Superman Week — Revisiting An Underrated Alternate Superman In ‘Superman’ Annual #6

Welcome to the table,

 

It’s Superman week here at Comicon.com, and, as is my way, I am going to go wildly off-book and talk about one of my favorite Elseworlds Superman stories of all time, Superman Annual #6. Let’s get into it.

I came to own this comic thanks to a large pack of 20 or so DC comics that were sold in a bundle together at a flea market in the foothills of North Carolina. I don’t remember much aside from the fact that there were a bunch of Batman books, a Star Trek comic, a few issues of Robin, and Superman Annual #6.

Even at that young age, the cover of this book, drawn by the always amazing Mike Mignola, spoke to my very soul. I had a very loose understanding of Elseworlds, but having purchased a few issues of Marvel Comics What If…? off the spinner rack at the grocery store, I had a basic idea that this story was not going to be the main DC Comics universe, but some kind of alternate reality story.

Additionally, I spent a great deal of my time as a kid reading anything I could get my hands on, and in the deeply repressed landscape I was born into, the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs were given a pass because they had the word “Classics” stamped on the cover so I was allowed to read about Tarzan at my leisure without fear that I would be subjected to lectures about the lack of a religious theme in those stories or being forced to give up my books as they did not serve some large purposes that was constantly changing demanded that was put on just about anything in that world.

I bring up the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs because this Elseworlds story is a retelling of the Superman origin set in an equatorial jungle, presumably somewhere in Africa, as the Tarzan story was.

A baby crash-lands in the jungle inside a pod from another world. He is found by a she-wolf who takes in the “man-cub,” snatching him out of the clutches of a tiger named Khan.

Khan is furious and tries multiple times to take the child, but is confronted by a council of animals, and the boy’s life is spared. The wolves name the boy K’L’L.

At this point in my childhood, I had no idea that Clark Kent’s birth name was Kal-EL so I assumed that the wolves just really liked fun names and rolled with it.

K’L’L grew up learning from the various animals who inhabited the jungle with him. Having no shame, he did most of this in the nude. As a kid in a very conservative environment, I was flabbergasted by his ability to run around naked, as I had been taught that your body was something to be ashamed of and you should always cover it for fear of judgment and exile.

But here he was, just hanging out in the jungle with monkeys and wolves, living his best life as he leaped through the trees and explored the dense undergrowth of the jungle landscape.

However, K’L’L, as one does in youthful exploration, wandered too far away from his wolf pack and was set upon by Khan, who slashed his face and attempted to kill him once more.

This would have been the end of K’L’L if not for the panther, Jahd Bahlja. Jahd snatched K’L’L away from Kahn and brought him back to his mother’s cave, where he was nursed back to health.

I knew bullets would bounce off his chest when he was shot at, so I was confused as to why Superman would be harmed by the tooth and claw of a tiger, but in my youth, the concern on things like canon was secondary to what was turning into one heck of a cool story.

You see, up and to this point, I was not a Superman fan. I enjoyed Batman: The Animated Series, but past that, I really did not like cape books as they never rang true to me. So finding myself really locked into a Superman story was new territory for me, and the fact that I was really enjoying what I was reading not only made an impression on me as a little kid, but has been something I have carried with me all these years later.

I would venture a guess that, even in my youth, it was more believable to me that a kid from another world could be raised by two loving wolves, rather than by two loving human parents. As the latter of those two situations seemed far less plausible to me.

As things go, though, our already dangerous jungle setting is made even more unsafe with the introduction of humans to the story. The humans set up a camp, and as is the nature of the ignorant and cruel, they start to make a game of shooting the various wildlife they see.

This “game,” of course, results in our boy K’L’L showing up and being none too happy with the way humanity is so cavalier with taking lives. A wolf pup is killed, and K’L’L’s she-wolf mother leaps from the underbrush to dispatch of the human hunter, whose companions gun her down. The sounds of gunfire ring out through the trees, and K’L’L’ comes rushing in with a terrible ferocity.

K’L’L quickly throws the human hunters about, making quick work of them as their bullets bounce off his now-hardened skin. A physical feature that seems to have developed as he has aged.

K’L’L recovers the bodies of his fallen found family and dashes back into the jungle, mourning the loss of those he loved.

What struck me as I was rereading this is how much this one story beat changed the “raised by a loving mother and father” Superman story I was familiar with at the time, to an orphan due to gun violence story that was typically something we saw attributed to a certain Dark Knight’s origin. It is not lost on me, looking back through the webwork of time and memory, that I was absolutely delighted at this story because our man-from-another-world’s origins were not dissimilar to that of Batman, a character whom I to this day am very fond of and one of the only super-hero series I read.

Our man K’L’L soon encounters Kahn attempting to take over his family’s pack, twisting the minds of the youth to follow him so they can serve as his minions. K’L’L challenges Kahn and the two clash, resulting in K’L’L slaying Kahn and then taking his pelt as a sign of his right to rule over the animals of the jungle.

Yet again, the mantle of something that strikes fear in the hearts of those who see it is such a Batman thing to do. It’s wild to me that I never put this together as a small child, but as an adult, it’s impossible not to see that our boy from Krypton grew to be an avenging shadow in the jungles of Earth.

K’L’L even affixes a bit of the pod he arrived on Earth in to his arm as a symbol of who he is. A symbol that all will come to fear or respect. It’s such a Batman move.

The humans who K’L’L had clashed with return to England and put together a new venture where they head back to the jungle to find the “feral man.”

This time, they return to the jungle with an English woman named Lois Lane, who serves as their guide, and a wealthy explorer named Lex Luthor.

Lex is deplorable, regaling the exploration group with a story of how he and a man by the name of Diablo gunned down a local tribe to take their glowing green “Star Gem.”

Like an absolutely unhinged entity of pure vengeance, K’L’L’ rides into the humans’ camp atop an elephant in the middle of the night and unleashes the jungle’s fury upon the explorers.

Superman is fully ready to kill all of these people to avenge the death of his family, but Lois convinces him to stay his hand. K’L’L’ clearly is an unstoppable force, and flanked by an army of deadly, organized animals, he is truly the king of the jungle.

K’L’L’ starts to venture to the human camp and watch them, eventually interacting in a non-violent way to learn more about them, specifically Lois Lane.

K’L’L shows he is fireproof, that he can fly, and that he is impossibly strong. Lois, who has previously rejected Lex’s advances, finds herself swimming as K’L’L’ hovers over the water, and she resigns to exiting the water nude, commenting that he probably has never seen such a thing before.

As a small child, I remember being horribly worried someone would find this comic, even though the most you see is what is pictured below.

Feeling slighted that Lois Lane enjoys her time more with K’L’L’ than she does with him, Lex tries to impress her with his wealth and worldly ways, and when that does not work, he attempts to sexually assault her.

K’L’L’ is having none of that and arrives on the scene to dispatch of Lex, who, very lucky for him, has his “Star Gem,” a stone whose green glow weakens our man K’L’L’, making him writhe in pain helplessly on the ground.

What follows is something that has haunted my nightmares, and I do not possess the medical and mental health knowledge to truly understand why.

The story jumps back to London, where K’L’L’ is caged like an animal by Lex, who has taken him to the stage akin to what was done with King Kong in the older films.

The panel above, as the frothy spit runs down K’L’L’s face, burned itself into my brain. I woke up in the middle of the night, worried someone would hate me enough to spit on me. I got into altercations with other kids on the playground when they would spit on me purely because of how this panel made me feel. To this day, the act of spitting on someone creates a spark in me that I can feel up my spine. There is a primal aversion to the act that I can trace directly back to this panel.

There is something about the impotent rage in K’L’L’s eyes, the way they way the shadows fall on his face, the way Lex says “Obey me.”

There is a primordial defiance so deep within my very soul that when people talk about subjection and hate, this image flashes in my mind’s eye before a library of other horrors appears in my head. This is art in its purest form because it not only changed me for life, but it also, to this day, makes me feel something very emotional and visceral.

Lex had K’L’L’ performing so that he could entice the Queen of England to arrive. She does, and Lex demands that K’L’L’ kill her so that he may take the throne. A half-baked plan at best.

His folly, aside from being a xenophobic monster and murderer, is that he threatens Lois Lane, whom K’L’L’ deeply cares for. So K’L’L’ attacks Lex and, through some convenient sword slashes and a bit of a tumble, sends the whole theater into flaming chaos as Lex escapes with Lois Lane in tow.

K’L’L’ breaks free of his bonds and frees his animal companions who had been trapped and transported with him. He leaps into action, finds Lex and Lois on the roof of the now-burning theater.

In the chaos, Lex is killed by a member of the exploration team seeking to redeem themselves and avenge their fallen friends, while K’L’L’ flies like a bullet through he flames to catch a falling Lois Lane, snatching her from certain doom.

K’L’L’ is knighted by the Queen and given lands and wealth as Sir Clark of Kent, a delightful punctuation on this amazing story.

And the story comes to a close with the news that K’L’L’ and Lois have three kids who seemingly patrol the skys of a now retro-future tech version of England.

Friends, I say this with no hyperbole… I would read a K’L’L’ and his family comic series from cover to cover for as long as someone was willing to give it to me. The fusion of pulp and weird fiction coupled with the time period is nothing short of magical, and this is the kind of thing that not only draws me to my well-worn dime store novels but is also why I delight in films like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, The Phantom, The Rocketeer, or The Shadow.

I have never liked Superman because he has always felt like performative propaganda to me, but this version of the character had me locked in and served as one of my favorite comics as a kid.

Until next time, while this is not the typical telling of Superman’s origin, no matter what form it comes in, one thing does not change: Superman is an immigrant story about the power of found family and pushing back against those who use their power and influence to do harm to others. No matter how you tell it, Superman is a champion of the oppressed and stands up against bullies, not because he is consumed with a lust for power, but because he knows it is the right thing to do.