Superman: Space Age is a Superman miniseries published by DC Comics under their DC Black Label imprint. It was written by Mark Russell and illustrated by Michael Allred, Laura Allred, and Dave Sharpe.
Starting in the early 1960's and continuing to 1985, the year of Crisis on Infinite Earths, the story is a Period Piece exploring Superman and Batman as they wrestle with the hardships of saving humanity, as well as what that means as the world both changes around them and stubbornly stays the same.
But nothing lasts forever, as Pariah notes, and the end of days approaches faster than one could guess. How Superman spends Earth's final years may be the key to saving them all.
Followed by Batman Dark Age in March 2024.
This story contains examples of:
- Adaptational Late Appearance: The Joker is normally one of Batman’s earliest enemies to show up, having debuted only a year after the Dark Knight, in the first issue of his ongoing series. In this series, the Joker doesn’t appear until the 1980s, two decades after Batman showed up on the scene.
- Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Superman and Batman are never as close here as they are in the comics and most other adaptations. Notably, despite both being active for over 20 years, Superman never learns that Batman’s secret identity is Bruce Wayne, even after Batman’s death.
- Alternate Universe Reed Richards Is Awesome: Superman eventually puts his super-intelligence to work to cure every disease on the planet and transfer most of humanity's DNA signatures to another universe where that universe’s Superman can use them to restart humanity on that universe's Earth.
- Bittersweet Ending: Superman dies, but his actions gave everyone on his Earth a new chance at life and gave an alternate Superman a whole Earth's worth of hope.
- Chekhov's Gun: Flash's stack of bombs he uses to practice defusing with help take out Brainiac's ship.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Brainiac shows our Superman a world that had already destroyed itself, leaving only its Superman, in an attempt to get him to join him. Superman decides to give that world renewed hope by transporting his Earth's inhabitants' DNA structures there.
- Death Equals Redemption: Bruce lets himself be killed fighting the Joker to both stop his plan and atone for his own mistakes.
- Demoted to Extra: The main five Justice League members all get some highlights and character moments except for poor Aquaman, who isn't even seen participating in the final battle.
- Epic Fail: Superman's first outing, spurred by President Kennedy's assassination and a resulting missile crisis, is a failure on all accounts as he flies into a bird, is shot down by pilots, and almost causes the very disaster he was trying to prevent.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Flash's ship-in-a-bottle gift gives Superman the idea to use Kryptonian crystals as an ark for humanity.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Brainiac figures that Superman will save himself once the universe begins to collapse, not realizing that to Clark, everyone else's lives are more important than his own, and he instead saves the DNA of everyone on Earth.
- Freudian Excuse: The Joker targets Bruce Wayne because he lost his daughter to the fires the company set when Maxwell Lord was CEO.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The inevitable end of the universe at the hands of the Anti-Monitor looms heavy over the series. In the end, the heroes never face him and are powerless to stop him.
- I Let You Win: Brainiac reveals he intentionally lost the battle he had on Earth because succeeding would have diminished the chances that Superman would have joined forces in his planned assault with the Anti-Monitor.
- Keet: The Flash is hyperactive and easily distracted and takes fun hobbies to have something to concentrate on, like model shipbuilding. He also has a pet turtle.
- Legacy Character: Hal Jordan is killed fighting Brainiac, leading John Stewart to take over.
- Me's a Crowd: Brainiac is in an alliance with variants of himself in the hopes of stopping the Anti-Monitor from destroying the whole multiverse.
- Mythology Gag: Like in Superman: The Movie, Lex's main assistants are Otis and Miss Tessmacher.
- Naked on Revival: Lois Lane is the first of humanity to be resurrected from Superman's archive of DNA samples, and she is naked during the process.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Bruce retiring as CEO to focus on being Batman leads the unscrupulous Maxwell Lord to take over, directly leading to Gotham's gentrification and Bruce's own death years later.
- Noble Demon: Brainiac, of all entities, is concerned with saving the multiverse by extracting all the worlds' best heroes in a chance at stopping the Crisis. When Superman and the League fight him to a stalemate, he withdraws, and decides not to destroy Earth because it would lessen Superman's chances of joining him. He also gives Superman one last chance to save himself as the universe ends.
- Outliving One's Offspring: The origin of this continuity's Joker involves him wanting vendetta against Wayne Enterprises because of his daughter Tabitha dying in a fire that was caused under Maxwell Lord's ownership of the company.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Brainiac will refrain from destroying Earths if he believes it will help his ultimate goal of stopping the Anti-Monitor. When Superman then exploits the portal Brainiac set for him (and only him) to instead transport humanity’s collective DNA signature to another Earth to be reborn, Brainiac and his variants decide it isn’t worth the expenditure of resources to stop it and let Superman have his way.
- Pyrrhic Victory: Lex cements his victory over Batman, Wayne Enterprises, and the world the day the world ends. To add insult to injury, the fact that he refused Superman's DNA extraction means nothing of him remains on the new Earth.
- Red Herring: Kryptonite's existence and potential as a weapon is mentioned repeatedly, but never used, even when Otis expends Lex's resources to buy some.
- Rogues' Gallery Transplant: Lex Luthor is ultimately more of a Batman enemy than a foe of Superman. He competes with Bruce Wayne at the beginning of the story, and is sent to prison before Superman becomes publicly known. When he's released 20 years later, he focuses his efforts on trying to absorb Wayne Enterprises, dismissing Otis' idea to use Kryptonite against Superman, and never directly confronts the Man of Steel once in this story.
- Take a Third Option: Brainiac gives Superman the choice to abandon his Earth to join a coalition of beings from across the multiverse that as a group could possibly stop the Anti-Monitor and leaves a portal to escape his universe that only a single entity can use before it close, noting Superman won’t be able to save any humans he might be attached to that way. Superman instead uses the portal to send a Kryptonian crystal with most of humanity’s DNA signatures in it to another Earth devoid of humanity where that world’s Superman can restart humanity.
- Taking You with Me: The Joker refuses to let the children he's holding hostage go unless Bruce wears a clown mask and lets the police snipers shoot him so he can make a clean getaway with a Bruce Wayne mask. Bruce instead makes it so both he and the Joker are shot dead.
- Unskilled, but Strong: Without formal training or even knowledge of what his powers are, Clark mainly uses brute strength and speed at first and is very confused when Jor-El's hologram mentions things like heat vision and super-intelligence.
- You Can't Fight Fate: Pariah is very clear that, when the Anti-Monitor decides to destroy the universe, nobody will be able to stop him. In regards to this universe, he’s right.
