Comic Book / Superman: Up in the Sky

"Are you going to help everyone?"
"No. But I'm going to try."

"...there's a difference between you and me. Between you and everyone. We're who we are. And you're Superman.''

—Batman

Superman: Up in the Sky is a Superman miniseries written by Tom King and illustrated by Andy Kubert, Sandra Hope, and Brad Anderson. The miniseries was released originally as part of Superman Giant, a Walmart-exclusive monthly series of 100-page anthology books featuring new stories about the Man of Steel with Up in the Sky beginning appearances in Superman Giant #3 in November 2018, concluding in Superman Giant #16 in December 2019. It would later be reprinted individually as a 6-issue limited series, released between September 2019 and February 2020, as well as in complete trade format in April 2020.

Up in the Sky ran concurrently with Brian Michael Bendis' run of Superman, but is treated as a side story with otherwise no canon standing. Not coincidentally, it also overlapped with Tom King's run of Batman — in an unusual twist, DC editorial had Bendis and King swap their respective characters for their work on the different Giant anthologies, with Bendis working on Batman Universe as part of the Batman Giant anthology.

The story begins with Superman learning of a grisly attack on a foster family by a "spaceman", with the parents murdered and a girl kidnapped and taken somewhere far away, up in the sky. Supes makes it his mission to journey among the stars to find her, undergoing a surprising series of challenges unlike anything seen before that will test him physically, mentally, and emotionally as the seemingly unwavering force of good, illustrating what exactly makes him not just any other superhero, but Superman.

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Tropes in the sky:

• Always Save the Girl: This approach is given something of a Reconstruction: Superman's entire mission for the series is finding a single orphaned girl who was kidnapped and taken to who-knows-where in the depths of space. The decision to pursue it isn't one free of reservations — he knows that he'll be leaving Earth for a while, potentially leaving it open to supervillains or other, more mundane tragedies that he can't be around to help prevent, an idea he struggles greatly living with — but at the same time, he also can't live with the idea of leaving an innocent child in the hands of evildoers when he knows there's the slightest chance he can save her. He ends up going after her because while protecting the planet is his self-imposed duty and responsibility, doing what he can to save lives, no matter how small they may seem, is just the right thing to do.
• Amnesiac Hero: Chapter 6 sees Clark accidentally being sent to a battlefield in World War II, and upon crash-landing, he loses memory of who he is and his powers, and when he's discovered by Sgt. Rock's squad, he ends up going through the battle like any other unarmed civilian. He ends up restoring his memory after trying to throw away an enemy grenade only for it to explode in his hand, naturally to no effect.
• Badass Boast: Superman ends up locked in giant chains made of kerenthium steel — the strongest metal in the universe, used to haul stars between galaxies — and when his captor attempts to taunt him as he struggles to escape...
  Captor: Do you understand, Superman? Do you know what "unbreakable" means?!
  (KKKRASSH)
  Superman: (surrounded by broken chains) No, sir. I do not.
• Boring Return Journey: When Clark finally rescues Alice in chapter 12, he decks her out in a spacesuit and flies the two of them home — which, given that it's on the other side of the universe, Supes has to preface will take them a while. During this, he invites her to ask any questions she may have about him — which end up including "How do you fly?", "If you and Batman fought, who would win?", "Is Wonder Woman as cool as she seems?", etc. — and he answers all of her questions patiently and thoughtfully.
• The Boxing Episode: Chapter 3 sees Clark forced into a literally out-of-this-world boxing match against an alien mercenary named Mighto, who was hired by Alice's kidnappers and only offers to tell Clark their identities if he can beat him in a boxing match without his superpowers, including his Super-Strength. Clark gets clobbered through the rounds as Mighto ends up being much faster and stronger, but his utter refusal to go down and give up on Alice ensures he ends up winning just by sheer attrition.
• Broken Ace: The series treats it as a given that Superman is one of the most powerful individuals in the universe, but that it's not without cost. The first few chapters alone has Clark feeling burdened by the decision to rescue a girl lost in space and leaving Earth without his help, and a flashback shows how he genuinely considered quitting after hearing the tragedy of a little boy, who died trying to fly like his hero, Superman. The rest of it isn't much easier, as he's placed with making increasingly difficult choices testing his moral fortitude in the name of protecting those he loves.
• The Cape: The series is all about reconstructing this ideal, especially when it comes to Superman. Being human and empathetic yet also a protector of all humanity is tough on Clark as it forces him into as many morally tough and/or exhausting decisions as it does physically destructive super-brawls, and his reputation as being the Hope Bringer to all in Earth and beyond places upon him a perpetual responsibility he doesn't take lightly and will almost never fully solve. That doesn't stop him from fighting to do what's right in the world, protecting and saving as many innocent lives as he can, all because he believes the world and everyone in it is worth fighting for. After all, he's Superman.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: The first chapter has Superman and several other heroes doing battle with monsters and supervillains (including Doomsday and Atomic Skull) along with other superheroic feats like stopping a meteor with his bare hands, but all the dialogue and narration is occupied by what he considers his priority: gathering information on Alice, figuring out where she may have been taken to, and how to find her.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome:
  • Clark finds himself dealing with this in chapter 1, amidst the broader conflict of his constant worries that even he can be outstretched in his ability to save everyone. On one hand, he wants to keep Earth safe and worries that the moment he leaves, the planet will be vulnerable, while the missing girl is something that could be investigated by the Lantern Corps. On the other hand, Clark absolutely wants to save her, and even with the slimmest available chance, it's something he feels he has to do. In chapter 2, Clark experiences a dream where he's about to jump off a roof, seemingly out of despair for being unable to save everyone, but is talked down by a projection of Alice:
    Alice: Sir. Are you going to jump?
    Clark: Yes.
    Alice: Me too. But when I do. Will you save me?
    Clark: I... I don't know if I can.
    Alice: Oh, that's good. I thought you were going to say... "I can't."
  • Chapter 8 plays with this in a unique way when Superman gets split into two selves: the powerless, but ever-determined and humanist Clark Kent, and the powerful, absolute, but highly clinical "Superman", with Clark wanting to continue the search for Alice despite no longer having powers, with "Superman" saying that it's pointless and he should focus on more important matters on Earth. As the two sides butt heads, Clark repeatedly tells his superpowered counterpart to get lost if he isn't going to help him or Alice, which he does... before coming back to Clark every time, much to his own confusion and lament. As it turns out, they end up having one very important thing in common:
    Clark: I remember what pa used to say: "Listen to what a man says, judge what a man does." You keep saying you can't save her. Fine. But it seems like the only thing you really can't do... is leave.
• Damsel in Distress: The plot of the story centers around Alice, a little girl in foster care who was abducted by an alien and taken somewhere in the depths of space, with Superman doing everything in his power to find her and bring her home safely. It's later revealed that she was kidnapped by a robotic Galactic Conquerer specifically because she was a nobody — an ordinary human citizen to calibrate the weapons of his Robotien army, one that he believed nobody would ever want to save.
• Darkest Hour: Chapter 11 sees Superman not only captured by Alice's kidnapper, a would-be Galactic Conqueror and his army of robots, but said robots making their assault across Earth, with various shots of the Justice League in all their greatness becoming steadily overwhelmed by their power, with Batman becoming buried under an avalanche of robot mooks. It's not until Superman ends up defeating their leader halfway across the galaxy that the invasion is stopped, saving the day for all.
• Deal with the Devil: In chapter 9, Superman ends up making a deal with Darkseid, who offers to help him find Alice, but only on one condition: Superman must take an innocent life. Superman finds it to be in the form of an alien hermit who's dying to a fatal disease and is quietly begging to be put out of his mercy, and it's still a tough decision for Supes... which is why he doesn't go through with it, instead finding a cure.
• Death Montage: The entirety of chapter 5 sees Superman impatiently waiting in a huge alien lobby to see if he's gotten contact back from Lois on Earth. As the arduous bureaucracy keeps testing his patience, Clark ends up fearing that something bad might have happened to her, and begins experiencing several disturbing Imagine Spots of ways that Lois could have died — shot by Lex Luthor, dying in a plane crash, tortured by The Joker, etc., all while waiting for Clark to save her, only for him to not show up.
• Determinator: Despite all the adversity and doubt Superman faces in his journey, at no point does he ever even consider giving up on his mission: he is going to find and rescue Alice, no matter what, and nothing in the universe will stop him.
  Superman: I was like anyone would be. I was... stuck. Some other day, I might have stayed that way. But right now, I don't have time for that. Someone's waiting on me.
• Enemy Without: An interesting play on this occurs in chapter 8, where Superman gets zapped by a space anomaly that splits him into two halves: the human, unpowered Clark Kent, and a completely Kryptonian Superman. Clark Kent is the introspective, idealistic, All-Loving Hero we've come to recognize even without his powers, but this split-off Superman — while a protector who does his best to keep Clark safe as he's light years away from civilization — is emotionally detached, and considers it worthless to continue pursuing Alice as his Kryptonian code of honor valuing science and truth, as he'd be wasting time saving lives back on Earth. These two end up butting heads as Clark continues to refuse to give up on Alice despite having no powers, while "Superman" believes it to be a futile effort, and the two snipping at each other: "Superman" claiming "You made me weak," Clark retorting "You never made me strong." It's not until Clark dares his counterpart to leave if he isn't going to help that he comes back and decides Clark may be right, finding a way to fuse them back together.
• Evil Is Petty: Chapter 7 flashes back to a race between Superman and The Flash to raise $1 billion for charity, something that Lex Luthor took an interest in. In an odd, but calculated act of generosity, he pledged to match for another billion dollars for the charity on the condition that Superman would win the race. Lex calculated that The Flash would win, so the intent was to simply find a means to demoralize Supes for his seemingly inevitable failure.
• Exposition Beam: Superman's first step in locating the missing girl's location is stopping at Rann and using their technology to beam in all the documented information they have about all usage of the zeta beam used to kidnap her. Sardath warns Superman that this is a terrible idea because an active zeta exists everywhere all at once, meaning that not only would sorting through all interactions to find where one girl was taken be an impossible task, the sheer amount of information would crush Superman's mind, with Sardath treating Superman's insistence on trying it anyway as inviting certain death. Fortunately, Supes isn't built like most mortal minds, and after experiencing several trippy and variously traumatic dreams, he ends up managing to guess the girl's location, as well as identify her name: Alice.
• Fastest Thing Alive: This reputation is passed onto The Flash as usual in the DCU, which gets discussed throughout chapter 7, where he and Superman participate in a race for charity involving looping around the entire Earth in 10 laps. While they've been known to have exceptional Super-Speed powers (heck, this isn't even the first time both of them were in a charity race), The Flash being seen as the de facto fastest superhero in the universe leads many absolutely certain that he'll triumph over Superman, which even leads to a petty scheme by Lex Luthor of betting to match the charity's billion-dollar goal if Superman wins just to rub in his failure. Superman, having used his Super-Hearing to learn of Lex's scheme puts his all into winning the race, and despite his brief stumbles, he just barely manages to claim victory.
• Galactic Conqueror: The ultimate Big Bad of the series is an unnamed robot leader of an army of "Robotiens", who simply decided out of boredom to take over the universe. He claims that Earth is ultimately a place of suffering that deserves to be "put out of its misery", which promptly gets retorted to by Supes with a boot to the skull.
• Grenade Hot Potato: Chapter 6 sees an amnesiac Clark and Sgt. Rock in a massive firefight attempting to advance against the Nazi forces, and early on, a grenade gets tossed into their bunker, only for Rock to calmly grab it and hurl it back before it explodes. Later in the chapter — as he convinces Rock of his own determination against the increasingly hopeless fight — Clark finds another grenade tossed towards them and attempts to throw it, only for it to explode in his hand. Fortunately, not only is he the Man of Steel, the shock of the explosion restores his memory, allowing him to fly in and kick some Nazi ass.
• The Greys: The unnamed alien species seen in chapter 4 are a greener, lankier form of this archetype. They're quite civilized and seemingly benevolent, with a healer attempting to revive an unconscious Superman by using his own life force, one who also has a wife and children.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Chapter 4 sees an unnamed alien healer attempting to revive an unconscious, unresponsive Superman by sacrificing his life force, but after much investment, he's told to stop as doing too much will kill him. However, this process allowed the healer to experience many of Superman's memories, and after seeing just how much Superman's fought and sacrificed in saving the world time and time again, he makes the decision to trade his life to bring Superman back and continue fighting the good fight even after he's gone.
• Hypothetical Fight Debate: Alice asks Superman the age-old question that if he ever got into a fight with Batman, who would win? After first attempting to weasel out of the question by saying "The Joker", Superman gives his honest answer: Batman.
  Alice: How would he win?
  Superman: I'd let him.
  Alice: What?! Why?!
  Superman: If you knew Batman, you'd know. It'd mean a lot to him.
  Alice: So?
  Superman: He's gone through a lot. He deserves some happiness.
• Keystone Army: The increasingly devastating invasion of Robotiens across Earth takes place at the same time that Superman is fighting against its leader somewhere countless light-years away in space. When Superman ends up defeating its leader by crushing his robot body to pieces, his army ends up falling as well. Even the Justice League members are surprised that after it looked like Earth was a goner, all the robots simply stopped moving.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: During Superman's brief excursion to World War II and encounter with Sgt. Rock, Rock's narration explains that Clark explained that he knew of the battles that they were facing, saying that "some of it used to read a bit like it'd come right out of a funny book, an action comic."
• Mythology Gag:
  • Chapter 3 shows Superman in a galactic boxing match run by aliens and without his powers for the second time. The first time, his opponent was Muhammad Ali.
  • Chapter 7 features a recent flashback between Superman and The Flash having a race for charity, just like in Superman #199 from 1967. Unlike that time, which ended in a tie, this recent race had Superman barely win.
  • One scene has Superman bound up in chains described to be made out of a metal so absurdly strong that it was used to drag stars between galaxies, which is more than likely a nod to that time in 1949 (specifically Superboy #140) when Clark-as-Superboy used a literal short-link chain to tow several planets out of a dying galaxy.
• Out-of-Genre Experience: Most of the series is Superman's super-adventures among the stars, but chapter 6 sees him accidentally hurtling through time and thrust into what's basically a World War II comic, complete with Sgt. Rock himself leading the offense. Clark loses his memory — and in turn forgets he has superpowers — so he ends up participating in an increasingly deadly and hopeless assault as any other soldier on the field.
• The Paragon: The story makes it clear just how beloved Supes is, especially on Earth. He's the favorite superhero to many people mentioned throughout the story, including Alice, acting as the beacon of hope bringing peace that otherwise assures that with his help, things will be alright in the end.
• Production Foreshadowing: The planet of Rann and zeta beams are important elements early on in the story, and Adam Strange himself is among the Justice League members seen fighting across the world in chapter 11. That, along with Alice discussing with Superman his opinion on Mister Terrific of all superheroes, would be a reference to an upcoming Tom King series in the works, Strange Adventures.
• Reconstruction: Taking a page from All-Star Superman, Up in the Sky is a re-evaluation on just how challenging yet rewarding it would be to be the Man of Steel. This version of Superman is a powerful, but fallible man who wants to do the right thing, but is faced with increasingly dark and complex problems from Samaritan Syndrome, isolation, sacrifice, even assisted suicide, all weighting heavily on Clark's moral code. However, said moral code ends up being just as unwavering and virtuous as it's always been, and the story is an unambiguously hopeful one where Clark's greatest strength is his compassion, reminding readers why he's such a beloved and inspiring icon inside and out of universe.
• Samaritan Syndrome: A recurring internal conflict for Superman is his fears surrounding his inability to save everyone he believes he can help — he may be a super-man, but he's still finite, and the decision he makes between choosing to risk travelling thousands of light years away from his home planet to rescue one girl vs. risk said girl never being found because of his inaction is a very difficult one. When he ends up making the decision to go after her, he still remains anxious about how things are doing back home, always fearing that catastrophe will strike without him being able to help and having very little to go on beyond faith and hope.
• Teleportation: The zeta beams from Adam Strange make an appearance in the series, being the teleportation ray that allowed Alice's kidnapper to disappear into space with her, seemingly without a trace and without anyone being able to track them down.
• Time Travel: Chapter 6 sees Superman accidentally falling into a temporal wormhole that displaced him into the middle of World War II, losing his memory, but fortunately finding himself in the good company of Sgt. Rock. When Clark ends up regaining his memory and helping save the day, he makes his way back to the anomaly to resume his search for Alice.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Lex Luthor is this once again, as seen in a flashback in chapter 7. During a race between Superman and The Flash for charity, Lex offered to match the charity's billion-dollar goal on the condition that Superman win the race despite being fully convinced that he would not, all just to spite Supes if he failed. When — against all odds — Superman did end up victorious, Lex was forced to keep his end of the bargain, with the money going to a children's shelter: the Lex Luthor Center for Displaced Children, where Alice was raised in and remembers fondly.

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