessed to purchase Woman of Tomorrow, Red Son, and Superman/Batman. The first, for obvious reasons, it's the comic Supergirl is based off of; Red Son piqued my interest, as it's basically an alternate universe where Superman lands in Russia rather than America and becomes a communist figurehead (I really loved it 10/10 recommend); and Superman/Batman because I love Superman and my boyfriend loves Batman, though I think Dick Grayson Robin tops them both.
Whilst waiting for the train and whilst on the train, I managed to finish Red Son as it wasn't very long, and oh my lord, I loved it. I thought it was such a fun comic, and although I feel as though I would have enjoyed it a bit more if I knew more about Superman, as I think there were a few references I didn't understand (many surface-level ones I did, thankfully!). But I just thought it was such a fun comic; it combines real-world events and people with the DC universe (if that's how it's said?), whilst also switching them up slightly, which made it really interesting to me!
Spoilers up ahead
Basically, Batman is a terrorist, Superman is a communist leader who owns all of the world except the US and Chile, Lex Luthor is still the number one hater, and Superwoman is a diva throughout. The ending really had me gagging. Superman sort of fakes his death whilst saving Earth; Lex Luthor becomes the president (?) of the whole world and, with his extreme intelligence, does things such as massively increasing life expectancy, improving living & working conditions, eradicates cancer and other diseases. He essentially produces an amazing world. Our yellow sun eventually becomes red, and the names of Lex Luthor's descendants go from something like Lena Luthor to Jor-L (maybe Superman fans who haven't read this can see where it's going). Jor-L tries to warn the people of Earth that the red sun is essentially going to swallow the Earth, but everyone's become so ignorant that they don't believe it. Anyways, it's true, and so he and his wife send their son, Kal-L, into space to continue the species, where he eventually lands in 1938 Russia.
If anyone couldn't tell, whether it's because they aren't a Superman fan or I explained it poorly, the whole comic basically implies a time loop! Superman is from Krypton, where there was a red sun, which is why living on Earth with a yellow sun gives him his powers. I think that this explanation is really cool, and while I don't think it really makes proper scientific sense, it's still fun to think about.
All of this just to say: I basically failed my own challenge and spent about £24 on more books to read. But it was worth it to bond with my boyfriend over something more. I thought that he would know nothing about Superman, but he unfortunately already knew the ending of the comic. But it was still worth the read because I still really enjoyed it and am now a massive Superman fan.
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