u/jstamper97

Personally, I'm fine with it. He has access to alien technology that could integrate into the suit without loosing the cloth feel. Plus Superman is as much of a gadget guy as Batman or Spider-Man. He just doesn't use gadgets as much.

I know most people pick Red Sun as their favorite but it's easy to make Superman evil when you change his whole upbringing and cultural context.

As for classic Superman, the last son of Krypton, raised by the Kents and turning him to the dark side? The Justice Lords does it best by asking the question that could break Superman. What does the champion of the oppressed do when the oppressed choose their oppressors?

What does Superman fear? It's not Lois dying, he's accepted that as an inevitability. His real fear is that men like Brainiac are right. That life will always lead to self-destruction as seen on Krypton, Colu, and countless other worlds.

Superman's rebuttal to this is that all life has the potential for greatness, and if you remove the boots crushing their heads they can reach their potential and just need someone to guide them.

Superman's greatest fear is that he was wrong, even with the help of a Superman to guide them and remove the oppressors limiting their potential, life will continue to make the wrong choices resulting in everyone getting killed, just like Krypton, Kal would be just like his father, the man who failed to save the world.

In the Justice Lords universe, that fear becomes reality when Lex Luthor is democratically elected president without cheating. The people saw him and gave him power despite knowing what an evil man he was, despite knowing he wouldn't make life better for anyone but himself.

And he brought the world to the brink of nuclear war! Who do you blame in that situation? You can't blame Lex for doing exactly what everyone expects him to do. You blame the people, human nature working against its own interest.

Compared to the Joker killing Lois, this is a far more compelling catalyst for Superman descending into authoritarianism because it actually challenges Superman's core beliefs in a way Joker killing Lois just doesn't.

It's an evil man doing the same evil things he's done thousands of times before. If anything it makes Superman look selfish. He could overlook Joker's atrocities before but now he went too far because it was someone he knew.

Lex getting elected and almost destroying the world could change something in Superman, that while Brainiac's bottled cities may be a bit much, it might be time to "make some rules" as Alan Moore puts in the third picture.

Have Kara wipe out most of the population like she does in the show but Brainiac takes the most populated cities for his own experimentation and torment. He's already heavily inspired by AM from I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, this is just a step further.

I like the idea that even his powers manifest, he has repressed memories that come to him as nightmares of a burning world, two inconsolable adults with his eyes, and a strange alien symbol on their chests that looks vaguely like an S. If that's not enough and if you think he should just be older like Absolute, then fine. But he should remember it.