Kevin J. Anderson tells the history of the planet as it approaches it’s fiery end.
BY JENNIFER M. CONTINO at comicon.com.
Kevin J. Anderson tells us what it’s like exploring an aspect of Superman’s history that should have all fans of the Man of Steel excited, The Last Days of Krypton.
THE PULSE: Although almost everyone knows that Superman is from Krypton and that the planet exploded, much more about the world isn’t widely known, aside from a few untold tales and a few limited series from the ‘80s. So, how do you research something like this to write the Last Days of Krypton?
KEVIN J. ANDERSON: I did a lot of background reading, picking up the tidbits of Krypton and its spectacular end (many of which are contradictory). Brainiac and how he steals the Kryptonian capital city of Kandor, General Zod and his revolt as well as his two companions Aethyr and Nam-Ek (called Ursa and Non in the first two Superman films), Argo City (the origin of Supergirl), Jor-El and Lara.
Because so many different versions of this “history” have been floated around over the past six decades, I had the freedom to take the best parts and make the most effective story possible.
THE PULSE: Why did you want to take on a project like this? It’s not exactly the type of Superman story that most people would dream of writing, at least since it doesn’t really feature Superman per se, but his family and some of the people who will become his greatest foes ...
ANDERSON: Superman is, of course, a very popular hero, but, being a science fiction guy, I always thought the origin story, the end of a highly sophisticated planet and one man trying to save it even when nobody believes him, was the most interesting part. This is a part of a great mythos that has never really been fully explored in almost 60 years of Superman history.
THE PULSE: How long has this story been in the works? Is it something you always thought about telling or something you didn’t really become enmeshed in until HarperCollins suggested it?
ANDERSON: This was my baby from the start. I had done comics work for DC and Wildstorm before (a six-issue Justice Society story, STRANGE TALES, and a graphic novel in my “Seven Suns” universe), so I originally pitched the idea as a comic series. But at the time, with SUPERMAN RETURNS in the works, DC didn’t want to do anything to touch upon the back story until they knew what was going to be in the movie. Later, the idea kept coming back to me, and I realized that the best vehicle would be to do it as a novel, which would give me the room and the depth to do this justice. After all, the novel would be creating the whole detailed fabric of Krypton.
Because the president of DC is a big fan of my DUNE and SEVEN SUNS novels, I was able to call him up directly and pitch him the idea. There was an immediate flood of excitement. My idea circulated around the various editors and departments at DC, I wrote up a brief summary and pitch of the story, and it went out to publishers. I believe we had six publishers bidding on the novel, and we ended up with HarperCollins.
THE PULSE: You’ve worked on so many different sci-fi type tales, how does what happened on Krypton stack up to those other works?
ANDERSON: As an author, I have made my name by writing huge science fiction epics, from the DUNE books I do with Brian Herbert to my own sprawling “Saga of Seven Suns,” and I wanted to do something just as big and epic about the pomp and grandeur and political machinations that would lead to the downfall of an entire world. I modeled it after “The Last Days of Pompeii” and “Ben-Hur.”
THE PULSE: General Zod and Braniac were mentioned as being a part of this story. How do you view both characters?
ANDERSON: By far, the coolest Superman bad guy is General Zod, along with his two companions Aethyr and Nam-Ek. In the version of Krypton in Superman I and II, it’s clear that Zod was actually a friend or partner to Jor-El before Zod was overthrown. Showing his rise and fall, and how his actions might have led to the destruction of the world was the best part for me.
Brainiac shrinks down and steals the Kryptonian capital of Kandor, but he may not be quite the villain that history knows. With the whole capital *gone*, it’s an event equivalent to 9/11 for Krypton, and Zod uses that to his advantage.
THE PULSE: How do Jor-El and Lara grow as this story progresses? Who are they when we first meet them in these pages?
ANDERSON: I will tell you that in the very first chapter, Jor-El discovers the Phantom Zone. We also see the first meeting with him and Lara, and how their romance grows. Lara has always been an undeveloped character, from what I read in the Superman stories, and here I had a chance to turn her into a real person, a true partner for Jor-El. Later, Jor-El, a genius scientist who had done so much for his world, is entirely spurned when he tries to warn of the planet’s impending doom. He reminded me very much of J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the revered scientists who masterminded the Manhattan Project, he was widely applauded when we needed him, and then the country rather coldly brushed him aside when public opinion turned. I modeled much of Jor-El on Oppenheimer.
THE PULSE: Which version of Krypton’s story are you telling here? Is it the recent DCU incarnation or the Silver Age version of one that’s an amalgam of the television and film Kryptons?
ANDERSON: DC is well aware that there is no one “canon” version of the events, because so many comics, TV shows, movies, cartoons, etc., have muddled up the details. (The versions are even contradictory as to whether Krypton was destroyed when its red sun went supernova, or whether the planet just exploded.) The folks at DC instructed me to go back to the basics, the core events of the story, and use those for the framework of the novel. You’ll see some echoes of the Brando / ice crystal Krypton, but the world is a lot bigger and more complex than the underground police state depicted in the films.
THE PULSE: How do you break something like this down? What’s your starting point? What major events do you hit here?
ANDERSON: I laid out the most prominent events and tried to stitch them together, as well as telling a story that explained some of the hard to swallow parts of the mythology (for instance, if Krypton was supposedly the most sophisticated planet in “twenty eight known galaxies” and had incredible technology, how is it that every single Kryptonian happened to be home on the day their planet blew up, so that only one baby got away? I explain that in the novel). The discovery of the Phantom Zone, the romance between Jor-El and Lara, the rise of General Zod, Aethyr, and Nam-Ek… Brainiac stealing Kandor, Zor-El and his wife Alura in Argo City, the shifts in the planet’s core that create kryptonite. It’s a treasure chest of nuggets for plotting a story.
THE PULSE: How many years does this story encompass?
ANDERSON: About two years and a lot happens in those two years.
THE PULSE: Since this is in conjunction with DC Comics, does that mean you have a lot of different people adding in their two cents about what this story should entail, or others looking over your shoulders and able to “edit” what you’re doing here? How many cooks are in the kitchen, so to speak?
ANDERSON: They’ve given me a lot of freedom, and so far we’ve had a very good dialog at each stage of the process. I basically have two other “cooks” in the kitchen, Chris Cerasi, my editor at DC who is in charge of guiding me through the DC Universe and giving me the OK for the content, while Mauro DiPreta is my editor at HarperCollins, who’s in charge of looking at LAST DAYS as a *novel* and making sure the characters, plotting, and writing are as good as they can be. Since I have written 94 books of my own and have often worked in established universes, *my* job is to make sure those two guys don’t have much to do!
THE PULSE: What do you anticipate as being some of the toughest parts of this story to get down on the printed page? Why?
ANDERSON: I’ll have to answer this with hindsight, since I’ve already completed the novel and I’m on my third edit right now. I really wanted to convey a majesty and grandeur for this wonderful society, yet also a sense of decadence, a bloated government that can’t act swiftly in times of emergency, a civilization grown so complacent over the centuries that they can’t believe anything bad will happen to them, even if one of their greatest scientists insists that the End Is Coming.
THE PULSE: You’ve worked with several other icons and created some of your own ... but Superman is a character who people you wouldn’t even think of know. How does that add to the pressure you feel telling this untold story that many have wondered about for years ...?
ANDERSON: Superman is absolutely iconic, THE superhero of all superheroes. To step into this universe, and not just to write a “Superman fights the villain” story, but to lay the very foundation of the mythology was something I couldn’t possibly pass up.
The real pressure is this: While researching this book, I became familiar with some very obscure Krypton trivia, and the more I worked on the novel, I started thinking that everybody must know these things. However, I can’t write LAST DAYS only for the comic geek who can quote every word balloon from Superman #343. This book will be read by a wide audience of people who are Superman fans, who know only the bare bones of the story, who may not even know that Jor-El discovered the Phantom Zone, or that his brother Zor-El is the father of Supergirl, or that Brainiac is going to steal Kandor. I have to make sure this is a novel for a broad general readership, with a lot of cool details and subtle in jokes for the real die hard fans.
THE PULSE: Through the course of your research on this, what have been some of the things you’ve learned that have surprised you the most?
ANDERSON: That some of the really old issues (where Superman thinks about Krypton) were quite goofy. How can you truly fit the “telepathic purple rhinoceros of Krypton” into the canon?
THE PULSE: What other projects, in or out of comics, are you working on?
ANDERSON: I’ve just delivered the sixth novel, METAL SWARM, in my “Saga of Seven Suns” and I’m about to start the seventh and final book in the series. Brian Herbert and I will soon begin our plotting and outlining for PAUL OF DUNE (now that we’ve turned in the final manuscript for next year’s SANDWORMS OF DUNE). I have also completed the last novel of science fiction grand master A. E. Van Vogt, SLAN HUNTER, at the request of his widow. And my wife Rebecca Moesta and I are completing a young adult fantasy trilogy, CRYSTAL DOORS, for Little, Brown. I have other irons in the fire, too, but that covers most of it.