Superman: The Kansas Sighting #1

Superman: The Kansas Sighting #1

by J.M. DeMatteis, Jamie Tolagson (Artist)

Before Superman's father sent his infant son to Earth from the doomed planet Krypton... wouldn't he have intensely researched our planet first? Before he blasted the baby Kal-El off into the void, would he have sent probes here to study human life? And would he have been capable of abducting humans for study?

Deep within the UFO believers' network, a woman who is sure her son was taken by aliens about thirty years ago investigates one of the most famous landings in unidentified flying object lore: the Smallville mystery that's been nicknamed... "the Kansas Sighting".

She confronts Superman, who must discover what really happened, if only out of guilt and curiosity over what his father may have done to ensure the Man of Steel's survival!

Genres: Comics, Superman, Dc Comics

64 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2003

About the author

Also Credited As:
DeMatteis, John Marc
Ellis, Michael
Lombego, Wally

Bio:
J.M. DeMatteis was a professional musician/singer and rock music journalist before entering comics in the late 70's.

Credits include Spider-Man, Moonshadow, Brooklyn Dreams, Justice League, Abadazad, Hero Squared, the Life and Times of Savior 28.

Created I, Vampire , Creature Commandos, Moonshadow, Hero Squared (co-creator), Abadazad, Stardust Kid, Savior 28 and more.

Reviews

[tony dillard jr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Legendary Justice League scribe and artist, JM DeMatteis asks an interesting question that until this book, I don’t think was ever explored in the vast history of the Superman family. Before sending his son, Kal-El to earth, did the scientist Jor-El do any field research on the third rock from the sun? And if he did, was he responsible for any of those alien abductions we hear about on the X-Files?

That’s the type of postulations explored when an Unsolved Mysteries type of show comes snooping around Smallville. When Clark Kent learns that his father was questioned during the filming, it leads to both adoptive father and son questioning themselves and the motives of Clark’s Kryptonian parents.

Eager to find some answers, Kent gets permission from the Daily Planet to investigate. Teamed with Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen, Kent runs into the production team who’ve found more witnesses who’ve claimed to have been abducted the night Kal-el crashed to earth. Clark is ready to dismiss one of the witnesses until he gets kidnapped by alien beings himself.

This is mostly a Clark Kent tale. Superman appears very little in this story. But that’s okay- it’s a very well written and thought out examination of our countries obsession with UFOs. Along the way, Clark will question whether his biological father was an ethical scientist and if he discovers that Jor-El acted inappropriately, how will that change Superman’s role on earth? More importantly, how is it going to change how earth sees Superman’s role?

DeMatteis did a fantastic job on this opening chapter. The art was very good too but it’s not very consistent. However, I enjoy a good mystery and I love the X-Files eerie feel that the story has. I almost regret not waiting closer to Halloween to read this.

[David Lipely · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting, intriguing, confusing, creative, wonderful new take on the origins of the man of steel, from many cool new perspectives!

[David Madden · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece in the vein of For All Seasons

[Tama · Rating 2 out of 5]

Superman does DMT.

Or DeMatteis does. “Mandy.” The anecdotal s medium between the twelfth dimension and our human reality.

A standard Superman story but just the right amount of wacky. Unfortunately the 12th dimension thing and ultimate answer that leads to a couple more boring less dramatic ultimately mysterious questions is a shame. It’s true that Jor-El was such a weird presence that it couldn’t be as it seemed.

Read both parts 1+2. :)

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wacky concept on so many levels: in a world where aliens abound and are widely publicized, from Superman on down, there remains a UFO subculture that largely resembles our own. There’s a lampshading monologue by Perry White in the first volume about why this isn’t any weirder than anything else he’s seen as a newspaperman, and then it’s glossed over and forgotten.

But in fact, as White implies in that monologue, our real-world UFO subculture has long since evolved into postulating a world that is far weirder than the world of DC Comics. Very few writers outside of DeMatteis could successfully integrate that world with Superman; Grant Morrison almost certainly could, but it would almost certainly also be a very different story.

In this world, one of the many weird theories that the UFO subculture has latched onto is that Superman is a very dangerous forerunner of a new race of evil overlords.

Dr. Berenson told Pa that what the world believes about Superman… is what I want them to believe…
But what if all I believe about Superman… about my Kryptonian heritage…
…is what Jor-El wanted me to believe?

The evidence for this is not exactly weak, as Superman learns watching tape given him by a prominent historian-cum-UFOlogist.

There are four interviews on the tape.
And all of them relate similar encounters with a being who, if their descriptions are accurate…
…was my father.
Jor-El.

Was Jor-El not just sending probes to Earth in the process of choosing which planet to send his son to, but also kidnapping and torturing humans using those probes?

Not to mention that DeMatteis takes one of the iconic features of Superman—his winning smile—and turns it into something that almost, but not quite, looks a whole lot like some form of low-level mind control!


Very little of this gets resolved, and its not getting resolved is kind of the point of the story: there is a truly alien, other dimensional being or set of beings kidnapping humans, probing them, often painfully, and sometimes returning them and sometimes not. They are so far removed from our own reality as to be completely opaque to us; they are literally inhuman.

Worse, they’ve been, since baby Kal-El’s arrival, doing all this in the guise of Jor-El, leaving the not-so-tiny UFO subculture with a visceral distrust and even hatred of Superman.

Superman accepts this distrust at the end of the book as a good and useful thing. But that doesn’t really resolve the problem: there is an otherdimensional being stealing and torturing humans of all ages and vulnerabilities beyond a wall of reality so profound that there’s nothing Superman can do about it except accept it.

What did you do to these people? What did you do to them in my name?

(These notes cover both #1 and #2.)

[Ming · Rating 2 out of 5]

A little dry, but still somewhat intriguing.